[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 44 (Tuesday, March 13, 2018)] [Senate] [Pages S1656-S1684] From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov] ECONOMIC GROWTH, REGULATORY RELIEF, AND CONSUMER PROTECTION ACT-- Continued The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada. Mr. HELLER. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to express my strong support for the legislation we are debating, which will restore economic opportunity, create jobs, help businesses grow, and help every Nevadan as they work to achieve the American dream. As a member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, I can tell you that this legislation is years in the making, and I wish to thank the chairman of the committee, Senator Crapo, and my fellow colleagues who are on the committee for their efforts to get us where we are today. For years the economy had been growing slowly after the great recession. It was like a truck with a bad transmission. It was moving, but it wasn't going anywhere fast. Today everything has changed. The American economy has been primed, the engine has been started, and through the work of the Senate and President Trump, the gas pedal has been hit, and our economy is finally going full speed ahead. Just a few month ago, we passed historic tax cuts for Nevada families and for Nevada businesses. A typical Nevada family of four will roughly get a $2,200 tax cut. We lowered the individual rates across the board and doubled the standard deduction used by most Nevadans, allowing them to keep more of their paycheck. This bill also included my efforts to double the child tax credit, from $1,000 to $2,000, further easing the tax burden on working families. Overall, these tax cuts accomplish my three major goals of creating more jobs, increasing wages, and making America more competitive around the world. I am proud to have worked on these tax cuts, but Congress can do more. That is why we are here today. The Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act we are debating is the next major step that we must take to shift our economy into another gear. This bipartisan bill tailors financial regulations to protect consumers and help Nevadans have more access to financial resources and more access to economic opportunities. It will give Nevadans more choices when it comes to finding a loan to buy a house, to buy a car to get to work, to start a business, and, for that matter, to grow their business. Finally, this bill helps to ensure that local lenders can grow their services for every community in Nevada. This is the oil in the economic engine. It keeps not only cities like Las Vegas, Henderson, and Reno running but all communities in Nevada, such as Mesquite, Pahrump, Carson City, [[Page S1657]] Fallon, Elko, and Ely. This bill includes many bipartisan proposals that I fought for. I am pleased that the legislation I offered with Senator Menendez to ease workforce mobility for mortgage loan officers who wish to move to Nevada or to change jobs is included in the base text. In committee I offered an amendment that was based off of legislation I worked on with Senator Warner that would require the regulators for credit unions to publish their annual budgets and to hold a public hearing on that budget. It would increase public transparency and ensure that Nevada credit union members have a voice in Washington, DC. Working with my friend Senator Tester, we were able to include language to increase congressional oversight of the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department in order to ensure that our best interests are represented at international insurance discussions on capital standards. I was also pleased that language authored by Senators Perdue, Tester, Donnelly, and myself was incorporated to require consumer credit bureaus to provide free and timely security credit freezes to all consumers. It also requires credit bureaus to provide consumers a notice at any time of their consumer rights and for the credit bureaus to tell consumers on their websites that they have a right to request a security freeze, fraud alert, and an Active-Duty military fraud alert. Additionally, this bill includes the Community Lender Exam Act that I co-led with Senator Donnelly, which would allow more highly rated community lenders to be examined every 18 months instead of 12 months. This will help safe and sound local lenders to direct more of their time and capital to Nevada communities and ensure the same level of regulatory supervision. With this bill we are seeing something rare in Washington, DC-- Democrats and Republicans working together to help Americans have more economic opportunities. Let me say that again. This bill will help Americans have more economic opportunities. That is why I am here in the Senate--to give every Nevadan the opportunity to live the fullest life and to achieve their goals. I look forward to voting to support this legislation, and I would encourage all of my colleagues to do the same. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll. The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll. Ms. HEITKAMP. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Ms. HEITKAMP. Mr. President, I am here to discuss the merits of S. 2155, a bill that I have been working on since coming to the Senate in 2013. It is a bill that addresses the concerns of rural financial institutions, particularly those in our rural communities. It is a bill that was drafted to address access to capital concerns and the consolidation of small banks in areas where I live, which is in the State of North Dakota. It is a bill that I am incredibly proud of. I know that there have been a lot of statements made about this bill in the last week, and I am here to set a lot of those straight. Before I start, I wish to talk about what it is like in rural communities where I grew up. I find it interesting when I hear that this bill is about Wall Street banks and big bank bailouts. The last time I checked, Lincoln State Bank, which is my small community bank in the community where I went to high school, in Hankinson, ND, is not on the Fortune 500. It is not on the Fortune 100. It is a small community bank that has been operating and has been available to consumers in my community to help them achieve their family goals, achieve their farming goals, and achieve their needs for capital going forward. I don't recognize the bill that is being debated here in the U.S. Senate because it is not the bill that has been written, and it is not the bill that is hopefully going to pass the Senate. I don't think that it is any mistake, when you look at the five primary sponsors of this bill--the five of us who wrote this bill--that most of us are from predominantly rural States. I think we understand the needs of those living in our States and the needs of those living in our rural communities. When you look at an opportunity to fix regulation and to respond to concerns that people have, one of the constant arguments that I get when I go home is this: There is no longer any common sense in Washington, DC. They don't understand where we live. They don't understand who we are. They don't understand that we live in communities and that we support and protect each other. Instead, they write one regulation that is supposed to be one-size-fits-all. That is certainly not what this is. This is an attempt to write a bill that would give direction to the Federal regulators so that small banks could be treated as small banks and so that large banks could continue to be regulated and treated as the large, systemically significant institutions that they are. I will give just a few statistics that I think everybody should understand. Thirty years ago, there were approximately 14,000 banks in the United States. Today, there are approximately 5,000. Since the passage of Dodd-Frank, the United States has lost about 14 percent of its smallest banks. Meanwhile, the small banks' share of U.S. domestic deposits and banking assets has decreased, and the five largest U.S. banks, which don't benefit from our bill, appear to have absorbed much of this market share. What I have said consistently is that Dodd-Frank was supposed to have stopped too big to fail, but the net result has been too small to succeed. The big banks have gotten bigger since the passage of Dodd- Frank, and the small banks have disappeared. They have retreated from their traditional role of relationship lending, first out of fear for regulation in that they might be doing something wrong and then out of fear of the cost of regulation if they are going to work towards compliance. I will make one simple point. This bill was not written by Wall Street bankers, and it was not written by Wall Street lobbyists. If it had been, it would have been a completely different bill in that it would actually provide relief to Wall Street banks and Wall Street bankers, but it does exactly the opposite. It will give relief to those institutions, whether they be regional banks or small community banks, that can be effective competition for the largest institutions in this country. It is absolutely essential that we set the record straight that this bill is to get our relationship institutions--whether they be credit unions or banks or our regional institutions that are not doing anything more sophisticated than the work that is being done in our small community banks--the regulatory relief that they need to effectively compete against the biggest banks in this country and to tailor our regulations, to set our regulations, in a way that reflects the common sense of American citizens. I will take a minute because I think a lot of things that have been said about this bill have been incredibly reckless. These inaccurate claims, if left unchallenged and undiscussed, will create the legislative history of this bill, which could, in fact, then be used by many of the same institutions that we believe are not affected by this bill to argue that they are entitled to some sort of protection. We can't let that happen. First, let me start by saying this is not a giveaway to Wall Street. It is not a giveaway to the largest institutions. Our bipartisan bill makes targeted, commonsense fixes so as to provide tangible relief to community banks and credit unions so that they can lend to borrowers in rural America and support rural communities. It leaves in place rules and regulations that hold Wall Street accountable. In fact, the big banks aren't necessarily happy with this bill because it doesn't benefit them much. When we asked the current regulators, such as Fed Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell--he basically said that he believes the bill gives the regulators the tools they need to continue to protect and prevent against financial collapse. Let me say how the bill doesn't help the largest institutions. It will not make any significant changes to the regulations that face the largest Wall Street banks. They [[Page S1658]] will continue to be reined in from causing havoc to the financial system like they did during the financial crisis. It will not make any structural changes to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It will be allowed to continue to protect consumers. It will do nothing to weaken or repeal the Volcker rule. The only institutions that will be given any relief from the Volcker rule will be those banks that have under $10 billion in assets. That is not JPMorgan; that is not Citibank; that is not Goldman Sachs; that is not the largest of institutions. Those institutions of $10 billion or less are the only institutions that will get relief from the Volcker rule. It also does not change the way the Federal Reserve regulates foreign banks. Second, this bill will not lead to another mortgage lending crisis. Let's just go back and examine what happened in 2008. We had a significant number of liar loans--subprime lending--which drove the mortgage market. That was troublesome and problematic in and of itself, but the real problem came when those mortgages were securitized and sold into the secondary market. That is where the trouble began. It was trouble enough that they were putting institutions in jeopardy, but they were passing along that risk to the public through these securitized products--derivatives. Guess what. When the whole thing collapsed, we looked behind, and we saw these risky mortgage loans. We saw what actually created some of the problems on the front end before it was securitized. Nothing in this bill changes qualified mortgage standards. Nothing in this bill removes the protections that Dodd-Frank has provided to the secondary market. The only thing this bill does as it relates to mortgages is to say to those small institutions, which are the small community banks that I am familiar with, that they can make mortgages without worrying about the qualified mortgage standards. They can go ahead and do that. The one thing they can't do is sell those mortgages into the secondary market. They have to keep those mortgages on the books. When you have a requirement that they keep them on the books, do you really, honestly believe that these institutions are going to take unnecessary risks? The answer is no. Guess what. They didn't take unnecessary risks before 2008. They did not cause this problem, but they are incurring the bulk of the expenses to fix this problem. To suggest that we are, in fact, risking the financial security of this country--of our institutions--because we gave a small, discrete break on mortgages to the smallest of institutions, which have to keep these mortgages in portfolio, is absurd. If you don't believe me, let's look at what Congressman Barney Frank, one of the architects of Dodd- Frank, said yesterday. He said, ``Nothing in this bill in any way weakens the prohibition about making shaky loans to people with weak credit and then packaging them into a security.'' Our bill restores the balance for small community banks in the mortgage business without opening the door to excesses and predatory lending standards that led to the financial crisis. To suggest otherwise is disingenuous and simply not true. We have to push back against this idea that somehow we are rolling back the clock. In fact, in this same interview, Congressman Barney Frank said that about 95 percent of Dodd-Frank, as it is written, will remain intact after this bill passes--95 percent. You would not believe that to listen to the dialogue and the diatribe we have heard on the floor. The third misstatement is that we will somehow scrap the rules for the largest Wall Street banks and allow regional banks with up to $250 billion in assets to follow the same rules and regulations as the tiny community banks. Again, this is not true. Far from scrapping the rules, our bill simply provides that the Federal Reserve has the ability to tailor one piece of Dodd-Frank, and that is the section 165 regulations. For certain regional lenders, that means that if they do not pose systemic risk, they will not be subject to the requirements of section 165. Yet, if the Fed determines that they could, as in the case, as you have heard, of Countrywide--if there is another Countrywide out there and the Fed discovers another Countrywide--it can, in fact, include that institution in section 165. So let's not exaggerate the impact of this bill. Let's talk about how we have moved the assumption from $50 billion or $100 billion to $250 billion in terms of what is systemically risky, knowing that the Fed can always go back and include smaller institutions if they, in fact, see the challenges. The other thing that we need to point out about the Dodd-Frank regulations and consistent regulations in moving forward is that our bill still requires very rigorous stress testing for these regional institutions. Regional institutions would have to have the ability to meet those stress tests. At his confirmation hearing, Chairman Powell called the framework of this bill a sensible one, and he affirmed that he would like to continue meaningful and frequent stress tests on banks between $100 billion and $250 billion, as provided for in this bill, while he confirmed that it is not necessary to stress test the smaller banks. I think that this position is supported, again, by Janet Yellen, who said, ``I do think it's appropriate to tailor regulations to the system footprint of the financial organization'' and called our bipartisan Senate bill ``a move in a direction that we think would be good.'' Moreover, our bill does not change the risk-based capital and leverage regime for these regional institutions under the Basel III reforms. Relatedly, our bill does not change the fact that the comprehensive capital analysis and review--what we call CCAR--applies to these regional banks. Of course, the Fed has said it will continue to implement enhanced prudential standards. In addition to stress tests that are required under this bill for some banks over $100 billion, we have all of these other requirements and the requirement that they continue to meet qualified mortgage standards. They can sell these mortgages into the secondary market if they meet those standards. It is critically important that we be very clear about what this bill does and does not do for our midsized or regional institutions. The fourth and probably the most hurtful of the claims that have been made is that those of us who care deeply about preventing and eliminating discrimination in lending have somehow opened the door to allow for discrimination in lending by changing the HMDA standards. That is an outrageous claim and particularly hurtful for the Members of this body who have spent their lives fighting discrimination. I want to talk about the facts. Our bill continues to require that all lenders, no matter the size, collect the traditional HMDA data, which includes information on race, gender, and ethnicity. Contrary to what some have said, our bill only relaxes the new, additional data requirements for some of the smallest lenders in the country--those that make less than 500 loans a year. This data only makes up 3.5 percent of all of the data collected under HMDA. Think about that. We are claiming that people are discriminating and allowing for discrimination because we are relaxing the standards for the smallest institutions, and it only amounts to 3.5 percent of the total data collected--3.5 percent. This is an outrageous statement, and it is needs to be corrected on the record. You might ask, why even change the 3.5? For those small institutions, the 44 pages of data that they are required to collect--it may, in fact, be that they no longer are interested in doing those kinds of mortgages. So it is very important that we correct the record. In fact, I asked Chairman Powell during a recent Banking Committee hearing to clarify whether he believed the change in S. 2155 would result in or lead to additional discrimination in lending. He said that he did not believe that it in any way would affect their ability to enforce the fair lending laws in this country. Fifth, some have inaccurately alleged that the change from ``may'' to ``shall'' in the tailoring is a dangerous provision that empowers big banks to secure more favorable treatment from the government. I think that claim does not stand up to scrutiny. First, it is common sense that we should tailor Federal regulations so they are implemented in a practical and effective way. Second, in our bill, we retain the broad rule of construction under section 165, which provides [[Page S1659]] the Federal Reserve with wide latitude to tailor prudential standards to any company or category of companies based on any risk the Fed deems appropriate--pretty broad authority on the part of the Federal Government. Third, in the event of a lawsuit, the Fed would be given strong deference by the courts to interpret what might apply to section 165. Sixth, our bill would not open up targeted reforms to the supplementary leverage ratio beyond the three custody banks. Under the plain reading of this bill, the three custody banks are the only three institutions that are predominantly engaged in the custody business. Of course, the regulators retain the discretion to make appropriate adjustments to SLR. To be clear, there is broad agreement among regulators that the unique business model of custody banks warrants tailored treatment of the SLR provision. That is why a substantially similar bill passed the House Financial Services Committee--no lighthearted people there on the minority side--by a vote of 60 to 0. Finally, our bill will not gut oversight of foreign megabanks operating in the United States such as Barclays and Deutsche Bank. These three institutions, all of which have over $250 billion in assets, will be subject to section 165 of Dodd-Frank. That means foreign banks will still be subject to foreign bank stress test requirements, liquidity stress testing, and strict Basel III capital requirements. Our bill does not change the Fed's requirement that large foreign banks establish an intermediate holding company in the United States, which subjects foreign banks' U.S. operations to requirements similar to those imposed on U.S. banks. Chairman Powell at the March Senate Banking Committee hearing was asked about this, and he said he did not believe this bill would exempt foreign banks from tough oversight under Dodd-Frank. Additionally, the substitute amendment for this bill has affirmed that large foreign banks do not escape Dodd-Frank supervision. I think it is really important that we debate the actual merits of this bill and not the ``boogeyman'' merits--the statements that this bill will somehow lead to a catastrophic downfall of our financial system. As I said, even Barney Frank disagrees with that evaluation of this bill. It is important we set the record straight on what this bill does and does not do and that we make sure that when a court is reviewing this provision--if, in fact, there is ever litigation--that the court has a record to go to on the floor of the Senate and in the committee which corrects misstatements and refocuses the bill on what the actual intended outcome is and how the bill was actually written. So with that, I will yield the floor, but I will say I intend to submit a document for the Record in the next discussion, which, hopefully, will provide a written document outlining the myth versus the facts of this bill so we can have an actual record that the courts can look to that documents the intent and the purpose of this legislation beyond the hyperbole and overstatement that we have heard. Thank you. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll. The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll. Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Ms. WARREN. Thank you, Mr. President. I have come to the floor of the Senate five times over the past week to talk about how the bank lobbyist act puts American families in danger of getting punched in the gut in another financial crisis. I have talked about how it rolls back consumer protections and how, if it passes, 25 of the 40 largest banks in this country--banks that sucked down, collectively, almost $50 billion in bailout money during the crisis, and nobody went to jail--can be regulated like tiny, little community banks. I talked about how the bill will roll back the rules on the very biggest banks in this country--JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and the rest of them--banks that broke our economy in 2008, banks where no one went to jail, banks where taxpayers coughed up $180 billion to bail them out. I talked about how Washington is poised to make the same mistake it has made many times before deregulating giant banks while the economy is cruising, only to set the stage for another financial crisis. Now, I am not the only one who has talked about problems with this bill. The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, the FDIC, the Congressional Budget Office, the NAACP, the Urban League have all talked about parts of this bill that cause problems and would cause problems in our economy. Today, I want to talk about another part of the bill that keeps me awake at night--the part that guts our ability to find and go after mortgage discrimination by exempting 85 percent of banks from reporting data about the loans they make under a law called the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act or HMDA. There is a long and shameful history in this country of discriminating against communities of color when they try to buy homes. From 1934 to 1968, the Federal Housing Administration led the charge, actively discriminating by refusing to insure loans to qualified buyers while helping White families finance their plans to achieve the American dream. This policy was not a secret. Nope. It was not the product of a handful of racist government officials. Nope. It was the official policy of the U.S. Government until 1968--in my lifetime and the lifetime of 90 Senators who serve today. The official policy of this government was to help White people buy homes and to deny that help to Black people. Because the Federal Government had set this standard, private lenders enthusiastically followed Washington's lead. Homes are the way that millions of working families built some economic security. They pay down a mortgage and own an asset that over time often appreciates. A home serves as security to fund other ventures--to start a small business or to send a youngster to college. If Grandma and Grandpa could hang on to the home and get it paid off, they can often pass along an asset that boosts the finances of the next generation and the one after that. That is exactly what White people have done for generations--but not Black people. Systematically, over many decades, government policies that encouraged mortgage companies to lend only to White borrowers cut the legs out from under minority families trying to build some family wealth, and the result has been exactly what you would predict. It has contributed to a staggering gap of wealth between White communities and communities of color today. One statistic from Massachusetts, according to the Boston Globe, states that the median net worth of White families living in Boston is $247,500, and the median net worth for a Black family is $8. That is something all Americans, regardless of race, should be ashamed of. When I was traveling around the country in the aftermath of the financial crisis, it became clear to me that the crash had made the problem worse. Subprime lenders that had peddled mortgages full of tricks and traps had specifically targeted minority borrowers. That meant that during the great recession, a huge number of minority borrowers lost their homes. When rising home prices helped White Americans regain some financial security, communities of color, with their lower homeownership rates and their higher foreclosure rates, were often left behind. Again, this is just one example. According to Pew, between 2010 and 2013, the median wealth of White households grew by 2.4 percent, but the wealth of Hispanic households in that same time fell by 14.3 percent, and the wealth of African-American households fell by 33.7 percent. Mortgage discrimination didn't end in the 1960s when formal redlining policies were abolished. It didn't end with the tightening of mortgage rules following the financial crisis. Lending discrimination is still alive and well in America in 2018. According to a new report that just came out from the Center for Investigative Reporting and Reveal, in 2015 and 2016, nearly two-thirds of mortgage lenders denied loans for people of color [[Page S1660]] at higher rates than for White people. This problem affects both big and small lenders, and it is nationwide. Minority borrowers were more likely to be denied a mortgage than White borrowers with the same income in 61 different cities across America. How do we know that? Because of HMDA data. That is how we can see how much Black families were charged for a mortgage or how often Latino families were denied a chance to take out a mortgage--and we can compare those numbers with White borrowers who have the same income and same credit scores, but we can't do that if the data is missing. It is impossible to detect and fight mortgage discrimination without HMDA data. The banking bill on the floor of the Senate says that 85 percent of the banks will no longer be required to report HMDA data, including the borrower's credit score and age; the loan's points, fees, and interest rates, and the property value. Eighty-five percent. This data is essential to figuring out whether the borrower got a fair deal. If this bill passes, there will be entire communities where there will not be enough data to figure out whether borrowers are getting ripped off, entire communities where it will be impossible to monitor whether people are getting cheated because of their race or gender, entire communities where Federal and State regulators will not be able to bring cases, and independent groups like Reveal will not be able to hold these groups accountable. Sure, banks will save a little money by not having to fill out the HMDA data, but when communities of color are once again left behind, there will be no way to prove it. That is why civil rights groups around the country have spoken up against this bill. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights said ``[e]xempting the overwhelming majority of our Nation's banks and credit unions from an expanded HMDA requirement that would better enable Federal regulators, State attorneys general, fair housing advocates, and others to identify and address discriminatory and predatory mortgage practices is unwise.'' The Urban League and the National Community Reinvestment Coalition wrote in a newspaper column that the bill ``would be a giant step backwards for the public and national groups who use this data to ensure banks treat all borrowers equally.'' According to the NAACP, the bill ``would devastate our attempts to determine--and potentially rectify--racially discriminatory lending or loan approval patterns at play.'' This is about basic fairness. HMDA data is an investment we should be making to make sure that all qualified Americans have the same chance to buy a home. Throughout our history, Washington has always fallen short of that goal. Gutting HMDA allows our country and our government to ignore discrimination, letting history repeat itself. Communities of color will pay the price if this Congress makes this same mistake again. It isn't too late. We can stop this bill from becoming law. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll. The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll. Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Daines). Without objection, it is so ordered. Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, today I want to talk about the tragedy of human trafficking. I want to talk about it today because this is an issue that I hope the entire U.S. Senate will take up within the next week. We have legislation on which we have worked on a bipartisan basis over the last couple of years, and we have an opportunity late this week or early next week to address this growing problem. I have spent a lot of time focused on this issue over the last couple of years because of the growth of trafficking and my sense that we can do something constructive about it. Others have been involved as well. Today, I will be at the White House for a meeting that Ivanka Trump is hosting with congressional colleagues, anti-trafficking advocates, and others who have demonstrated a commitment to addressing this issue. We will talk about the need to pass this legislation, get it to the President's desk for signature, and begin to help women and children across our country who are currently being exploited online. We will probably talk about lots of different kinds of trafficking this afternoon, including work trafficking and other human trafficking, but the one I want to focus on this afternoon is sex trafficking, and the reason is that we think we have a legislative solution for addressing the biggest problem. Unbelievably, right now in this country, sex trafficking is actually increasing. That is based on all the best data we are getting from all the experts around the country. They say that it is increasing primarily for one simple reason, and that is the internet. The great increase is happening online. As some have said, this is because of the ruthless efficiency of selling people online. When I am back home in Ohio, victims tell me: Rob, this has moved from the street corner to the smartphone. There is a ruthless efficiency about it. Anti-trafficking organizations, such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Shared Hope International, and others, have told us that the majority of the online sex trafficking they encounter occurs through one single website, and that is backpage.com. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says that backpage is involved in about 75 percent of the online trafficking reports it receives from the public. Shared Hope International says it is more than that. I chair the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Learning about what is going on online, we decided to do an in-depth investigation to find out what is really happening and how we could address it. We spent 18 months studying this, and studying online trafficking quickly led us to backpage.com because, again, that is where the majority of this commercial sex trafficking is occurring. What we found was really shocking. Not only was backpage--as other websites have in the past--selling women and children online, but this organization and others are actually complicit in these crimes; in other words, they knew much more than we had previously thought. We found that backpage was actually knowingly selling people online. We did this through a subpoena process that had to be approved here in the U.S. Senate because the company objected to responding to our subpoenas. For the first time in 21 years, we had to come to the U.S. Senate to get approval to actually enforce the subpoena. We then had to take it all the way to the Supreme Court because they appealed it all the way up, and we won. Through this, we were able to get about 1 million documents. We went through these documents to find out what was happening. What we learned was that this website actually was actively and knowingly involved in selling people online. When a user would post an ad that might have a word indicating that the girl they were selling was underage--for instance, it might say ``cheerleader'' or it might simply reference the age of the girl being 16, 17 years old or younger sometimes--instead of rejecting that ad, knowing that it was of course illegal, they would instead clean up the ad; in other words, they would edit out the words that indicated someone was underage. They didn't just remove the post because they didn't want to lose the revenue--and you can imagine this is a very lucrative business. They just insisted that the ad be edited. By the way, this also covered up the evidence of the crime, so it was then harder for law enforcement to find out who was involved in the selling of girls online--and underage girls. Of course, it also increased the company's profits. That is what we found in our investigation. We also found that for years and years people who had been trying to hold these websites accountable in court had failed, and they had failed and been unsuccessful because of a Federal law that, in essence, said to these websites: You have an immunity to be able to do this. You couldn't do it on the street corner, but online you have an immunity to be able to do it. I recommend a powerful documentary. It is called ``I am Jane Doe.'' You [[Page S1661]] can find it on iamjanedoe.com. It is on Netflix. It tells the story of underage girls who have been exploited on backpage. It talks about the trauma they have experienced, and, finally, it also talks about their frustration with their inability to hold these websites accountable. What might surprise you is the reason these websites are not held accountable--the more we dug into it, the more it became clear--is that Washington basically passed a Federal law, which I believe has been misinterpreted by the courts, but it has been interpreted by the courts to say that these websites have no risk, that they are not liable, and that they have an immunity under Federal law. It is called the Communications Decency Act. The Communications Decency Act was enacted back in 1996, when the internet was in its infancy. It was intended to protect websites from liability based on third-party posts on that website. I understand the intention of Congress, but it now protects websites when they knowingly allow this criminal activity--the crime of sex trafficking--to occur through their site. I believe Congress meant well when enacting this law. In fact, part of its original intent was actually to protect children from indecent material on the internet by holding individuals liable for sending explicit material to those children. Now that same law is being used as a shield by websites that promote and engage in online sex trafficking with immunity. I don't believe Congress ever intended this broad liability protection for websites that actively and knowingly facilitate online sex trafficking, but the legal interpretation of the law has led to this. That is why America's district attorneys, 50 State attorneys general, judges all over the country, and so many others have called on Congress to amend this Communications Decency law and fix this injustice--really, this loophole. Last year, a Sacramento judge threw out pimping charges against backpage and directly called on Congress to act. Here is what this judge said--again, this sort of message has been repeated by other courts: ``If and until Congress sees fit to amend the immunity law, the broad reach of section 230 of the Communications Decency Act even applies to those alleged to support the exploitation of others by human trafficking.'' That is not just a suggestion; it is an invitation--an invitation to this Congress to act, calling on us to do what we were sent here to do, which is to craft laws that promote justice. For too long, victims of online sex trafficking have been denied the justice they deserve, and now we have the opportunity here in the Senate--I hope within the next week--to fix that. Last August, I introduced legislation called the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, or SESTA, with a bipartisan group of 24 cosponsors, including my coauthor, Senator Richard Blumenthal, and Senators John McCain, Claire McCaskill, John Cornyn, Heidi Heitkamp, and others. SESTA would provide justice for victims of online sex trafficking and hold accountable those websites that intentionally facilitate these crimes. We do this by making two very narrowly crafted changes to Federal law. First, we remove the Communications Decency Act's broad liability protections for a narrow set of bad-actor websites that knowingly facilitate sex trafficking crimes--high standard: knowingly. Second, the legislation allows State attorneys general to prosecute websites that violate existing Federal trafficking laws. SESTA simply says that if you are violating Federal sex trafficking laws and you are knowingly facilitating it, then you have to be held to account. That seems to make all the sense in the world, and it will make a big difference for these girls and women who are being exploited online. Our bill protects websites that are doing the right thing, by the way. In fact, it preserves what is called the Good Samaritan provision of the Communications Decency Act, which protects good actors who proactively block and screen their sites for offensive material, and thus it shields them from frivolous lawsuits. I think that is appropriate. We simply carve out a very limited exception in the Communications Decency Act's liability protections for those who knowingly facilitate sex trafficking. By the way, there are already exceptions for things in this law-- exceptions for things like copyright infringement. This isn't a new idea. So unless you think protecting copyrights is more important than protecting women and children from the trauma of trafficking, you should be for this. Even those who support section 230 otherwise should strongly support this. If a prosecutor can prove in court that a website has committed these acts, SESTA allows that website to be held liable and the victims to get the justice they deserve. By the way, 68 Senators now--more than two-thirds of this body--have signed on as cosponsors of this legislation, a majority of Republicans and a majority of Democrats. That doesn't happen very often around here. The House of Representatives passed SESTA as an amendment to a broader anti-sex trafficking bill just a couple of weeks ago by an overwhelming margin--more than 300 folks. The Trump administration has endorsed this solution and again shown a commitment to the issue. So SESTA has overwhelming support from the White House, from more than 300 House Members, and from the 68 Senators who signed on to be a part of this solution. I think one reason it has gotten so much support is because of the logic of the legislation, the fact that we narrowly drew up the legislation not to affect internet freedom, to be sure we were listening to people who had concerns, but also, and more importantly, because we are all hearing about this issue back home. We are all hearing the stories, and they are powerful, they are compelling, and they are heartbreaking. Kubiiki Pride came to Congress, to our subcommittee, as we were looking into this issue and told us her story. In testimony, she said: My daughter ran away from home. She had gone missing. She had been missing for several weeks. Obviously, I was very concerned. I couldn't find her. Someone suggested that I look at this website called backpage, so I did. I found my daughter. She found her daughter--14 years old--but found her daughter in very sexually difficult photographs, horrible photographs of her beautiful daughter. So she called backpage.com and said: I am Kubiiki Pride, and that is my daughter on your website. She is 14 years old. I am so glad I found her. Thank you for taking down that ad. She is 14 years old. Do you know what the person on the other end of the phone said? They said: Did you post the ad? This is how evil these people are. She said: No, I didn't post the ad. That is my daughter. I have been trying to find her. She has been missing for several weeks. They said: If you didn't post the ad, if you didn't pay for it, you can't take it down and we won't take it down. That is what we are dealing with here. Eventually, she found her daughter, got her daughter back. She went through the proper process to be able to hold backpage accountable, and guess what. The court said: Sorry. Under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act--Congress wrote this bill--this website has immunity, even though she is 14 years old and she was being sold online. So I think that is why 68 Senators have said: Let's step up and do this. This is something we can do around here that is not partisan, that isn't about politics. It is about people. It is about human dignity. It is about ensuring that more girls like Kubiiki Pride's daughter don't have to go through this trauma, that more women and children can live out their life's purpose without having to go through this trauma. I think that is why we have been able to find so many Members who want to step up and do something here and do something that will really make a difference. So let's vote on this legislation in the next week. Let's get it signed into law so that more children and more women are not exploited through this brutally efficient online process of selling people. If we do this, we are going to be able to provide justice to those victims who deserve it, and we are going to make this world a little better place. I urge the Senate to vote this next week. [[Page S1662]] For those Members who are not yet a part of this legislation, we urge you to join us. Wouldn't it be great to have everybody on board to correct this injustice, to close this loophole, and to ensure that everybody has the ability to meet their God-given purpose in life? I yield the floor. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll. The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll. Mr. FLAKE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Unanimous Consent Request--H.R. 1551 Mr. FLAKE. Mr. President, today, I rise once again to urge this body to address the critical issue of securing the border and protecting those young immigrants impacted by the uncertain future of the DACA Program. Last week, I offered legislation to extend DACA protection for 3 years and provide 3 years of increased funding for border security. Unfortunately, some of my colleagues chose to block that measure. Let me first say, I understand and sympathize with my colleagues' concerns. I, too, believe that DACA recipients deserve a permanent solution, and I have repeatedly stated my strong preference for such a measure. We have tried to find this permanent solution through Republican-led bills, Democratic-led bills, and bipartisan bills. Yet somehow, each time, we are incapable of finding a compromise that can garner 60 votes. It is clear that we cannot achieve this goal right now, and no one is more disappointed about that fact than I am. I am the first to admit that this solution I propose is far from perfect, but it provides a temporary fix to those crucial and critical problems. It begins the process of improving border security, and it ensures that DACA recipients will not lose protections or be left to face potential deportation. These young immigrants, brought here through no fault of their own, cannot wait for these protections. Likewise, border communities, like those in my home State of Arizona, cannot wait for increased security along the southern border. As I have said before, we in Congress have too regularly confused action with results and have become entirely too comfortable ignoring problems when they seem too difficult to solve. That is why, if this measure is blocked again today, I will be returning to the Senate floor repeatedly until we can pass some sort of solution. To put it as bluntly as possible, it is simply not something we can ignore any longer. I would like to again thank Senator Heitkamp for joining me as a cosponsor of this bill. She has always been a valuable ally in bipartisan efforts to secure the border and to pass other immigration reform measures. We may not be able to deliver a permanent solution for these problems at this time, but we can't abdicate the responsibility of Congress to, at one point, solve them. There are many people whose lives and well-being depend on our ability to deliver meaningful results. Therefore, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 300, H.R. 1551. I further ask that the Flake substitute amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? The Senator from Georgia. Mr. PERDUE. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I, for one, really appreciate the Senator's attempt to solve this issue. Our hearts are very similar. But a temporary solution, such as the one the Senator from Arizona has proposed, is not a solution, as he just said. It is, rather, another failure of Congress to provide real border security for the American people. It provides only 25 percent of what we need to secure that border for the next 3 years. Does anybody really think that is acceptable? Something the President and the American people have in common is that they want border security. In addition, Members of this body and the administration have spent a great deal of time over the last year, as a matter of fact, talking about a potential DACA solution. I am happy to report that people on both sides want this DACA situation solved permanently. I think the Senator from Arizona and I have the same desire there. Further, as a result of recent decisions by Federal district courts, current DACA recipients are free to continue renewing their status unless and until the Supreme Court overturns those lower court decisions. It will likely be over a year before the Supreme Court would even hear such a case. It is my opinion that we should take that time right now and continue working on a permanent DACA solution, as well as the other legal immigration issues that we know are within reach, rather than settling for a temporary solution that does not address the problem. That permanent solution should also be one that ensures we are not back here in the future dealing with the same issue again. The bill the Senator from Arizona is now proposing would only take us further away from fulfilling our congressional responsibility, with a 3-year delay. I will be happy to work with the Senator from Arizona and any of our colleagues in this body to try to address any of the concerns he and they have with the Secure and Succeed Act, which we just voted on a couple of weeks ago. That bill is exactly what the President said he would sign into law. Therefore, Mr. President, I respectfully object. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard. Mr. PERDUE. I suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll. The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll. Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Flake). Without objection, it is so ordered. Yemen War Powers Resolution Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to use an oversized visual poster to be displayed during my remarks. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Wyden be added as a cosponsor to my resolution, S.J. Res. 54. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, along with Senator Murphy and Senator Lee, I rise to talk about one of the most important jobs the U.S. Congress has, and that is to fulfill its constitutional responsibility about whether the United States of America engages in military action. We can disagree about the merits of this or that military action, but there should be absolutely no confusion that sending men and women of the U.S. military into conflict is the responsibility not of the President of the United States alone but of the U.S. Congress. Let us be very clear--and I say this especially to my conservative friends who talk about the Constitution all the time. Let me remind them as to what article I, section 8 of the Constitution reads in no uncertain terms: ``The Congress shall have Power . . . to declare War.'' The Founding Fathers gave the power to declare war to Congress-- the branch most accountable to the people. For far too long, Congress, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, has, in my view, abdicated its constitutional role in authorizing war. We are moving down a very slippery slope by which Congress is now becoming increasingly irrelevant in terms of that vitally important issue. In my view, the time is long overdue for Congress to reassert its constitutional authority. That is what Senator Lee, Senator Murphy, and I are doing with S.J. Res. 54. I am proud to have as cosponsors on that resolution Senator Durbin, Senator Booker, Senator Warren, Senator Leahy, Senator Markey, Senator Feinstein, and Senator Wyden. Many Americans are unaware that the people of Yemen--one of the poorest countries in the world--are suffering terribly today in a devastating [[Page S1663]] civil war with Saudi Arabia and their allies on one side and Houthi rebels on the other. In November of last year, the United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator said that Yemen was on the brink of the ``largest famine the world has seen for many decades.'' So far, thousands of civilians have died. The last count that I have seen is about 10,000. Over 40,000 have been wounded in the war. There are 15 million people who lack access to clean water and sanitation in an infrastructure which has been devastated. More than 20 million people in Yemen--over two-thirds of the population--need some kind of humanitarian support, with nearly 10 million people in acute need of assistance. This is a humanitarian disaster. This very sad picture of a young child who faces starvation is what is taking place throughout this country. Sadly, this is not the only child in that position. Famine is a serious and growing problem in Yemen. Further, more than 1 million suspected cholera cases have been reported, potentially representing the worst cholera outbreak in world history. The pictures I have here today have been taken by photojournalists in Yemen, and they can attest to this human disaster. One of the problems we have is, unfortunately, foreign policy is not an issue we talk about enough on the floor, and it is certainly not talked about enough in the media. Many Americans today are not aware that American forces have been actively engaged in the support of the Saudi coalition in this war--in its providing intelligence and the aerial refueling of planes whose bombs have killed thousands of people and made this crisis far worse. My colleagues and I, along with all of our cosponsors, believe that as Congress has not declared war or authorized military force in this conflict, the U.S. involvement in Yemen is unconstitutional and unauthorized and the U.S. military support of the Saudi coalition must end. Without congressional authorization, our engagement in this war should be restricted to providing desperately needed humanitarian aid and diplomatic efforts to resolve this terrible civil war. That is why Senator Lee and Senator Murphy and I have introduced this joint resolution pursuant to the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which calls for an end to U.S. support for the Saudi war in Yemen. The War Powers Resolution defines the introduction of U.S. Armed Forces to include the ``assignment of members of such Armed Forces to command, coordinate, participate in the movement of, or accompany the regular or irregular military forces of any foreign country or government when such military forces are engaged, or there exists an imminent threat that such forces will become engaged, in hostilities.'' Assisting with targeting intelligence and refueling warplanes as they bomb those targets clearly meet this definition. Here is the bottom line: If the U.S. Congress wants to go to war in Yemen, vote on that war, but I and the cosponsors of this legislation do not believe that the authority to go to war is now appropriate. We think what is going on now is unconstitutional, and unless Congress authorizes this war, it should be ended and ended immediately. I look forward to a colloquy with Senator Lee and with Senator Murphy. I now yield to Senator Lee, who has been very active on this issue from day one. I thank the Senator. Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I thank Senator Sanders for his leadership on this issue. It is an honor to be here with my friend and colleague, the Senator from Vermont, to talk about our joint resolution to force a vote on U.S. military involvement in a civil war that is going on in Yemen. Whether one is present in the Senate Chamber today or whether one is tuning in from home, I hope you will listen closely for the next hour or so, so we can fill you in on the unauthorized Middle East war that your U.S. Government is supporting. This war in Yemen has killed tens of thousands of innocent victims-- human beings, lest we forget--each with immeasurable, innate, God-given dignity. This war has created refugees, orphans, and widows. It has cost many millions of dollars. Believe it or not, at the end of the day, according to at least one U.S. Government report, it has, arguably, undermined our fight against terrorist threats, such as ISIS, rather than to advance those efforts. I will expand on these uncomfortable facts in a few minutes, but, for now, let's focus on just one thing. Our military's involvement in Yemen has not been authorized by the U.S. Congress as is required by the U.S. Constitution. Article I, section 8 of the Constitution is pretty clear on this point. It reads that Congress shall have the power to declare war--Congress, not the President, not the Pentagon--Congress. This is the branch of government that is most accountable to the people at the most regular intervals. It makes sense that this power would only be granted to that branch of government. Yet, in 2015, President Obama initiated our military involvement in Yemen without having permission from Congress, without having an authorization for the use of military force, without having a declaration of war. The current administration has continued Obama's war. Senator Sanders and I, along with Senator Murphy and our six other cosponsors, are giving Congress a chance to fix this error by debating and voting on our Nation's continued involvement in this illegal, unauthorized war in Yemen. Now, as our opponents claim, if this war is necessary, then, surely, they will be willing to come down to this floor within the Senate Chamber and defend it. Surely they will be willing to come onto the floor of the Senate and onto the floor of the House and seek authorization from Congress as the Constitution demands. Let's have an honest reckoning about this war today. At this very moment, a tragedy is unfolding in Yemen. Very sadly, it is a tragedy for which our Nation shares some blame. Here are just a few facts about this war in Yemen, which is now approaching its third year: Fifteen million human souls in Yemen lack clean water and sanitation, and 8 million are at risk of starvation. The Yemeni people have been visited by the worst cholera outbreak in recorded human history--over 1 million cases. Every 10 minutes, a child under the age of 5 dies of preventable causes. A total of 10,000 civilians have been killed in this war, and 40,000 more civilians have been wounded in this war. I think it is important to discuss the human toll this war is inflicting. I think it is especially important to have discussions like this one at the outset so that as we go into a conflict, the stakes are clear. For thousands of human beings, the decision we make in this Chamber will make the difference between life and death. This is one of the many reasons it is so important to keep reminding ourselves that the Founding Fathers were very clear about this. They didn't leave any ambiguity in terms of identifying who has the power to make decisions like this one, who has the power to decide when we go to war. Article I, section 8, says that Congress shall have the power to declare war. From time to time, I hear it argued that declarations of war are somehow antiquated, that they are outdated, that they are anachronisms akin to ceremonial relics like powdered wigs or a key to the city, akin to a society whose principal mode of transportation involved a horse and a buggy, but that isn't true. These principles are as true today as they were then. Nothing about those principles has become outdated. If you read the Founding Fathers, it is very clear that they thought the power to declare war was, in fact, important. They deliberately considered the matter and withheld it from the President for a reason. They did not vest this power in the Office of the Presidency, and that was a conscious, deliberate, and I believe wise choice. To quote Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 69, the Founding Fathers wanted their President to be ``much inferior'' in power to a King. Kings declare war unilaterally. They can make life-or-death military decisions--on a whim if they want to. They don't need to go and seek support from the public before doing so. In our system, Presidents, by contrast, have to garner support from the public and the legislative branch before initiating war--far from a unilateral decision. The decision to go to war in America is supposed to be based on collaboration and consensus so that our Nation will be united to the greatest degree possible when we go [[Page S1664]] through trying conflicts, at that moment when unity is what is so badly needed. So which does the modern Executive resemble more today--a President as the Founding Fathers understood that term or a King? The answer is uncomfortably clear from the string of unauthorized military excursions that Presidents from both political parties have initiated in recent decades. Of course, some people claim that the President has broad constitutional authority to make war as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. They are absolutely right. The President of the United States is, in fact, the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, but this is not the beginning and the end to the question. This does not mean the President may authorize at will military excursions around the globe for any reason or no reason at all without authorization from Congress. It does not mean that. It means nothing close to that. Only Congress can authorize a military campaign. Once Congress has done so, then the President has broad authority, vast discretion to decide how specifically to command the Armed Forces to victory. There is one important notable exception to this big principle, and that exception arises specifically in the event of an attack on the United States. The Founders were wise. They anticipated that there could be threats to the homeland so serious that it might be physically impossible for Congress to respond quickly enough, so they preserved to the President the power to ``repel sudden attacks,'' in the words of James Madison. Clearly, this strategy--we might describe it as a ``break glass in case of emergency'' kind of strategy. It is that kind of power. It is a ``break glass in times of emergency'' kind of power. It is supposed to be used only under extreme, extraordinary circumstances where Congress cannot convene in time to save the Nation. The Founders did not intend for the Commander in Chief's power to be used to justify military intervention in civil wars 8,000 miles away. That authorization can come only from this body in the form of a declaration of war or in the form of an authorization for use of military force. To date, we have not considered either one of these, much less voted on them and passed them in the case of this civil war in Yemen. So I would ask my colleague, Senator Sanders from Vermont, how long the American people can be expected to ignore our involvement in a foreign war. Mr. SANDERS. Before I answer that very important question, I thank Senator Lee for his remarks. He is right on virtually everything he has said. I want to bring Senator Murphy into this colloquy. Senator Murphy has been ahead of his time in focusing attention on what is going on in Yemen. He is one of the original sponsors of this legislation. If Senator Murphy would express his thoughts on this issue. Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I thank Senator Sanders and Senator Lee for allowing me to step in and say a few words before we have a short colloquy about the resolution we are bringing to the floor. I brought this picture to the floor before, and I hesitate to keep it up for more than a few moments. It is very disturbing to look at, but this is the reality of Yemen today. This is the reality of a country in which thousands and thousands of civilians have been killed by a bombing campaign that the United States is facilitating--facilitating with intelligence sharing, facilitating with targeting assistance, facilitating with midair refueling, facilitating with the sale of munitions that end up being dropped on the homes of families like this. This, as has been stated, is perhaps the worst cholera outbreak in modern history. Let's talk about why that happens. Why are over 1 million people in Yemen today suffering from cholera, a disease that is entirely 100 percent preventable? The reason is that the water treatment facilities inside Yemen have been bombed, have been rendered useless such that there is no means by which they can keep the water that these young children drink clean. Bombs sold to the Saudi coalition by the United States, bombs dropped from planes refueled by the U.S. Air Force, bombs that are directed via targeting centers in which U.S. personnel are embedded hit water treatment facilities inside Yemen, and there is now the worst cholera outbreak in our lifetime. I cannot do a better job than Senator Lee did of explaining to the body why we believe it is so important for Congress to exercise our Article I responsibility to declare war. He laid it out better than I can. The Founding Fathers believed, as he said, that when there were matters of great import to the national security of this country, when there were decisions that the Executive was making with respect to hostilities with other nations that included serious consequences for the United States and the world, that should not be simply an Executive function. Very specifically, as Senator Lee said, that power of declaring war, of entering into hostilities against another nation, is housed here in the Congress. So it is relevant to talk about what is happening in Yemen today. What is the degree of the hostilities, and does it come with serious national security concerns for the United States of America, for the constituents we represent? We are absolutely engaged in hostilities today. There is no way that what we see in these charts could not be categorized as hostilities. The bombs that ruined this entire neighborhood are made in the United States, are dropped by planes refueled by the United States, are directed by a targeting center that involves U.S. personnel. This is clearly an act of hostility that the United States, in partnership with the Saudi coalition, has entered into against the Yemeni people. Remember, this is a civil war inside Yemen. There are not-so-good people on both sides of this civil war. The Houthis have been responsible for major, catastrophic acts in the country, just as the coalition has, but we are only on one side of that, so it makes sense for us to focus on the hostilities that have been entered into by the United States and the Saudi coalition. But let's for a second talk about the other implications for U.S. national security. What has happened inside Yemen as this civil war has persisted? Al- Qaida and ISIS have grown in strength. For a period of time, AQAP--the arm of al-Qaida inside Yemen that has the most direct intention to hit the United States--had captured a major port inside Yemen and was drawing substantial revenue, allowing them to become stronger than ever before. By continuing to feed weapons into this civil war, the United States is helping to expand the reach and the power of the two entities inside Yemen that the administration argues they do have authorization to fight--al-Qaida and ISIS. Many of us would draw issue with the interpretation of an AUMF passed a decade and a half ago as it applies to ISIS, but no doubt the administration has the ability to pursue war against al-Qaida, and al-Qaida is gaining strength because of the continuation of this civil war. If you talk to Yemeni-Americans, they will tell you that inside Yemen, this is not seen as a Saudi bombing campaign, this is seen as a U.S.-Saudi bombing campaign. And what they will further tell you is that Yemenis are becoming radicalized against the United States because there is a U.S. imprint on every bomb that is dropped and every single death inside that country. While we may talk a good game about humanitarian relief and we may enter into occasional efforts to settle this conflict through negotiations, all they know is that for 3 years the United States has been supporting a Saudi bombing campaign that does not end. We have been supporting a Saudi-led coalition that has blocked humanitarian relief from entering this country. We may hear a lot about the money that the Saudis are putting into humanitarian relief, but we don't hear as much about the fact that at one point they completely closed the port through which the majority of humanitarian relief flows. Although now it is technically open, they are still narrowing the channel greatly through which relief supplies get to this country. So nobody should applaud the United States or the Saudis for providing relief to a country that they, indeed, are bombing. I am not setting aside the culpability of the Houthis for substantial atrocities in this civil war as well, but we are only on one side of it. [[Page S1665]] This is clearly covered by the powers vested in the U.S. Congress to make war. If it isn't, it unlocks a horrific Pandora's box. If the President can enter into hostilities against another country so long as all they are doing is providing vast logistical support to a coalition partner, then there is no end to what the President can do so long as he doesn't put a troop on the ground. Our involvement in the Saudi-led coalition has serious national security implications for the United States, aside from the fact that it has resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians and has set off the worst humanitarian catastrophe the world has seen today. As a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, I just want to bring these consequences to bear for our colleagues to think about--our colleagues who might not think that this rises to the powers vested in the Congress by the Constitution. There are very few more serious conflicts with respect to consequences for the United States than this one. So I guess I would wrap back around that question that Senator Lee posed to Senator Sanders. If the United States doesn't weigh in here, then, when? What is the precedent that is set by Congress's continuing to remain silent even when you have a humanitarian catastrophe and a set of consequences for U.S. national security that are this big? Mr. SANDERS. Well, let me thank Senator Murphy for his comments and Senator Lee before him. I think they touch on the most important issues. I wish to respond to what Senator Lee and Senator Murphy both said, but I wish to make a point that needs to be made again and again. This is not a partisan issue. We are talking about Democratic administrations acting militarily without congressional authorization. We are talking about Republican administrations doing the same. Senator Lee is a conservative Republican. Senator Murphy is a Democrat. I am an Independent who caucuses with the Democrats. So if you are talking about bipartisanship, you are looking at it right here. I should tell you that there are many organizations around the country--conservative and progressive--that are raising exactly the same issue that we are raising right here, and that is that Congress has to reassert its congressional authority over the issues of war. If you want to go to war and you think the war in Yemen makes sense, that is fine. Come down here on the floor and tell us why you feel that way. Tell the American people and tell your constituents why you think it is a good idea to work with Saudi Arabia to wreak utter horror on one of the poorest countries in the world. Fine, come on down here and tell us. What we have to do, from a precedent point of view, is finally to say to our Republican President or a Democratic President: Enough is enough. Listen to the Constitution. The Founding Fathers of this country were amazingly smart on this issue, and they understood that before we send our young men--and now women--off to war to die or to get maimed, there better well be a very good reason that we have to explain to the people who elected us--not just somebody sitting up there in the Oval Office. That is why the authority for going to war is vested in the representatives of the people, whether we are elected for 2 years or elected for 6 years. I would also point out that this is not the first time that the Congress has weighed in on the devastating war in Yemen. In November of last year, the House of Representatives--and I hope my Senate colleagues know this--voted by a vote of 366 to 30. That was not even close. There was overwhelming support among Democrats and Republicans. They passed a nonbinding resolution stating that the United States' involvement in the Yemen civil war is unauthorized. The Democratic leadership supported it, as did the Republican chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Ed Royce. Here is the bottom line. The bottom line is that Congress has ducked its responsibilities for many years, and if we continue to duck our responsibility on the all-important issue of U.S. military intervention, this Congress and, in fact, the people of the United States become increasingly irrelevant on this most important matter. We are bringing forward a privileged motion. There will be a vote on this issue in one form or another. If you like the war in Yemen, then be prepared to defend why you think it is a great idea to work with the Saudis to destroy the infrastructure and to create a situation where famine and cholera are rampant in that incredibly poor country. Come on down and tell us why you think it is a good idea. If not, I hope you will vote with us to end this war and to allow the United States to get involved in bringing the warring parties together to see if we can bring peace and to see if we can bring humanitarian relief to these terribly suffering people. I yield to Senator Lee. Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to display an oversized visual display. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Johnson). Is there objection? Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. LEE. I am not sure what constitutes oversized, but I have it on good authority that the ordinary Senate rules don't allow for a picture this big without unanimous consent. So, therefore, I sought it. The picture itself paints an image and leaves an impression that itself is oversized and that demonstrates the humanity of this conflict. You see a child standing in what appears to be a school in an ordinary learning environment that has been rendered unusable by the devastating impact of war. Now, war does happen. Conflicts do arise. This is one of the reasons why it was built into not only our system of laws but our foundational governing structure in the Constitution. The Founding Fathers understood that war would arise from time to time, but they carefully divided up the power, recognizing how devastating its implications could be, recognizing that bad things are a little bit less likely to happen if you don't allow too much power to be concentrated in the hands of a few. Over time, Congress and the Presidency have had a little bit of a tug-of-war, as I referenced earlier, about where the Commander in Chief power ends and the war power begins. In 1973 Congress reasserted its constitutional role and tried to clarify some of what had been described as a gray area by passing the War Powers Resolution. The crisis that led Congress to create this important law in many ways was reminiscent of the conflict that we are discussing today. The War Powers Act was passed in response to the Vietnam war. That war began with the insertion of just a small handful of U.S. military advisers in 1950, but their ranks grew and grew gradually but steadily, so that our commitment in Vietnam spiraled into a decades-long, bloodied conflict. Presidents from both parties abused their authority in order to wage this far-off war. Finally, in 1973, Congress decided it was time to bring our boys home. So it repealed the limited legal authority for the war it had granted to then-President Johnson 7 years earlier. In defiance of Congress, President Nixon continued the war, citing his authority as Commander in Chief. So Congress drafted the War Powers Resolution to give itself a way to remove our armed services personnel from unauthorized, unlawful, and unconstitutional war zones. The War Powers Resolution states that the President must notify Congress within 48 hours of committing American troops to ``hostilities'' or ``imminent hostilities.'' The War Powers Resolution goes on to provide that the President must remove troops from the conflict if Congress does not authorize their presence within 60 days or a maximum of 90 days in the case of certain emergencies. Congress's passage of the War Powers Resolution was a bold assertion of its constitutional responsibility in the face of a chronically overreaching executive branch. In fact, Congress's desire to uphold the Constitution was so strong that it actually overrode President Nixon's veto of the War Powers Resolution. Members of Congress today could certainly learn a thing or two from their predecessors' commitment to constitutional duties and to the limited power possessed by each branch of government. Since the War Powers Resolution was passed in 1973, defenders of a royal executive have tried to go around it and [[Page S1666]] tried to circumvent it altogether by claiming that their unauthorized wars somehow do not qualify as ``hostilities.'' We heard this claim by President Obama in response to Libya, and we heard it again in response to Yemen. It is the official position of the U.S. Department of Defense that we are not engaged in ``hostilities'' in Yemen unless our troops ``are actively engaged in exchanges of fire with opposing units of hostile forces.'' To translate, the U.S. Government really claims that it is not engaged in hostilities unless U.S. troops are on the ground being shot at by the enemy. It stretches the imagination, and it stretches the English language beyond its breaking point to assert that our military is not engaged in hostilities in Yemen. Consider for a moment what it is that the U.S. military is doing as part of the Saudi-led coalition effort against the neighbors of Saudi Arabia, the Yemeni neighbors. U.S. military personnel are assigned to the joint combined planning cell in Saudi Arabia, where they are sharing military intelligence with the Saudis and helping to target enemies within Yemen for attack. Our forces are also refueling coalition bombers in midair on combat missions. If sending our military men and women to foreign lands to fuel a country's bombers and handpick its targets does not qualify as ``hostilities,'' then those words have lost their meaning. What does the word ``hostility'' mean if it cannot be said to encompass that? As it happens, the War Powers Resolution was designed to stop secret and unauthorized military activities such as these. So Congress is well within its right to vote on whether these activities should continue. That is why this joint resolution that is authored by Senator Sanders and cosponsored by Senator Murphy, myself, and six others represents a big chance--a significant chance, a constitutional moment--for Congress to do the right thing, for Congress to do its job, and for Congress to represent the American people. After all, this is their blood and their treasure that are being put on the line. That is why the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution alike contemplate actions by Congress and not solely unilateral action by the executive branch. I ask my colleagues Senator Sanders and Senator Murphy: Isn't it arguable that by overreaching in this instance, we might in fact be making matters worse? Couldn't we be putting our country in a position of less security rather than more? Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I say to Senator Lee that I think that is an excellent question. That was just the question that I was going to ask of Senator Murphy, because I think we understand that in recent history, when there is chaos and confusion in a country, it provides an extraordinary opportunity for al-Qaida and their allies to move in. We have spent billions and billions of dollars fighting al-Qaida and their affiliates, and I fear very much, as you have indicated, that the situation we are creating in Yemen in many ways is making life easier for them. I would ask this of Senator Murphy--and maybe listeners might be surprised by this: What side of this battle is al-Qaida on in Yemen right now? Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I thank Senator Sanders for the question. This is incredibly important to understand. There was great consternation in the beginning of this civil war, when the United States, under the Obama administration, was beginning to support the Saudi-led coalition. The Saudis were only targeting the Houthis, and as the al-Qaida wing inside of Yemen was getting stronger and stronger, no matter how much we asked, no matter how much we pushed, the Saudi-led coalition would not drop bombs on al-Qaida and would not send any of their forces near them. They were only focused on the Houthis. The answer as to why that was happening is very simple. The enemy of your enemy tends to be your ally, and inside Yemen, the Houthis were drawing fire from both the Saudi-led coalition and from al-Qaida. In the early stages of this fight, the policy of the Saudi-led coalition was to have hands off of al-Qaida, and that made al-Qaida stronger and stronger and stronger. Now, admittedly, recently we have been more successful in getting the Emirates, not necessarily the Saudis, to take on targeted missions against al-Qaida, but that is only a recent phenomenon, and it is frankly belied by the fact that we have new information that at the same time that the Emirates are occasionally taking out operations--and sometimes dangerous operations, with risk of life to their forces against al-Qaida--they are also supporting other militias inside Yemen--Salafist militias--that are in many ways just as radical as al- Qaida is and are recruiting the types of recruits that one day may join ISIS and one day may join al-Qaida, targeting against the United States. So this is a very chaotic space in which very purposefully, for a period of time, the coalition allowed for al-Qaida to grow. Even though that policy has changed recently, there are still signs that there are some people who are very dangerous to the United States who are being supported on the ground by members of our coalition. I know Senator Durbin is here, so I want to turn it over to him. I just want to say two more quick things on this point. One is to note that our resolution does continue to allow for the United States to target al-Qaida. We built into this resolution a carve-out for any military activities that are currently authorized by the 2001 AUMF, and the administration interprets that to be al-Qaida and affiliated follow-on organizations. So let's be clear that if you care about the United States targeting al-Qaida, that can continue here. Finally, to Senator Lee's point about this interpretation of hostilities, let's be clear about how narrow a definition that is. There have to be American troops on the ground exchanging fire in order for the War Powers Act to be triggered. That is not what Congress intended because, in fact, that would then allow the administration to perpetuate an unlimited air campaign, dropping unlimited munitions, devastating, ruining a country, without any input from Congress. Even if one would say ``Well, that does involve U.S. personnel flying overhead, so maybe that is potentially putting U.S. troops in the line of fire,'' remember, we are also entering an era of robotic warfare, in which U.S. personnel are going to be less instrumental to hostilities that will still have grave consequences for the United States. Clearly, the notion of war and how you fight it has changed over the years. The Founding Fathers never imagined air campaigns. Yet, the intent and the language of the War Powers Act and of the Constitution are clear. When war is being waged, when hostilities are being entered into, Congress has to have a say. Please, look at any of the pictures that we are putting before you and tell us that the United States is not engaged in hostilities if the effect in the country of Yemen is this. I thank Senator Durbin for joining us on the floor today, and I yield to him. Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleagues, Senator Sanders, Senator Murphy, and Senator Lee, for this bipartisan effort. Why are we here today? Why are we discussing wars so far away? We are here because of this book. This is the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution very expressly tells us what we are supposed to be doing here. In article I, section 8, it lays out the things that we, the men and women who serve in Congress, are responsible for. Among the things that Congress shall have the power to do is to ``declare war.'' Why did the Founding Fathers make certain that it was clear that Congress would be involved in that decision on the declaration of war? When they created Congress, the idea was that the people of this country, far and wide, would at least have a voice in the decision, through the people they elected, and we would be held accountable for our decisions to declare war or to not declare it because we are up for election. So Congress has this responsibility, and over the years, many times, Congress has not exercised its responsibility in a responsible way. I have a question. I bet that if I brought in every U.S. Senator and asked them the following question, very few would be able to answer it: How many countries is the United States military currently involved in [[Page S1667]] fighting? How many countries are we in today, fighting? Would you guess two? Iraq, Afghanistan--all right, for sure, there. Five? Ten? Twenty? Brown University's Costs of War Project recently published data saying that the United States fought terror through direct fighting, training, or military support to other forces or through drone strikes in 76 countries between October 2015 and 2017. Is that the right number today? I am not sure. None of us know. We are often surprised to learn we are sending our military and fighting in another country. When something awful occurs--Americans are killed, for example--sometimes Members of Congress hear it for the first time: Oh, we are in what country fighting? I take this pretty seriously, and I have over the years when it comes to the authorization of using force, because it isn't just a matter of projecting American power; it is life and death. These are decisions that will be made by Congress or by the President--sometimes both--and the net result of it, even under the best of circumstances, is that Americans will perish. Funerals will be held in Illinois and in Utah and in Vermont and in Connecticut and in Wisconsin. That is the reality of the decisions we reach. I can remember the debate right after 9/11 on the floor. It was one of the most important of my career. It was a question about whether we would authorize the President of the United States--President Bush at the time--to use military force to respond to 9/11. If my colleagues remember the debate, there were two real options on the floor. One was to use military force against those responsible for the attack on the United States and to send that force into Afghanistan. The other was to go after the so-called weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They were two parallel debates, but two debates that I saw very differently. I was skeptical from the start about this Iraqi invasion. Nobody ever connected the dots between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. We were talking about the threat that he was to the rest of the world. Yet we voted here on the floor of the U.S. Senate in 2002 to authorize the use of military force to go into Iraq. Sadly, we are still there today. Sadly, Iraq is in shambles, politically and physically, and the war continues. I voted no. I remember that night. It was in October of 2002. I remember that night because the vote was taken very late, and there were two or three of us who stayed on the floor here, including Kent Conrad, as well as Paul Wellstone of Minnesota. Paul Wellstone was up for reelection. We wondered if that vote would affect him in any way, and I remember going up to him and saying: Paul, I hope your vote against the war in Iraq doesn't cost you the election. Wellstone said to me: It is all right if it does. People know where I stand. They expect nothing less. He didn't live to see the election. If my colleagues will remember, he died in a plane crash with his wife and staffers just a few days after that vote. But that is the gravity of this decision. That is the importance of this decision. And that is why I want to thank my colleagues for bringing us together--just a few of us but enough of us, maybe--in the Senate to remind people of our constitutional responsibility. The vote on Afghanistan was one I voted for--the invasion of Afghanistan. The message was clear: If you attack the United States, we will come right back after you, al-Qaida, and we did. I recently asked the Secretary of Defense--when I voted that way in 2002, I did not imagine that 15 or 16 years later, that war would continue. So I asked him: How does this war ever end in Afghanistan? He didn't know the answer. He didn't come up with one. All he could say to me was that if we left, it would be worse. Well, you can say that about a lot of other countries in the world. But what we are talking about today is what we are going to do in terms of this horrid situation in Yemen. I was in my office looking down on this debate via C-SPAN, and I saw the photos that have been displayed here--the utter human and physical devastation that is taking place. Senator Sanders is asking a simple but deeply important question here today, and Senator Lee and Senator Murphy join him. Here is the question: Who authorized the U.S. military action to help Saudi Arabia fight the Houthis in Yemen? I didn't. I don't remember that there was ever a vote. So how are we doing this? By what authority is our government doing this? This is not about the merits of the fight or in any way a vindication of the Houthis' troubling role in the horrific Yemeni civil war; it is about whether Congress follows its constitutional responsibilities. It is about whether the American people have a voice in this decision--the same people who will send their sons and daughters to bravely serve in our military. I am happy to be a cosponsor of this resolution that halts any such U.S. support without any congressional authorization. I call on this Congress to deal with revisiting the 2001 and 2002 authorizations of force that I believe have been stretched by multiple administrations beyond any credible limit. There are real threats to the safety and security of America out there--al-Qaida and its successors and others. But we in Congress have the responsibility to authorize those conflicts and regularly update them as necessary. Congress and the Senate have been absent without leave when it comes to article I, section 8, and our authority and responsibility to declare war. We have other looming threats, including North Korea and Iran, but any U.S. war against those countries or others, short of protecting against an imminent attack as allowed for in the War Powers Resolution, requires the vote of Congress, regardless of who the President may be. When it comes to the declaration of war, we simply cannot see this as an annoyance. We must do our part. We must follow the Constitution, even when it is difficult. I yield the floor. Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Illinois very much for his perceptive remarks and for reminding us that the time is long overdue for the U.S. Congress to accept its constitutional responsibilities. I wanted to ask Senator Lee if he--we are running out of time here-- has some closing remarks. Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Vermont. I appreciate his remarks and his leadership on this, and I appreciate the remarks that Senator Durbin and Senator Murphy have added to this discussion. I want to close by pointing out that in addition to being unlawful and in addition to being unconstitutional, our involvement in Yemen is unproductive in the fight against terrorism. The Houthis we are fighting are a regional force--one that doesn't harbor ambitions of attacking the U.S. homeland. While the Houthis are certainly no friend of ours, neither are they a serious threat to our country. Yet we are diverting considerable resources to fighting the Houthis, resources that would be better spent fighting more substantial threats--threats that harbor, rather openly, ambitions of bringing down the United States, of attacking the United States. These are threats like al-Qaida or ISIS. On that point, the best evidence we have suggests that their involvement in Yemen has arguably undermined our fight against ISIS. The State Department's most recent study, its most recent ``Country Reports on Terrorism''--which, by the way, happens to be the authority on that subject for Congress and the American people--says that we have inadvertently strengthened ISIS by killing off its antagonists, the Houthis. This just reinforces the farcical character that our military excursions in the Middle East have the potential to undertake. We bomb with one hand; we give humanitarian aid with the other hand. We whack a terrorist from one group, and another springs up in its place. Defenders of our efforts in this war in Yemen often claim that the real reason we are fighting the Houthis is that they are a proxy for Iran, which is the true threat to our Nation and to the world. This would be perhaps a reasonable rationale, but there are conflicting reports about the Houthis and their ties to Iran. Iran has expansionist views; the Houthis do not. Hezbollah is an officially listed as a foreign terrorist organization; the Houthis are not. The Houthis may be a rogue non- [[Page S1668]] State actor, destabilizing their own country, but they are not a threat to America--at least not yet. By helping the Saudis bomb them, we only give the Houthis reasons to start to hate us. Our involvement in Yemen detracts from our ability to be a diplomatic resource and the peacemaker in the region. In closing, the substance of the resolution offered by Senator Sanders and cosponsored by Senator Murphy, me, and others is simple. It puts our war against the Houthi rebels to a vote. It concerns the Houthis and only the Houthis. If Members are convinced that our fight against the Houthis is worthwhile, then so be it. Congress will have done its part and the fight will go on, but if Members are not willing to pay the heavy pricetag for this war, calculated in dollars and in innocent human lives, then our resolution will bring U.S. operations to a close. This resolution is an opportunity for Members of Congress to stand up and be counted on a matter of life and death. It is an opportunity to end the Executive's unconstitutional dominance over matters of war and peace and restore in its place a collaborative process whereby Congress declares war and Presidents wage war. I thank Senator Sanders. Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, let me conclude by thanking Senator Lee, Senator Murphy, Senator Durbin this afternoon, thanking Senator Booker, Senator Warren, Senator Leahy, Senator Markey, Senator Feinstein, and Senator Wyden for their cosponsorship of S.J. Res. 54. Let me summarize it very briefly in this way: Congress cannot continue to abdicate its responsibility on the all-important issue of how and when the United States becomes involved in military intervention. We cannot continue to run away from that issue. If you think the war in Yemen and siding with the Saudis on this war makes sense, then come down to the floor of the Senate, make your position clear, tell your constituents what you believe, and then vote for the war but have the courage, at least, to accept your responsibility as a Member of the U.S. Congress and not abdicate it to the President. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida. Climate Change Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, we have a series of Senators who are going to be speaking about what is happening as a result of climate change and sea level rise, which is having its effects in my State of Florida, particularly. Few States are as vulnerable to climate change than what we find particularly in South Florida, Miami Beach being Ground Zero. What is happening as the sea level is rising--and these are not projections, they are not forecasts; these are actually measurements, measurements by NASA and NOAA over the last 40 years that the sea has risen in South Florida 5 to 8 inches. We see the effects of that at the seasonal high tides--now, more increasingly, along with the cycles of the Moon each month. Water, typically, is sloshing around in streets and sloshing over the curves. As a result, the city of Miami Beach has had to spend tens of millions of dollars on huge, expensive pumps and has also had to raise the level of the roadbeds. NOAA's most recent worst-case scenario projections predict a 2-foot sea level rise by 2060 and, if we take it all the way to the end of the century, 6 feet by 2100. Needless to say, in a peninsula that sits in the middle of what we know as Hurricane Highway, 6 feet would inundate so much of the coastal areas. By the way, the population of Florida is 21 million people, and 75 percent is along the coastal regions. That puts all of the entire Nation's low-lying coastal cities at risk of major flooding, not to mention our military installations along the coast. The seas are not just rising; they are also warming, and they are rising because they are warming. Of course, I have explained this several times on the floor of the Senate: As the Sun's rays come in and hit the Earth, some of the heat is absorbed, but some of it is reflected off the Earth's surface and is radiated out into space. When you put up an extra abundance of greenhouse gases--mainly carbon dioxide and methane--and they move into the upper atmosphere, they serve like a glass ceiling of a greenhouse; thus, the term, the ``greenhouse'' effect. Then, as that heat is reflected off the Earth that would normally radiate out into space, it is trapped and, thus, the entire Earth starts to heat. Two-thirds of the Earth's surface is covered by oceans, and 90 percent of that heat is absorbed into the oceans. What happens to water when it is heated? It expands. So we see the reasons that warmer water means the sea levels rise. Do you know what else it produces? More frequent and more ferocious hurricanes. After the back-to-back punch of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, imagine how much we would have to spend in Federal disaster aid if we had a hurricane season like last year every year. That is why it is so critical to continue funding climate and weather research and to keep improving NOAA's hurricane models. This information can make the difference in a life-or-death situation. We saw what havoc the hurricanes visited upon Texas and then Florida after it had already crossed Puerto Rico, but then along comes Maria, and it hits the island directly. As of today, 5, going on 6, months after the hurricane, the poor island of Puerto Rico--our fellow American citizens--17 percent today do not still have electricity. So, indeed, there has been a lot more loss of life as a result of hurricanes. Our coastline in Florida is blessed, as a hurricane is approaching, with a natural breakwater. It is called the Florida Reef Tract. It is along the southeastern coast. Of all the major barrier reefs in the entire world, Florida has the third largest. It starts south of Key West and continues all the way up the Keys, north, up to Fort Pierce, FL. This Florida reef is the only barrier reef in the continental United States. Healthy reefs are able to reduce storm damage by taking a lot of the impact, but climate change, ocean acidification, and an unprecedented coral disease outbreak are hurting Florida's reefs and diminishing their ability to act as a shoreline buffer. I am not even talking about all the other things that reefs do--which is the natural place for all the fish and critters of the sea to gather, swimming in and around and among all of the coral reefs. That is why, last week, I wrote a letter to the Secretaries of Commerce, Agriculture, and Health and Human Services calling for an interagency strike team to be formed to finally diagnose the coral disease in an attempt to save the remaining reefs. I want to show an example of the difference between a healthy reef and a diseased reef. Look at the difference. Here is the healthy coral. Look how the diseased reef has actually been bleached out. So time is running out on this third largest barrier reef on the planet. We have to respond to the causes and effects of climate change now. The longer we put it off, the harder and more expensive it is going to be to mitigate. I thank Senator Whitehouse and my fellow colleagues who are speaking out on this critical mission. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader. Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, first, let me thank my good friend from Florida. His State may be more affected by climate change than just about any other. We hear about water lapping up on the shores of Southern Florida already and the constant flooding. We have seen these amazing pictures that equal 1,000 words about the coral reefs--and he even talked about a word we rarely use in Brooklyn, ``critters.'' We want to save the critters too. So he has been eloquent--not just today but constantly--on the issue of climate and does it in such a practical perspective that just about every American of every ideology, part of the country, and thought process can understand. So I thank him. Of course, I thank our great leader on this issue, the Senator from Rhode Island, Sheldon Whitehouse. He is passionate, and his passion carries over into effective action. There has been no voice more clarion, more constant, more effective in remembering that we cannot ignore this issue, constantly reminding us how important it is. I thank Senator Whitehouse not only for pulling us all together tonight but for his great strength and constancy on this issue. [[Page S1669]] I join my colleagues to shed light on the subject of climate change, which has received scant attention, unfortunately, from President Trump and this Republican Senate. Despite decades of incontrovertible evidence that climate change is harming our planet, President Trump and the Republicans have done nothing about it. In fact, worse than doing nothing, they have actively weakened our environmental laws, decrying the very science that has helped us progress, has helped men and women progress through the centuries. Republicans in Congress have undone the environmental protections that held corporations accountable for polluting our streams. They have undone the rule that increased transparency in the management of public lands. Through an unrelated tax bill, congressional Republicans opened up the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. In the executive branch, EPA Administrator Pruitt has implemented an extreme deregulatory agenda, unwinding the rules that keep our air clear, our water clean, and limit carbon emissions that poison our atmosphere and our planet. Worst of all, President Trump announced that he will pull the United States out of the Paris climate accord, which would make America the only country in the world that isn't a part of the agreement. While the world comes together to negotiate sensible climate change policies, while other nations and other foreign businesses grab the mantle of leadership on green energy, the United States, which used to be such a leader on so many issues, can only sit and watch from the sidelines-- all because President Trump decided to pull out of the Paris accord. What a remarkable mistake. It will go down in history as one of the worst days in American history, as the world gets hotter and climate change takes its toll on our country and the world. Climate change is real, human activity is driving it, and it is happening right now. These are facts. This is not speculation. This is not someone spinning a tale. These are facts not in dispute. Scientists know it. Businesses know it. The world knows it. The American people know it too. We in New York learned about the devastating impact of Hurricane Sandy. It took so long to rebuild our coastal communities. All of Long Island understood that climate change is real and devastating when you do nothing about it. The storms are getting more powerful--storms like Sandy--more frequent, and there is no doubt that climate change is playing a role. We watched three recordbreaking hurricanes buffet our cities and our coastlines, devastating parts of Louisiana, Florida, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Stronger wildfires have ripped through our Western States. According to NOAA, 2017 was the most expensive year on record for disasters in the United States, costing hundreds of billions of dollars. We are running out of time to do something about this issue. Together with my colleagues this evening, led by Senator Whitehouse, who will be giving his 200th ``Time to Wake Up'' speech--what a great accomplishment; I admire it--I urge all Americans--particularly younger Americans, who understand that this planet will decline if we don't do something, and it is their planet--I urge everyone--younger Americans, older Americans, everybody--to contact Republican Senators and Congressmen and tell them to wake up on climate change. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The assistant Democratic leader. Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, for the past 6 years, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island has delivered weekly addresses to the Senate Chamber on climate change, telling us that it is time to wake up. That is the sign he posts on the floor each time he comes to discuss the disastrous effects of global warming. Today will mark his 200th speech on the Senate floor on this topic. The urgency of the topic is real. Climate change threatens our national security and our local communities. Climate change drives global conflict and has far-reaching national security implications. A report by Oxfam states that there is growing evidence that climate change is making droughts more frequent and more severe. Drought has contributed to the crisis in Syria, migration from West Africa, and rapid urbanization in Somalia. Just last week, ``PBS NewsHour'' reported that in the last year alone, more than 1 million Somalis have been forced from their homes because of drought. Herders and farmers used to live among one another, but increasingly severe drought has led to a scarcity of land and water. Some animal herders now carry weapons and fight over fertile land. Farmers who have fled to the city claim herders burned down their homes and turned their farmland into grassland. The fighting and scarcity of land has pushed both farmers and herders to the cities, and most of them end up in ramshackle camps, burdened by poverty--a tinderbox. Last March, 110 people died from starvation and drought-related illness in 48 hours, prompting President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo to declare the drought a national disaster. Still, 1.2 million children under the age of 5 are projected to be malnourished in 2018. Somalia is not the only country where the effects of climate change have created and exacerbated regional conflicts. In a few days, Syria will mark the seventh year of civil war. Research published by the National Academy of Sciences reports that climate change has contributed to the crisis in Syria. Extreme drought in Syria between 2006 and 2009 was most likely due to climate change, and that drought was a factor in the uprisings in 2011, when more than 1 million displaced farmers joined pro-democracy protests. Just last year, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Tom Friedman wrote about massive migration out of parts of West Africa, through the Sahara Desert, to Libya, where people were hoping to eventually cross the Mediterranean Sea into Europe. The migration is driven in part by drought made more extreme by climate change, which has created widespread humanitarian crises. As climate instability drives more extreme and frequent droughts and the scarcity of fertile land, water, and food, it will trigger major conflicts over resources, as we have seen in Yemen and Syria. As one of the largest contributors of greenhouse gas emissions, the United States has a moral responsibility to act on this growing crisis. Here in our country, my constituents in Illinois are already experiencing the adverse effects of climate change. Climate models suggest that if current global warming trends continue, Illinois will have a climate similar to that of the Texas gulf coast by the year 2100. You can't grow a lot of corn in that climate. For Illinois farmers, these changes to the environment have a direct effect on their livelihood--and for all of us, a direct effect on our food supply. Wetter springs and more frequent flooding will leave farmers struggling to plant their corn and soybeans. Increasingly hot summers and more frequent droughts will stunt the growth and hurt crop yields. This means prices will increase, making it harder for families to put food on the table. In recent years, Illinois has seen historic storms, floods, and droughts that have caused millions of dollars in damage. Last week, scientists at the Illinois State Water Survey reported that this February was the wettest on record, beating the previous record precipitation by over half an inch. An average of 5 inches of rain fell statewide. Streator, IL, had over 11 inches of rain, and Aurora had the largest snowfall, with a recorded 26 inches of snow. In the last week of February, rainstorms and melted snow caused flooding across Illinois, with more than 20 counties throughout the State placed under a flood warning. As the water level of rivers continued to rise, several communities had to evacuate for their safety. Multiple communities were evacuated, and in some areas, residents had to be rescued by boat. Flooded roadways claimed the life of an Illinois resident after her car rolled into a rain-filled ditch. Climate change is likely to increase the frequency and severity of flooding in Illinois, as well, and my constituents are concerned about their ability to recover from repeated flood events. [[Page S1670]] How much is flood damage costing us in Illinois? Last July, 3,200 residences were impacted by flooding, including 244 with major damage. This damage costs millions but often doesn't rise to the level where anyone qualifies for Federal aid. From 2007 to 2014, flooding in urban areas has caused $2.3 billion in damages. Moving forward, repeated flood events will have a high price tag. In the last decade, extreme weather events and fire have cost the Federal Government over $350 billion, according to OMB. These costs will rise as the climate changes. The evidence is clear. We need to get serious about addressing the cause and effect of climate change. Ignoring them threatens our national security and our safety. I believe our generation has a moral obligation to leave the world in better shape than we found it. Let's not run away from our responsibility to our children and grandchildren. Let's work toward solving the challenges of climate change. This is a hard issue to explain from a political point of view. The only major political party in the world today that denies climate change is the Republican Party of the United States of America. It is hard to imagine that a great party that once was actively engaged in a positive way in this debate is now absent without leave. It is hard to explain that the party of Richard Nixon, who created the Environmental Protection Agency, now is in complete denial when it comes to climate change and global warming. It is hard to understand that they are missing the obvious indicators of evidence from every corner of the world about the impact of global warming. It is almost impossible to understand how they can ignore the impact this will have on the lives of our children and grandchildren. Is it too much to ask our generation to make a little sacrifice to spare them the devastation that will come from climate change? Is it too much to ask us to be a little more sensitive in our use of energy so that our kids and grandkids can enjoy a good life in their years on Earth? That usually is a responsibility most generations accept, but we are being told that it is just too much to ask--to ask current Americans to come forward and do something that is thoughtful, meaningful, to reduce energy consumption and reduce emission and pollution. I think that is a horrible situation. I think it is one we shouldn't be proud of at all. I thank my friend Sheldon Whitehouse for coming to the floor regularly and reminding us of what is happening in this world today and how we each have a responsibility to future generations to alleviate the suffering, the pain, and the damage that has been caused by this global warming. Mr. President, I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island. Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I come to the floor this evening inspired by the determined efforts of my colleague Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. My colleague has made clear, by delivering his 200th floor speech on climate change, that he is committed to raising awareness about and urging action on this very real threat to our environment. Let me speak briefly as someone trained in science as a chemist. I am troubled that time and again I am called to this Chamber to defend and advocate for science. We live in a time of unprecedented scientific advances. Throughout our history, we have turned to science to help us solve both domestic and international crises. Science was there, for example, to do battle against the Ebola outbreak, threats from hurricanes and other natural disasters, and the dangers of cigarette smoke and lead exposure. It was scientists who helped find a cure, provide early warning, who educated us, and who influenced politics to lead to policies that led to stronger industry and consumer safety standards in facing all of these threats. The scientific method has saved lives and ensured our survival, so why don't we more widely embrace the science of prediction, mitigation, and adaptation to the effects of climate change? Climate change is real. We know climate change is already happening, although it is slow, gradual, and often hard to perceive. Its effects will impact human health, agricultural production, national security-- an unbelievable range of concerns that should motivate us together. Yet I have colleagues who either aren't convinced or don't understand that climate change is a real and pressing threat. Let me briefly cite one meta-study of scientific opinion. It surveyed 13,950 peer-reviewed articles and studies on climate change and found that only 24 of them rejected global warming--less than 0.2 percent. Although there is not unanimous opinion, when there is 99.8 percent agreement in the scientific community, we should agree that this degree of certainty is enough to take action. ``An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure'' is an aphorism that dates back to the early 1700s. Why are we waiting? Let's change our ways. Let's work together to lower greenhouse gases, combat pollution, and slow the impact of climate change. As someone who represents the State of Delaware, I am passionate about this because we are the lowest mean elevation State in America. I have heard from folks up and down the First State--from my colleague Senator Carper, from our Governor, from our community leaders, and from concerned citizens from Wilmington, to Rehoboth, to Middletown--that they are concerned about sea level rise and its likely impact on our State. We need to do more because, in my small State, sea level rise is happening at twice the national rate. In about 100 years, everyone in Delaware will finally have a beach house--just not the way they want it. Let me conclude by saying we need to look forward, not backward, when addressing climate change and sea level rise. We need action, not reaction. We need policy, not politics. We should act today, not tomorrow. Again, I thank Senator Whitehouse. It was my pleasure to have him visit my home State of Delaware and see what we are doing to plan for and to combat sea level rise as a result of climate change. It was my honor to join him this evening and lend my support to him, to our environment, and to the fight against climate change. I yield to my senior colleague from our shared home State of Delaware. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Rubio). The Senator from Delaware. Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I am Tom Carper, and I approved this message. I have had the privilege of serving on the Environment and Public Works Committee for--oh, my gosh--17 years and now serve as the senior Democrat on the committee. I have had the opportunity of serving with Sheldon Whitehouse for more than half of those years. He is a senior member of our committee, a good friend, and, I think, someone who is respected by Democrats and Republicans and Independents alike here in the Senate. He is the junior Senator from Rhode Island, but he casts a long shadow on a lot of issues, none less than the issue we are discussing here today. I join my friend Senator Coons in thanking Sheldon sincerely for his passion and for his persistence in highlighting what the vast majority of the world recognizes as the greatest environmental challenge of our time, and that is climate change. Our friend from Rhode Island is a well-known climate champion, but what some may not know is that Sheldon has spent over 500 hours here on the Senate floor in reminding all of us that it is long past time to wake up, that it is time to wake up and get serious about addressing this ever-growing threat. I learned early on in the Senate that if we want to get anything done, we have to be persistent, and we have to stay on message. He has been staying on that message through 200 floor speeches, and the theme has always been ``time to wake up.'' For nearly 6 years now, Sheldon Whitehouse has reiterated what his constituents in the Ocean State and what constituents in our State, the First State, see every day--climate change is real, human beings are making it worse, and it is threatening our economy and our way of life. Those of us living in coastal States also know all too well that we can no longer ignore the issue or wait to take real action. While our friend from Rhode Island is--what they like to say in Rhode Island--wicked smart, you don't have to [[Page S1671]] take his word for it that climate change is a growing threat, for leading scientists in our country and around the world have been saying this not just for a couple of years but for decades. Scientists and medical professionals have also linked climate change to increased air pollution, deadly high temperatures, and more pests in our food and water--all of which negatively impact our health and disproportionately affect the most vulnerable among us. These days, you don't need a degree in science or medicine to see the disastrous effect of climate change on the world in which we live. Rising sea levels and extreme weather events from climate change are the new norm. In 2017 alone, we had multiple category 5 hurricanes--I think maybe for the first time in history. We had the second hottest year on record, catastrophic fires in the West, and severe flooding in the East. These events place extreme burdens on the American people, on our economy, and on our budget, having cost our Federal Government literally hundreds of billions of dollars not over the last 10 years but last year--in 1 year. The effects of rising sea levels are even more harmful in low-lying, coastal States, like Delaware. Senator Coons explained that Delaware is the lowest lying State in America, where the highest piece of land in our State is a bridge. There is a combination of things going on in coastal States like ours. In our State, the land is sinking, and the sea is rising. That is not a good combination for Delaware or any other place, and our friends from Rhode Island know of what I speak. I am delighted that Senator Whitehouse is a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee with many of us because, whether we are discussing environmental policy or infrastructure investments, the Senator from Rhode Island never fails to remind our colleagues of the unique and significant challenges that coastal States face as a result of climate change. Many people may not know this, but as I said before, you can go to Delaware, the lowest lying State. You can come with me and drive south on State Highway 1, past Dover Air Force Base, make a left turn on Prime Hook Road, drive to the edge of Delaware Bay, and look across toward New Jersey. There is a concrete bunker--I don't know--maybe 500 feet out in the water, poking up out of the water. What used to be there at the water's edge was a parking lot, where people used to park their trucks and launch their boats and go out and fish or whatever. That concrete bunker out in the ocean, out in Delaware Bay, used to sit 500 feet west of the dune line. It is now out in the ocean and is largely covered when we have high tide. I invite my colleagues who deny climate change to visit our State. Come to Delaware and see firsthand what I just described at Prime Hook Beach. Come with us to a place called Southbridge, which is just at the southern edge of Wilmington, DE, or to the roads that are washing out in Odessa, which is about 30 miles south of Wilmington, where the strongest storms have ravaged our beaches and the sea level has risen, as I mentioned earlier, at Prime Hook Beach. One colleague who has been to Delaware more than a few times is Sheldon Whitehouse. I like to call him affectionately ``the Whitehouse.'' A few years back, Senator Whitehouse came to the First State to see a spectacular natural event that Delaware is lucky to host every year--the arrival of the red knots. They fly for literally thousands and thousands of miles, from south to north and north to south. They stop for lunch in Delaware. They eat the eggs of our horseshoe crabs, and they refuel for their journey. Imagine it. They are not this big. They are maybe half the size of the birds that are right here, but they can fly literally thousands of miles--almost 10,000--before stopping to refuel. Each year, Delaware Bay hosts tens of thousands of tiny but tough birds--the red knots. The red knot regularly migrates some 19,000 miles, it turns out, each year from the southern tip of South America all the way up to the Arctic Circle. It stops in Delaware to feed on horseshoe crab eggs and refuel for the rest of its journey. It is an incredible journey for such a small shorebird. Its arrival on our shores is a must-see event, as our friend from Rhode Island can attest. You might think that a bird as hearty as the red knot, which flies across the globe every year, might be able to escape the effects of climate change, but warming temperatures, ocean acidification, and sea level rise are threatening their food supply and their nesting grounds all along their journey. If nothing else, we should be working together to ensure that our children and our grandchildren will be able to experience natural phenomena like the arrival of the red knots for years, for decades, for centuries to come. We should also recognize that we share a home with these creatures. It is not just our planet; it is their planet too. If we allow climate change to determine their fate, it will undoubtedly determine ours eventually. I will close with this. I know that fighting climate change is a personal matter for me. I also know that the same is true for our friend from Rhode Island. We are fighting for our constituents' way of life, and our Senator from Rhode Island and I will continue to speak truth to power. To the climate science deniers who are still out there, I borrow the fitting words of our Ocean State colleague: It is really time to wake up. Climate change is no longer in the distant future; it is here, it is now, and we need to meet that challenge head-on. I yield to the Senator from Hawaii. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii. Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, the news about climate change certainly feels daunting. In the United States, we have historic wildfires, hurricanes, storms, and floods. Severe weather has upended people's lives, destroyed businesses and homes, and is now costing the economy tens of billions of dollars every year. Around the world, it can sometimes seem even bleaker. Cities are running out of water, and drought has distressed entire regions and pushed people out of their homes and fueled conflict. Meanwhile, here in Washington, DC, the Trump administration is actively undermining our ability to address climate change. At the EPA in particular, Scott Pruitt is allowing polluters to violate the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. He plans to eliminate limits on methane emissions and protections that keep toxic chemicals from polluting our waterways. He is rolling back the Clean Power Plan and fuel efficiency standards that keep too much carbon from polluting the air. He has cut the number of fines for polluters by more than half, and he has reduced the EPA's staff so that it is down to the same level that it was in 1984. There are 700 EPA employees, including 200 scientists, who have left since the beginning of the Trump administration. In other words, this administration is not just ignoring climate change and its impacts, it is actually throwing fuel on the fire. So is there any reason for hope? Let me give you three reasons to actually be hopeful. First, the rest of the world is going to move forward with or without leadership. Every single nation in the world is working to lower its emissions and meet its commitments as part of the Paris Agreement. Experts said that even without the United States, the Paris Agreement can succeed if nations follow through, and there are some promising signs that this is happening. In China, experts predicted that coal consumption would peak between the years 2020 and 2040, but Brookings reported earlier this year that the country's consumption of coal has already peaked. One-third of global investments in renewable energy today come from China. In 2018, they will likely make up half of the entire global market for new solar installations. China is not the only one making progress here. The world is in a race for clean energy. A coalition of 22 countries and the EU is investing more than $30 billion a year in clean energy research and development. That brings us to the second reason to have hope on climate change, and that is economics. Here in the United States, financial incentives remain the law regardless of what Scott Pruitt wants the law to be. We still have the investment tax credit and the production tax credit for solar and wind, and they are pushing us toward clean energy. Last year, more than half of the [[Page S1672]] new energy generation that came online in the United States was that of wind and solar--more than coal and natural gas combined. The fact is that clean energy is now cheaper than dirty energy. In 2009, coal cost $111 per megawatt hour, natural gas $83, wind $135. Utility-scale solar cost a whopping $359--about 3\1/2\ times the cost of coal. By 2017--listen to these numbers--it was $102 for coal, $60 for natural gas, $45 for wind, and $50 for utility-scale solar. Now wind and solar are 20 percent cheaper, on average, and coal is twice as expensive as clean energy. Even the fossil fuel industry understands that we are moving toward a low-carbon economy. That is why their investors are demanding accountability. Last year, a majority of shareholders forced ExxonMobil to start reporting on how the fight against climate change will impact the oil company, which is the largest oil company in the world. TransCanada canceled its plans to build an oil pipeline that would have carried 1.1 million barrels of oil a day because of the changing economic and political calculations. Third and finally, the United States may not have the President's leadership on climate change, but when it comes to the Paris Agreement, corporations, States, and cities have stood up and declared: We are still in. Thousands of mayors, Governors, CEOs, Tribal leaders, and average Americans are working to meet our commitment to the Paris Agreement. Here is one example at the State level. More than half of the States have clean energy policies in place, and many have capped emissions. In Hawaii, we will transition to 100 percent clean energy by the year 2045, and analysts are optimistic that we may reach our goal sooner than that. These efforts are making a difference. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon found that the United States can meet our original commitment to the Paris Agreement regardless of what Rex Tillerson, Donald Trump, and Scott Pruitt want. Even if the EPA undermines our effort, we are still on track. George Washington once said that ``perseverance and spirit have done wonders in all ages.'' He also said that ``it is infinitely better to have a few good men than many indifferent ones.'' By these two measures, there is even hope in Congress. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse will be remembered in history as the epitome of perseverance and spirit when it comes to climate change. He understands the moral urgency of this moment. When we look at the Senators joining him on the floor this evening, it is clear that we have more than a few good men and women working on this issue. We will continue to shine a light on the many ways that this administration is failing the American people by ignoring climate change. We will also continue to hope because the absence of leadership from this President has not stopped the rest of the country or the rest of the world from acting on climate, and it will not stop us from moving forward. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts. Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I rise today to join the citizens of Massachusetts who are making their voices heard and sending a clear message to President Trump: The Commonwealth of Massachusetts stands strong in opposition to his reckless proposal to expand offshore drilling. We stand strong in opposition to yet another handout to Big Oil executives who are willing to put corporate profits ahead of the health of our coastal families. We stand strong in opposition to this administration's willful ignorance of climate change and the world's ongoing clean energy revolution. President Trump may say that his drilling plan is about growing jobs, but the truth is that this offshore drilling proposal is a slap in the face to every hard-working coastal family. President Trump is willing to put corporate profits for his Big Oil buddies ahead of shipping crews in Boston, ahead of the fishermen from Gloucester to New Bedford, ahead of the mom-and-pop diners all along the Cape, ahead of every tourism industry worker, and ahead of the families of all of these workers. President Trump is willing to gamble with the livelihoods of over 600,000 North Atlantic coastal and ocean workers. The people of Massachusetts and the people who depend on a clean coast are not willing to take that gamble. Our coastal communities remember when the BP Deepwater Horizon oilspill happened in 2010. One offshore oil well blew and caused Deepwater Horizon's drilling rig to explode. It killed 11 workers, injured 17 others, and unleashed one of the worst environmental disasters in human history. Nearly 5 million barrels of oil gushed into the ocean, contaminating more than 1,300 miles of coastline and nearly 70,000 square miles of surface water. Millions of birds and marine animals died, suffocated by thick coatings of oil and poisoned by other toxic chemicals. The gulf fishing industry lost thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. The spill devastated the gulf's coastal tourism economy. The environmental and economic devastation hit working families and small businesses across the region. But the Trump administration insists on padding the pockets of Big Oil while small coastal towns bear all the risks that something will go wrong. The local towns bear the risk of a devastating oilspill. The local towns bear the risk of climate change impact, including increased coastal habitat destruction, fisheries threatened by ocean acidification, and rising sea levels. President Trump and this Republican Congress want to bury their heads in the sand or bury their heads in the big pile of Big Oil money, but the reality is this: Climate change has happened, and the evidence is all around us. The consequences are worsening with every single day of inaction. Make no mistake. We are in the most critical fight of our generation and we are running out of time. We are in a fight to save our coastal towns, a fight to save our farmers, a fight to save our fishermen, a fight to save good-paying clean energy jobs, and a fight for our children's future. Will winning the fight against climate change be tough? You bet it will. We will need to retool to install offshore wind turbines instead of offshore drilling rigs. We will need to invest in faster clean energy deployment, modernize the electric grid, build sea walls to protect our coastal towns, and much, much more. It is a big job ahead, but there is no country and no workforce in the world that is more willing and more able to tackle the challenges of climate change head- on than the United States of America. Yes, it is hard, but it is what we do. It is who we are. We are a nation of unrelenting workers who clawed our way out of the Great Depression, who fought two world wars, who put a man on the moon, and who electrified the Nation with 20th century fuels. With a level playing field, we are a nation of workers who can electrify the world all over again with the 21st century fuels of wind, solar, and other clean energy sources. The American people deserve leadership that understands just how innovative and persistent we are--leadership that knows the fearless strength of the American people; leadership that believes in the innovative, get-it-done attitude of the American worker; leadership that will stand up to Big Oil executives hell-bent on protecting their profits at our expense; and leadership that knows that our best days are ahead of us. But we have to fight for them. They deserve leadership that will not ignore the challenges of climate change; leadership that will not chain our economy to the fossil fuels of yesterday and, instead, will support the good-paying, clean energy jobs of tomorrow; and leadership that refuses to put our coastal families at risk of another devastating oil spill. The American people deserve leadership that doesn't work for Big Oil. The American people deserve leadership that works for them. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll. The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll. Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I first wish to thank Senator Whitehouse, one of my best friends in the Senate. [[Page S1673]] We came to the Senate on the same day. He will go down in history as the best advocate in this body or perhaps the greatest moralist of our time combatting climate change. He has educated Members of the Senate-- some more resistant than others. He has taken to the floor over and over. He has continued to make sure that people listen to something important, and we all appreciate that leadership. Climate change affects Ohio jobs that rely on Lake Erie. The Great Lakes are vital to our industrial heartland, as the Rockies are to the West, as the Atlantic coastline is to New England, as the Gulf of Mexico is to the Presiding Officer's own State of Florida. In fact, 84 percent of America's freshwater is in the five Great Lakes. Only polar icecaps contain more freshwater than do the Great Lakes. Lake Erie is one of the biggest lakes in the world. It is also the shallowest of the lakes. This is an amazing statistic. Lake Erie is the shallowest and among the smallest of the Great Lakes in surface area. Lake Erie contains 2 percent of all the water in the Great Lakes, yet it contains 50 percent of the fish in the Great Lakes because it is warmer and shallower and conducive to aquatic life and fish life. Its shallowness makes it particularly vulnerable to storm water runoff and the algae blooms that it causes. The Maumee River runs through Toledo. The Maumee River Basin is the largest drainage basin of any of the Great Lakes, and the largest river that empties into the Great Lakes is the Maumee. Climate change makes these algae blooms off the coast of Toledo in the western base of Lake Erie. Climate change makes those blooms worse. It contaminates our lakes, and it threatens the Ohio businesses and communities that rely on Lake Erie. Three summers ago, we had to get bottled drinking water to the citizens of Toledo and the surrounding areas of Northwest Ohio because the water was not potable at that time. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, we know that one effect of climate change in the Great Lakes region has been a 37-percent increase in the gully washers--the heavy rain events that contribute to algae blooms. I talked to farmers who have been farming in the Western Lake Erie Basin for decades. Just a few weeks ago I did a roundtable in that part of the State. My staff member Jonathan McCracken has done a number of roundtables before. Since talking to these farmers, they tell us they are experiencing heavier rain events more often and with greater intensity compared to even 15 years ago, let alone in the lifespan of many of these farmers. Hotter summers and shorter winters make this worse. The effects of algae blooms have a profound effect on the ecosystem. That is why this matters. Protecting our lakes is one of the biggest environmental challenges facing the entire Midwest. It is the biggest challenge facing Ohio. We have made some progress over the last 8 years, thanks in large part to the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. The GLRI is working. Everybody knows it does. Nobody claims it doesn't. I remember how polluted Lake Erie was when I was growing up. I grew up an hour or hour and a half from there. My family, a week or two in the summer, would drive north to Gem Beach. I remember the dead fish. I remember the smell of the lake. I remember that this lake was in big, big trouble. We have made progress cleaning up its tributaries. We increased access to the lake. We approved habitats for fish and wildlife. It has been a bipartisan success story, and it took the Federal Government to do it. The city of Cleveland couldn't do it, nor the city of Lorraine, the city of Sandusky, the city of Port Clinton, the city of Ashtabula. They couldn't clean up the lake. The State of Ohio didn't have the ability and the resources to clean this lake up. It took the Federal Government and the U.S. EPA to have the strength and the dollars and the mission to clean up this lake. That is why it has been a bipartisan success story all over our country. We need to make sure that GLRI has the funding it needs to keep up its work and not eliminate it, as the President again proposed in his budget. Taking a hatchet to GLRI would cost Ohio jobs, and it would jeopardize public health by putting our drinking water at risk. If you are over 50 years old, you remember what that lake looked like. You remember what that lake smelled like. You remember how people didn't swim there, how people's drinking water was threatened. You remember that before EPA, before there was this bipartisan commitment to clean up one of the greatest of the Great Lakes. You remember that. Obviously, this President doesn't know this. This President won his election based on winning these Great Lakes States, and he has abandoned these States by drastically cutting funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. Those of us along the Great Lakes didn't stand for a budget that eliminated GLRI last year. Nothing has changed this year. Ohioans on both sides of the aisle will go to the mat for our lake. I am working with Senator Portman--I am a Democrat; he is a Republican--and my Ohio colleagues from both parties to protect it. Budget cuts are terrible for this; climate change will only make it worse. When I was young, people wrote off Lake Erie as a polluted, dying lake. As I said, I remember seeing it. I remember smelling it. I remember hearing people talk about it. Many, many people thought that there wasn't much future for this Great Lake, that it would be impossible to clean up. People in the past have had a habit of not just writing off Lake Erie but also writing off my State. We have proved them wrong time and again. We proved them wrong back then, we proved them wrong today, and we will prove them wrong in the future. Our lake is improving. It is supporting an entire industry. It supports the jobs it creates. It is providing drinking water and recreation and so much more to communities across our State, and we can't allow climate change to ruin that progress. We cannot write off Lake Erie. We cannot write off the millions of Ohioans and people from Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota who depend on these five Great Lakes. I see it up close. I live only 5 or 6 miles from the lake. I know what it means for my community. I know how important this is for the future--the environmental future--of our country, the economic future of my State. It is important for all of us to come together on a bipartisan basis. Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I join my colleagues today to discuss climate change. I want to thank Senator Whitehouse for being a vocal advocate for addressing this issue. Climate change is real. It is happening all around us, and we can't afford to ignore this fact any longer. This past year, global temperatures were up 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit over the historical average. Millions of Americans came face-to-face with extreme weather events like deadly wildfires and powerful hurricanes, and these extreme weather events are only expected to get worse. If no action is taken to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the world will warm 7 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. Rising temperatures will bring increasingly more severe droughts, destructive floods, deadly wildfires, and strong coastal storms. Rising temperatures are also warming our oceans, threatening to melt both polar icecaps. Last summer, the world watched as an iceberg the size of Delaware broke free from Antarctica's Larsen C ice shelf. Scientists are now studying how the entire shelf may collapse and projecting what that would mean for the even larger West Antarctic Ice Sheet as oceans continue to warm. That sheet--twice the size of Texas--contains enough ice to raise sea levels by more than 10 feet. That much sea rise would submerge more than 25,000 square miles of the United States that is home to more than 12 million Americans. Rising seas and the loss of coastal land aren't the only threats we are facing due to climate change. The effects it is having on our water supply is deeply troubling. California is home to the largest agriculture sector in the United States. [[Page S1674]] Our growers need access to plenty of water to help feed the whole Nation. As temperatures rise, we are seeing fewer and fewer days below freezing, greatly reducing mountain snowpack which is a critical source of water in the West. Extreme heat is also making it harder for agriculture workers to safely work outside. In the Central Valley, average temperatures are projected to rise 6 degrees by the end of this century. It is not just people who work outdoors who are feeling the health effects of climate change. Warmer temperatures are expanding the range of disease-carrying pests such as ticks and mosquitos. Lyme disease cases have tripled in the last two decades, and tropical diseases are now appearing as far north as the Gulf Coast. Californians know all too well the effects of climate change. We are still recovering from an historic drought and the most destructive wildfire season on record. But we may be in another drought by next year if we don't get more rain soon. In the absence of leadership from the Federal Government, California is stepping up and taking action. California is still honoring the Paris Agreement even though the President pulled the United States out. By 2030, California will reach 50 percent renewable electricity, double energy efficiency, and reduce emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels. California has also grown to become the sixth largest economy in the world, showing you can still grow your economy while making smart investments in clean energy. President Trump and his allies in Congress need to wake up. We can't afford to ignore an issue as important as climate change any longer. The American people demand action. Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I rise today to commemorate the 200th speech the Senator from Rhode Island, Mr. Whitehouse, will make here on the floor of the U.S. Senate on the need to act on climate change. When global challenges arise, countries throughout the world look to the United States for leadership. Climate change is an issue that affects billions of people worldwide, and the United States can and should be a leading voice in combating it. Despite making significant progress under President Obama, President Trump has decided to reverse course and take a backseat while the rest of the world tackles this issue head-on. Over the last year, the United States has pulled out of the Paris Agreement, weakened air and water protections here at home, moved away from renewable energy, and implemented drastic funding and staffing cuts at the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA. President Trump's decision to retreat from our commitment to combating climate change comes at a critical time for the state of our environment. His abdication of responsibility is calamitous. The vast majority of scientists have concluded that climate change is real and caused by human activity, and Americans are already feeling the effects. Last year, for instance, our Nation experienced one of the most destructive hurricane seasons on record and a series of deadly wildfires. On top of this, sea levels continue to rise at record pace, posing an existential threat to coastal communities throughout the country. This is especially dangerous for the State I represent, as many Marylanders live in areas that are acutely susceptible to rising tides and flood damage. As such, much of our essential communication, transportation, energy, and wastewater management infrastructure is at risk. This begs the question: What kind of environmental legacy do we want to leave for our children and grandchildren? I believe that it is our responsibility to leave our beaches, farms, towns, and wetlands healthier than we found them. The most recent research suggests that our actions over the next 5 years will shape the course of sea level rise for generations. Therefore, the time is now to take decisive action on climate change. If we fail to do so, we will be left to explain to the next generation why we failed to act in the face of so much incontrovertible evidence. Some of my colleagues argue that tackling climate change is too costly an undertaking. They claim that any action we take to protect human health and the environment will inevitably cost jobs and hurt the economy. The reality is that nothing poses a bigger long-term threat to our economic and national security than climate change. As sea levels and temperatures climb higher, so do the costs of doing business. Changing weather patterns increase risk for homeowners. Our attempts to cool a heating planet will strain our energy supply. These are just a few of the economic consequences that we will face if we fail to take action. The progress we have seen in Maryland demonstrates that we can preserve our environment while maintaining a robust economy. Marylanders have taken decisive action on a range of environmental issues, and the State is currently on track to meet the guidelines established in the Paris Agreement. Thanks, in part, to the partnerships within the Chesapeake Bay Program, the health of the Bay has been steadily increasing for years. At the same time, Maryland's farming industry, which employs over 350,000 Marylanders, has remained vibrant. Our success in Maryland is a testament to what we can do as a nation on climate change. The key to our success will depend on the degree to which we are willing to cooperate with each other. This includes interstate partnerships such as the Chesapeake Bay Program, as well as international partnerships like the Paris Agreement. We should not let President Trump's decision to remove the United States from the Paris Agreement discourage us from working together to achieve our goals. In the spirit of collaboration, we should continue to partner with the States, localities, universities, and business that have decided to honor the global commitment we made under President Obama. I am especially proud to see the city of Baltimore, Hyattsville, Takoma Park, the University of Maryland School System, and all the other localities and organizations lead this effort in Maryland by joining the America's Pledge project. America's Pledge is a new initiative co-led by California Governor Edmund G. ``Jerry'' Brown, Jr., and the U.N. Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change Michael R. Bloomberg, which aims to assess the scope and scale of climate actions being taken by U.S. States, cities, businesses, and other non-Federal actors. I am proud the Center for Global Sustainability at the University of Maryland is among the institutions providing the project their research support. I encourage my colleagues to put our planet, our environment, and the future of humanity over partisan politics and President Trump's stubborn insistence on retrograde policies. We must do what is best not just for ourselves, but for future generations, too. The United States of America has been a world leader on so many issues, which redounds to our own benefit. Now is not the time to abdicate that role. The world and our children are watching. We are fortunate to have climate change leaders like Senator Whitehouse. With a dogged persistence, he has come to this Chamber month after month to educate, to cajole, and to inspire us to take action. Most of all, he has warned us of the grave danger climate change presents. Will we be like the Trojans of ancient Greek mythology, who ignored the prophecies of Cassandra about the imminent destruction of their city? We do so, like the Trojans, at our own peril. Cassandra's prophecies came true. If we listen to Senator Whitehouse and learn from him and take action now, we can change our fate for the better. Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I thank my friend Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, and congratulations on his long history of action on climate change. Six years ago, Senator Whitehouse began a campaign to speak every week about climate change. One need only look at the past 6 years of climate impacts to understand just how important the Senator's pledge is. The planet has been warming for years, but in the last few years, the disturbing trends have accelerated. The last 4 years have been the hottest on record. The effects of climate change are already obvious, from the eroding coasts [[Page S1675]] off Cape Cod to storm surge in Boston Harbor. January's bomb cyclone in Massachusetts broke the flood record in Boston set by the Blizzard of 1978. Sadly, this is our new normal. Thirteen of the top 20 biggest flood events in Boston have occurred since 2000. While Massachusetts gets overrun by the impacts of climate change, President Trump has plans to expand offshore drilling off the New England coast. This is the very definition of insanity. Our communities and our oceans are feeling the pressure of the changing climate. But what has the Trump administration decided to do about it? Worse than nothing. It has started to withdraw us from the Paris Climate Accord. It has repealed the Clean Power Plan. It has rolled back historic fuel economy standards, loosened standards for hazardous pollutants, and declared all-out war on climate science. Throughout the administration, there has been an alarming attack on public information about climate change. On the Environmental Protection Agency's website, more than 5,000 pages of information on climate change have disappeared, either relegated to an unsearchable maze far from public view or simply deleted. Fact sheets on public health and climate change are gone. Resources for States and cities have disappeared. Guides for students and teachers are no more. This isn't transparency; it is a transparent attack on climate science. It is also an attack on our scientists. More than 200 scientists have left the EPA under the Trump administration. Those 200 scientists have been replaced with only seven new hires. Our top climate scientists are telling us that fear is rampant at EPA and across Federal agencies. The EPA's job is to instill fear into the hearts of corporate polluters, not its own scientists. We need to encourage more science, not less. We need science to inform the policies we need to provide the solutions that could save our planet. That is what Senator Whitehouse has championed for these past 6 years on the floor and throughout his career in public service. I thank Senator Whitehouse for asking me to stand with him today and for being an environmental Paul Revere, sounding the alarm on climate change. We cannot be silenced, and we will continue to work together to sound that alarm--because that is what is happening, the Earth's alarm clock has gone off and it is telling us all to wake up. There is no one who is more woke to what is happening to our planet's climate than he. Thank you. Mr. BROWN. I suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll. The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll. Mr. KING. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. KING. Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleague from Rhode Island to talk about climate change, but I first want to make a comment about my good friend and an important Member of this body, Senator Whitehouse of Rhode Island, and what he has done. In the 1930s, a lonely voice stood on the floor of the Houses of Parliament, warning of the impending catastrophe of the rearmament of Germany in the advent of World War II. People didn't listen. Often, he spoke to a lonely House, but his voice was clear, his voice was prescient, and what he said was important. Of course, I refer to Winston Churchill. Today and over the past many years, Senator Whitehouse has performed that same function of warning us, of trying to wake us up to a challenge that is impending, that is catastrophic, that is significant, and that is also at least somewhat preventable. Senator Whitehouse has talked about climate change in terms of ocean acidification, temperature changes, sea level rise, drought, famine, and the effects throughout the world. Often this Chamber is empty, but his warnings are important and should be heeded nonetheless. The first thing I want to do is thank him and compliment him for the work that he has done over these many years and continues to do. I can see his sign--as I see it on C-SPAN and here on the floor--that says ``Wake Up,'' and wake up is what we need to do. People often talk about climate change as if it were some abstract thing that is going on, and it is in scientific journals, and it is a kind of environmental movement that doesn't really affect real life that much; it is just sort of something that goes on out there and one of the many issues we have to deal with. But it is real. I will tell you how I know. The fishermen in Maine have told me so. Just this past Saturday, I spent the evening with a man who has been a fisherman for 40 years in the Gulf of Maine. He said that he has never seen the kinds of changes we have seen in the last 10 years. They are catching fish that have never been seen before in the Gulf of Maine. A lobsterman told me of pulling up a seahorse in his lobster trap. Seahorses aren't supposed to live in the cold water of Maine. This isn't an abstract question for us. Lobstering is a $1.7-billion- a-year industry for Maine. Lobstering used to be a major industry in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, and now it is largely gone. There are multiple explanations, but one of them is that the water is warming, and our species, whether they are lobsters or trees or bears, are sensitive to small environmental changes. We have had record lobster harvests in Maine in the last 5 to 10 years--although I have to say that in the last 2 years, they have been down. We don't know whether the declines are a blip or a trend. We deeply hope that it doesn't represent a trend, but we can't ignore what happened to the lobster population to our south. The water is getting warmer in the Gulf of Maine. The water in the Gulf of Maine is warming at the fastest rate of any body of water on Earth, except for the Arctic Ocean, and it has already wrought changes in the nature of our natural resource-based economy. Maine is a natural resource State, dependent largely upon fisheries, lobster, agriculture, farming, and forestry. That is who we are. Of course, another part of our economy is the millions of tourists who come to Maine each summer to visit our incredible coastline. Climate change isn't an abstract for us; it is a very real phenomenon. I want to emphasize not only what my friend the fisherman told me this weekend, but also that I have heard from fishermen all over Maine for the last 4 or 5 years about the changes they are seeing. This guy isn't a scientist, but he is out on the water, and he knows what he is catching. He knows he is catching fish he has never caught before. He has never seen the tropical, warm water fish now being caught in the Gulf of Maine. I think the other factor we need to talk about is a dollars-and-cents question that relates to sea level rise. We are talking about millions of dollars on the part of the U.S. Government to preserve the coastal infrastructure that we have in connection with our Armed Forces. The city of Norfolk is already experiencing what are called sunny day floods. The city of Miami--the Presiding Officer's hometown--is experiencing sunny day floods. These are floods that aren't caused by great storms, by great perturbations in the atmosphere; they are caused just by a high tide. The cost of dealing with this in Miami, New Orleans, New York, or Maine is going to be enormous. We tend to think of the ocean as a fixed commodity, as something that has always been the way it is now. It turns out that we have been fooled. We have been lulled into a sense of confidence about the level of the sea because for the past 8,000 years, it has been the same. But this is a chart that shows the depth of the Atlantic Ocean over the past 24,000 years. It turns out that 24,000 years ago, which was the height of the glacial period, the waters off the coast of Maine were 390 feet shallower than they are today--390 feet shallower. What you see here is the melting of the glaciers and the refilling of the oceans. From our historic point of view, the problem is that it got to a plateau about 10,000 years ago, and that is all we know. That is human history, right here. We don't remember this very much because it appeared before recorded human history. Now, there is an interesting moment in this chart, and it is right in this period about 15,000 years ago, and it is [[Page S1676]] called the meltwater pulse 1A. That is what scientists call it. We see a very steep rise in the ocean level during this period. Interestingly, this rise is about 1 foot per decade. That is what happened during that time about 15,000 years ago. Well, a year and a half ago I went to Greenland with two climate scientists, one of whom focuses almost exclusively on sea level rise. The estimates vary quite a bit, I will concede, but their estimate was that what we are facing now is 1 foot of sea level rise per decade for the rest of this century. Has it ever happened before? Yes. Is that an outrageous estimate? No, because it has happened before. It can happen again. Why? Because the last remnants of the glaciers are in Antarctica and Greenland, and between the ice sheets on those two areas is 260 feet of additional sea level rise. Greenland is melting at an unprecedented rate, and there is a huge ice shelf in Antarctica that is poised to fall into the ocean. If that happens, it will cause sea level rise, just as dropping an ice cube in a glass of water does. The indications are overwhelming of what this issue means for the future of this country. This is not an academic question. Here is another example of what is happening in a relatively short period of time. The volume of ice in the Arctic Ocean has fallen by two-thirds since 1979--a 40-year period. The Arctic Ocean is more clear today than it has ever been in human history. Anybody who says nothing is happening or it is just routine or the weather changes all the time isn't paying attention to the facts. Again, my concern about this is practical: the cost of seawalls, the cost of shoring up our infrastructure, just the cost to the government of protecting the naval facilities in Norfolk. Of course, one of the problems in the State of the Presiding Officer is, the rock is porous limestone so it is very difficult to build a seawall because the water will simply come under it. So we are talking about a very serious practical issue that is going to cost our society billions, if not trillions, of dollars. Can we stop it? Probably not. Can we slow it? Yes, but it is going to take action today, and every day we wait, it makes the action harder and more expensive. If we wait until the waves are lapping up over the seawall in New York City or over the dikes in New Orleans or over the streets of Miami or along the coast of Maine at our marshes and low points, it will be too late. Then all we can do is defend and not prevent. I believe we can make changes now that are not totally disruptive to our economy but will be protective of our economy and will be much cheaper now than they will be 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, or 50 years from now. What we are doing is leaving the problem to our kids, just like we are leaving the deficit to our kids, just like we are leaving broken infrastructure to our kids. Tom Brokaw wrote a book after World War II called ``The Greatest Generation.'' That was the generation that sacrificed in World War II, and then they built the Interstate Highway System, paid for it, and paid down the debt that was accumulated during World War II. We are just the opposite. We are increasing our debt on all levels at a time of relative prosperity. The economy is at low unemployment. Yet we are passing trillion-dollar tax cuts that add to the deficit that these young people are going to have to pay off. We are not attending to the problem of climate change. Who is going to have to pay to build those seawalls? Not us; our children and our grandchildren. I believe this is a moral and an ethical issue as well as a practical issue. So I will return to where I began: to compliment my colleague from Rhode Island for raising the alarm, for pointing out what we can do, how we can do it, the consensus of scientific opinion, and the reality of what we are facing. We can do better. We don't have to avoid and ignore and waste the resources and the time we have now. The most precious resource we have now to confront this problem is time, and every day that goes by is a day of irresponsibility. It is a day where our children and grandchildren are going to say: Where were you when this was happening? Why didn't you listen to that guy from Rhode Island who told you what was going to happen, who told you how we could do something about it? Why didn't we listen? I don't want to be a person who says I didn't listen because I was too busy or because it was inconvenient or because I was afraid it might change a little bit about how we powered our automobiles or got electricity. I think it is a question we can face. This body can solve big problems. It has done it in the past, but recently our pattern has been, instead of solving problems, avoiding problems--putting them off until next year, next month, or decades from now when this problem is no longer a problem but a catastrophe. So I salute and thank my colleague from Rhode Island for keeping the focus on this issue. I look forward to continuing to work with him, as we will continue to urge and plead with our colleagues to join us in reasonable steps that can be taken to ameliorate what is coming at us. This is a moment in time when we have it within our power to do something important for the future of our country and for the future of our children. I hope we can seize that moment and serve not only the American people today but the American people who will come after us and will judge us by the extent to which we confronted a problem and saved them from having to solve it themselves. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Daines). The Senator from New Jersey. Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I come to the floor to amplify the efforts of my colleague Senator Whitehouse as he gives his 200th climate speech on the Senate floor. He really has become a modern-day Paul Revere on one of the most critical issues of our time that very well dictates the future of our planet and our way of life as we know it. I believe history will record that Senator Whitehouse riveted the attention of the Senate--or attempted, certainly, to do so--and the Nation on the real threat that is climate change. Climate change may be an inconvenient truth to some, but it is a threat to New Jersey, to the United States, and to the security and stability of our world. It is a challenge we cannot afford to ignore. I agree with my distinguished colleague from Rhode Island that it is well past time for this Congress to wake up and demand climate action from this administration. We often hear the Trump administration officials, and even some of our colleagues in Congress, suggest that ``we don't know enough'' about climate change to take action, when the truth is, we know too much not to take action. We know about the greenhouse effect and how gases like carbon dioxide trap heat in our atmosphere. We know that since 2010, we have experienced the five warmest years on record and that momentary cold snaps in our weather do not detract from the indisputable reality that around the world, temperatures are steadily rising. We know that 97 percent of scientists agree that manmade climate change is real and that the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities have led to unprecedented levels--unprecedented levels--of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere and in our oceans. We know experts at NOAA have concluded that since the Industrial Revolution, our oceans have become 30 percent more acidic--the greatest increase in 300 million years. Likewise, we know the Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world and that as icecaps melt, our sea levels rise, endangering the coastal communities that drive so much of America's economy. In New Jersey, we know the real threat posed by climate change, and we know that threat is real. My constituents bore the brunt of Superstorm Sandy when it devastated the Jersey shore. We know rising sea levels and the powerful storms that accompany them jeopardize our coastal communities. From tourism to commercial fishing, to coastal property values totaling nearly $800 billion, millions of families across New Jersey depend upon a healthy coast and a safe climate. While I may be partial to the Jersey shore, the reality is, nearly 40 percent of the American people live along a coast. That is 40 percent of our country threatened by rising sea levels, stronger storm surges, and more extreme flooding. [[Page S1677]] Of course, climate change is far from just a coastal problem. From life-threatening heat waves to crop-destroying droughts, to record- breaking wildfires, the perils of a warming planet are not up for debate. The fact is, climate change will impact every human being and every living thing on this planet if--if--we fail to take action, and the American people know it. In October of 2017, the Associated Press found that over 61 percent of Americans want us to respond to this historic challenge--61 percent. Even President Trump's Department of Defense gets it. Earlier this year, the Pentagon reported that about 50 percent of all Department of Defense sites already--already--face risks from climate change and extreme weather events. As the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I am particularly concerned that we have done little to address climate change's role as a threat multiplier. Whether it is disruptions to the food supply or forced migration from sea level rise or destruction wreaked by more powerful storms, climate change will likely exacerbate conflict and humanitarian crises around the world. President Trump's willful ignorance of these threats risks leaving the United States unprepared for the 21st century. There is no question that this willful ignorance is born out of this administration's cozy relationship with the fossil fuel industry. From the Department of Energy to the Environmental Protection Agency, to the Department of the Interior, President Trump has stacked his Cabinet with individuals who seem more concerned about Big Oil profits than the safety of our people and the future of our planet. Nearly a year ago, the President announced his plan to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord, leaving us isolated on the global stage. Now is not the time to hand our precious waters and protected public lands over to special interests. Now is the time for Congress to incentivize the investments that will modernize our energy infrastructure, create new high-paying jobs, and grow our clean energy economy. That is why I have introduced the COAST Anti-Drilling Act to permanently ban offshore drilling in the Atlantic and protect the coastal communities so vital to New Jersey and other States. That is why I introduced legislation with 22 of my colleagues to level the playing field and eliminate taxpayer-funded subsidies for the five biggest oil companies. That is why I have worked on the Senate Finance Committee to extend incentives for wind and solar and other clean energy technologies. That is why I have backed legislation that would help harness the potential for limitless clean wind power off our shores. These initiatives represent modest, commonsense steps toward a thriving clean energy economy, but, ultimately, it is not enough. We need to think bigger and act boldly. That is why I am here on the floor today with Senator Whitehouse calling for action on climate change. It is time we take action to reduce carbon pollution, create new, high- paying jobs, and accelerate the adoption of innovative clean energy technologies. It is time this administration wake up and put the long- term economic, environmental, and security interests of the United States ahead of fossil fuel profits. It is time the United States reclaims its rightful place as the global leader on climate change. The American people demand it, and the future of our planet depends on it. That future, to a large degree, is going to be, hopefully, achieved because of individuals willing to stand up for a cause, being principled about it, and willing to fight for it and continue like a laser beam on focusing the attention of the Senate, the Congress, and the American people. Senator Whitehouse is that person, and I salute him as he gives his 200th speech today. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico. Mr. UDALL. I thank the Presiding Officer for recognizing me. Mr. President, I know the Presiding Officer hasn't been here the whole time, but many Senators have been speaking about climate change. We see in the Presiding Officer's State, in Glacier National Park-- which I think kind of tells it all--a national park created around glaciers, and they are disappearing rapidly. I come to the floor, first of all, to thank Sheldon Whitehouse for his remarkable leadership on the issue of climate change. His weekly wake-up call speeches have inspired a lot of us. Articles have covered his effort on this. This one is titled, ``A Climate `Wake Up' for the 200th Time.'' He has been down here religiously taking on this issue. In this article, a major leader in the environmental movement said about Sheldon's speeches, ``[His] speeches have been critically important in drawing attention to the need for climate action.'' She also said, ``Demand for climate action is only growing, and certainly we give him credit for his leadership in that effort.'' Very true. I remember traveling with Sheldon Whitehouse to Paris, when all of us were very much enthused to see the world come together and sign the Paris climate agreement. We were all very excited. This effort had been going on for 40 years, and here the countries in the world were finally getting together. I watched Sheldon making those arguments over there. He argued his case persuasively, and he wins converts easily. So we all are here to thank him for his leadership. In particular, I would also like to talk about climate change, its impact on the Southwest, and where we are headed in my home State of New Mexico and the Greater Southwest. Climate change is here and now. I want to talk about that impact in the Southwest, which is severe. My home State of New Mexico is right in the bull's-eye. Our Nation and our Earth cannot afford for us to sit back and do nothing for the next 3 years, but this is precisely what is happening under this administration and this Congress. Our executive and legislative branches are not only sitting on their hands in the face of climate change disruption and devastation; they are aggressively halting all progress we are making. I was so discouraged when I saw the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency take down a climate change website that had gone from a Republican administration to a Democratic administration. I think it had been going on for almost 10 years. This was covered in the Washington Post. Administrator Pruitt, on taking office, took it down and said: We are going to update it. Here we are, more than a year, and if you try to look at that website, it just says: We are in the process of updating it. I don't think we are ever going to see it again, would be my guess. Let's look at some of the reasons and how the progress is being halted here. There are a number of reasons for this, but I think the biggest and most insidious is money--billions of dollars in campaign contributions. The President and congressional majority are delaying, suspending, and stopping policies and programs that combat climate change because of the dark money in politics. Oil and gas, coal, power companies, and other special interests feed their campaign and PAC coffers while the clear public interest is ignored. We must reform our campaign finance system or our climate and the American people will pay a greater and greater price. Sheldon Whitehouse has made a contribution there with his book, ``Captured,'' where he talks about this dark money indepth. That is another piece of scholarship that really adds to what is happening on this campaign finance front. While the President, his EPA Administrator, and his Interior Secretary are openly hostile to climate change science, career government scientists and professionals are still hard at work doing their jobs evaluating climate impacts. Last November, the U.S. Global Change Research Program, consisting of 13 Federal agencies, issued volume I of the ``Fourth National Climate Assessment.'' It is the most authoritative Federal Government resource on climate change. It concludes, ``This period is now the warmest in the history of modern civilization'' with ``record-breaking, climate-related weather extremes,'' and human activities--especially greenhouse gas emissions-- are the ``extremely likely'' ``dominant cause.'' A pretty strong statement from the scientists. [[Page S1678]] With climate change, the Southwest is expected to get hotter and much drier, especially in the southern half of the region. In the last 18 years, New Mexico has seen one reprieve from drought, and the trend is unmistakable. We are seeing less snowpack, earlier melting, and less runoff. Even when we do get snow, new research shows we are getting less runoff from it. Our scarce water resources are even more strained. Here is a drought map of New Mexico from just last week, March 6. Virtually the entire State faces drier conditions. We can see it here, talking about the northern part of the State with extreme drought, most of the middle and northern part of the State in severe drought, and then the southern part of the State in moderate drought. Virtually, the entire State of New Mexico is in a very serious drought situation. Some experts are saying we need to stop thinking about this phenomenon as a drought but instead as a dry region becoming permanently drier. This is a direct threat to our way of life in New Mexico and the Southwest. Elephant Butte Reservoir is our biggest reservoir in New Mexico. It was built close to 100 years ago for flood control and irrigation. Its supply comes from the Rio Grande, our largest river in New Mexico and, as we know, a 1,900-mile river that flows through several States. It is a border for close to 1,000 miles or more, and it flows into the Gulf of Mexico, but for the decade ending 2010, on the Rio Grande, flows in the Rio Grande decreased 23 percent--almost one-quarter--from the 20th century average. Here are photos of Elephant Butte Reservoir from 1994 and 2013. These photos were taken from a satellite. This top photo is from 1994, and we can see a remarkable reservoir and how deep and extended that reservoir is. Now we jump forward about 20 years, and here is Elephant Butte Reservoir in 2013. The picture says a thousand words: The reservoir is rapidly, rapidly disappearing. We can see the dramatic decrease in supply over that short time. Our farmers and ranchers depend on this supply, and they are struggling. This year, the snowpack in the Upper Rio Grande is half of what it should be, and that will force the reservoir even lower. Across the Southwest, the average annual temperature has increased about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit. The last decade, from 2001 to 2010, was the warmest in over a century. Now, New Mexico is really feeling the heat. We are the sixth fastest warming State in the Nation. Since 1970, our average annual temperature increased about 0.6 degrees per decade-- or about 2.7 degrees over 45 years--and it is not over. Average annual temperatures are projected to rise 3.5 to 8.5 degrees by 2100. Difficult-to-control wildfires have multiplied because of dry conditions killing trees and other vegetation, threatening lives, destroying homes, and costing billions of dollars. New Mexico experienced its largest wildfire in 2012--the Whitewater-Baldy Complex fire--that burned almost 290,000 acres. The fire burned in the southwestern part of the State but caused air pollution hundreds of miles away in Las Cruces to the east and Santa Fe to the northeast. Agriculture is a mainstay for the Southwest's economy. We produce more than half of the Nation's high-value specialty crops, and crop development is threatened by warming and extreme weather events. Likewise, another key economic sector--tourism and recreation--is threatened by reduced streamflow and a shorter snow season. Ski Santa Fe used to always open Thanksgiving weekend. That hardly ever happens anymore. Reduced snow and higher temperatures have been an economic disaster for the slopes all over New Mexico. The Southwest's 182 federally recognized Tribes are particularly vulnerable to climate changes such as high temperatures, drought, and severe storms. Tribes may lose traditional foods, medicines, and water supplies. Similarly, our border communities are in greater jeopardy because they don't have the financial resources to protect against climate change impacts. They are vulnerable to health and safety risks like air pollution, erosion, and flooding. The President and his administration have taken aim at Federal programs that would address all these impacts to my State and the Southwest. The President unilaterally withdrew from the Paris Agreement. EPA put the Clean Power Plan on hold. Secretary Zinke has done all he can to halt BLM's methane waste prevention rule. Public lands are open for coal and oil and gas drilling. The President's budget slashed climate science funding. The list goes on and on. This is not what the American people want. They believe science, they understand that human activity is causing climate change, and they want robust policies in response. Climate change presents the greatest threat our Nation and world now confront. It is the moral test of our age. We will be judged by future generations by how we respond now. We owe it to our children, our grandchildren, and beyond to meet this challenge head-on. I call upon my colleagues across the aisle to listen to the science and the American people and to work with us to take action. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I believe Senator Whitehouse's colleague, the senior Senator from Rhode Island, is here to speak next. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island. Mr. REED. Mr. President, let me thank Senator Udall for his kind remarks and his great leadership. I rise today to add my voice to his voice and to that of so many of my colleagues in calling attention to the growing threat of climate change, and to encourage the Senate to take meaningful action. First, let me join all of my colleagues in recognizing and thanking my colleague, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse from Rhode Island. His tireless work to raise awareness about the devastating impacts of climate change has truly made a remarkable difference in our country and around the world. Senator Whitehouse comes to the Senate floor every week to tell us why it is ``time to wake up,'' and I am pleased to be able to join him as he gives his 200th such speech. These 200 speeches provide at least 200 reasons why we should be acting quickly and decisively to address climate change. Just one of those reasons, which I would like to highlight, is the impact of climate change on our national security. Climate change acts as a threat multiplier, exacerbating other problems in unstable areas around the world. It is already creating conflict related to a lack of resources, whether it is access to food, water, or energy. I was just traveling through Djibouti and Somalia--adjacent to Yemen--and one of the great crises in Yemen is not just the conflict on the ground, but it is a water crisis that is causing massive drought. Then I moved on up to Jordan, and there spoke with our representatives. There is a water crisis in Jordan also and another threatened drought. These national security problems are climate problems, and these climate problems are national security problems. When it comes to our national security, decisions are made through a careful evaluation of risks, and we must be sure to include risks caused by climate change. It is particularly troubling to me to see that the current Administration is instead choosing to ignore the reality of scientific consensus by removing all references to climate change from documents like the ``National Security Strategy'' and the ``National Defense Strategy.'' The Department of Defense must be able to execute its missions effectively and efficiently. So it is disconcerting that climate- related events have already cost the Pentagon significant resources-- measured in both monetary costs as well as in negative impacts on military readiness. In fact, Secretary Mattis, who understands these issues very well, and despite the official publication of the Department of Defense speaks very candidly and directly, has declared the following before the Senate Armed Services Committee: Where climate change contributes to regional instability, the Department of Defense must be aware of any potential adverse impacts. . . . climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today. . . . and the Department should be prepared to mitigate any consequences of a changing climate, including ensuring that our shipyards and installations will continue to function as required. [[Page S1679]] Across the globe, we see our forces in conflict. They are in the Horn of Africa. They are there facing not just radical fighters, but drought and environmental issues. Here at home, we have shipyards and naval bases on the coast that are seeing rising waters that are going to cost us hundreds of millions of dollars to remediate so they can continue to function. If we don't respond, if we put our heads in the sand on the issues of climate change, our national security will be in endangered. I was very pleased as the Ranking Member of the Armed Services Committee to support my colleagues when they included in the fiscal year 2018 National Defense Authorization Act a direction that the Department of Defense conduct a threat assessment and deliver a master plan for climate change adaptation. That was a bipartisan bill led by Chairman McCain and supported by vast numbers on both sides of the aisle who understand that climate change must be addressed. It also codified several findings related to climate change and expressed the sense of Congress that climate change is a threat to our national security. We are on record as a Congress saying that national security is jeopardized by climate change. That has to be embraced by the whole of government, not just the Senate or the House acting together. I must commend our colleague--Sheldon's and my colleague--Congressman Jim Langevin of Rhode Island because he pushed for the same measure in the House of Representatives, and he was successful. Just like other threats to our national security, it is critical that we recognize, plan for, and take steps to address climate change. Combating climate change may not seem as urgent as other threats we are facing today, but I would argue otherwise. If we don't begin to take aggressive action to protect ourselves from the effects of climate change, we will face ever increasing and severe consequences. Because of his clarion call to pay attention to climate change, Senator Whitehouse is advancing our national security interests in an important way, and I stand here to commend him and thank him. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin. Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. President, I rise to join and thank Senator Whitehouse for his ongoing commitment to give a voice to the issue of climate change and the threat it poses to our country and, frankly, our world. Senator Whitehouse has provided real, moral leadership on this issue, and I wish to express my gratitude for his unrelenting focus. Let there be no doubt that climate change is real. The question is not whether it is happening but how we will address it. Are we going to do all that we can to leave the next generation a safer and healthier world? As my friend from Rhode Island has impressed upon us with due urgency week in and week out, climate change will be tremendously costly to our economy and to our very way of life. The longer we wait to act, the more costly these impacts will be. The State of Wisconsin has been a proud home to environmental leaders who have worked to pass on a stronger environment to future generations. I think of Aldo Leopold. I think of John Muir. I think of Senator Gaylord Nelson, the founder of Earth Day. As a Senator for our great State, it is one of my top priorities to follow in this legacy and to preserve our natural resources and quality of life for future generations. It is not hard to see why Wisconsinites deeply value environmental protection. From looking out at the crystal clear waters of Lake Superior from its South Shore to standing atop Rib Mountain and gazing at the forests and farmlands of Central Wisconsin, to casting your fishing rod in the world-class trout streams of the Driftless region in the southwest of our State, there is no question that we are blessed. We are blessed with natural beauty in the State of Wisconsin. The impact of climate change can already be seen on these very landscapes and the economies they support. We see it in agriculture. Growing seasons are shifting, and extreme weather events are harming our crops. We have increasing concerns about drought and groundwater. In fact, NASA recently warned that droughts will not only become more severe, but our ecosystems will be increasingly slower to recover from those droughts. Decreased soil moisture will put stress on farmers and their livestock, on private wells, and on our municipal drinking water systems. These prolonged droughts, combined with the increased intensity of storms and changing temperature patterns, will force farmers to change how and what they grow. It is extremely troubling as agriculture is an $88 billion industry in the State of Wisconsin. We also see the negative effects of climate change on our Great Lakes. In Lake Michigan, for example, we see changes in precipitation and evaporation patterns due to climate change that may cause more dramatic fluctuations in lake levels than we have already seen. Data from the Environmental Protection Agency shows that average surface water temperatures have increased in all five Great Lakes since 1995. Warmer surface water temperatures disrupt the food chain and facilitate the spread of invasive species, threatening our native fish with disease. Changing water levels create challenges for property owners and communities along the Great Lakes. Each of these changes will strain our local economies. Tourism is also a major part of Wisconsin's economy. The Northwoods is a beloved place to fish, camp, hunt, and snowmobile. But last year, for only the second time in its 45-year history, Wisconsin's famous Birkebeiner cross-country ski race was canceled because of warm temperatures and a lack of snow. The impacts on tourism, recreation, and the landscapes that we hold near to our hearts are already here. They will only become more drastic. The threats may be daunting, but we cannot allow the challenges to overwhelm us into inaction. Wisconsin's motto is just one word--``forward.'' The people of Wisconsin have never been afraid of the challenges we face. We have a strong progressive tradition of confronting our challenges and working together to shape our future for the next generation. Many of Wisconsin's most successful companies are leaders in energy efficiency, renewable energy, and clean technology. In 2014, one of Wisconsin's major healthcare systems became the first in the Nation to use entirely renewable energy. Wisconsin companies are strong innovators and provide opportunities for workers of today and tomorrow as they lead the way. I believe in smart investments by governments at all levels, by companies and institutions, and by citizens. This will help us confront the challenge of climate change while positioning Wisconsin for economic and ecological resiliency. This opportunity is great, and we must meet the challenge head-on--going forward, the Wisconsin way. I would like, once again, to thank Senator Whitehouse for his laser focus on this issue that is so critical to our home States, as well as the Nation and the world, that we will pass on to the next generation. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island. Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, let me thank the Senator from Wisconsin. Like Wisconsin, Rhode Island has a one-word motto as well. Hers is ``Forward.'' Ours is ``Hope.'' Together, they point in the right direction. Americans are dissatisfied. Opinion surveys tell us that only 35 percent of Americans believe our country is headed in the right direction. Why this alarming dissatisfaction? We don't have to guess. Popular opinion tells us quite plainly. In a survey taken after the 2016 election, 85 percent of voters agreed that the wealthy and big corporations were the ones really running the country. That includes 80 percent of voters who supported Trump. It is not just opinion. Academic studies have looked at Congress and confirmed that the views of the general public have statistically near zero influence here--that we listen to big, corporate special interests and their various front groups. Even our Supreme Court is not immune. In a 2014 poll, more respondents believed, by 9 to 1, that our Supreme [[Page S1680]] Court favors corporations over individuals rather than vice versa. Even among self-identified conservative Republicans, it was still a 4-to-1 margin. So hold that thought: The wealthy and powerful corporations control Congress, and people know it. As I give my 200th ``Time to Wake Up'' speech, the most obvious fact standing plainly before me is not the measured sea level rise at Naval Station Newport; it is not the 400 parts per million carbon dioxide barrier we have broken through in the atmosphere; it is not the new flooding maps that coastal communities like Rhode Island's must face; it is not the West aflame; it is not even the uniform consensus about climate change across universities, National Laboratories, scientific societies, and even across our military and intelligence services, which warn us, as Senator Reed indicated, that climate change is fueling economic and social disruption around the world. No. The fact that stands out for me, here at No. 200, is the persistent failure of Congress to even take up the issue of climate change. One party will not even talk about it. One party in the executive branch is even gagging America's scientists and civil servants and striking the term ``climate change'' off of government websites. In the real world, in actual reality, we are long past any question as to the reality of climate change. The fact of that forces us to confront the questions: What stymies Congress from legislating or from even having hearings about climate change? What impels certain executive agencies to forbid even the words? Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield for a question? Mr. WHITEHOUSE. No. I intend to give my remarks, but I appreciate the Senator's intervention. Before the Citizens United decision was delivered up by the five Republican appointees on the Supreme Court--a decision, by the way, that deserves a place on the trash heap of judicial history--we were actually doing quite a lot about climate change in the Senate. There were bipartisan hearings. There were bipartisan bills. There were bipartisan negotiations. Senator McCain campaigned for President under the Republican banner on a strong climate platform. What happened? Here is what I saw happen: The fossil fuel industry went over and importuned the Supreme Court for the Citizens United decision; the five Republican-appointed judges on the Court delivered the Citizens United decision; and the fossil fuel industry was ready and set at the mark when that decision came down. Since the moment of that decision, not one Republican in this body has joined one serious piece of legislation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Our Senate heartbeat of bipartisan activity was killed dead by the political weaponry unleashed for big special interests by those five judges. The fossil fuel industry then made a clever play. It determined to control one party on this question. It determined to silence or punish or remove any dissent in one political party. This created for the fossil fuel industry two advantages. First, it got to use that party as its tool to stop climate legislation, and it has. Remember the movie ``Men in Black''? I would make the analogy that today's Republican Party bears the same relation to the fossil fuel industry as to climate change that the unfortunate farmer in ``Men in Black'' bore to the alien who killed him and occupied his skin for the rest of the movie--complete occupation with nothing left but the skin. The second advantage for the fossil fuel industry is that it could camouflage its own special interest special pleading as partisanship and not just the muscle and greed of one very big industry that wanted to have its way. That is why we are where we are. That is why one's talking to Republicans about climate change resembles one's talking to prisoners about escape. They may want out, but they can't have their fossil fuel wardens find out. Climate change is a prime example of how our institutions are failing in plain view of the American people. It is a small wonder the public holds Congress in low esteem and thinks we don't listen to them. Frankly, it is amazing that there is any shred of esteem remaining given our behavior. Congress remains a democratic body on the surface with all the procedural veneer and trappings of democracy as we hold votes and as there are caucuses and hearings. Yet, on issues like climate change, which most concern the biggest special interests, Congress no longer provides America a truly functioning democracy. Underneath the illusory democratic surface runs subterranean rivers of dark money. Massive infrastructures have been erected to hide that dark money flow from the sunlight of public scrutiny to carve out subterranean caverns through which the dark money flows. If you want to understand why we do nothing on climate, you have to look down into those subterranean chambers, understand the dark money, and not be fooled by the surface spectacle. Of course, it is not just the spending of dark money that is the problem. When you let unlimited money loose in politics, particularly once you let unlimited dark money loose in politics, you empower something even more sinister than massive anonymous political expenditures; you empower the threat of massive anonymous political expenditures--the sinister whispered threat. Once you let a special interest spend unlimited dark money, you necessarily let it threaten or promise to spend that money. Those sinister threats and promises will be harder to detect even than the most obscured dark money expenditures. You may not know who is behind a big dark money expenditure, but at least you will see it. You will see the smear ads. You may not know what is up, but you will know something is up. But a threat? A couple of people, a back room, and a silent handshake are enough. If you give a thug a big enough club, he doesn't even have to use it to get his way. This is the great, insidious evil of Citizens United, and this, I believe, is why we are where we are. In the Gilded Age, the Senate was described as having Senators who didn't actually represent States but ``principalities and powers in business.'' One Senator represents the Union Pacific Railway system, another the New York Central, still another the insurance interests of New York and New Jersey. We cannot pretend it is impossible for the United States to be disabled and corrupted by special interests. Our history refutes that thought. So, as Americans, we need to keep our guard up against corrupting forces, and this unlimited dark flow of money into our politics is a corrupting force. Congress's embarrassing and culpable failure to act on climate change is one face of a coin. Turn it over, and the obverse of that coin is corruption exactly as the Founding Fathers knew it--the public good ignored for special interests' wielding power. In this case, it is the power of money--climate failure, dark money; dark money, climate failure. They are two sides of the same evil coin. If that thought is not cheerful enough, wait. There is more. There is the phony science operation that gives rhetorical cover to the dark money political muscle operation. This phony science operation is a big effort, with dozens of well-funded front groups that participate that are supported by bogus think tanks, well described as the ``think tank as the disguised political weapon.'' Today's phony science operation has a history. It grew out of the early phony science operation run by the tobacco industry, which was set up to create doubt among the public that cigarettes were bad for you. How did that work out? I will tell you how. That effort was so false and so evil that it was determined in court to be fraud--a massive corporate-led fraud. After the tobacco fraud apparatus was exposed, it didn't disappear. It morphed into an even more complex apparatus to create false doubt about climate science. The goal, exactly like the tobacco companies' fraud, is to create something that looks enough like science to confuse the public but which has the perverse purpose of defeating and neutralizing real science. It is a science denial apparatus. By the way, this fossil fuel-funded science denial apparatus has some big advantages over real science. First, the science denial apparatus has unlimited money behind it. The IMF has put the subsidy of the fossil fuel industry at $700 billion per year in the United States alone. To defend a $700 billion annual subsidy, you can spend enormous amounts of money, so money is no object. [[Page S1681]] Second, the science denial apparatus doesn't waste time with peer review--the touchstone of real science. Slap a lab coat on a hack, and send him to the talk shows. That is enough. The science denial apparatus is public relations dressed up as science so it behaves like public relations and goes straight to its market--an inexpert public-- to work its mischief. Third, it has the advantage of Madison Avenue tacticians to shape its phony message into appealing sound bites for the public. Have you read a scientific journal lately? The Madison Avenue message gets through a lot more sharply. Fourth, the science denial apparatus doesn't need to stop lying when it is caught. As long as it is getting its propaganda out, the truth doesn't matter. This is not a contest for truth; it is a contest for public opinion. So debunked, zombie arguments constantly rise from the Earth and walk again. Finally, it doesn't have to win the argument. It just has to create the illusion, the false illusion, that there is a legitimate argument. Then the political muscle those five Justices gave this industry can go to work. I suggest, 200 speeches in, that it is time we stopped listening to the industry that comes to us bearing one of the most flagrant conflicts of interest in history. It is time we stopped listening to their fraudulent science denial operation. It is time we put the light of day on this creepy dark money operation and stopped listening to its threats and promises. If we are going to stop listening to all of that, whom should we listen to? How about Pope Francis, who called climate change ``one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day.'' How about the scientists--we pay hundreds of them across our government--whose salaries our appropriators are funding right now and who, under President Trump, released this report? This report reads that there is ``no convincing alternative explanation'' for what it calls ``global, long-term, and unambiguous warming'' and ``record-breaking, climate- related weather extremes.'' It is our human activity. How about listening to our intelligence services, whose ``Worldwide Threat Assessment,'' issued under President Trump and signed by our former colleague, the Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, actually has a chapter titled ``Environment and Climate Change.'' Here are the identified consequences in that report: ``humanitarian disasters, conflict, water and food shortages, population migration, labor shortfalls, price shocks, and power outages,'' and most dangerously, the prospect of--and I quote the ``Worldwide Threat Assessment'' here--``tipping points in climate-linked earth systems'' that can create ``abrupt climate change.'' Or how about listening to Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Jr., and Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump, and the Trump organization in 2009, when they took out this full-page ad in the New York Times saying that the science of climate change was ``irrefutable,'' and its consequences would be ``catastrophic and irreversible.'' Donald J. Trump, chairman and president--where did that guy go? How about listening to our own home State universities. Every one of us can go home to Old Miss or Ohio State, to the University of Alaska or LSU, to Utah State or West Virginia University or Texas A&M. We can each go home to our home State's State university. They don't just accept climate change; they teach it. They teach it. If you can listen quietly, you can listen to the oceans. They speak to us, the oceans do. They speak to us through thermometers, and they say: We are warming. They speak to us through tide gauges, and they say: We are rising along your shores. They speak to us through the howl of hurricanes powered up by their warmer sea surfaces. They speak to us through the quiet flight of fish species from their traditional grounds as the seawater warms beyond their tolerance. If we know how to listen, through simple pH tests, the oceans will tell us that they are acidifying. The oceans will tell us that they are beginning to kill their own corals and oysters and pteropods. We can go out and check and see the corals and the oysters and the pteropods corrode and die before our eyes. It is happening. The fishermen who plow the oceans' surface can speak for the oceans. As one Rhode Islander said to me: ``Sheldon, it's getting weird out there.'' ``This is not my grandfather's ocean,'' said another. He had grown up trawling with his granddad on those oceans. It is not just oceans. I went on Lake Erie with seasoned, professional fishermen who told me that everything they had learned in a lifetime on the lake was useless because the lake was changing on them so unknowably fast. We choose here in Congress to whom we are going to listen, and it is time we started to listen to the honest voices and the true voices. If you don't like environmentalists or scientists, listen to your ski industry. Listen to your fishermen and lumbermen. Listen to your gardeners and birders and hunters. Listen to those who know the Earth and the oceans and who can speak for the Earth and the oceans. It is an evil mess we are in, and if there is any justice in this world, there will one day be a terrible price to pay if we keep listening to evil voices. The climate change problems we are causing by failing to act are a sin, as Pope Francis has flatly declared, but that is not the only sin. To jam Congress up, fossil fuel interests are interfering with and corrupting American democracy, and to corrupt American democracy is a second and a grave sin. The science denial apparatus--to mount a fraudulent challenge to the very enterprise of science, that is a third grave sin. Perhaps worst of all is that the world is watching. It is watching us as the fossil fuel industry, its creepy billionaires, its front groups, its bogus think tanks all gang up and debauch our democracy. From John Winthrop to Ronald Reagan, we have held America up as a city on a hill, with the eyes of the world upon us. From Daniel Webster to Bill Clinton, we have spoken of the power of our American example as greater in the world than any example of our power. Lady Liberty in New York Harbor holds her lamp up to the world, representing our American beacon of truth, justice, and democracy. I have a distinct memory, traveling with our friend John McCain to Manila and waking up early in the morning to go visit our American military cemetery, the Sun coming up over the rows of white gravestones standing over our dead, the massive, gleaming marble arcade of names, carved on walls stretching high over my head, of the Americans whose bodies were never recovered--over 17,000 in all, remembered in that cemetery. After their sacrifice, after the accomplishments of the ``greatest generation,'' can we not do better than to sell our democracy to the fossil fuel industry? What do you suppose a monument to that would look like? I wonder. America deserves better, and the world is watching us; we, this city on a hill. With gratitude to the many colleagues who have joined me today, I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii. Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, when we discuss climate change, we often speak about the future--a future in which rising temperatures and seas displace millions from their homes around the globe, devastate agriculture, and damage critical infrastructure. This future is not far off. Climate change will impact every State in our country and every country in the world. In island and coastal communities like Hawaii, the impact will be particularly severe. Climate scientists across the world agree that without decisive action, seas will likely rise by at least 3.2 feet by the end of the century. To put this in context, a child born today will likely experience these effects in their lifetime. I will focus my remarks today on the foreseeable impact on Hawaii. The State of Hawaii investigated and issued a chilling report about what a 3.2-foot sea level rise would mean for our State. The report concluded that 3.2 feet of sea level rise would inundate more than 25,000 acres of land across Hawaii. Over 6,500 hotels, malls, small businesses, apartments, and homes would be compromised or destroyed, and 20,000 residents would be displaced in the process. [[Page S1682]] The economic cost of this damage--$19 billion. If anything, this is a conservative estimate of the total economic cost of climate change in Hawaii. The State report, for example, doesn't estimate the total cost of damage to Hawaii's critical infrastructure. Climate change and sea level rise would damage sewer lines in urban Honolulu and other low-lying areas across the State. These phenomena would also lead to chronic flooding across 38 miles of major roads, such as the Kuhio Highway on Kauai, Kamehameha Highway on Oahu, and Honoapiilani Highway on Maui. The State's report certainly outlines the serious challenges that climate change will pose for the future, but we are already living with its effects. Each summer and winter, the specific placement of the sun and moon combined with the rotation of the Earth produce extraordinarily high tides. We call them king tides. Most years, scientists can predict when these tides will happen and how bad they will be. Last year's king tides, however, were the worst on record. Scientists believe that these historic king tides provide a glimpse of the increasing severity and frequency of the coastal flooding driven by climate change. Hawaii also experienced an exceptionally rare king tide on New Year's Day, and a larger than normal north swell caused major coastal erosion on Oahu's north shore. Coastal erosion is a critical issue for Hawaii, where our beaches draw millions of visitors from around the world every year. According to research from the University of Hawaii Sea Grant College Program, 70 percent of the beaches in Hawaii are eroding, and 13 miles of public beach have eroded completely. In other words, they are gone. During last year's king tides, Sea Grant mobilized citizen scientists to document their impact on the State. From Sea Grant's research we learned that record-high water levels caused localized flooding and erosion across every island in the State. Waikiki Beach was particularly impacted last year when the king tides overwashed the shoreline during peak tourist season. Climate change will make events like this more frequent and severe, adversely impacting our environment and our economy. Waikiki Beach on Oahu alone generates $2.2 billion for Hawaii's economy every year, and it could be completely submerged by the end of the century. There is a clear urgency to act, and we need our President and the Federal Government to acknowledge the threat and to lead. We need more funding for programs like Sea Grant that help State and local governments develop plans and policies to help our beaches, our coasts, and our economy adapt to climate change. But at a time when we should be increasing funding for Sea Grant colleges, the Trump administration is zeroing out this funding. We were able to protect funding for Sea Grant last year, and I will continue to fight during this year's budget and appropriations cycle to make sure it receives the money it needs to do its important work. We also need our Federal agencies to invest in research that will help us better understand climate change's long-term impact on our States and communities. But Donald Trump has appointed--and his Republican allies in the Senate have confirmed--regressive, dangerous, and extreme nominees who are undermining critical climate change research. Last May, the Department of Interior under the leadership of Ryan Zinke, put out a news release about a report on climate change-related sea level rise, coauthored by two Hawaii scientists without ever mentioning in their release the words ``climate change.'' Earlier today, I asked Secretary Zinke at a hearing to comment on this incident and to clarify whether it is the Department's policy to censor announcements about climate change research produced by his Department. Secretary Zinke acknowledged that the content of the press release is his prerogative but that he would not censor the contents of documents and reports themselves. However, by not referencing the term ``climate change'' in a press release on a report about how climate change drives sea level rise, he is toeing the President's line that climate change is a hoax. The problem is that press releases from agencies like the Interior Department serve as indicators of the Federal Government's priorities. By eliminating references to climate change in these releases, the Department is sending a clear signal that climate change is not a priority. In the absence of Federal action, States like Hawaii are stepping up and taking the lead. Hawaii was the first State in the country to enact legislation to implement the Paris climate agreement after President Trump announced that he would withdraw the United States from this agreement without much reason. Standing up to the challenge of climate change also means developing our renewable resources of energy and moving away from dependence on fossil fuels. Hawaii has set the forward-thinking goal of generating 100-percent renewable electricity by 2045. Through decisive action, Hawaii is already generating 27-percent renewable electricity while cutting oil imports by 41 percent since 2006. As the most oil-dependent State in the country, this is significant progress. Over 97 percent of climate scientists agree that the climate is changing due to human activity, and the vast majority of the American public also acknowledges this. Our Nation's military recognizes the threat that climate change poses to our national security and the urgent need to confront it. Mr. President, I agree with my colleague from Rhode Island that it is time to wake up. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota. Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I rise today to join my friend and colleague Senator Whitehouse on the day of his 200th weekly climate change floor speech. We came in the same class. So I have been a witness to this. For years he has come to the floor every week that the Senate is in session, often to an empty Chamber, to speak on this critical issue. He has been a leader and an unwavering voice on climate change, calling for action week after week and, I think, that is why so many of us are here tonight. Two hundred speeches is truly a milestone, and you can just look at the wear and tear of his ``Time to Wake Up'' floor sign to know that this actually happened. Not only does Senator Whitehouse come to the floor to talk about this issue and to share new data and information with all of us on the need to act now, but I have also seen him take on climate change deniers as a member when I was on both the Environment and Public Works Committee and also on the Judiciary Committee. I have experienced his dedication to moving the needle on this issue as a member of the Senate Climate Action Task Force that he has led for several years. I have been part of the meetings where he has pulled together Senators and advocacy group leaders to strategize on how to move forward on legislation and meetings where he has brought together Senators and private sector leaders, such as Greg Page, the former CEO of Cargill, to talk about how we change the private dialogue about sustainability in supply chains. He is truly committed to finding solutions, and I am pleased to join him tonight for his 200th speech. People talk about climate in many places in my State--from hunters and snowmobilers in Northern Minnesota to business leaders in the Twin Cities, to students at the University of Minnesota. When President Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the climate change agreement this summer--the worldwide, international climate change agreement--I heard an outpouring of concern. Now, 195 countries made a pledge to come together to combat climate change. In withdrawing, the United States was one of only three countries that wouldn't be in the agreement. The other two were Syria and Nicaragua. Then, Syria and Nicaragua signed the accord. So now the United States is the only country not to sign the accord. It is a big step backward. It is the wrong decision for our economy, and it is the wrong decision for the environment. As military and security experts have reminded us, climate change is a threat to our national security, increasing the risks of conflict, humanitarian crisis--as we have already seen because of droughts, with subsistence [[Page S1683]] farmers in Africa coming up as refugees--and damage to crucial and critical infrastructure. I am a former prosecutor, and I believe in evidence. Every week seems to bring fresh evidence of the damage climate change is already causing. Minnesota may be miles away from rising oceans, but the impacts are not less of a real threat in the Midwest--more severe weather, heat waves that could release our water supply, extreme rainfall that could damage critical infrastructure, and a decrease in agricultural productivity. It goes on and on. It has an impact on the Great Lakes and people respond. We are going to keep talking about the importance of making a global commitment and an American commitment to address climate change. We should not be the last one in. We should be the first one. This is a great nation with a history of Democrats and Republicans coming together to conserve our land and care about our environment. We are going to keep pushing climate change deniers on their facts, and we are going to keep working on policies that encourage energy efficiency, renewable energy, and a decrease in greenhouse gasses. Many of the businesses in Minnesota, such as Cargill, which I already mentioned in the lead, have taken on this cause. They know that when they have business all over the world, it matters. They know that it matters to their shareholders, it matters to their employees, and it matters to their customers. They also know that we deal with the rest of the world, and when businesses go to meetings in other countries, they don't want to hear: Well, I guess your country is not in the climate change agreement and China is; so maybe we will buy our stuff from China. That is what people are hearing at business meetings. We need to be a part of the Paris climate change agreement, and we need to lead the way in the United States. In the last administration, we had some commonsense policies put forth to reduce greenhouse gasses, but this administration has pulled back on them. I disagree. I think we could have made that work. Even though we are not seeing the action we would like out of this administration, we are seeing it in cities, in States, in businesses, and universities. They have said: If this administration doesn't do it, we will. So I wish to thank Senator Whitehouse for his leadership and let all of those listening to this series of speeches and tributes to doing something about climate change in his 200th speech tonight know that there are those in this Chamber who stand with you and believe in science and believe that we need to do something about climate change. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon. Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Minnesota for laying out the case so clearly on the challenge, as I like to call it, of taking on climate chaos. My wife Mary comes from Minnesota. I know they value the Land of 10,000 Lakes. Every time I have said that before, I always say the ``Land of a Thousand Lakes,'' and Senator Klobuchar corrects me. I just can't quite envision 10,000 lakes. Minnesota is a land with incredible wildlife, a land that certainly has seen the impacts of climate chaos, as has my home State. So thank you so much for your remarks and for being here to help celebrate our colleague and our friend, the Senator from Rhode Island, Mr. Whitehouse, who spoke tonight just a few minutes ago for his 200th time, to say: Wake up. Wake up, America. We have a significant challenge, the sort of challenge that you may not notice from one day to the next. We may wake up tomorrow and not realize that the damage being done to our planet is greater than the day before or we may not be able to wake up a week from now and realize that the damage is more. Nonetheless, it is, if looked at over any significant span of time, a huge, huge force wreaking havoc on our planet, and it will just get worse with time if we do not take on this pollution of the atmosphere by carbon dioxide. Back in 1959, an eminent scientist was asked to speak at the 100th anniversary of the petroleum industry. That scientist was Edward Teller. Edward Teller gave his speech at this 100th anniversary in 1959, but he said to the gathering of the fossil fuel industry: You do realize that you will eventually have to look for a different form of energy to invest in, first, because the amount of fossil fuels in the Earth's crust is limited and it will run out. He said: Second of all, there are some interesting facts that many of you might not be aware of--that when you burn fossil fuels, it creates carbon dioxide, and carbon dioxide might not at first seem like a pollutant because it is invisible and it is odorless, but it has this quality where visible light passes through it, but heat energy is trapped. As a result of trapping heat energy and changing the makeup of our atmosphere, we will start to do major damage to the planet. He talked about how it would affect the melting of ice on the poles, the rising of sea levels, and that humankind lived by the oceans and, therefore, this carbon dioxide would do enormous damage and it would be important to transition off of burning carbon fuels, off of burning fossil fuels. That was in 1959, which is a long time ago that we have had the information about the damage wreaking havoc by this pollutant, carbon dioxide. Henry David Thoreau, the philosopher, challenged us and said: What is the use of a house if you don't have a tolerable planet to put it on? Yet everywhere we see our planet crying out for us to pay attention-- never as much, however, as in this last year. Here in America, there were fierce forest fires from Montana, across Idaho, into Washington, down to Oregon, and into California clear into December. Smoke covered much of my State for month after month this last summer, having an impact on people's health and certainly having an impact on our economy. We could look at the storms of last year--the hurricanes of Harvey, Irma, and Maria assaulting Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. Those storms were unusually damaging, and part of the reason for that is because the energy of those storms is taken from the temperature of the ocean, and the ocean has been collecting 90 percent of the increased heat on the planet from carbon dioxide pollution and, therefore, producing more powerful hurricanes. So we saw it in the fires, and we saw it in the hurricanes, but you really can start to see it almost everywhere. You can see that the pine beetles are doing much better because the winters aren't cold enough to kill them, and the trees are doing much worse. You can see that the ticks in New England and Maine and on through Minnesota are doing much better because the winters are not cold enough to kill them. Therefore, they are killing the moose. You can see the impact of the rising ocean temperature on coral reefs around the world, which are a small part of the ocean but have a significant role in the fisheries on our planet. In my home State in Oregon, the warmer temperatures and the acidity in the ocean caused a billion baby oysters to die in 2008. Well, that is quite an impact on our seafood industry. I can tell you that scientists were mystified because they couldn't imagine, at first, that it had to do with the water quality. They thought it must be a virus or it must be some form of bacteria, but it just turned out that the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere not only results in the warming of the ocean, but it is absorbed in the ocean and becomes carbonic acid. That greater acidity of the ocean damages the ability of baby oysters to form shells. So now we have to artificially buffer the ocean water. We see it in spreading diseases, like malaria, as they follow the mosquitoes, and Zika, as it follows the mosquitoes into greater territory, or leishmaniasis, which is a real diabolical disease that now has come to the United States with sand flies. My point is that everywhere you look, if you open your eyes, climate chaos is having a big impact and hurting us. The answer is simple. We have to stop burning fossil fuels. This is where the 100-percent notion comes from, from my bill of last year--100 percent by 50, 100 by 50, or, if you prefer, mission 100. It just means we have to transition from the energy that we gain [[Page S1684]] from fossil fuels to substituting energy from clean and renewable sources--100 percent. Stop burning fossil fuels. A few years ago, folks said: Well, that will cause great damage to our economy because renewable energy is so much more expensive than cheap fossil fuels. But we have been blessed. We have been blessed in taking on this challenge because it is no longer true that renewable energy is more expensive than fossil fuel energy. We have had an incredible drop in the price of solar energy over a short period--from 35 cents per kilowatt hour down to 5 cents per kilowatt hour. Then Xcel Energy in Colorado put out a proposal this year. The proposal came back at 2 cents per kilowatt hour. In other words, it is cheaper to have new and clean renewable energy than to burn coal in an already depreciated fossil fuel coal electric plant. Wind has gone from 13 cents or so per kilowatt hour to 5 cents per kilowatt hour. Xcel Energy in Colorado brought in a bid at 3 cents per kilowatt hour. As we have seen these prices drop dramatically on solar and wind, we have seen the installations of solar and wind surge. On the solar side, in 2017 we installed about 12 gigawatts of capacity--12 gigawatts, or 12,000 megawatts. That is a lot of energy. To put it differently, one- fourth of the total installed capacity of the United States of America went in just in 2017. That is a dramatic upsurge in installation. Think of a world where we can have every flat business roof and every manufacturing plant with solar rays on its surface or canopies over its parking lot because this energy is so cheap to collect, and we can collect it in places where the grid already exists. For wind, in 2016, 8 gigawatts of new capacity went in. Again, there is a tremendous upsurge in the amount of wind installed. Now we are seeing roughly half of our utilities scale new capacity with renewable energy rather than with fossil fuel energy. The transition is underway, but we need to accelerate it. We need to move it much more quickly, and then we need to move our consumption of energy over to the electric grid. What does that mean? For example, it means heating your house with a heat pump, which uses electricity, rather than a gas furnace. It means changing the way you heat water from a gas hot water heater to an electric hot water heater. It means getting a plug-in vehicle, an electric vehicle. Let's stop and talk a little bit about electric vehicles. While we have been seeing the production of carbon dioxide from making electricity come down in America, we are seeing the carbon dioxide from driving vehicles go up, so it is a major area we have to take on. Five years ago, I bought a Volt, which is a plug-in hybrid. It has a range of about 35 miles of electricity, and it also has a gas backup. That car really worked exceedingly well. We drove 3 out of 4 miles on electricity, even though we used gasoline to drive all the way to South Dakota and back. What we found was that the cost per mile on electricity was only about 3 cents a mile, and the cost of running it on gasoline--with oil, maintenance, and so forth--was closer to 10 cents a mile. So it is three times cheaper to drive it on electricity. So there is a big incentive. Unfortunately, my son had an auto accident, and we had to replace that car. Because the range has increased over 5 years, we were able to get a fully electric car, a Nissan LEAF. The range had gone up in 2016 from roughly 80 miles to about 107. That extra 27 miles is enough that my wife could do her work in home hospice, potentially being assigned to a house way on the west side of the Monona County area and then way on the east side and back and forth several times a day and still make it completely on a single-charged battery. With the proliferation of driving stations, now we are starting to see the ability to operate much more closely to the way we behaved, if you will, previously with gasoline vehicles--being able to drive hundreds of miles and then recharge. We have seen that with the Volt that just came out to replace the Bolt, which now goes over 200 miles on just its battery alone and more if you drive cautiously. Buses are another big piece of this. I went down to Eugene, OR, a couple of weekends ago and rode on their first electric bus, the first one in the State of Oregon. That bus looked just like the old diesel buses that we have had serving our metro systems across America, but it cost a lot more. It cost $200,000 more than a diesel bus. You might say ``Well, that is way too much,'' but here is the interesting thing: It saves about $40,000 to $45,000 a year on fuel. It doesn't take a math genius to then realize that after 5 years of service, you have paid off that cost, and after that, you are saving money. We are going to see a huge transition simply on the economics. This is the challenge before us, that we have been given the gift of affordable solar that is cheaper than fossil fuel energy, affordable wind that is cheaper than fossil fuel energy, a greatly declining cost of battery power to help supply meet demand, but at the Federal level, we are paralyzed. Unfortunately, the Koch brothers are really the puppet masters of this body, this Chamber I am in. This wonderful Senate is supposed to be the place where we deliberate to have government of, by, and for the people, but right now we have deliberations here that are of, by, and for the Koch brothers; of, by, and for the wealthy and the well- connected. That is not the vision of America. We have to reclaim the vision of America. The people of America understand that we have this enormous challenge that we must undertake to save our beautiful, blue and green planet. Since the Federal Government isn't operating, we see companies and cities and places of worship jumping in to fill the gap, adopting 100 percent resolutions--resolutions to transition to 100 percent cleaner renewable energy, to stop burning the fossil fuels that are damaging our planet. Burlington, VT, is now using a mixture of biomass and hydro wind and solar so that 100 percent of electricity comes from renewable generation. Fifty-eight other cities across America have committed to making that 100 percent transition, and they are handing out an action plan--this year we can do this, and this year we can do that. Families can do the same, places of worship can do the same, and companies are doing the same all across our Nation. We see many of our Fortune 500 companies stepping forward to be real leaders in this. They want to attract employees who know that they care about our planet. They care about stopping this pollution that Edward Teller, an eminent scientist, pointed out in 1959. When Henry David Thoreau said ``What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?'' he asked a question we should always ask ourselves in terms of the different threats to this beautiful orb that we call home. So let's fight to save this beautiful planet. It is the only one we have. We have no other. It is under serious threat, and we in this Chamber need to tell the Koch brothers to go and sit on their fossil fuel fortune, invest it as they want somewhere else, but to join us in the most important work they could possibly be part of in the years that they have remaining to live here in America, and that is this fight to take on climate chaos and win. Thank you, Mr. President. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Dakota. ____________________