Floor Statements

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

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

I am here on the floor today just to say a few words to follow the distinguished chairman of the Commerce Committee in support of the Marketplace Fairness Act.

I represent Rhode Island and I have to say my Governor, a former member of this body, Lincoln Chafee; the president of our State senate, Senator Teresa Paiva; our speaker of the house, Gordon Fox, and numerous other Rhode Island organizations have ardently urged us to pass this legislation. The reason for that is twofold. No. 1, they are losing immense amounts of tax revenue that is swirling down this loophole of noncollection. Actually, the number I think is $23 billion for 2012. Rhode Island is not the biggest State, so we don't have a huge chunk of it, but it is about $70 million for Rhode Island, which is pretty significant. So it is important to all of us, while the States are struggling, to make sure tax revenue that is due and just not being collected is put into the revenue equation.

The second thing is that it really just plain is not fair to the local businesses that have shops on Main Street, that have shops in the local shopping malls, to have competition with electronic delivery companies, with companies that exist on the Internet and with Internet shopping, that are subsidized, in effect, by the government.

Very often my colleagues come to the floor to say government should not

pick winners and losers. Government should not pick winners and losers--how many times have we heard that? If I had a nickel for every time somebody on the other side of the house said government should not pick winners and losers, I would probably be a wealthy man. But ``government should not pick winners and losers'' is a principle that really applies in this area because those companies that are operating a brick-and-mortar storefront are paying their taxes--they are paying their taxes--and the noncollection on the Internet sales puts them at an unfair disadvantage.

There are conveniences to Internet sales. Nobody wants to get rid of that. It is an important, growing part of our economy. I am all for that. In fact, I think I have family members who shop that way, including a daughter who is one of the more ardent eBay shoppers in the country, I suspect. But in any event, it is very important that we not add to the natural advantages Internet shopping has by creating this additional, manufactured tax advantage.

It comes down to a point that I think you could appreciate if you can put yourself in the shoes of a small business owner. Imagine that you own an electronic goods store and you sell televisions--imagine that you are a shoestore owner and you sell shoes for kids and adults--and somebody comes into your electronics store and they look at all the TVs, they call over your salesperson and they get the whole briefing on what is best and how you hook it up and all of the technical details about it, and they see exactly what they want. Then, when they have decided what they want, that is the moment when they should reach into their wallet and pull out their credit card and say: I will take that one. I will buy it. Instead, they reach into their pocket and they pull out a notepad and they write down the details of the television they were looking at, and they say thank you very much to the store owner, and they walk out and they buy it off the Internet.

The brick-and-mortar store has put all the expense into having the overhead, into having the television there, and into having the expert salespeople there, and a consumer takes advantage of that but then does not buy it, goes outside. That may still happen, but it will happen less if we can take out the unfair disadvantage that brick-and-mortar store owner has and put that back into balance.

I have had a shoestore owner say the same thing. A parent comes in, sits the kids down, and has the sales clerk bring out boxes of shoes. They try them all on, see which ones the kids like, see which ones fit best. Then, when they are all done and they are ready to make their purchase, again, out with the notepad. They write down the brand of the shoe, the size of the shoe, and then walk out of the store, and there is the sales clerk left to box up the shoes, wrap them back up in the paper, take them back in the back again, and they took all that effort and all that expense and they never made the sale.

Again, there are advantages to shopping on the Internet, and there are probably times when that kind of behavior by consumers will continue. But why add the subsidy of uncollected taxes to the advantages the Internet shopper has? Our local stores, our local small businesses need to have this set right and set into balance.

There has been a concern raised that the Marketplace Fairness Act would create all this immense bureaucracy and it would be so difficult to do this. That is really not true. The computer and billing systems that exist right now make this a virtually seamless transaction, and States are obliged before they can do it to come into compliance with the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement, which is a compact among States, developed by them, that has coordinated the different State tax laws so that this process can be easy and streamlined.

So I think this is a good moment coming for us after a very lousy week last week. We have the chance to get together on a bill that in the budget process I think gathered 70 votes--maybe more than 70 votes. I do not remember the exact count, but it was a very strong majority in this body. It was a completely bipartisan vote, with proponents and opponents on either side.

But I think that in the interest of fairness, in the interest of economic efficiency, in the interest of not picking winners and losers, and in the interest of helping to move our economy forward and protecting our stores that are on our Main Streets and in our shopping centers and shopping malls, this is a good thing to do. So I hope we will come together and pass this bill and show that we can act productively and in a bipartisan fashion and that we will do so this week.

I thank the Presiding Officer and again thank the chairman of the Commerce Committee for his leadership and enthusiasm.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent all time be yielded back.

Mr. President, I rise today in support of commonsense legislation to address the epidemic of gun violence in America.

In the aftermath of the Newtown tragedy, Americans across the country began a solemn discussion about gun violence, and an emerging consensus has formed around several much-needed reforms.

The Senate Judiciary Committee heard compelling testimony in support of these measures, we debated them, and we reported them to the full Senate. It is time now for the Senate to debate and pass this legislation. We can achieve greater safety in our schools, movie theaters, churches, and malls, and on our city streets, without infringing on anyone's constitutional right to bear arms.

A large majority of the public wants to keep dangerous weapons off the streets and out of the hands of criminals.

The legislation that we are voting on includes several important provisions. First, it would close loopholes that allow millions of gun purchasers each year to evade the background check system without scrutiny. Under current law, a convicted felon, a drug addict, a domestic abuser, or someone who has been determined by a court to be dangerously mentally ill, can easily evade background checks by purchasing firearms at a gun show or online.

The American people understand that allowing so many gun purchasers to evade background check laws does not make sense: Universal background checks are supported by over 90 percent of the public. As President Obama has said, ``How often do 90 percent of Americans agree on anything?''

Second, to stop people from subverting existing gun laws, this legislation clearly outlaws straw purchases, where an individual buys a firearm for someone who cannot legally buy one. It also clarifies and expands existing trafficking laws to give our law enforcement officials the tools they need to combat gun violence.

Third, the legislation includes a commonsense grant program to improve school and campus safety. No parent should have to worry, when they walk their son to the bus stop, or drop their daughter off at her dorm, whether they are safe. I hope we can all agree on the importance of protecting our children.

We will also be considering an assault weapons ban as an amendment. This proposal, which I cosponsor, helps restrict the sort of military- style assault weapons that have no place in a civilian setting.

I know that in the politics of this issue, the assault weapons ban has uphill sledding. But I would certainly hope we can agree on a ban on high-capacity magazines. The full assault weapons ban has the support of the majority of Americans; the ban on high-capacity magazines has even more overwhelming support from the public. In recent polling, 65 percent of Americans said that they support a ban on high- capacity magazines.

It is no wonder that the public overwhelmingly supports this ban. As we heard in testimony before the Judiciary Committee and in other venues, in almost every mass shooting in the past few years, high- capacity magazines led to additional deaths and injuries.

John Walsh, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Colorado, testified that in Aurora the shooter used a hundred-round drum and was able to murder 12 people and injure 58 in a matter of 90 seconds. The carnage only stopped when that ultra-large feeding device jammed.

Captain Mark Kelly testified that in Tucson, the shooter had a 33 round magazine and was able to kill 6 people and injure 12 in a matter of 15 seconds. He was only overwhelmed when he eventually had to change magazines. Nine-year-old Christina-Taylor Green was killed by the thirteenth bullet from that magazine. That little girl might well be alive today if her murderer had to stop to reload after 10 rounds.

We have heard no reasonable justification for why any civilian needs these deadly devices. They are not appropriate for hunting. A number of laws already restrict the number of rounds per magazine for hunting, and most sportsmen would not want to hunt with high-capacity magazines.

These magazines also are not necessary or appropriate for self- defense. Opponents of this legislation talk about the need for high- capacity magazines and assault weapons in nightmare scenarios: society breaking down following a terrorist attack, or natural disaster; or gangs of armed intruders breaking into homes.

But there is no evidence that anyone has been made safer by having access to these magazines, and law enforcement officials and experts have repeatedly pointed to the dangers of keeping them in the home. Even some gun clubs ban their use on the range, because they are so dangerous.

I have also cosponsored an amendment to close the so-called ``terror gap.'' Believe it or not, under the existing law, someone on a terrorist watch list would not be allowed to board an airplane, but there is nothing stopping him or her from buying a gun. This loophole is ridiculous and dangerous, and we should close it immediately.

These proposals are reasonable measures that would make our communities safer from gun violence. I urge the Senate to pass them.

Amendment No. 715

Madam President, we are gathered in the Senate in the somber shadow of the events in Boston at the marathon, and I guess I will start by conveying my sympathies to the individuals and their families who were killed or hurt in that terrible act. I share the determination of so many people that our law enforcement folks will indeed get to the bottom of this; that they will get the resources they need, and we will have answers

and justice for the families who are affected.

Climate Change

I rise today, though, on the subject I come to the floor every week we are in session to discuss, which is the need for this body to wake up to the reality of the clear scientific consensus that human activity is driving serious changes in our climate and oceans.

For more than two decades the fossil fuel companies and certain rightwing extremists have cooked up a well-organized campaign to call into question the scientific evidence of climate change. The paid-for deniers then manufacture an interesting product--they manufacture uncertainty--so the polluters who are doing the paying can also keep polluting because a sufficient atmosphere of uncertainty has been created to inhibit progress.

This is not a new strategy. We have seen this played before. Industries eager to drown out scientific evidence to maximize profit is not a new story. They questioned the merits of requiring seatbelts in automobiles, they questioned the toxic effects of lead exposure, and they questioned whether tobacco was really bad for people. Well, they were wrong then and they are wrong now about climate.

Interestingly, they do not actually care. It is not their purpose to be accurate; they just want to create doubt, to sow enough of a question to stop progress. So these sophisticated campaigns are launched to give the public the false impression there actually is a real scientific debate over climate change. In the Senate, regrettably, some of my colleagues even promote this view.

But let's be practical. Which is the more likely case: Are a handful of nonprofit environmental groups using their limited funding to pay off literally hundreds and hundreds of climate scientists in an internationally coordinated hoax to falsify complicated climate research? Really? Or is it more likely that fossil fuel corporations are using a slice of their immense profits to float front groups to protect their immense profits? Well, I think the answer to that question is obvious just from the logic, but we don't have to apply logic. We can follow the money and look at evidence.

According to an analysis by the Checks and Balances Project, a self- described pro-clean-energy government and industry watchdog group, from 2006 to 2010, four sources of fossil fuel money--just four of them-- contributed more than $16 million to a group of conservative think tanks that go about the business of being publicly critical of climate science and of clean energy. Those four sources are the Charles G. Koch Foundation, the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, the Earhart Foundation, and oil giant ExxonMobil.

On the receiving end is a lengthy roster of well-known and often- cited right-ward leaning outfits. We will just talk about the top 10 in this set of remarks. They are the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heartland Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Institute for Energy Research, the George C. Marshall Institute, the Manhattan Institute, and the Mercatus Center.

Who is giving? Well, Charles Koch is the chairman and CEO of Koch Industries and the sixth richest person on the planet. Koch Industries is the second largest privately held company in the United States of America. Koch companies include the Koch Pipeline Company and Flint Hills Resources, which operates refineries with a combined crude oil processing capacity of more than 292 million barrels per year. That much oil accounts for 126 million metric tons of carbon pollution each year--as much as 35 coal-fired powerplants produce or 26 million cars.

So to put it mildly, this fellow has some skin in the game. Between 2006 and 2010, the Charles G. Koch Foundation gave almost $8 million to think tanks and institutes, including $7.6 million to the Mercatus Center, and $100,000 to the American Enterprise Institute.

Charles Koch, along with his brother David, also established the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation--those two have the same source-- and they direct that foundation's giving as well. This foundation provided almost $5 million to climate-denying think tanks and institutes, including over $1 million to the Cato Institute and more than $2 million to the Heritage Foundation.

The Earhart Foundation was started by Henry Boyd Earhart, using funds from his oil business, White Star Refining Company--now a part of, you guessed it, ExxonMobil. The Earhart Foundation has donated almost $1.5 million to climate denier groups, $370,000 to the American Enterprise Institute, $330,000 to the Cato Institute, and another $195,000 to the George C. Marshall Institute.

That leaves us, of course, ExxonMobil itself, which is the second largest corporation in the world and often the most profitable. Ranked No. 1 among Fortune 500 companies, its total revenues reached nearly $\1/2\ trillion in 2012, and their profits were nearly $45 billion. ExxonMobil produces over 6 million barrels of oil per day at its 36 refineries in 20 countries. So it is the world's largest oil producer. From 2006 to 2010, the petroleum giant gave institutes more than $2.3 million: $1.2 million to the American Enterprise Institute, $220,000 to the Heritage Foundation, $160,000 for the Institute for Energy Research, and $115,000 for the Heartland Institute.

So what did the Charles G. Koch Foundation and the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation and the Earhart Foundation and ExxonMobil get for all of that so-called charitable giving? Well, the Checks and Balances Project found from 2007 to 2011 the 10 organizations I cited--the top 10--were quoted or cited or had articles published over 1,000 times-- over 1,000 times--in 60 mainstream newspapers and print publications, and invariably they were promoting fossil fuels, undermining renewable energy, or attacking environmental policies.

That is good investing--spend millions of dollars on a handful of think tanks to protect billions of dollars in profits. Really, it is a 1,000-to-1 return. But here is the problem. The public is unaware of the connection usually. Only a handful of these attacks were accompanied by any explanation by the media the fossil fuel industry was involved in them.

Here is one prime example: Last summer, when the Navy displayed its great green fleet, a carrier strike group that runs on a 50-50 blend of biodiesel and petroleum, Institute for Energy Research president Thomas Kyl wrote a column for U.S. News and World Report calling that initiative ``ridiculous'' and ``a costly and pointless exercise.'' Never mind for a moment our defense and intelligence communities have repeatedly warned of the threats posed by climate change to national security and international stability and of their own need to secure a reliable and secure fuel supply.

What is misleading is that the U.S. News and World Report in publishing that article attributed the column simply thus, ``Thomas Pyle is the president of the Institute for Energy Research,'' with no mention the Institute for Energy Research is a front for big donors such as the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation and ExxonMobil.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 5 additional minutes.

The problem is that this is one example of a misleading practice that is the norm in the media. More than half of the time, media outlets do nothing more than state the name of the publishing organization, such as ``Thomas Pyle and the Institute for Energy Research,'' or they may add a functional description such as ``think tank'' or ``nonpartisan group.''

The instances where the publication described the basic ideology of the group--for example, as a ``free market'' or ``conservative'' think tank--amount to less than one-third. In all of the media outlets reviewed between 2007 and 2011, the financial ties between the authors and the fossil fuel industry were mentioned a mere 6 percent of the time. Ninety-four percent of the time, the fossil fuel industry funders got away with it.

This chart shows some of the examples. The Washington Post ignored the financial connection 88 percent of the time, Politico ignored the financial

connection 95 percent of the time, the Christian Science Monitor ignored it every time, USA TODAY ignored it 98 percent of the time, and the New York Times ignored it 90 percent of the time. So the scam of laundering money through independent-sounding organizations works. The media lets it work. The vast majority of scientists agree that global warming is occurring, but a recent Gallup Poll revealed that only 62 percent of Americans believe that the vast majority of scientists agree that global warming is occurring.

Well over 90 percent of scientists agree that climate change is happening and that humans are the main cause. The only uncertainty is about how bad it is going to be, and the leading research predicts warmer air and seas, rising sea levels, stronger storms, and more acidic oceans.

Most major players in the private sector actually get it. While the big fossil fuel polluters try to confuse the public in order to boost their bottom line and prolong their pollution, hundreds of leading corporations understand that climate change ultimately undermines our entire economy. Let me mention some of the examples: the Ford Motor Company; Coca-Cola; GE; Walmart; the insurance giant Munich Re; Alcoa, the great aluminum maker; Maersk; Proctor & Gamble; FedEx; and the so- called BICEP group, which includes eBay, Intel, Starbucks, Adidas, and Nike.

This notion that this is a hoax, that there is doubt, is belied by some of the most respected names in the private sector. Those companies join the National Academies, they join NASA, they join the U.S. Department of Defense, the Government Accountability Office, the American Public Health Association, and, yes, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, as well as a majority of Americans in understanding that it is time to wake up, to end this faux controversy that has been cooked up by the fossil fuel industry, and to do the work in Congress that needs to be done to protect Americans from the harms of carbon pollution.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, I am back again to speak about carbon and climate and to remind my colleagues that it is long past time for us to wake up and to address the causes and consequences of global climate change. Carbon pollution is changing our world, and it is time that our national policies reflect the reality of that changing climate. We cannot pretend the change is not going to happen when it is actually already happening all around us.

Air and ocean temperatures are increasing, the sea level is rising, oceans are growing more acidic, seasons are shifting, and extreme events such as heat waves or powerful storms are becoming both more frequent and more intense. Well-established science tells us these changes are caused by carbon pollution in our atmosphere, mostly from burning fossil fuels. These changes to our planet will continue and likely accelerate, and the consequences will be dire. We had better be aware and prepared. Sometimes even little changes can have big effects.

For example, take the winter flounder in the waters of Narragansett Bay in my home State of Rhode Island. I am sure the Presiding Officer's home State has winter flounder as well. Many of our colleagues will not give a hoot about the winter flounder, but Congress always tends to care a lot about money, and the winter flounder has historically been a very popular and lucrative catch for Rhode Island fishermen.

In the 1980s, commercial landings of winter flounder averaged more than 2,500 metric tons per year, and as recently as 1989 it was still over 1,000 metric tons. Trawlers were a common sight on the bay in the winter and fishermen prospered. The most recent data from 2009 for the commercial landing of winter flounder is down to about 150 metric tons. It went from 2,500 metric tons down to 150, and today trawlers in the bay are a rare sight.

Narragansett Bay waters are getting warmer--4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer in the winter since the 1960s. Spring is coming earlier, and that is not good for the winter flounder. NOAA scientists working in Rhode Island found that winter flounder that incubated in warmer water are smaller when they hatch than those that incubated in colder water. Smaller juveniles are easier prey when predators return with the warmer spring water.

The juvenile winter flounder used to have time to settle to the bottom of the bay and grow larger before the abundant bottom feeders, such as the sand shrimp, were present. Now warmer water brings the shrimp in earlier while the flounder is still small enough to eat. So warmer waters load the dice against winter flounder in the Narragansett Bay, and the fishermen who relied upon them pay the price. They pay a real price.

These changes to Rhode Island are not unique to Rhode Island. We can find examples all over the country. The Pacific Coast has ocean acidification--driven by the higher levels of carbon dioxide in the water--which is killing off baby oysters as they try to form their shells in the acidified water. Again, I don't know how many colleagues care about baby oysters, but oyster farming is a serious cash crop on the Pacific Coast. An oyster hatchery in Oregon has seen 70- to 80- percent losses of its oyster larvae due to the acidic waters washing in from the sea.

It is not just the oceans and coasts that are affected. In our Heartland, rivers and forests are facing the changes coming with the warming climate. The water hyacinth is an invasive species spreading rapidly across the Southern United States, blocking waterways and choking native species.

The water hyacinth has been called the world's worst aquatic weed. The pest renders a body of water unsuitable for most other plants and animals, drains water from the drinking and irrigation supply, and can clog pumping stations and hydropower infrastructures, costing local economies millions of dollars. Water hyacinths cannot survive a winter freezing, but as the average temperature warms, this species spreads further and further.

In the Rockies, pine beetles are devastating native forests. The pine beetle larvae are killed by hard frosts, and so this kept them in lower latitudes and in lower altitudes where the temperature was warmer. With global warming and winters that are not so cold, the beetle is spreading northward and upward to higher elevations.

Fly over Idaho or Montana and look down. What was once miles and miles of green pine forest is now standing dead on the mountainsides. These forests provided timber, hunting, clear streams, and an entire forest environment for birds and animals. It doesn't look like they are ever coming back.

Winter flounder, baby oysters, water hyacinth, pine beetles, these species pinpoint just a few of the many changes scientists are observing in nearly every corner of our country. Thankfully, we now have the beginnings of a blueprint for adapting to these changes.

Last month, the Obama administration--in partnership with State and tribal industries--released its first National Fish, Wildlife and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy. It is an attempt to understand and head off--or at least prepare for--the changes carbon pollution is beginning to wreak on our country's wildlife, plants, coasts, and rivers.

Jamie Rappaport Clark, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife, called the adaptation plan a ``science-based . . . commonsense, `look- before-you-leap' strategy [that] emphasizes long term planning and management for climate change on a fundamental level.''

The adaptation strategy stresses that we need research to understand the specific effects of climate change on local fish, wildlife, plants, and habitat. The faster you are driving, the better your headlights need to be, and it is scientific research that provides the headlights for us to see what is now coming at us.

We are past the point of avoiding what is coming at us. The big polluters have seen to that. With their lobbyists, their money, and their lies, they have prevented us from doing what we should have. Of course, Congress shares the blame. This institution prefers listening to self-interested polluters than listening to science or the signals of nature.

There is no avoiding it now. The National Wildlife Federation now recommends ``managing for change, rather than maintaining status quo conditions,'' and urges that ``[f]ederal land and water management agencies should explicitly incorporate climate change projections into their resource management planning.''

A coalition of 21 groups--including American Rivers, National Audubon Society, Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Wilderness Society, and the World Wildlife Fund--have urged the Federal Government to account for climate change in all relevant programs and activities. They called this adaptation strategy ``a landmark . . . strategy for making wildlife and ecosystems more resilient to climate impacts.'' Clearly, they recognize that climate impacts are inevitable. Indeed, they are happening. The question is: How bad are they going to be? How much damage will we let the polluters do before we bring them to heel and ourselves to our senses?

The Natural Resources Defense Council echoed a recent Government Accountability Office finding that our current adaptation planning is inadequate and that this--for those who only care about money-- increases the Federal Government's fiscal exposure to climate change.

A group of 10 outdoor enthusiasts and sportsmen's groups, led by the Wildlife Management Institute, recently urged President Obama ``to stand firm on his commitment to develop and implement climate change adaptation strategies'' because they know we have to adapt.

The alarm has long been sounded by the scientific community which overwhelmingly warns about the effects of our carbon dioxide emissions on our atmosphere and oceans. Our defense and intelligence communities warn of the threats posed by climate change to national security and international stability. Economists recognize the market distortion of overlooking the costs of carbon pollution.

Let me say a word of appreciation to former Secretary George Schultz, who wrote an excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal pointing out that this is, indeed, a market distortion that favors polluting fossil fuels and gives them an unfair advantage against other forms of energy that would do less damage to our planet.

Of course, government accountants list climate change as a threat to our fiscal stability. Even faith leaders appeal to our moral responsibility to shield communities--and particularly the poorest communities here at home and around the globe--from the devastating effects of carbon pollution on God's Earth.

Now the alarm is sounded by those dedicated to the conservation of America's wild spaces and living creatures. They are warning that thanks to Congress's neglect, change is coming to our planet locality by locality. They are warning that we had better understand and prepare for those changes and do what we can to minimize the eventual havoc.

The American people are not sitting idly by on this. They are demanding action. Three-quarters of those recently surveyed by Stanford University think the Federal Government should do something to reduce the effects of rising sea levels.

My Newport tidal gauge in my home State in the famous sailing port of Newport is up 10 inches since the famous hurricane of 1938. When the next big one comes, that 10 inches is going to mean a lot of additional damage. Americans believe national preparations for the climate change that is around us will more likely help the economy than hurt it, and they are right. These changes will help the economy.

Sixty percent of Americans believe that taking steps now to adapt would actually create more jobs while only 13 percent thought it would create fewer jobs. Sixty percent as opposed to 13 percent of Americans recognize that the real economic strength we will get is by addressing this problem, not by ducking it because of the pressure from the carbon polluters.

Americans clearly see the benefits of adapting for climate change. Again, for those who only care about money, Americans see the economic benefits of addressing climate change.

I will say once again it is time for us in Congress to wake up. We are sleepwalking through history. We are asleep to the urgent demands of our time. It is time to wake up and prepare our national strategy to protect our Nation's precious resources, protect our coasts and forests and plains, protect our animal and plant life, protect our people and our communities against the inexorable change that looms.

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

Mr. President, I thank Senator Coons.

The Senate budget resolution that we have worked so hard on would, first, replace the harmful budget sequester, the effects of which are only beginning to be felt in our communities--with balanced deficit reduction. Second, it would invest in our crumbling roads, bridges, and water infrastructure. Our engineers give our infrastructure a D-plus. Clearly, we need to make that investment, and it would support continued job creation and economic growth.

Despite this sensible, balanced approach, not a single Republican supported this budget in committee. Republicans prefer to raid the programs that the middle class depends on, while protecting the rich and the well-connected.

A CBS News poll conducted last September shows that 78 percent of Americans favor continuing the current guarantee of Medicare coverage for seniors--78 percent. But the Republican budget would gut Medicare, turning it into a voucher program for those 55 and under--basically putting Medicare into a death spiral. And it would end the Medicare guarantee that has been the pillar of American retirement for half a century.

More than 3 million seniors right now save an average of $700 a year on prescriptions because we closed the dread doughnut hole. Well, the Republican budget throws them right back in the doughnut hole, forcing today's seniors to pay an additional $700 a year, on average, out of pocket.

Sixty million Americans got to college and were able to seize their dreams because of Pell grants. The Republican plan cuts Pell grants, dropping an estimated million students in this vital program. This Ryan Republican plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program is so extreme and so radical that even Republicans are speaking out against it.

Congressman David McKinley voted against the Ryan budget. He said, ``My home State of West Virginia has the highest percentage of Medicare beneficiaries in the country, and I cannot support a plan that the Congressional Budget Office has determined would nearly double out-of- pocket healthcare costs for future retirees.''

Of course, former Speaker Newt Gingrich described this plan as ``right-wing social engineering.'' This Republican budget makes enormous mystery cuts in the budget. Chairman Ryan claims he can cut $900 billion of appropriated domestic spending over the next 10 years. That means border security, that means the FBI, that means medical research, that means student financial aid, that means the grants that support our efforts to combat violence against women.

Under the extreme radical Republican budget, domestic discretionary spending will fall to its lowest level as a share of GDP since we started keeping track in 1962. There were not even Pell grants in 1962. There was not even Medicare in 1962. Their future is our distant past.

Chairman Ryan would push $810 billion onto our States to shift costs to the States for Medicaid, and find another mystery $962 billion in unspecified entitlement grants. He boasts that the Republican budget repeals ObamaCare but he puts all of the savings from ObamaCare in the budget.

He cannot have it both ways. It is not even an honest budget. It is politically, mathematically, and logically unrealistic. It is not a balanced budget so much as magical thinking. Even if the unrealistic program cuts in the Republican budget could be made, the plan ignores the economic damage that would result.

We have had the austerity experience. We have had the austerity experience in Europe. The evidence is in. Deep austerity cuts in Spain, Greece and Portugal caused persistent double-digit unemployment and negative growth rates. We may be impatient with our unemployment rate, we may be impatient with our low positive growth rate, but the countries that tried what the Republicans want to do have double-digit, 26-percent unemployment rates. Their economic growth is negative. Their economies are shrinking.

The Wall Street Journal just reported that industrial production in the UK after its austerity plans has fallen to its lowest level in 22 years and the country is looking at a third recession. The Republicans who want to emulate European austerity should consider what Jeremy Warner said in the conservative Daily Telegraph.

This is a truly desperate state of affairs. . . . We seem

to have the worst of all possible worlds, with nil growth,

some very obvious cuts in the quantity and quality of public

services, but pretty much zero progress in getting on top of

the country's debts.

That should be a warning. Not only is the Ryan Republican budget's magical thinking unrealistic, it is unfair. It achieves 100 percent of its deficit reduction by cutting government programs that benefit lower and middle-income Americans, while getting nothing--not one dime--from wealthy Americans or corporations. In fact, it would cut the high-end tax rate for corporations and wealthy individuals. It adds more tax breaks for the rich and well-connected, and goes after the lower and middle-class families.

The Republican budget cuts total education and workforce training, for instance, by an estimated 47 percent. It cuts $135 billion out of the food stamp program, which helps feed the poorest Americans. At the same time, if you are making over $1 million, it offers you an average tax cut of $330,000.

For the kind of money the Ryan Republican budget wants to give to the rich and the well-connected, they have to come after the middle class. Chairman Ryan's tax cut would require $5.5 trillion in new revenue. To cover that pricetag, President Clinton revealed the hard truth. I will quote President Bill Clinton:

. . . they'll have to eliminate so many deductions, like

the ones for home mortgages and charitable giving, that

middle-class families will see their tax bills go up.

That is the promise of the Ryan Republican budget--middle-class families will see their tax bills go up. We do not. We take 7 percent out of that, which means we can focus on the corporate tax spending, we can focus on the high-end deductions, on the carried interest exception, so we do not have to go after the middle-class tax cuts.

Let me close by reading one thing. We have just welcomed a new Pope. The Conference of Catholic Bishops had this to say about the Ryan budget last year:

Congress faces a difficult task to balance needs and

resources and allocate burdens and sacrifices. Just

solutions, however, must require shared sacrifice by all,

including raising adequate revenues, eliminating unnecessary

military and other spending, and fairly addressing the long-

term costs of health insurance and retirement programs. The

House-passed budget resolution fails to meet these moral

criteria.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, may I call up amendment No. 646. I believe it is the next one in order.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President and colleagues, we have a new Pope, Pope Francis, who said last week that our relation with God's creation is not very good right now. God's creation runs by laws--the laws of nature, the laws of physics, the laws of chemistry--and God gave us the power of reason to understand those laws. But they are not negotiable. They are not subject to amendment or repeal. And the arrogance of our thinking that they are is an offense to His creation.

We can ignore obvious facts, we can ignore the essentially unanimous science, we can ignore our generals and admirals, we can ignore the insurance industry's warnings, but we ignore carbon pollution at our peril, and we have subsidized it long enough. It is past time to wake up from our sleepwalking. This vote is a test. Whether we pass or fail is a measure of us.

I urge that we support this amendment that will allow us to put a price on carbon and protect the American people.

Mr. President, except perhaps in Congress, and in the boardrooms of ExxonMobil, it is no longer credible to deny what carbon pollution is doing to our atmosphere and to our oceans. We aid and abet that harm by subsidizing carbon, distorting the market, by violating the rule that the cost of a product should be in its price. Nonrepealable laws of nature, laws of physics, laws of chemistry are at work. History's judgment will be harsh if we continue to fail in respecting those laws.

I urge a ``no'' vote and yield back to the Senator from Washington.

Mr. President, I have similar stories to those that have been described on the Senate floor today. Indeed, a former Member of this body, who is now the Governor of our State, Governor Chafee, wrote to me about a bookstore owner in Middletown, RI. The bookstore owner talked about patrons who would browse for books in his store, only to leave without actually making a purchase. He said they would make a list of the books they wanted to buy and then went to get them more cheaply on the Internet.

I have been approached by a Rhode Islander who works in a shoe store. He said he has seen people come in and have his employees bring them boxes of shoes to try on so they can find the exact size and model shoe they want only to then walk out the door without a purchase. They have seen it happen enough that they think what happens is the potential customer is instead going to an Internet site so they can buy the shoe more cheaply.

Now, there are true efficiencies and true benefits to shopping over the Internet. It is very valuable, and it is very sensible. Those are real factors. That is part of progress, and we have no quarrel with that. However, we should not be using discrepancies in taxes to favor shoe companies, one over the other, because one sells over the Internet and the other sells out of a brick-and-mortar store where people can actually come in and try on the shoes.

As a result of this loophole, big businesses who do business over the Internet have $23 billion to fiddle around with that doesn't go to support the kind of civic structure of our society--as Senator Franken talked about.

The complexities are not that great. There is an existing Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement that simplifies this immensely. The tax payments will very shortly be built into the basic business software. The concern about small businesses is misplaced because we completely exempt any business with less than $1 million in annual sales. They have no obligation to comply with this whatsoever.

The National Governors' Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the National Association of Counties, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National League of Cities, the Retail Industry Leaders Association, the National Retail Federation, the International Council of Shopping Centers, and amazon.com, to their credit, as well as AFSCME, support this.

I hope we can use the vote on this amendment to show that this is a piece of legislation that we are willing to move forward on. Then, of course, we will have to go through the legislative process of authorization in order to actually pass it into law. The budget amendment will not pass it into law, but I think it will send an important signal that will bring everybody to the table and finally get us to closure on this important piece of legislation.

I will close by thanking Senator Enzi, whom I see on the floor, for his work and his leadership and dedication in trying to get this right over 14 years. Before it was as easy as it is now to comply with this, he was working on this. Every year it gets easier. Every year the software is able to catch up more. Every year more States join the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement. He and Senator Durbin have

done a service to this country with their leadership on this issue.

It is more than sufficient.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Levin for his leadership on this issue. I am proud to be part of his Levin-Whitehouse group in putting this together. If we boil down the discussions that we are having back and forth about the budget, they come to a very simple question; that is, can we use the money that is in tax avoidance, in tax loopholes toward solving our sequester problem, our deficit problem, and our debt problem?

The way this has been described so far is that there are spending cuts. That is one part of the equation. The other part of the equation is tax increases. That has been the way this has been framed. That overlooks the third big piece of the problem, which is money that goes out the backdoor of the Tax Code without ever coming into the U.S. Government in revenues. I want to let people who are watching know-- because they probably won't believe it--what a colossal number that is.

We get $1.09 trillion in revenue out of the individual Tax Code. We get $181 billion in revenue out of the corporate Tax Code. We give away $1.02 trillion out the backdoor of the Tax Code for individual deductions and loopholes. We give away $157 billion out the backdoor of the Tax Code in corporate deductions and loopholes. The IRS estimates that there is $385 billion which never even gets into the formula because of what Chairman Levin was talking about: companies and individuals who hide their revenue and income offshore so it never even gets into the tax package. If we add it up, there is actually more money lost through tax avoidance than there is collected in tax revenue in this country.

When people talk about only the tax revenue and only spending cuts, they are trying to hide a very big ball. That is the basic difference between the Democratic proposal and the Republican proposal. We want to take $975

billion, which is only 7 percent of all the money that goes out the backdoor of the Tax Code, and use it toward ending the sequester and balancing the budget. That is our proposal. The Ryan Republican proposal is to take 41 percent of that money that goes out the backdoor of the Tax Code and use every nickel of it to lower the high-end rates for corporations and for wealthy Americans who pay the highest end rates. They don't put a dime from this toward either the sequester or deficit reduction. We cannot have that be the rule.

If we take this number, which is an annual number--the minimum is right here, $1.02 trillion plus $157 billion. We do our budget over a 10-year span. These are annual numbers. That means in a 10-budget horizon, we have at least $11.5 trillion going out the backdoor of the Tax Code. If we allow for moderate growth in the economy, it is not $11.5 trillion, it is $14 trillion. If we throw in the nearly $400 billion in offshoring, we are up to nearly $18 trillion--$18 trillion that goes out the back door of the Tax Code.

By the way, although there are important middle-class deductions in the middle of this, such as the home mortgage deduction, there is an awful lot of nonsense and mischief in the tax expenditures that go out the back door of the Tax Code. If we want to know why hedge fund billionaires pay a lower tax rate than their chauffeurs and the hospital orderly rolling his cart down Rhode Island hospital hallways in the middle of the night, we can look at the mischief in the Tax Code for the carried interest exception. If we want to know why corporate jets, private jets get favored treatment, look at the accelerated depreciation schedules in the corporate Tax Code. There is a lot of mischief and monkeyshines that have been built into the Tax Code by lobbyists for the wealthy and lobbyists for powerful corporations over the years.

All we want to do--and what this fight is all about--is take $975 billion out of those trillions and trillions of dollars that go out the back of the Tax Code and use it to get rid of the sequester and to balance the budget. That is what we want to do. And what the Republicans want to do is take 41 percent of that and use every dollar--every dollar--to lower tax rates for the richest people. They don't spend a nickel in all of that toward reducing the deficit or toward ending the sequester.

This Tax Code spending--all the earmarks the lobbyists built into the Tax Code over decades--is the Republican treasure trove. That is their Ali Baba's cave. That is where all the goodies are, and they don't want to spend a nickel of it either getting rid of the sequester or helping with deficit reduction. They want all of the treasure in Ali Baba's cave of special tax deals to stay with the big corporations and with the wealthy in the form of lower tax rates. That is the entire debate between our sides right now.

I think Chairman Levin, by putting forward this plan to take this offshore hidden revenue and bring it into the discussion and use it to help solve our sequester, use it to help support our economy, use it to help reduce our deficit, is a very strong idea, so I am very pleased to support him. I appreciate his leadership. I am delighted Senator John McCain has joined us on this to make this a bipartisan initiative. They show great leadership together, and I am delighted to join them.

With that, with my great appreciation to Chairman Levin, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, this Saturday marks the third anniversary of the passage of the Affordable Care Act. At age 3, the law is protecting consumers against abusive insurance practices, helping seniors by lowering prescription drug costs, and building the infrastructure to expand health insurance coverage to millions of Americans. For the first time, patients' interests and needs are being put ahead of those of the insurance and drug companies.

The Obama administration has worked tirelessly to implement the law, in the face of constant opposition. My Republican colleagues in Congress have voted to repeal or defund the Affordable Care Act well over 30 times. It is a chilling, if useless, political refrain from the tea party.

On this third anniversary, it is important not only to reflect on how far we have come but to continue pressing forward on the Affordable Care Act's many improvements to our health care system, particularly the delivery system reforms.

The Council of Economic Advisers' 2013 ``Economic Report of the President'' identified a number of sources of waste in our health care system, including the fragmentation of the delivery system; duplicate care and overtreatment; the failure of providers to adopt best practices; and payment fraud. The council notes:

Taken together, [these factors] have been estimated to

account for between 13 and 26 percent of national health

expenditures in 2011. The magnitude of this waste offers an

equally large opportunity for spending reductions and

improvement in quality of care an opportunity that underpins

many of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

Thankfully, we have the tools necessary to seize the opportunity described by the Council of Economic Advisers to drive down costs and improve the quality of patient care. The Affordable Care Act included 45 provisions dedicated to improving the way we deliver health care in 5 priority areas: payment reform, primary and preventive care, measuring and reporting quality, administrative simplification, and health information technology.

The effort to extract from the wasteful swamp of our health care bureaucracy a lean, humane, patient-centered system is vital. National health spending hit $2.7 trillion in 2011 or about 18 percent of GDP. The next least efficient developed country--the Netherlands--spent 12 percent of its GDP on health care in 2010. Germany and France spent 11.6 percent of their GDP on health care. If we were as efficient as the Netherlands, if we merely moved from last place to second-to-last place in health care efficiency, we would save over $800 billion per year.

For all of our excess spending, one might expect that Americans live longer, healthier lives. But that is not the case. The Institute of Medicine recently compared the United States to 17 peer countries. We were worst for prevalence of diabetes among adults, worst for obesity across all age groups, and worst in infant mortality. We suffer higher death rates and worse outcomes for conditions such as heart disease and chronic lung disease.

According to the Week, avoidable infections passed on due to poor hospital hygiene kill as many people in the United States--about 103,000 a year--as AIDS, breast cancer, and auto accidents combined. These deaths are tragic because they are largely preventable. As we have shown in Rhode Island, when hospital 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, etc.-- rates of infection plummet, and the costs of treating those infections disappear. The costs of treating the 100,000 who die, as well as the hundreds of thousands who suffer nonlethal infections, disappear.

Delivery system reform has real promise in improving the management and prevention of chronic disease. These diseases accounted for 7 out of 10 deaths in the United States in 2011 and at least 75 percent of our health care spending.

I am not alone in saying that a correct diagnosis of the problem will lead us to delivery system reform. Gail Wilensky, the former Administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services under President George H.W. Bush, said in 2011, ``If we don't redesign what we are doing, we can't just cut unit reimbursement and think we are somehow getting a better system.''

In the private sector, George Halvorson, chairman and CEO of Kaiser Permanente said, ``There are people right now who want to cut benefits and ration care and have that be the avenue to cost reduction in this country and that's wrong. It's so wrong, it's almost criminal. It's an inept way of thinking about health care.''

Saving money by reforming how we deliver health care isn't just possible, it is happening. At a 2011 hearing I chaired of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Greg Poulsen of Intermountain Healthcare said:

Intermountain and other organizations have shown that

improving quality is compatible with lowering costs and,

indeed, high-quality care is generally less expensive than

substandard care.

So when Republicans say we must cut Medicare and Medicaid benefits to fix our deficit, that assertion is flat-out wrong.

Attacking Medicare and Medicaid is consistent with a particular political ideology, but it is not consistent with the facts. It ignores the fact that we operate a wildly inefficient health care system and that our health care spending problem is systemwide, not unique to Federal health programs. It is not just Medicare and Medicaid; former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said of the Defense budget, ``We're being eaten alive by health care.''

The President's Council of Economic Advisers estimates that we could save approximately $700 billion every year in our health care system without compromising health outcomes. The Institute of Medicine recently put this number at $750 billion. Other groups are even more optimistic: The New England Healthcare Institute has reported that $850 billion could be saved annually. The Lewin Group and former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill have estimated annual savings of a staggering $1 trillion. Most recently, the Commonwealth Fund laid out a set of policies that would accelerate health care delivery system reform and slow health spending by $2 trillion over the next 10 years.

These savings will have a dramatic impact on the Federal budget. The Federal Government spends 40 percent of

America's health care expenditures. If the estimate by the Council of Economic Advisers is correct, we could reduce the Federal deficit by up to $280 billion per year. If we achieve only one-quarter of the Council of Economic Advisers' estimate, the Federal savings would be $70 billion annually. Over a 10-year budget period, that amounts to $700 billion in Federal health care savings all without taking away any benefits, all while likely improving quality of care.

In a report I issued last year for the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, I found that the administration has made considerable progress on implementing the 45 delivery system reform provisions in the law. But more can and must be done. Specifically, I again urge the administration to set a cost-savings target for health care delivery system reform. A cost-savings target will focus, guide, and spur the administration's efforts in a manner that vague intentions to ``bend the health care cost curve'' will not. As the Commonwealth Fund concluded, ``The establishment of targets can serve both as a metric to guide policy development and as an incentive for all involved parties to act to make them effective.''

In 1961, President Kennedy declared that within 10 years the United States would put a man on the Moon and return him safely. The message-- and the mission outlined--was clear. The result was a vast mobilization of private and public resources to achieve that purpose.

This administration has a similar opportunity--particularly now, at the height of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. We need to put the full force of American innovation and ingenuity into achieving a serious cost-savings target for our Nation's health care system. But it is hard to do that if they won't set one.

I urge the administration to set a cost-savings target, with a number and a date. And then let's get to work to give American families the health care system they deserve. Instead of waste and inefficiency, poor outcomes and missed opportunities, we would have a health care system that is the envy of the world.

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

I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 15 minutes as in morning business.

Madam President, I am here, once again, to sound an alarm about carbon pollution's damage to our oceans and to our climate. It is past time for Congress to wake up to our responsibility as elected officials and as stewards of this planet.

The alarm has been sounded by the scientific community which overwhelmingly warns about the effects of our carbon dioxide emissions on our atmosphere and oceans. Our defense and intelligence communities warn of the threats posed by climate change to national security and international stability. Economists recognize the distortion of energy markets that overlook the true cost of carbon pollution, and government accountants now list climate change as a threat to our fiscal stability.

Today, as we enter the Passover and Easter season and as Catholics the world over celebrate the selection of a new Pope, we turn to voices of faith. They too call upon us. They call upon us to heed the moral imperatives of protecting creation and seeking justice for all people. They call upon us to reflect on our faith, on our relationship to our world and each other and on our responsibility to future generations, and they call upon us, as President Obama reminded us in his inaugural address, to ``preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God.''

I lay no claim to religious authority, but I must believe this: Something that harms others, something that disturbs God's creation, something that stands on lies and greed--protecting that must not be consistent with God's will.

In his 2010 World Day of Peace message entitled ``If You Want to Cultivate Peace, Protect Creation,'' Pope Benedict XVI called upon the faithful:

. . . [t]o protect the environment, and to safeguard

natural resources and the climate . . . while at the same

time taking into due account the solidarity we owe to those

living in the poorer areas of our world and to future

generations.

In his inaugural mass this morning, Pope Francis said:

Please, I would like to ask all those who have positions of

responsibility in economic,

political, and social life, and all men and women of good

will: let us be ``protectors'' of creation, protectors of

God's plan inscribed in nature, protectors of one another and

of the environment.

As early news reports indicated, the new Pope chose his papal name Francis out of respect for Saint Francis's sense of obligation to God's creation. He noted in one of his very earliest comments that our relationship with God's creation is not so good right now. Of course, the Pope is not the only one.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, also reminds us to remember those most affected by climate change:

Climate change is much more than an issue of environmental

preservation. Climate change constitutes a matter of social

and economic justice.

In the United States, hundreds of evangelical leaders signed the Evangelical Climate Initiative statement which declares: ``Love of God, love of neighbor, and the demands of stewardship are more than enough reason for evangelical Christians to respond to the climate change problem with moral passion and concrete action.''

The Hindu Declaration on Climate Change affirms that ``the dire problems besetting our world will all be magnified manyfold by the predicted impacts of climate change.''

Buddhist leaders, including the Dalai Lama, urge both individual and institutional transformation to confront what they call ``the gravest challenge that humanity has ever faced: the ecological consequences of our own collective karma.''

As Rev. Fletcher Harper of the interfaith coalition GreenFaith explains, all faith-based communities have a spiritual connection to the natural world. For example, Sheikh Ali Gomaa, the internationally respected Egyptian Islamist, sees this connection as central to a faithful life. I will read:

If we take seriously our role as God's deputies on Earth,

not just by benefiting from the environment, but by

preserving it and ensuring that other communities and

generations will have the same possibilities to drink clean

water, breathe fresh air, and live in a world that is in

harmony with itself and with ourselves, we may hope to be

among those who are beloved to God due to their care for his

creation.

For many, faith compels work toward fairness and justice for all living beings, regardless of nationality or social status, and encourages us to consider the effects of our actions on future generations.

For many individuals all over the world, the fight against climate change is a moral call. As Americans, we have a tradition of calling upon our own deeply held spiritual convictions to address our society's greatest moral challenges. People of faith are answering that call, from major denominational governing bodies down to local parishes and synagogues.

Representative Henry Waxman and I, as part of our work on the Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change, recently wrote to 300 groups to ask for their views on actions the Federal Government could take to reduce carbon pollution and strengthen our resiliency to climate change. A number of those organizations which answered are religious organizations.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record excerpts of letters from six of these groups.

The Coalition on the Environment and Jewish life and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs wrote to us that ``the need to transform the world's energy economy while addressing global climate change is not only a religious and moral imperative; it is a strategy for security and survival.''

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops says:

At its core, global climate change is not about economic

theory or political platforms, nor about partisan advantage

or interest group pressures. It is about the future of God's

creation and the one human family.

The bishops ask Congress to consider seven principles in shaping responsible climate change policies:

No. 1, addressing global climate change means protecting the common good.

No. 2, climate change will hit the most vulnerable communities the hardest.

No. 3, we must seek solutions that enhance rather than diminish the economic standing of the poor.

No. 4, new resources must be made available to poor communities to adapt to the effects of a changing climate.

No. 5, we must protect vulnerable peoples from the negative human health effects of climate change.

No. 6, local affected communities should have a voice in shaping the response to climate change.

No. 7, technological solutions to reduce carbon emissions and adapt to a changing climate must be made available to the people of developing nations.

That is from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

We heard from the Quaker Friends Committee on National Legislation. They wrote that climate change is ``the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced.''

The Evangelical Environment Network urges immediate, bipartisan action saying:

The simple truth is, those opposed to climate action have

done a good job of having climate change viewed as a

political issue, even a partisan one.

We firmly believe that the need to act to overcome climate

change is a moral issue, that it should be viewed morally

rather than in a partisan fashion.

The National Council of the Churches of Christ, representing 37 Christian denominations, calls for a national policy that ``lifts up justice, stewardship, sustainability and sufficiency as guiding tenets.''

Interfaith Power and Light, a national faith-based campaign against global warming, tells us that its ``[40] state affiliates and thousands of congregations view a swift and equitable transition to a clean energy economy as our moral responsibility, and are prepared to support [the Task Force's] efforts every step of the way.''

These religious leaders and groups are, unlike Congress, not sleepwalking through history. Faith groups throughout America are acting on their sense of spirit, justice, and stewardship, and are mobilizing locally to combat and prepare for the effects of climate change.

In my home State, Rhode Island Interfaith Power and Light provides

free energy audits, training workshops, and online information about implementing and maintaining energy efficiency programs for houses of worship. The Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island's Community Relations Council is working to reduce the carbon footprint of Rhode Island synagogues by 14 percent by next year.

In East Providence, RI, the Newman Congregational Church made some simple changes, such as installing occupancy sensors and better lighting, and experienced a 25-percent reduction in electricity costs.

Last year, the Beneficent Congregational Church of the United Church of Christ in Providence undertook an ecumenical Lenten carbon fast. This spring, from Easter to Pentecost, the congregation will be taking part in the United Church of Christ's national campaign of volunteering and environmental advocacy.

These urgent calls from religious leaders of so many faiths, and these conscientious actions by individual houses of worship, demonstrate the powerful connection men and women of faith feel to the wonders of creation and to our fellow humankind. For some, this connection derives from a connection to a higher power. For others, it is hope for future generations or a commitment to justice for all living things.

I once heard a colleague here in Congress brush off the warnings of science about climate change saying: ``God's still up there,'' implying that there is no need to worry about climate change. Well, if God is still up there, what better use of the gifts of moral reasoning that we have been given as His people than to protect His creation--and one another--from harm?

As we sing in the old hymn:

Field and forest, vale and mountain,

Flowering meadow, flashing sea,

Chanting bird and flowing fountain,

Call us to rejoice in Thee.

We are each called in our own way to wake up and to do the right thing.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, if I may respond by thanking the Senator from Florida for his kind remarks. He is the only Member of this body now or ever to have seen that view of our planet from the space capsule in which he looked down on Earth. He has spoken with enormous eloquence and passion about what that experience meant to him, both on the floor and to us in our caucus. I am very grateful for his kind remarks.

I yield the floor.

I thank the Senator.

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

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

Madam President, I noted last week the Republican leader came to his desk and spoke about the budget and described our Democratic budget as a leftwing manifesto.

We have done $1.8 trillion in spending cuts already. We raised $600 billion--one-third of that--in revenue by restoring the Clinton-era tax rates for families earning over $450,000 a year. So in the balance between spending cuts and new revenues, it is already 3 to 1 in favor of spending cuts. In our budget, we propose to fill the gap of the remainder with 50 percent spending cuts and 50 percent revenue and that is a leftwing manifesto.

The Republican budget changes Medicare into a voucher program. The Republican budget cuts nondefense discretionary spending to levels lower than at any time since OMB started keeping track a half century ago. The Republican budget would set annual domestic spending at rates lower than 1962, when there were no Pell grants at all, when 30 percent of American seniors lived in poverty. But that is not extreme. A Democratic budget that is 50-50 spending cuts and revenues, that is a leftwing manifesto.

The Democratic budget has $975 billion in new spending cuts and it has $975 billion in new revenue in order to close that budget gap 50- 50. That means, including the deficit reduction we have already done of $1.8 trillion, we will be, in total, at $4.3 trillion in deficit reduction, which is probably just a little bit over the target that most of the experts have given us to hit. About $2.8 trillion of the $4.3 trillion will come in spending cuts, $600 billion has come in new tax revenue, and $975 billion will come from loopholes, for a total of $1.6 trillion coming from new revenues. Some leftwing manifesto, $1 trillion more in spending cuts than revenue at a time when billionaires in America are paying lower tax rates than brick masons. If that is a leftwing manifesto, then the leftwing needs to fire its manifesto writers. That is some pretty high rhetoric.

We know where the word ``manifesto'' comes from, of course. It comes from the Cold War and the Communists--50 percent spending cuts, 50 percent revenue--and the rhetorical hint is that we Democrats with our budget are a bunch of Commies. That is high rhetoric indeed, and it is not coming from some fringe Senators in their rank and file. This is the Republican leader of the Senate.

In the face of the obvious facts of the balance of our budget, why might the rhetoric be getting so high? What might the Republicans be getting so touchy about? Let's look at where we get the rest of our revenue for our 50-50 budget.

We got the first $600 billion from restoring the Clinton-era tax rates, a time of huge economic success for our country for folks over $450,000 in income. Where do we get our $975 billion in new revenue? We go to the Republican treasure trove. We go to Ali Baba's cave for corporations and the rich. We go to the tax earmarks and the special deals that special interests have, year after year, squirreled away in the Tax Code.

People think: How much can that be? What can it mean when we have money going through the Tax Code and out but not coming to the government in revenues? What is in Ali Baba's cave? How big is the treasure trove? Have a look.

This is the amount of money the U.S. Government collects in taxes from individuals--$1.09 trillion. Here is how much goes back out the backdoor of the Tax Code to people who have loopholes, special rates, deductions in the Tax Code that helped them: $1.02 trillion--virtually the same. For every $1 of revenue the United States collects in actual revenues from individual taxpayers every year, another 94 cents goes back out through the loopholes and the deductions and the special rates, a grand total every year of more than $1 trillion. Since we budget over a 10-year period, it is $10 trillion in this budget period.

On the corporate side, for every $1 of revenue the United States collects in actual revenues from corporations, another 87 cents goes back out the backdoor of the Tax Code through loopholes and special rates and deductions. Again, because we do this over--every year, $157 billion. Again, because we do this over 10 years, that is more than $1.5 trillion. If we add these two together, it is more than $11.5 trillion in the budget period. If we presume some modest growth in the economy over those 10 years, that number gets to about $14 trillion.

So Ali Baba's Tax Code cave of tax spending is very big. There is lots of treasure squirreled away in it, and that doesn't even count the billions of dollars that corporations and wealthy tax avoiders hide offshore so it never even gets into the tax equation. The IRS has pegged that recently at about $385 billion a year.

There is one little building in the Cayman Islands that Chairman Conrad used to refer to regularly when he was chairman of the Budget Committee. One little building in the Cayman Islands, maybe 5 stories tall, where over 18,000 companies claim to be doing business. One can imagine what kind of business they are doing there. That is how $385 billion a year never even appears in the tax equation.

This spending that gets done through the Tax Code that does not get reviewed by annual appropriations, it gets squirreled away in there and it is there to stay. It is a big treasure trove indeed--not counting offshoring, probably $14 trillion in a 10-year budget period for those who are clever and connected enough to get their special deals, their tax earmarks, into the Tax Code.

We take out of that, call it $14 trillion--at a minimum $11.5 trillion--$975 billion, about 7 percent. That is how

much of it, this little red slice, is what we take to balance the budget for deficit reduction. The problem is the Republicans do not want us to look into their treasure trove. Ali Baba's cave of tax tricks is where the juicy earmarks are for special interests. Do you want to know why Mitt Romney had to fiddle his taxes to get up to a 14- percent tax rate--which, by the way, is a lower tax rate than a solitary hospital orderly pays walking down the halls of Rhode Island Hospital at night. How does he get it so he has to fiddle his taxes to get up to a rate lower than a hospital orderly pays? How do Romney and the hedge fund billionaires pull off that trick? Look in Ali Baba's cave for the carried interest exception.

Do you want to know where ExxonMobil, which is the richest and most profitable corporation in the history of the world--where ExxonMobil gets its hands into the American taxpayers' pockets? Look at the Big Oil subsidies in Ali Baba's cave.

Do you want to know how corporate jets get special favored tax treatment compared to the commercial jets that ordinary mortals fly? Look at the accelerated depreciation schedules in Ali Baba's cave of tax tricks. If using the phrase ``leftwing manifesto'' seems a little strident, a little exaggerated about a budget proposal for 50 percent spending cuts and 50 percent revenues and you want to inquire why, look no further than the Republican treasure trove of corporate and special interest tax earmarks heaped up in Ali Baba's cave.

We are knocking at the door. We are knocking on the door of Ali Baba's cave, which so far has been untouched. We have done all spending cuts and a little bit of tax rate increases for families over $450,000 back to the Clinton-era rates. We have not touched, yet, Ali Baba's cave. What we are saying as Democrats is that Americans paid in deficit reduction spending cuts what they are going to lose in services and in benefits, $1.8 trillion, and they will pay in another $975 billion in cuts under our Democratic proposal. We are saying that folks earning over $450,000 a year income saw their tax rates go up to Clinton-era levels, and they are paying in another $600 billion in deficit reduction. Now we want to go into Ali Baba's cave of tax earmarks and out of at least $11.5 trillion, probably more like $14 trillion, and if you throw in the offshoring that takes you up to $17 trillion, $18 trillion--we want to take less than $1 trillion out over 10 years to help reduce our budget deficit.

So the Republicans are getting anxious. The alarms are ringing in the special interests and the Republicans are rushing to the trenches to defend their special interests and their cherished tax earmarks. The best defense being a good offense, that is how a balanced deficit reduction plan that in sum has $1 trillion more in spending cuts than in revenues suddenly becomes a leftist manifesto.

We just had the hearings in the Budget Committee on our budget. If you listened on that committee, the Republicans said it plainly. They did not mince words: Not a penny of tax loopholes, not a penny from Ali Baba's cave of tax treasures can go for deficit reduction--not a penny. That is their rule.

They will say they are willing to move the treasure around a little bit in Ali Baba's cave so long as it all gets used for corporations and the wealthy. Again, that is not a guess. That is in the Republican budget--none of the goodies squirreled away by the special interests over the years in Ali Baba's cave for deficit reduction--none; all of it to lower tax rates for corporations and the rich, the ones who mostly benefit from the treasure in Ali Baba's cave to begin with. They are willing to spread the treasure around a little as long as it stays in the hands of big corporations and the rich.

We are at the gates of Ali Baba's cave, this treasure trove of Tax Code special deals and earmarks for the rich and the well connected. We are at the place where the lobbyists wheel the sweet corporate tax deals. We are knocking on the door of a $14 trillion tax spending area that has been, so far, left completely untouched in deficit reduction and so our Republican friends are getting a little twitchy.

Come on, tell us, out of nearly $14 trillion in tax spending and earmarks, can't we just put a little bit toward the deficit? Just 7 percent? Under their own budget, they take 41 percent of it and give it back in the form of lower high-end tax rates, lowered rates for big corporations and the rich. Can't we do just 7 percent for deficit reduction? I thought the deficit was so important, but maybe not when it comes to our friends protecting the interests of the big corporations and the rich.

Madam President, I also wish to speak about the continuing resolution and its provisions relating to Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations. Specifically, I want to highlight how the continuing resolution will support continuing advances in the field of digital forensics.

The continuing resolution is accompanied by a series of explanatory statements that detail Congress' intent behind the raw numbers of the resolution itself. The explanatory statement for the Commerce, Justice, and Science provisions in turn incorporates portions of the Appropriations Committee report on the earlier Commerce, Justice, and Science bill. ``[L]anguage included in . . . Senate Report 112-158,'' the explanatory statement provides, ``that is not changed by this explanatory statement or this Act is approved.'' Neither the explanatory statement nor the continuing resolution change language from Senate Report 112-158 regarding computer forensics. The language from Senate Report 112-158 therefore states the intent behind this portion of the continuing resolution.

This is what Senate Report 112-158 says:

Cell Phone Digital Evidence--As smartphones and the

Internet have become integral parts of daily life, these

technologies have also become an integral part of a majority

of criminal acts and enterprises, from drug deals by text to

child pornography websites. Because more than 95 percent of

all criminal cases are investigated and prosecuted at the

State and local levels, the Committee is concerned that

without the Department's support, the ability of State and

local law enforcement to effectively investigate and

prosecute cases involving digital evidence and computer-based

crimes will diminish. The Committee encourages the Department

to prioritize State and local assistance toward computer

forensics and digital evidence training and investigations

surrounding drug and violent crimes, and crimes against

children.

Collaborative Efforts To Fight Cybercrime--According to the

Norton Cybercrime Report 2011, more than 69 percent of online

adults have been a victim of cybercrime in their lifetime,

resulting in an annual price of $388,000,000,000 globally.

The Committee is aware of the important progress that has

been made in the fight against cybercrime by collaborative

efforts that bring together prosecutors, researchers, and DOJ

in a multidisciplinary effort to identify and prosecute

cybercrimes such as `phishing.' These collaborative efforts

involve experts in computer forensics that help to identify

the source of phishing, train prosecutors in the intricacies

of the crime and how best to prosecute cybercriminals, and

conduct research to stay ahead of cybercriminals and their

ever changing tactics. The Committee believes these

collaborative efforts have made good progress against

cybercrime and encourages the Department to continue funding

these important initiatives.

I applaud Chairwoman Mikulski for stressing the importance of computer forensics training and research, first as the Chairwoman of the Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations Subcommittee and now as chairwoman of the full Appropriations Committee. I am very grateful for her leadership on this important issue.

The report clearly identifies the need for continued Justice Department attention on this subject. This is particularly the case in light of the severe cybersecurity threats facing our Nation. Like the Norton report cited by the committee, a recent report by the security firm Mandiant highlighted the growing threat to our national economic security posed by cyber attacks launched by criminal organizations and foreign countries. Every day, sophisticated hackers are attempting to steal America's secrets, its intellectual property, and the identities of our citizens. As FBI Director Robert Mueller has stated, ``[w]e are losing data, we are losing money, we are losing ideas and we are losing innovation. Together we must find a way to stop the bleeding.'' Digital forensics tools that help attribute the source of an attack and the extent of the damage caused will be an important element of any cybersecurity solution.

Digital forensics tools also help law enforcement investigate and prosecute

more traditional crimes. Criminals use smartphones and computers to engage in all kinds of criminal acts and enterprises, from drug dealing to child pornography. Even when criminals do not use modern electronics in the commission of the crime, digital forensics can provide useful evidence relative to, for instance, the whereabouts and intent of the offender, or the participants in a conspiracy. Federal, State, and local law enforcement thus must have access to digital forensics tools and appropriate training to investigate and prosecute these crimes effectively.

For the last decade, the Justice Department has funded extremely important research in these areas. For example, its National Institute of Justice, or NIJ, has funded research on tools for scanning for child pornography; forensic tools for mobile cellular devices; data forensics for cloud computing; technologies to identify and defeat encryption methods used by criminals; and forensic tools for seizing digital evidence in a forensically sound way. NIJ also has funded invaluable training that equips state and local law enforcement to tackle the cybercrime and digital forensics issues that they encounter in their criminal investigations. I believe that NIJ and the Justice Department more broadly must support this research and training going forward. I am very pleased that the continuing resolution we are considering today likewise prioritizes this important work.

Again, the fact that the continuing resolution does this is a testament to Chairwoman Mikulski's leadership in this field. She has been a champion of effective law enforcement for a long time. She now is bringing the same leadership to bear on cybersecurity and criminals' use of emerging technologies. I also would thank Senator Shelby, who is the ranking member of both the full Committee and the Commerce, Justice, and Science Subcommittee, for his work on this important issue. As a result of their collaboration, the continuing resolution will support a broad range of important Federal initiatives. It is very good news that research and training on digital forensics will be one of them.

Madam President, I ask that I be recognized when the senior Senator from Arizona has finished his remarks.

Madam President, may I take this opportunity to thank Senator McCain for his call to our consciences on the massacres in Syria by the tyrant Assad. I thank him for his reminder to us all that in the case of moral emergencies, those with the ability to act have the duty to act, and I thank him for his efforts to call us to that duty.

While he is here on the floor, I would like to also take this chance to join in the warm remarks from colleagues on both sides of the aisle on this 40th anniversary of his release from captivity in North Vietnam--an anniversary that could have come a good deal sooner had he not been so courageously stubborn in refusing to leave his comrades in captivity.

Order of Procedure

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate recess following my statement until 2:15 p.m. and that the first-degree amendment filing deadline be at 3 o'clock today.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, I rise today, as I have at least two dozen times in the past year, to say again that it is time for us to wake up to the stark reality of the climate changes carbon pollution is causing.

Elected officials bear a responsibility every once in a while to escape the grip of the polluting special interests and to act in the interests of regular Americans. We need to wake up and start talking about the negative consequences, the harms of climate change. We need to wake up and mitigate--take steps to protect ourselves--and adapt to the consequences that are already hitting our coasts and our forests, our cities and our farms, our economy and our way of life.

But, of course, the climate deniers and the polluters do not want that. The deniers want to prevent discussion of climate change altogether. In the past few years, in this body, climate science has become a taboo topic.

I watched, when my back was out in the last few days, one of the Harry Potter movies on television. Lord Voldemort was called ``He-Who- Shall-Not-Be-Named'' in those Harry Potter stories. Well, carbon pollution is the ``Pollution Which Shall Not Be Named.'' Climate change--the harm that is caused by that pollution--is the ``Harm That Shall Not Be Named.''

The obstructionists want to squelch any discussion of the ``Pollution Which Shall Not Be Named'' so as to let big polluters continue dumping carbon and other greenhouse gas into our oceans and atmosphere.

Take, for instance, the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, created in 2007 as a forum for confronting the economic and security challenges of our dependence on foreign fuels. When Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in 2011, they disbanded that committee. End of discussion.

Between May 2011 and December 2012, our colleagues in the House of Representatives, Henry Waxman and Bobby Rush, who were the Democratic ranking members of the Committee on Energy and Commerce and of the Subcommittee on Energy and Power, wrote 21 letters--21 letters--to Chairmen Fred Upton and Ed Whitfield requesting hearings on climate change. To date, there has been no response, no hearings. End of discussion.

House Republicans have tried to prevent the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture from funding their climate adaptation plans--commonsense efforts to preserve our resources, protect our farmers, and save taxpayer dollars. But, no, end of discussion.

I am sad to say that it is not just the House of Representatives. In the Senate, in the Environment and Public Works Committee, Democrats have been informed that there will be opposition to any legislation that mentions climate change. It is one thing to want to oppose any legislation that does anything about climate change. This is a further step. The mere mention of climate change is enough to provoke Republican opposition. End of discussion.

The taboo is being applied elsewhere in this Chamber. Just this week a Republican Senator demanded that the following language be stricken from a noncontroversial Senate resolution. We pass resolutions here in the Senate all the time by unanimous consent. A Republican Senator said: No, I am going to withhold my consent. I am going to deny the ability of the resolution unless this offending language is removed. What was the offending language? I will quote:

[W]omen in developing countries are disproportionately

affected by changes in climate because of their need to

secure water, food, and fuel for their livelihood.

This body unanimously approved identical language in the last Congress, but today that mention of climate change in an otherwise noncontroversial resolution draws automatic Republican opposition. Again, end of discussion.

And they are not just trying to squelch the legislative branch. In the executive branch, they have tried to defund salaries for White House climate advisers and withhold U.S. funds from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Again, end of discussion.

Now, you might think that in these efforts to attack funding, at least they are motivated by a desire to cut spending. But then what would be the motivation behind House Republicans blocking a no-cost restructuring of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that would have created a National Climate Service that is akin to the National Weather Service--a simple reorganization that would have centralized information about climate change, information which is in high demand by State and local governments and by the business community? Again, the purpose is obvious: try to end the discussion.

I would remind my colleagues who are trying to silence this discussion with political power that history teaches, quite plainly, that in contests between power and truth, truth always wins in the end. The Inquisition tried to silence Galileo, but the Enlightenment happened anyway, and the Earth does still spin around the Sun.

Chris McEntee, who is the executive director of the American Geophysical Union, said:

Limiting access to this kind of climate information won't

make climate change go away.

And shareholders and directors of corporations should consider what it will mean for the corporations that used their power to suppress the truth once that truth becomes inescapable, once it is undeniable and the denial campaign is seen as a fraud.

This Republican policy of climate change denial is alive and well at the State level too. In 2010 Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli used his powers of office to harass former University of Virginia climatologist Michael Mann and 39 other climate scientists and staff. As a UVA grad, I am proud that the university fought back against this political attack on science and on academic freedom.

Said UVA:

[The attorney general's] action and the potential threat of

legal prosecution of scientific endeavor that has satisfied

peer-review standards send a chilling message to scientists

engaged in basic research involving Earth's climate and

indeed to scholars in any discipline. Such actions directly

threaten academic freedom and, thus, our ability to generate

the knowledge upon which informed public policy relies.

The victim of this harassment, Professor Mann, was more blunt. He called out this witch hunt as ``a coordinated assault against the scientific community by powerful vested interests who simply want to stick their heads in the sand and deny the problem of human-caused climate change, rather than engage in the good faith debate about what to do about it.''

I would note that the Virginia Supreme Court ruled Attorney General Cuccinelli's so-called investigation groundless. But that was not enough for obstructionists in Virginia. Last year the Republican Virginia Senate struck from a joint resolution titled ``Requesting the Virginia Institute of Marine Science to study strategies for adaptation to relative sea-level rise in Tidewater Virginia localities''--they struck from that title the phrase ``sea-level rise'' both in the title and again in the text of the resolution. News outlets reported--get this--that this was because ``sea-level rise'' was believed to be a ``left-wing term.'' Add ``sea-level rise'' to the ``Harms Which Shall Not Be Named.''

In North Carolina, you can still say ``sea-level rise,'' but you cannot predict it or plan for it. That is because last year North Carolina's Republican-dominated legislature passed a bill requiring, as a matter of law, that North Carolina coastal policy be based on historic rates of sea-level rise rather than on what North Carolina scientists actually predict. This means that even though North Carolina scientists predict 39 inches of sea-level rise within the century, North Carolina, by its own law, is only allowed to prepare for 8. King Canute would be so proud.

Further down, the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources wrote a report more than a year ago on the risks climate change poses to the Palmetto State, but it was never released to the public. The State newspaper managed to obtain a copy of that study. The report calls for South Carolina to prepare for increases in wildlife disease, loss of prime hunting habitat, and the invasion of non-native species. But to Republicans, these are more ``Problems Which Shall Not Be Named.''

In South Dakota, the Republican legislature, in 2010, even passed a nonbinding resolution calling for teaching in public schools that relies on a number of common and thoroughly debunked climate denier claims--in short, bringing climate denier propaganda into public high school science classes.

Who might be behind this concerted effort to make climate science and climate change taboo subjects--``Problems Which Shall Not Be Named''? Well, look at ALEC, the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, which peddles climate denier legislation and undermines local and national efforts to protect against climate change. Look at ALEC's board of directors, comprised of lobbyists from ExxonMobil, Peabody Energy, and Koch Industries. Look at the array of

bogus denial organizations propped up to create doubt in this debate.

Against this tide of propaganda and nonsense stands States, including Rhode Island, that already cap and reduce carbon emissions. Nineteen States have climate adaptation plans completed or in progress. Thirty- one States have a renewable and/or alternative energy portfolio standard.

Twenty-three States require State buildings to meet Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design or LEED standards.

The obstructionists may be well funded by the polluting special interests, but the majority of the American people--the vast majority of the American people--understand that climate change is a very real problem. They want their leaders to take action. Americans want their leaders to listen to the climate scientists. They want us to plan and to prepare, to limit, to mitigate, and to adapt to the changes that are coming.

Here in Congress it is long past time to move forward with meaningful action. That is why I am working with several colleagues to establish a fee on carbon pollution. As I said in my remarks last week, the idea is a simple one. It is basic market 101, law 101, and fairness 101. If you are creating a cost that someone else has to bear, that cost should be put back into the price of the product.

The big carbon polluters should pay a fee to the American people to cover the cost of their dumping their waste into our oceans and air. It is a cost they now happily push off onto the rest of us, allowing them an unfair and improper market advantage, in effect to cheat against rival energy sources. The deniers want to make this the problem which shall not be named. But I am here to name it, as are many others. I am here to shame them if I can, if shame is a feeling a big corporation can even have. I am here to see to it that we wake up and that we get to work.

I yield the floor.

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

I ask unanimous consent to speak for 15 minutes.

I am back to again urge my colleagues to wake up to the stark reality of climate change. We often hear in this Chamber colleagues extolling the virtues of the marketplace. Indeed, a fair and open marketplace is the cornerstone of our economy. Markets work--not perfectly always but better than any other mechanism.

Paraphrasing Winston Churchill, one might say that markets are the worst form of setting prices and exchanging goods, except all of the other methods that have been tried. But markets only work when they are fair. Markets are not fair if the price of goods does not take all the costs into account.

A grocery store, for instance, has to pay to have its garbage removed. It has to build that garbage removal into its prices. And that is the right thing. That is the market working. If that grocery store can recycle or compact or composite its trash and make removal cheaper and lower its prices, then that is right too. That is the market working. But if a second grocery store down the street breaks the law and throws its garbage into the park next door and then competes with lower prices, that is not a market in proper operation. That is not a fair market. That is just one person cheating another.

If a factory makes a product and treats its waste, that is part of its cost. That is good. That is how it is supposed to be. If the factory can figure out how to treat its waste more efficiently and lower prices, terrific. That is also the market at work. But a factory down the river that breaks the law by dumping its waste into the river may have better prices as a result, but that is not a fair market.

The value of open and fair markets is lost when people cheat, when they offload their costs onto the general public. The garbage in the park, the waste in the river--the grocery store down the street and the factory down the river--does not reduce costs; businesses just offloaded them onto their neighbor, onto the rest of us. They may actually have even made it more costly for everyone, but they have managed to impose that cost on the public.

There is even a word for these offloaded costs. They are externalities, the harms that are caused that are external to the company. This is not complicated. It is econ 101. It is also law 101.

Seventy years ago a soda bottle exploded and injured the hand of a waitress named Gladys Escola. Ms. Escola sued the bottler. The court decision has been in most every law student's first-year classes ever since.

In a famous concurrence, Justice Traynor ruled in the case of Escola v. Coca-Cola Bottling Company that the cost of Ms. Escola's injury should fall on the bottler. His logic was simple and clear: They made the bottle. If they did not have to pay for the injuries exploding bottles caused, they would just keep making exploding bottles. If you made them responsible for the exploding bottles they made, they would have a big incentive to improve their bottles and everyone would be safer.

As Judge Traynor said 70 years ago, ``Public policy demands that responsibility be fixed wherever it will most effectively reduce the hazards.''

This idea that you shouldn't be able to offload your costs and have the park, the river, or Ms. Escola's hand pay the price is not new, and it is not unusual. Frankly, we see it in our own lives. It is also fairness 101, as well as econ 101 and law 101. You may not rake your lawn and throw the leaves over the fence into your neighbor's yard. The principle is the same--they are your leaves, and you clean them up.

What do soda bottles and yard work have to do with climate change? The very same principle applies. We now know how much harm carbon pollution is causing. We see the costs all around us in storm-damaged homes, flooded cities, in drought-stricken farms, raging wildfires, in dying coral and disappearing fish, in shifting habitats and migrating diseases, in changed seasons and rising seas, in vanishing glaciers and melting icecaps. These are costs. In some cases they are economic costs. People lose money. The owner of a ski lodge, for example, losses money when the ski season gets shorter and shorter. In some cases they are personal costs, such as not being able to take your granddaughter to the stream near where you grew up because it is dried up or the beach island you used to explore as a kid because it is underwater. In some cases the cost is life-and-death. Powerful storms and severe heat waves take a deadly toll. These are real costs, and they come as a result of carbon pollution.

These costs, however, are not factored into the price of the coal or oil that is burned to release the carbon. The big oil companies and the coal barons have offloaded those costs onto society.

There is nothing inherently wrong with producing energy. There is nothing inherently wrong with bottling soda or running a grocery store. What is wrong is when you knowingly pass on the cost of your exploding bottle, your waste disposal, or your carbon pollution to everybody else.

Oil and coal companies have been sending carbon pollution into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution. When these industries started, the risks were poorly understood. Today they know better. They know what the harm is that they are doing, and they continue. When they lie and pretend those costs aren't out there--leaves? What leaves? There is no garbage in the park. Your hand is just fine, Mrs. Escola-- and when they pay people to lie and pretend those costs aren't out there, well, that is all just flat wrong. And when they do it with fat campaign contributions, slick lobbyists, and marauding super PACs, that makes it worse. That is dirty pool. It is a market failure. It takes unfair advantage of competing energy sources that don't pollute so much, and it makes the competition between them unfair. The big oil companies and the coal barons are no different than the grocery store dumping its garbage in the park or the factory spilling its waste into the river. They are not bearing the costs of their product, and they are cheating on their competitors. There is a right way to do it. They figured out how to do it the wrong way and have other people pick up the tab.

When it comes to carbon pollution, economists can estimate the true cost of dirty energy. It is often called the ``social cost of carbon.'' The social cost of carbon includes the financial consequences of a change in climate, such as property loss, increased health care costs, and loss of productivity that come with heat waves, drought, heavy rains, sea-level rise, habitat shifts, ocean warming, and acidification.

We recently learned from NOAA that their scientists predict that worldwide, the average summertime loss in labor capacity will double by 2050, as the climate warms and periods of extreme heat become more frequent and more intense, affecting labor-intensive outdoor work such as construction and farming. That is a social cost of carbon.

Of course, certain costs can be hard to predict. How do you calculate the cost of an extinct species? What does it cost to leave to our children and grandchildren warmer, more acidic, less biodiverse oceans? These calculations may not always be perfect, but that doesn't make the costs any less real. For instance, in my home State of Rhode Island, the costs to our fishermen of these changes is very real.

In the final tally, economists tell us that big carbon emitters are unloading a big cost onto the public and onto future generations. On average, estimates of the social cost of carbon are about $48 per ton of carbon dioxide--$48 per ton that these big businesses dodge and that we all pay for.

Whatever the exact dollar amount, it is time for Congress to wake up and start discussing these very real costs. This is why I am working with several colleagues to establish a fee on carbon pollution. We hope to have a draft framework soon to start this discussion. The idea is simple: The big carbon polluters pay a fee to the American people to cover the cost of dumping their waste into our atmosphere and oceans-- the costs they now push off onto the rest of us, giving them unfair advantage against their competitors.

I am pleased to participate in an effort to determine how best to assess a carbon pollution fee, how to protect American manufacturers from overseas competition that is cheating, and how to protect middle- and low-income families. It has been recognized by Republicans and Democrats alike that a carbon pollution fee can reduce emissions and help make the market more efficient.

Last month Senator Sanders and Senator Boxer introduced related legislation, and I commend them for their efforts. I also wish to commend Senator Boxer this week, as chairwoman on the Environment and Public Works Committee, for beginning a regular appearance on the floor to draw this Chamber's attention to the dangers of carbon pollution. I hope more colleagues will join us in this important discussion. It is economics 101, it is law 101, and it is fairness 101.

We have had enough sleepwalking. We have had enough silence. We have been warned by our national defense and intelligence communities, we have been warned by the national academies, we have been warned by the Government Accountability Office, we have been warned by the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community, and, of course, we are hearing from millions of concerned Americans. It is time for this Congress to wake up and to put a price on carbon pollution that matches the costs of carbon pollution. We won't get it done if we don't wake up to what is happening all around us.

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

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