Floor Statements

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

Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I and Senator Blumenthal from Connecticut and Senator Baldwin from Wisconsin and, if he is able to join us, Senator Murphy from Connecticut be allowed to engage in a colloquy.

Mr. President, my colleagues and I have come to the floor to talk about an issue that is at the heart of the discussion of our national debt and deficit; that is, health care spending.

These days around Washington, there is a regular refrain echoing through the hallways: In order to fix our deficit, we must cut Medicare and Medicaid benefits. That is wrong. That idea is, according to the former CEO of Kaiser Permanente--somebody who knows a little something about health care--and I will quote him:

. . . so wrong it's almost criminal. It's an inept way of

thinking about health care.

I could not agree more.

It was put this way by Froma Harrop, who is a columnist for my hometown paper, the Providence Journal. I will quote her: ``The dagger pointed at America's economic viability hasn't been the existence of government programs like Medicare, it's been the relentless rise in health care costs that plagues not only Medicare and Medicaid, but everyone who uses health care.''

Attacking Medicare and Medicaid ignores the fact that our health care spending problem is systemwide and not just unique to Federal programs. Our colleague Senator Angus King has used the colorful metaphor that to go after Medicare and Medicaid when the problem is our health care system would be like attacking Brazil after Pearl Harbor--wrong target. It ignores the fact that we operate a widely inefficient health care system: 18 percent of our GDP compared to only 12 percent for our least efficient international competitors.

So how can we continue to stem the rise in costs and improve our wildly inefficient health care system?

Thankfully, many of the tools necessary to drive down costs have an interesting collateral benefit. They actually improve the quality of care for patients. The Affordable Care Act included 45 different provisions dedicated to redesigning how health care is delivered for the benefit of patients and taxpayers. These reforms support and encourage an ongoing delivery system reform movement--and there truly is a movement out there--driven by dedicated providers, payers, employers, and even some States that have worked for years to improve the quality and the safety and the effectiveness of health care.

We are not discussing hypothetical improvements. We are not discussing theoretical cost savings. Today I am joined on the floor by colleagues who have seen how delivery system innovators in their States have achieved real improvements to quality, real improvements in patient outcomes, and real cost savings. In Congress, we can't get over yesterday's

quarrels about repealing or defunding ObamaCare, but out there in the real world health care leaders across the country are innovating forward, places such as the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, Intermountain Healthcare in Utah, Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania, Gundersen Lutheran in Wisconsin, Palmetto Health in the Carolinas, and in Rhode Island, among other places, our own Coastal Medical.

One Rhode Island practical example: When intensive care unit staff follow a checklist of basic instructions--washing their hands with soap, cleaning a patient's skin with antiseptic, placing sterile drapes over the patient and so forth--rates of infection plummet, and the costs of treating those infections disappear--no infection, no cost.

These reforms have the triple benefit of protecting Medicare and Medicaid, improving patient outcomes, and dialing back health care spending for all Americans. How big is it? The President's Council of Economic Advisers has estimated that we could save approximately $700 billion--that is billion with a ``b''--$700 billion every year--every year--in our health care system without compromising health outcomes. The Institute of Medicine took a look at the same question. They put the savings number at $750 billion.

Other groups are even more optimistic. The New England Health Care Institute has reported that $850 billion could be saved annually. The Lewin Group and former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill--who as the CEO of Alcoa is deeply involved in the reform efforts in Pennsylvania that have been very successful and knows a fair amount about this--they estimate an annual savings of a staggering $1 trillion.

Whatever the exact number is, what is clear is there is huge potential for savings in our health care system while improving or maintaining the quality of care. Since the Federal Government does 40 percent of America's health care spending, when we get that right, taxpayers as well as patients become big winners from these reforms.

I will close with two points: First, many of us are asking the Obama administration to set a hard cost savings target for these delivery system reform efforts. It may be $750 billion. Pick a number that will be a target to be actually achieved. A target--a measurable goal--will focus and guide and spur the administration's reform efforts in a manner that vague intentions to ``bend the health care cost curve'' simply cannot.

Second, we need to put the full force of American innovation and ingenuity into achieving that serious cost savings target for our Nation's health care system. It is hard to do that without that target to strive toward.

This is an issue where our Republican colleagues should be able to join us to accelerate these reforms in our health care delivery system and to move forward beyond tired-out calls to repeal ObamaCare so we can deal with the ongoing reality of health care reform.

Let's give American families the health care system they deserve. Instead of waste and inefficiency, poor outcomes and missed opportunities, let's give them a health care system that is the envy of the world.

I yield for my colleague, Senator Baldwin.

Madam President, I rise today to speak regarding the nomination of James B. Comey, Jr., to serve as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Mr. Comey has a long record of service to the Department of Justice. Colleagues doubtless are familiar with Mr. Comey's role in the infamous scene at the side of Attorney General Ashcroft's hospital bed over the reauthorization of part of President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program. Mr. Comey, to his great credit, stood firm for the rule of law and for the Department he served.

Nonetheless, I believe Mr. Comey's role in the issuance of Justice Department legal opinions on torture deserves close examination by this body.

In August 2002, Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee and John Yoo of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel used what are now acknowledged to be radical--some would say outlandish--legal arguments to authorize the use of torture. Jack Goldsmith, the subsequent head of the office, withdrew those opinions. His successor, Daniel Levin, issued a new opinion, dated December 30, 2004, that provided a new analysis of the Federal statute outlawing torture. The Office of Legal Counsel, under the leadership of Steven Bradbury, applied that analysis to a series of abusive interrogation techniques, as used individually and in combination. The resulting two opinions--the Individual Techniques Opinion and the Combined Techniques Opinion--were issued on May 10, 2005. Then-Deputy Attorney General Comey concurred in the former and vigorously objected to the latter on both legal and policy grounds.

I strongly disagree with Mr. Comey's conclusion that the Individual Techniques Opinion was, as he put it at his confirmation hearing before the Judiciary Committee, a ``serious and responsible interpretation'' of the torture statute. Its legal analysis is inadequate in numerous ways, but for today I will focus on one of the most significant shortcomings.

As I have observed on other occasions, this opinion omits the 1984 Fifth Circuit case of United States v. Lee, which involved the prosecution by the Reagan Justice Department of a local sheriff and deputies who had engaged in waterboarding. The Justice Department's brief on appeal described the technique in detail and described it as ``water torture.'' The opinion by the Fifth Circuit likewise repeatedly referred to ``water torture'' and ``torture.'' As Professor David Luban of Georgetown Law School explained at a hearing I chaired in May 2009, Lee is ``perhaps the single most relevant case in American law on the legality of waterboarding.''

To give you an idea of how widely the Individual Techniques Opinion ranged, it evaluated the meaning of the terms ``severe physical or mental pain or suffering;'' it evaluated ``[t]he common understanding of the term `torture' and the context in which the statute was enacted'' and it discussed ``the historical understanding of torture.'' Yet nowhere in this discussion of the ``historical understanding of torture'' and the ``common understanding of the term `torture''' does this opinion mention that it was the view of the Department of Justice itself, confirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in 1984, that waterboarding is torture. The opinion likewise fails to consider the American prosecutions of Japanese soldiers for waterboarding our troops during the Second World War or the court- martials of American soldiers for using the technique in the Philippines after the Spanish-American war.

The shortcomings of the Individual Techniques Opinion go beyond the failings of its legal analysis. Lawyers cannot analyze the law without knowing the facts, and the record demonstrates that the CIA repeatedly gave the Office of Legal Counsel bad information about the use and effectiveness of the techniques. How willingly Yoo and Bybee accepted false representations by the CIA about their use of the techniques is a question for another day--and their consciences.

In 2004, however, the CIA's Inspector General explained that the CIA had used the techniques differently than they were described in the Yoo and Bybee opinions. Significant misrepresentations also made their way into Office of Legal Counsel opinions in 2005. As former FBI interrogator Ali Soufan testified at a hearing I held in 2009, a May 30, 2005, opinion claim about the effectiveness of waterboarding against Khalid Sheik Muhammad and the so-called Dirty Bomber, Jose Padilla, was demonstrably false. And although I cannot discuss the report of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which remains classified, it is my firm belief that when all the facts are finally made public, the judgment about the candor of the CIA will be harsh and the Individual Techniques Opinion will be further discredited.

As I pointed out at Mr. Comey's confirmation hearing, it is not enough to say that letting the Individual Techniques Opinion go was ok because the techniques would likely only be used in combination. If Mr. Comey's view had prevailed and the Combined Techniques Opinion had not been issued, an interrogator could have waterboarded a detainee as long as that technique was used in isolation.

It also concerns me that Mr. Comey did not press for an analysis of legal prohibitions other than the torture statute. The Individual Techniques Opinion and the Combined Techniques Opinion did not consider, for example,

the legality of abusive techniques under American treaty obligations, such as those imposed by the Convention Against Torture or even under the Constitution. It may be the practice of the Office of Legal Counsel to divide relevant legal questions among multiple opinions, but that does not justify failing to address all obvious and relevant legal questions. As a result, I believe that concurrence in the Individual Techniques Opinion should have been withheld until it was clear that the Office was evaluating all relevant treaty and constitutional questions.

Because I do not believe the Individual Techniques Opinion is reasonable or responsible, and because I believe the process for reviewing that opinion was flawed, I cannot hold Mr. Comey blameless for concurring it. He should have done better.

This evaluation has the benefit of hindsight and is free from the pressurized atmosphere of early 2005, when Mr. Comey was forced to contend with a White House pulling the Justice Department in the wrong direction on a number of fronts.

I accept that it was not Mr. Comey's responsibility as the Deputy Attorney General to do his own research on the questions addressed by the Individual Techniques Opinion. I do think that the opinion had a bad enough odor to put a responsible, well-trained lawyer on alert.

Mr. Comey did take significant, affirmative steps to satisfy himself that the Individual Techniques Opinion was issued in good faith, seeing to it that the opinion was pressure-tested by exposing it to broad review within the Department of Justice and the executive branch. This fact distinguishes the Individual Techniques Opinion from the earlier opinions that had been crafted without adequate scrutiny within the executive branch--scrutiny they likely could not have survived: remember the use of the Medicare standard for a torture opinion.

In sum, while I believe that the Individual Techniques Opinion does not meet the standards expected of Justice Department attorneys, I ultimately have concluded that Mr. Comey performed his role reasonably.

One key fact corroborates this conclusion. As discussed above, the legality of waterboarding under American treaty obligations and the Constitution was the obvious followup question. In fact, the Office of Legal Counsel was working on a separate opinion on those very questions and would publish it on May 30, 2005. Mr. Comey, however, was deliberately cut out. Though he already had submitted his resignation, Mr. Comey apparently was enough of a thorn in the side of the enablers of torture that they wanted to get around him.

It is my judgment, overall, that Mr. Comey was an opponent of torture and a defender of the best traditions of the Justice Department and our Nation. I think he could have done better, but Mr. Comey was on the right side. Add to this his clear statements to the committee, his long track record of public service, and his principled stands on other matters of national importance, and I conclude that Mr. Comey has the integrity, the capability, and the commitment to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I will work to see his nomination confirmed and work with him as he undertakes this new chapter in his public service.

Mr. President, I am here once again, actually now for the 40th time, to urge my colleagues to wake up to the threat of climate change.

I am very pleased to be joined today by our colleague Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii, who is a champion of renewable energy and energy efficiency. As Hawaii's Lieutenant Governor, he coauthored his State's net metering rule, which encourages renewable energy, and he led the design of the State's Renewable Energy Portfolio, which is on track to be No. 1 in the Nation. He has pushed commonsense ways to boost energy security and battle climate change, and it is no wonder he has been called Hawaii's ``Ambassador of Energy.''

We are here today in the wake of a hearing last week in the Committee on Environment and Public Works. The premise of that hearing was simple--``Climate Change: It's Happening Now.'' Disappointingly, again, allies of the fossil fuel industry attempted to discount or downplay that straightforward call to action.

Of the climate scientists on hand, everyone--even the minority witnesses--agreed that carbon dioxide causes climate change. That is physics 101. And all but one agreed that climate change is a real problem. The only academic who did not, Dr. Roy Spencer, is affiliated with the industry-backed George C. Marshall Institute and the Heartland Institute.

Regrettably, Dr. Spencer played a tried-and-true trick of the climate deniers: deselecting data that does not support your conclusions. Scientists around the world have been collecting high-quality surface temperature data for more than 100 years. To Dr. Spencer, however, the only data that matters are satellite and balloon readings of atmospheric temperatures in the tropics. Why ignore data outside the tropics? Why ignore surface temperature data? Why ignore ocean data, when the oceans cover two-thirds of the globe? Well, when you look at all the data, it shows the Earth warming at a much faster rate than his data in isolation.

Other minority witnesses played similar games.

Ms. Furchtgott-Roth, who is not a climate scientist, testified. She appears to be a sort of all-purpose witness-of-all-trades for the Republicans on topics that range from job training to health insurance to constitutional law, even to Samoan fisheries. She claimed that climate change has stopped.

Well, if you look at the past decade, you can convince yourself that climate change has stopped. Actually, on this chart I have in the Chamber, you can convince yourself that climate change has stopped five different times. But when you look at the whole picture, the only conclusion is that the Earth is getting warmer. The past 10 years were warmer than the 10 years before that. In fact, the past 10 years were warmer than any other 10 years in recorded history.

The continued, now-near-fraudulent denial of climate change is pernicious. Dr. Jennifer Francis of Rutgers called out in her testimony what she calls ``climate misleaders.'' She explained--and I will quote her--

These are people who [are] deliberately ignoring and

misconstruing the science in an attempt to convince

[lawmakers] and the public that either human-caused climate

change isn't happening, or that it's nothing to worry about.

Well, I am sure Senator Schatz is aware that observations around the world, including in his home State, show climate change is indeed real and already happening.

Mr. President, tide gauges in Newport, RI, show an increase in average sea level of nearly 10 inches since 1930. That is a big deal for Rhode Islanders when we think about how devastating our great hurricane of 1938 was and what worse would now befall us with 10 more inches of sea for storms to hammer against our shores.

Those measurements show that the rate of sea level rise is also increasing. This matches reports that since 1990, sea level has been rising faster than the rate predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Part of what has caused sea level rise is ocean warming, as described by Senator Schatz.

When fluids get warm, including ocean water, they expand and therefore rise. During last week's EPW hearing, we heard about the heat, significant amounts of heat, that oceans are now absorbing. Even if atmospheric warming had hit another temporary level, the ocean is still warming, and ocean warming hits ocean ecosystems.

Dr. Margaret Leinin testified at the hearing last week about a study that showed economically important species such as cod, haddock, yellowtail, and winter flounder shifting northward over the last four decades. The study suggests that the fish are moving to locations within their preferred temperature range.

Scientists have begun to tease out how what seem like small changes in average temperature are important to fish and other animals in the ocean. In Narragansett Bay, we have a continuous temperature record going back to 1959, along with data on what is living in the water. We know water temperature is rising. One study found on average winter temperatures are up almost 4 degrees since the 1960s in Narragansett Bay, and that is not good for the winter flounder.

NOAA scientists working in Rhode Island found that winter flounder incubated in warmer water are smaller when they hatch than those incubated in colder water. Juvenile winter flounder need time to settle to the bottom of the bay and to grow larger before abundant bottom feeders such as the sand shrimp arrive. It looks like warmer water brings the shrimp in earlier while the flounder are still small enough to eat, making them easier prey.

So the evidence is that warmer waters load the dice against winter flounder in Narragansett Bay, and the fisherman who relied upon this fishery paid the price. Catches are down to less than one-tenth of what they once were. Fishermen in Hawaii are paying the price as well.

As the Senator from Hawaii said, it is not just Hawaii, it is not just Rhode Island actually, it is all of our States that will be affected. Dr. Leinin, who testified at our EPW hearing, is from Florida Atlantic University. She highlighted how sensitive Florida will be to climate change.

In her testimony, Dr. Leinin said:

The Caribbean/Florida region has shown sea surface

temperature increases of about . . . [2 degrees Fahrenheit]

per decade concurrent with losses of viable coral reef area

of between 5.5 percent and 9.2 percent per year. Western

Atlantic reefs have the highest percentage area affected by

bleaching of any reefs worldwide.

Not so great for Florida's diving and snorkeling economy. Dr. Leinin pointed out that Florida's population ``is heavily concentrated, with almost 14 million people living along our coast. In South Florida, Miami, the seventh largest city in the country, the Florida Keys, coastal and inland portions of Broward County, the Florida Everglades and Ft. Lauderdale are all below 2 feet in elevation.''

The effects of sea level rise that we discussed for Hawaii and Rhode Island appear to be more evident in Florida. Dr. Leinin told us: Although sea level rise has only risen these few inches in 50 years, that rise has been sufficient to prevent drainage systems from working during lunar high tides and during storms. The streets of Miami Beach are now routinely flooded at peak high tide. The addition of storm surges to these higher sea levels means that drainage systems no longer work reliably, causing seawater to move into storm sewer systems forcing water inland.

So South Florida is ground zero for sea level rise. As Senator Schatz said earlier, this is one of the effects of climate change. Sea level rise has not stopped or slowed down, especially not in South Florida. It is time to wake up and get to work slowing these changes where we can, and adapting our communities to their inevitable effects.

Mr. President, Rhode Island is preparing for climate change. We are doing it in commonsense ways. Along our coasts, we are identifying areas that are vulnerable to sea level rise. The University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography is a world leader in measuring and understanding the effects of climate change on our waters.

Rhode Island's Department of Health, with a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is preparing us for the health effects associated with climate change. But it is not enough for individual States to have to act alone. That is why Senator Schatz and I, along with our colleagues in the House, Representatives Waxman and Blumenauer, have put forward a discussion draft for a fee on carbon pollution.

It is clear when we consider the damage climate change will cause, indeed already has begun to cause, there is a social cost of carbon pollution. It is not factored into the price of fossil fuel.

That is a market failure, and our approach would correct that market failure.

We wish to discuss with our Democratic and Republican colleagues how best to implement this solution, what the price should be, how fast it should rise, and how to return the proceeds back to Americans. A market solution like this should be right up Republicans' alley. This is why Republicans such as Art Laffer and George Shultz are talking about it.

A fee on carbon can reduce emissions. One option, to use the proceeds to reduce taxes, should be attractive to our Republican colleagues.

To give one example, with the majority of the carbon pollution fee proceeds, setting a little reserve aside for the lowest income people, putting the rest of it to work lowering corporate income taxes, and just with that you can reduce the top of the American corporate income tax rate from 35 to 28 percent, that is a pretty considerable value to those businesses that are still considering paying the top rate, and that should be worth something during negotiations.

As I have said before in these talks, it is time to wake up. It is time to get to work.

I wish to thank my friend Senator Schatz for his leadership in the effort to protect Americans from the harms of climate change.

I turn to him now for his final remarks and welcome Senator Blumenthal, who will be joining us in this colloquy.

I look forward to that.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, it is a pleasure to see both Senators from Connecticut here, one speaking and one presiding. To reflect on the junior Senator's comments about the EPA nominee Gina McCarthy, who has not only worked in Connecticut but in Massachusetts, she has surrounded my State of Rhode Island. We have had plenty, I would say, indirect exposure to her. I think she is terrific. I could not agree more with the Senator's comments. I look forward to a swift confirmation for her to get to work rapidly on the issue that brings me to the floor again for the 39th time, which is to try to get this body to wake up to the threat of climate change.

Senator Markey

Speaking of Massachusetts, I will also welcome our new Senator from Massachusetts, my New England neighbor Ed Markey. For decades Ed has been a passionate leader in Congress on energy and environmental issues. He has been a true champion on climate change. He and I serve as cochairs of the Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change, along with our colleagues Representative Waxman and Senator Cardin. So I really look forward to continuing to work alongside now-Senator Markey to forge commonsense solutions to the crisis of climate change.

Climate Change

We need common sense in a place where the barricade of special interest influence has blocked action on climate change and where even the debate itself is polluted--polluted with falsehood and fallacy and fantasy. Look no further than the Republican response to the announcement last month of President Obama's national climate action plan.

The President described in his speech some of the overwhelming evidence that our planet is changing. The 12 warmest years in recorded history have all come in the last 15 years, he said. Last year temperatures in some areas of the ocean reached record highs, and ice in the Arctic sank to its smallest size on record faster than most models had predicted it would. These are the facts. That is what the President said.

Here in the Senate, the President's facts were challenged. Those are not the facts, Mr. President, flatly replied one of my Republican colleagues. It is not even true. So let's look. Where were the facts and where were the falsehoods?

Well, according to NASA, the President had the facts right on warming. Indeed, he may actually have understated the severity of global warming. In fact, the 13 hottest years on record--the red ones-- have all occurred in the last 15 years. The 13 hottest years on record have been in the last 15 years.

I remind my colleagues that NASA is the organization that right now is driving a rover around on Mars. We might want to consider that these are scientists who know what they are talking about.

As to ocean temperatures--the other part of the President's assertion--NOAA says that ``sea surface temperatures in the northeast shelf's large marine ecosystem during 2012 were the highest recorded in 150 years.'' The President's facts were right again. This chart from the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado shows, just as the President said, that ``the 2012 early sea ice melt in the

Arctic smashed previous records.'' Furthermore, the data center confirms that--and I will quote them again--``ice extent has declined faster than the models predicted.''

So in the contest between fact and falsehood, the President was completely accurate on his facts. Facts, as John Adams said, are stubborn, not to be easily brushed aside for convenient falsehoods.

Falsehoods, fallacies, and fantasies. Let's go on to a fallacy. My Senate colleague warned against accepting what he called ``the extreme position of saying that carbon dioxide is the cause of climate change or of global warming.'' He suggested that carbon dioxide cannot be a threat because it is found in nature. We exhale it. Well, that is a fallacy, an incorrect argument in logic and rhetoric resulting in a lack of validity or, more generally, a lack of soundness. That is the definition of a ``fallacy.'' Arsenic is found in nature, but in the wrong concentration and in the wrong places, it is nevertheless still dangerous. And the principle that carbon dioxide warms the atmosphere dates back to the time of the American Civil War. It is not late- breaking news. It is sound, solid, established science.

Quite simply, the position that carbon dioxide is not causing climate change is the extreme one. The overwhelming majority of climate scientists--at least 95 percent of them--accept that global climate change is driven by the carbon pollution caused by our human activity.

We are having a hearing this week on climate change in the Environment and Public Works Committee. Even the witnesses invited by the minority to that EPW hearing acknowledge the effects of carbon on our climate. In a recent interview, minority witness Dr. Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama-Huntsville said:

I don't deny that there's been warming. In fact, I do not

even deny that some of the warming is due to mankind.

In another interview, he said:

I'm one of those scientists that think adding carbon

dioxide to the atmosphere should cause some amount of

warming. The question is, how much?

Another minority witness, Dr. Roger Pielke of the University of Colorado, testified before the House Committee on Government Reform back in 2006. Here is what he said:

Human-caused climate change is real and requires attention

by policy makers to both mitigation and adaptation--but there

is no quick fix; the issue will be with us for decades and

longer.

These are statements by the witnesses invited by the Republican side.

It is simply not credible any longer to just deny climate change. The view that carbon emissions have caused climate change is shared by virtually every major scientific organization, from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, to the American Geophysical Union, to the American Meteorological Society.

But, of course, to the polluters, this is not about the facts. It is about political power. They bought this clout and they are going to use it, facts be damned.

The Republican response to the President's climate plan even served up the old climategate fantasy; that is, the faux scandal in which hacked e-mails between climate scientists were selectively quoted to try to throw doubt on years of peer-reviewed research. The scientists, my colleague said, ``were exposed for lying about the science for all those years.'' Nothing of the kind is true. None of it. Because of the kerfuffle about this, eight groups, including the Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Commerce and the National Science Foundation, reviewed those whipped-up allegations against the researchers and found no evidence of fraud--none.

It turns out the so-called climategate scandal is pure fantasy, but even that fantasy flies in low orbit compared to the high-flying Republican fantasies about what regulating carbon pollution would do. According to my colleague, putting a price on carbon pollution will cost ``about $3,000 a year for each taxpayer.'' There is some history here. This scary misleading number has been kicked around by Republicans since 2009. As the colleague noted, the $3,000-per-year figure is derived from a 2007 MIT assessment of cap-and-trade proposals. But there is more. When Politifact asked one of the study's authors what he thought of the Republican characterization of his work, here is what he said:

It is just wrong. It is wrong in so many ways, it is hard

to begin.

That is the assertion that is being quoted on the Senate floor--one that is wrong, according to the authors, wrong in so many ways, it is hard to begin.

Politifact rates political statements generally from true to false, but it reserves a special designation for fantasies. Politifact, all the way back in 2009, gave these comments that very special designation: ``Pants On Fire.''

The fact, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, is that the cap-and-trade bill's actual costs were modest, about 48 cents per household per day. Further, it is worth noting that these environmental rules, such as the Clean Air Act--let's use that as an example--actually save money overall. In the case of the Clean Air Act, it has been documented, $40 saved for every $1 spent. There is a 40-to- 1 return on the cost of the Clean Air Act for the benefit of all of us.

Just as fantastical, our colleagues claim that new Environmental Protection Agency greenhouse gas regulations would cover ``every apartment building, church, and every school.'' Here is another good one: `` . . . that EPA will need to hire 230,000 additional employees and spend an additional $21 billion to implement its greenhouse gas regime.''

That may be true in fantasyland, but in reality EPA has specifically issued a rule limiting the regulation of greenhouse gases to only the largest sources such as powerplants, refineries, and other large industrial plants while exempting smaller sources such as restaurants, schools, and other small buildings. In fact, EPA filed a court brief, a signed court brief, a representation to the courts of the United States, that regulating ``every apartment building, church and every school,'' as my colleague put it, is wholly unrealistic.

EPA has fewer than 18,000 employees. To add 230,000 new employees, it would have to increase its workforce by 1,300 percent. Really?

If EPA had 230,000 employees, it would be equivalent to the 20th largest corporation in the United States. It would be larger than General Motors and Walgreens. In fact, back here on Earth, this claim has been evaluated by PolitiFact when it was made by other Republicans. Those similar statements received a rating of ``false.''

I applaud the President for courageously taking the lead on protecting the American people and the American economy from the devastating effects of carbon pollution on our oceans and our atmosphere.

I hope my Republican colleagues would consider the differences between the administration's regulatory approach and the market-based solutions we could implement through bipartisan legislation. I hope they will decide if they are content to holler from the back seat about this or whether they are willing to come forward and join with us, put hands on the wheel, and design commonsense solutions for a very real problem.

Unfortunately, instead of seizing this opportunity, the other side of this debate can't let go of the falsehood, the fallacy, and the fantasy. We were together the other night, Monday night, as a Senate. We joined together, and we went to the Old Senate Chamber to discuss a lot of issues related to the filibuster and to the Senate. A lot of high-minded things were said that Monday night, a lot of good things about the traditions and the institution of the Senate.

Traditions of the Senate worth preserving include that we don't traffic in falsehoods, fallacies, and in ``pants on fire'' fantasies, that we face even unpleasant facts squarely--that is our job--and that we do our job. We have received credible and convincing warnings. We have received compelling calls to act. The denial position has shown itself to be nonsense, a sham. It is time to wake up and for us to do the work necessary to hold back, to mitigate, and to adapt for the climate change that our carbon pollution is causing.

Yet we sleepwalk in this Chamber. We sleepwalk in Congress.

It is time to shelve the falsehood, fallacy and fantasy and have an honest discussion about how we are going to address the very real threat of climate change.

It is time to wake up.

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

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

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

Mr. President, in 1638--375 years ago--a small, brave group of free thinkers banded together to establish an independent democratic community founded upon civil liberty and religious toleration.

The settlers were followers of Anne Hutchinson, a highly educated midwife and controversial figure in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where ideological conformity was enforced by the gallows and the lash. Hutchinson and many of her allies were banished from Massachusetts for challenging the orthodoxy of the Puritan establishment. At the urging of Roger Williams, who had founded the colony of Providence Plantation just 2 years earlier, they settled on nearby Aquidneck Island in Narragansett Bay. The group called themselves the freemen of Pocasset, after the Native American name for the area. Eventually the new community settled on the name of Portsmouth.

With the signing of the Portsmouth Compact on March 7, 1638, these religious dissenters, including John Clarke and William Coddington, formed a ``Bodie Politick'' that held forth the freedom to worship according to one's own conscience. Together with Roger Williams and his Providence colony, they blazed the path for American freedom of religion, one of our enduring national blessings.

Their bold declaration would echo 25 years later in the Royal Charter granted in 1663 by King Charles II to establish the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in New England, which provided the world's first formal establishment of freedom of religion. Their principles of tolerance are the foundation upon which our State, and afterwards our Nation, were built.

Portsmouth, RI, was also the first community in the New World to be founded by a woman. It was in Portsmouth in 1778 that the First Rhode Island Regiment, with its complement of over 100 African-American soldiers, valiantly repulsed British forces in the Battle of Rhode Island. And it was Portsmouth abolitionist and suffragist Julia Ward Howe who penned the patriotic poem, ``The Battle Hymn of the Republic,'' in 1861. The history of Portsmouth is a legacy of America.

I am proud to join with our State's senior senator, Jack Reed, and all Rhode Islanders in congratulating the people of Portsmouth on this historic milestone.

I ask unanimous consent the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 183 and the Senate proceed to its consideration.

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 understand that there are three bills at the desk, and I ask for their first reading en bloc.

I now ask for a second reading en bloc, and I object to my own request en bloc.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, July 18, 2013; 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 the majority leader be recognized; that following the remarks of the two leaders, the Senate be in a period of morning business for 1 hour, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each, with the time equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the first half controlled by the majority and the second half controlled by the Republicans; that following morning business, the Senate resume executive session to consider Calendar No. 99, the nomination of Thomas Perez to be Secretary of Labor, postcloture; further, that all time during adjournment, morning business, legislative session, and recess count postcloture on the Perez nomination.

Mr. President, I am informed by the leader that we hope to confirm both the Perez and McCarthy nominations on Thursday.

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

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

I ask I be permitted to speak in morning business for up to 20 minutes.

Madam President, I am here for my 38th weekly ``Time to Wake Up'' speech, and today I want to ask the question: What if?

What if climate change is real? What if the 30-plus gigatons of carbon pollution mankind is dumping into the atmosphere every year makes a difference? What if it is warming the planet and changing the weather? What if it is warming the seas and raising their level and making them more acidic? What then? What if this is serious?

What if this is serious and we are not? What if this is serious and we are sleepwalking when we should be awake? What if this is deadly serious and we are reckless when we should be responsible?

What if we are completely missing this moment in history? Winston Churchill talked about ``sharp agate points upon which . . . destiny turns.'' What if our destiny will turn based upon what we do about carbon? What if we have been warned? What if we have been thoroughly and convincingly and reliably warned? What if we have been warned by virtually every climate scientist--at least 95 percent of them--by the scientists who work for the United States of America at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, by the vast majority of scientific societies, such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Meteorological Society, among others?

I ask unanimous consent to have a letter from a great number of those organizations printed at the conclusion of my remarks.

What if we have been thoroughly and convincingly and reliably warned by thorough, convincing, and reliable scientists and have chosen instead to listen to the cranks and the polluters?

Let's play this out a bit. Foresight is supposed to be a capability of our species. What if it turns out the world will care about this? We Americans have held ourselves out as a beacon of light to other nations. We have proclaimed we are a shining city on a hill. What if that is true? What if President Clinton was right; that the power of our American example is, indeed, greater than any example of our power? What if Daniel Webster was right; that if the example of our great democratic experiment ever became an argument against that experiment, it would sound the knell of popular liberty throughout the world? What if our political and moral failure to address carbon pollution became, in fact, an argument against our American example, an argument against our American example punctuated by the exclamation points of local climate change happening right there in towns and barrios, hills and hamlets, on coasts and farms all around the world?

What if the world takes notice of that? What if the world takes notice of what is already happening all around them and takes notice of how we blew it at dealing with carbon pollution and, as a result, turns away from our great American experiment because of this conspicuous and consequential failure of American democratic governance and leadership?

Let's really push it here. What if Abraham Lincoln was right, was not just making it up when he said America was ``the last best hope of Earth.'' The last best hope of Earth. He was not alone. Thomas Jefferson too in his first inaugural said this American Government was ``the world's best hope.''

What if we are, indeed, the last best hope of Earth, a hope which it is up to each American generation to, as Lincoln said, ``nobly save or meanly lose''? What if we in this generation of Americans meanly lose such a measure of that American light and hope in the world? What if we, the children of the ``greatest generation,'' were to blunder into history as the ``vilest generation'' because we failed so badly at this plain and present duty?

In sum, what if the deniers, the mockers, and the scoffers are wrong? What if they are wrong? Someone has to be. There are two sides to this. What if it is the deniers and the scoffers and the mockers who are wrong? What if the evidence keeps piling up and the tide of public opinion keeps going out and the deniers are left stranded with their inadequacies plainly visible?

Please, let's look at the two sides. On the side of waking up and doing something about carbon pollution: the President of the United States of America, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and our military leaders, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Council of the Churches of Christ, and many faith groups and leaders. On the side of waking up: icons of our American corporate community, including GM, Ford, Coke, Pepsi, Nike, Apple, Walmart, and hundreds of others. Also on the side of waking up: the property casualty insurance and reinsurance industry and many in the electric utility industry and the vast majority of national scientific societies. In particular, I wish to mention the scientists at NASA who right now are driving an SUV- sized rover around on the surface of Mars. That might be an organization whose scientists actually know what they are talking about.

What if it turns out that the other side of the argument is actually phony?

What if it turns out that the other side of the argument is a few cranks, a lot of people and organizations on the payroll of the polluters, and a cynical propaganda campaign intended to mislead and deceive?

What if it is the argument that climate change is a hoax--which we hear around here--what if it is that argument that is the real hoax?

What if the so-called climategate scandal was no fraud at all, but the whipped-up allegations were the fraud and the so-called climategate was really climategate-gate?

What if that cynical, polluter-driven propaganda campaign is one of the biggest and most successful frauds ever perpetrated on the public-- a fraud that, when it is ultimately exposed for what it is, will change the way we think about political information and trust in corporations, just as my generation seeing the Cuyahoga River burn changed the way we thought about the environment?

What if the great climate denial fraud will stand in the annals of American scandal beside Watergate and Teapot Dome and the corruption leading up to the great crash of 1929 as a dark smear across the pages of our American history?

There was an iconic recruiting poster for World War I. I wish I had it with me, but I don't. It is a picture of a fellow sitting in his armchair with two little children, and they are asking him: ``Daddy, what did you do in the Great War?'' And he is looking sadly out at the viewer of the poster because clearly he had not done his part in the great war. That was the message of that poster--``Daddy, what did you do in the Great War?'' What if we have to be asked by our children and grandchildren, when they are studying this disgraceful episode in their history classes, ``Mommy, what did you do in the great climate fraud? Grandpa, what did you do in the great climate fraud?''

Why do I come every week to give these speeches? Because these questions stick in my craw. These are the questions that haunt me and that I can't shake. And upon the answer to these questions, to these what-ifs, the future may depend, destiny may turn. I have asked them today as questions, but many of the answers are already clear. Many of the answers are crystal clear. Many of the answers are so likely clear that no rational person would bet against them. And many of the answers carry stakes so high that they cry out for prudent choices to be made.

Many of the answers are crystal clear--as clear as measurement. For at least 800,000 years the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere held between 170 and 300 parts per million of carbon dioxide--for 800,000 years, always in that range. Now it is 400 parts per million and climbing. That is a measurement. Oceans are already 30 percent more acidic than before the Industrial Revolution and getting more so. That is a measurement. The winter water temperature of Narragansett Bay has risen 4 degrees since the 1960s. That is a measurement. Millions of acres of western pine forest, once protected by cold, have been ravaged by the pine beetle. That is a measurement. Thirteen of the past 15 years are among the hottest 15 years on record. That is a measurement. Being against science is one thing. Being against measurement, that takes us to a new extreme.

Many of the answers are so likely clear that no rational, prudent person would bet against them. The principle that carbon dioxide and water vapor in the atmosphere create a greenhouse effect that warms the planet goes back to the time of the American Civil War. It is firmly established science.

The head of the World Bank recently said, ``If you disagree with the science of human-caused climate change, you are not disagreeing that there is anthropogenic climate change; what you are disagreeing with is science itself.''

I submit that my denier colleagues in their own personal lives would never take the wild risks, the reckless risks they are asking us to take on carbon. If they went to 100 doctors and 95 or more of the doctors told them that their child or grandchild needed treatment and it was urgent, I doubt very much they would go with the three or four who didn't. In fact, it would probably be a matter for their State child welfare services if they ignored that kind of warning about the health of a child or a grandchild. But that is what they want us to do on carbon pollution.

Many of the answers carry stakes so high that they plead for prudent and rational choices. The downside is so deep that the balance has to be toward precaution if we are indeed a rational species. We are talking about fundamental changes in the habitability of our planet, with considerable human dislocation and disorder a likely result. We are talking about measurements of basic planetary conditions veering outside the entirety of human experience, to measurements whose antecedents are found only in geologic time and which we find there in the geologic record, associated with massive disruptions, upheavals, and die-offs.

The facts are clearly measured, the principles are solid and sound, and the stakes are very high. Yet we sleepwalk on the precipice, refusing to listen, refusing to speak of it, refusing to act when duty calls us to act. It is time to wake up--or perhaps I should say, what if it really is time to wake up and we are just missing it, sleepwalking on the lip of the precipice, listening to the lullabies of the polluters, and ignoring the facts and consequences that are plain to our sight and reason, plain in front of our faces? What then?