Floor Statements

Madam President, I am so glad to have you here because a recurring tradition on the Senate floor is about to take place, and it is always particularly good for a Senator from Rhode Island to have a Senator from Massachusetts presiding while I talk about this.

Today I am here to recognize and celebrate one of the earliest acts of defiance against the British Crown in our great American struggle for independence. Most Americans remember the Boston Tea Party as one of the major events building up to the American Revolution. We learned the story of spirited Bostonians--and when I say ``spirited,'' I mean that in several senses; I gather that spirits had been served to those Bostonians before they embarked on this adventure--clambering onto the decks of the East India Company's ships and dumping bales of tea into Boston Harbor as a protest of British ``taxation without representation,'' which was a fine and worthy stunt, and I am certainly not here to defend taxation without representation.

However, there is a milestone on the path to revolution that is frequently overlooked, and it is the story of 60 brave Rhode Islanders who challenged British rule more than a year before that Tea Party in Boston, and they did a little bit more than throw tea bags overboard. So every year I honor those little known Rhode Island heroes who risked their lives in defiance of oppression 1 dark night more than 240 years ago.

In the years before the Revolutionary War, as tensions with the American Colonies grew, King George III stationed revenue cutters, armed customs patrol vessels, along the American coast. They were there to prevent smuggling, to enforce the payment of taxes, and to impose the authority of the Crown.

One of the most notorious of these ships was the HMS Gaspee. Its captain, Lieutenant William Duddingston, was known for destroying fishing vessels, seizing cargo, and flagging down ships only to harass, humiliate, and interrogate the colonials.

Outraged by this egregious abuse of power, the merchants and shipmasters of Rhode Island flooded civil and military officials with complaints about the Gaspee, exhausting every diplomatic and legal means to stir the British Crown to regulate Duddingston's conduct.

Not only did British officials ignore the Rhode Islanders' concerns; they responded with open hostility. The commander of the local British fleet, ADM John Montagu, warned that anyone who dared attempt acts of resistance or retaliation against the Gaspee would be taken into custody and hanged as a pirate, which brings us to June 9, 1772, 242 years ago.

Rhode Island ship captain Benjamin Lindsey was en route to Providence from Newport, in his ship the Hannah, when he was accosted and ordered to yield for inspection by the Gaspee. Captain Lindsey ignored the Gaspee's command and raced away up Narragansett Bay--despite warning shots fired by the Gaspee. As the Gaspee gave chase, Captain Lindsey knew a little something about Narragansett Bay and he knew a little something about the Hannah. He knew that she was lighter and drew less water than the Gaspee. So he sped north toward Pawtuxet Cove, toward the shallow waters off Namquid Point. His Hannah shot over the shallows there, but the heavier Gaspee grounded and stuck firm. The British ship and her crew were caught stranded in a falling tide, and it would be many hours before a rising tide could free the hulking Gaspee.

Presented with that irresistible opportunity, Captain Lindsey continued on his course to Providence and there enlisted the help of John Brown, a respected merchant from one of the most prominent Providence families. The two men rallied a group of Rhode Island patriots at Sabin's Tavern, in what is now the east side of Providence. So perhaps something the Bostonians at the Tea Party and the Rhode Islanders at the Gaspee had in common was spirits. Together, the group resolved to put an end to the Gaspee's threat to Rhode Island waters.

That night, the men, led by Captain Lindsey and Abraham Whipple-- later to become a commander in the Revolutionary navy--embarked in eight longboats quietly down Narragansett Bay. They encircled the Gaspee, and they called on Lieutenant Duddingston to surrender his ship. Duddingston refused and ordered his men to fire upon anyone who tried to board.

Undeterred, the Rhode Islanders forced their way onto the Gaspee's deck--in a hail of oaths and sword clashes and musketfire--and Lieutenant Duddingston fell with a musket ball in the midst of the struggle. Right there in the waters of Warwick, RI, the very first blood in the conflict that was to become the American Revolution was drawn.

As the patriots commandeered the ship, Brown ordered one of his Rhode Islanders, a physician named John Mawney, to head to the ship's captain's cabin and tend to Duddingston's wound--a humane gesture in their moment of victory to help a man who had threatened to open fire on them only moments before.

Brown and Whipple took the captive English crew back to shore and then returned to the Gaspee to rid Narragansett Bay of her despised presence once and for all. They set her afire. The blaze spread through the ship, and ultimately to the ship's powder magazine, which went off with an explosion like fireworks, the blast echoing through the night across the bay, the flash lighting the sea up like daylight, and fragments of the ship splashing down into the water all around.

The site of this audacious act is now named Gaspee Point in honor of these brave Rhode Islanders. So I come again here to share this story and to commemorate this night so many years ago--June 9, 1772--and the names of Benjamin Lindsey, John Brown, and Abraham Whipple, and those men not known to history who fought beside them that night.

The Gaspee Affair, as it was called, generated furor in the British Government, which appointed a royal commission of inquiry based in Newport to gather evidence for indictment. The indicted men were then to be sent to England for trial.

Well, not so fast. Rhode Island's colonial charter guaranteed its citizens the right to a trial in the vicinity in which the crime was alleged to have occurred. And beyond that, these Rhode Islanders presumed they were entitled to the

same rights as Englishmen in their mother country. Some went so far to say that this proposal to try them overseas violated ancient rights outlined in the Magna Carta.

This breach of the rights that colonists believed were enshrined in the British Constitution created continent-wide uproar. Young members of Virginia's House of Burgesses, such as Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, yearning to protest, pushed the body to create a committee of correspondence to gather information from around the Colonies concerning the British Parliament's actions, while also urging other Colonies to do the same. By December 1773, 11 Colonies had set up committees of correspondence. These committees played a vital role in enflaming discontent. They were the first permanent modes of communication among the Thirteen Colonies and allowed abuses by Parliament to be quickly known throughout the Colonies.

John Allen, a little-known visiting minister in the Second Baptist Church in Boston, gave a sermon on the Gaspee Affair. It went the revolutionary equivalent of viral--widely published. In this sermon, Allen rejected the proposition that Parliament had a right to tax and enforce laws like the ones implicated in the Gaspee Affair on Americans without the consent of their colonial representatives--a position that would come to define colonial discontent and reverberates to this day through the slogan ``no taxation without representation.''

Allen concluded his sermon with the provoking and revolutionary question whether the British King had a right to rule over America in the first place. Reverend Allen asserted there was no parliamentary right to reign as in Britain, nor a right by conquest, as the American colonists had only signed compacts with the Crown for protection of their religious and civil rights. Allen espoused Enlightenment ideals of social compacts and political rights, stating that if the British Government enacted laws that were oppressive to the rights of American colonists, as it had with the creation of a commission of inquiry intending to send the Gaspee raiders to England for trial, then it lost its right to rule over them.

The sermon was published eight separate times in three different colonial cities and spread widely through the Colonies. Through that, the Gaspee Affair sparked in the minds of Americans ideas about parliamentary abuses and the King's right to rule that would seed a spirit of discontent and eventually boil over into revolution. The sermon, along with fiery editorials published in the wake of the affair, inspired colonial leaders to speak openly about the British Government's abuses, instigating conflict that would culminate in the battles of Lexington and Concord.

The Gaspee Affair galvanized colonial discontent and led to greater unity among the Thirteen Colonies. After Rhode Islanders defiantly set fire to the Gaspee, the American Colonies came together for a common cause for the first time in their history, a formative step in the birth of our new Nation.

I know these events, and the patriots whose efforts allowed for their success, are not forgotten in my home State. Over the years, I have enjoyed marching in the annual Gaspee Days Parade through Warwick, RI, as every year we recall the courage and zeal of these men who fired the first shots that drew the first blood in that great contest for the freedoms we enjoy today.

They set a precedent for future patriots to follow, including those in Boston who more than 1 year later would have their tea party. But do not forget, as my home State prepares once again to celebrate the anniversary of the Gaspee incident, Massachusetts colonists threw tea bags off the deck of their British ship. We blew ours up and shot its captain more than 1 year earlier. We are little in Rhode Island, but as Lieutenant Duddingston discovered, we pack a punch.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that at a time to be determined by the majority leader, with the concurrence of the Republican leader, the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nomination: Calendar No. 523; that there be 30 minutes for debate equally divided in the usual form on the nomination; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate proceed to vote without intervening action or debate on the nomination; that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order; that any related statements be printed in the Record; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action and the Senate then resume legislative session.

I understand that S. 2450, introduced earlier today by Senators Sanders, McCain, and others, is at the desk. I ask for its first reading.

I now ask for its second reading and object to my own request.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m. on Tuesday, June 10, 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; that following any leader remarks, the Senate proceed to vote on confirmation of Executive Calendar No. 734, as provided under the previous order.

Madam President, under the previous order, there will be one vote at 10 a.m., two votes at noon, followed by a recess until 2:15 p.m. for the weekly caucus meetings, and then three additional votes at 2:30 p.m.

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

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

Mr. President, I am here for the 69th straight consecutive week that the Senate has been in session to try to wake us up to the harm that carbon pollution causes to our oceans, to our communities, to our ecosystem, and to our health.

The effects of climate change are all around us, from melting glaciers in our national parks, to drought-stricken land across the American Southwest, to rising seas along my eastern seaboard. In Washington, DC, the iconic cherry blossoms are blooming earlier. Snook, native to South Florida, are being caught off the coast of Charleston; tarpon and grouper off the coast of Rhode Island.

This is all happening now--not tomorrow, not sometime in the distant future but now--right now. Projections show that it will get much worse in the coming years unless we wake up and take real action. Happily, this week, the Environmental Protection Agency used its Clean Air Act authority as established by Congress and affirmed by the Supreme Court to propose carbon pollution standards for the country's existing powerplants.

Before this, there were no carbon pollution limits--believe it or not--none. As you can see on this chart, the 50 dirtiest U.S. powerplants--this is the whole U.S. powerplant fleet. These are the 50 dirtiest powerplants. They put out more carbon than Korea, which is a pretty industrialized country. They put out more carbon than Canada, our neighbor to the north.

I congratulate the administration on developing these smart, sensible limits that will put our Nation on a better path economically and on a better path environmentally. Thank you to the scientists, the engineers, the staffers, the attorneys, and the experts who invested so much time and energy in developing this historic standard. Through an unprecedented public engagement, EPA held more than 300 public meetings, working with stakeholders of all kinds and all across the political spectrum.

The result: EPA has put the States in the driver's seat to come up with their own plans to meet State-specific targets. States and power companies will have a wide variety of options to achieve carbon reductions, like boosting renewable energy, establishing energy savings targets, investing in efficiency or joining one of the existing cap- and-trade programs. States can develop plans that create jobs, plans that cut electricity cost by boosting efficiency, plans that achieve major pollution reduction.

What is not to like? Already, a diverse array of groups support the new EPA pollution standard. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in a letter to Administrator McCarthy wrote: ``These standards should protect the health and welfare of all people, especially children, the elderly, as well as poor and vulnerable communities, from harmful pollution emitted from power plants and from the impacts of climate change.''

The Catholic bishops went on to point out that ``the best evidence indicates that power plants are the largest stationary source of carbon emissions in the United States, and a major contributor to climate change.''

We are also hearing from 600 State and local elected officials who recently sent a letter to the President in support of the EPA plan. These are the mayors, council members, and State legislators for whom climate change is a day-to-day reality at home right there in their communities.

The letter is signed by officials from both red States and blue, including Texas, Iowa, Arizona, and the ground zero of climate change in this country, the State of Florida. The business community has weighed in. Over 125 companies including American giants like Nike, Levi's, and Starbucks sent a letter of support for the new rule.

Our support is firmly grounded in economic reality. The new

standards will reinforce what leading companies already know:

climate change poses real financial risks and substantial

economic opportunities and we must act now.

VF Corporation is an American apparel manufacturer in North Carolina whose brands include North Face, Timberland, Wrangler, and many others. ``As a company that makes innovative apparel and footwear for people who love the outdoors, we know how important addressing climate change is to our consumers, and therefore, our business,'' said Letitia Webster, VF's director of global sustainability. ``Today's rules provide the long-term certainty that VF needs to continue to invest in clean energy solutions so that we can do our part to reduce the impacts of climate change.''

Major utilities are behind the new rule. Tom King, the President of National Grid, which serves my home State of Rhode Island, said:

The Obama administration, through the good work of EPA

Administrator Gina McCarthy and her staff has worked in a

transparent manner to craft regulation that promotes

environmental and human health through a host of clean energy

options. Rather than picking winners, this proposed rule

supports market-based solutions.

Major public health groups agree. Here is what Harold Wimmer, national president and CEO of the American Lung Association had to say: ``For the 147 million--nearly half of all Americans--already living in areas with unhealthy levels of ozone or particle pollution, curbing carbon pollution emissions is a critical step forward for protecting public health from the impacts of climate change happening today.''

As widespread and broad as the support is for this rule, not everyone is applauding. Big polluters have enjoyed a long and happy holiday from responsibility for the carbon pollution they have dumped into our atmosphere and oceans. This free pollution they have enjoyed emitting is a market failure, a market failure recognized even by groups as conservative as the American Enterprise Institute--a market failure which allowed these polluters to dump billions of dollars in costs and harm on their fellow Americans.

They did this to their fellow Americans without apparent shame or regret, and they are fighting desperately to preserve this loophole. They do not want you to know that we can achieve these reductions responsibly. They do not want you to know that we can do this and help our economy. Indeed, before the proposed rule was even available to examine, the climate deniers at the so-called U.S. Chamber of Commerce said it would cost electricity customers hundreds of billions of dollars and zap the U.S. economy of tens of billions in GDP and hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Do not believe it. These claims are exaggerated at best and flat out false at worst. Do not just take my word for it. Republicans, citing the chamber's report--of course some of our colleagues jumped to cite that report. When they did, they earned a PolitiFact ``false'' and four Pinocchios from the Washington Post fact checker.

The problem with the big polluters is that they only look at one side of the ledger. They ignore the costs of carbon pollution on the rest of us. These costs are real. People see them in their lives, in real lives at home in our communities--damage to coastal homes, roads, and businesses from rising seas and erosion; asthma attacks in children triggered by smog, sending them to the emergency room; forests dying from beetle infestations and swept by unprecedented wildfire seasons; farms ravaged by worsened drought and flooding. Our side of the ledger counts too.

If the big polluters were accountants and they filed financial statements that only looked at one side of the ledger, they would go to prison. But this is politics, so without consequence or shame or regret, they ignore the harm they cause the rest of us.

If the Chamber of Commerce and the big polluters want to talk about jobs, let's not forget about the jobs they hurt by their carbon pollution. Fishermen in Rhode Island have seen their winter flounder catch nearly disappear in recent decades as the water temperature in our Narragansett Bay has risen 3 to 4 degrees. That is an ecosystem shift for these species.

Actually, there are now more jobs in clean, green energy than in oil and gas, more jobs in solar than in coal mining.

This rule is a job creator in innovation and clean energy. The polluters just won't count that side of the ledger.

It is an old story: tobacco, seatbelts in cars, acid rain, lead paint, ozone depletion, and more. Same old strategy: Muddle the science, manufacture doubt, manufacture cost, exaggerate the costs, and ignore the economic benefits.

The Clean Air Act, according to a 2011 EPA assessment, will benefit Americans more than it costs by a ratio of 30 to 1, $30 of value in preventing hospital visits and premature deaths, avoiding missed work and school days, improving environmental quality, helping people live healthier, more productive lives--$30 of value to Americans for every $1 they had to pay in cleanup costs.

Opponents of clean air standards have been proven wrong time and again. Here is the bottom line: Excessive carbon pollution is bad for our health, bad for our environment, and bad for our economy, even bad for our

national security, if you read the Department of Defense's own Quadrennial Defense Reviews.

The largest source of carbon pollution in the United States is powerplants. Until now there were no limits on the carbon pollution these plants could spew into our atmosphere and oceans. This week changes that. If the big polluters don't like the change, many of us will work with them on a legislative alternative. Perhaps as many Republicans support an economywide price on carbon pollution, which could generate a financial benefit for taxpayers and even provide transition assistance to affected industries. But they can't just keep dumping their pollution on the rest of us. Doing so might be free for them, but the costs are too high for us. Their long holiday from responsibility has to come to an end. It is time for them to wake up.

A number of my Republican colleagues have come to the Senate floor to respond to the administration's proposal. Those of us seeking to stave off the worst effects of climate change welcome this opportunity to engage in a bipartisan discussion on the challenges of climate change.

In the past, Republican colleagues have coauthored and voted for bipartisan climate change legislation. They have spoken out in favor of a carbon fee and, of course, our Republican colleagues represent States such as Florida that are every bit at risk from the effects of climate change as States represented by Democrats. So we think our Republican colleagues could have a lot to offer if they wish to join us in exploring solutions.

A number of us have requested that time after votes on Monday, June 9, next Monday, be reserved for us to engage in a robust, bipartisan exchange of views about carbon pollution. We invite all our colleagues, Republican and Democrats, to join us then on the floor. We hope to find the Republican Party in the Senate is not a uniform monolith of climate denial.

We earnestly believe the costs of failing to exercise American leadership and solve this carbon pollution problem are very high, terribly high, with ramifications for our health, safety, economic well-being, our food and water supplies, and our national security and standing.

I look forward to a vigorous discussion on Monday. I hope my colleagues show up.

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

There has been considerable discussion on the floor about the nominee to the First Circuit, David Barron, that has hinged around his tenure in the Office of Legal Counsel and an opinion he wrote specifying the outer bounds of Presidential authority in the area of defending our national security against Americans who have signed up with organizations that do us harm. I wish briefly to bring to the attention of this Chamber that it is not the only issue with respect to David Barron and the Office of Legal Counsel.

The Office of Legal Counsel has indeed had a scandal, and it is indeed related to David Barron, but it is related to David Barron in the best possible way, in that he is the one who cleaned up the scandal. The scandal in question--the Presiding Officer is a former attorney general of her State and she will understand this very clearly--the scandal in question related to the shabby opinions that were written by the Office of Legal Counsel to justify the torture program that was run by the Bush administration. When I say shabby, these were awful opinions. They were hidden from most peer scrutiny because they would not have stood up to peer scrutiny. They made errors as basic as failing to cite Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decisions right on point.

There actually had been an incident in which the Department of Justice, where the Office of Legal Counsel is located, prosecuted a Texas sheriff for waterboarding victims in order to get confessions out of them. He was prosecuted as a criminal. He was convicted. The case went to the Fifth Circuit on appeal and in the course of their written decision on appeal, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals of the United States--one row below the U.S. Supreme Court--described the technique of water torture that was used, the waterboarding, and on a dozen separate occasions used the word ``torture'' to describe what was being done.

Look for that case in the Office of Legal Counsel. Look for that case in the opinion of Office of Legal Counsel about whether torture is accomplished by waterboarding, whether waterboarding is torture. It is not there. They didn't even cite the case. It was a case they could have found in their own files because the Department of Justice was the organization that had prosecuted this sheriff as a criminal for that act.

If you wanted to bring it up as a case and try to find a way to distinguish it, I could accept that. I probably would disagree with that analysis, but the failure to even cite the case, knowing how difficult it would be for the torture program to go forward, I think is a sign of either the worst kind of incompetence or a deliberate fix being put into the opinion of the Office of Legal Counsel.

Having served as a U.S. attorney as well, I think the Department of Justice should have the best lawyers in the country, and within the Department of Justice the OLC prides itself on being the best of the best. It was a disgraceful departure of that standard when the torture opinions were allowed to pass. They simply don't meet any reasonable test of adequacy. So on April 15, 2009, the Department of Justice withdrew the Office of Legal Counsel's CIA interrogation opinions. The memorandum for the Attorney General effecting that withdrawal was signed by none other than David Barron. This was the instance of a man who absolutely did the right thing. He helped clean up a terrible mess that had been left at the Department of Justice. We should be proud of the conduct of David Barron at the Office of Legal Counsel.

I ask unanimous consent that the 1-page memorandum for the Attorney General signed by David Barron be printed in the Record.

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

Madam President, I am joined by the chair and ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee to discuss a provision of the Water Resources Reform and Development Act conference report, which we will vote on shortly in the Senate. I thank them for their leadership on this important legislation, and rise with them today to discuss one of its provisions.

Section 4014 of the conference report, Ocean and Coastal Resiliency, creates a new Army Corps authority to address ocean and coastal ecosystem resiliency.

Subject to appropriations, this authority requires the Army Corps of Engineers to work with the heads of other Federal agencies, like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Fish and Wildlife Service, State governors and other State officials, and nonprofit organizations, to conduct a study identifying projects in coastal zones to enhance ocean and coastal ecosystem resiliency. State and local leaders often have the best information about the changing conditions of their oceans and coastal zones, and participation by them in the Army Corps' study process is intended to ensure the most effective resiliency projects are identified in the study.

In Rhode Island there are numerous entities, from our Coastal Zone Management Agency to our National Estuary Program, the University of Rhode Island, and Save the Bay that would bring important information and expertise to the process for identifying coastal resiliency projects in Rhode Island. In other States I know there will be similar interest.

Subject to appropriations, the study and project list will be updated every 5 years, to ensure that best available science and policies are informing project identification and selection.

When funding is provided for this program through the appropriations process, the Army Corps may carry out identified projects in accordance with the criteria for existing Corps Continuing Authority Program authorities.

The conference committee's deliberations were informed by a legal analysis prepared by the Corps of Engineers Counsel regarding the interpretation of Section 4014.

I ask unanimous consent that the legal analysis prepared by Scott Murphy, Senior Counsel for Project Agreements and Reports in the Office of the Chief Counsel of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Headquarters, which describes how the Corps would implement this provision, be printed in the Record at the end of this colloquy.

The legal analysis, dated May 8, 2014, states that Section 4014 authorizes ``an independent coastal zone resiliency study and follow-on construction authority for projects to the extent they satisfy criteria for projects carried out under four named CAP authorities.'' In other words, Section 4014 relies on the terms and conditions of four preexisting authorities but it is not limited by the authorized levels in those authorities.

I thank the chairman. I look forward to supporting this program in the future and during the appropriations process.

Resiliency is important in our estuaries, bays, and barrier islands, because we cannot just restore things the way they were and expect to reap the benefits. These systems are changing too much. Resiliency requires planning for future threats from extreme weather, from rising sea levels and warming temperatures, from development pressure, and from pollution. Coastal ecosystems act as filters, improving water quality so we can swim and fish off our docks; they act as barriers protecting property and lives from storms and storm surges; and they provide habitat for commercially valuable fish, shellfish, and other wildlife.

Coastal ecosystems support coastal economies, and I will continue looking for avenues to support restoration and research in this area.

Mr. President, I have come directly to the Senate floor from a terrific event in the Dirksen building where hundreds of people who are concerned about what the carbon pollution is doing to our atmosphere and oceans gathered to wake up Congress. At 5 o'clock a whole bunch of alarms went off down there, and it was a very exciting, very enthusiastic moment with more than 40 members of Congress showing up to reflect our commitment to getting this done.

One of the things I told people at the rally was that we are close to turning this issue around. The barricade of special interest propaganda that has surrounded Congress is eroding. The denial castle is built on sand and the sand is eroding the foundations for that propaganda, washing out from underneath it, and it will collapse soon. Why do I say that? I say that for several reasons.

The first reason that I believe we are close to a win is that for a long time the big polluters have had a free shot at the atmosphere and oceans. Pollution costs them nothing, and that has created a mindset of entitlement and it created a mindset in which pollution was viewed as of no consequence. Thankfully, the President of the United States has required the EPA to promulgate regulations that will for the first time put a price on the carbon pollution that is emitted from our biggest power plants, and the 50 biggest power plants in America put out more carbon than Korea. They put out more carbon than Canada. So this is a very serious situation. When they are faced with the regulation, I think that is not just going to reduce their emissions, but it is going to change the way they see the problem, and they will be motivated in a new way to think: ``Wait a minute; what is the best way to solve this problem?'' Once they are no longer free to pollute, once the advantage is taken away, the whole equation changes for them, and I suspect that it will not take long between a polluter change in point of view and a change in point of view on the other side of the aisle in the Senate.

The second reason is the politics on this. We have seen a recent poll that I have talked about on the floor before that points out that Republican voters--self-identified Republican voters--if they are under the age of 35 think that climate denial is--not my words, but in the words in the poll--ignorant, out of touch or crazy.

So if you are a modern political party and you have built your climate change policy on a theory of denial that your own youth cohort, your own young voters under 35 think is ignorant, out of touch, or crazy, that is what I mean by a castle that is built on sand and that is doomed to fall.

The third reason I want to mention here is there is a very significant role for America's corporations because what you get in this body from the so-

called self-appointed corporate mouthpieces--the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the so-called U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers--what you get from all of them is flat out climate denial, the absolute hard stuff--just complete denial, absolute ignorance and ignoring of the science, totally in the tank with the polluters and the oil and coal industry. What is interesting is that actually doesn't represent the views of America's corporate community, and it doesn't represent them by a lot.

If you look at big brand name American corporations, if you look at Coke and Pepsi, if you look at Apple and Google, if you look at WalMart and Target, if you look at Mars and Nestle, UPS and Federal Express, GM and Ford, look at the entire casualty property insurance industry, look at the bulk of the electric utility industry, look at the entire green energy sector, all of them know that climate change is a real problem, understand the undeniable science of what carbon pollution does to the Earth's atmosphere and to our oceans, and they are doing things about it.

They have sustainability policies. They have climate policies. WalMart has probably done more to get rid of the incandescent bulb than any other force on the planet. They are very strong on this issue. But within those great corporations, it tends to be cabined into their corporate business and sustainability divisions. It hasn't really influenced yet the way they communicate with the public, and it certainly hasn't influenced much their government relations. So there is a huge mismatch between the so-called voice of the corporate community, which is really a polluter-paid propaganda effort coming through the Wall Street Journal, coming through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and coming through the National Association of Manufacturers--a huge difference between that and what the underlying leaders of what regular Americans think of as the American corporate community believe. That difference is eventually--like these other forces--going to tear apart the foundation of the denial castle.

We have the chance to make this happen and to make this happen soon, and we need to. We absolutely need to. The Presiding Officer is the senior Senator from Connecticut, a State which borders mine. Connecticut and Rhode Island share a critical factor, which is coastline. If you follow the logic, such logic as exists in the denial machinery, they will take you off into distant and complex computer models of what the temperature is going to be and what the atmosphere is going to be like 30 or 40 years from now. And yes, that is complicated. In that area there is room to sow confusion.

Come to the coast. At the coastline you see sea levels rising because of an immutable law of nature called the law of thermal expansion. The ocean is warming because it has caught more than 90 percent of the excess heat that the carbon has trapped, and when it warms, it expands.

It is as simple as that. That means when you go to my State to the Newport tide gauge off the Naval Station Newport, you see it is 10 inches higher than it was in the 1930s. That is a big deal because in the 1930s we had the hurricane of 1938. And if you look back at the devastation that hurricane caused to our coastline and you adjust for what 10 additional inches of sea would do and adjust again for stacking up that 10 inches in what a storm surge would do, you end up with a truly apocalyptic vision of the Rhode Island shore, and it is not deniable.

You cannot quarrel about a tide gauge. It is in effect a yardstick nailed to a dock, and the water has gone up 10 inches. To deny that is not just to deny science; it is to deny measurement. I think it is a bit of a stretch for even the most ardent of my denier colleagues to deny measurement. With a thermometer you measure that Narragansett Bay is nearly 4 degrees warmer in mean winter water temperature, and that means a lot for fishermen who used to fish for winter flounder. It doesn't take a very complicated test to determine what the acidity of the ocean is and to measure just the way you would measure the acidity in an aquarium. Our oceans are acidifying at the fastest rate that has been measured in 50 million years.

Remember we are a species that has been on this planet as Homo sapiens for a little over 200,000 years. So when you are talking about the steepest rate of acidification in millions of years, that is a dramatic shift in the habitability of our planet. If you want to know who that matters to, go to the west coast, go to the oyster fisheries and look at the wipe-out of young oyster species that took place when acidified ocean water got into the growing oysters and killed them all off. It was simply too acidic for their little shells to survive.

These are the harbingers of things to come. These are the undeniable facts. These are the truths the oceans tell us and our coastlines tell us. For all those reasons, I am confident that we will be at serious business to address climate change a lot sooner than the deniers think. The American public simply is not going to put up with a Congress that has become the prisoner to a barricade of special interest propaganda when they know better. Now the American people do, indeed, know better.

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

Mr. President, I am here for the 67th time to urge my colleagues to wake up to the growing threat of climate change, and today I am joined by my friend and colleague Senator Nelson of Florida, who is a true leader in this fight.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we be able to engage in a colloquy for the next 25 minutes.

Florida is about 1,000 miles from Rhode Island, and it is slightly larger than my home State, but Florida and Rhode Island have a great deal in common, such as a beautiful coastline, an economy and a way

of life that is tied to the sea, and as a result risk from the ocean in a changing climate.

On my recent trip down the southeast coast, I spent 2 days in Florida and heard firsthand about the unprecedented changes taking place there. Like the folks I met in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, Floridians are worried about the coastal communities they love. They are getting serious about protecting their homes and their livelihoods, and they want their representatives in Congress to get serious.

Senator Nelson hears them. He recently took the Senate commerce committee to the Miami Beach townhall to examine the dangers posed by rising seas. Here is what the Miami Herald said about his effort:

South Florida owes Senator Nelson its thanks for shining a

bright light on this issue. Everyone from local residents to

elected officials should follow his lead, turning awareness

of this major environmental issue into action. It is critical

to saving our region.

Senator Nelson and I also held a press conference at Jacksonville's Friendship Fountain with Representative Corrine Brown to highlight these serious implications of climate change. So I am grateful for Senator Nelson's bringing his passion and expertise to the floor today.

On my trip through Senator Nelson's State, the Army Corps of Engineers officials in Jacksonville gave me some pretty dire warnings about what the sea level rise portends for Florida, both the punch from storms that will bring the higher seas ashore and the steady encroachment of saltwater.

This is a scene from western Boynton Beach after Tropical Storm Isaac in 2012. I don't know if you can see it on the screen, but this sign says ``no wake zone.'' The family put up a ``no wake zone'' sign in their front yard because the cars going by would cause wakes and more damage.

The Corps also showed me what 2 feet of sea level rise would do to the Everglades National Park. I went down to the Everglades later on during my visit. This is what it would look like. You can see the green in the Everglades here and all the development up here. Basically, if you add 60 centimeters of sea level rise, or 2 feet, and that is all ocean again, that is a pretty serious change.

The Southeast Florida Regional Compact, which is a bipartisan coalition of four South Florida counties, predicts that the water around southeast Florida could surge up to 2 feet in less than 50 years.

So that is a preview of the coming attractions ``Everglades Under Water.''

What was interesting was that the local officials, both Republicans and Democrats, were working together. The division that exists in this body doesn't exist down there. Mayor Silva Murphy of Monroe County is a Republican and former Mayor Kristin Jacobs of Broward County is a Democrat. They both know that flooding and access to drinking water are not partisan issues in the way that it divides us here.

Here are a couple more examples from my visit. This is Castillo San Marcos, which Senator Nelson will recognize as being in St. Augustine. It is a famous and very beautiful ancient fort. It sits along the water there. If you add 3 feet of sea level rise, it turns from being part of the coast to being its own tiny little peninsula surrounded by flooding. It is the oldest masonry fort in the United States.

This is what Fort Matanzas would look like. This is a little fort built by Spanish colonists in 1742. It is right here on this inlet. If you add 3 feet of sea level rise, suddenly it is in the water. It has nothing to stand on. As it is, they have built a wall to protect it from the sea level rise that has already happened, and from time to time the high tides lap over that wall.

The Senator said there is the potential for an enormous amount of harm here that could happen to people. One of the scientists I met in Florida said that if we don't do something about this, ``people are going to get hurt and it's going to cost a lot of money.'' That is true.

One topic I would like to discuss is how the seawater will affect the freshwater supply of Florida. Senator Nelson is an expert on the geology of Florida and why it is different from my rocky New England coast.

I will yield back to Senator Nelson so he can discuss the limestone bedrock problem.

Mr. President, it is a pleasure to be here with the Senator from Florida, and his leadership is truly remarkable.

Here is another example on this picture from my tour. This is Broward County. People say it is not real. Ask the owner of this house with the for sale sign. Good luck selling that house with the ocean running through it. That was in 2010.

Another Broward County photograph. Commissioner Kristin Jacobs, who was the mayor at that time, gave me these pictures. Again, this is tide. Look at the sky. It is a beautiful day. This isn't rain. This is the tide flooding in, showing what it does to the cars. It is a mess.

As Senator Nelson described, because Florida is this limestone, kind of hard sponge, what keeps the saltwater out is the pressure of the freshwater holding it at bay. There is no wall. There is no structure that keeps the water, salt, and fresh balance. It is a hydraulic system. They have built a very complex system of canals, where they have raised the water so they have pressure, so they can push it back. As the sea level comes up, they are losing that fight. So here is a line through Broward County of how far the saltwater has already intruded into the water supply. If we drilled wells on this side of the red line, the water is no good, and all of these wells, the little green spots, all of these water areas are in the way because this line is moving.

As one Army Corps engineer in Jacksonville said, Florida is in a box, because as the sea level rises, the way we keep the freshwater available to people is by raising the fresh water, and that keeps what the engineers call the hydraulic head that pushes the sea water back and allows us to maintain freshwater for drinking water purposes, for agriculture, for Florida oranges and grapefruits and all the things we count on. If what we are worried about is flooding, we could only raise the freshwater so far, because if we raise it enough, we have freshwater flooding. There is no way out of that conundrum. There is no way out of that conundrum in Florida. He said, whether it happens in 100 years or whether it happens after the next bad hurricane, that is what is going to happen. That is a terrible predicament. It is not going to get better by pretending it is not real. It is not going to get better by denying it.

If we go offshore, we get to the problem of acidification, which happens from the carbon. This is not a theory. People say climate change is a theory. No. The acidification of the ocean from the type of carbon dioxide is something we can do in a lab. It is a scientific fact. It is a law of chemistry. So it happens, and it is starting to hit the reefs and the fisheries as the ocean warms and turns more acid.

Mayor Murphy is the mayor of Monroe County. I met her in Key Largo, which is one of the famous world destinations. I said: What is the acidification of the warm air? What does that do to your reefs?

She said: Well, the reefs are still beautiful unless you had been out to see them 10, 15 years ago. The reefs are still beautiful unless you had been out to see them 10 or 15 years ago. People see the change.

I met with the Snook and Gamefish Foundation in Florida and the marine industry folks, and they are concerned about what is happening there. In fact, the problem goes all the way up the coast. When I came down from North Carolina and South Carolina, the fishermen there told me they are starting to catch snook off the Carolinas. It is one thing when we are catching grouper and tarpon up in Rhode Island, but what they are seeing on the South Atlantic coast is the same thing that a

Rhode Islander fisherman said to me about the fishing off our coast. He said: It is getting weird out there. We are catching fish our fathers never saw in their nets in their lives. So when a snook comes up on the line off the Carolinas, that is a sign that something is dramatically changing, and these reefs are changing as well.

Last story: Mike Shirley works at the Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve on the south side of St. Augustine. He moved up there from South Florida. He moved there 7 years ago. When he got there, he said there was one thing noticeable: There were no mangroves. South Florida is covered in mangroves, but there weren't any here. Now, 7 years later, the place is covered in mangroves. All that habitat migrating northward as the oceans and the water warms and it is changing things.

He said one other thing. He said: Do you know what we ought to look out for? There is going to be another migration north. It is going to be the people leaving flooded South Florida who can't get freshwater, whose homes are flooded, who can't deal with their car going hubcap deep in saltwater every high tide. They are going to be moving up. It is not just the people from the cold North coming to Florida now, it is people coming from the flooding South who are going to be coming North again.

I will say one last thing. The mayors were terrific. Sylvia Murphy, the mayor of Monroe County, is putting climate and energy policy at the very forefront of her 20-year growth plan for the county. Mayor Philip Levine of Miami Beach is hard at work. He says:

Sea-level rise is our reality in Miami Beach. We are past

the point of debating the existence of climate change. We are

now focusing on adapting to current and future threats.

Mayor Levine is pushing a $400 million plan to try to make the city's drainage system more resilient in the face of rising tides.

From Mayor Joe Riley in Charleston to Mayor Edna Jackson in Savannah, to Mayor Alvin Brown in Jacksonville, to the mayors in South Florida I mentioned, council members, mayors from Pinecrest, South Miami, Surfside, Miami Shores, Cutler Bay, Palmetto Bay, the Seminole Tribe, the local officials, they are all serious about tackling climate change. It is real. They see it in their neighborhoods. They see it in their districts. They see it in their towns. They are away from this poisonous place where the polluters control what people are allowed to think and see and do something about.

We have to start listening to the American people. We have to start listening to the mayors who inhabit real life and not the political fantasy in this Senate. We have to start dealing with this.

Lee Thomas worked for President Ronald Reagan. He was a member of the Reagan Cabinet. He ran the Environmental Protection Agency for Ronald Reagan. Last week he wrote an op-ed--and I know the Senator from Florida saw it--in the Tampa Bay Times urging Florida's leaders to wake up to the changes taking place in the Sunshine State. Here is what he said: ``Whether Democrat or Republican, Florida residents cannot afford to ignore the evidence of climate change.'' That is a Reagan official saying those words.

Come on, Republican mayors, Reagan officials. At some point we have to wake up. This is real.

Just last year, Thomas joined all the other former Republican EPA heads--four of them--and they wrote this:

The costs of inaction are undeniable. The lines of

scientific evidence grow only stronger and more numerous, and

the window of time remaining to act is growing smaller: delay

could mean that warming becomes locked in. A market-based

approach, like a carbon tax, would be the best path to

reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Bob Samuelson just said the same thing in his editorial over the weekend.

I will say that the citizens of Florida and the people of the United States are very fortunate to have a Senator such as Bill Nelson, who is aware of this problem, who is fighting hard to solve it, who is listening to his mayors, Republican and Democratic alike, who are telling him what is happening in their home State, and who was willing to bring the Commerce Committee of the U.S. Senate down to a Miami Beach townhall to make sure everybody understands what is going on. He helped bring that message back to Washington and it was a terrific thing.

So we will continue working together to get this body to wake up out of its polluter-induced slumber and face the realities that people all across this country are seeing in their daily lives. It is indeed time to wake up.

I yield the floor for any final comments the Senator from Florida may wish to make.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, today I am pleased to introduce the Safety over Secrecy Act, which prohibits courts from enforcing confidentiality agreements in the settlement of civil suits involving hazards to public health and safety. This bill will ensure that plaintiffs in such suits do not have to remain silent about their experiences as a condition of settling their disputes.

While confidentiality agreements can be useful tools to protect sensitive information and trade secrets, too often they are used to hide important safety concerns from regulators, policymakers, the news media, public health experts, and the general public. Over the past 20 years, we have learned of numerous cases where court-approved secrecy has shielded serious public health and safety dangers from the public-- putting hundreds, if not thousands, of lives at risk. These cases have involved hydraulic fracturing, or ``fracking,'' asbestos, defective auto components, and ``adverse incidents'' from drugs.

Typically in these cases, victims face large corporations that can spend unlimited amounts of money defending lawsuits and prolonging their resolution. Faced with mounting litigation expenses and medical bills, plaintiffs often seek to settle their suits. In exchange for damages, they are forced to agree to provisions that prohibit them from discussing their cases or revealing information disclosed during litigation. Defendants are thus able to keep damaging information from getting out. As a result the public, as well as regulatory agencies, remain unaware of the risks.

Let us take fracking, where drillers from Pennsylvania to Arkansas and Wyoming to Texas have entered into cash settlements or property buyouts with individuals who claim fracking has contaminated their water and polluted their air. In the vast majority of these cases, the cost of the awards has been the plaintiffs' silence. As Aaron Bernstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the Harvard School of Public Health, put it in an interview, non-disclosure agreements ``have interfered with the ability of scientists and public health experts to understand what is at stake'' in the country's quickly evolving energy infrastructure.

Perhaps the most notorious case of fracking hush money is the Hallowich case. In that case, Chris and Stephanie Hallowich's dream house--built on acres of land in southwestern Pennsylvania--turned out to be sitting atop the Marcellus Shale, one of the biggest fracking operations in the country. The previous land owner had leased the mineral rights to various gas companies. Soon after moving in, Chris,

Stephanie, and their young children began experiencing headaches, nose bleeds, burning eyes, and sore throats. After complaining for three years of what they concluded were the side effects of contaminated air and water, the Hallowiches brought suit. Without accepting responsibility for any health effects, the companies agreed to pay the Hallowiches $750,000 so that they could move off the property, in exchange for the Hallowiches' promise to remain silent about the case. The case gained international attention when the Pittsburg Gazette obtained an unsealed settlement transcript 2 years later and discovered that the Hallowiches' 7 and ten year-old children had been gagged for life along with their parents under the confidentiality agreement. Needless to say, these gag orders make it difficult to challenge industry claims about the safety of the fracking process. Fracking is just one of many areas where defendants impose secrecy as a condition of settlement.

Under current law, judges are not specifically required to consider the public interest when determining the enforceability of confidentiality ageements. In cases involving hazards to public health and safety, and only in those cases, this bill would change that, and would require judges to balance a party's specific interest in confidentiality against the public interest in disclosure of information when approving or enforcing confidentiality agreements. My bill would not prohibit secrecy agreements across the board because there are appropriate uses for such agreements, including protecting trade secrets and other confidential company and personal information. Given its narrow scope, this bill would not place undue burdens on our judges or judiciary system.

In introducing the Safety over Secrecy Act, I want to recognize former Senator Kohl and his Sunshine in Litigation Act, which he introduced in various forms between 1995 and 2011. That bill, which I was proud to support in the Judiciary Committee, was a broader version of the legislation I have just introduced. I supported that bill when Senator Kohl introduced it, and I plan to offer my full support when it is introduced again in this chamber.

Mr. President, today I am pleased to introduce the Safety over Secrecy Act, which prohibits courts from enforcing confidentiality agreements in the settlement of civil suits involving hazards to public health and safety. This bill will ensure that plaintiffs in such suits do not have to remain silent about their experiences as a condition of settling their disputes.

While confidentiality agreements can be useful tools to protect sensitive information and trade secrets, too often they are used to hide important safety concerns from regulators, policymakers, the news media, public health experts, and the general public. Over the past 20 years, we have learned of numerous cases where court-approved secrecy has shielded serious public health and safety dangers from the public-- putting hundreds, if not thousands, of lives at risk. These cases have involved hydraulic fracturing, or ``fracking,'' asbestos, defective auto components, and ``adverse incidents'' from drugs.

Typically in these cases, victims face large corporations that can spend unlimited amounts of money defending lawsuits and prolonging their resolution. Faced with mounting litigation expenses and medical bills, plaintiffs often seek to settle their suits. In exchange for damages, they are forced to agree to provisions that prohibit them from discussing their cases or revealing information disclosed during litigation. Defendants are thus able to keep damaging information from getting out. As a result the public, as well as regulatory agencies, remain unaware of the risks.

Let us take fracking, where drillers from Pennsylvania to Arkansas and Wyoming to Texas have entered into cash settlements or property buyouts with individuals who claim fracking has contaminated their water and polluted their air. In the vast majority of these cases, the cost of the awards has been the plaintiffs' silence. As Aaron Bernstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the Harvard School of Public Health, put it in an interview, non-disclosure agreements ``have interfered with the ability of scientists and public health experts to understand what is at stake'' in the country's quickly evolving energy infrastructure.

Perhaps the most notorious case of fracking hush money is the Hallowich case. In that case, Chris and Stephanie Hallowich's dream house--built on acres of land in southwestern Pennsylvania--turned out to be sitting atop the Marcellus Shale, one of the biggest fracking operations in the country. The previous land owner had leased the mineral rights to various gas companies. Soon after moving in, Chris,

Stephanie, and their young children began experiencing headaches, nose bleeds, burning eyes, and sore throats. After complaining for three years of what they concluded were the side effects of contaminated air and water, the Hallowiches brought suit. Without accepting responsibility for any health effects, the companies agreed to pay the Hallowiches $750,000 so that they could move off the property, in exchange for the Hallowiches' promise to remain silent about the case. The case gained international attention when the Pittsburg Gazette obtained an unsealed settlement transcript 2 years later and discovered that the Hallowiches' 7 and ten year-old children had been gagged for life along with their parents under the confidentiality agreement. Needless to say, these gag orders make it difficult to challenge industry claims about the safety of the fracking process. Fracking is just one of many areas where defendants impose secrecy as a condition of settlement.

Under current law, judges are not specifically required to consider the public interest when determining the enforceability of confidentiality ageements. In cases involving hazards to public health and safety, and only in those cases, this bill would change that, and would require judges to balance a party's specific interest in confidentiality against the public interest in disclosure of information when approving or enforcing confidentiality agreements. My bill would not prohibit secrecy agreements across the board because there are appropriate uses for such agreements, including protecting trade secrets and other confidential company and personal information. Given its narrow scope, this bill would not place undue burdens on our judges or judiciary system.

In introducing the Safety over Secrecy Act, I want to recognize former Senator Kohl and his Sunshine in Litigation Act, which he introduced in various forms between 1995 and 2011. That bill, which I was proud to support in the Judiciary Committee, was a broader version of the legislation I have just introduced. I supported that bill when Senator Kohl introduced it, and I plan to offer my full support when it is introduced again in this chamber.

Madam President, in 1874, a financier named William Watts Sherman and his wife Annie Wetmore decided to build a house on a plot of land Wetmore had inherited from her father in Newport, RI, just a few blocks from Sheep Point Cove. The couple hired the respected architects H.H. Richardson and Stanford White, and chose the popular Queen Anne's style, which employed steeply sloping rooflines, gables, broad porches, and deep entranceways. But, as is the case with many in Rhode Island, they also wanted to put their own mark on the property--something that would set it apart from their neighbors. So they added new materials, like stucco, shingles, stained glass windows, and an asymmetrical layout to draw the eye in unexpected directions.

The house was both fashionable and altogether different, and a new style was born. So it is that ``Shingle Style,'' as it came to be known, is traced back to Rhode Island and the William Watts Sherman House.

Today the home is one of more than 21 historic buildings on the campus of Salve Regina University, which has sought to maintain the structures and commission new buildings that complement Newport's distinct architectural tradition. That is why Salve Regina University has been selected for the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art's prestigious Arthur Ross Award for Stewardship. It joins previous recipients that include the New York Botanical Garden in New York, Monticello, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation in Virginia, and the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts in Washington, D.C. The award recognizes the university's ``astute and indefatigable effort'' to preserve its legacy for future generations and expand upon the defining aesthetic of its campus and surrounding neighborhood. I could not imagine a more worthy recipient.

The story of William Watts Sherman House is one of many examples of architectural innovation in the Ocean State, from ``stone-ender'' farmhouses in Lincoln, to vast industrial spaces like Slater Mill in Pawtucket, and to Gilded Age mansions like The Breakers in Newport. We see our own history reflected back to us through these structures, and by preserving them we see more clearly how much has changed and why.

I am proud to see an institution that cares deeply about preserving Newport's architectural heritage receive worthy recognition. I applaud Salve Regina's dedication to Rhode Island's rich cultural history and congratulate them on this prestigious honor.