Floor Statements

Mr. President, I would like to add to the remarks I made a moment ago about climate change to respond to some statements that have been made recently on the Senate floor on this subject.

As those of us who are advocates in the cause of doing something about climate change know, the polluters and their advocates have an advantage: They only have to create doubt, they only have to create debate in order to create delay and allow the polluters to continue making money at the expense of the rest of us. That means the arguments, frankly, don't have to be true; they just have to be made. Then they can say there is still debate, then they can say there is still controversy, both of which are self-fulfilling prophecies.

But they are not real, and some of what has been said is pretty flagrant.

One of the lead Senate deniers came to the floor the other day to challenge President Obama. President Obama said this in his State of the Union Address:

But the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all

come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and

floods--all are now more frequent and intense.

My denier colleague quoted him. And to quote my colleague, he said-- referring to the President:

The President said, yes, it's true that no single event

makes a trend. But the fact is that the 12 hottest years on

record have all come in the last 15. That is just flat wrong.

So why don't we just take a look and see where the President got his information so we can put this into some perspective. The President got his information from NASA. Maybe people in this body are more capable than NASA at dealing with scientific things, but when you consider that NASA has put an explorer on the surface of Mars, I think they are entitled to some credence about basic science. And they agree--in fact, Reto Ruedy, a program manager at the Goddard Institute, has laid out the actual years. Some of these are statistical ties because they are equally hot.

The No. 1 and 2 hottest years, according to them, are 2010 and 2005. The No. 3 through 8 hottest years are 2007, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, and 2009. The 9th through 12th hottest years recorded are 2012, 2011, 2001, and 2004. If you go to the 13th year, it is 2008. The 14th and the 15th are 1997 and 1995. All of the 15 hottest years on record are 1995 and thereafter. The top 12, all have happened 1998 and thereafter.

It is not just NASA's data set that confirms this. NOAA also looks at the same information. They come at it a little bit differently--and they do have a difference. I will concede that. NOAA considers 2012 to be the 10th warmest year on record instead of the 9th. That is the difference between NASA and NOAA. And we are talking about records going back to 1880, so it is a broad data set.

If you look at NOAA's data, it actually shows that 14 of the past 15 years were the hottest on record. Ditto the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Of course, as many of us know, in political life there is a group out there called Politifact that takes a look at claims that are made in the public debate and politics, and they assign them ``true'' to ``pants on fire.'' They looked at the President's claim that the 12 hottest years on record have come in the last 15 years. They gave the President a ``true.'' Indeed, they said:

Obama was actually overcautious in his statement, so we

rate his statement true.

So we have one denier--a Senator--against NASA, against Politifact, against NOAA, and against the National Center for Atmospheric Research. I think it is pretty clear who has the facts on their side.

This is the other statement that was made:

I don't think anyone disagrees with the fact that we

actually are in a cold period that started about 9 years ago.

Let's look at the facts. This is the temperature data. The green represents the actual data. The red line is a statistically derived mean of all that information. It is something that is done mathematically. It is not amenable to argument; it is not amenable to debate. You can do it using different methods, but it is clear from that data set that we are in fact in a warming period, not a cooling period.

So how do you get to say that in 9 years we are in a cooling period? Well, if you go back a few years here, you see there are some high points, and if you pick just those high points and then you go forward 9 years, you can draw a graph that goes down. But you have to be very careful how you pick your points to create that illusion. You can actually do it, if you want, repeatedly in the data. You could pick this point and have it go down. You could pick this point and have it go down. You could pick this point and have it go down, and this, and this.

For each one of those points, you could say: Well, during this period, it was actually a cold period. It was actually a cooling period.

But when you look at the actual information and when you look at the statistically driven mean that cuts through all the data, it is pretty clear that to try to look at it this way is playing tricks with the data. It is playing games and trying to fool people. It is twisting and distorting the data.

I think that is a less-than-honest application of these facts. So if that is the sort of misleading statistical trick the polluters and their advocates have to resort to, that is just another reminder that it really is time for us to wake up and get to work on this. There is no credible scientific debate over what carbon pollution is doing to our atmosphere and our oceans, and it is pretty darned clear that it is warming--and warming pretty fast.

I appreciate the opportunity for this clarification.

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

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Politifact article that I referred to in my remarks be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that H.R. 933, which was received from the House and is at the desk, be placed on the calendar.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that on Monday, March 11, 2013, at 5 p.m., the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations: Calendar Nos. 9 and 17; that there be 30 minutes for debate equally divided in the usual form; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate proceed to vote, without intervening action or debate, on the nominations in the order listed; that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order; that any related statements be printed in the Record; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action; and that the Senate then resume legislative session.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration en bloc of the following resolutions which were submitted earlier today: S. Res. 71, S. Res. 72, and Res. 73.

I ask unanimous consent the resolutions by agreed to, the preambles be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be laid on the table en bloc, with no intervening action or debate.

I understand there is a bill at the desk, and I ask for its first reading.

I now ask for a second reading, and in order to place the bill on the calendar under the provisions of rule XIV, I object to my own request.

I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 2 p.m. on Monday, March 11, 2013; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; and that following any leader remarks the Senate be in a period of morning business until 5 o'clock p.m., with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each; further, that following morning business, the Senate proceed to executive session under the previous order.

I am informed that at 5:30 p.m. on Monday there will be at least one rollcall vote on confirmation of the Taranto nomination. We hope to begin consideration of H.R. 933, the continuing appropriations bill received from the House.

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

Mr. President, I rise today in support of the nomination of Caitlin Halligan to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Ms. Halligan is an outstanding nominee with sterling credentials and broad support among the legal community. By the accounts of everyone who has worked with her or observed her work, she is a first-rate legal mind and a tireless worker, with great personal integrity and a thoughtful temperament that is perfectly suited to the Federal bench. Her nomination deserves prompt confirmation.

Ms. Halligan has spent much of her career as a dedicated and distinguished public servant. She has a strong record in law enforcement, including in her current role as general counsel at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, an office that investigates and prosecutes 100,000 criminal cases annually.

She is highly esteemed by the New York and national law enforcement communities. Her nomination has been endorsed by New York City police commissioner Raymond Kelly, former Manhattan district attorney Robert Morgenthau, the National District Attorneys Association, several Republican district attorneys from New York, the New York Association of Chiefs of Police, and the New York State Sheriff's Association, among many others.

Ms. Halligan is also widely recognized as one of the finest appellate litigators in the country. As solicitor general for the State of New York, she supervised 45 appellate lawyers and represented the State of New York, then-Governor George Pataki, a Republican, and other State officials in both State and Federal courts. She has been counsel of record on nearly 50 cases before the Supreme Court and has argued before that court 5 times. Twenty-one of the top lawyers from across the political spectrum who have worked with Ms. Halligan, including conservatives Miguel Estrada and Carter Phillips, have endorsed her nomination. She was rated unanimously ``well qualified'' by the American Bar Association.

President Obama first nominated Ms. Halligan in 2010. Despite Ms. Halligan's outstanding qualifications and broad support, our Republican colleagues have refused to grant her an up-or-down vote for over 2 years.

Some have argued, because of positions that she took in litigation at the behest of a client, that she does not have adequate respect for the second amendment. Yet both at her hearing and in response to written questions, she stated unequivocally that she

would faithfully follow and apply the Supreme Court's decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which held that the second amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense. When asked whether the rights conferred under the second amendment are fundamental, Ms. Halligan answered, ``That is clearly what the Supreme Court held and I would follow that precedent.'' It doesn't get much clearer than that.

In 2011 Republicans filibustering her nomination claimed that the caseload of the DC Circuit did not warrant filling that seat because the other judges serving on the court had too few cases. At that time, Ms. Halligan was nominated to fill the ninth seat out of 11 on the DC Circuit.

Even at the time, that argument was questionable. Senate Republicans confirmed President Bush's nominees for the 9th, 10th, and 11th seats on the DC Circuit without concerns about caseload. That court's caseload has only gone up in since then. Also, the DC Circuit's caseload is uniquely challenging, as the former chief judge of the DC Circuit, Patricia Wald, has explained:

The D.C. Circuit hears the most complex, time-consuming,

labyrinthine disputes over regulations with the greatest

impact on ordinary Americans' lives: clean air and water

regulations, nuclear plant safety, health-care reform issues,

insider trading and more. These cases can require thousands

of hours of preparation by the judges, often consuming days

of argument, involving hundreds of parties and interveners,

and necessitating dozens of briefs and thousands of pages of

record--all of which culminates in lengthy, technically

intricate legal opinions.

Even if we accept the argument that the DC Circuit did not need another judge when Ms. Halligan was nominated for the ninth seat, the circumstances have changed. Because an additional vacancy has opened, Ms. Halligan is currently nominated for the eighth seat, meaning there are now four vacant seats on the court. To put it another way, the court is now understaffed by over one-third. At the same time, the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts reports that the caseload per active judge has increased by 50 percent since 2005, when the Senate confirmed President Bush's nominee to fill the 11th seat on the DC Circuit.

Thus, there is no basis for debate now about whether an additional judge is needed on the D.C. Circuit. With an extra vacancy and a growing caseload, the court considered by many to be second only to the Supreme Court in its importance in our Federal judiciary desperately needs help.

Luckily, we have the opportunity to send the court an outstanding legal talent in Caitlin Halligan. I urge my colleagues to support her confirmation.

More broadly, I hope that we can come together and return the Senate to its best traditions of holding up-or-down votes on judicial nominations. We have an opportunity this Congress to move past this obstruction and get back to the proper manner of handling judicial nominations. Doing so will bring much needed assistance to the Federal judiciary, which has been forced to contend with unmanageable judicial vacancy rates. It also will do credit to this institution, which is failing in its duty to confirm Federal judges. We do not deserve the moniker of the ``world's greatest deliberative body'' if we cannot do something as simple as confirming judicial nominations.

There have been some encouraging signs that we are making real progress in this regard. For instance, the rules reforms that we voted on in a bipartisan manner earlier this year included a provision to shorten the postcloture debate window on district court nominees from 30 hours to a more reasonable 2. This change could dramatically streamline the nominations process without limiting the minority's ability to filibuster a nominee they do not like. It will expire at the end of this Congress, however. I hope that we can come together in bipartisan agreement to extend it permanently and perhaps even expand it to include circuit court nominees like Ms. Halligan.

Even with this change, there is still much to be done. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service recently reported that the confirmation percentage for President Obama's nominees is the lowest of any President in the last 36 years. The effects are obvious. The judicial vacancy crisis in this country is real, and it is growing. As Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has said, ``a persistent problem has developed in the process of filling judicial vacancies. . . . This has created acute difficulties for some judicial districts. Sitting judges in those districts have been burdened with extraordinary caseloads.'' As he explained, there is ``an urgent need for the political branches to find a long-term solution to this recurring problem.''

So let's return to the principle that barring ``extraordinary circumstances'' a nominee should receive a prompt up-or-down vote on the floor, and let's confirm the nomination of the outstanding nominee before us today, Caitlin Halligan.

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

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, if I may interject, I believe I have the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to interject just for a moment to sort out the order on the floor.

I apologize to the Senator from Arizona for the last exchange. I thought I had the floor at that point. I understand now this is a colloquy.

I think Senator Ayotte seems to be in order, but the chairman of the Appropriations Committee is here, so perhaps she could be recognized at the conclusion of Senator Ayotte's remarks. I see Senator Inhofe, so if he could follow Senator Mikulski and then I will follow Senator Inhofe, I offer that as a proposal.

The Senator has that right, and she will yield to him.

I yield for a question.

Having the floor, why don't I propose now that at the conclusion of my remarks Senator Toomey be recognized.

Madam President, I am rising today in strong support of Leader Reid's proposal to stop the sequester. We need to reduce our debt and deficit. We should do so in a thoughtful manner.

We have so often on this floor heard our Republican friends criticize Democratic legislation as job killing: a job-killing bill, a job- killing proposal. We hear that all the time. Often that charge has been without much factual support, but it is part of the common rhetoric in this room. But now we face an event that actually is expected to cause the loss of 1 million jobs, and yet so many Republicans support these cuts in their fixation, frankly, on what economists call budget austerity, cutting your way out of a recession.

How has the budget austerity record worked? There is a record now, because a lot of countries have tried it--from Spain to Portugal to Greece, countries slashed spending to address deficits in the name of budget austerity. Their record? Lousy. Persistent double-digit unemployment and negative economic growth.

The U.S. unemployment rate of 7.9 percent--which is actually even higher in my home State--is for sure too high, but it is far better than the rate of 26 percent unemployment in Spain and Greece, the record of 16 percent unemployment in Portugal. Our 2.3 percent growth rate may seem inadequate, and it is; but as we recover from the deepest recession we have seen since the Great Depression, it is much better than the negative growth rates in the countries that took the austerity path. The results are clear. The evidence is in from the austerity experiments. The countries that cut the deepest have been hurt the most.

If we want to continue growing our economy and creating jobs, we need to resist the European path that is championed by Republican austerity advocates. We need to maintain the balanced approach that has brought the U.S. economy up out of recession--admittedly, not fast enough. But look at what the alternative has been.

Leader Reid's bill would replace the indiscriminate cuts of the so- called sequester with targeted cuts to agricultural subsidies and defense spending--as the chairman of the Appropriations Committee said--after the troops are home when the costs can necessarily come down, paired with revenue not from raising taxes but from closing a loophole, a tax loophole that allows the highest paid people in America to pay lower tax rates than regular middle-class families.

I heard the passion of Senator McCain--and I respect him immensely-- on the harm the sequester will do to the military. We have a way out. It is a question of priorities. Do you really want to protect the military from these cuts or is it more important to protect the low tax rates of billionaires? That is the choice, and that is the choice they are making. Leader Reid's is a smart and balanced bill, and I hope it will pass.

To put this into some context about where we are on spending cuts, the ranking member of the Budget Committee said this week that President Obama was opposed to spending cuts. I have the transcript of what he said in

committee here: The President believes no spending, even wasteful spending, should be cut.

Well, let's look at the facts. Through the Budget Control Act of 2011 and several other measures, we have cut spending almost $1.5 trillion in the budget period of the next decade. When you include interest savings--the top part--from that reduced borrowing, it comes to $1.7 trillion in spending cuts and associated interest savings.

On the revenue side, we have only generated a little over $700 billion from ending the Bush tax cuts for the top 1 percent--at least over $450,000 in income--and from the associated interest savings. This together puts us $2.4 trillion in deficit reduction toward our goal of $4 trillion in total deficit reduction that most economists agree is needed to stabilize our budget. But notice, in the balance between spending cuts and new revenues, spending cuts are ahead by $1 trillion.

The ranking member of the Budget Committee said President Obama believes no spending, even wasteful spending, should be cut. And he is $1 trillion ahead on spending versus revenues. We have cut $7 of spending for every $3 of revenue, even though right now U.S. Government revenue is at its lowest percentage of GDP in more than 50 years, more than half a century. Our proposal going forward is 50/50, spending cuts and revenues. So let's not pretend we are immune to or allergic to spending cuts. There have been more spending cuts than new revenues. We have tried to find a balanced approach and so far, in this $2.4 trillion, we have not even looked at tax loopholes, at spending that happens through the Tax Code that mostly benefits big corporations, special interests, and super-high-end American earners.

Take a look at how big that amount is. We collect, in individual income tax revenue, a little over $1 trillion every year from individuals. But the total liability of individuals under the Tax Code is over $2 trillion. What happens to this other $1.02 trillion? It flows back out. It never comes into the government as revenues. It goes back to people as tax deductions, loopholes, and various ways that we spend money through the Tax Code.

If you look at the corporate income tax side, it is about the same. We look at our corporations--which, by the way, contribute about one- sixth as much into our national revenue as they used to. They are at an all-time low in terms of contributing to our national revenues in the last couple of decades--60 years, I want to say. They are at $118 billion that actually gets collected and becomes revenue. And there is another $157 billion that is corporate tax liability, but we let them get it back through loopholes in the Tax Code. You put them together and you have $1.16 trillion that we can use to help defeat or replace the sequester.

It is a big deal to look at the tax spending as well as just the revenues that come in. We have done nothing on that yet. That should be part of this discussion. That is what we do in the proposal I put out.

Last year we spent a great deal of time in this body debating whether the top income tax rate should be 35 percent or 39.6 percent, and we ultimately set the rate at 39.6 percent for families whose income is over $450,000. But what we know is that many of those families will never pay anything close to that rate. The Tax Code is riddled with those special provisions that I talked about, the loopholes, the tax spending that disproportionately benefits high-income folks. They are special deals for special interests. Of them all, perhaps the most egregious is the so-called carried interest loophole that allows billionaires--literally billionaires--to pay lower tax rates than regular families. That is why in the last election it became apparent that Mitt Romney was paying something like an 11-percent tax rate.

It is not just Mitt Romney. The IRS tracks the effective tax rates paid by the top 400 highest income earners in the country. In 2009, the last year they have data, the top 400 earned an average of over $200 million each, 1 year's income, over $200 million each. What did they pay in taxes on average? About 20 percent. About 20 percent on average. Some paid more. The nominal rate was supposed to be 35 percent. How many Mitt Romneys are there paying 11 percent in order to average to 20 percent? And 20 percent is the same rate that an average firefighter pays in Rhode Island, or a brickmason pays in Rhode Island. Don't tell me a billionaire hedge fund manager cannot pay a higher tax rate than a brickmason.

It is not just the top 400. The Congressional Research Service estimates that about a quarter of people in America who make more than $1 million a year, about a quarter of them pay lower tax rates than over 10 million middle-income taxpayers. In that sense the Tax Code is upside-down in favor of these high-income earners. Loopholes let them do that.

So we cut across all these loopholes with the so-called Buffett rule. They are supposed to pay 39.6 percent. The Buffett rule says: Ok, take all the loopholes you want, but you cannot go below 30 percent. We will let you take off 9.6 percent of the rate the law says you are supposed to pay but you cannot go below 30 percent. You can't go to 11 percent. You cannot be paying lower than a brickmason pays. That is in our sequester replacement bill. It produces $71 billion.

High-earning professionals can perform another trick. They can avoid paying Social Security and Medicare taxes simply by calling themselves corporations for tax purposes. You heard the Republican Presidential candidate say corporations are people. This is the flip side. These people are corporations. If you make enough money you can afford to turn yourself into a corporation to dodge paying your Social Security and your Medicare contributions. So the second item on my list closes that loophole too, which is another $9 billion.

The next item on the list contributes $3 billion by ending special depreciation rules for private jets. Private jet owners can depreciate their aircraft faster, for tax purposes, than commercial aircraft. I am very happy for anybody who is successful enough to have a private jet. But that luxury need not be subsidized by taxpayers. Setting aside the need for this because of the sequester, this is a change that makes sense just on fairness grounds. It stands on its own and it is another $3 billion.

The fourth provision in my bill would end tax breaks for big oil companies. Over the past decade the big five oil companies have collectively enjoyed over $1 trillion in profits--yes, trillion with a T. Repealing taxpayer giveaways to them is something we should be doing anyway. It is another $24 billion toward getting rid of the sequester.

The final provision in my plan helps replace the sequester by ending a tax break that, unbelievably, rewards manufacturers that close up shop in the United States and move jobs to other countries. It does that by allowing those corporations to indefinitely delay paying taxes on profits from those foreign overseas operations. Ending the deferral loophole for companies that manufacture goods overseas for sale to American customers is something we should do anyway to support our domestic manufacturers. It adds almost $20 billion toward replacing the sequester cuts.

Each one of these five provisions would make the Tax Code more fair for ordinary Americans. I love our chairman of Appropriations. She can speak to issues on the floor of the Senate like nobody else. When she said these are cushy, lobbyist-driven earmarks, she is dead right. They do not deserve to stand on their own. And we can get rid of some of the smelliest ones and spare ourselves the sequester and the loss of a million jobs at the same time? Gosh, I think we ought to be doing that.

I strongly support Leader Reid's bill to replace the sequester cuts with a 50/50 mix of revenue and spending. But I also want to show we can avoid the sequester for the coming year by looking at the vast tax spending we do through loopholes and gimmicks in the Tax Code--usually for the benefit of powerful corporations, special interests, and very high-income individuals. When you set that against the economic harm the sequester is going to cause to our country, closing those loopholes should be a higher priority, on economic grounds and on grounds of fairness.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I understand the Senator from West Virginia is going to have the floor, followed by the Senator from Tennessee, and I wish to be recognized to make some remarks following the Senator from Tennessee.

Mr. President, while the Senator from Tennessee is on the floor--and because he referenced the filibuster of district judge nominees--let me say that there was a concerted effort to try to filibuster a district court nominee, one whom Senator Reed and myself had a particularly keen interest in, since we recommended this candidate to the President, and it was the Senator from Tennessee, along with 10 of his Republican colleagues, who decided that was not in the best traditions of the Senate and who voted against the filibuster and to allow cloture so that the precedent remains that district judges will not be filibustered. I just want to take this opportunity to thank him for doing that, and to let him know he has my gratitude for that. I think it was in the best interests of the Senate. I do not think the Senator did it in order to gain any gratitude from me. I think he did it because, as a matter of principle, he thought this was the way the Senate should behave. But I certainly do appreciate it and I want to take this moment to say so.

I am here, actually, Mr. President, to once again urge Congress that we have to wake up to the growing threat of climate change. The alarm bells are ringing. The signs are all around us. Yet we continue to sleepwalk through history, ignoring the warnings from the scientific community, from economists and business leaders--even from our military--of long-term shifts in the climate of our planet.

Another alarm has now sounded--this time by the Government Accountability Office, the taxpayers' watchdog. For the first time ever, the threat to the Federal Government of climate change has been included on the Government Accountability Office's High Risk List.

Every 2 years, at the start of a new Congress, GAO--the Government Accountability Office--provides the House and Senate with a list of program areas that are at high risk. GAO was the government's nonpartisan auditor, and the High Risk List is its catalog of threats to the integrity and performance of the Federal Government.

GAO says:

Solutions to high-risk problems offer the potential to save

billions of dollars, improve service to the public, and

strengthen the performance and accountability of the U.S.

government.

House Oversight Committee chairman, Darrell Issa, has called the High Risk List ``the most important report published.'' As we face the indiscriminate spending cuts of the multibillion-dollar sequester, Chairman Issa pointed out that ``the list represents tremendous opportunities to save those billions of dollars.'' It is enough, actually, to prevent the sequester we are careening toward twice over.

Only 55 issues have been elevated to the High Risk List since it first began in 1990. The current list comprises 30 big-ticket problems, such as improving defense program management, protecting the Nation's cyber infrastructure, and modernizing Federal health programs. When a problem reaches GAO's High Risk List, it shouldn't matter if you are a Democrat or a Republican. These issues must be among the top priorities of Congress and of the Nation.

Add now to this list of serious national problems the destabilizing fiscal risk posed by climate change.

The Federal Government and our military--and by definition, the American taxpayer--own and operate hundreds of thousands of buildings and extensive infrastructure in every State, including utilities, flood control and navigation systems, powerplants, distribution networks, and irrigation systems, not to mention the usual roads and bridges. The Federal Government also manages about 650 million acres of land for grazing, for timber, for conservation, and for recreation. That is nearly 30 percent of the total area of the United States, and climate change is affecting virtually all of it.

The overwhelming majority of climate scientists tell us that the air and oceans are warming, that sea level is rising, and that we are changing the very chemistry of our oceans. These changes--some of them unprecedented in human history--increase the risk of extreme weather, such as heat waves, floods, droughts, and storms. As GAO points out, Federal assets in every corner of the country are at risk.

Storms crashing into the Southeast, wildfires burning throughout the West, and floods inundating the Northeast are not just local problems. Droughts are draining aquifers in the Midwest, warm temperatures are melting permafrost in Alaska, and rising, warming, more acidic oceans are eroding our national coast lines and threatening our lives and our seas. These are not just local problems. Climate change is a high-risk threat to our shared national well-being, our shared national wealth, and our shared national heritage.

The GAO High Risk List sounds yet another alarm that we are fools to ignore. For instance, GAO found that neither the National Flood Insurance Program nor the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation is prepared to deal with climate change.

Between 1980 and 2005, the Flood Insurance Program's exposure quadrupled to nearly $1 trillion. The Crop Insurance Program increased 26-fold to $44 billion. Yet GAO reports that these programs have not even developed the ``information needed to understand their long-term exposure to climate change and not yet analyzed the potential impacts of an increase in the frequency or severity of weather-related events.''

Major private insurance companies such as Allianz, Swiss Re, Munich Re, and Lloyd's of London have for years been developing strategies to address climate change. Our Federal insurance programs don't even have the basic information to address these risks.

Understanding and preparing for these risks is essential to protect our communities from catastrophic loss. According to NOAA, the value of flood insurance coverage in my home State of Rhode Island was $2.2 billion in 2011. The Ocean State has received $57 million in payouts since 1978, some of which helped Rhode Islanders recover from our record floods of 2010 brought on by extremely heavy rainfall. Folks who have flood coverage through the National Flood Insurance Program should know that heavy rainfall has increased in the Northeast by 74 percent since the 1950s, and scientists predict that warmer air will continue to increase the frequency of heavy rainfall and consequent flooding in the Northeast.

Disaster aid is expensive. FEMA has obligated more than $80 billion in Federal disaster aid between 2004 and 2011. Another $50.5 billion in emergency aid was just approved for the northeastern communities devastated by Hurricane Sandy. PSE&G, New Jersey's largest utility, plans to spend over $4 billion over 10 years to make its electric and gas systems more resilient to these severe storms. New Jersey's second largest utility, JDP&L, announced that it intends to spend $200 million to do the same. According to Jeanne Fox, who is a commissioner on the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, ``This is a cost of climate change, pure and simple.''

It is really time for us to wake up. In the private sector, the insurance and utility industries are facing the threat. Congress must now act responsively.

House Oversight Committee ranking member Elijah Cummings asked GAO Comptroller Gene Dodaro if it was ``GAO's opinion that regardless of the outcome of global negotiations to reduce carbon emissions, the United States Government should take immediate action to mitigate the risk posed by the climate change.'' Comptroller General Dodaro responded with a simple and unequivocal ``yes.''

In the High Risk List, GAO states that despite any possible future reduction of emissions, ``greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere will continue altering the climate system for many decades.'' That is the way the laws of physics and chemistry work. Damage with lasting consequences is already done.

Many effects of climate change can be mitigated, and it is the responsibility of this Congress to help our Nation prepare and adapt. Some Federal efforts are underway. In 2003 the U.S. Department of Transportation initiated a study of climate risks to gulf coast transportation. It is now cooperating in that study with the South Alabama Regional Planning Commission. The Bureau of Land Management and

the U.S. Forest Service are developing a drought vulnerability model, a carbon storage map, and an alpine monitoring program to help land managers in southwestern Colorado cope with the effects of a changing climate. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have a Climate- Ready States and Cities Initiative to help local health departments prepare for changes in health risks driven by climate change. EPA partnered with New York City's Department of Environmental Protection to develop a software tool that helps drinking water and wastewater utility operators understand how climate change poses risks to their facilities.

Rhode Island, I am proud to say, is one of many States that have formed a climate change commission. The commission is coordinating with Federal officials to identify specific State and local challenges that are presented by our changing climate. Twenty other States have similar climate action plans developed or underway.

Despite the actions by States, the actions in the private sector, and the warnings in the GAO High Risk List, special interest politics in Congress prevent the Federal Government from using our resources effectively and efficiently against this threat. The polluting special interests have Washington gripped in a barricade of obstruction, and the effect truly is disgraceful.

Consider, for example, NOAA's proposal to create a National Climate Service, akin to its renowned National Weather Service. This was a no- cost restructuring that would have centralized NOAA's work on understanding the climate, including its observations of climate change. The National Climate Service would have helped meet the growing local demand for climate change science information. This proposal was blocked by Republicans over in the House who simply don't want to hear about climate change. That kind of thinking will not get climate change off the High Risk List.

According to GAO, ``The Nation's vulnerability can be reduced by limiting the magnitude of climate change through actions to limit greenhouse gas emissions. . . . While implementing adaptive measures may be costly, there is a growing recognition that the cost of inaction could be greater and--given the government's precarious fiscal position--increasingly difficult to manage given expected budget pressures.''

Congress has been asleep long enough. We have a tradition in this body of taking the accounting of GAO--our nonpartisan watchdog-- seriously and of taking GAO's High Risk List seriously. GAO now joins our defense and intelligence communities, our scientific research communities, our State and local governments, and major sectors of private industry that have all elevated climate change from their to-do list to their must-do list. It is time for Congress to wake up to its duties and to get to work.

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.

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