Floor Statements

I object.

Mr. President, this is my first ``Time to Wake Up'' speech in the Senate as a Member of the minority. Being in the minority will give me the opportunity, for the first time, to use the tools uniquely available to Members of the Senate minority. On the issue of climate change, which is affecting all of our States but particularly Rhode Island, I intend to use those tools politely and persistently.

We have just left a period of partisanship and obstruction by the minority unique in the Senate's history. I do not intend to return us to those days. My intent is to enliven the Senate and see to it that it does its duty, that we as Senators do our duty to our fellow Americans. My intent is not to blockade and degrade this great institution with obstruction for the sake of obstruction. My goal, in short, is Senate action, not Senate inaction.

Pope Francis recently spoke to the world about mankind's care of God's creation. He warned us against what he called negligence and inaction. I hope to be a constant spur in the Senate against negligence and inaction, specifically the negligence and inaction that is our present Senate standard of care for God's Earth.

I know that powerful forces of negligence and inaction are arrayed against us. I know the Supreme Court's reckless and shameful decision in the Citizens United case has empowered those forces as never before. I know there has resulted an unprecedented campaign by polluting interests of political spending and threats. It is plain to see that the polluters' campaign has, for now at least, silenced meaningful bipartisan debate about carbon pollution. We can line up the Citizens United decision and the silence almost exactly. Coal and oil interests are enjoying massive economic subsidies--massive subsidies--and similar to any special interest, they will fight to protect those special benefits. But it can't last. It can't last. My confidence is strong because our American democracy is ultimately founded in the will of the American people, and the American people understand the need to end our days of negligence and inaction. They want us to run the blockade that polluters have built around Congress.

Polling shows this. More than 80 percent of Americans say they see climate change happening right around them. Two-thirds say they would pay more for electricity if it would help solve this problem. Among Independents, that is 64 percent.

Even among young Republicans, voters get it--young voters, anyway. Under the age of 35, most Republican voters, according to polls, think that climate denial is ignorant, out of touch or crazy. Those are the words from the poll. Under 50 years of age, a majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents support action against climate change. Among all Republicans of all ages, fully half support restrictions on carbon dioxide, and nearly half think the United States should lead the fight.

Trusted American institutions get it, too--from the Joint Chiefs of Staff of our military services to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, from all of America's major scientific societies to the experts we trust day in and day out at NOAA and at NASA, and from the leaders of America's corporate community--Walmart and Target, Apple and Google, Ford and GM, Mars and Nestle USA, Alcoa and Starbucks, Coke and Pepsi. From all of them and from many other respected voices comes the message that climate change is a serious threat. I have confidence that Congress will soon have to heed their voices.

We might mention the recent agreement in Lima where 194 countries all agreed to carbon reductions. Does the Republican Party in the United States of America really want to be aligned with Vladimir Putin, the great international climate denier?

My confidence also comes from necessity. This simply must be done. Our human species developed on this earth in a climate window that has always been between 170 and 300 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere--always. For as long as human kind has been here on Earth, carbon concentration has wobbled up and down but always within that range--through our entire history, going back a million and probably more years. We have now rocketed outside that range and broken 400 parts per million, a condition on Earth that is a first, again, in millions of years.

Our oceans, as a result, are acidifying measurably at a rate unprecedented in the life of our species. One has to go back into distant geologic time to find anything similar. If you go back that far and look at what the geologic record tells us about what life was like on the planet in those primal eras, it presents a daunting prospect.

The scientific warnings about what this means are now starting to be matched in our experience with unprecedented rain bursts and droughts, wildfires and heat seasons, sea levels and ocean temperatures. In the tropic seas, coral reefs are dying off at startling rates; in the Arctic seas, sea ice is vanishing at levels never recorded until now. Everywhere the oceans shout a warning to those who will listen. Rhode Island, as a coastal State, as the Ocean State, is particularly hard hit. We get the land problems such as the rain bursts heavily associated with climate change, which in 2010 brought unprecedented flooding along our historic rivers. We have the sea level rise. It is expected now to be several feet by the end of the century--by a warming sea that has also disturbed our fisheries and distressed our fishing economy. ``It is not my grandfather's ocean out there,'' as one commercial fisherman told me.

This only goes one way. There is no theory of how this magically gets better on its own. Every theory--and now most observations--all point to all this getting worse and perhaps very badly worse. The time for negligence and inaction has passed.

In the Senate we need to begin a conversation about this. We have to begin at the beginning. We have to agree on a baseline of facts, principles, and laws of nature that can then inform our judgments about what to do. I do not think it is asking too much of the new majority in the Senate to begin an honest conversation about carbon dioxide and climate change. I don't think that it is too much to ask the new majority in the Senate that we undertake this conversation in a serious and responsible manner. I do not think that is extreme or unreasonable. We need to begin at the beginning in this conversation, and I will make every effort to see to it that we begin. But even as we begin, we can keep the end in sight. That end is a world where polluters pay the costs of their pollution. That in turn creates a world where market forces work properly in our energy markets. The end is a world where it is America that seizes the economic promise of these new energy technologies, where we are builders--not buyers--of the energy devices of the future. The end is a world that turns back from the brink of a plainly foreseeable risk where the consequences of negligence and inaction could well be dire for us and for the generations that follow us.

In sum, we in this Senate have a duty before us, and negligence and inaction will not meet what that duty demands. For those of you with a coal economy or an oil economy in your States, I understand and I want to work with you. There are answers to be found. But please, do not pretend that this problem doesn't exist. That is false and unacceptable.

I must, on behalf of my State and on behalf of our future, insist that we in the Senate meet our duty, even under this new Senate majority--and I will.

I yield the floor, and I thank the Presiding Officer for his patience.

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

Mr. President, we are winding down the end of this year and, indeed, the end of this Congress, and I am here today to give the last ``Time to Wake Up'' speech in this Congress. I am particularly pleased to be delivering it while my friend from West Virginia is presiding. He actually took the trouble to come to Rhode Island and hear firsthand about what is happening in my State on these issues.

The year that is ending now ushered in some mighty dubious milestones. January through November 2014--the year so far--were the hottest first 11 months of any year recorded. Unless something dramatic changes in December, 2014 is on track to be the hottest year since we began keeping records back in 1880. That would mean that 14 of the warmest 15 years on record were in this century. According to the World Meteorological Organization's secretary general, ``There is no standstill in global warming.''

This chart shows the decades-long rise in the ocean's heat content from the surface down to a depth of 2,000 meters--a little over 1 mile. Look at 2005 to 2014, the red part. NASA estimates that the amount of energy needed to

account for that much warming in that much ocean is equivalent to four magnitude-6.0 earthquakes occurring every second for those 9 years. Four 6.0 earthquakes every second for 9 years would create the kind of energy necessary to warm that much. Well, obviously it wasn't earthquakes that did it. We would have known about that. And the first law of thermodynamics--conservation of energy--decrees that all that heat in the ocean had to come from somewhere. The near certain source of that heat is increased greenhouse gases, mostly carbon pollution trapping heat from the Sun.

Since the rise of fossil fuel energy, we have been on a carbon binge. As long as humans have been on the Earth, we have existed safely in a range of about 170 to about 300 parts per million carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This year the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, measured at the famous Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, exceeded 400 parts per million for more than 3 months. Archeologists estimate that our human species has been around on this planet for about 200,000 years. The Earth last saw such high levels of carbon as 400 parts per million for that long a period more than 800,000 years ago.

Oceans have absorbed more than 90 percent of the excess heat that the carbon has trapped. As seawater warms--we all know by the law of thermal expansion--it expands, and as a result sea levels rise. Satellite measurements show that in this period, global average sea level rose about an inch. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory attributes about one-third of global mean sea level rise to the warming of the upper ocean. Combine that with the melting of glaciers on land, and you can see that climate change is significantly increasing sea level worldwide. In my home State I see this. And the Presiding Officer was there. The Newport tide gauge records nearly 10 inches more water than it did in the 1930s.

Carbon pollution in the atmosphere also dissolves in the ocean. It doesn't just warm it up, it dissolves in it. When it dissolves in it, it makes it more acidic. Indeed, the extra carbon dioxide that humans have pumped into the oceans has caused a nearly 30 percent increase in the acidity of the upper ocean, which means a lot for shellfish, such as mussels and clams and oysters, that make their shells from calcium carbonate because calcium carbonate dissolves in acidified seawater.

In July 2014 a Maine oyster farmer--a guy named Bill Mook--came to the Environment and Public Works Committee and described for us the difficulty his oyster crop--his oyster spat, they call it--had maturing. Here is what he said:

Through observation, trial, and error, we reached the same

conclusion made by researchers using controlled, replicated

experimentation. Acidification is not a future problem. It is

a problem now, and it will only get worse.

He said it is a problem now and it will only get worse.

Measurements of the atmosphere and ocean tell us that climate change is real. We already see the harm connected with it in storm-damaged homes, flooded cities, drought-stricken farms, and raging wildfires, in fish disappearing from warming, acidifying waters, in shifting habitats and migrating contagions. Climate change loads the dice for these events, which carry real costs to homeowners, business owners, and taxpayers. A key cause is undeniably carbon pollution.

Some of my Republican colleagues continue to deny that climate change is even happening or at best they will stand mute in the face of the changes we see, in the face of so much evidence. ``I am not a scientist'' is all we get from some. Well, if they are not scientists, maybe they should ask one. Ask NOAA. Ask NASA. Ask our National Academies. If a Senator doesn't know what they are talking about, they should study up. That is our job. If they can't be bothered to ask a scientist, then look at what the military is saying about climate change or what the business community is saying.

The military's 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review, for example, offers a straightforward assessment of the threat climate change poses to national and international security. Even in Pentagon bureaucratese, the assessment is pretty harsh:

Climate change poses [a] significant challenge for the

United States and the world at large.

Climate change may exacerbate water scarcity and lead to

sharp increases in food costs. The pressures caused by

climate change will influence resource competition while

placing additional burdens on economies, societies, and

governance institutions around the world.

The Pentagon also released a Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap this year, detailing the military's plans for a changed climate. The report states in no uncertain terms:

Climate change will affect the Department of Defense's

ability to defend the Nation and poses immediate risks to

U.S. national security.

That would seem to me to be a phrase worth listening to.

The business and financial community also see climate risk. Former Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson teamed up with former New York City business tycoon and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Republican Senator Olympia Snowe, and others, to put together an evidence-based assessment of the risks posed by climate change to the U.S. economy. Their report found that between $66 billion and $106 billion worth of existing American coastal property will likely be below sea level by midcentury. That pricetag could top $500 billion by the end of the century.

They also found extreme heat could reduce labor productivity of outdoor workers by as much as 3 percent by the end of the century.

They found that shifting agricultural patterns could cause States in the Southeast, the lower Great Plains, and Midwest to see a 50- to 70- percent loss in average annual crop yields. It is a risk we would be reckless to ignore.

One bright light of 2014 has been the proposed limits on carbon emissions from existing coal plants announced this year by the Obama administration. The new standard will not only reduce emissions, it will change the way the polluters think. Now that it is no longer going to be free to pollute, I suspect some new thinking by polluters will be followed in short order with some new thinking on the other side of the aisle here in the Senate.

Another bright light of 2014 was the Obama administration's carbon- reduction agreement with China, the world's largest carbon polluter now, followed by news this weekend from Lima that every nation in the world is expected to put forward a plan to rein in its carbon pollution.

The public is with us on this, too. A recent poll released by the insurance firm Munich Re showed that 83 percent of Americans believe the climate is changing.

I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute to conclude the page in front of me.

Seven Americans in ten say we should use more solar and wind power to battle climate change. An AP poll released this week said that half of Republicans favor regulations on carbon dioxide emissions.

In 2014, the physical evidence of climate change continued to mount. Our military, our business leaders, our President, and the American people all affirmed their commitment to fending off the worst effects of carbon pollution. So in 2015, Congress will need to step up to the plate.

I have introduced carbon fee legislation that would provide a practical tool for getting this done. By charging a fee on carbon pollution, we can correct the market failure that lets polluters unload the costs of their pollution on the rest of us, and compete unfairly in energy markets. We can use those proceeds to reduce other taxes. Most important, we can significantly reduce harmful carbon pollution. We just need to wake up. Maybe 2015 will be the year.

I thank the Senator from Oklahoma for his courtesy, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, the Senate will likely pass legislation to extend several dozen expired tax provisions. While I support a number of the individual provisions extended by this bill, I rise today to explain why I reluctantly plan to oppose it.

The so-called ``tax extenders'' package includes the 1-year extension of a hodgepodge of over 4 dozen tax provisions. This extension is not for the year ahead of us, as one might reasonably expect, but rather for the year that's mostly past us. In other words, we will be extending for 2014 tax programs that expired at the end of 2013. This means that, for the most part, the bill will offer credits and deductions to reward things that have already happened while doing absolutely nothing to help businesses and individuals plan for the future.

If tax policy is intended to influence behavior, the extenders bill is a double failure: it spends money rewarding things that have already happened and offers no incentives for businesses and individuals for the year ahead.

Let's take for example the production tax credit for wind energy, a program I strongly support that encourages the construction of wind farms. The provision in the extenders bill offers this incentive for properties for which construction has commenced by the end of 2014. That's 3 weeks from now. Instead of giving energy companies time to plan and prepare wind projects, we are saying: if you happen to have one ready to go, you have got until the end of the holiday season to break ground. The clock is ticking.

In contrast to Congress's temporary, year-to-year treatment of the wind tax credit and other incentives for renewable energy, Big Oil and Gas enjoy permanent subsidies in the Tax Code. It is long past time to reform the Tax Code so it reflects America's 21st century energy priorities. Permanent incentives for oil and gas and temporary programs for renewable energy is simply upside-down public policy.

In total, there are 50 or so extensions in this bill, and the only thing they seem to have in common is that Congress repeatedly packages them together. It is truly a mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Let's start with some of the good provisions. In addition to clean energy incentives, the bill extends a popular tax credit that encourages businesses to hire veterans, a host of incentives for energy efficiency, and a provision that ensures that families that lose their homes in foreclosure do not incur tax bills for the deficiencies. These provisions have strong bipartisan support.

Then there is the bad: the unjustifiable tax giveaways. These include so-called ``bonus depreciation,'' a program that allows corporations to deduct the costs of equipment right away instead of spreading out the deductions over the life of the equipment. Congress first included this provision in 2009 in the Recovery Act when it made some sense. The idea was to encourage businesses to accelerate their purchases when the economy most needed the investments. We have extended it so many times, though, that now we are just giving money away to corporations for buying things they would have bought anyway. That is a nice subsidy for the businesses, but not a wise use of taxpayer dollars.

The bill also includes tax giveaways for NASCAR tracks and racehorses. While I know these sports are popular, it is hard to justify subsidizing them with taxpayer dollars at a time when we are running large deficits and face the prospect of more budget sequestration.

And then there is the ugly, the stuff that does actual harm. There is a pair of provisions in the bill--the ``active financing'' and ``controlled foreign corporation look through'' provisions--that reward U.S. corporations for shifting money overseas to avoid paying taxes. Sadly, there are already a number of provisions in the Tax Code that encourage companies to move operations and assets overseas. We should repeal those provisions, not enhance them as the extenders bill does.

This 1-year, retroactive mixed bag of extensions will increase the budget deficit by over $41 billion. To put that figure into perspective, that is more than the annual budget for the entire Department of Homeland Security.

Earlier this year, my senior Senator from Rhode Island, Jack Reed, lead an effort to extend unemployment benefits for the millions of Americans who have struggled to find work in this uneven economic recovery. Republicans repeatedly filibustered his unemployment insurance legislation, with many citing the $17 billion price tag and the offsets included to pay for it.

I expect many of these same Republicans will vote to pass the $41 billion tax extenders bill, legislation which is not offset and will add to the deficit. If Republicans are truly as worried about the deficit as many of them claim to be, they need to raise these concerns consistently and not forget them when it is convenient. Spending through the Tax Code is still spending, and we should offset it.

Mr. President, next year this body will have new leadership and a fresh opportunity to tackle our Nation's problems. I hope Senate Republicans will show us they can exercise the power of being in the majority responsibly. President Obama says he is eager to work with the Republican majority on several major bills including tax reform. I too am eager to work with Republicans on sensible, responsible tax reform-- reform that ends the era of year-to-year extensions, eliminates wasteful tax spending, and decreases the deficit.

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

Mr. President, I am on the floor this evening for ``Time to Wake Up'' speech No. 82.

Scientists tell us that the evidence for climate change is now ``unequivocal''--not a word often used in scientific writing. The American people know that climate change is real.

In a new poll released by the insurance firm Munich Re, 8 out of 10 Americans believe the climate is changing. They see it happening around them. The American people also know we need to cut our carbon pollution if we are to avoid the worst effects of climate change. We can't keep burning carbon-polluting fossil fuels indiscriminately. Seven out of 10 Americans put using more carbon-free energy, such as solar and wind, among the best ways to battle climate change.

Changing the way we generate power will help cut emissions from the largest sources of carbon pollution in the country, our coal-fired powerplants. The Energy Information Administration notes that coal generates less than 40 percent of our country's electricity while it generates 75 percent of the carbon pollution from the power sector.

The 50 dirtiest coal plants in America emit more carbon pollution than all of South Korea or all of Canada, which brings us to the war on coal.

Every effort to protect the American people from coal pollution has been denounced by the fossil fuel industry and its various mouthpieces as a ``war on coal.'' When EPA proposed limits on emission from new powerplants, we heard ``war on coal.'' When EPA promoted limits on existing powerplants, ``war on coal.'' For mercury limits, ozone limits, particulate limits, always ``war on coal.''

The war on coal is a fabrication. The denial machine, funded by fossil fuel money, literally owns the war on coal. The Web site waroncoal.com is owned by American Commitment, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that has been funded by the Koch brothers-backed group Freedom Partners. War-on-coal is a public relations strategy, a catchphrase, a gimmick that serves to distract people from the harm coal wreaks on us.

Dr. Drew Shindell is a professor at Duke University. He worked at NASA for two decades. Last week in the Environment and Public Works Committee he said:

We hear a lot up here on Capitol Hill about the war on

coal; what we forget about is coal's war on us.

So let's talk about the so-called war on coal versus coal's war on us. When Republicans talk about President Obama's war on coal, they leave a lot out. They leave out that coal companies have shifted to big open-topped mines--what is called mountaintop removal--so they can lay off miners and still produce the same amount of coal. They leave out that coal simply can't compete with today's cheaper, cleaner burning natural gas.

In 2012 Duke Energy's own CEO acknowledged that EPA's proposed climate rule for new powerplants was not to blame. This is what he said:

The new climate rule is in line with market forces anyway.

We're not going to build any coal plants in any event.

``We're not going to build any coal plants in any event,'' he said.

He continued:

You're going to choose to build gas plants every time,

regardless of what the rule is.

That is not a regulatory war on coal; that is the free market operating.

EPA's proposed Clean Power Plan for existing powerplants is the newest PR front in the imaginary war on coal. EPA projects that the Clean Power Plan will yield between $55 billion and $93 billion in benefits per year by 2030, compared to $7 billion to $9 billion to comply with the rule. That math makes it a winner for the American people. Some war on coal. What would they expect us to do--give up $90 billion at the high end in benefits for the American people in order to avoid a $9 billion compliance cost, again at the high end? Again, $90 billion for the American people versus $9 billion in compliance--who wouldn't take that deal?

If the Obama administration is waging a war on coal, it has a funny way of going about it. Coal exports grew by 44 percent from 2008 to 2012. The Obama administration keeps opening up Federal lands to coal extraction, awarding many leases at below-market rates. It actually took a Federal judge in Colorado to tell the Obama Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service to factor the cost of climate change into their cost-benefit analysis of coal mining leases. The Federal agencies had looked at only one side of the ledger. They counted the economic benefits of mining coal but not the costs. Some war on coal. Two years ago the Obama Army Corps of Engineers fast-tracked environmental review of a proposed coal export terminal on the Columbia River in Oregon. Local communities and tribes objected, and the State of Oregon denied the permit for the project. If that is what a Federal war on coal looks like, somebody didn't get the memo.

On the other side, let's look at what coal's war on us looks like. Evidence that mining and burning coal harms our health and our environment and our oceans is undeniable. It is this other side of the coal ledger which hits home in Rhode Island and Connecticut and many other States, and it is that side which the polluters want to ignore and obscure with ``war on coal'' rhetoric.

Burning coal releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. That warms our atmosphere, bringing changes we are already seeing in seasons, weather, and storms. There is a strong association between global warming and the kinds of rain bursts that flooded homes and businesses in Rhode Island in 2010, for instance.

Coal burning contributes to the formation of toxic ground-level ozone, which is a cause of the bad air days in my home State of Rhode Island. Kids with asthma in the emergency room in Rhode Island are connected with midwestern powerplants that burn coal and pump often unscrubbed emissions up smokestacks designed to move the problem downwind--out of State, out of mind.

Don't overlook our oceans, which absorb about one-third of the carbon pollution being emitted and most of the excess heat. As a result, oceans are becoming more acidic, water temperatures are rising, and sea levels are rising across the globe. In Rhode Island the sea is up nearly 10 inches at the tide gauge at Naval Station Newport since the 1930s, when we had our great hurricane of 1938.

So whether you have a flooded home or are a mom with a child with asthma in the emergency room or somebody

with coastal property facing 10-inch higher seas, there are costs to coal. This is all virtually indisputable, and it follows immutable laws of nature. Damage to coastal homes and infrastructure from rising seas and erosion, asthma attacks in children triggered by smog, forests dying from beetle infestations and unprecedented wildfire seasons, farms ravaged by worsened drought and flooding--these are all real costs to Americans. This other side of the coal ledger counts too.

It even hits home in coal country, where blowing up mountaintops pollutes streams and harms folks around the mining operations. West Virginia University has linked the dust thrown up by these mountaintop mines to lung cancer among nearby residents.

Coal-fired powerplants are the biggest sources of mercury pollution in the United States, and they also emit arsenic, acid gases, and other toxins.

Dr. Shindell, whom I mentioned earlier, is an expert in atmospheric chemistry and health. Here is what he told the EPW Committee last week:

Of all of the sources of the emissions that lead to poor

air quality in the United States, coal burning is the single

largest, causing by my calculations about 47,000 premature

deaths per year. That happens to be larger than the total

number of Americans killed in all of the years of the Vietnam

War by hostile fire.

If you look at the casualties, the Federal Government isn't waging a war on coal. If there is any war, coal is waging a war on us.

This is business as usual for the polluter industry and its propaganda apparatus. Coal companies have long fought public health standards, mine worker protections, and compensation for ailments such as black lung disease, as well as efforts to address acid rain or reduce toxic pollutants, such as mercury, that cause brain damage in kids.

In 1989 Southern Company's CEO Edward Addison testified that acid- rain controls would increase electricity rates in States with the most coal power by 10 to 20 percent by 2009. Well, we couldn't evaluate that prediction then, but now we can. This is a fact: In the 10 States with the most coal, rates actually fell. Big Coal's war on the truth has a long history.

I recently had the opportunity to visit West Virginia with Senator Manchin to learn about what coal means to the Mountain State economy. I get it. We need to care about the miners, the truckers, the powerplant operators, the engineers, and others who make their living in this industry. It would be wrong to ignore their plight, just as it is wrong when the coal industry tries to ignore the effects of its carbon pollution.

I think we need a carbon fee to correct the market and to slow climate change. I am sure I will hear that is a war on coal. It is not. It is simple fairness. It is simply paying for the mess you cause. That is not war. It is not even punishment. It is just fair accounting, taking both sides of the ledger into account.

When people do that--economists and scientists--they calculate the cost of carbon pollution as what they call the social cost of carbon. The administration estimates the social cost of carbon at around $40 per ton of carbon pollution--$40 per ton. The effective cost to polluters for causing that mess is zero.

My carbon fee bill would correct that. It would correct what even economists and groups as conservative as the American Enterprise Institute agree is a market failure, and then return every dollar of the fee to the American people. That could include transition assistance for coal workers--and assistance for communities far from coal mines, like in Rhode Island, facing these costs of climate change. It is also becoming increasingly clear that a revenue-neutral carbon fee will spur innovation, create jobs, and boost the economy nationwide.

So it is time to end the polluters' holiday from responsibility. It is time to see through their fanciful war on coal, and protect those facing the effects of coal's war on us and coal's war on the truth. It is time to seize the economic benefit of a clean energy economy. It is time to wake up.

I yield the floor to my friend, the distinguished Senator from Louisiana.

Madam President, while Chairman Feinstein and Chairman Rockefeller are still here on the floor, may I just take a moment to thank them for the work they did on this report. I am very proud of the moral certainty of leadership that both Chairman Rockefeller and Chairman Feinstein showed.

It was, as they know better than I, through many troubles, toils, and

snares, that this report was able to be produced. I could not be happier that we made it public while Senator Rockefeller remains a Member of this body and has the chance to participate in this.

I join Chairman Feinstein in recognizing the exceptional work of the Intelligence Committee staff: David, Dan, Alissa--who is not with us any longer. I thank you for mentioning Andrew Grotto, who was my staff member, who worked on this report. I feel we have done a very good thing here. I appreciate very much in particular Senator McCain coming forward. He brings a unique moral perspective and force to this conversation. He has wielded that moral perspective and force with great courage.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I had a chance briefly earlier, when Chairman Dianne Feinstein of the Senate Intelligence Committee and her predecessor as Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Commerce Chairman Jay Rockefeller, were on the floor, to express my appreciation to them for the leadership they showed in bringing the Senate Intelligence Committee report through a very long ordeal and finally before the American public today.

I am not going to revisit what the report says. I was on the Intelligence Committee as it was prepared. I was closely involved in its preparation. The points I would like to make here today are, first, to once again thank Chairman Rockefeller and Chairman Feinstein for persisting through this process, particularly Chairman Feinstein, who I think saw very intense resistance both within the Senate and within the CIA to this effort. They, I think, have done something that is in the very best traditions of the Senate.

The second thing I will say is that in my opinion, in America, an open democracy like ours lives and dies by the truth. If we have done something wrong, if we have done something we should not have done, then we should come clean about it. That is what this report does, in excruciating, painstaking detail.

Let me credential the report for a minute. When the CIA was offered a chance to challenge the facts of the report, they had it for 6 months. My understanding is they came up with one factual correction which was accepted. You hear a lot of blather in the talk show circuit now about how the report is inaccurate. Well, the agency that least wanted to see this report come out and most wanted to hammer at it had 6 months with full access to all of the files and the underlying knowledge of what was done. The best they could come up with was a single correction. So I hope we can get past whether it was correct.

The other thing we should get past is this was a bunch of second- armchair thinking by people who approved the program originally and now, on reflection, want to look good. The Senate was not briefed on this program until the public found out about it. The Senate Intelligence Committee was not briefed on this program until the public found out about it. The only people who were briefed on it were the Chairs, the Chair and the Vice Chair on the House and the Senate side. They were told strictly not to talk to anybody, not to talk to staff, not to consult with lawyers, in some cases not even to talk with each other. So the idea that the Senate is now having some kind of second thoughts about this, having once approved it--part of the findings of the report are that the Senate was misled. Not only was the Senate misled, but it appears the executive branch was misled as well.

The point that I would like to conclude with is that when you have a wrong, a considerable wrong that has taken place--and I think that for an American agency to torture a human being is a very considerable wrong--it tends to affect nearby areas. You cannot contain the wrong. So congressional oversight was compromised in order to protect this program. People simply were not told. When they were told, they were given watered-down, misleading, or outright false versions.

The separation of powers has been compromised by this. A Federal executive agency has actually used its technological skills to hack into the files of a congressional investigative committee. That has to be a first in this country's history. A subject of a congressional investigation was allowed to file a criminal referral with the Department of Justice against members of the investigative committee's staff. That, I believe, is a first in the history of separation-of- powers offenses in this country.

The integrity of reporting not only through congressional oversight, but up into the executive branch, appears to have been compromised to protect this program with information that the government already knew, from legitimate, proper, professional interrogation, being ascribed to the torture program. You can line up the timeline. You can see that the information was disclosed first. You can see where higher-ups in the executive branch were told that that information was due to the torture which occurred after the

information was received. That simply does not meet the test of basic logic.

The final thing is that it compromised the integrity of the way we look at our law. The Department of Justice and the Office of Legal Counsel wrote opinions designed to allow and protect this program that were so bad that they have since been withdrawn by the Department of Justice.

The Presiding Officer is a very able and experienced lawyer. Those of us who have been in the Department of Justice know well that the Office of Legal Counsel stands at the pinnacle of the Department of Justice in terms of legal talent, ability, and acumen. Many of us believe the Department of Justice stands at the pinnacle of the American legal profession. So those are the people who ordinarily are the best of the best. When they write legal opinions so shoddy that they have to be withdrawn, when they overlook and fail to even address the U.S. Circuit Court decisions that describe waterboarding as torture when they are answering the question, is waterboarding torture, that is shoddy legal work.

When I first got a look at this and came to the Senate floor to speak about it, I described it as ``fire the associate'' quality legal work. That is what we got from the very top of the Department of Justice. It is not because there was a lack of talent there. It is because things were bent and twisted to support this program. So it is very important that the truth just came out.

I am very glad this has happened. It is a sad day in many respects because these are hard truths. These are hard facts to have to face. But we are better off as a country if we face hard truths and hard facts.

I will close by saying this. I have traveled all over that theater looking at the way our Central Intelligence Agency operates and the way our other covert operations operate. I am extremely proud of what our intelligence services do. I am incredibly impressed by the courage and the talent of the young officers who go overseas into often very difficult and dangerous situations and do a brilliant job. In many respects, it is for them that I think this report needs to be out. It needs to be known that this was not the whole department, that there are many officers who had nothing to do with it and would want nothing to do with it and knew better. There were many people who were professionals in interrogation who knew how amateurish this was. It was done by a bunch of contractors, basically.

So I think we should be well aware, as we reflect on this, of their courage and of the sacrifice and of the ability and of the discipline of the young men and women who put themselves in harm's way to make sure that this country has the information and the intelligence it needs to succeed in the world. I am proud of them.

I am also proud of the Intelligence Committee and our staffs who worked so hard to perform this extraordinary service.

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

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

Madam President, I am here for my 81st ``Time To Wake Up'' speech and to ask this body to wake up to the effects of climate change and to say this: Acting on this issue will accelerate economic growth, spur innovation, and create jobs.

We have settled any real argument about the leading cause of climate change. It is carbon pollution. Measurements in the atmosphere and oceans reveal dramatic, even unprecedented changes in the climate.

Our scientists know carbon pollution heats up the climate and acidifies the ocean. That is beyond debate. They know this is already a problem for Americans and the world.

We had wonderful testimony from a NASA scientist today in the Environment and Public Works Committee who talked about what they actually see when they look down from the satellites.

They take measurements. They are not hypothesizing. They actually measure these things. The scientists know that continued, unchecked emissions of carbon dioxide will push the climate and the oceans into dangerous unchartered new territory.

In the face of overwhelming evidence of climate change, some of our Republican colleagues--just a few--are beginning to move beyond denial of basic measurements and basic classroom science and beginning to talk about the costs of action. That is progress. When he was asked recently about climate change, the junior Senator from South Dakota acknowledged there are a number of factors that contribute to that, including human activity. The question is, he went on to say, what are we going to do about it and at what cost?

Across the building, over on the House side, Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin has also been talking about the costs of action. In his most recent campaign for reelection, he said that when it comes to action to reduce carbon emissions, ``the benefits don't outweigh the costs.''

Let's talk about that. When we get past the denial, which with a few of our colleagues it seems we have--not all, maybe not even many, but a few--and we talk about balancing costs and benefits, if we look at the whole ledger, there is no doubt about it that the balance favors action.

Climate change carries enormous costs to our economy and to our way of life. Acting now can accelerate economic growth and create new jobs. The costs of climate change are huge. We even hear this from our own advisers at the Government Accountability Office. In its 2013 high-risk list, our Government Accountability Office said that climate change poses a significant risk to the U.S. Government and to our Nation's budget. Why? The Federal Government owns and operates infrastructure and property that is vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The Federal Government provides aid and disaster response when State agencies are overwhelmed. The Federal Government is an insurer of property and crops vulnerable to climate disruption. These are major line items in the Federal budget.

Our Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew, recently explained:

If the fiscal burden from climate change continues to rise,

it will create budgetary pressures that will force hard

trade-offs, larger deficits or higher taxes, and these

tradeoffs would make it more challenging to invest in growth.

One example--just one. Last month, in the GAO report on what climate change means for private and Federal insurance for crops and for floods, it warned of increased hurricane-related losses to the Federal program. They estimated between a 14- and 47-percent increase by 2040 and a 50- to 110-percent increase over the next century due to climate change. Remember, when you are doubling a number like that, you are starting with a pretty big baseline.

Superstorm Sandy wrought $66 billion in damage in 2012. If we are constantly replacing damaged roads and bridges, always adapting farming and fishing practices to suit never-seen-before conditions, and frequently paying out big disaster relief and flood insurance claims, that will hit the Federal pocketbook hard.

We do not even have to look to the costs of the future to justify reducing carbon pollution today. Increasingly, green energy makes economic sense for utilities, for business, and for consumers. Since 2008, prices for solar photovoltaic have dropped 80 percent--80 percent. Austin Energy in Texas recently signed a power purchase agreement for a 150-megawatt solar plant at 5 cents per kilowatt hour-- less expensive than comparable offers for natural gas at 7 cents, coal at 10 cents, or nuclear power at 13 cents. The story is similar for wind power. Since 2009, the cost of wind power has decreased by 64 percent. At the lowest end of the price range nationally, unsubsidized wind power prices are just below 4 cents per kilowatt hour. This compares favorably to new coal generation, priced between 6 and 7 cents per kilowatt hour at the lowest end.

The World Resources Institute has just done a brief report called ``Seeing is Believing: Status of renewable energy in the United States.'' It is headlined ``Wind & solar are cheaper than coal & gas in a growing number of markets.'' It lists sales in Utah, Colorado, Texas, Georgia, and Minnesota--not States that have a lot in common except that renewables are beginning to outcompete fossil fuels in those States.

Similarly, the New York Times just last week in its business section highlighted this shift in an article: ``Solar and Wind Energy Start to Win on Price vs. Conventional Fuels.''

I ask unanimous consent that the World Resources Institute report and the New York Times story be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.

Green energy jobs--they are out there. They are helping communities.

Indeed, they are helping communities recover from the great recession. Let me use a Rhode Island example--TPI Composites. TPI has a development and manufacturing facility in Warren, RI. It is also one of our leading manufacturers of wind turbine blades. They make them in Iowa. When the Maytag plant closed in Newton IA, leaving as many as 4,000 workers jobless, wind jobs helped the town get back on its feet. In 10 years TPI has manufactured more than 10,000 wind turbine blades.

In Iowa, MidAmerican Energy pays farmers thousands of dollars each year to site their turbines on their farms. The farmers love it. They can farm right up to about 25 feet around the base of the turbine. There is a little gravel road for the maintenance trucks, but they can farm right up to that. They get paid for having the turbines on their farms. So it is a win-win that has helped Iowa generate more than one- quarter of its electricity from wind.

They are investing more. They have been reducing emissions and moving the State's economy forward--step by step reducing emissions and moving the economy forward. More and more companies, in their own planning, are seeing the economic benefits from cleaning up their supply chains and reducing carbon pollution from their operations. They see green investments increasing profits. ``Too many people say it's this or that,'' Apple CEO Tim Cook explained earlier this year. ``We've found that if you set the bar high, then it's possible to do both.''

Outside these walls here in Congress, where the deniers rule and polluter money reigns, State and local political leaders also see that reducing carbon pollution and growing the economy go hand in hand. Almost 10 years ago, the Presiding officer's State and my State and others--bipartisan--nine northeastern Governors came together and formed the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, called RGGI, which caps carbon emissions and sells permits to powerplants to emit greenhouse gasses. Since the program started, RGGI States that have cut emissions from the power sector have cut them by 40 percent.

Here is the blue line. That is the emission chart from 2005 through 2012. Well, if cutting emissions was bad for the economy, you would think that the State GDP would have followed downward in that curve, but, in fact, you see that the regional economy across these States actually grew by 7 percent--grew by 7 percent. Bear in mind, this is 2008, the great recession.

Here we are now. So you would think that during this period the GDP numbers would have taken a pounding. The underlying numbers are actually better than this once you adjust for the recession.

Early estimates show that in its first decade, RGGI will have saved New England families and businesses in the participating States nearly $1.3 billion on their electric bills. It will have added $1.6 billion into local economies. Along the way, those RGGI States will have added 16,000 job years. Additional investments are coming online because it is such a successful program. So those benefits also grow. Rhode Island has put over 90 percent of the money generated through the RGGI auctions into energy efficiency improvements, helping residents save money on their utility bills and making small businesses more competitive. This success led Tom Wolf, the Governor-elect of Pennsylvania--a coal mining and natural gas State--to campaign for office successfully on joining RGGI.

RGGI shows that improving the environment boosts the economy. Look north to Canada. British Columbia has a revenue-neutral carbon fee that has reduced the use of polluting fossil fuels by 16 percent. What has happened to the economy? The BC economy has not missed a step. The carbon fee revenue has been used to lower personal and corporate rate income taxes. British Columbia now has the lowest personal tax rate in Canada.

If our Republican colleagues would like to lower our American corporate and individual taxes, then I have a revenue-neutral carbon fee bill I am happy to discuss with them. Evidence from Rhode Island to British Columbia shows that action on carbon pollution spurs innovation, creates jobs, and economically boosts families and businesses.

Today I discussed this larger report, again from the World Resources Institute, which is a group that has, for instance, executives from Alcoa and Caterpillar on its board. This is not some fringe group; it is a very responsible organization with significant corporate and international leadership.

Here is the lead sentence:

A growing body of evidence shows that economic growth is

not in conflict with efforts to reduce emissions of

greenhouse gasses.

It continues:

Policies are often necessary to unlock these opportunities,

however, because market barriers hamper investment in what

are otherwise beneficial activities.

That is what we are about here. Unlock those opportunities for our economy. On the downside--here is the first chapter heading: ``Delaying action will have significant economic impacts.''

Climate change itself constitutes a significant risk to the

nation's economy.

The downside is on doing nothing, according to this report. The upside is on changing our policies to seize those opportunities. Why are we here fighting about this? Well, again, to quote the report:

The persistence of pollution externalities--

``Pollution externalities'' means when the cost of your product--you can ship off to somebody else and make them have to take care of it.

The persistence of pollution externalities gives an unfair

advantage to polluting activities. Externalities occur when a

product or activity affects people in ways that are not fully

captured in its price, such as the full health effects of air

pollution not being factored into the cost of electricity

generation. Thus, society rather than the company pays the

cost.

Why are we in this fight? Because there are a lot of companies that folks on the other side are supporting and representing here that have been the winners in that fight. They have had those polluting externalities work in their favor. They have enjoying that unfair advantage. They do not want to give it up. But as the report continues, the well-designed policies can overcome those market barriers and direct investment into beneficial technologies and practices. New policies can enhance the transition to a low-carbon economy while delivering net economic benefits and, in many cases, direct savings for consumers and businesses. So that is pretty good news.

Equally important, taking action helps to reduce the worst effects of climate change--what is coming at us. Do not just take my word for it. Many conservative economists, writers, and officials see the benefits of market-based climate action. ``A tax on carbon,'' wrote Hudson Institute economist Irwin Stelzer, ``need not swell the government's coffers--if we pursue a second, long-held conservative objective: Reducing the tax on work.

He continues:

It would be a relatively simple matter to arrange a dollar-

for-dollar, simultaneous reduction in payroll taxes. . . .

Anyone interested in jobs, jobs, jobs should find this an

attractive proposition, with growth-minded conservatives

leading the applause.

That is the economics of it unless you are shilling for the folks who have had the unfair advantage and want to keep it, but that is not market based, that is not economics, that is just taking care of special interests.

A recent joint report from economists at the Brookings Institution and the conservative American Enterprise Institute described human- induced greenhouse gas emissions as a textbook example of a negative externality. The report proposed--guess what--a revenue-neutral carbon fee program as the efficient and elegant approach to managing carbon pollution.

According to the report's authors:

Taxing something we do not want (e.g. greenhouse gas

emissions) rather than something we want more of (e.g.,

productive labor and investment) could help lower the

economy-wide cost of the program and may even have economic

benefits in addition to its environmental benefits.

Today, in the Environment and Public Works Committee, I had a conversation with a Heritage Foundation witness in which I read to the witness a very similar quote from the economist Arthur Laffer, Reagan's economist, saying: A carbon fee--where you tax the product in the ground and relieve taxes on work and effort by people--is a net win for the economy.

I asked the witness what he thought about that, and he couldn't dispute it.

In fact, he considers himself to be something of an acolyte of Arthur Laffer's, so there is actually a lot of economic support for it.

I will conclude by saying, if the topic is now not going to be denial but it is going to be the cost and benefits of climate action, I am ready to have that conversation all day long. Let's just make sure it is the whole conversation, not just the half of the conversation that looks at what losing their subsidy means for the big oil companies, the big coal companies, the Koch brothers and the rest of the polluters.

A lot of my colleagues only look at one side of the ledger, how this affects the fossil fuel lobby. If we look at the whole ledger, if we look at both sides, when we look at all the evidence, it tells us one thing; that is, that the costs of climate change are already here. They are showing up in our lives in innumerable ways that carry real economic costs and carry real costs in terms of quality of life and our identity as a country, and in fact they may overwhelm us by century's end. Looking at all the evidence shows us that significant reductions in carbon pollution will actually support jobs and increase economic growth.

Finally, a revenue-neutral carbon fee would spur innovative business models and technological development in the United States. If we lose this race to clean up our carbon mess, one of the collateral injuries we will sustain is that we will not have developed a robust clean energy economy and we will find ourselves buying products from the Chinese, the Indians, the Europeans, and others.

We need to put our industry to the test. They will rise to it. They always have. We can trust them. We can count on them, but giving them a pass does not serve their interests or ours. This will drive market forces to decrease our emissions and grow our economy.

We have the tools to do something big. It has been proven in British Columbia. It has been proven with RGGI. All of the economists across the economic spectrum seem to agree the time is right to put a national price on carbon.

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

I thank my colleague for allowing me the extra time, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am here now for the, I guess, 80th time in my weekly series of speeches about carbon pollution to ask the Senate and Congress to wake up to the growing threat from climate change, and today I am also announcing the introduction of the American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act.

Carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is changing the atmosphere and the oceans. We see it everywhere. We see it in storm-damaged homes and flooded cities. We see it in drought-stricken farms and raging wildfires. We see it in fish disappearing from warming and acidifying waters. We see it in shifting habitats and migrating contagions.

All of these things we see carry costs--real economic dollars-and- cents costs--to homeowners, to business owners, and to taxpayers. That cost is described as the social cost of carbon. It is the damage that people and communities suffer from carbon pollution and climate change. None of those costs from carbon pollution are factored into the price of the coal or the oil or the natural gas that releases this carbon. The fossil fuel companies that sell and burn those products have taken those costs and offloaded them onto society--onto the rest of us.

That is not fair. If you rake your lawn, you don't get to dump all the leaves over your neighbor's fence and leave him or her the problem of cleaning up your leaves. If you are located on a river, you don't get to dump your garbage in the river and leave it to the downstream property owners to clean up your mess. Yet the big carbon polluters transfer the costs--all those costs of climate change--onto everyone else--all the rest of us.

The U.S. Government has done some estimating about what that social cost of carbon pollution is and their estimate is that it is around $40 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted, and that that amount rises over time as carbon pollution creates more and more harm and havoc. So a climbing $40 per ton is the cost, but the current effective price on carbon pollution is zero.

By making their carbon pollution free, we subsidize fossil fuel companies to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars annually. By making their carbon pollution free, we actually rig the game, giving polluters an unfair advantage over newer and cleaner technologies. It is a racket. It is a form of cheating. And corporate polluters love it because it gives them advantage, and they fight tooth and nail to protect it in this body. But it is wrong.

As University of Chicago economics professor Michael Greenstone recently explained, this concept--that offloading social costs is wrong and that there should be a proper price on carbon--is very widely accepted. Here is what he said:

The media always reports that there's near consensus among

scientists about the fact that human activity impacts climate

change. What does not receive as much attention is that

there's even greater consensus among economists, starting

from Milton Friedman and moving into the most left-wing

economists that you could find, that the obvious correct

public policy solution to this is to put a price on carbon.

It's not controversial.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record, at the conclusion of my remarks, an article from The Economist magazine.

The economics editor of The Economist magazine--which is certainly no hotbed of left wing sentiment--Ryan Avent, has posted a comment on climate policy and his question is: ``Do economists all favour a carbon tax?'' He says:

The economic solution is to tax the externality--

That is the offloaded cost.

--so that the social cost of carbon is reflected in the

individual consumer's decision. The carbon tax is an elegant

solution to a complicated problem.

So today I am introducing this bill to put a price on carbon emissions. It is simple. It will require the polluters to pay a per-ton fee for their pollution and all of the revenue generated by those payments will go back to the American people.

I want to thank Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii for cosponsoring this measure. He has been a great colleague on environmental issues and on our discussion regarding climate change. The bill that we introduce today establishes an economy-wide fee on carbon

dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, tracking that social cost of carbon, starting at $42 per ton and going up by 2 percent per year, plus inflation.

We know how much carbon dioxide each unit of coal, oil, and natural gas produces, so we assess the fee on fossil fuel producers, processors, and importers. That makes it simple to administer. The whole bill is only 29 pages long.

For other varieties of greenhouse gases and nonfossil fuel sources of CO2, we assess our fees only on the very largest emitters-- those emitting more than 25,000 tons a year. This is the same universe of companies that we already require to monitor and report on their carbon emissions.

A significant greenhouse gas concern is the methane that escapes throughout production and distribution. To address this, we require annual reports on methane leakage and direct the Treasury Secretary to adjust the fees on fossil fuels to account for that leakage. This fee will promote innovation and help further reduce carbon emissions.

Fossil fuel companies that capture and sequester or use carbon dioxide or innovate new ways to encapsulate it in materials or products will get credits to offset the carbon fee.

We also take care to ensure that American manufacturers are not put at a competitive disadvantage globally. Imports from nations that don't price emissions will face a tariff that the Treasury Secretary is authorized to impose at the border. Likewise, the Secretary is authorized to rebate American producers on their exports.

I would note one thing. Since regulation is usually a response to market failure, a well-designed carbon fee would also properly open a conversation about which and, indeed, whether carbon regulations are still needed. A carbon fee by itself is much more efficient and predictable than complex regulations, and I am open to that conversation.

That is it. It is that simple. Make the polluters pay the full costs of their products; end the cheating; level the playing field for other forms of energy, such as wind and solar, to compete fairly; keep the fee mechanism simple; and maintain a border adjustment that keeps American goods competitive. Twenty-nine pages.

On the flip side, the carbon fee will generate significant new Federal revenue. The technicians are still working on the official revenue estimate for the bill, but it should be at least $1.5 trillion and perhaps more than $2 trillion over the 10-year budget periods we work with in Congress and on the Budget Committee.

Whatever the exact number is, all of it should be returned to the American people. So the bill establishes an American opportunity trust fund to hold the revenue and return it to the American people. This could include through tax cuts, through student loan debt relief, through increased Social Security benefits for seniors, through transition assistance to workers in fossil fuel industries, or even just a direct dividend back to the American family. I am looking forward to deciding with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle what is the best way to return this revenue, but I do believe every dollar should go back to the American people in some form. To use economic jargon, this should be revenue neutral.

This is one example to consider, just a hypothetical: What could we do? We could cut the corporate tax rate in America from 35 percent to 30 percent. That has been a bipartisan goal for a long time. It was part of Romney's Presidential campaign. We could accomplish it with this measure.

We would have enough money left to go to the payroll tax and for every worker rebate the first $500 they paid in payroll tax. So every American worker who paid more than $500 in payroll tax would get a $500 check to spend on whatever they wanted. The first tax reduction at the corporate level uses about $600 billion to offset. This uses about $700 billion to offset.

Third, we could add to that a boost to the EITC--the earned income tax credit--which supports many American families at the very low end of the economic spectrum. We could do that by literally hundreds of dollars a year for millions of lower income families. Again, there has been bipartisan support for expanding the earned income tax credit.

Three important goals, all reducing taxes or adding to a tax credit-- all should have strong bipartisan support.

The American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act has revenue that could make our companies more competitive, could give every single worker a tax rebate, and could boost benefits for struggling low-income families.

Last month the Des Moines Register ran a column titled `` `Carbon tax' would help Iowa, planet.'' The column said this:

The United States could take the lead by acting on its own,

watch its economy grow, and let the rest of the world catch

up.

In the process, the United States would gain mastery of the

sustainable-energy technology that will drive economic growth

in the future.

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

George W. Bush's Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson gave the same message earlier this year, saying:

A tax on carbon emissions will unleash a wave of innovation

to develop technologies, lower the costs of clean energy and

create jobs as we and other nations develop new energy

products and infrastructure.

Emphasizing that, coincidentally, is an article in today's New York Times headed ``A Carbon Tax Could Bolster Green Energy.'' As we all know, green energy jobs are exploding in this country, and we need more of them.

Treasury Secretary Paulson continued:

Republicans must not shrink from this issue. Risk

management is a conservative principle.

Secretary Paulson is not alone. Conservative figures such as George Shultz, who was Secretary of State under President Reagan, emphatically support a carbon fee as the best way to address carbon pollution.

Art Laffer, one of the architects of President Reagan's economic plan, had this to say about a carbon tax and related payroll tax cut:

I think that would be very good for the economy and as an

adjunct, it would reduce also carbon emissions into the

environment.

I ask unanimous consent that a 2013 New York Times op-ed be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.

In this New York Times op-ed, Bill Ruckelshaus, Christine Todd Whitman, Lee Thomas, and William Reilly wrote:

A market-based approach, like a carbon tax, would be the

best path to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.

I know the big carbon polluters want this issue ignored. I know that. They want to squeeze one more quarter, one more year of public subsidy for their product from the rest of us. From their point of view, lunch is good when someone else is picking up the tab. But notwithstanding the power of the big carbon polluters, I still believe this is a problem we can solve.

Not long ago this would have been a bipartisan bill. Not long ago leading voices on the Republican side agreed with Democrats that the dangers of climate change were real. Not long ago leading Republican voices agreed that carbon emissions were the culprit. And it was not long ago that leading Republican voices agreed that Congress had a responsibility to act. One Republican Senator won his party's nomination for President on a solid climate change platform. Other Republican colleagues in the Senate introduced, cosponsored, or voted for meaningful climate legislation in the past. Some of the proposals were market-based, revenue-neutral solutions aligned with Republican free market values, just like my bill today.

The junior Senator from Arizona--a Republican--was an original cosponsor of a carbon fee bill when he served in the House of Representatives. That proposal, introduced with former Republican Congressman Bob Inglis, would have placed a $15-per-ton fee on carbon pollution in 2010, more than $20 in 2015, and $100 in 2040. At the time, our colleague from Arizona had this to say:

If there's one economic axiom, it's that if you want less

of something, you tax it. Clearly, it's in our interest to

move away from carbon.

We simply need conscientious Republicans and Democrats to work together in good faith on a platform of fact and common sense. We know this can be done because it is being done.

At the end of a speech about the American Revolution, the historian David McCullough was asked by someone in the audience why it was that our Founding Fathers had the courage to pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the cause of independence when signing the Declaration was signing their own death warrant. He had a very simple answer. He said: It was a courageous time.

Well, clearly in courageous times Americans have done far more than simply stand up to polluters to serve the interests of this great Republic. It only takes courage to make this a courageous time too.

Mr. President, I am here now for the, I guess, 80th time in my weekly series of speeches about carbon pollution to ask the Senate and Congress to wake up to the growing threat from climate change, and today I am also announcing the introduction of the American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act.

Carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is changing the atmosphere and the oceans. We see it everywhere. We see it in storm-damaged homes and flooded cities. We see it in drought-stricken farms and raging wildfires. We see it in fish disappearing from warming and acidifying waters. We see it in shifting habitats and migrating contagions.

All of these things we see carry costs--real economic dollars-and- cents costs--to homeowners, to business owners, and to taxpayers. That cost is described as the social cost of carbon. It is the damage that people and communities suffer from carbon pollution and climate change. None of those costs from carbon pollution are factored into the price of the coal or the oil or the natural gas that releases this carbon. The fossil fuel companies that sell and burn those products have taken those costs and offloaded them onto society--onto the rest of us.

That is not fair. If you rake your lawn, you don't get to dump all the leaves over your neighbor's fence and leave him or her the problem of cleaning up your leaves. If you are located on a river, you don't get to dump your garbage in the river and leave it to the downstream property owners to clean up your mess. Yet the big carbon polluters transfer the costs--all those costs of climate change--onto everyone else--all the rest of us.

The U.S. Government has done some estimating about what that social cost of carbon pollution is and their estimate is that it is around $40 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted, and that that amount rises over time as carbon pollution creates more and more harm and havoc. So a climbing $40 per ton is the cost, but the current effective price on carbon pollution is zero.

By making their carbon pollution free, we subsidize fossil fuel companies to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars annually. By making their carbon pollution free, we actually rig the game, giving polluters an unfair advantage over newer and cleaner technologies. It is a racket. It is a form of cheating. And corporate polluters love it because it gives them advantage, and they fight tooth and nail to protect it in this body. But it is wrong.

As University of Chicago economics professor Michael Greenstone recently explained, this concept--that offloading social costs is wrong and that there should be a proper price on carbon--is very widely accepted. Here is what he said:

The media always reports that there's near consensus among

scientists about the fact that human activity impacts climate

change. What does not receive as much attention is that

there's even greater consensus among economists, starting

from Milton Friedman and moving into the most left-wing

economists that you could find, that the obvious correct

public policy solution to this is to put a price on carbon.

It's not controversial.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record, at the conclusion of my remarks, an article from The Economist magazine.

The economics editor of The Economist magazine--which is certainly no hotbed of left wing sentiment--Ryan Avent, has posted a comment on climate policy and his question is: ``Do economists all favour a carbon tax?'' He says:

The economic solution is to tax the externality--

That is the offloaded cost.

--so that the social cost of carbon is reflected in the

individual consumer's decision. The carbon tax is an elegant

solution to a complicated problem.

So today I am introducing this bill to put a price on carbon emissions. It is simple. It will require the polluters to pay a per-ton fee for their pollution and all of the revenue generated by those payments will go back to the American people.

I want to thank Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii for cosponsoring this measure. He has been a great colleague on environmental issues and on our discussion regarding climate change. The bill that we introduce today establishes an economy-wide fee on carbon

dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, tracking that social cost of carbon, starting at $42 per ton and going up by 2 percent per year, plus inflation.

We know how much carbon dioxide each unit of coal, oil, and natural gas produces, so we assess the fee on fossil fuel producers, processors, and importers. That makes it simple to administer. The whole bill is only 29 pages long.

For other varieties of greenhouse gases and nonfossil fuel sources of CO2, we assess our fees only on the very largest emitters-- those emitting more than 25,000 tons a year. This is the same universe of companies that we already require to monitor and report on their carbon emissions.

A significant greenhouse gas concern is the methane that escapes throughout production and distribution. To address this, we require annual reports on methane leakage and direct the Treasury Secretary to adjust the fees on fossil fuels to account for that leakage. This fee will promote innovation and help further reduce carbon emissions.

Fossil fuel companies that capture and sequester or use carbon dioxide or innovate new ways to encapsulate it in materials or products will get credits to offset the carbon fee.

We also take care to ensure that American manufacturers are not put at a competitive disadvantage globally. Imports from nations that don't price emissions will face a tariff that the Treasury Secretary is authorized to impose at the border. Likewise, the Secretary is authorized to rebate American producers on their exports.

I would note one thing. Since regulation is usually a response to market failure, a well-designed carbon fee would also properly open a conversation about which and, indeed, whether carbon regulations are still needed. A carbon fee by itself is much more efficient and predictable than complex regulations, and I am open to that conversation.

That is it. It is that simple. Make the polluters pay the full costs of their products; end the cheating; level the playing field for other forms of energy, such as wind and solar, to compete fairly; keep the fee mechanism simple; and maintain a border adjustment that keeps American goods competitive. Twenty-nine pages.

On the flip side, the carbon fee will generate significant new Federal revenue. The technicians are still working on the official revenue estimate for the bill, but it should be at least $1.5 trillion and perhaps more than $2 trillion over the 10-year budget periods we work with in Congress and on the Budget Committee.

Whatever the exact number is, all of it should be returned to the American people. So the bill establishes an American opportunity trust fund to hold the revenue and return it to the American people. This could include through tax cuts, through student loan debt relief, through increased Social Security benefits for seniors, through transition assistance to workers in fossil fuel industries, or even just a direct dividend back to the American family. I am looking forward to deciding with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle what is the best way to return this revenue, but I do believe every dollar should go back to the American people in some form. To use economic jargon, this should be revenue neutral.

This is one example to consider, just a hypothetical: What could we do? We could cut the corporate tax rate in America from 35 percent to 30 percent. That has been a bipartisan goal for a long time. It was part of Romney's Presidential campaign. We could accomplish it with this measure.

We would have enough money left to go to the payroll tax and for every worker rebate the first $500 they paid in payroll tax. So every American worker who paid more than $500 in payroll tax would get a $500 check to spend on whatever they wanted. The first tax reduction at the corporate level uses about $600 billion to offset. This uses about $700 billion to offset.

Third, we could add to that a boost to the EITC--the earned income tax credit--which supports many American families at the very low end of the economic spectrum. We could do that by literally hundreds of dollars a year for millions of lower income families. Again, there has been bipartisan support for expanding the earned income tax credit.

Three important goals, all reducing taxes or adding to a tax credit-- all should have strong bipartisan support.

The American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act has revenue that could make our companies more competitive, could give every single worker a tax rebate, and could boost benefits for struggling low-income families.

Last month the Des Moines Register ran a column titled `` `Carbon tax' would help Iowa, planet.'' The column said this:

The United States could take the lead by acting on its own,

watch its economy grow, and let the rest of the world catch

up.

In the process, the United States would gain mastery of the

sustainable-energy technology that will drive economic growth

in the future.

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

George W. Bush's Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson gave the same message earlier this year, saying:

A tax on carbon emissions will unleash a wave of innovation

to develop technologies, lower the costs of clean energy and

create jobs as we and other nations develop new energy

products and infrastructure.

Emphasizing that, coincidentally, is an article in today's New York Times headed ``A Carbon Tax Could Bolster Green Energy.'' As we all know, green energy jobs are exploding in this country, and we need more of them.

Treasury Secretary Paulson continued:

Republicans must not shrink from this issue. Risk

management is a conservative principle.

Secretary Paulson is not alone. Conservative figures such as George Shultz, who was Secretary of State under President Reagan, emphatically support a carbon fee as the best way to address carbon pollution.

Art Laffer, one of the architects of President Reagan's economic plan, had this to say about a carbon tax and related payroll tax cut:

I think that would be very good for the economy and as an

adjunct, it would reduce also carbon emissions into the

environment.

I ask unanimous consent that a 2013 New York Times op-ed be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.

In this New York Times op-ed, Bill Ruckelshaus, Christine Todd Whitman, Lee Thomas, and William Reilly wrote:

A market-based approach, like a carbon tax, would be the

best path to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.

I know the big carbon polluters want this issue ignored. I know that. They want to squeeze one more quarter, one more year of public subsidy for their product from the rest of us. From their point of view, lunch is good when someone else is picking up the tab. But notwithstanding the power of the big carbon polluters, I still believe this is a problem we can solve.

Not long ago this would have been a bipartisan bill. Not long ago leading voices on the Republican side agreed with Democrats that the dangers of climate change were real. Not long ago leading Republican voices agreed that carbon emissions were the culprit. And it was not long ago that leading Republican voices agreed that Congress had a responsibility to act. One Republican Senator won his party's nomination for President on a solid climate change platform. Other Republican colleagues in the Senate introduced, cosponsored, or voted for meaningful climate legislation in the past. Some of the proposals were market-based, revenue-neutral solutions aligned with Republican free market values, just like my bill today.

The junior Senator from Arizona--a Republican--was an original cosponsor of a carbon fee bill when he served in the House of Representatives. That proposal, introduced with former Republican Congressman Bob Inglis, would have placed a $15-per-ton fee on carbon pollution in 2010, more than $20 in 2015, and $100 in 2040. At the time, our colleague from Arizona had this to say:

If there's one economic axiom, it's that if you want less

of something, you tax it. Clearly, it's in our interest to

move away from carbon.

We simply need conscientious Republicans and Democrats to work together in good faith on a platform of fact and common sense. We know this can be done because it is being done.

At the end of a speech about the American Revolution, the historian David McCullough was asked by someone in the audience why it was that our Founding Fathers had the courage to pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the cause of independence when signing the Declaration was signing their own death warrant. He had a very simple answer. He said: It was a courageous time.

Well, clearly in courageous times Americans have done far more than simply stand up to polluters to serve the interests of this great Republic. It only takes courage to make this a courageous time too.

I thank the Senator for her constant leadership on this issue. I am going to start on a somewhat unusual note because I want to compliment my lead adversary here, Senator Landrieu, who has fought so hard to bring this bill to the floor. She is passionate about getting this done, and it is because of her efforts that we are here.

I have to say I am just as passionate as she in opposition to this bill. Many of us come from coal States or oil States or natural gas States. Rhode Island doesn't have coal--at least it hasn't in generations. We used to mine coal in Portsmouth, in Cumberland, but that has been a long time ago. We don't have natural gas sources. We don't pump oil.

What we do have is a coastline, and at that coastline what coal and oil and natural gas are doing to all of us through the operation of natural laws, through the operation of the laws of science--stuff we can't get around because this isn't opinion--is very harmful to our island.

Naval Station Newport has a tide gauge. My friend Senator Manchin was kind enough to come and visit from West Virginia and we started out bright and early in the morning and our first stop was with the Navy folks down at the tide gauge. At that tide gauge what they show is that since the 1930s the water levels are up 10 inches.

We had something very big happen in Rhode Island. In the 1930s we had the hurricane of 1938. If anybody wants to take 2 minutes and Google hurricane of 1938 and hit images, they will see terrific destruction. They will see our capital city flooded to the top of the buses. They will see houses smashed to flinders and boats thrown up onto the land. That was with a sea 10 inches below what we have now, and every responsible scientist tells us the risk of worse and bigger ocean storms has increased because of the emission of carbons.

So I have a very clear perspective on this, and that is that we have to address our carbon pollution problem before it comes home to roost in very dangerous ways in my State. It is there already. As the Senator from West Virginia saw, we have fishermen who say this is not my grandfather's ocean. Their world has changed because of the way we have changed it. This pipeline, because of the filthiness of the fuel that it brings into the market, will add additional carbon dioxide in the amount of nearly 6 million cars per year on the roads--6 million cars per year on the roads--and that comes home to roost in Rhode Island. That comes home to roost in warming waters.

Narragansett Bay is nearly 4 degrees--mean winter water temperature-- warmer than it was 50 years ago. I can remember driving over the Newport Bridge and Jamestown Bridge and looking down in the winter and seeing trawlers out at work--trawlers at work fishing for the winter flounder. The winter flounder is gone. It has had more than a 90- percent crash, largely because, as the scientists have told me, the warmer Narragansett Bay is no longer hospitable to the fish. Four degrees doesn't seem like a big deal to me. It probably doesn't seem like a big deal to any human, for whom the water is kind of an alien place, but for the fish that live in it, 4 degrees is an ecosystem shift. My wife, a major professor at the University of Rhode Island School of Oceanography, explained that to me several decades ago for the first time.

The argument is that this is going to bring jobs. I am all for those jobs. But let us not be selective about when we are for jobs. If we are only for jobs when it is oil pipelines, then something else is going on than the concern about jobs. Where was the concern about jobs when a bipartisan piece of legislation called Shaheen-Portman for energy efficiency was on the floor and was estimated to create not 42,000 temporary jobs, not less than 4,000 direct temporary jobs, not less than 50 permanent jobs, but 190,000 jobs? That bill got nowhere. It died here, and it died here for reasons that were very open on the front of the paper.

Jeanne Shaheen's opponent, who is a former colleague of ours, asked to have the bill die so she would not have a legislative accomplishment to her credit. So the agreement that the bill was going to pass got reworked, and the folks came back to Majority Leader Reid and said: Actually, we are not ready to support this bill. We need a vote on Keystone Pipeline. We need a sense of the Senate on Keystone Pipeline. Senator Reid said: OK. We can have a sense of the Senate on Keystone Pipeline. Agreed. Then they came back again--moved the goalpost again-- and said: Well, we need more than a sense of the Senate now. We actually need a hard vote on the Keystone Pipeline. Leader Reid checked around and said: All right. I don't like this much, but sure. Fine. In order to move Shaheen-Portman, a 190,000-job bill, go ahead and have your vote. Then they came back and moved the goalpost a third time. They said: We don't just need a vote on the Keystone Pipeline, we need to win the vote, and if you can't give us a win on the vote, then you don't get Shaheen-Portman.

When the goalposts get moved that often, you can pretty much figure out there is something more going on than the merits of the bill. They didn't want the bill to pass. They didn't want it to come up. But where was the concern then about 190,000 jobs, when everybody is in an uproar about these 40,000 indirect temporary jobs?

I will stop right now and do anything to get infrastructure legislation passed and put people to work rebuilding America's roads, rebuilding America's water pipes, and rebuilding America's bridges. We can put hundreds of thousands of people to work doing that. But when we had the chance to do that, when Chairman Boxer brought a 6-year environment bill out of the Environment and Public Works Committee, where every billion dollars we invest in highway infrastructure supports 13,000 jobs, and this was a multibillion--multibillion--dollar bill, did they pass it? No, they filibustered it, stopped it, and gave us a 3-to-5-month stopgap bill, during which nobody is going to enter into any big contracts, depressing employment, and moving the bill into the next Congress where they thought they would have a majority and in fact they will.

If you want to do something about jobs, we can take your 42,000 dirty pipeline jobs and we can raise that by a factor of 5 just by doing Shaheen-Portman. We can raise it by a factor of 10 or 15 with infrastructure legislation. We can do big jobs bills, and we are ready to do them, but not when it is only dirty oil pipelines. Because there are two sides of the ledger. There is the side that says jobs, and there is the side that says harm. My problem with this is that our friends on the other side of the aisle will not look at the second page. They pretend the second page doesn't exist.

Even in coastal States where I have been, down to Georgia, to Sapelo Island, where the University of Georgia has a terrific marine science undertaking that has been going on for decades now, they are very clear. Carbon pollution is doing real harm to the coast. It is raising the Georgia sea level at a rate that is challenging the ability of the famous marshes to keep up. If they cannot keep up, they flood. If they flood, they get washed away and you lose that entire infrastructure that supports clammers and oysterers and fishermen and tourism and all the things that are important for Georgia. I say that because I see my friend Senator Isakson on the floor.

You could use an example of everything that stays in the country, and our colleagues will never ever look at that other page. If you were the CFO of a corporation and you only looked at one side of a ledger, you would go to jail for that.

It shouldn't be asking too much to ask our colleagues to reflect on the fact that there are benefits to this pipeline and there are harms to this pipeline. From my State's point of view, it is all harm. From a net point of view, the harm vastly outweighs the value by I think virtually any State's measure--perhaps not South Dakota. There is real harm that this will cause. Six million cars' equivalent of CO2 added every year is more than we need.

So I think we need to turn the corner. More importantly, it is not what I think that matters; the American people understand we need to turn the corner on climate change and carbon pollution. It doesn't matter whom you ask. If you ask independent voters, it is better than 2 to 1. If you ask all voters, it is about 2 to 1. If you ask young voters, it is more like 4 to 1. There is a poll that shows that among young Republican voters, self-identified Republican voters under the age of 35, when asked about a politician who denies that climate change is real, they say that politician--they are asked to check off the box, and what they checked off was ``ignorant, out of touch, or crazy.''

So it is time to make this turn, and there is no better moment to make this turn than on this pipeline that would bring the filthiest fuel on the planet into circulation and hurt even more those of us who are already being hurt by carbon pollution.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today it adjourn until 2:15 p.m. on Thursday, November 13, 2014; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; and that following any leader remarks, the Senate proceed to executive session, as provided for under the previous order.

For the information of all of our colleagues, there will be three rollcall votes at approximately 2:30 p.m. Those votes will be on confirmation of the Moss and May nominations and cloture regarding the child care and development block grant bill. Additional votes remain possible during Thursday's session beyond those three.