Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I am here now for the 60th time to ask my colleagues to wake up to the threats of climate change. To see the damage that is being caused by our shifting climate, we need look no further than the Winter Olympics. The most recent Winter Olympics concluded last month. Over 200 countries broadcast the event to an estimated 3.8 billion people worldwide. In Rhode Island, we rooted for our very own Marissa Castelli, who brought home a bronze medal in pairs figure skating.

But what does the future hold for the Winter Olympics? As global temperatures rise and weather patterns shift, the world's glaciers are receding and snowpack in traditionally snowy regions is declining.

A report from the University of Waterloo found that February daytime high temperatures during the Winter Games have been steadily increasing from the 1920s and the 1950s to the 21st century. This forced the International

Olympic Committee to take drastic measures to ensure adequate conditions: ramping up the use of snow-making machines and physically transferring large amounts of snow to the site of the games.

This is just the beginning of things to come. If our emissions are left unchecked, as the Republicans and the polluters prefer, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports we will likely see warming between 4.7 and 8.6 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. The Waterloo report found that only 10 of the 19 cities to previously host the Winter Olympics would be cold enough to host the games by the 2080s. There could be no Sochi Olympics, no Vancouver or Squaw Valley or Sarajevo Olympics, and that is if we are able to stabilize and ultimately reduce our global carbon emissions before the year 2100. If carbon pollution continues on the current pace, only six of these cities could host the games. Forget about Torino and Nagano, Lake Placid and Lillehammer.

Over 100 Olympic athletes from 10 different countries signed a letter asking world leaders to take action to curb climate change. They said:

As winter Olympic athletes, our lives revolve around the

winter and if climate change continues at this pace, the

economies of the small towns where we live and train will be

ruined. Our sports will be forever changed and the winter

Olympics as we know it will be a thing of the past.

Much as we all love the Winter Olympics, we could do without them. We cannot very well do without freshwater. Glaciers represent the largest reserves of freshwater on Earth. Their freshwater feeds our rivers and streams, waters our farms and ranches, and provides some of our drinking water. Glacier loss is happening all over the world, including right here in the United States.

Just like atmospheric warming, ocean acidification, and sea-level rise, this evidence of climate change is not a theoretical projection. It is not a complex scientific model. It is simply observation and measurement.

This is Grinnell Glacier in Montana's Glacier National Park. On top we see the glacier in 1940. On the bottom is the same spot in 2004. Grinnell Glacier has lost 90 percent of its ice in the last century. The glacier has almost disappeared or, as the U.S. Geological Survey puts it, ``effects of global climate change are strikingly clear.'' The U.S. Geological Survey further explains:

Glacier recession is underway, and many glaciers have

already disappeared. The retreat of these small alpine

glaciers reflects changes in recent climate as glaciers

respond to altered temperature and precipitation. It has been

estimated that there were approximately 150 glaciers present

in 1850 and most glaciers were still present in 1910 when the

park was established. In 2010 we considered there to be only

twenty-five glaciers larger than twenty-five acres remaining

in Glacier National Park.

So there were 150 glaciers 100 years ago, 25 now.

Here we see a similar change at Lillian Glacier in Washington's Olympic National Park. On the top we see a large healthy glacier in 1905, and this almost unrecognizable view of the same landscape in 2010.

Of course, this is not just happening in the United States. Countries across the world are seeing rapid glacier loss.

A 2013 article published in Nature found clear evidence that the Tibetan glaciers--the world's third largest ice reservoir behind Antarctica and Greenland--are shrinking, even at altitudes above 20,000 feet.

South America's Andean glaciers are retreating at an amazing rate. Climatologists from Ohio State University and NASA loaned my office a piece of a plant that had been preserved under the Quelccaya icecap in Peru for at least 5,200 years, a little bitty piece of plant. But under the pressure of the ice and the cold, it had been preserved for 52 centuries. Today, due to glacial retreat, it was exposed and I now have that piece of plant in my office.

Glaciers are some of the largest reservoirs of fresh matter on Earth. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, glaciers store 69 percent of the world's fresh water. Annual spring glacial melt provides a dependable source of water for streams, plants, spawning fish, farming, and now often hydroelectricity. In Central Asia hundreds of millions of people rely on the Tibetan glaciers to supply drinking water. The same goes for the people of Peru and Bolivia in the Andes.

This is a crisis we must take seriously. Unfortunately, Congress remains barricaded behind a blockade of polluter influence. Only last week a Republican witness at an Environment and Public Works hearing on adapting to climate change argued that we would all be better off if the glaciers just went away--if they just melted away. After all, he told the committee:

We evolved at the equator in a climate where freezing

weather did not exist. . . . It could be said that frost and

ice are the enemies of life.

He continued:

Obviously if the glaciers stop melting, there will be no

more meltwater from them. So my questions . . . are, Are you

saying you want the glaciers to stop melting? Then where

would the irrigation water come from? . . . I say let the

glaciers melt.

That is the witness the Republicans put up. Let the glaciers melt.

I guess he missed the difference between seasonal melting, whose annual rhythms fill our streams and rivers for drinking water, fishing and farming, and glaciers outright melting away.

There is another little trick the deniers like to play when it is wintertime. Every time there is a cold snap or a little snow falls in Washington, DC, or back in their home States, they say: How can there be global warming when it is cold out? And, yes, we have had a cold winter. But what scientists and other level-headed observers understand is the changes occurring in the climate are happening over longer periods than just one winter and across broader regions than only one State or even the United States. Moreover, short-term temperature anomalies such as a cold snap might be worse because of climate change, because of changes in the jetstream, for instance. This chart shows how worldwide winter temperatures every year since 1880 compare with the 20th century average.

Do you think there is a trend visible there? Over 100 years, yes, winter is still cold, but it is not as cold as it used to be. This change is ravaging winter sports and tourism across the United States. The National Resources Defense Council found that between 1999 and 2010, a lack of snowfall cost our ski industry $1 billion and up to 27,000 jobs. Before the end of the century, the number of economically viable ski locations in New Hampshire and Maine will be cut in half. Skiing in New York will be cut by three-quarters and, the report says, there will be no ski area in Connecticut or Massachusetts. If we know our geography, we know if that is true of Connecticut and Massachusetts, there goes Rhode Island's Yawgoo Valley ski area and slope.

The Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change, which I started with Representative Henry Waxman, asked the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, National Hockey League, National Football League, and the United States Olympic Committee, to tell us what climate change means for their sports.

National Hockey League Deputy Commissioner William Daly wrote:

Hockey's relationship with the environment is unique. Our

sport was born on frozen ponds, where--to this day--players

of all ages and skill levels learn to skate. For this

magnificent tradition to continue, it is imperative that we

recognize the importance of maintaining the environment.

The Park City Foundation in Utah predicts an annual local temperature increase of 6.8 degrees Fahrenheit by 2075, which could cause a complete loss of snowpack in the lower Park City resort area of the Rocky Mountains. The foundation estimates that this will result in thousands of lost jobs, tens of millions in lost earnings, and hundreds of millions in lost economic growth.

While we in Congress equivocate and stall, the evidence of climate change relentlessly mounts. The damage is being done in our atmosphere and our oceans. The longer it takes us to wake up, the harder and more expensive it will be to fix it.

The sickening part is that everyone else is waking up. Sixty-five percent of voters support the President taking significant steps to address climate change now. Another poll found that 82 percent of Americans believe we should start preparing now for rising sea levels and severe storms from climate change.

Even in the party that won't speak the words ``climate change'' any longer--not since Citizens United cleared the way for big spending by polluters in Republican primaries--even in the Republican Party, among young Republican voters 35 and under, the majority of them feel that climate denial is either ignorant, out of touch, or crazy. If that is what young Republicans feel, that is a very poor foundation for the Republican Party to maintain this denier policy.

The campaign of money and denial that imprisons Congress is as poisonous to our American democracy as carbon pollution is to our atmosphere, oceans and, yes, glaciers. It is time to fight back. It is time to wake up.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 4, 2014, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on March 4, 2014, at 3 p.m., to hold an East Asia and Pacific subcommittee hearing entitled, ``Strengthening U.S. Alliances in Northeast Asia.''

Mr. President, I thank the distinguished chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee for

his remarks, and for the relentlessness, enthusiasm, and passion which he has pursued putting together this extraordinarily strong bill for our veterans. I look forward to supporting it, and I commend him for his excellent work.

Climate Change

Mr. President, I am here because every week the Senate is in session, now for 59 weeks, I give my climate speech, hoping some day sparks will hit tinder.

I could give a whole separate speech about the evil done by the Supreme Court Citizens United decision, and I could give a separate speech about the gridlock which bedevils the Senate. But this week's climate speech will touch all three--Citizens United, gridlock, and climate change--to show how the three are connected.

We fail here in this Senate to address climate change because of the peculiar gridlock in Congress. And Congress is peculiarly gridlocked because of the evils of Citizens United. Our failure to address climate change is a symptom of things gone wrong in our democracy.

I have spoken before on the Senate floor about the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, one of the worst and most disgraceful decisions ever made by the Supreme Court, destined to follow cases such as Lochner v. New York onto the ash heap of judicial infamy. But we are stuck with it now. Until the Supreme Court gets its bearings back, their Citizens United stands.

In a nutshell, the Citizens United decision says this: Corporations are people; money is speech; so there can be no limit to corporate money influencing American elections under constitutional principles of freedom of speech.

If that doesn't seem right, it is because it is not. To unleash that corporate power in our elections, the conservative Justices had to go through some pretty remarkable contortions: They had to reverse previous decisions by the Court which said the opposite; they had to make up facts which are demonstrably flat-out wrong; they had to create a make-believe world of independence and transparency in election spending; and they had to maneuver their own judicial procedures to prevent a factual record which would belie those facts they were making up. It was a dirty business, with a lot of signs of intention, and it has produced evil results.

Let's start with the contortions the conservative Justices had to go through to uncork all that corporate money. They had to first make the leap that corporations are people and money is speech to ensure corporate money is protected by the First Amendment. They went a more circuitous route, but that is where they ended up. And it is quite a leap when you think of how suspicious the Founding Fathers were of corporations. There is no mention of corporations in the Constitution. So much for these conservative Justices' fidelity to originalism--a constitutional theory the conservatives put a lot of credence in when it suits them.

To treat corporations as people and money as speech, the conservative Justices also had to overrule previous Supreme Court decisions which had said the exact opposite, which they did, upending a century of law. So much for fidelity to precedent.

The conservative bloc then had to deal with the inconvenience that First Amendment doctrine actually allows the government to regulate elections, to protect against either political corruption or even the appearance of corruption.

So how do you take away the people's ability to restrain corporate money in elections when protecting against corruption is a legitimate reason for restraints on corporate money? What you do--and what they did--is decide, by making a finding of fact, that corporations' money would not corrupt elections or politics; indeed, that no amount of corporate money could even appear to corrupt elections or politics. So much for fidelity to the judicial rule which appellate courts, State or Federal, are not supposed to engage in fact-finding.

This fact-finding about corruption by the conservative Justices caused another little inconvenience: The assertion that corporate money can't corrupt politics is laughably false. This meant the conservatives couldn't allow a factual record in the case. A factual record, with testimony and evidence about such a ludicrous proposition, would have blown it out of the water. So they let the little, narrow Citizens United case get all the way through the judicial process, including briefing and argument before them, and then they went back and changed the question into a big one.

This clever maneuver at the very end of the case guaranteed there would be no factual record developed on the new and larger question. And that freed their hand.

I should emphasize that this was a third transgression. The first transgression was for conservatives to ignore their own constitutional theory of originalism in getting to the ``corporations are people and money is speech'' result. The second transgression was violating the traditional rule that appellate courts were not supposed to engage in factfinding at all, let alone ludicrous factfinding. The third transgression was this maneuver with the question presented.

As a general rule, when cases come to a supreme court, State or Federal, the court defines the ``questions presented'' by the case. This may not seem like a big deal, just something in the ordinary course, but it is actually an important limit on judicial power under our constitutional separation of powers. It is what prevents a supreme court from roving willy-nilly into any question it wants any time. Courts have to wait until a case comes that presents a particular question, and then they identify what the question is. So it was odd indeed when the Chief Justice went back, after the case was briefed and argued, and did his own new ``question presented.'' But it did the job.

Now the court--with no record saying otherwise--could pretend that corporate money just plain can't corrupt American elections, can't do it, no way, no how--the conservative immaculate conception of corporate money.

Pretending that corporate money couldn't possibly corrupt or even appear to corrupt American elections allowed them to sweep away any interest of the people in keeping corporate corruption out of our politics and elections. People don't need to worry their little heads about corruption, they said. Corporate money in elections is immaculate and can't corrupt.

Bingo. That got them where they wanted. We, the people, could no longer limit corporate spending in our elections. As we have seen, the big money began to flood in.

Citizens United actually gets worse in its plain errors about how independent corporate money was going to be from candidates and how transparent it was going to be whose money was truly behind all of those negative ads. Independent? Transparent? Look at the last elections. How did that work out? Subsequent history shows the falsity of that nonsense.

Those contortionist justices completely ignored a big, important fact: what big money can do, big money can threaten to do or promise to do, and there is going to be nothing independent or transparent about those private threats and promises. The Citizens United decision opened this avenue to corruption while pretending corruption was impossible.

So on to the next step: How do the evils of this Citizens United decision lead to the evils of gridlock? Look around. Look at who is scared of whom and look at who is angry with whom around here.

Democrats and Republicans actually get along pretty well--at least Democrats and most Republicans. We are policy adversaries on many subjects, but Democrats and Republicans have been policy adversaries for decades. Democrat versus Republican is old news. It doesn't explain the new weirdness around here.

Look at what you see. The real fear and the real anger around here is between the mainstream Republicans and the tea party extremists. Look around. Ask around. Where do emotions run high? Where are the shouting matches? Where are the insults hurled? Where are Senators heckled by their colleagues? The worst of it is not between Democrat and Republican, it is between tea party and Republican.

Who is being told how they can and cannot vote and what they can and cannot say? Who is being bullied and punished when they don't follow the party line--the tea party line? Not

Democrats, Republicans. No one likes being bullied.

Is it the irrefutable logic of tea party argument that scares regular Republicans? Is it the clear grasp by the tea party of modern economic, cultural, and scientific realities that scares regular Republicans? Is it the broad way the tea party represents our great and diverse democracy that scares regular Republicans? Is it the keen political acumen of the tea party, say, shutting down the U.S. Government and darned near blowing the debt limit, that scares regular Republicans?

Those questions answer themselves, don't they? No. The thing that scares regular Republicans is the big money--the big corporate money, the billionaire money--behind the tea party.

The Koch brothers, for instance, may be a living cartoon of avarice, out to pollute even more and make even more money, but when the Koch brothers' big money comes in and bombs you in a small primary election, it is pretty scary. When the paid-for rightwing attack machine turns on you in your Republican primary, that can be pretty scary.

So the gridlock comes when the Republican party will not work with Democrats--not because we don't make sense and not because most Republicans don't want to make sense but because they are scared of tea party attacks funded by Citizens United money.

That brings us to climate change. As I have described in a recent speech, tens--perhaps even hundreds--of millions of dark-money dollars are being spent. Is all that money being spent having any effect on Republicans? Just look.

In this body we have Republican colleagues who have publicly acknowledged in the past carbon-driven climate change and have called for legislative action. In this body we have a former Republican Presidential nominee who campaigned for President on addressing climate change.

In this body we have Republicans who have spoken favorably about charging a fee on carbon, including the Republican original cosponsor of a bipartisan carbon pollution fee bill. We have a Republican colleague who cosponsored climate change legislation when he was in the House and another who voted for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill when he was in the House.

In this body we have Senators who represent historic villages now washing into the sea and needing relocation because of climate change and sea level rise, and Senators who represent great American coastal cities that are now overwashed by the sea at high tides because of climate change.

We have Republican Senators whose home State forests--by the hundreds of square miles--are being killed by the marauding pine beetle, and Republican Senators whose home States' glaciers are disappearing before their very eyes in their own lifetimes. We have Republican Senators whose home States are having to raise offshore bridges and highways before the rising seas.

We have Republican voters who actually get that climate change is real. It is the tea party that has the deniers. Sixty-one percent of nontea party Republicans say there is solid evidence the Earth is warming, but only 25 percent of tea partiers agree--a 36-point swing between Republicans and tea partiers.

Republicans outside of Congress, immune from the effects of Citizens United, have actually supported a carbon pollution fee so long as it is revenue neutral and doesn't add to big government. You could actually lower other taxes with it. But Republicans in Congress will now scarcely say a word about climate change--not since Citizens United; not since that disgraceful decision uncorked all that big, dark money and allowed it to cast its shadow of intimidation over our democracy.

So that is how Citizens United connects to climate change.

While our American democracy suffers and stalls, the evidence of climate change relentlessly mounts. The damage will be done in our atmosphere and oceans. The damage has already started.

I have to warn my colleagues that the denier machinery--the beast I described earlier this month--will ultimately be shown for the evil apparatus of lies that it is. When that happens, there will be more damage to go around. There will be damage to a party that allowed itself to be taken over and silenced by that corrupt apparatus, ignoring the plain facts in front of their faces.

There will be damage to a supreme court that went through such peculiar contortions to let that dark money loose, ignoring plain facts in front of their faces. We Americans, who hold our lamp high to the rest of the world as a beacon of democracy, will have some explaining to do about how we--to the dismay of the rest of the world--let our great democracy be stifled by greedy polluters, ignoring the plain facts the world faces.

The historian David McCullough spoke at the Library of Congress 2 weeks ago about John Adams and America's founding generation. He reminded us that when those men signed the Declaration of Independence, they were signing their own death warrants. When they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to this cause, it was not mere words. David McCullough explained: ``It was a courageous time.'' And look at us, our great democracy mired in polluters, lies, and money.

But I still believe this can be a courageous time. As Americans have in the past, we can shed the shackles of corrupting influence and rise to our duty. It just takes courage to make this a courageous time.

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

Mr. President, this March, Providence, RI, celebrates the 250th anniversary of the founding of Brown University, known as one of the world's great universities.

In 1764, the American Colonies were on a headlong course toward Revolution. Many of those who would lead the charge to independence also had a hand in establishing this great American college. Among the founding Fellows and Trustees of what was then called the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations were future signers of the Declaration of Independence, delegates to the Continental Congress and Congress of the Confederation, and members of the prominent Brown family of Providence. One of them, John Brown, was later in the 1772 attack on the royal customs vessel HMS Gaspee in Narragansett Bay, an act of violence against the crown that drew the first British blood in the conflict that led to the American Revolution, more than a year before the Boston Tea Party.

Since then, prominent Brunonians have included Secretaries of State John Hay and Charles Evans Hughes, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, and our own Governor Lincoln Chafee and Congressman David Cicilline, to name just a few. For two and a half centuries, bright and eager young Americans have arrived in Providence's beautiful College Hill neighborhood, greeted by historic architecture and the famous Van Wickle Gates. They brought their ambition and their talent and, inevitably, they left their mark and continue to leave their mark--on our State and our Nation.

Today, Brown University is a hub of research, innovation, and learning, and an integral partner in our capital city's culture and economy. As a magnet for talent and resources, Brown has helped fuel Providence's Knowledge District, and the university itself is the fifth-largest private employer in Rhode Island. Brown's Alpert Medical School has helped bolster our State's leadership in the health care field, with more than 1,700 physicians--43 percent of all physicians in the State--affiliated with the school. And Brown's heralded BrainGate program famously helped Cathy Hutchinson use a robotic arm to pick up a cup of coffee and take a sip 15 years after a stroke left her paralyzed and unable to speak. These and countless other contributions continue to put Rhode Island on the forefront of the innovation economy, and I am grateful for Brown's role in driving our Ocean State forward.

Brown is a wonderful place. As I travel the country and encounter Brown

graduates, and attend Brown functions and meet undergraduates, I have been struck at how much they love this college. For a great many of our best and brightest high school seniors, Brown is their decided first choice among all the great universities of the world.

In its original charter, it was said that Brown, ``to which the youth may freely resort for education in the vernacular and learned languages, and in the liberal arts and sciences, would be for the general advantage and honor of the government.'' Two hundred fifty years later, it is clear that Brown has lived up to that expectation.

I am proud to congratulate the president of Brown University, Christina Hull Paxson, Brown's trustees and faculty, and its students and alumni on 250 remarkable years.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Boozman precede me in recognition on the floor for such time as he may consume.

Mr. President, this marks the 58th consecutive week we have been in session where I have

come to the floor to seek to wake up this Congress to the threat of climate change.

Carbon pollution from the burning of fossil fuels is altering the climate. The consensus around this fact within the scientific community--and in fact the reality-based community--is overwhelming.

Since the industrial revolution, humans have dumped 2 trillion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the air and oceans--and counting. The EPA estimates that in 2011, the United States alone emitted more than 5.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide.

We know the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere is higher than it has been in the history of mankind. We know that when we put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, it warms up the planet. This has been understood science since Abraham Lincoln was President.

We know the ocean absorbs 90 percent of the excess heat and 30 percent of the carbon in the air. As water warms, it expands, and sea levels go up. This is called the law of thermal expansion. We know that when carbon dissolves in water, it increases the levels of carbonic acid in the water. This is a law of chemistry. We know from simple measurements that seawater is acidifying at a rate we haven't seen at any time in the past 50 million years. We are a species of homo sapiens who have been on the planet for a little over 200,000. So 50 million takes us back a way.

When we put these things together, and then look at things like 37 straight years with a global temperature above the 20th century average, sea level up 10 inches in Newport, RI, oyster spat killed off by acidic water in Washington State, shorter seasons for ski resort operators and longer seasons for wildfire fighters, our climate is changing. The scientific debate is long settled, and public awareness of the crisis is growing stronger and even across party lines.

Outside these walls of Congress, which have been barricaded by lies and special interest propaganda, Americans of all stripes, including more and more responsible Republican voices, acknowledge the threat of climate change and call for responsible solutions. Yet Congress remains trapped behind a barricade of polluting special interest influence. Republicans in Congress refuse to get serious.

It wasn't always this way. Conservation of this land's natural resources used to be a core value of the Republican party, and protecting future generations' natural birthright from plundering by special-interest industry was a cornerstone of Republican leadership. This month actually marks the anniversary of a milestone in that kind of American leadership.

On February 1, 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt established the U.S. Forest Service. Fed up with the cronyism and bureaucracy that defined the weak existing conservation programs, he dissolved the Bureau of Forestry within the Department of Agriculture and transferred management of the 63 million acres of national forests under the Department of the Interior to the new Forest Service.

Roosevelt resented the ``malefactors of great wealth,'' as he called them, the timber and mining interests whose ``selfish and shortsighted greed,'' he called it, ``seeks to exploit [our natural resources] in such fashion as to ruin them, and thereby to leave our children and our children's children heirs only to an exhausted and impoverished inheritance.''

Roosevelt not only knew how to say the right thing, he knew how to say it well.

Pictured here is Teddy Roosevelt looking across the vast expanse of Mogollon Rim in Arizona, one of the many forests transferred to the newly created Forest Service. With the President is Gifford Pinchot, a prime advocate of the Forest Service. As its first Chief, Pinchot restructured and professionalized the management of the national forests. During Roosevelt's Presidency, the Federal forest system grew by nearly 130 million acres. In total, he extended protection to an additional 230 million acres of our Nation's land.

Roosevelt said:

We have become great in a material sense because of the

lavish use of our resources, and we have just reason to be

proud of our growth. But the time has come to inquire

seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when

the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when

the soils shall have been still further impoverished and

washed into the streams, polluting the rivers.

Today, some of these long-cherished American forests, grasslands, and landscapes are under assault due to climate change.

In July 2010, the Forest Service issued its ``National Roadmap for Responding to Climate Change.'' Specifically, the Forest Service report says:

Most of the urgent forest and grassland management

challenges of the past 20 years, such as wildfires, changing

water regimes, and expanding forest insect infestations, have

been driven, in part, by a changing climate. Future impacts

are projected to be even more severe.

Our Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change, which I chair with Congressman Waxman, hosted a roundtable of firefighters and State and Federal foresters. Here is what Dave Cleaves, the Forest Service's Climate Change Advisor, told us:

So what have we been seeing? . . . The length of the fire

season increasing by more than 60 days over the last 10

years, the annual area burned by wildfire increasing more

than four times what it was in the 1970s; the portion of the

area burned by large fires has gone up two to seven times, so

most of that increase in acreage has been because of the

large fires, and the extreme part of the distribution of

fires.

. . . So we have a big issue on our hands, it's an

ecological issue, it's an economic issue, it's a social

issue, and dealing with it means we have to understand it

better and understand some of the related challenges.

Shown here is the devastation from the largest rim fire in the Sierra Nevada range in recorded history. The healthy forest is shown 2 years prior to the fire on the left, while monitoring right before the fire showed a sudden decline in the health of the forest caused by the western pine beetle killing ponderosa pine and making the forest vulnerable to burning. This is a beetle that is killed off by cold weather. So where it can infest forests is limited by cold weather and altitude, of course, because it gets colder at higher altitudes.

With climate change, the territory of the infestation has expanded, and we see this change from a healthy forest to this. When it turns to this, it can burn. On the right we see the charred and unrecognizable landscape. Although we cannot definitively attribute any single fire to climate change, according to a 2012 comprehensive science report for the U.S. forest sector, increased temperature and drought can increase frequency and magnitude of fires and amplify insect and pathogen outbreaks which affect forest health. For example, Montana's deep freezes used to kill off the pine bark beetle. Today, that beetle kills millions of acres of trees across the American West.

President Roosevelt issued a warning a century ago:

One distinguishing characteristic of really civilized men

is foresight. We have to, as a nation, exercise foresight for

this nation in the future; and if we do not exercise that

foresight, dark will be the future.

Have we heeded Roosevelt's warning? We can clearly foresee the devastation climate change will bring. Yet many modern Republicans, particularly those in Congress, are aligning themselves with the polluters and deniers to manufacture doubt about the science and fight any limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

Roosevelt, a Republican, had foresight to protect the natural resources we relay on, but his once great party has lost track of his ideals. Democrats and Republicans should be working with President Obama to implement his climate action plan to reduce carbon pollution. But when the Environment and Public Works Committee recently held an oversight hearing on the President's plan, what did we get from our Republican colleagues? Flat-out climate denial--the polluter party line.

Theodore Roosevelt, the great Republican conservationist, stood up to polluting special interests. He was, in the name of the recent book, ``The Wilderness Warrior.''

Today, too many Republicans in Congress have joined polluting corporate special interests in their war on the wilderness. Perhaps they should listen to another Roosevelt. Theodore Roosevelt IV is the great-grandson of the 26th President, and he is still a Republican. He wants his fellow Republicans

to return to the values of his great-grandfather.

It seems to be beyond the scope of many on the right to

say, for instance, that species extinction, as a result of

unrestrained human activity, is immoral and indefensible;

that our refusal to seriously engage in a global effort to

address climate change is unethical and imprudent.

There are such clear warnings. The facts speak for themselves. The denial position has shown itself to be nonsense, a sham. Yet in Congress we sleepwalk on. Every day more and more Americans realize the truth, and they increasingly want this Congress to wake up. They know that climate change is real.

It is time to wake up and to do the work necessary to combat climate change. It is time for us to heed the words of President Theodore Roosevelt:

Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders,

cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and

romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your

children's children. Do not let selfish men or greedy

interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its

romance.

Let us wake up.

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

Mr. President, today I am pleased to join Senator Hatch once again in introducing the bipartisan Designer Anabolic Steroid Control Act. Like the legislation we introduced in 2012, this measure will help keep American children and families safe from dangerous designer drugs that masquerade as healthy dietary supplements.

Doctors and scientists have long recognized the health hazards of non-medical use of anabolic steroids. For that reason, Congress has previously acted to ensure that these drugs are listed as controlled substances. Nonetheless, according to investigative reporting and Congressional testimony, a loophole in current law allows for designer anabolic steroids to easily be found on the Internet, in gyms, and even in retail stores.

Designer steroids are produced by reverse engineering existing illegal steroids and then slightly modifying the chemical composition, so that the resulting product is not on the Drug Enforcement Administration's, DEA, list of controlled substances. When taken by consumers, designer steroids can cause serious medical consequences, including liver injury and

increased risk of heart attack and stroke. They may also lead to psychological effects such as aggression, hostility, and addiction.

These designer products can be even more dangerous than traditional steroids because they are often untested, produced from overseas raw materials, and manufactured without quality controls. As one witness testified at a Crime Subcommittee hearing on the issue, ``all it takes to cash in on the storefront steroid craze is a credit card to import raw products from China or India where most of the raw ingredients come from, the ability to pour powders into a bottle or pill and a printer to create shiny, glossy labels.''

The unscrupulous actors responsible for manufacturing and selling these products often market them with misleading and inaccurate labels. That can cause consumers who are looking for a healthy supplement--not just elite athletes, but also high school students, law enforcement personnel, and mainstream Americans--to be deceived into taking these dangerous products. While the world's top athletes competing in the Winter Olympics are subjected to strict guidelines and rigorous testing to prevent the use of steroids, as they should be, many Americans may be unknowingly dosing themselves with these harmful substances.

Loopholes in existing law allow these dangerous designer steroids to evade regulation. Under current law, in order to classify new substances as steroids, the DEA must complete a burdensome and time- consuming series of chemical and pharmacological testing. As a DEA official testified before Congress: ``in the time that it takes DEA to administratively schedule an anabolic steroid used in a dietary supplement product, several new products can enter the market to take the place of those products.''

The Designer Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2014 would quickly protect consumers from these dangerous products. First, it would immediately place 27 known designer anabolic steroids on the list of controlled substances. Second, it would grant the DEA authority to temporarily schedule new designer steroids on the controlled substances list, so that if bad actors develop new variations, these products can be removed from the market. Third, it would create new penalties for importing, manufacturing, or distributing anabolic steroids under false labels.

Senator Hatch and I worked closely with a range of consumer and industry organizations to ensure that this legislation would not interfere with consumers' access to legitimate dietary supplements. I thank these organizations for their support, and look forward to working with them, with Senator Hatch, and with colleagues from both sides of the aisle to enact this common sense measure into law.

Mr. President, today I am pleased to join Senator Hatch once again in introducing the bipartisan Designer Anabolic Steroid Control Act. Like the legislation we introduced in 2012, this measure will help keep American children and families safe from dangerous designer drugs that masquerade as healthy dietary supplements.

Doctors and scientists have long recognized the health hazards of non-medical use of anabolic steroids. For that reason, Congress has previously acted to ensure that these drugs are listed as controlled substances. Nonetheless, according to investigative reporting and Congressional testimony, a loophole in current law allows for designer anabolic steroids to easily be found on the Internet, in gyms, and even in retail stores.

Designer steroids are produced by reverse engineering existing illegal steroids and then slightly modifying the chemical composition, so that the resulting product is not on the Drug Enforcement Administration's, DEA, list of controlled substances. When taken by consumers, designer steroids can cause serious medical consequences, including liver injury and

increased risk of heart attack and stroke. They may also lead to psychological effects such as aggression, hostility, and addiction.

These designer products can be even more dangerous than traditional steroids because they are often untested, produced from overseas raw materials, and manufactured without quality controls. As one witness testified at a Crime Subcommittee hearing on the issue, ``all it takes to cash in on the storefront steroid craze is a credit card to import raw products from China or India where most of the raw ingredients come from, the ability to pour powders into a bottle or pill and a printer to create shiny, glossy labels.''

The unscrupulous actors responsible for manufacturing and selling these products often market them with misleading and inaccurate labels. That can cause consumers who are looking for a healthy supplement--not just elite athletes, but also high school students, law enforcement personnel, and mainstream Americans--to be deceived into taking these dangerous products. While the world's top athletes competing in the Winter Olympics are subjected to strict guidelines and rigorous testing to prevent the use of steroids, as they should be, many Americans may be unknowingly dosing themselves with these harmful substances.

Loopholes in existing law allow these dangerous designer steroids to evade regulation. Under current law, in order to classify new substances as steroids, the DEA must complete a burdensome and time- consuming series of chemical and pharmacological testing. As a DEA official testified before Congress: ``in the time that it takes DEA to administratively schedule an anabolic steroid used in a dietary supplement product, several new products can enter the market to take the place of those products.''

The Designer Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2014 would quickly protect consumers from these dangerous products. First, it would immediately place 27 known designer anabolic steroids on the list of controlled substances. Second, it would grant the DEA authority to temporarily schedule new designer steroids on the controlled substances list, so that if bad actors develop new variations, these products can be removed from the market. Third, it would create new penalties for importing, manufacturing, or distributing anabolic steroids under false labels.

Senator Hatch and I worked closely with a range of consumer and industry organizations to ensure that this legislation would not interfere with consumers' access to legitimate dietary supplements. I thank these organizations for their support, and look forward to working with them, with Senator Hatch, and with colleagues from both sides of the aisle to enact this common sense measure into law.

Madam President, it has been over a month since Congress allowed the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program to expire. That means that more than 1.5 million out-of-work Americans-- including more than 6,000 Rhode Islanders--have by now lost a critical lifeline. While Republicans obstruct here in Washington, families in Providence and Bristol and Westerly are scrambling to pay the mortgage or keep the heat on in the dead of winter. Over the coming months, thousands more Rhode Islanders will not be eligible to receive extended weeks of unemployment benefits as their regular unemployment benefits expire.

Congress passed--and President Bush signed--the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program in response to the epidemic of joblessness brought on by the great recession, just as we have done during previous economic crises. The program has been extended several times as our Nation continues to struggle under stubbornly high rates of unemployment. Yet Senate Republicans would not agree to extend this lifeline to families before the holidays, and just this week, they voted to prevent us from restoring the emergency assistance.

Even with the worst of the recession behind us, too many Rhode Islanders are still unable to find work. The unemployment rate in my State--9.1 percent in December--remains well above the national average. The sheer depth and duration of this jobs crisis have plunged unprecedented numbers of Americans into long-term unemployment. The share of workers unemployed longer than 6 months is still greater than the previous record set in the early 1980s. Now is not the time to pull the plug on our fellow Americans.

Nationwide, there are three unemployed workers for every available job opening. For some, the jobs just aren't there, and a strategy to make people desperate creates nothing but cruelty.

My Republican colleagues who think this assistance doesn't make a real difference should talk to the 74 year-old woman from Westerly, RI, who contacted my office. She was laid off in July after 11 years with the same company and is still unable to find work. She has moved in with a neighbor to cut costs. She says emergency unemployment assistance helped her keep her head above water.

Those who think extended unemployment discourages people from seeking work should talk to the forty-five-year-old husband and father from West Warwick, who finds himself unemployed for the first time in his life. Since losing his job 5 months ago, he has applied to nearly 100 jobs with no success. With only his wife's wages coming in the door, his emergency unemployment helped this family to barely make ends meet.

Unemployment benefits spent on rent, groceries, and other basics contribute directly to economic activity. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the country could lose 200,000 jobs if unemployment benefits aren't extended.

My senior Senator Jack Reed has led the fight to maintain this basic support for Americans still struggling to get back to work. He has worked tirelessly across the aisle to find a thoughtful compromise. Rhode Islanders are grateful for his leadership and he has my full support in the effort to restore emergency unemployment assistance to American workers. The Senate must not turn its back on those struggling the longest to find work.

I yield the floor.

Farm bill policies touch the lives of all Americans, not just those who work in the agricultural sector. In addition to reauthorizing farm programs, this legislation deals with domestic and international food aid, conservation and the environment, trade, rural development, renewable energy, forestry, and financial markets, among other issues. This year's reauthorization presented an opportunity to enact significant reforms in these areas. While some progress was made, I believe the bill falls short of its potential, and ultimately I could not support it.

The farm bill takes an important step toward reform by ending the longstanding practice of giving direct payments to farmers of certain commodity crops regardless of whether they experienced losses or even planted a crop. It also tightens limits on the amount of farm payments an individual can receive, expands crop insurance opportunities for specialty and organic crops, establishes conservation compliance as a requirement for receiving premium insurance subsidies, and invests in rural broadband.

In spite of these successes, however, the farm bill does not do enough for Rhode Island families.

Of greatest concern to me, it cuts $8.6 billion over 10 years from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP, also known as food stamps. These cuts could reduce food stamp benefits for as many as 850,000 households across the country, including tens of thousands in Rhode Island. SNAP is our Nation's most important antihunger program. In this challenging economic climate, it is wrong to cut critical food- assistance funding.

In addition, this farm bill, like its predecessors, fails to provide adequate support for our fishermen in Rhode Island and nationwide. Farm bill programs provide billions of dollars in subsidies and technical assistance to farmers every year. In comparison, fishermen have little access to similar kinds of Federal assistance. Despite attempts to correct this inequity, fishermen remain second-class citizens when it comes to Federal support.

Finally, American agriculture springs from the richness of our land

and natural resources, and the farm bill has long supported programs to conserve and protect those resources. As the harmful effects of climate change become more prevalent, our agricultural policy should reflect the threat posed to farming and food production by these changes. In this farm bill, ``climate change'' and ``extreme weather'' are hardly mentioned. Congress can start by opening the Regional Conservation Partnership Program to climate change adaptation and mitigation projects.

The farm bill is important and wide-ranging legislation. Unfortunately, the conference report leaves out essential protections for low-income Americans, hard-hit fisheries, and precious natural resources.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for about 15 minutes, perhaps as many as 17 minutes.

Madam President, I come to the floor today for the 57th consecutive week that the Senate has been in session to urge my colleagues to wake up to what carbon pollution is doing to our atmosphere and oceans.

I have described Congress as surrounded by a barricade of lies. Today I will be more specific. There is not just lying going on about climate change; there is a whole carefully built apparatus of lies. This apparatus is big and artfully constructed, phony-baloney organizations designed to look and sound as if they are real, messages honed by public relations experts to sound as if they are truthful, payroll scientists whom polluters can trot out when they need them, and the whole thing big and complicated enough that when you see its parts, you could be fooled into thinking it is not all the same beast. But it is, just like the mythological Hydra--many heads, same beast. So this speech is going to be about that beast.

A recent research article published by Dr. Robert Brulle, a professor of sociology and environmental science at Drexel University, describes the beast.

He joins a tradition of scholarship in this area, including work by Naomi Oreskes, Aaron McCright, and Riley Dunlap, each of whom has studied the forces behind climate denial; and David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, who explored chemical and lead industry campaigns to deceive Americans about the dangers of those products.

The intricate, interconnected propaganda web and funding network of this climate denial beast encompasses over 100 organizations, including industry trade associations, conservative think tanks, and plain old phony front groups for polluter interests. It has even co-opted media outlets, a phenomenon I chronicled in an earlier speech about the Wall Street Journal editorial page becoming a tool of polluter propaganda.

So let's take a look at this climate denial beast, and how polluter money and dark money flows through its veins. This chart from Dr. Brulle's report shows the complex interconnection of the beast's major players. The green diamonds are the big funders, the Koch-affiliated foundations, the Scaife-affiliated foundations, the American Petroleum Institute, and so on.

The blue circles are the who's-who of climate denial groups: the Heartland Institute--they are the group that compared folks concerned about climate change to the Unabomber, to give you a sense of what sort of people they are--the American Enterprise Institute, right here, the Hoover Institution, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Mercatus Center, to name just a few.

The purpose of this network, to quote the report, is ``a deliberate and organized effort to misdirect the public discussion and distort the public's understanding of climate.''

To misdirect and distort. The coordinated tactics of this network, the report shows, and I will quote again, ``span a wide range of activities, including political lobbying, contributions to political candidates, and a large number of communication and media efforts that aim at undermining climate science.''

That is the beast. Big money flows through it, more than half a billion dollars. The Drexel University report chronicles that from 2003 to 2010, 140 foundations made grants totaling $558 million to 91 organizations that actively oppose climate action. It looks like a big beast to build just to propagate climate denial. But if you look at carbon emissions from fossil fuels, which in 2011 EPA estimated to be over 5.6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide--so take 5.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide and then multiple that by the social cost of carbon, the economic and health costs that the polluters cause and inflict on the rest of society, which OMB recently set at $37 per metric of CO2--5.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide emitted, $37 per metric ton of CO2 on the social cost of carbon. Just 1 year's emissions will cost roughly 200 billion--with a B--dollars. So the stakes are pretty high for the polluters. If they were to pay for the harm they are causing, half a billion dollars through the beast, over 7 years, to get away with $200 billion of harm every year is a bargain.

More than that, a lot of this machinery was already built. The beast did not spring up at once full grown, it grew over time--in industry- fueled campaigns to obscure the dangers of cigarette smoke, of acid rain, of ozone depletion. Who knows. There are probably parts of it that go back to the benefits of requiring seat belts and airbags in cars.

Looking back on the effects of these industry-funded campaigns of denial, we see that real people were hurt. But the denial machinery stalled action and made the wrongdoers money. It worked. So now the climate denial machine, the beast, is calling plays from the same playbook and even using many of the same front organizations.

So who is behind this base? Unfortunately for the proponents of transparency, a large portion of the funding is not traceable. Much of the money fueling the beast is laundered through organizations which exist to conceal donor identity. Some of the organizations examined by Dr. Brulle get over 90 percent of their money from hidden sources. Indeed, more than one-third of these organizations get over 90 percent of their money from hidden sources. The biggest identity laundering shop is Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund. Indeed, it is by far the biggest source of funding in this web. These twin entities reported giving a combined $78 million to climate denier groups between 2003 and 2010, and they refused to identify their funders.

According to the Drexel report, the Donors Trust and Donors Capital funding operation does double duty. It is the ``central component'' and ``predominant funder'' of the denier apparatus, and at the same time it is the ``black box'' that conceals the identity of contributors.

Interestingly, anonymous funding through Donors Trust and Donors Capital fund has grown in tandem with disclosed funding from fossil fuel polluters declining, anonymous dollars up,

disclosed dollars down. As we see here, Donors Trust and Donors Capital donations to the beast went from 3 percent of all foundation funding in 2003 to more than 23 percent in 2010.

At the same time, for example, the Koch brothers' affiliated foundations declined from 9 percent of all foundation funding in 2006 down to 2 percent by 2010. The same is true for other polluter-backed foundations. The ExxonMobil Foundations wound down its disclosed funding of organizations in the climate denier network and basically zeroed out by 2007.

It makes perfect sense. Why would the Koch brothers and ExxonMobil come under fire for obviously funding climate denial when Donors Trust and Donors Capital creates a mechanism for polluters to secretly fund the base?

Plus, the phony-baloney front organizations within the beast can pretend they are not funded by polluter money. Everybody wins in this identity-laundering charade except the public, obviously, whom this elaborate construction is designed to fool.

The product of the denial apparatus is a complex ruse to delegitimize the science that supports curbing carbon emissions, foisted on the American people with all of the financing and fantasy of a Hollywood blockbuster production. Here is Dr. Brulle describing what you see when you look behind the actors who appear in the media spotlight. I will quote.

The roots of climate-change denial go deeper . . . Just as

in a theatrical show, there are stars in the spotlight. In

the drama of climate change, these are often prominent

contrarian scientists or conservative politicians. . . .

However, they are only the most visible and transparent parts

of a larger production. Supporting this effort are directors,

script writers, and, most certainly, a series of producers,

in the form of conservative foundations.

Frankly, this apparatus is a disgrace. When the inevitable happens, and the impact of climate change really starts to hit home, people will want to know--Americans will want to know, people around the world will want to know why, why we did not take proper steps in time. It is not as if there is not enough scientific evidence for us to act. Why not? This denial operation, the beast, will then go down as one of our great American scandals, like Watergate or Teapot Dome, a deliberate, complex scheme of lies and propaganda that caused real harm to the American people and to our country, all so that a small group of people could make more money a little longer.

The fact that one of our great political parties is in on the scheme will be to its lasting shame. There is an old hymn that says, ``Turn back O man, forswear thy foolish ways.'' It is time for our denier colleagues to turn back and forswear their foolish ways. If they do not, there will be a day of reckoning and a harsh price to pay.

Every day, more and more Americans realize the truth, and they increasingly want this Congress to wake up. They know climate change is real. As the President said in his State of the Union Address:

The debate is settled. Climate change is a fact.

Sir Winston Churchill once said this:

Owing to past neglect, in the face of the plainest

warnings, we have now entered upon a period of danger. . . .

The era of procrastination, of half-measures, soothing and

baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close. In

its place we are entering a period of consequences. . . . We

cannot avoid this period; we are in it now.

Well, we are now in a period of consequences. We have got to break the back of the beast and break the barricade of blandishments and lies that the beast has built around Congress. This campaign of denial, this beast, is as poisonous to our democracy as carbon pollution is to our atmosphere and oceans. With money and lobbyists and threats, it has infiltrated itself in an unseemly influence in our government. For the sake of our democracy, for the sake of our future, for the sake of our honor, it is time to wake up.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside so I may call up amendment No. 2706.

Madam President, I wish to say a few words about this amendment which I hope we can pass. I think it is an amendment that will find strong bipartisan support.

I am from New England and across New England--and I suspect in Wisconsin and across the country as well--communities are trying to restore old rivers to their healthy state. What we see in New England, particularly in Rhode Island with our history of the Industrial Revolution, is that our early industrial history was powered by hydropower. It was powered by damming rivers and then diverting some of the flow through a wheel that then drove the engines of industry--the mills, for instance, that were so important to Rhode Island's industrial history. That is not true just of Rhode Island; it is true across New England, and I suspect it is true in a lot of places across the country.

As local communities are restoring these old rivers--they tend to be small rivers, particularly in New England, and these tend to be old dams--what we want to do is remove the old dams so the original flow is restored or we want to rebuild or maybe even redesign culverts so the flow of the river through the culvert permits the passage of fish. In some cases, we want to fully keep the dam but build a fish passage, so the fish that are working their way upstream to their traditional breeding grounds find a passage and aren't blocked by dams. Again, this is part of bringing these old rivers back to life. When we do that, in my State, it is usually towns--small towns often--and local community organizations that have to apply in order to make those changes.

Part of the application process is a flood map revision to show what a change--removing the dam or changing the culvert or adding the fish ladder--will make on downstream conditions and so the flood map gets redone. The flood map gets filed with FEMA, and FEMA requires a processing fee of more than $5,000 in order to review and accept the flood map revision.

What actually happens in practice is that the town or the local organization that is filing the flood map revision, because they are repairing or replacing the dam or providing fish passage for it, will apply to waive that fee. Virtually always--at least in Rhode Island, and I think around the country--FEMA is willing to waive that fee.

But the problem is, these are small organizations and these are small towns, and it takes actually a considerable effort to put together the fee waiver application. So you may save $5,500 in the form of the FEMA fee, but you will spend maybe close to that much on your lawyers and engineers and on time and trouble in working together to get that application done.

So since these fees usually get waived anyway, this amendment would just cut to the chase and say there is no fee. And because there is no fee, now you do not have to apply for a fee waiver. That will help the small towns and the small organizations that are often behind these small projects; and I mean dams that are only just 4 or 5 feet tall sometimes. The redesign of a culvert is not a major effort. It is very important to local communities, very important to local fishermen, very important to local canoers and outdoorsmen, but not a terrifically big deal.

I hope we can agree to eliminate that bureaucratic requirement. Neither NOAA nor FEMA have expressed any objection whatsoever to this amendment.

If I can close, I will read a statement by Chris Fox, who is executive director of the Wood-Pawcatuck Watershed Association. The Wood River and Pawcatuck River run through western Rhode Island, and they are wonderful rivers. I have actually canoed and kayaked them both and enjoyed it immensely. He had to go through this fee waiver process for a set of projects on the Upper Pawcatuck River, and he writes:

This Amendment will avert lengthy project delays and reduce

the cost of these environmentally beneficial projects

nationwide. . . . On behalf of the wildlife, water, and

people who reside in, and depend upon the health of the Wood-

Pawcatuck Watershed, I thank you and all those who support

this Amendment.

I hope all my colleagues will join together to earn Chris Fox's thanks for this, I hope, noncontroversial and beneficial amendment.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

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

Mr. President, I hope my colleagues will vote enthusiastically for this amendment. Across the country, communities and local organizations are trying to revive rivers that have been dammed and blocked. When they go forward to remove a dam, when they go forward to put in a fish ladder, when they redesign a culvert to allow for water passage, they have to file a flood plan.

FEMA requires them to pay a fee to have that flood plan assessed. The fee is almost always waived. But they still have to go through the waiver process, which costs money and frankly can be as burdensome as simply paying the fee. This eliminates that fee. It eliminates that part of the process and allows towns and small organizations more readily to come to the aid of our old small rivers.

I think this is something we should be able to agree on with great strength. It is noncontroversial. I urge my colleagues to vote yea.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 15 minutes as in morning business.

Mr. President, this is the 56th time, the 56th consecutive week that we have been in session in the Senate that I have come to the floor to sound an alarm about carbon pollution and the harm it is causing to our oceans and to our coastal communities--the 56th time. Frankly, I am getting a little sick of it. I am getting sick of the Republican Party being completely the tool of the polluters. I am sick of the phony denial and of not getting anything done. I am sick of what it is going to say about American democracy if we keep failing at this.

But I am going to keep pounding away because it is so vital to my ocean State. We are a little State with a lot of coast. Our sea level is rising, driven by faraway melting glaciers and everywhere expanding sea water. As oceans warm, the water expands. That is what liquids do. Deniers look up thermal expansion of liquids and deny that.

The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report projected that sea level will likely rise 1\1/2\ to 3 feet by 2100 if we do what the polluters prefer and ignore the clear scientific evidence. By the way, that is a conservative number.

These rising sea levels hit coasts hard, particularly when storms beat those seas against our shores. It is not just me saying that, we are supposed to listen to the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office around here. A 2013 GAO report on climate change effects said this:

Storm surge, combined with sea level rise, is projected to

generate a wide range of negative impacts on roads and

bridges. For example, storm surges are projected to

increasingly inundate coastal roads, cause more frequent or

severe flooding of low lying infrastructure, erode road

bases, and ``scour'' bridges by eroding riverbeds and

exposing bridge foundations.

People from polluting States may think that is funny, may think that does not matter, but to a coastal State such as mine this is a serious threat. This chart shows the worldwide measured change in sea level. This is not some theory--measured change in sea level--as well as a number of different models projecting future sea levels.

We can see that sea level has been steadily rising over the past 130 years, generally consistent with human fossil fuel use. Between 1901 and 2010, sea level rise was estimated at 1.7 millimeters per year. Recently updated satellite measurements from the University of Colorado Sea Level Research Group show a rise of 3.2 millimeters per year from 1993 to 2013.

The rate of increase has already nearly doubled. According to the IPCC, that rate is likely to accelerate. In Rhode Island, our tide gauge in Newport shows an increase in average sea level of nearly 10 inches since 1930. Consistent with the global trends, measurements at our Newport tide gauge show that the rate of sea level rise has also increased in the past two decades.

Local coastal erosion rates have doubled from 1990 to 2006, and some freshwater coastal wetlands are already transitioning to salt marsh from freshwater as they are inundated by the sea.

Our Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council has documented 160 feet of shoreline lost to erosion in the town of South Kingstown since 1951, a rate of 3 feet per year. A steady 3 feet per year is one thing, add a storm and surges can wipe up whole swaths of land at once, as we saw with Superstorm Sandy.

We can see the erosion here. Back in 1994, this beach pavilion was set back a good way from the water. By 2012, here, the ocean was just a few feet from the structure. This is the roof that is here. This is the framing that is here. This is the very beginning of this walkway back here. There is the ocean. The ocean has moved from here essentially to there. Roads and other infrastructure that were once a safe distance from the shoreline were also battered by this terrible storm surge and wind.

The small, vibrant coastal town of Matunuck, RI, is under siege from the advancing ocean. This chart shows how far the shoreline has shifted since 1951. Here is the 1951 shoreline. This is the 2012 photo, showing how much the sea has risen and eaten against the shores. In the last dozen years, beaches have eroded 20 feet.

The community now faces difficult decisions. The only road connecting Matunuck to neighboring towns is protected by only about 10 feet of sand now. The road provides access for emergency vehicles residents may need. Underneath it lies their water main. If carbon dioxide emissions continue unchecked, another 5 feet of projected sea level rise is a real possibility after the year 2100.

Matunuck's projected coastline with 5 feet of sea level rise can be seen in red. These are all houses. This is Roy Carpenter's Beach. These houses have been here in some cases for generations and they are tumbling into the sea as the ocean encroaches on them.

This is famous Newport Harbor. In Newport, 5 feet of sea level rise would inundate large portions of our vibrant downtown area, including America's Cup Avenue, right here; including the Long Wharf Shopping Center, which would be about here; and including the famous and historic Cardines Field, a great old baseball field.

Goat Island will be only a few specks of land. This is what 3 feet of sea-level rise would look like in Newport. Perrotti Park is gone. The Ann Street Pier is gone, not to mention the Newport Harbor Master's office. He will be a lot closer to the harbor when it is pouring through his windows than he is right now. Wherever Rhode Island meets the sea, our homes, communities, and our very economy are at stake.

Yet in Congress we sleepwalk, lulled by the narcotic influence of the polluting special interests. No wonder I am frustrated.

When my colleagues say they are worried about job loss in the polluting coal and oil industries, I am willing to listen. I am even willing to help, but I am not willing to stand by while this is happening in my home State and have us pretend it is not even real.

Rhode Island, of course, is not the only region experiencing sea- level rise, coastal erosion, and economic disruption. Rising seas concern coastal regions across the country. With over 1,000 miles of coastline, Florida is at grave risk from sea-level rise.

According to the World Resources Institute and an article published in ``Environmental Research Letters,'' of all the people and housing in America threatened by sea-level rise, 40 percent is in Florida. That is because in Florida the flooding won't just be along the coast; low- lying inland areas are also at risk. That is because Florida is built on porous limestone.

In New England, on our rocky shores, we could perhaps build levees and dams in some places to hold the oceans back. In Miami, they would be building those structures on geological sponge. The water will seep right under. Using the best available science, the Southeast

Florida Regional Climate Change Compact assessed the risk to four south Florida counties of sea-level rise. In those counties, 1 foot of sea- level rise would endanger approximately $4 billion in property. In Monroe County, three of the four hospitals, two-thirds of the schools, and 71 percent of emergency shelters are endangered by a 1-foot sea- level rise.

Go to 3 feet of sea-level rise in these counties. That would endanger approximately $31 billion worth of property. That is a lot of infrastructure at risk.

This map shows 3 feet of sea-level rise in Miami-Dade County. The map on the left shows current elevation in southern Miami-Dade compared to 3 feet of sea-level rise on the right. These blue regions go underwater. They have lost acres upon acres of that city.

This nuclear power station, Turkey Point, and this sewage treatment plant are virtually cut off from dry land. Yet what do we hear from our Republican colleague from Florida? Denial, right along the polluter party line.

Louisiana is teed up for the worst storm surge by the warming, rising waters of the Gulf of Mexico. According to a U.S. Geological Survey-led study, between 1985 and 2010, Louisiana lost a football field an hour of land and wetlands to coastal erosion.

A recent poll shows that Louisiana voters understand and want action on climate change. Seventy-two percent of Louisianans believe climate change is a serious problem that threatens everyone. It is hitting their lives and yet our Republican colleague from Louisiana offers streams of denial.

The State with the most coastline is Alaska. Another U.S. Geological Survey study shows that coastal erosion of a 40-mile stretch along the Beaufort Sea has climbed from 20 feet per year between the mid-fifties and late seventies to 28 feet per year between the late seventies and two thousands and now has doubled to more than 45 feet per year between 2002 and 2007.

Climate change is one of several factors at play and is contributing to this accelerating loss.

Earlier this month our Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change, which I lead with Chairman Waxman, welcomed Alaskans from the town of Shishmaref, an Inupiat Eskimo village located on a small barrier island 5 miles from mainland Alaska, to hear from them how climate change is affecting their homes. Their houses are literally falling into the sea thanks to sea-level rise and coastal erosion. Their centuries-old culture is crumbling away with each wave. This is a house in Shishmaref. This is a house at Roy Carpenter's Beach in Rhode Island. We can see how we sympathize with the town of Shishmaref.

In Alaska, Shishmaref is not alone. A recent GAO report showed that 31 Alaskan villages are at risk. The 12 red dots shown are villages that are now considering relocating completely. According to the U.S. Corps of Engineers, relocation costs are estimated at $100 million to $200 million for Shishmaref, and other villages could face similar costs.

Stanley Tocktoo is the former mayor of Shishmaref. He came to our hearing and said:

No matter your politics, you can't ignore the facts. The

facts are that our village is being impacted by climate

change on a daily basis. And we need you to do something

about it.

He said:

No matter your politics, you can't ignore facts.

The painful truth, Mayor Tocktoo, is that in Congress, if you have certain politics, you are actually obliged to ignore the facts. You are required to ignore the facts. Your big-money people--the big polluters, the Koch brothers--insist on it. They demand that you ignore the facts.

Citizens United, that God-awful Supreme Court decision, means that the big polluters' big money can drown out in elections--particularly in Republican primary elections--every reasonable person, Republican, Independent, or Democrat, who understands that we need to act. The party on the other side is stuck, trapped by the campaign finance rules and the big money of the big polluters.

We could, in Congress, be awake, helping and meeting the call of duty. We could be working with the President to implement his climate action plan.

The Environment and Public Works Committee, under the strong leadership of Chairman Barbara Boxer, recently held an oversight hearing on the President's climate action plan. What did we get in that hearing from our Republican colleagues? Denial, quarreling, and obfuscation--the polluter party line.

They actually brought in, as a Republican witness, a person whose organization took money from the Koch brothers, Exxon, and from other far-right and denier foundations, including the notorious Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, which launders money from big donors who want to remain anonymous.

If people have not heard of this Donors Trust and Donors Capital group, a recent report out of Drexel University described this group as the ``black box that conceals the identity of contributors,'' the ``central component,'' and ``dominant funder'' of the denier apparatus. This was who they chose as their witness.

We could, in Congress, be figuring out how a carbon pollution fee-- one that returns all of its proceeds back to the American people--could best boost our economy, as some prominent Republicans have suggested. But I sent a letter to my Republican colleagues summarizing the Republican case for a carbon fee and not one responded.

The polluters have the Republican Party at their heels. It is a tragic state of affairs for a great political party.

Carbon pollution from the burning of fossil fuels is altering the atmosphere and oceans. It is changing our climate. The scientific consensus around this fact is overwhelming. Denial at this point is propped-up polluter-paid nonsense. Where carbon pollution hits the oceans, denial requires people not only to reject science but to reject measurement. We measure sea-level rise. We measure ocean warming. We measure ocean acidification. It is not complicated. We measure sea- level rise, more or less, with a yardstick. We measure ocean warming with a thermometer; we measure ocean acidification with simple litmus tests that everyone with an aquarium is familiar with.

Yet despite that incontrovertible evidence from our oceans, we sleepwalk on in Congress, thanks to a great political party's captivity by polluters. It is a disgrace. It will go down in history as a disgrace.

We could strengthen our economy, we could save our great coastal cities and our age-old island villages, and we can leave things better, not worse, for the generations that will follow us, but we have to pay attention to reality. We have to pay attention to the real evidence. We can't be swept up in the toxic polluter-paid politics that infect Washington.

This matters immensely to Alaska. It matters immensely to the citizens of Shishmaref. It matters immensely to the residents of Florida who are looking at their cities; and it matters immensely to Rhode Island, the Ocean State, because the undeniable changes from sea- level rise and warming are upon us and will only worsen. For once and for all, it is time for us to wake up.

I yield to the Senator.

Fifty-six.

One of the most prominent ones is George Shultz, who served with great distinction, I believe, under three Republican Presidents.

I ran into him in the last 10 days and I said: Thank you for your work on carbon. It is important. He said: It is important. I said: We have to do a carbon fee. He said: Revenue neutral. I said: Yes, we have to do a revenue-neutral carbon fee.

Revenue-neutral carbon fee means that the money that is generated by the polluters pays for the harm they do to do to all the rest of us, which they otherwise get away with for free, and it goes back to the American people. It is revenue neutral. It doesn't go into the government and raise the size of government. It goes right back. We could do it by lowering taxes, by paying off every student loan in the country. We could do it by giving seniors on Social Security a raise. What a good discussion that would be, to be having right here. But we can't have that discussion because the other party is trapped by the polluters--trapped in their politics, trapped by their money.

They have erected a barricade of lies, Madam Chairman. They have erected a barricade of lies, and it is supported by an avalanche of money. If you go outside that barricade, you see enormous support for getting something done about climate.

Just to give the example of our corporate community--Coke and Pepsi, the Mars corporation, which makes M&Ms and Mars bars, Ford and GM, Apple, Nike, Walmart, on and on--we can go through the signal American corporations, the heraldry of the American corporate world, and they are ready to get something done. But there is enough money that gets thrown by the polluters and enough threats made by them in Republican primaries that our colleagues are trapped. Unless we build a coalition that gets them a way out, that barricade will continue to inhibit progress on this issue in this building.

My colleague's point, that this used to be a bipartisan issue, is actually illustrated by this photograph. This is Roy Carpenter's Beach. It is a beach that got probably hit the hardest. There were some bigger, older houses that got washed away down the shore, but this has a lot of these smaller houses that families have held onto for generations. After Sandy, with the sea level rise and then the storm, together, they knocked them into the water this way.

This individual right here is Lincoln Chafee. That is Governor Chafee. He served in this body as a Republican, and he was one of the staunchest environmentalists in this body. If you go back further, his father John Chafee served as the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. He was one of my colleague's predecessors, and he helped lead the passage of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, a Republican, and he was proud of it. He didn't hide from it.

It wasn't something the Republican Party had to run away from in those days. Try to find that in the modern Republican Party. It is embarrassing what has happened to a great political party.

If the underlying problem weren't so serious, it would be laughable that they are already challenging a rule that has not even been promulgated yet. They are sort of prechallenging it. It just shows what a pell-mell tumble our Republican colleagues will subject themselves to in order to keep in the good graces of the polluting industries. Again, it is embarrassing. It ought to be embarrassing.

But I think there is hope. One of the signs of hope is the polling information among young Republican voters. Young Republican voters under the age of 35--not very young but young Republican voters under the age of 35--when asked about climate denial and asked what their view is of people who espouse climate denial say they think they are ignorant, out of touch or crazy. That is the young cohort of the Republican Party. That is what it believes.

So time, obviously, is on the side of reason and science and the plain evidence people see in front of their noses across this country, whether they are farmers, fishermen, hikers or skiers. Anybody who has contact with the outdoors understands this is absolutely real. It is only people in this little hot house of polluter-paid intrigue that the denial strategy still stands up, and it is our job to knock it back down.

Absolutely. Indeed, years ago one expert in this area wrote that, in terms of the experience that people would have--yes, the planet is warming--but the experience that people would have wouldn't be just of warming. It would be of weirding weather--weird weather--and truly the better name would be not global warming, but it would be global weirding. That is because, very simply, when you add energy-- heat energy in this case--to a closed system by trapping it with more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, you speed things up. You make storms stronger, you change weather patterns, and you see things that you have not seen before.

So the things people are seeing now--not specifically and not that storm, but the patterns that people would see more extreme weather of various kinds--were indeed predicted. The fact that it is happening is exactly consistent with what the scientists have been warning us about.

John Warner.

I thank the chair for her staunch leadership. She is such an ally and leader for us. It really is very exciting, and, yes, you will see considerably more activity.

I will close by telling one personal story because very often you are dealing with statistics, and you are dealing with figures, and you are dealing with things that are happening on a large scale when you talk about climate change.

I remember this day. I remember this day, walking along and meeting with these homeowners whose houses these were. I remember talking to the lady whose house--I think this one was right here--the Governor is looking into.

She remembers, as a child, being in that house. In front of this house she had a lawn, a lawn where they could throw Frisbees and play Wiffle ball.

On the other side of the lawn was a road that gave access along the shoreline, a sand road. On the other side of the road was a parking lot where people would come and bring their cars, and on the other side of the parking lot was the beach that was so long down to the water, and she could remember running as a kid. You know, when the summer Sun beats down on the beach and the sand gets so hot that it hurts your feet, and you have to dash to get your feet into the water because they are hot, hot, hot as you run when you are a little kid? And she would make that long run and think what a long run it was to get down that hot sand and into the cool, clear waters of Narragansett Bay.

That beach is gone. That parking lot is gone. That road is gone. Her lawn is gone, and this is what has happened to her house.

If people want to know why we are not going to give up--yes, I am sick of it. I am sick of having to come here and do this. It is tiresome to have no progress and have people not listen and have it be because of, frankly, scandalous polluter-paid interference and influence in this building. Yes, I am

sick of it. But I am not going to stop, not while this is happening to my home State of Rhode Island.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following leader remarks on Thursday, January 30, the Senate resume consideration of S. 1926, with the time until 11:15 a.m. equally divided between the two leaders or their designees, with the final 10 minutes equally divided between Senator Menendez or his designee, and Senator Toomey or his designee, with Senator Toomey controlling the final 5 minutes; that at 11:15 a.m., the Senate proceed to votes in relation to the following amendments: Toomey amendment No. 2707, as modified; Coburn amendment No. 2697; Merkley amendment No. 2709, as modified; and Heller amendment No. 2700; further, that upon disposition of the Heller amendment, the Senate recess until 2 p.m.; at 2 p.m. when the Senate reconvenes, the Senate proceed to vote on passage of the bill, as amended; finally, there be 2 minutes of debate prior to each vote, equally divided in the usual form; and that all after the first vote be 10-minute votes.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 282, S. 1417.

I further ask that the committee-reported substitute be agreed to; the bill, as amended, be read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.