Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of H.R. 2860 which was received from the House and is now at the desk.

I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read three times and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

I ask unanimous consent that the Rules Committee be discharged from further consideration of S.J. Res. 28 and S.J. Res. 29, and the Senate proceed to their consideration en bloc.

I ask unanimous consent that the joint resolutions be read a third time and passed en bloc, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Con. Res. 31 which was submitted earlier today.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 a.m., on Thursday, January 30, 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

resume consideration of S. 1926, the flood insurance bill, under the previous order.

Mr. President, I am advised to inform my colleagues that there will be up to four rollcall votes beginning at 11:15 a.m. tomorrow in order to complete action on the flood insurance bill. The vote on final passage of the bill will occur at approximately 2 p.m.

Mr. 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 to speak as in morning business for about 15 minutes.

Mr. President, I am back now for the 55th time that the Senate has been in session, each week, to urge my colleagues to wake up to the toll that carbon pollution is taking on our atmosphere, on our oceans, and on our people.

While climate change deniers continue to gin up phony doubt to mislead the public, top American businesses and corporations recognize the risks posed by climate change. They are preparing for the economic fallout. Members of Congress bury their heads in the sand like the proverbial ostrich, hoping the issue will go away, wondering in some cases recently whether the recent cold front disproved decades of research and an overwhelming scientific consensus.

Business leaders in the real world, not the political world, not the polluter-paid, phony-doubt world, business leaders in the real world are doing what they do best; that is, taking steps to protect their bottom line and maintain their relationships with their customers.

Major corporations, even those with large carbon footprints, are taking voluntary action to lower their own carbon output. Some are joining broader efforts to support policies that reduce carbon emissions. Some of our largest and most sophisticated companies are even factoring the economic burden of climate change in their own accounting and their own long-term planning by--guess what--assigning an internal price to carbon.

The Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change, which I lead with Congressman Waxman, wrote to over 300 businesses and organizations seeking their views on actions the Federal Government could take to reduce carbon pollution and to strengthen our resiliency to climate change. The response from the business community was very encouraging. Some examples: Coca-Cola, headquartered in Georgia, wrote this:

We recognize climate change is a critical challenge facing

our planet with potential impacts on biodiversity, water

resources, public health and agriculture. Beyond the effects

on the communities we serve, we view climate change as a

potential business risk, understanding that it could likely

have direct and indirect effects on our business.

That is Coca-Cola. Texas- and Maryland-based Lockheed Martin told the task force of the major headway it has made in reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. I will quote from Lockheed Martin:

From 2007 through 2011, Lockheed Martin reduced its

absolute carbon emissions by 30 percent, and continues to

focus on carbon emission reductions by championing energy

conservation and efficiency measures in our facilities.

Lockheed Martin. Let's look at Walmart, founded and headquartered in Arkansas. Walmart wrote:

We are committed to reducing our carbon footprint and we

are working with our suppliers to do the same.

Indeed, I met yesterday with the general counsel from Apple, doing exactly the same thing, working to reduce their carbon footprint, working with their suppliers to push for reductions on the part of their suppliers.

Walmart's 2009 sustainability report shows its longstanding commitment to fighting climate change. Here is what Walmart said:

Climate change may not cause hurricanes, but warmer ocean

water can make them more powerful. Climate change may not

cause rainfall, but it can increase the frequency and

severity of heavy flooding. Climate change may not cause

droughts, but it can make droughts longer. Every company has

a responsibility to reduce greenhouse gases as quickly as it

can.

That is Walmart.

That is why we are working in a number of areas to reduce

our company's carbon footprint, and also working with our

suppliers and customers to help them do the same. Currently

we are investing in renewable energy, increasing energy

efficiency in our buildings and trucks, working with

suppliers to take carbon out of products, and supporting

legislation in the U.S. to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

That is Walmart. I also wish to commend the Walmart family foundation for the work they are doing on oceans as well as on the atmospheric aspects of carbon. Let's look at Mars, the Virginia-based candy company. Mars states:

We are committed to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions

in absolute terms because this is the right thing to do. As

climate change has implications for the production of

agricultural ingredients, addressing it requires changes to

the way we source materials and manufacture our products.

Mars, maker of the famous Mars bars and M&Ms. North Carolina's VF Corporation, which makes major apparel brands such as Lee and Wrangler, Nautica, and North Face says this:

We seek to conduct our business with the highest levels of

honesty, integrity and respect. These values are embedded in

our approach to sustainability, which reflects our commitment

to operating our business so future generations can live with

cleaner water and air, healthier forests and oceans and a

stable climate.

Toy maker Hasbro, from my home State of Rhode Island, has issued its energy pledge:

Climate change mitigation is a pressing global issue and we

aim to reduce our corporate carbon footprint by improving

energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions at

our sites.

Hasbro was awarded a Climate Leadership Award by the EPA in 2012 for excellence in greenhouse gas management.

These companies and their products are household names in this country. They are major players in the American economy.

Lockheed Martin had annual revenue in 2012 of over $47 billion. We trust them with some of our most important defense contracts. Coke topped $48 billion and may be the most recognizable corporate franchise in the world. Walmart is the world's second largest company, with 2012 revenue of more than $443 billion.

These are serious companies, they are serious about their products, and they are serious about their returns. In part, they earn their impressive returns by being serious about science, and they understand the harm carbon-driven climate change causes. They see the unfair advantage big polluters get when those big polluters don't have to factor the costs of their carbon pollution into the price of the coal or oil.

That is why more and more leading businesses are calling on Congress to wake up and set new ground rules to even the energy playing field. Mars and VF Corporation, along with eBay, Gap, Levi's, Nike, Starbucks, and other name-brand American corporations, are members of the Business for Innovative Climate & Energy Policy coalition--BICEP--which is pushing for energy policies that will draw down carbon emissions and boost economic growth. BICEP is only one of the impressive initiatives organized by Ceres, a nonprofit organization that helps to mobilize investors and business leaders to build a sustainable global economy. If we in Congress are willing to take on the special interests, the polluting special interests that keep Congress barricaded, BICEP member companies and others will have our back.

What we need to do is to price carbon properly, to get a right price for carbon. That means making the big carbon polluters pay a fee to the American people to cover the cost of dumping their waste into our atmosphere and oceans. That is a cost they now happily push off onto the rest of us.

Because of the political control of the polluters over Congress, conditions do not presently allow us to price carbon. So Senator Boxer and those in our new Senate Climate Action Task Force are pushing to change those political conditions. While we are doing that--and we will do that because we have the public, the facts, the science, and the imperative, both moral and practical, on our side--while we are doing that, these big, name-brand American companies have begun to assess their own internal prices on carbon.

A recent report by the Climate Disclosure Project, which gauges carbon emissions and energy usage of major corporations, has identified 29 large companies that use internal carbon prices in their operations or their long-term planning. Some of those companies price carbon to drive energy efficiency. Others see it as a smart way to prepare their business practices for the likelihood of a national American carbon fee. Among those companies are some of the world's largest oil and gas companies, as well as major energy consumers. For example, ExxonMobil

estimates that a price of $60 per metric ton of carbon dioxide will be assessed on carbon by 2030. BP's figure is $40, and Devon Energy's is $15. Some of the biggest carbon emitters in history are preparing for a price on carbon. Let that sink in for a second. The emitters have already baked into their planning a price on carbon--among other reasons, because they know it is the right outcome.

Who else is using internal carbon pricing? Well, Google assesses an internal carbon fee of $14 per metric ton that it uses to invest in green initiatives.

Likewise, Microsoft charges each of its organizational divisions a quarterly carbon neutral fee of $6 to $7 per metric ton. The revenue from those divisions from that carbon fee goes--very similar to Google--to a central fund to support carbon offset projects. Microsoft even published a carbon fee playbook as a guide for businesses looking to establish their own internal carbon fees.

The Walt Disney Company--talk about a nameplate company--charges its subsidiary businesses a carbon fee based on their share of the company's overall footprint.

According to a company statement:

The higher the carbon footprint, the more they pay. We have

built this into our capital planning process as well, so

businesses have to take the price of carbon into account

while planning new projects. The additional operational cost

has started to incentivize businesses to seek methods to

reduce their impact.

Walmart ran the numbers assuming an economy-wide carbon fee of $18 per ton. The company finds that ``Walmart's early action on emission reductions represents a competitive advantage over other retailers that have not performed such projects.''

Investors, who are behind a lot of these companies, are also voicing concerns about the exposure of their portfolios to the effects of climate change, and they are pushing for climate action. The Carbon Asset Risk Initiative--also coordinated by Ceres--is a coalition of 70 investors worth nearly $3 trillion. They have pressured 45 of the world's top fossil fuel companies to disclose the climate risks facing their investments in those companies. Should the oil and gas interests prove, shall we say, evasive in answering, well, investors may soon have other resources at hand to evaluate the climate risk to their portfolios. Bloomberg News, for example, has developed for its readers the Bloomberg Carbon Risk Valuation Tool--a model which can describe the potential effect of carbon regulations on fossil fuel company earnings and share price.

Investors and corporate executives take climate change seriously because of how they see it will hurt the bottom line and because of how it will affect their relationship with their customers. They get it. Big nameplate American corporations get it--unlike this building, this institution and the one down the hall, the Senate of the United States and the House of Representatives, which remain under the control and thrall of the polluting interests and won't take action like these big nameplate American corporations already have.

We can work with these big corporations. We have to work with them to break the campaign of polluter-paid denial that has Congress barricaded. That campaign of denial is as poisonous to our democracy as the underlying carbon pollution is to our atmosphere and oceans. We need to clean up both of them. We need a democracy that is clean of polluter-paid denial, and we need an atmosphere and oceans that are clean of polluter-emitted carbon.

It is time to push back on the misleading propaganda of the polluters. It is time to recognize that our allies are out there to work with us. It is time for us to wake up.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I presume we are in a quorum call. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I am back today for the 54th time to urge my colleagues to wake up to what carbon pollution is doing to the Earth's climate and oceans. We see the facts all around us, but can't seem to penetrate the politics of Congress.

We, in this body, are willfully ignoring changes we have never seen before, changes that threaten our planet and its rich array of plant and animal life, our homes, farms, and factories, and our very health and well being.

Carbon-driven climate change can be seen in warming surface temperatures and shifting seasons, but perhaps nowhere is carbon pollution doing more harm than in our oceans. The year 2013 brought ample new evidence of these changes in our oceans.

People often talk about climate change as if it were a theory. Here is what we know. We know that the oceans are warming. That is not a theory; that is a measurement. It is done with thermometers. It is not complicated. Sea level, we know, is rising; that is another measurement. It is very simple. We could do it with a yardstick. Oceans are becoming more acidic. Every American with an aquarium measures acidity with litmus paper. Again, it is simple measurement and proven facts.

If we put those proven facts into context, let's look at geologic context. According to an article published in 2012 in the journal Science, our current rate of carbon dioxide emissions--mainly from burning fossil fuels--is enough to cause the most severe changes to the chemistry of our oceans in 300 million years, and 300 million years ago is before the dinosaurs.

We know the oceans are warming. The oceans have absorbed more than 90 percent of the excess heat in the atmosphere between 1971 and 2010, according to a 2013 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Here is where the heat goes: 93.4 percent goes into the ocean. The rest we are seeing, 2.3 percent, goes into the atmosphere. Our oceans are really taking the brunt of the added heat.

We also know that sea level is rising. We know this. It is driven not only by melting glaciers carrying water into the seas and raising their level, but also by ocean water expanding. As water warms, it expands. The principle of thermal expansion is known in every science class in this country.

At the Newport tide gauge in Rhode Island, sea level is up almost 10 inches since the 1930s. So that means that storms driving the sea against Rhode Island's coast have 10 more inches of sea to throw against our homes and infrastructure.

Recent satellite measurements from the University of Colorado Sea Level Research Group show 3.2 millimeters of sea level rise per year from 1993 to 2013. Between 1901 and 2010, that rate was estimated at 1.7 millimeters per year. So the rate of increase has nearly doubled, and that means sea level rise is very likely speeding up. That is all stuff we measure. That is not theory.

The IPCC report also projects--conservatively, in my view--that sea level will likely rise one-half to one full meter by the year 2100 if we do nothing to dial back carbon pollution. Obviously, the other estimates are for far more extreme sea level rise.

We know the oceans are becoming more acidic. Oceans not only absorb 90 percent of the heat that has come from climate change, they are absorbing about 30 percent of the carbon itself. The carbon itself goes to the surface of the ocean, and it is absorbed there. Roughly 600 gigatons worth of carbon have been pumped into our oceans as a result. As all that carbon dissolves into the oceans, what happens? Ocean water becomes more acidic. It is a chemistry experiment you can duplicate in any simple lab. Indeed, if you do the measurement, we have gotten about 26 percent more acidic--the seas have--since the Industrial Revolution. That was reported, again, last year by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean.

The rate of change in ocean acidity--we can see it is speeding up--is already faster than at any time measured in the past 50 million years according to research published in the journal Nature Geoscience. Yet we sleep walk here in Congress, narcotized by polluter money.

Ocean acidification and warming are fundamentally altering our undersea environment--what Pope Francis in his recent exhortation called the ``ocean wonder world.'' These changes, among other things, have made the world's coral reefs extremely vulnerable to decay and bleaching. Areas such as the Great Barrier Reef--one of the great global wonders of the world off the coast of Australia--has already experienced large-scale bleaching.

As a boy, I used to scuba dive in the Andaman Sea. If you go back now--30 years later--it is heavily bleached. These are pictures that were taken in 2002 by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, and they clearly show a once lush and vibrant reef now gone and barren.

Worsening this bleaching would be particularly hard on countries whose people depend on the bounty of the reef for their protein, sustenance, and economy. Remember, the reefs are the ocean's nurseries, and they support food and economic stability as well as pretty tropical fish.

New research also suggests that even the most remote depths of the ocean will suffer the consequences of climate change. A study published in the journal Global Change Biology looked at various climate models to predicate changes in food supply throughout the world's oceans. The models predict that the changes to our ocean could lead to a worldwide drop in sea floor dwelling life by the year 2100.

The North Atlantic--off our shores in Massachusetts and in Rhode Island--may lose more than one-third of all deep-sea marine life. These drastic changes from our carbon pollution are daunting ones-- particularly for our ocean State of Rhode Island. Our way of life in Rhode Island, like the Presiding Officer's in Massachusetts, has always been closely tied to the sea. Yet here in Congress we ignore all of that and continue perilously sleepwalking through history.

The Obama administration has at last put forward a Climate Action Plan, the cornerstone of which will be EPA regulations to limit greenhouse gas emissions from new and existing powerplants. Our 50 worst powerplants--in terms of emission--put out more carbon pollution than the entire country of Canada and the entire country of Korea. So solving that problem is vitally important.

The plan also directs executive branch agencies to take concrete steps to safeguard the American people and our interest in the world against the harmful effects of excessively high temperatures, melting ice, ocean acidification, and sea level rise.

These are important steps, but they must ultimately be backed up by congressional action. EPA regulations and executive orders will never have the same economy-wide effect as a congressionally approved carbon fee, for instance.

The sweeping changes taking place in our oceans make adapting to these changes particularly important along our coastlines. Warmer waters and higher seas load the dice for more damaging storms. Our coastal counties in this country harbor 39 percent of the country's population and account for 41 percent of our GDP.

Let's look at our ports, for example. According to a 2009 National Ocean Economics Program report: ``Three-quarters of all United States trade passes through estuary ports.'' No wonder, then, that the American Association of Port Authorities is taking climate change seriously--working to reduce carbon pollution and stave off its effects, rather than waiting for Congress to awaken from our slumber.

American ports are switching trucks and cranes from diesel to electric and installing onshore power supply to ships, thus reducing emissions from the port and from idling vessels. Likewise, the International Association of Ports and Harbors has launched the World Ports Climate Initiative to reduce the CO2 output from port- related activities.

In my State, the Rhode Island Climate Change Commission reported:

Inundaton of the state's ports and railroads may reduce

interstate access, affecting economic viability and

potentially limiting imports and exports. Sea level rise may

also reduce navigational clearances for the State's bridges,

additionally limiting access.

These changes will be particularly harmful for the Port of Providence, which today brings hundreds of millions of dollars to the region.

We need strong Federal action to reduce the carbon emissions that are threatening our coastal communities. We must also take firm Federal action to adapt ourselves, and our States and our coastal communities, to the changes that we can no longer avoid because of what we have already pumped into the atmosphere and the harm we have already done.

This is a real threat. It is embarrassing, and it is wrong for Congress and the Senate to continue to ignore it. Somebody who knew something about looming threats was Sir Winston Churchill. He gave this advice:

One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger

and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double

the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without

flinching, you will reduce the danger by half.

That is good advice. What's embarrassing and wrong is that not only are we failing to meet it promptly--and flinching--but that failure and that flinching is the result of special interest influence in this body.

We face uncommon challenges and they demand uncommon resolve. America has not overcome past crises by pretending they did not exist; that state of play is preposterous for us to embark from. We actually have clear scientific understanding of the problem. The doubt is passed, the jury is in, and the verdict has been delivered. Yet we lack the will of leadership to forge a solution. Another great leader who knew something of leadership in times of crisis was President Lincoln. He understood that the greatest challenges require clear vision and brave thinking. When faced with a crisis, President Lincoln said:

The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must

rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think

anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then

we shall save our country.

It is past time to disenthrall ourselves of the corrupt thrall of polluting special interests. It is time, at last, to wake up and get to work on the job we have before us.

I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, may I ask unanimous consent that a military fellow with Senator Murray's office, Major James O'Brien, be granted floor privileges for today's session of the Senate.

I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today with my colleagues, Senator Blunt, Senator Blumenthal, and soon to be joining us Senator Graham, to speak about our Cybersecurity Public Awareness Act of 2013.

It is now broadly accepted in this body that the cyber threat posed by criminals, foreign intelligence, and military services, and even terrorists, is enormous and unrelenting. But useful information about cyber attacks and cyber risks still is not consistently available to consumers, to businesses or to policymakers.

The legislation the four of us have introduced, the Cybersecurity Public Awareness Act, is an important first step toward fixing this problem.

Senator Blunt has earned a reputation for working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle, particularly on issues of national security. I was very glad to have the opportunity to work with him last year as part of a bipartisan group of Senators seeking a sensible middle ground on cyber security legislation. He has brought his keen understanding of national security issues to bear on this important problem, as well as his expertise on public and private collaboration. So I thank the good Senator from Missouri for the opportunity to work together.

Likewise, Senator Graham, as my colleagues know, has a long track record of bipartisan legislative accomplishments and a passion for issues of national security. On our Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism, where together we are the chair and ranking member, Senator Graham has been a worthy partner in our work to improve America's cyber readiness, including our readiness against economic espionage and trade secret threat. I thank Senator Graham for his continuing leadership and partnership as we introduce this bill to improve public awareness of the cyber threats facing our country.

I am pleased also to be joined by my colleague Senator Blumenthal. We were attorneys general together. We serve on the Judiciary Committee together. We are northeasterners together. I know he brings to this Chamber a deep understanding of the tools at the disposal of law enforcement, as well as the challenges of adapting to a swiftly evolving threat.

Americans' privacy is routinely violated by criminals who steal credit card information and Social Security numbers or even spy on us through the webcams of our personal computers. Bank accounts and businesses, local governments and individuals have been emptied overnight. Sensitive government networks have been compromised. The networks that run our critical infrastructure, the basics we depend on for heat, for communications, for commerce, have been compromised, raising the prospect of a cyber attack that could bring down a portion of the electric grid or disrupt our financial system.

Even our Nation's long-term economic competitiveness is at risk. General Keith Alexander, the head of the National Security Agency and Cyber Command, has said, for example, that the theft of trade secrets through cyber hacks has put us on the losing end of the largest illicit transfer of wealth in history. Yet most Americans are still unaware of the full extent of this threat.

Why? Cyber threat information is often classified when it is gathered by the government or is held as proprietary when collected by a company that has been attacked. As a result, Americans are left in the dark about the frequency, extent, and intensity of these attacks. Raising awareness of cyber threats is an important element of Congress's work to improve our Nation's cyber security.

The Cybersecurity Public Awareness Act of 2013 takes up that challenge. Building on legislation I previously introduced with Senator John Kyl, it will increase public awareness of the cyber threats against our Nation and do so in a matter that protects classified, business-sensitive, and proprietary information.

The bill addresses several different elements of the cyber security awareness gap. It enhances public awareness of attacks on Federal networks by requiring that the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense report to Congress on cyber incidents in the ``.gov'' and ``.mil'' domains. As we work to protect the American people from cyber attacks, we must first understand the nature of attacks on our own systems and what we can do to ensure that those attacks are not successful.

The bill tasks the Department of Justice and the FBI to report to Congress on their investigations and prosecutions of cyber intrusions, computer or network compromise, or other forms of illegal hacking. Those reports also must detail the resources they devote to fighting cyber crime and any legal impediments they find that frustrate prosecutions of cyber criminals. It is not enough just to try to stop hackers when they are coming after us; we must also identify and prosecute the people responsible for cyber crimes wherever they may be.

In addition, the bill requires the Securities and Exchange Commission to report to Congress on the corporate reporting of cyber risks and cyber incidents in the financial statements of publicly traded companies. The purpose of this requirement is to make

sure American businesses are adequately informing their shareholders of any material information shareholders should know relating to cyber security.

Last, the bill requires the Department of Homeland Security to report to Congress on the vulnerabilities to cyber threats in each critical infrastructure sector: the electric grid, the gas and oil markets, the banking sector, and others. When it comes to protecting our critical infrastructure from cyber attacks, there is no margin of error. Failure in this area could mean a blackout in a major American city or a serious disruption of the banking system on which our economy depends. That is why we must fully understand the threats to these sectors and do what we can to stop them.

These are ways in which the Cybersecurity Public Awareness Act will help to better inform the American people about the nature of the cyber threats we face and help us in Congress make the informed decisions about how to better protect against these threats.

We have more work to do to improve our Nation's cyber security, but a key first step is to ensure that members of the public, businesses, shareholders, policymakers, and other cyber security stakeholders have an appropriate awareness of cyber vulnerabilities, threats, and opportunities. I look forward to working with Senator Blunt, with Senator Graham, and with Senator Blumenthal to get this bill passed into law, and I thank them each for their helpful cooperation and their insight.

I yield the floor.

I thank Senator Blumenthal for that question, and I thank him for his work in this area. For some time he, Senator Graham, Senator Blunt, and I were part of a group that tried to pull together a bipartisan compromise, a meaningful piece of cyber security legislation, which, unfortunately, failed at the last minute.

As a result of that failure, the President began a process by Executive order for bringing together the various private sector industries in this country whose operations qualify as critical infrastructure, and that provide the basics for your lives--the basic heat, electricity, financial services, and communications on which modern, civilized life depends. From all the reports I have heard--and I have looked at it very closely--that process is actually going very smoothly. As a result, the administration is comfortable with deferring legislative activity in that area--in the area of trying to regulate and improve the cyber security of our critical infrastructure.

We are holding off for the time being on that, but the area of public awareness is still wide open. Legislative authorities are required--not just Executive order authorities--in many of these areas, particularly for organizations, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is largely independent of direct Presidential control, because they are independent agencies under our constitutional system.

This bill would not interfere with what is going on under the authority of the Executive order. It is something we can do in a bipartisan way in the meantime while the Executive order process goes forward.

I believe it will be very productive because, as Senator Blumenthal and Senator Blunt have noted, we are a better country and more effective legislators in the Senate when the public knows what is going on and has had a chance to engage on an issue. For that to happen, the public needs the information, and for the public to get that information, they need to have it collected by these different agencies and presented to them. We can't expect an average American citizen to go out and try to do this research on their own if it has not been gathered anywhere.

I appreciate the question. I think what we are doing will be both very productive and consistent with what the President has done under his Executive order. I applaud him for picking up the baton after we failed in Congress. Certainly, that failure had nothing to do with the energy and determination to get something done on this issue with Senator Graham, who has joined us on the floor.

I will yield the floor so Senator Graham can offer his thoughts.

Mr. President, let me conclude for our side with the observation that in this season of peace and reconciliation, perhaps this is an issue where a little peace and reconciliation, a little zone of peace and reconciliation can emerge through all of our partisan rancor so we can go forward and do something that will indeed protect this country that we love.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, if the Senator would yield for a question, I might inquire of him whether it is his view that if you actually take a look at what is being done by the administration under the executive order, it bears a considerable resemblance to the proposal we had worked on?

I thank the Chair.

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

Mr. President, I wish to engage for perhaps the next 20 or so minutes with Senator Cantwell, who is arriving shortly. I will begin with some remarks and ask unanimous consent for us to engage in a colloquy.

I am here today to talk about the health care problem in the country, because I think the fixation of this body on the health care Web site has taken our eye off the fact we have a very significant and fundamental health care problem.

This graph represents how much we spend on health care as a country. It begins back here in 1960. I was 5 years old in 1960. So this is a lifetime: 50-some years, $27.4 billion. That is what we spent on health care. Now here we are. This is up to 2011, and $2.7 trillion is what we spend on health care. It is 100 times as much in 50 years. Granted, there are more Americans but not 100 times as many.

This has been an explosive cost growth curve. When we were trying to pass the health care bill, that is what we were looking at for costs. It is a big competitive problem for our country.

This is a really interesting graph. I wish every time anybody talked about health care they would take 1 minute and look at this graph. I will explain briefly what it is.

This column is the up access and measures life expectancy in years, country by country, 65 to 85, where countries fall in terms of their average life expectancy for their population, for their citizens. This along the bottom is the cost, the health spending per capita per person in that country. So if you measure it all out, what you see is a great raft of countries all through here: Japan, Great Britain, Netherlands, Switzerland, Norway, Italy, Greece. There is a whole large group of countries right here, and all of them have a life expectancy 80 or older and they all spend between $6,000 and $2,000 per person on their country's health care. Essentially the entire modernized, civilized world is in that zone, from here to here.

Guess where the United States of America is. Boom. Here. We are below them all in life expectancy. We are trailing the pack of modern industrialized nations in our life expectancy. We are competing with Chile and the Czech Republic. But Japan, Greece, Great Britain, France, Germany, Luxembourg, all manage with their health care systems to achieve longer lifespans for their people. And we are doing it at a cost of about $8,500 per person per year.

To give a comparison, here are Switzerland and Norway. They are the other two most expensive countries in the world per capita on health care spending, and they are at about $5,700 per year. If we could bring our per capita health care spending in this country down to the most expensive countries in the world, if we could compete head to head with the most expensive countries in the world, we would save more than $1 trillion a year.

This is an interesting graph because it shows basically all the modern industrialized nations here, and it shows us here as a way outlier. It is a big deal for us to be an outlier here, because it means we blow about $1 trillion a year in wasteful and unnecessary health care which could be building infrastructure, solving problems, reducing the deficit, and could be doing other work. Instead, we spend it on a health care system which doesn't produce good health care results--at least not measured by life expectancy, which is a pretty good proxy.

There is a huge $1 trillion a year cost to our society in being that bad of an outlier. The cost is also measured in lost lives and lost years of life, because we are averaging 77 years and these countries are averaging 82 years of life.

We have a real problem on our hands, and obsessing about a Web site is a complete distraction from getting after this problem--5 years off every human's life in this country and $1 trillion a year. That is worth paying attention to.

The health care changes we brought are actually making a difference. Here are some interesting graphs. Each one is a projection done by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office of what health care costs are going to look like in the future, and what you see is a progression. They did this graph in August of 2010. This was where they projected health care spending would go when they projected in August of 2010 for this period, from 2014 onward to the next decade. A year later they went back and they projected again, and they projected actually costs would be lower. Then they came back in August of 2012 and they did another projection, and their projection showed that these anticipated costs went down again, every year, lower and lower.

Here is the big one. In May of this year, the Congressional Budget Office went back and redid its projections for Medicare and Medicaid spending from 2014 to 2023. Look how far below what they had projected 1 year ago, 2 years ago, and 3 years ago the current projection. That is a saving of about $1.2 trillion in that decade.

That is a long way from $1 trillion a year we could be saving if we just got back to where we were on this graph, if we got back from here to where Switzerland and Norway, the most expensive countries in the world, are. That is $1 trillion over 1 year. This is $1.2 trillion over 10 years, but it is still a big change and it is still moving in the right direction. So we shouldn't be too quick to condemn ObamaCare when

that kind of savings is already being projected.

The last slide I will show before I go to Senator Cantwell, who has been good enough to join us, is this one. Why might it be that those costs went down so far in May of 2013? Why might it be that graph of projected costs keeps going down? It is because of changes in what is going on in the health care system.

This is one good example. This shows the hospital readmission rate from January of 2007 until August of 2013. This is how often somebody was discharged from the hospital, went home, and then within 30 days had to come back and be readmitted.

That could potentially be for a completely new reason, but usually it is because the discharge planning wasn't done well enough and there was a bad handoff between the hospital and the primary care physician or the nursing home. What we found is you could make that transition much better for patients. When you do, guess what. They don't get sent back to the hospital. When they don't get sent back to the hospital, you save money.

That is just one way the kind of huge $1.2 trillion over 10-year savings CBO has already projected could be taking place, but this is clearly a part of it. It is improving the quality of care so people aren't going back into the hospital, aren't going to the emergency room, and you avoid that cost at all by having handled the patient better, by having given them better treatment and better care.

It is pretty astounding. In 2007, right through here until the end of 2011, it was a pretty steady readmission rate. Then when we changed the signal to the hospitals and cut their payment for readmissions, boom, down it fell. That represents a very significant savings in the system. And in the personal lives of those people and their families not having to go back to the hospital, that is a pretty big plus too.

It was Senator Cantwell's idea that we should come down today and talk a little bit about the delivery system reform side of the health care discussion. I got started a little bit before she could get here, but my wonderful colleague now has arrived, so let me yield the floor to her. I will put this graph back because I want to leave this here for whenever the camera swings my way. I want people to see this graph. It is inexcusable that all of these competitive industrialized nations of ours should be able to deliver universal high-quality health care for what would be a $1 trillion a year savings if we could simply match them, and they produce a longer life expectancy for their people and we are stuck competing for life expectancy with Chile and the Czech Republic. Come on. We can do a lot better than that, and that should be the ball we have our eye on rather than obsessing about the ObamaCare Web site.

I yield the floor.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

Isn't it the heart of what the Senator said just a moment ago that there is an area that actually touches on a lot of health care--it is a big area--where you can do two things at once? You can save significant money for taxpayers and insurance ratepayers, and at the same time you can improve the quality of care that people receive.

So often in legislative matters it is a zero sum game. One wins so the other has to lose exactly by the same amount. This is not like that. This is a win-win situation. So there really should be energetic efforts to pursue these win-win opportunities.

If I could ask the Senator another question in response to what she just said, not only is it a win-win, being lower cost and better quality care, but I believe the Senator said that there is actually a third win here. There is the win of lower cost, there is the win of better quality care, but for seniors there is a huge win of maintaining your independence and being able to stay at home. It is hard to put a price on that, but if you are facing the choice of having to leave your home and having to go to a more restrictive health care setting, being able to stay at home is a very big plus.

Really, it is not win-win, it is win-win-win.

Mr. President, in responding to what Senator Cantwell

just said about the Congressional Budget Office, it indeed has been frustrating and bedeviling to run up against their inability to project these savings in a way that would allow us to--what we call in Washington--score them and get budget credit for them. But even though they have that difficulty, there are some very serious organizations that project that very significant savings of the kind I have mentioned--the $1 trillion savings--are possible.

Some years ago the President's own Council of Economic Advisers estimated that we could do savings of $700 billion without affecting the quality of care in any way for the worse.

The National Institute of Medicine has made several regular projections. The most recent one is $750 billion a year. The Institute of Medicine is pretty serious folks, and they are entitled to respect when they say we can have those kinds of savings.

RAND Corporation--a lot of people know a lot about it--is a very expert organization. They have done two things. They looked at what we can save in health care, and then they looked at what we can save in health care plus an additional bit for dealing with waste and fraud. They gave ranges for the two. The midpoint of the range for savings is about $730 billion. If we add their suggestions on waste and fraud, the midpoint of their range goes to about $910 billion a year.

The Lewin Group, which is another respected think tank that looks at health care issues, wrote a piece some time ago with George Bush's former Treasury Secretary, and they said it was $1 trillion.

So is it $700 billion a year? Is it $750 billion a year? Is it somewhere between $730 and $910 billion a year depending on how you score the waste and fraud? Is it $1 trillion a year? Either way, I will take it. Those are big numbers, and wherever it falls in that range, we should be energetically fighting for it.

I will close with the request I always make in these speeches--and this is a request to the President and to his administration--and that is to inspire us and set a bold national target. Sure, CBO, OMB, and our actuarial and accounting organizations cannot predict what these savings are going to be, but, by gosh, the President can direct his administration to target a savings goal and to go after it. I think if the President were to set a hard date and dollar target for delivery system savings--a couple of years out so we have a chance to do that-- that would make a big difference.

The example that I use is of President Kennedy. Back in 1961, when it looked as if we were losing the space race to the Soviet Union, President Kennedy declared that within 10 years--he put a date on it-- he would put a man on the Moon and bring him back safely. He had a hard target, something specific so you would know if it was or wasn't achieved. The message was clear, the mission that was outlined was clear, and the result was a vast mobilization of private and public resources to achieve that purpose.

It is not enough to talk about bending the health care cost curve. That catchphrase should be jettisoned and discarded. We should have a hard date and dollar figure, and that should be a target the entire administration aims toward.

Had President Kennedy given that speech back in 1961 and declared as his purpose to bend the curve of space exploration, I very much doubt we would have put that man on the Moon within 10 years. It was his exercise of Presidential leadership and challenge--ahead of what the scientists knew could be done but with confidence and faith in our ability to achieve big things--that put the executive branch of government into focus so we could achieve exactly what he had directed. We can do the same with health care. We should do the same with health care. There is no downside to it because this is a win-win area, as I discussed with Senator Cantwell.

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

Madam President, I ask consent to speak as in morning business for up to 20 minutes.

Madam President, this is my 53rd time for consecutive weeks we are in session that I have come to the floor to speak about climate change and to urge my colleagues that it is time to wake up. These speeches are not easy. A great deal of effort goes into assisting me with research and crafting of them. I am particularly grateful for the hard work of Dr. Todd Bianco in helping me to prepare them. He is the fellow sitting on the other side of the sign, looking embarrassed that I have just called him out.

Todd joined my office in September of 2012 as a Geological Society of America-U.S. Geological Survey congressional science fellow. He has contributed considerable scientific understanding and analytical rigor to our work. His ability to interpret the latest climate research has helped me to convey complex scientific concepts both accurately and in a way that is accessible and meaningful to policymakers and the public. You may be used to seeing him with me here on the floor for each week's speech, but he has also been effective in researching legislation and preparing for hearings in the Environment and Public Works Committee.

I say this because this week marks the end of Todd's fellowship and he will soon return home to Rhode Island with his wife Allison. Allison Bianco, by the way, is a very talented artist whose work reflects our deep human connection to the natural world. In addition to lending us Todd, Allison has also lent us some of her artwork which is hung on display in my front office. So in addition to thanking Todd for his efforts, I also want to thank Allison. Todd, like me, is an over- married human being.

I wish them both the best of luck back home, and I thank Todd for his work in the U.S. Senate to advance responsible public policy, grounded firmly in the best science.

It is time at last for Congress at least to heed that best science and act responsibly. It is time to wake up. Denying and delaying is irresponsible. In the judgment of history, it will ultimately, I believe, be shameful. Carbon pollution from the burning of fossil fuels is altering the climate. The consensus around this fact within the scientific community is overwhelming, and public awareness of this crisis is growing stronger.

Interestingly, it is growing stronger across party lines. Republicans might want to listen to this. A survey conducted for the League of Conservation Voters found that more than half of young Republican voters, 53 percent of Republicans under the age of 35--53 percent would describe a politician who denies climate change is happening as ``ignorant,'' ``out-of-touch,'' or ``crazy.'' Madam President, 53 percent of Republicans under 35 view that kind of climate denying as ``ignorant,'' ``out-of-touch,'' or ``crazy.''

Even though a majority of young Republicans understands that denying climate change is out of touch with reality, Republicans in Congress refuse to get serious. Why? Another national survey, this one by the Pew Research Center, found that 61 percent of non-tea-party Republicans actually agree there is solid evidence the Earth is warming, with a plurality saying it is mostly because of humans. But the tea partiers are different. Seventy percent of tea partiers, contrarily, say there is

``no solid evidence'' the Earth is warming and 41 percent of tea partiers assert that warming is ``just not happening.'' Not that we don't have enough information yet, but it is ``just not happening.''

Regardless of what you think is the cause, there are legion independent measurements that the Earth is warming. This is not a theory. We measure that the temperature of the atmosphere and oceans is rising. We measure that snow, ice caps, and glaciers are melting. We measure that seas are rising. We measure that the very seasons are shifting.

It is one thing to be the party that is against science. The tea partiers would make it the party against measurement. Just as the tea partiers led the Republicans off the government shutdown cliff, just as the tea partiers tried to defeat the budget deal most Republicans supported, so the tea party wants to lead the Republican Party off the climate cliff.

Outside these walls it is different. Responsible Republican voices more and more acknowledge the threat of climate change and call for responsible solutions. Many want to correct the market failure that aids and abets the polluters' irresponsible practices.

My colleagues, Representative Henry Waxman, Representative Earl Blumenauer, Senator Brian Schatz, and I have put forward just such a market-based proposal, a revenue-neutral fee on carbon emissions, the revenues of which would be returned back to the American people. Here, within Congress, where the polluters' money flows so abundantly, no Republican colleague has come forward to join us. But outside of Congress here are some of the responsible voices in the Republican Party: Former South Carolina Representative Bob Inglis has long urged his party to get serious on climate change. In an article in the Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum this year, Mr. Inglis invoked the tenets of conservative economics. He wrote:

If you're a conservative, it is time to step forward and

engage in the climate and energy debate because we have the

answer--free enterprise. . . . Conservatives understand that

we must set the correct incentives and this should include

internalizing pollution and other environmental costs in our

market system. We tax income but we don't tax emissions. It

makes sense to conservatives to take the tax off something

you want more of, income, and shift the tax to something you

want less of, emissions.

That was Bob Inglis and that is exactly how you use his words ``internalize pollution and other environmental costs in our market system.'' You do it with a carbon fee.

Sherwood Boehlert and Wayne Gilchrest, former Republican Representatives from New York and Virginia, in a joint February 2012 op ed with Representative Waxman and Senator Markey, made the fiscal case for a carbon fee. Here is what they said:

The debate over how to reduce our nation's debt has been

presented as a dilemma between cutting spending on programs

Americans cherish or raising taxes on American job creators.

But there is a better way: We could slash our debt by making

power plants and oil refineries pay for the carbon emissions

that endanger our health and environment. This policy would

strengthen our economy, lessen our dependence on foreign oil,

keep our skies clean--and raise a lot of revenue. The best

approach [they continue] would be to use a market mechanism

such as the sale of carbon allowances or a fee on carbon

pollution to lower emissions and increase revenue.

For one former Republican Member of this body, the threat of climate change has serious professional implications. As Secretary of Defense, it is Chuck Hagel's job to account for all hazards to our national security and our interests in the world. He gave this clear-eyed assessment at the Halifax International Security Forum just last month:

Climate change does not directly cause conflict, but it can

significantly add to the challenges of global instability,

hunger, poverty, and conflict. Food and water shortages,

pandemic disease, disputes over refugees and resources, more

severe natural disasters--all place additional burdens on

economies, societies, and institutions around the world. . .

. The effects of climate change and new energy resources are

far-reaching and unpredictable . . . demanding our attention

and strategic thinking.

Top advisers to former Republican Presidents have joined this chorus of Republicans speaking out on climate and urging a carbon fee. Republican Presidents listened to these men and women. Who knows, maybe Republican Members of Congress will listen to them also.

William D. Ruckelshaus, Lee M. Thomas, William K. Reilly, and Christine Todd Whitman, all headed the Environmental Protection Agency during Republican administrations. They spoke with one voice in an August New York Times op-ed. They wrote:

As administrators of the EPA under Presidents Richard M.

Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George Bush and George W. Bush, we held

fast to common-sense conservative principles--protecting the

health of the American people, working with the best

technology available, and trusting in the innovation of

American business and in the market to find the best

solutions for the least cost.

These former Republican officials recognize both the wisdom of properly pricing carbon and, as well, the obstinate opposition that stands in the way of progress in Congress. They continued in their article:

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

best path to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but that is

unachievable in the current political gridlock in Washington.

But we must continue efforts to reduce the climate-altering

pollutants that threaten our planet. The only uncertainty

about our warming world is how bad the changes will get and

how soon. What is most clear is that there is no time to

waste.

They could even have said that it is time to wake up.

George Schultz, another prominent Republican, served as Secretary of both Labor and Treasury under President Nixon and Secretary of State under President Reagan. He, too, is calling for an end to the polluters' free ride.

In an April op-ed with Nobel economist Gary Becker that appeared in RealClearPolitics, George Schultz appealed to our American sense of fairness writing:

Americans like to compete on a level playing field. All the

players should have an equal opportunity to win based on

their competitive merits, not on some artificial imbalance

that gives someone or some group a special advantage. We

think this idea should be applied to energy producers. They

all should bear the full costs of the use of the energy they

provide.

Let me repeat that:

They all should bear the full costs of the use of the

energy they provide . . . Clearly, a revenue-neutral carbon

tax would benefit all Americans by eliminating the need for

costly energy subsidies while promoting a level playing field

for energy producers.

Veterans of a much more recent Republican administration are likewise acknowledging the appeal of a carbon fee proposal.

David Frum, speechwriter to George W. Bush, wrote in a December 2012 cnn.com op-ed that a carbon fee could help address a number of pressing national issues. Here is what he wrote:

Take three worrying long-term challenges: climate change,

the weak economic recovery, and America's chronic budget

deficits. Combine them into one. And suddenly three tough

problems become one attractive solution. Tax carbon. . . .

The revenues from a carbon tax could be used to reduce the

deficit while also extending new forms of payroll tax relief

to middle-class families, thus supporting middle-class family

incomes.

Gregory Mankiw, economic adviser to George W. Bush and Mitt Romney, specifically highlighted our carbon fee proposal in an August op-ed in the New York Times. Our bill, he wrote, ``is more effective and less invasive than the regulatory approach that the federal government has traditionally pursued.''

Speaking of us, he said:

If the Democratic sponsors conceded to using the new

revenue to reduce personal and corporate income tax rates, a

bipartisan compromise is possible to imagine. Among

economists, the issue is largely a no-brainier.

I say to Mr. Mankiw, as one of the Democratic sponsors, we

are very interested in a bipartisan compromise. We just need

a Republican to come to the negotiating table and we can

begin. That is what the American people want, what voters

want, and it is what responsible State and local leaders want

as well.

Take, for example, Jim Brainard, a five-term Republican mayor from Carmel, IN. In an Indianapolis Star op-ed this month, Mayor Brainard implored Democrats and Republicans alike to face up to the reality of climate change. Here is what Mayor Brainard said:

[T]his issue isn't just about saving polar bears. It's

about saving our cities. . . . No matter your politics, there

is overwhelming evidence of climate change and we as a nation

have a moral obligation to address these issues.

For himself, he says he plans ``to urge the federal government to take a stronger leadership role in helping our cities prepare for what is certainly coming our way.''

There are a lot of Republicans out there who are awake to the threat of climate change and to the win-win-benefits of pricing carbon and using the revenues to invest in tax reductions and adaptation and other ways to protect ourselves and advance our economy.

Unfortunately, in Congress, the dark, heavy hand of the polluters is helping the tea party drive the Republican party off the cliff. One day the Republican Party will pay a heavy price for this, and that day may be soon. They need to make the change.

It is the responsibility of Congress to heed the warnings of environmental calamity, to stamp out market distortions that favor polluters, and to steer this country on a prudent, reasonable path toward a proud future that is both sustainable and equitable. It is time for Congress to wake up.

I yield the floor.