the grip to the capital people listen to each other in things got done. but not today. live to power monopoly of the republican and democratic parties has now run the course of all monopolies becoming arrogant and calcified like electric utility with a guaranteed rate of return. hyper gerrymandering has resulted in eggs attached -- extreme part is ahead on either side of the aisle the two major party seem to agree on only one thing to perpetuate their own duopoly. but the duopoly is second not producing results for

pri has lost all creativity nobody is listening to anyone. a storm is brewing in the republican party may crack into. that isn't a bad thing has happened twice before in times of political ferment and 1912 year roosevelt founded the bull moose party in nearly one up presidency easily defeating william howard taft the listing to wilson. in the '50s the southern faction of the whig party split off and to become the know nothing party. [laughter] that was driven by three things anti-immigrant fervor , violent rallies and conspiracy theories i kid you not to.

sound familiar? in node nothing's disappeared in just three years but the other half me branded as the republican party went on to elect abraham lincoln president of the united states in 1860 the number of ways gary johnson reminds me of abraham lincoln and four starters sheer physical strength and endurance his prowess as a rail spur was legendary he is a world-class athlete not everyone knows this he has been a contestant in for "iron man" triathlete world championships and has climbed to the highest mountain peak on each of the world's seven continents climbing mount everest with a broken leg when you ask him how he does all that he says i just put 1 foot in front of the other. that reminds me of abraham lincoln and very tall man

who was asked how long should a man's legs be? long enough to reach the ground. [laughter] he has his homespun wisdom as well as his discipline and honesty. on this to gary i hope that sticks. [laughter] no deception or flew three or appeals to the base or the angels of our nation. anymore than abraham lincoln great nations like a great men must keep their word of i wish i did not feel it necessary to say this, but i do. we believe it is important for united states of america

to keep its word. is important to our president cannot abrogate our treaty obligations are blatantly violate our agreements with our trading partners as one of the major party candidates has proposed. a priceless asset of the united states which i see all over the world we are the envy of the world that our society and economy are based on the rule of law. candidly mr. trump likes bullying and bankruptcy in my suggestion to him is tomorrow, instead of taking out the art of the deal and rereading it for the 400th time. [laughter] takeout united states constitution and read for the first time. [applause]

this is from a the cato institute i have carried this in my pocket 20 years. in terms of relations with other countries, gary in dire inclined towards a position of three straight with boots on the ground or blood on foreign soil is concerned we have all seen in recent years that actions to reduce regime change can haven't seen cost moral as well as economic with unintended consequences from the middle east and north africa. at the same time we believe strongly that the invincible defense is a bedrock responsibility of the u.s. government which requires that america maintain and demonstrate the most powerful military in the world including air supremacy and naval supremacy we're the only candidates on the ballot the

believe in free international trade of goods and services guided by the rule of law. [applause] in terms of people's personal life we are tolerant and inclusive. don't tell us they're all criminals. leave that to the states. don't tell us that addiction is a crime and not a public health emergency which it is. [applause] delta listen 18 old can lead a platoon into battle into fallujah but cannot drink a beer. [applause] in conclusion, and gary and i have talked about the nuts and bolts that acre our position as candidates filed like to end by addressing something bigger and more

urgent cahoon than any of those issues that may be the most important reason that voters should give gary johnson and hilton -- and weld serious consideration. i am not talking fifth about the republican elephant or the higher dollar key but 1/5 fifth both in major parties are struggling and having trouble connecting with the usual natural good will and enthusiasm this in support of the american public because the tectonic plates of our democracy are shifting. we are adopting, as all must with the push and pull of the citizen body and the innovations of our times but there is no need for

transition and/or change to be a violent process as it has seemed to be at several points during the primaries the tone of the election season has seemed to echo that of warfare is people swear off in take a more on each other their hearts are filled with anxiety and fear and rage. this is not how we do things in america. john adams once said there was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. gary johnson and i refuse to stand by and watches our beloved democracy turned on itself and how we can keep america safe and sane to work together as a close team with open hearts and

minds and intelligence and the transparency to be sure that every voice is heard every man and woman and child gets their fair share of the bounty and opportunity we believe we really can do this we hope the voters will give us a chance. [applause] >> as a reminder to our audience the general public is invited so what you may hear is not necessarily a sign of the journalists of the talking points i think the term was a plenary

clinton and trump have serious trust concerns with the majority of voters. and how did they make decisions for the nation? and rightful scrutiny the level of 10 percent that is what's happening. it is there. as a governor state of small states like massachusetts or new mexico there is nowhere to hide. we were both to a term governor's if we were not trustworthy would have noted in we would not be to turn governors.

>> governor johnson, could you take more away from? to begin the polls they have done an analysis to this point we're taking more votes away from hillary better margin that is a discernible. i think it will be equally from both sides this is a two-party dinosaur we fled me the conduit to in this equation. [laughter] [applause] talk about google i assume they're not underwriting your campaign but what is the biggest obstacles it is

just appearing in the polls it is clinton antron panetta's what is reported in as an afterthought you have gary johnson and bill weld added that the onset to pull johnson tromp and clinton i think that would result in the 15 percent that we need with the added scrutiny to go with that. that is what we need at this point is more scrutiny. >> to clarify you want a three-waypoll nobody else included? >> we are suing the presidential debate commission that is often the basis to mathematically be

elected although we pay for the lawsuit 100 percent we included the green party also from the standpoint of fairness that they did garner 270 electoral votes we will be the only third-party on the ballot in all 50 states have. >> i am not concerned or worried about this percentage point if you are at 10 percent now people that 16 or 19 and hold - - the head of the clinton budget lies in my mind he

was an asterisk in the polls and that we are at consensus of 10% the numbers will not take care of themselves but we will take care of the numbers. >> u garner represent of the vote in 2012 what do you believe you can do to get above that? >> people said to me it is too bad you never caught on. in 2012 by started to run as a republican in the issue was for the republican party david issue criteria you have to be at 2% in the polls.

when you are not in the pull that we do have to be 8% but the point is in 2012 when ever my name appeared in the of pull i was equal to or ahead of those on stage. they share my name is included in the polls in 2012 i don't need to tell you i was not included in one national poll running for president. not one. the trajectory or the level of support in 2012 is this is the trajectory line and on election day it was 1.3 million votes but i was told not to discount those votes and that was very significant that the trend has continued it has been the trendline since 2012 that now is noticed trendlines and go from this to this at some point they

do best but this is the phenomenon and a difference in 2012 as we have finally broken through the level that gets us noticed. >> do you worry being perceived as a spoiler to the major party candidates or ralph nader in 2000? >> i will lose no sleep and i will reiterate that this is a party that needs crashing. what is the spoils? [laughter] [applause] >> you were a former doj official put you believe that is why read a lynch overstepped her bounds? indicating she had no choice

they he stepped onto her plane. [laughter] we have not been as troubled by the whole e-mail affair as others have i thought it the director did a good job that no reasonable prosecutor would come to the correct conclusion. >> twitter of you have a private e-mail server? >> you are on good terms with secretary clinton and nominated you to be the ambassador to mexico why are you challenging her with a third-party candidacy rather than have her move towards a more libertarian views but we represent the views of the majority of the united states we are fiscally responsible and are open on social issues our

republican party vendor in the democratic party to be honest is not there has not the doing promises that you heard so i think it is considered a pleasure and an honor to stand before the american people but it is also something of a duty and i feel that way because of the absence of substance and the unappealing tone of the statements made by the presumptive nominee mr. trump was a prosecutor seven years and head of the criminal division at the department of justice i spend a lot of time in a courtroom to look forward to the opportunity to help dissect the statement by mr. trump to understand the basis or lack of.

[laughter] >> how does a libertarian determine what is self-defense? >> make no mistake that i reject the notions wendy unintended consequence to make things less safe with free trade and diplomacy in the neck we have already intervened with iraq and afghanistan but would i do with isis to make you cannot make this up in it isn't intentional zwickau looking at syria and libya n.d.

opposition in is aligned with isis and al qaeda. was this intentional? it's what happened with regard to afghanistan for i supported that from the beginning that after a very short amount of time we should get out of afghanistan immediately not that it will have consequences this consequence we can deal with those that have bad allied that there would be a genocide we can take care that if we pull out of afghanistan 20 years from

now the consequences the same paths are we going to stay there forever? some images. . . united states won in with the high level of the delegation to major there would not go berserk this they laughed and said go into afghanistan have all the fun that you want they had the british empire before them we have the british and the russians. >> you talk about the fate this struggle is getting attention make no mistake

the immediate fed does present to candidates for office but make no mistake we are getting attention. unprecedented attention we released a campaign video on thursday last week over in excess of 5 million views sinbad is unheard of the edits the appetite out there and we are the main course. [applause] >> both if you are very simple and politically correct as the elections get heated, how do you and governor weld plan to take off the gloves and compete

with? >> iran into campaigns for governor of mexico i did not mention my opponent printery your television. people are hungry to vote for someone rather they of the lesser of two evils and that is something that is exemplified in this race beyond any racing have ever seen before. he said/she said there should be about the issues of in dish should be about how the debate in our look the other candidates are saying that is fair game winner ran for reelection in new mexico was the incumbent who we did a poll right after i got the nomination running for reelection and was up by 10 points and conventional wisdom i controlled the debate process how many times?

whole little or nine? my choice i debated 28 times i think government is about transparency in running for office this debate and discussion revolving issues and of we currently have going on. >> in 1996 iran an unsuccessful race challenging senator kerry of massachusetts the six were pretty high was the marquee race nobody would say that isn't a fair or equal fight though backing and luck if you want to see to be vigorous sam hard-fought in the civil bassets statices standard that we agreed personally to limit campaign

spending to $8 million in the race we easily could have raised 254th 50 million but we thought pfiffner would be better to have more time for substance in the campaign. it can be done and it was a. >>. >> have they improved this year from which we raise this cycle to compete? >> [inaudible] i enjoy fund-raising was a national finance chair when he ran and the mitt romney cochair and i do enjoy it. they have just been that this 14 days but the money looks to be still there from the old friends and new friends as well that frankly

that think the libertarian message is a breath of fresh air. at the end of the day if we haven't raised the millions of dollars we would be taken seriously we will not have $1 billion to compete with mrs. clinton but if the area of the debates of this almost unlimited amount of earned a pediatric -- media. >> it seems part of it is getting into the debates to compete what happens if you don't? >> times if we don't we stay active in raising issues that need to be raised we would not be doing this if

it wasn't just possible but that it would happen of. >> use said governor johnson you want to take the best ideas from both parties were the best. >> when you look at the republican party they are supposed to be about smaller government but they are anything but be you can challenge them to be that there is a unique opportunity as libertarians to challenge republicrepublic ans what they should begin at the but they pick and choose after all is said and done it is justin areas that republicans want to spend money and democrats what about challenging them on civil liberties? we have the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world mandatory sentencing though

war on drugs with marriage he quality there is so many initiatives that the democrats could embrace that is all about spending and not about results. >> to introduce more competition i think areas as diverse as health care virtually every department of the federal government could profit from five more competition. as governor is chairman of the national council of public-private partnerships in republicans are generally

friendly to those ideas. i am not saying go but to say it has to happen right now i myself am had the earned income-tax credit in that falls in the gap in between welfare and comfort in the earned income tax credit is a state and national tool to address that more aggressive retraining and resettlement of the policies to move out of the geographic area of free trade creates high wage jobs because of productivity

you may lose some low-wage you gain the high wage you to target industries, i did this in massachusetts with biotech software and telecom to was over $50,000 a we give them what they wanted in that the idea of violation of republican orthodoxy i am not a zero i am a4. with the highest and a portrait of the 11 states at the end of a first term we'll was the lowest. so let's talk about that there were questions submitted about marijuana you want to let states decide how far do you go to

legalize drugs marijuana or heroin or math -- with the amphetamine? >> i only advocate legalizing marijuana and i do think that will happen as president of the united states i can be scheduled as class one. let me predict california will vote to legalize recreational lee and of the 25 states said to have medicinal marijuana in those that our recreational with said district of columbia, all that has happened at the ballot box with a few exceptions when calicut -- california votes they'll just make it happen if it will be the tipping point when we legalize we will take a quantum leap when it comes to understanding drugs and drug problems it is a health

issue not a criminal justice issue i am not advocating the legalization debate and know-how to do that but the heroin epidemic right now the overdose situation situation, looking at city is like amsterdam that implemented harm reduction strategy is there reduce death and disease and crime and corruption that is exactly a what they have done. cities have the opportunity for example, thank you really want to address the chair a when overdose issue open up those labs that will test heroin for their consistency in for those that participated to bring in the hair windows there would be less overdose.

did you reduce hepatitis c in hiv significantly so there are so many strategy's out there for reducing the things that we care about in those strategies will take a real foothold starting off with marijuana legal prescription drug statistically kill 100,000 people per year the one undocumented death on the recreational side i have always maintained legalizing marijuana is less of the overall substance abuse because it is so much safer than everything else out there starting in alcohol with colorado that campaign to legalize marijuana was based that is safer up and alcohol -- in alcohol.

>> key is not by himself vice supported methadone programs maybe we were out there i took a lot of heat but these ideas have been around since the nineties and with the ambassador to mexico will refresh your memory. jesse helms blocked the nomination he was pro gay, a pro-choice and pro medical marijuana as purchase the homes. 1997 that was me on trial also. when was the last time you so door egested marijuana? [laughter] >> i did this about two months ago. when you tell the truth you have nothing to fear. i have always maintained you

shouldn't be on the job impaired. as of two plants ago really this is a 24/7 job running for president of the united states. it is a 24/7 job in devastating liability to be self discipline i haven't had a drink of alcohol in 29 years non-alcoholic but asked to do with rock climbing in be the best you could be. but this is the truth component that is lacking in politics who would know that i ate in justin products two months ago my best friend's advice that i have not use them my best friends would consider me a hypocrite and i think hypocrisy is the one unforgivable to do one thing

and say another. [applause] >> are you saying who would not in jest or smoked marijuana as president. >> yes. >> you get your wish what does america look-alike. >> this is inexperience by citizens in mexico there is a fairness to all of this absolute equality it is true spirit in august i look at

issues first into politics are last if they exist in all. >> taking people would be happier i want folks to bought -- have a good time at the end of my tenure i think they were happier. [laughter] it is more general than that i have said as an eisenhower president reagan succeeded to make people feel good about americans that is something we very much want to do if you put your mind to it with a willing heart you to make people feel better about themselves. >> whitten or lose what can we do this year to may kid a

sustainable threat? >> with an or lose it is so little for the libertarian party -- a women. with principles and as presented to the libertarian party we are in the middle when it comes to the libertarian party as a result of this candidacy and those within the libertarian party to make the pitch to a great bigger audience in most people in this country are libertarian they just don't know. >> if elected had to work with congress that would include no libertarians? >> it is a huge opportunity.

don't you see it to challenge republicans? , non. [applause] cut government that does that mean planned parenthood genuinely smaller beverage. smaller government. democrats. end of the zero wars and stop the bombing stop the interventions stop flying droves header killing thousands of innocent people that when it comes to the foreign policy this is a big opportunity that neither a democrat or a republican-led can lay claim to because they are so polarized. [applause] >> i think it would be added vintage if they were not chosen based on the party loyalties so they were not suspicious they would know roughly half for republicans

or democrats. somebody has the of all the capper pass to take the of first step but by not being republicans or democrats that might give us the wedge. i cannot believe at the end of the day those who served that it is so quick partisan gridlock. with those that are demonized every single day they are decent people given the opportunity i think they could work together as well as with us. >> back to those appointees i guarantee there will have a libertarian bent on the world. [applause]

>> given the news of the two black men shot and killed, what policies would you pursue to address that issue? >> one of the things i really enjoy about being governor was being to the table the people that should tell the most. which communities then this country have the best record when it comes to police violence? which have the worst? there will be common threads the with the best in the worst with the department of justice, to play and have to think we can improve on things. >> first a reminder the national press club is the leading professional organization in the fight

for a free press worldwide. on july 14 director of the national security agency is speaking in the director of the national park service was here in the award winning actor will speak. no reply will present our press club mud. is empty. [laughter] if you had to choose between the two would you vote for trump or clinton? >> the libertarian party has been around since the early '70s there has always bennett kennedy for

president proviso libertarian. [applause] >> i can see as part of my role in this campaign to hold mr. trump feet to the fire to change the of the inert which she wages his candidacy if that cannot happen he would leave with a variable price -- little choice. >> on behalf of the national press club thank you. we are richard -- adjourned. [inaudible conversations]

with the influence of facebook:the media and

induce cancers. oh i will talk about technology and the election and what has changed over the last 20 years and then with the topic again in traditional media to work for the atlantic to get to deputy editor they came over to fusion to do technology into the cave editor in chief the way the media landscape has changed i want to give you one complete fought for the very clear vision of the industry changes on the way that this

election is playing out that facebook is changed everything the way that media has changed. the most powerful gatekeeper that includes google and few look at most websites even in your times our "washington post" and all e magazines of facebook is the dominant way people see their work. facebook obviously for a lot of people is the dominant way that they access news and. they think they're looking for pictures of their grandchildren that they see the articles and that is seagram was scaled. those people not only use it every month but every day's

a is the eagerness battleground in that it is difficult because unlike the traditional media sources to understand their institutions and is a totally different beast, is all the people just individuals that work to use facebook and come together in complicated ways in don facebook will put one little thing called the media producers are incredibly discombobulated it changes the way we produce information from the way headlines work perhaps to look different from five years ago that is due to face before the images testing infrastructure,

sometimes it is 10 times more people on the second version of the post of the savings going into the ways that you see the news with those publications before if you read an article you say this is "rolling stone" now they say i saw it on facebook so that brand equity is hard to keep a hold of because people say i saw on facebook or twitter lewis did people reading it in a package to have context instead they read in a stream on an application on a device or photo and that makes a lot of publications very different from what they

were before the biggest magazines from bayerische a million people in a month but that leads to a different kind of publication but what they are now was what is on the facebook page and what that means to target a narrower and narrower slices of audience you don't just want to read one particular type of thing in that is a new phenomenon. of those sources the davis and celebrities to don't need us as much as they used to have twitter and snap

chat they go direct to their audience for the future of

the media of ecosystem he shows what it looks like when somebody is really good to play the media as ecosystem and this is the first election we have experience the conditions we have now but not the last i think things are more likely to look white this they and twentieth century broadcast networks so i haven't been thinking about this everyone recognizes that some people are good on screen.

we need that same kind but for what happens on social media note that i am suggesting this but it is the quality that you create lots of the engagement in the people that live have the of quality that may be the most fascinating example but when they do almost anything over social media i cannot define that to critique charismatic but there is that quality, the

democratic side in many publications aubrey souders was like hillary clinton was not so there is a lot of coverage because of what they would see relative to the television networks. the concept is important for understanding what is happening with donald trump and i can borrow a little bit and is called cybernetics predating the way they think about the internet. when a the things that they talked about that it would

have run away positive feedback not like we say but technical mathematical like a herd of cows been even more starch and running you to stop her from taking off at the same time that is what is happening with donald trump and in the ecosystem that generates engaged in which drives the traffic and also means that individuals see the people that comment post maurer articles than they are fed back into facebook and the software says he is getting more a engagement so it is the of reinforcing system

that says show more donald trump is there isn't a thing built into the ecosystem is people saying postwar donald trump and not mean that of media companies but individuals who were out there engaged in political discussion so the next thing unilaterally did he get coverage bette vargas coverage in the digital world in regardless of what you think about donald trump i think that is dangerous to have figures create run away feedback in system without checks and balances the system needs to have. for us with fusion is a

journalist of many stripes we serve an audience of young and diverse millenials many of whom are directly or indirectly targeted by donald trump not that we want to stop him but how do we play into that runaway feedback? so for us that doesn't mean we will stop writing about donald trump for hillary clinton or tons of stuff about the of libertarian or green party candidates but we want to take that trump attention bubble redirecting into issues to the audience that we serve a set of

falling that immigration lines it may be other types of policies for example, the other important thing, because publications are so dependent on facebook that can micro target the audience to say this is the black members or the jewish members were the mexican audience. and they tend to get there were into the niche of a common people that are all trying to make decisions the way the world should work? to activate the very narrowly. so what we are trying to do and what we need more of is

the future of journalism to rebuild the micro targeted audiences and to a larger group of people that care about each other's issues. really that is the only way to build a way to stand up to the new ecosystem that we magically created. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

. .

amen. the president pro tempore: pleae join me in reciting the pledge f allegiance to our flag. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. mcconnell: i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. mcconnell: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mcconnell: i understand there is a bill at the desk dow a second reading. the presiding officer: the clerk will read the title of the bill for the second time. the clerk: h.r. 1270, a understand act to amend the internal revenue code of 1986 to repeal the amendments made by the patient protection and affordable care act and so forth. mr. mcconnell: in order place the bill on the calendar under the provides of rule 14, i would object to further proceeding. the presiding officer: objection having been heard, the bill will be placed on the calendar. mr. mcconnell: well, madam president, we've recently made progress on the issues of importance to the american people. we've also seen some very

regrettable decisions from our colleagues across the aisle. this week offers the opportunity for all of us and for our country to move forward. every senator will have a chance to advance important solutions on behalf of the american people this week and some colleagues will have a chance to reconsider partisan mistakes that hurt our country. so let me explain. this week democrats can reconsider their decision to block funding for the men and women serving and protecting us overseas. these americans selflessly and voluntarily put themselves in harm's way to help keep our country safe. they don't ask for much in return. what they don't deserve is for democrats to filibuster the bill that supports them as part of some partisan political game. at a time when we face an array of terror threats around the globe, we cannot afford to play politics with the men and women serving and protecting us overseas. the bill democrats are now

filibustering respects the budget caps, was reported out of committee at the earliest point in more than a decade, and earned the support of every single democrat in committee. the top democrat on the defense subcommittee said it takes a responsible approach to protecting our country that honors the bipartisan budget deal in place. that was the top democrat on the defense subcommittee. and warned colleagues not to take chances when it comes to funding the men and women serving in forward positions. he's certainly right. there's no excuse for domes continue blocking this bill. they'll have another chance to make the right decision later this week. this week democrats can reconsider their decision to block funding to fight zika. either democrats believe zika is a crisis that requires immediate action or they don't. either democrats think protecting pregnant women and babies from zika today is more

important or they think holding out for an earmark for their favorite partisan special interest group is more important. even though the administration has acknowledged that they haven't spent the anti-zika money already available to them, republicans believe we ought to pass this bill now because this is indeed an emergency. our friends across the aisle will have to decide if they feel the same way. i would remind colleagues that the rules don't allow for a conference report to be amended, even for powerful democrat special interest groups. and repassion the same bill that went to conference, as some have naively suggested as political cover, won't put a bill on the president's defnlgt so i urge colleagues to work with us to pass this compromise zika control and veterans funding legislation and send it to the president for his signature. not block it and spend the summer explaining why a special interest group was more important than funding zika control and our veterans.

this week senators can take decisive action to combat the heroin and prescription opioid abuse epidemiology that's hitting nearly every state and community across america. support for the comprehensive addiction and recovery act conference report that passed the house last friday seems to grow with each passing day. there are now more than 230 groups fighting this epidemic in their own communities that have come out in support, including the detroit recovery project in michigan, the foundation for recovery in nevada, central city concern in oregon, and project recovery in new hampshire. one of these groups is the fraternal order of police. here's what the group's president had to say about it: "the legislation provides treatment for those caught in the clutches of addiction or who also suffer from mental illness and also provides law enforcement with necessary tools to prevent heroin and opioid

deaths. too many lives have been lost to these drugs and too many families have been torn apart. on behalf of more than 330,000 members of the fraternal order of police, i urge congress to adopt the conference report." that's from the fraternal order of police. widespread support like this helps explain why the cara conference report passed the house last week 407-5. now i.t. the senate's turn to act and send this critical comprehensive response to the president for his signature. we know senate democrats and senate republicans already voted 94-1 to pass a very similar cara bill. we know the senate has provided more than twice as much funding for opioid-related issues as under the previous senate majority. we also know that there's a ground swell of support from so many corners for this cara legislation that can help communities begin to heal from an epidemic sweeping the

country. quite systemly, there is a he no excuse to -- quite simply, there's no excuse to block it. i want to thank senators like grassley and ayotte who have worked ceasely to advance this issue. our democratic colleagues have worked hard on this bill as well. i know they are proud of their work and i'm sure they look forward to supporting this overwhelmingly popular piece of legislation. the outspokenness and leadership of all these members and others on this issue helped move the bill forward with the urgency this crisis demands. this week senators can take action to improve security and consumer protections for airline travelers. recent terror attacks across the globe only emphasize the importance of securing our airports. the bipartisan, bicameral aviation agreement aims to achieve that by enhancing security in prescreening areas, increasing measures to address

cybersecurity dlet threats, improving vetting for airline employees and tightening security standards for flights coming into the u.s. not only will it increase safety and security but i the bill also includes a number of consumer protection provisions like refunds for lost baggage and for parents traveling with small children. we expect the house to pass this agreement tonight and then the senate will have a chance to send a bill to the president's desk this week. also this week senators can take another important step toward modernizing america's energy policies. the senate will have an opportunity to go to conference with the house to work toward an agreement on the energy policy modernization act. this reform bill which passed the senate in april represents the first broad energy legislation to move through the senate since the bush administration. it aims to bring our aging policies and infrastructure in line with current and future

demands. going to conference on this measure would put us one step closer to getting a bill and sending it to the president. senators have several opportunities to advance serious solutions that can make a difference for the american people, from doing the right thing by our veterans, to protecting women and babies from zika, to combating the prescription opioid and heroin rep, from keeping airline travelers safe to modernizing america's energy policies there is a lot we can get done. there are issues that should be prieshts for us all. i would encourage colleagues on both sides to work together advance each of these solutions in the coming days.

madam president, i ask the chair lay before the senate the conference report accompanying s. 524. the presiding officer: the chair lays before the senate a message from the house of representatives. the clerk will report. the clerk: the committee of conference on the disagreeing votes of the houses on the amendments of the house to the bill s. 524 to authorize the attorney general to award grants to address the national epidemics of prescription opioid abuse and heroin use, having met, have agreed and do recommend that the senate recede from its disagreement to the amendment to the house and the text of the bill and agree to the same with an amendment signed by a majority of the conferees on the part of both houses. mr. mcconnell: i send a cloture motion to the desk. the presiding officer: the clerk will report the motion to invoke cloture. the clerk: cloture motion: we, the undersigned senators in accordance with the provisions of rule 22 of the standing rules

of the senate hereby move to bring to a close debate on the bill to authorize the attorney general to award grants to address the national epidemics of prescription opioid abuse and heroin use signed by 17 senators as follows. mr. mcconnell: i ask the reading of the names be waived. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mr. mcconnell: i ask the mandatory quorum be waived with respect to this cloture motion. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mr. reid: madam president? the presiding officer: the democratic leader. mr. reid: i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to the consideration of the conference report to accompany h.r. 2577 and the conference report be agreed to with no intervening action or debate. that must be the wrong one. sorry about that. madam president? the presiding officer: the democratic leader. mr. reid: sure good we have star around, isn't it?

madam president, i ask consent the senate proceed to the consideration of h.r. 5243, which is at the desk. all after the enacting clause be stricken. the substitute amendment which is the text of the blunt amendment to provide $1.1 billion in zika be agreed to, that there be up to an hour of debate equally divided between the two leaders or their designees, that upon the use or yielding back of that time the bill as amended be read a third time and the senate vote on passage of the bill as amended with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: is there objection? mr. mcconnell: madam president, reserving the right to object, republican senators are prepared to pass a conference report and send it to the president's desk for signature today. the democratic leader has asked for the senate to pass legislation providing $1.1 billion in immediate funding to combat zika. in fact, the conference report before us provides exactly that, $1.1 billion in immediate

funding to combat zika. passing the house-passed conference report is the only way to get this critical funding before september. this is a conference report. the house has already passed it. it's not amendable. the senate should act now. therefore, i object. the presiding officer: objection is heard. mr. mcconnell: so, madam president, i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to the consideration of the conference report to accompany h.r. 2577 and the conference report be agreed to with no intervening action or debate. mr. reid: reserving the right to object. the presiding officer: is there objection? mr. reid: reserve the right to object. madam president, i would give a longer presentation in just a minute or two but i do want to say this. the -- has the approval of 89 senators here in the senate, democrats and republicans. only 11 did not vote affirmative.

it doesn't seem too outrageous to suggest that the house send this back to us as it is. what the republican leader is asking has very little support over here that's not partisan in nature. he's proposing a completely partisan conference report ridden with poison pill riders, one of the worst conference report i've seen in this body. it restricts money for planned parenthood, the very place women rely on for care to prevent the spread of zika and to get contraceptives. it's ridiculous to try to pass a conference report that runs count to common sense. so i object. the presiding officer: objection is heard. mr. reid: madam president? the presiding officer: the democratic leader. mr. reid: carrying on, this week the republican leader will continue with the pointless approach that has been a hallmark of his time as the

leader, bringing another failed partisan bill back before the senate for a revote. the republican leader will force yet another failed vote on the cynical zika conference report. the republican agreement on the milcon v.a. conference report is is a disgrace. it's a mockery. remember, we passed out of here a bill, 89 votes. it wasn't everything that we wanted. it was a compromise. instead of $1.9 billion, it was $1.1 billion. but we agreed to that. democrats and republicans agreed to that. it went to the house, and we thought we were home free, but little did we realize that we were dealing with the same problems that speaker boehner dealt with for a long time until he was forced to leave. but it seems that ryan, who was going to bring a new voice to

the house, has not been able to do so. i know he's tried. as i repeat, it's a mockery of how congress should treat an emergency. what does it do? it restricts funding for birth control provided by planned parenthood. it skpepts pesticide -- exempts pesticide spraying from the clean water act. it cuts ebola funding by $1.7 million. it rescinds $543 million for obamacare. madam president, that simply would fall like that with a point of order. it strikes a prohibition on displaying the confederate flag in the house bill. why then would the republican leader waste his time on this? the conference report isn't going anyplace. the senate will not pass this republican conference report, and obama will not sign it into law. democrats were willing to negotiate, willing to compromise. i told the republican leader

give us something to work with. i've given him something to work with. i think it's reasonable. instead of wasting time, we should be responding to the real zika emergency that now is in the united states. it's not just in puerto rico. it's in the mainland. according to the centers for disease control, nearly 3,700 people in the united states have zika. 599 as of right now are shown to have the infection. seven babies have been born with birth defects caused by zika. these babies were born in the united states. there's a path toward a bipartisan solution to combatting this terrible virus. if republicans are willing to take it. two months ago the senate passed a bipartisan compromise to address the zika crisis. as i indicated previously, we didn't like that. we believed, as we still do, that $1.1 billion is not enough.

to shortchange what scientists, doctors and public health officials need to fight zika, but we still voted for the bill because it was a step in the right direction and as i've indicated now for the third time, it passed 89 votes. the senate bill while imperfect was not riddled with provisions in the conference report that i've enumerated. senate zika legislation would save lives. we need to get to this soon. we need to send it to the president. one way to do this is to pass the senate kroeupls as is -- compromise as a stand-alone bill. that's precisely what we democrats are proposing. it's too bad but the house says we can't do that unless we have that confederate flag flying over cemeteries, stop people from going to planned parenthood, take money from ebola which everyone says we need to stay on top of that.

we take $500 million away from veterans, processing claims. the senate should take up and pass the zika compromise as a stand-alone bill. as we said, if the house speaker will bring the legislation up today, if he will let the democrats vote, it would pass overwhelmingly. but he doesn't do that. he's still following the disgraced hastert rule which we need not say more about that other than to remind everybody that he's now in prison, a man whose name is affixed to that. a couple of other things, madam president. last thursday night a peaceful protest for justice in dallas erupted into violence as a sniper ambushed law enforcement officers. five police officers were killed, murdered. nine were wounded.

seven police officers and two civilians. we grieve with the victims, their families and the brave men and women who serve the people of dallas, texas. we thank the police and first responders whose timely action prevented further loss of life and there would have been plenty. it is insufficient to say that we as a nation are saddened by this attack. it's more than that. we're devastated. we're aghast by the sickening violence perpetuated on innocent police officers who are on duty to protect and to serve. there's no justification for such a senseless, evil act. this shooting rampage ran counter to the message conveyed by the peaceful demonstrators in dallas. the people at the dallas march were demonstrating for an end to violence. they were calling for no more brutality and hostility for the lives of americans of all background but disproportionately people of color. that message should not be lost particularly in the aftermath of the two fatal shootings last

week in. last tuesday alton sterling, a 37-year-old black man from baton rouge, louisiana, was pinned down by police officers and shot and killed. the next day on the outskirts of saint paul, a 32-year-old cafeteria supervisor named philando castile was pulled over for a broken taillight. the police officer killed castile as he reached for his license as his fiancee and four-year-old daughter sat in the car and watched. we're saddened by this loss of life but this epidemic of violence persists. our words are worthless if we don't do something to stop this violence. the black community is grieving over the disproportionate number of deaths of their young men. how would you explain all these deaths? how would you explain this violence to your children? tamara rice, a 12-year-old boy

in cleveland killed by police for holding a bb-gun or freddie gray in baltimore or eric garner in new york or the other en bloc men who died -- or other black men who died in confrontations with law enforcement. 512 people have been shot and killed by police so far. black americans are killed at a rate two and a half times greater than that of whites. according to "the washington post," the number of fatal shootings by police officers during the first six months of this year has increased. 26 more killed this year than during the first half of last year. the evidence is not disputable. we have, as president obama called it last year, a slow rolling crisis, trouble police interactions with people of color. and because we're not addressing the problem, people are rightly outraged. we all should be outraged. police brutality is not in america a new issue.

the black caucus and leaders are calling for more funds and more training for police departments. we must help ensure that those who police our neighborhoods have proper training in deescalation tactics. the black caucus has said that. i agree. the dallas police department is exemplary in the effectiveness of community policing. long before this tragedy in dallas, long, glowing articles have rightly been written about the dallas police department. america looks to dallas. other police chiefs look to dallas not only to grieve for the fallen officers but to learn of the department's improvement under the police chief david brown. as dallas mayor rawlings said in the aftermath of these attacks, we must get to the root cause, from baton rouge to saint paul to dallas, there is division and violence. so, madam president, as a nation we must work to bridge the gaps between police and the

communities they serve and unite against police brutality. i apologize to everyone for taking a little extra time but it's necessary because of the exchange that the republican leader and i had. over the next two days senate dacts -- democrats will speak about how the world is being distracted and misled on climate change. the senator from rhode island has been the champion of this frightening issue, climate change. he's spoken 143 times on the senate floor calling for action. dozens of shadowy organizations are waging a campaign to mislead the public and undermine american leadership and climate change. the paris climate agreement, clean air initiatives across the country, every day that's going o. all these shadowy dark entities such as the chamber of commerce, the heart institute and cadd cato institute are fros

for the koch brothers. they're bank rolled by the koch brothers. the shadowy groups they fund have a simple agenda, promote their own interests at everyone else's expenses. these two brothers have one of the largest privately held corporations in the entire world. together charles and david koch are worth some say up to a hundred billion dollars but at least $80 billion. why would the koch brothers mastermind a plot to convince america that climate change doesn't exist? because denying climate change is fundamental to the koch business model. that's why it's done. the volume of pollution the koch industries emit into our environment is staggering. the company is among the worst toxic air pollution in the entire united states. koch industries turns out more greenhouse gases than the oil giant chevron, shell, and vol

volero. to acknowledge climate change exists is to acknowledge that the koch empire contributes to it but they won't take that respond because they don't care -- responsibility because they don't care. they don't care about climate change. they don't care it is making wildfires more frequent. as i speak, madam president, there are fires raging all over the western part of the united states. arizona, california, other states but really they're very, very vicious in those states as we speak. the koch brothers as wealthy as they are, don't care about nevada. they don't care nevada is entering the 15th year of a terribly difficult drought. they don't worry about the water levels of lake mead. they don't worry they dropped to the lowest level since the great depression when the lake was first filled. the kochs have ignored the

underlying cause of the california and nevada droughts. itself unsustainable amounts of carbon being dumped into our atmosphere because of fossil fuels and one of the chief contributors of course is the koch brothers. those who ignore the climate crisis or deny it exist do not have a valid point of view. they're wrong. they're out of touch with reality. these wealthy moguls, the kochs aren't just on the other side of this debate. they're on the other side of reality. their flagship organization, america's prosperity is carrying the kochs's toxic agenda through the state houses of america. they're trying to buy government. they're doing pretty well. they buy their own scientists to publish misleading reports so confuse the public about the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. this isn't my theory. this is a fact.

a university professor found in seven years half a billion dollars was spent by the koch network on a i quote -- "campaign to manipulate and mislead the public about the threat posed by climate change." closed quote. consider the example of one of the front groups the nevada policy research institute. -- to increase my state's use of clean energy. even though to date $6 billion has been invested in clean energy projects in nevada crafting tens of thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue, this in spite of the kochs's bankrol bankrolling. i can remember when i came out against coal-fired plants in nevada. i didn't know where all the opposition was coming from. i know now. it's the koch brothers. they don't appreciate nevada's renewal act of am sell ration so

they funded to bash clean air. they are heavily involved in the nevada state legislature. this koch front group recently hired an academic to write a report saying renewable energy was raising nevada's energy costs. how about that one? but the report of course was false and of course it was misleading. when experts studied the report it was found to be without basic facts. the nevada policy verch institute went so far as to oppose tesla's factory being constructed just outside of reno which would use clean air energy and employ thousands of nevadans. this is a project that every state wanted to have in their state. nevada was fortunate to get it there. the footprint of that facility is so large the only standing billing -- building that be any larger is the boeing factory in seattle. listen to what i said, madam president. this will all be taken care of,

all the energy, renewable energy, the kochs don't like that. even though they oppose something as basic as bringing thousands of thousands of jobs to nevada through tesla's factory, this kind of deceitful activity from large corporations has occurred before, but the kochs have made it so much -- they deserve to be in the hall of fame. they have done so much and deceitful activity that all other corporations are on the sidelines there, in the minor leagues. for more than 40 years big tobacco confused scientific consensus about the effects of tobacco that it had on our health leading to millions of premature deaths. just like the tobacco companies, big oil has known about the harm it's causing. as early as 1981, exxon's in

house climate expert knew climate change was an issue but they bought off enough scientists they could stall for a while longer. in spite of knowing exxon provided over $30 million to 69 organizations to cast doubt on the science of climate change. this is what a clean environment confronts. lots of koch money and lots of falsehoods. the koch brothers and their shatd dough organizations -- shadow organizations know the truth. science has long been proven but they don't care. they'll sacrifice the future of our planet for wigger koch -- for bigger koch projects. i call attention to the web of -- and other fossil fuel interests. the koch s owe money and power -- den notice our -- deny our voices. our planet belongs to the people, not the koch brothers, these multibillionaires. it belongs to the people. the public deserves to know who is behind the deceitful efforts

to allow better, informed decisions about understanding climate change and we're going to continue doing everything we can to show the evil nature ever the koch brothers. -- of the koch brothers. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. under the previous order, the senate will resume consideration of the motion to proceed to h.r. 5293 which the clerk will report. the clerk: motion to proceed to the consideration of h.r. 5293, an act making appropriations for the department of defense for the fiscal year ending september 30, 2017, and for other purposes. a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from texas. mr. cornyn: last thursday night, hundreds gathered in downtown dallas to engage in a peaceful protest. dozens of police officers were on hand to make sure these protesters could exercise their

rights under the first amendment to the united states constitution. protesters even snapped pictures of themselves with the officers in a show of harmony underscoring the peace in nature of the event. but as we know now near the end of the route, all this was shattered as a gunman opened fire on law enforcement officers in a targeted senseless and vicious attack. it was made clear early on that the attacker's goal was to kill as many police officers as possible and he made a calculated effort to do just that. but to attack those who work day in and day out to keep our communities safe is absolutely revolting. it's an act of pure evil and the shameful work of a coward. today our country grieves with dallas, the dallas police

department who lost four of their own in the dallas area of rapid transit, who lost an officer while protecting the community that night. these officers do what all of our law enforcement officers potentially would be called to do and that is they put their lives on the line and some gave their very lives and several others were injured in actions that could only be described as heroic. these officers were certainly worthy of the badge they wore and their courage makes me proud to be a texan. they could have turned around and run away from the sound of gunshots and commotion. they could have given up and decided that their lives were more important than the lives of those that he had vow -- that they had vowed to protect but they didn't. that's not who they are. they are made of better, braver stuff than that. in fact, these officers ran to the sound of gunshots without

hesitation to protect the community they serve. dallas police chief david brown recounted that many ran out in the middle of the gunfire knowing that they were making themselves targets of the attack in order to get injured officers to safety and to medical help. many used their own bodies to help shield protesters who were fleeing in terror. that's what the men and women of the dallas police force are made of undeniable valor and unfailing courage. to say we're indebted to them for their service to the communities is an understatement but i want to thank each and every one of them who didn't hesitate to put it all on the line to defend and protect the people of dallas. so today and tomorrow when the president comes to dallas, our country will continue to mourn with the whole dallas community.

we grieve for the first named officer who was killed, officer brent thompson. officer thompson was a newlywed who married a fellow officer just a couple of weeks ago. we grieve for the loss of patrick zamarripa who bravely served three tours in iraq and leaves behind a wife, a son, and a 2-year-old daughter. we likewise grieve for the family and friends of lorne ahrens, michael krol and michael smith, three other officers that were killed. and we offer our prayers for those who were wounded, including a woman who happened to be an african-american who was shot in the leg while trying to shield her sons from the bullets. we pay for her and the several other police officers who were shot but survived as they begin the long road for recovery.

i mention the race of the woman who was shot to underscore that while the shooter said he intended to kill white police officers, his actions did not discriminate based on race. everyone that was in the line of his sight that night was a target. this is a national tragedy. the deadliest day for our american law enforcement since the events of 9/11. tomorrow i will join leaders in dallas, president obama, former president bush at the memorial service to honor the lives of those we lost and to pray for healing and peace for the city and for our country. and while it should not take an event like this to jolt our conshenses, we got to consider more ways to protect our law

enforcement who keep order, enforce the rule of law and pocketing our communities. one way we could do that is to support additional training for our law enforcement, like some legislation that i've introduced called the police act which has passed the senate unanimously. it would make millions of dollars available for law enforcement to pursue active shooter training. in other words, we've learned the hard way that by police officers -- trained police officers running to the gunshot, we could actually save lives while endangering obviously the lives of the police officers engaging in that active shooter practice. but with training, these officers can minimize their own exposure and hopefully save more lives. so i hope the house will pass this legislation soon so we can send it to the president's desk. i also would note the contribution of my friend and colleague, congressman john carter from central texas who

has sponsored the legislation in the house. it's pretty clear, madam president, we don't have all the answers. that g -- that goes without saying, but we know we could make a difference if we try. in addition, i plan on introducing other legislation soon that would help law enforcement go after the violent criminals who intentionally target police officers and give additional authorities to our law enforcement officers to help them better defend both the public and themselves. so as we continue to grieve and we continue to say our prayers, let's not neglect our work to support law enforcement so that they can better protect and defend our communities. our law enforcement officers deserve our utmost respect for the essential, irreplaceable role that they play in our communities. tragically, the officers we lost last week were killed and injured for simply doing their

job. that is for keeping the community safe and were shot while actually protecting protesters so that they could exercise their constitutional rights of free speech and assembly. these officers didn't do anything wrong. they weren't responsible for any of the real or perceived injustices that have occurred in other parts of the country, that they were targeted by a twisted and demented mind who lost his own life in pursuit of this terrible crime. so there is no, zero justification for the taking of these lives. now, as our country continues to grieve, i hope we'll also unite to support those who put their lives on the line to keep us safe. madam president, i see another

senator wishing to speak so i will yield the floor. mr. whitehouse: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. whitehouse: i see that senator cardin has arrived, and so in one moment, i will yield to him, but i just wanted, while senator cornyn was here on the floor, to express the sorrow and sympathy of the law enforcement community in rhode island for the loss that dallas has sustained. as anybody who has served in law enforcement knows, the worst thing that an officer can hear are the two words, officer down. they don't know who it is. they know it's one of theirs, and it is the sign of a casualty among the brotherhood and sisterhood of the police department, and over and over again on that deadly night, those officers had to hear again and again and again officer down, officer down, and again officer down. i think it has shocked the entire country and certainly i

have seen people who have come from all around the united states when we have lost police officers in rhode island. they come and they stand in the freezing cold outside of churches where a funeral is going on. they come in groups. they come with bands. they come to show their respect. and so it is not just the men and women of law enforcement in dallas and in texas who feel this. everyone across the country does, and i wanted to express that to the people of dallas, to the law enforcement community of dallas and to our friend senator cornyn. and with that, i will yield to senator cardin to bring our conversation on a different subject. mr. cardin: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from maryland. mr. cardin: madam president, first let me thank senator whitehouse for his extraordinary work on behalf of an issue that affects the united states and the global community, and that is the reality of climate change

and the impact it is having on the united states and on the global community. senator whitehouse and i, along with eight other members of this senate, represented the united states at the coke 21 conference in paris in which over 190 nations came together on an action plan to deal with climate and climate change. that could not have happened but for the u.s. leadership, and i'm proud of the work that was done by the united states in setting up a blueprint for us to deal with the impact of climate change in the international community. and we can talk about the specific aspects of climate change and the impact it's having on the security of america. you can talk about the number of climate refugees, people who

will be forced to leave their lands because of the rising sea level. we can talk about the impact of famine by droughts and floods that are occurring as a result of climate change, and you can listen to our generals talk about the impact it has on our national security. so, madam president, i start by saying this is an issue of international concern that affects america's security, and we could do something about it and we have done something about it. u.s. leadership has brought about a game plan to deal with this. so it's particularly frustrating when we see special interest groups that have direct financial interest in maintaining the status quo on using high carbon productions in order to produce their products, that they finance groups that

produce documents to justify the science deniers. that's a particularly frustrating aspect when we recognize how much we need u.s. leadership, and to see that type of effort -- and i thank senator whitehouse for bringing that to our attention, the different groups that have financed, special interest groups interested in high carbon emissions, interested in maintaining the status quo on our direction on climate, who have financed these groups that come up with studies that are really phony in order to justify their opposition to responsible legislation here in the united states and around the world that will lead us to a safer course on climate change. and this is particularly important for us in america, and i will get a little parochial for one moment, if i might.

the chesapeake bay is one of the most vulnerable regions in the nation to the effects of climate change. according to a report from the chesapeake bay program scientific and technical advisory committee, some of these effects, including rising water temperatures and sea levels, have been observed in the watershed and regions expected to experience further shifts in its environmental conditions. as water levels rise, so will coastal flooding and erosion. marshes and wetlands will be inundated with saltwater and will disappear faster than wetland plants can populate higher grounds. madam president, there was just an article in our local paper talking about the islands in the chesapeake bay, tangiers and smith. they're disappearing. these islands won't be there in the future. and we already have islands that used to be inhabited in the chesapeake bay that no longer exist. a loss of marshes and wetlands

will mean a loss of habitat, trap pollution and provide food and shelter to fish, shellfish, birds and the loss of the livelihood to maryland's men and women who earn a living by fishing, crabbing and oystering in the chesapeake bay. it has a direct economic impact as far as in addition to a safety issue. strong rain and snowstorms can damage crops, erode soil, increase flooding. floods can damage ports, marine as and historical monuments and threaten buildings, sewer systems, roads and tunnels. meanwhile, a network of groups purporting to be unbiased have misled the public about the scientific certainty of climate change. in maryland, junk science is a thing of the past. i take the time to point that out. the now-defunct naps center for science-based public policy was founded in 1993 by a former vice president of the national association of manufacturers. in its own word, the center was

a national nonprofit educational organization that supports and promotes responsible energy, environmental health and safety policy, making through the use of sound science. nothing could be further from the truth. in 1997, the annapolis center hosted a workshop discussing the scientific and economic uncertainty of climate change and that a firm on qualified conclusion on the direction of rate of climate change will come many decades in the future. that was their finding. for reference, dr. james hansen, who was then a scientist at nasa and is still one of the most world-renowned climate scientists, testified in front of congress nearly a decade earlier as to the certainty of climate science. fortunately, the annapolis center is not sending out this kind of misinformation any longer. they're no longer in existence. they have closed their doors. thank goodness. but they were funded by special

interests to produce a document that they could use to try to prevent the progress being made on climate change in our policymakers, including congress. accelerating the transition to a low carbon economy will produce many benefits with regards to sustainable economic growth, public health, resiliency to natural disasters and the health of the global community. i along with my colleague in the house, common delaney, have filed resolutions in the house and senate affirming the establishment of national goals of more than 50% of america's electricity production coming from clean and carbon-free electricity by 2030. this is doable. despite the misinformation that's been put out by these special interest funded groups, we can do much better on the use of noncarbon sources to produce our electricity. our 5030 resolutions are cosponsored by 30 senators and

103 house members. the resolutions also call -- also endorsed by the union of concerned scientists, green latinos, green for all, climate hawks and the house sustainable energy environmental caucus. i am proud of the legitimate science-based work of groups like the university of maryland center for environmental science. i plaudits hard work and the positive news of an improved score on this chesapeake bay report card for 2015. we're making progress. why? because we are following science-based solutions to deal with carbon, reducing carbon emissions. i am also proud of recent efforts to divest in fossil fuels in america. the -- in maryland. it was announced on june 28 that it will stop investing in coal, oil and natural gas companies. a victory for a student-led

movement to direct more of the portfolio toward clean energy. the university of maryland founding which helps fund scholarships, endow professors and more said it would sign on to a united nations pledge to be more socially aware of its investments and appoint a staff person to identify opportunities in renewable energy. i am also proud of the work that the maryland board members of the u.s. chamber of commerce who have adopted a proactive climate policies or practices. this should not be controversial. this is good for business, not bad. for example, board member xerox corporation, headquartered in germantown, maryland, is doing its part to reduce the financial risk of climate change. it signed the american business act on climate change and pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption by 20% by 2020. it's good for the environment, it's good for dealing with the impacts that i have mentioned. it's also good for business.

this pledge is sponsored by the whitehouse which 154 businesses signed, voicing support for the strong outcome of the paris climate negotiations. madam president, another example is the maryland state pension and retirement system. it is a proud member of the serious network of climate risk, companies that have committed to improve their environmental performance to publicly support their sustainable strategies. these and many other examples across maryland demonstrate contrary to what the chamber has said that there is a business and economic case to be made to take steps to fight cliej climate change. unless we all act, we will continue on a trajectory that leads to a grim future for us and our children. the first step that must be taken is the recognition that climate change is real, it's happening right now so that we can work cooperatively to come up with creative solutions rather than continuing unproductive arguments about whether or not everyone agrees

that the science is settled. madam president, the type of activities we have seen should have no place in american politics. it's one thing to have disagreements on how we can resolve problems. it's another thing to say that the science points to an opposite direction than it does, particularly when that is funded by special interests that have a financial income, financial reward for trying to be prevent science from dictating the policies or leading us to the policies in this country. i'm proud to be part of the effort that senator whitehouse has brought to the floor to expose these types of organizations. i am pleased that the organization that existed in maryland no longer exists, and i am proud of the great work that is being done. before i yield the floor, madam president, i would like just to point out the incredible help that i've had in my office by detainee, a

brookings fellow michael wolf. michael is a brookings fellow who's worked in my office. his home agency is the e.p.a. where is a senior program analyst in the office of air radiation. he has worked at the e.p.a. since 2004 dedicating most of his professional career to serving the american people. i know my colleagues how fortunate we are when we get detainees that work in our office. that he provide extremely valuable help. michael wolf has been an incredible restores to our office. he's been port part of my team, a civil engineer by training, something we could desperately use in our office. it was instrumental in my work on fra water infrastructure this year. he's also worked tirelessly to protect the clean water rule, the chesapeake bay arrangement and increasing access to public lands in maryland. while michael is incredibly smarkts the first thing one notices about mike is that he's nearly always smiling, even on tough days he brightens up our office and it had been a pleasure to know him.

he will be leaving our office next week, and i wanted to take this time to personally thank him for his service to the united states senate. with that, madam president, i would yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. white house thanmr. whitehouse:, madam president. we expect the senator from delaware fairly shortly but in the meantime let me begin with a few remarks. this is the 144th time that i've come to the in regard to urge congress to wake up to the threat of climate change. this week something new is happening. i'm joined by colleagues who will help me shine a little light on the web of climate denial and spotlight the bad actors in the web who are polluting our american discourse with phon phony climate denial.

this web of denial formed over decades has been built and provisioned by the deep-pocketed koch brothers, by exxonmobil, by peabody coal, and bid other fossil fuel interests. it's a grim shadow over our democracy in that it includes an electioneering effort that spends hundreds of millions of dollars in a single election cycle and threatens any republican who steps up to address the global threat of climate change. just one of those electioneering groups, the koch-brothers-backed americans for prosperity has claimed that if republicans support a carbon tax or climate regulation, they would be "a the a severe disadvantage in the republican nomination process. it would mean their political

peril. wheclose quote. when that threat comes from a group that has openly pledged to spend $750 million 234 that election cycle, that is a threat that serves notice on the political class to behave and regrettably the political class too often does behave in the face of that kind of money. i see that senator coons has arrived. i am delighted to yield the floor to him. mr. coons: mr. president? the presidinmr. president, imad. the presiding officer: the senator from delaware. mr. coons: i would like to thank the senator from rhode island for keeping climate change on this chamber's radar. one day i hope we can move it to our to-do list and ultimately to the history books. i am pleased to join my colleagues to talk about something that i thought we'd established in grade school, the importance of science. it is troubling that today in the 21st century there is any

doubt about the importance of real sound science in many facets of our lives. it is troubling we still need to defend science here on the senate floor. scientific discovery and invention is the engine of our economy. science leads to transformative technologies and new ways of thinking in a wide range of fields: health care, manufacturing, agriculture, clean energy a understand national security. scientific inquiries are also the foundation of good public policy, it shapes andness of how we address global threats such as ozone depletion, an issue in which the international community has made real progress. science must play an equally central role in how we address climate change. when we want to know what to do about a public health or environmental crisis, we turn to science. for example, rigorous, careful data collection and analysis is critical toning long-term trends. data can show the effectiveness of a medication in treating a disease, for example, or the ability of a new material to withstand extreme conditions over time, and data can help us to make good decisions based on

those trends. never have we had a greater ability to collect and analyze data than today. that's why more than ever in today's world, science should drive policy, not the other way around. in a number of areas i've worked with my republican colleagues on bipartisan bills that help substantially advance scientific inquiry, from encouraging citizen science projects to improving public-private partnerships with our national labs. so why is climate science so threatening to some? sadly, there are far too many organizationorganizations in exy that have it backrds with. these organizations have attempted to distort science for purely political ends because the facts threaten the bottom line of those who have created and sustained them. these organizations claim to use sound science to support policy objectives, but their actions indicate that the only science they find sound is the kind that sounds like profits. one of these organizations is the now defunct advancement of

sound science coalition known as the task, an organization that played a key role obscuring the facts around the dangers of tobacco use. task was originally founded in 1993 you understand the guise promoting sound science making. as was later discovered in the documents that came to light in will the gas emissions against the tobacco industry, task actually had the opposite goal. the year it was founded it stated in private documents at the time that one of its goals was to lay the groundwork to help philip morris advance its agenda of promoting tobacco use nationally and at the state and local level. how? by -- and i quote from one of these discovered documents -- "encouraging the public to question from the grass roots up the validity of scientific studies." these are not the statements of an organization devoted to data-driven policy. the problem doesn't lie in industry hiring scientists to

argue their case. that's well within rights of industry and of any organization in our country. the problem is when groups like this one misrepresent their very vow motives, hide their sources of funding and industryize and push out misleading or even incorrect information under the guise of sound science. we all know today that smoking tobacco is harmful to our health. profoundly harmful to our health. yet these same organizations, the ones that decades ago promoted science, that hid the truth about tobacco and threatened public health for far too long, are now in sadly too many cases doing the same with climate change. fortunately, today this group i'm discussing, task, is now defunct, but its former executive director steve malloy is still an active climate change denier editor of junkscience kovment he helped draft the 1998 global science communications action plan. included a statement "victory will chieved when average

citizens understand the uncertainties in climate science, recognize nicks of uncertainties becomes part of the conventional which is come to." quite simply, his goal was and continues to be to persuade people using incorrect unsound information to doubt the science about climate change. one of the graiflt global challenges we face. his policy goal is to halt action on climate change and he's using science incredible to achieve this political end. frankly, this is irresponsible and it flies in the face of the foundation of the scientific method. as someone who trained in chemistry in college, i am familiar with the high podge these without bias or pre-assumed consensus. starting with the answer and only considering evidence that supports that answer, that's not science. that's politics u the very existence of groups like task and others that my colleagues will speak about this evening

and tomorrow make clear that we must work harder to defend and support science throughout our society. that means providing robust funding for a national labs system, establishing a federal effort to coordinate research and a new subfield of chem stlai i have been ex-suited about, that means supporting the use of crowdsourcing in federal agencies. that means supporting agencies that will support industry-relevant training and engineering including advanced manufacturing. all are efforts that i have been involved in and that enjoy bipartisan support. my colleagues know that i make an effort to promote pragmatic policy ideas. science should not be a partisan issue. and neither frankly should climate change. climate change is all too real for those of us who live in low-lying coastal states where flooding has already devastated homes and communities up and down the state. the science is clear. this severe fleet flooding is only going to increase as temperatures continue to rise

around the globe and as the sea level rises as well. madam president, we live in an era of unprecedented scientific and technological advances. the nasa juno spacecraft mission to jupiter, the ability to use 3-d printing to manufacture cuss testimony products spefngly prosthetics, the evolution of new products in robotics capture our imagination and can change our world. these developments happen these america's best-traininged scientists and engineers have spent decades in applying their findings to address the big questions of our world. certainly the challenges of climate change are daunting and urgent and so we should be focused on using the best science available to tackle these challenges with the best policy solutions possible. not by convincing people who prefer denyald and deception that the science isn't even real. madam president, i want to thank my friend and colleague, senator whitehouse, for his tireless leadership in addressing climate

change and for assembling today's important colloquy. and if i might, with the forebearance of my colleague from new mexico, whom i see has come to the floor, i'd like to take just a few more minutes and address an unrelated but an urgent topic. madam president, before i invite one of my colleagues to continue today's colloquy, i just wanted to say a few words about the tragic events in dallas. a peaceful protest in dallas that brought together protesters and police in an example of the very best of our nation was torn "part" by a savage thact reflects the very worst. five police officers were murdered, leaving their families, friends, and country in shock, in mourning and in search answers and six of their colleagues were injured. madam president, last week was a very difficult one for america, from dallas to many other cities, including baton rouge and st. paul, minnesota. far too many lives were cut shortably violence.

far too many families will never be whole again u but as our president said this weekend, america is not as divided as we may appear. we are united in mourning the tragic deaths of brent thompson, patrick zamarripa, michael krol, smiekal smith and lorne ahrens. we are united in grief for their families. the overwhelming of first responders do their jobs with bravery and selflessness. but we're also uinto thed in our awarnings. we have so much more work to do to strengthen the relationship between law enforcement and the communities they serve and protect. we are united in our understanding that moving beyond this tragic and unacceptable status quo to heal owrd wound and build a community of respect and compassion will challenge us in ways both new and uncomfortable. as franklin roosevelt said in an address exactly 0e89 years ago today, there are no limits to

this nation's capacity to obtain and maintain true freedom, no limits except the strength of our nation's desire and determination. madam president, i'm confident our desire and determination will build an america in which police officers can serve their communities worried only about how to make their communities safer, not whether they will come home that night. our desire and our determination can and should billeted build a nation in which every american can live and work and play and worship free of concerns about discrimination, a nation in which all of us are able to abide by the law, as written, with a law as lived. we must do better and we will do better. madam president, i thank you for the opportunity to join in this colloquy. i would now like to yield the floor to my colleague from the state of new mexico. mr. udall: madam president? the presiding officer: the

senator from new mexico. mr. udall: thank you, madam president, for the recognition. let me will as my other colleagues have done here, thank senator whitehouse for his leadership on climate change and global warming and the work he's done in that area. i was also part, with senator coons, of the paris 10 that went to pairs and did everything we could to let the rest of the countries of the world and their representatives know, as senator coons knows very well, that we were in this for the long haul and we were going to make sure that it happened, that the united states would continue with all the good policies that have been put in place. now, senator whitehouse has been particularly, i think, shown good leadership in the area of exposing a sophisticated network of climate deniers, network of

special interest groups, of front groups that have all rallied around the slogan, i guess, of being climate deniers. and i rise today, madam president, to join my colleagues to draw attention to what we are calling the web of denial, interconnected corporations and special interest groups spending millions of dollars misleading the public about the harmful effects of climate change. madam president, contrary to what these groups want the american people to think, climate change is a fact, it's a reality and we have to deal with it. carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, is a major contributor to global warming. this is not some ideological belief i share with my senate colleagues. we wish global warming did not exist and that it was not

threatening our health, our livelihoods and the environment. but it is real, and in mexico and the southwest are in the bull's eye. we're seeing it in the form of more frequent droughts, increasingly severe wildfires, rising temperatures. there's no doubt, and the data cannot be denied, scientists cannot be ignored. we can see it before our eyes in new mexico and across the country in so many different areas. the intergovernmental panel on climate change, the national academy of sciences, and independent researchers at our most esteemed universities, all of them have written extensively about this link between greenhouse gases and the warming of the earth. scientists at los alamos and sandia national labs in new mexico are key parts of this scientific effort.

madam president, we trust that all of these institutions, we trust these institutions to perform the scientific research that is critical to our nation's national security. they ensure our arsenal of nuclear weapons is safe and secure. so when these scientists tell us that man-made climate change is real and poses a serious threat, we should listen and take them seriously. the evidence has been mounting for decades. the research has been thorough and unbiased. the countries around the world have been pressing to address this challenge in a global manner. so why are people still trying to foster a debate? why are they asking if global warming is really happening? that's what we're here to discuss, the web of denial. there are so many who have different agendas, agendas that aren't rooted in truth or science. and those agendas are playing

out in our politics in the most disgraceful way possible, through the dark money that is poisoning the system and spreading lies to benefit a few. it started when industry became concerned that this link could harm the bottom line. over the years industry groups have spent millions of dollars to influence the debate through dark money and front groups. many of my colleagues have talked about this here today and many more will talk about it tomorrow. the evidence of this strategy is profound, an early example is the information council for the environment, or i.c.e. and the greening earth society. these groups sound technical and environmental but they weren't. they were cooked up in the boardrooms of the fossil fuel industry executives, people who put profits over public health. they were designed after focus

groups and market data convinced them that the public trusted scientists more than politicians and more than political activists, and certainly more than industry press people. these groups founded by the western fuel association aimed to shape the global warming discussion. this was at a crucial time in the early 1990's as the world was gathering in rio and kyoto to hammer out agreements and tackle the problem. i.c.e. ran print and radio advertisements saying -- quote -- "if the earth is getting warmer, why is kentucky getting cooler?" if the earth is getting colder why is the frost line moving south. and another, who told you the earth was warming? chicken little? and how much are you willing to pay to solve a problem that may not exist? these questions and claims were

misleading and false, but they helped to stir up the public. the public that was looking to trust independent scientists and analysts, not industry front groups. even more concerning, madam president, is the way global warming deniers have refocused their strategies at discrediting scientists and researchers. we have seen a terrible trend here. as the public has become more aware of these front groups, they have changed their tact. now they are working to discredit and disavow the credible scientists that are out there. charging that scientists have hidden agendas, more research dollars, more federal funding, i find this absurd and ominous. madam president, the intergovernmental panel on climate change, the national academy of scientists, university researchers, their funding is transparent. the money is there for the public to see.

none of these folks are getting rich. they don't have profits to protect. they're providing the public with data and with research, and it's getting harder and harder to stop these outside groups from spreading their smear campaigns. these groups have an interest in making sure congress never gets anything done to prevent climate change, and they are using our broken campaign finance system as a tool to keep it that way. we used to have sensible laws on campaign finance. we used to have an enforcement agency, a watchdog over the federal finance system. the laws have been gutted by the supreme court's devastating decisions, whether it's citizens united, mccutcheon or much or misguided decisions. and the enforcement agency, the federal election commission, has become completely dysfunctional and mired in gridlock, leaving

super pacs and special interests free to pollute the political system with unlimited dark money and always to protect someone's bottom line. the way western fuels association and so many other companies have put pollution above public health. we need to fix the system. a few months ago several of my colleagues and i got together to discuss the state of our democracy. the question we ask ourselves, what can we do to repair this damage, to return the government to the people, government by and for the people? the product of those meetings is the bill we introduced last month, the "we the people" act. it will bring dark money out of the shadows, create a real watchdog to enforce campaign finance laws, rein in the influence of special interests and lobbyists. the "we the people" reform package also includes my constitutional amendment to overturn buckley, citizens

united and other decisions. it will allow congress and the states to enact real reforms, to get the flood of money out of our political system, laws that five conservative judges on the supreme court can't overturn. i know the political climate of an election year makes bipartisanship unlikely, but i will reintroduce the "we the people" reform package in the next congress and hope that my republican colleagues will join me. poll after poll shows that our constituents across the political spectrum want reforms. tackling climate change, eliminating dark money from our politics, and standing up to the groups that distort public perceptions, it's time we listen. our democracy, our environment and the planet are at stake. and i see senator whitehouse is here, and there may be others

here. i just once again want to thank senator whitehouse for his leadership. i think that one of the things that he has done in our caucus and here on the floor and being constantly vigilant about is how many of these groups are out there and network with each other. and it's a very sophisticated operation that has to be is exposed if we're really going to get down to what's happening and really get down to what we need to do. so with that, i would yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. whitehouse: madam president, i, for purposes of the floor, would like to say that i understand that senator sullivan from alaska will be coming over here, and i will end my remarks so that he can speak

as soon as he arrives. but in the meantime i intend to intersperse my remarks between the various speakers who come. senator sullivan should not be disconcerted if he sees me speaking. i'll draw to a rapid conclusion and give up the floor. when i finished my remarks a moment ago i was describing the polluter-funded front group that with one hand threatened to spend $750 million in this election cycle, and with the other hand threatened to cause severe disadvantage in the republican nomination process. their quote -- "and political peril" -- their quote -- "to people who cross them in their denial of climate change." and that raises the obvious question, why all that money?

why all those threats? well, the threats are there and the money is that big because the stakes are very high. the international monetary fund, which is a generally respected organization filled with very intelligent people, has determined that the fossil fuel industry receives nearly $700 billion -- -- with a "b"-- dollars in what they call effective subsidies in the united states alone every year. how hard would you fight to protect an effective subsidy of $700 billion a year? no wonder throwing $750 million around seems like a wise investment by the big polluters. the fossil fuel industry has another problem which is that it

faces wide, indeed world consensus about the urgent need to address climate change. consensus from the american public, consensus from every single major american scientific society, consensus from a vast number of major american companies, essentially the heraldry of american corporate leadership signed on to the paris agreement. every single u.s. national lab, the scientists that have been mentioned before from nasa and from noaa who in every other respect we count on. imagine the nasa scientists who have put an explorer on to the surface of mars and they're driving a rover around on the surface of mars right now. do we think they might know a little science? and yet, when they tell us that climate change is a serious

threat, oh, oh, suddenly we can't pay any attention to that any longer because you've got the koch brothers with all their money telling everybody don't listen. you have also america's national security, military and intelligence leaders warning us of the threat. you have the pope calling on us to take action, and most world leaders. so if you are the fossil fuel industry, what do you do? you come to congress, to the choke point of legislation, and you put a choke chain on the republican party so you can snap it to heel. and in support of that they perpetrate this web of climate denial. this is actually a graphic of the web that was done by one of the academic researchers who specializes in this area. why did they do this? to do their best to fool the public about the risk of climate change, to provide talking points to right-wing talk radio,

to take advantage of a lazy media's impulse to offer both sides of the story even when one is false, and of course to hide the hands of the fossil fuel protagonists who are behind the scenes. so it's long past time that we shed some light on the perpetrators of this web of denial and expose their filthy grip on our political process. it is a disgrace, and our grandchildren will phraobg back at this as a tkeur -- dirty time in america's political history. i'm grateful to my colleagues to help spotlight the lengths to which the koch brothers and other fossil fuel fronts go to advance their economic self-interest by sabotaging america's response to the climate crisis. as we look into this, we are aided by a growing body of research examining the web of

denial. and examining how the actors in that web propagate climate denial. so let's listen to some of the experts. drexel university professor dr. robert brulle calls the web of denial, in his research, the climate change counter movement. in his 2013 paper, institutionalizing delay, foundation funding and the creation of u.s. climate change countermovement organizations, professor brulle describes that movement as a constellation of organizations, as you see here, depicted in a graphic from that very paper. that, he says, and i quote him, engages in a wide variety of activities opposing any

legislative attempts to enact mandatory restrictions on carbon emissions. the green diamonds here and here and here and here are the big funders, fossil fuel billionaires foundations, for instance, the american petroleum institute, and so on. the blue circles here, here and here are the who's who of climate denial groups. the heartland institute is in here, for instance. they're that classy bunch who compared folks concerned about climate change to the unabomber, just to give you a sense of what sort of people they are. there is the hoover institution. there is the heritage foundation. there is the cato institute. there is the mercada center, to

name just a few of the climate saboteurs on dr. brulle's graph. brulle's research describes these groups as part of what he calls, and i'll quote him here, a deliberate and organized effort to misdirect the public discussion and distort the public's understanding of climate. to misdirect and distort. the coordinated tactics of this network in its effort to misdirect and distort, says brulle, and i'll quote him again, span a wide range of activities, including political lobbying. we certainly see plenty of that here. contributions to political candidates. plenty of that. and a large number of communication and media efforts that aim at undermining climate science. this is professor brulle's

depiction of the web of denial. this chart is from a 2011 study by professors riley dunlap of oklahoma state university and aaron mccright of michigan state university, describing the behavior of the major actors in what they call the climate denial machine. that's their quote. you remember professor brulle called it the climate change countermovement. we would call it the climate -- i'm sorry. these two researchers call it the climate change denial machine, and of course we call it the web of denial. i so that senator warren has

come to the floor, and i would gladly yield to her and resume my remarks when there is again room on the floor. ms. warren: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from massachusetts. ms. warren: madam president, i thank the senator from rhode island for yielding here. i just want to talk a little bit about data. i believe in data, and i try to find good information about issues and use that information to inform my work. we need good data, but can we trust the think tanks and public policy groups that hold themselves out as offering solid independent research? the work of these think tanks and public policy groups is increasingly funded by wealthy corporate interests, and the line between objective, scholarly research and pay-for-play studies is becoming blurred. the problem is compounded by the fact that corporate financial support often occurs in the dark. think about it this way. companies are required to

disclose their expenses when they directly lobby lawmakers, but these same companies are allowed to make huge secret contributions to think tanks, even if they have the same goal of influencing those same lawmakers. today climate deniers have an increasingly difficult time selling their antiscience positions, so a small industry of think tanks has emerged to give the veneer of plausibility to their bizarre views. take a look at just one organization, the science and public policy institute. now, the science and public policy institute describes its mission as providing -- quote -- research and educational materials dedicated to sound public policy based on sound science. that seems pretty reasonable. but where is this sound public policy and sound science actually coming from?

well, for several years, the chief science advisor at the science and public policy institute was a man named willie sune, one of the most notorious climate change deniers around. armed with korea detentions and a part-time job at the smithsonian institution, sune churned out paper after paper disagreeing with the overwhelming scientific consensus that human activities are driving climate change. eventually, it was revealed that, surprise, surprise, sune had accepted $1.2 million from the fossil fuel industry. exxon, the american petroleum institute and the charles g. cook charitable foundation, and -- i got this wrong. the charles g. koch charitable foundation and coal giant company southern company made payments to sune, payments that

he rarely disclosed when promoting his climate change denial research. in other words, sune was raking in fossil fuel cash by producing research helpful to the fossil fuel industry. great deal. willie sune left the science and public policy institute a few years ago, and these days the most prominent figure at the organization is christopher moktin, the think tank's chief policy advisor. let's ask the question here who is christopher moktin. oh, boy. christopher moktin is a former politician from the u.k. he has presented himself as a member of the house of lords, a claim that is so off base that the house of lords was forced to do something that it had never done before, and that is issue a statement saying no, he is not part of the house of lords and he should not -- and he should stop lying about it.

moktin used to represent the ultraconservative, anti-immigrant u.k. independence party that recently led the brexit campaign. in fact, moktin thought that brexit was such a good idea that he has also called for a texit, as he puts it, pushing for texas to secede from the united states to protect itself against muslim and latino immigrants. now, moktin is clear about where he stands on climate change and on the people who are concerned about it. he said that global efforts to fight climate change are part of -- quote -- a totalitarian plot to create -- quote -- a world government, and he's compared climate change activists to hitler youth. now, to be clear, these allegations of government overreach are coming from someone who believes that reading the koran out loud

should be a prosecutable offense in the united states and who once called for everyone with aids to be rounded up and permanently quarantined. now, he has backed away from that last idea, but don't worry, moktin found a new idea to address aids. he claims to have invented a miracle cure that can treat everything from i have h.i.v. to multiple sclerosis to the flu. you really can't make this stuff up. the fact is moktin is not a climate scientist or a scientist of any kind. his degrees are in classics and journalism, and actual scientists who have taken a look at his work have found his conclusions to be completely made up. so why does it matter that scientific posers like christopher moktin and industry-funded hacks like

willie sune are running around saying crazy things about climate change? well, i'll tell you why it matters. it matters because by attaching themselves to the science and public policy institute and other credible sound think tanks, people start to take them seriously. you don't think so? moktin has testified in front of congress three times. each time representing the science and public policy institute. a former chairman of the house energy and commerce committee called him -- quote -- one of the most knowledgeable if not the most knowledgeable expert from a skeptical point of view on this issue of climate change. sune's work has been repeatedly cited by influential climate change deniers, both in congress and elsewhere. as senator whitehouse has pointed out, moktin, sune and

the science public policy institute are part of the much larger network of pseudoscientific researchers and organizations who get paid to spin a web of denial about the science behind climate change. it's a network that has been funded by the fossil fuel industry and by its friends. look, there's no getting around it. climate change is real. it's caused by humans. and if we're going to address it in a meaningful way, we need to take decisive action now. and this is why the fake science think tanks are so dangerous. they throw enough fake facts into the process to justify inaction, enough fake facts to excuse inaction, enough fake facts to let every politician in the pocket of big oil or big coal to keep right on blocking meaningful action while the

earth slowly chokes on its own filth. it is time to stand up to the fossil fuel industry and its well-funded p.r. efforts and say enough is enough. our children's futures are at stake, and we will not sit on the sidelines while big fossil fuel companies call the shots here in washington. madam president, i yield back. mr. whitehouse: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. whitehouse: madam president, i thank senator warren for her terrific remarks. when i left off speaking, we were talking about the -- not just the web of denial of organizations that have been propped up by the polluters to look like they're real and to broadcast phony science, but also to know that people are on

the hunt looking for them, and i had begun to talk about the academic researchers who are treating this web as a social phenomenon, as a bizarre sociopolitical phenomenon and beginning to look at how it works. i mentioned first dr. brulle of direction he will university, and then -- of drexel university, and then we were looking at the work of dr. dunlap and dr. mccright, dunlap from the university of oklahoma and dr. mccright from michigan state university. let's look for a minute at what they say in their publications. when you listen to this, consider today's blockaded senate chamber. i'll quote them. it is reasonable to conclude, they say, that climate change denial campaigns in the u.s., this stuff, have played a

crucial role in blocking domestic legislation and contributing to the u.s. becoming an impediment to international policy making. because of the perceived threat posed by climate change to their interests, to the fossil fuel interests, actors in the denial machine have strived to undermine scientific evidence documenting its reality and seriousness. their success in these efforts weakens an essential component of societal reflexivity when the need is greater than ever. and with that quote, i will yield the floor to -- i see my friend, senator sullivan, has arrived, and i will yield the floor to him.

a senator: madam president? the presidin -- may i inquire? are we in a quorum call? the presiding officer: we are not, senator. mr. kaine: thank you, madam president. i joi rise to join my colleagueo talk about the critical issue of climate change and especially the facts around climate change but also the fact that there are

many who would deny the facts. this is a really important issue to the commonwealth of virginia. climate change is not a distraction. it's not a next year or next decade issue. climate change in virginia is a today issue. earlier today, i was in norfolk, virginia, which is in the hamp to-- hampton roads area near the atlantic ocean. norfolk and the surrounding communities is the largest concentration of naval power in the world. it's the center of naval operations. the headquarters of the u.s. atlantic fleet. and it is already having to spend millions of dollars to elevate the piers where aircraft carriers come and go due to sea level rise. the hampton roads area is listed as the second most vulnerable community on the east coast of the united states to rising sea levels after new orleans. this is a challenging issue in a lot of ways. i have friends who live in these communities who bought homes

recently but now their homes aren't marketable. for most americans, certainly for me, my home is the most valuable asset i own. and if you have that and then you suddenly can't sell it because climate is changing sea level is rising, flooding is more recurrent, no one will buy your home, it's a very, very serious issue. in addition to the effect on individuals and businesses because of sea level rise, the effect on the naval station is significant. current estimates are that rising sea levels in norfolk will take the main road entrance into the center of american naval power and have that under water by 2040, three hours a day just because of normal tidal action. in times of storms it would be worse. so imagine in america that counts on its navy, that counts on that naval presence around the globe having its largest naval base inaccessible because of sea level rise.

we have an interesting community. one of the most unique areas is tangjeer island. it's been continually inhabited since the 1600's as a community for men and women. the folks who have traditionally made their living by going out and catching crabs and oysters and fish, and this is a small island with a few acres. it's one of the only places you can go in the united states where you can hear english spoken as shakespeare would have spoken it with a language that is an elizabethan language. the community is isolated in that way. you hear this beautiful english spoken there and the community has many wonderful virtues but the chesapeake bay is coming up around this community and eroding it. i received a letter from a middle school student within the last month, a handwritten letter that might have been the most heartfelt piece of communication i've received in four-plus years in the senate saying would are you doing about sea level rise, what can you do to help us deal

with these issues so that tan tangjeer as an island does not completely disappear. for these reasons and many others in virginia we take this very, very seriously and we have to deal with it. i'll tell you something else about virginians. virginians believe in science. the virginia political figure we most admire was the preeminent science of these -- scientist of these day, thomas jefferson. virginians overwhelmingly believe in science. 70% of virginians accept the scientific consensus that human activity is causing climate change and that it is urgent that we do something about it. 70% of virginians believe in that proposition. but i'm here today because my friend from rhode island asked me to come and talk about the fact that there is an organized effort, not just a battle about the policy about climate science but to knowingly try to misrepresent the status of climate science and suggest that climate change is not occurring.

they're denying it exists. they're denying that it's a concern. they're working against any reasonable solutions. now, of course, we've got to be open to points of view and reasonable differences of opinion and have a debate, but when the science is settled on some things and people are in an organized way who know better are trying to fight against it, we should be suspicious. so a group of senators are speaking today and tomorrow to discuss these organizations that constitute what my friend from rhode island has termed a web of denial, an organized effort to deny science. and so let me just talk a little bit because a number of these den niers are -- deniers are companies that at least have ponchts o. boxes or nonprofit organizations that at least have p.o. boxes in virginia. the same virginia where tangjeer island is disappearing, the same virginia where the navy is having to spend to shore up their infrastructure also has some shadowy organizations that are trying to deny the real

science involved. there's an organization called the science and public policy institute. and it purports to summarize available academic literature. here's a quote. "they further note that availability in sea level is observed but to date there's no detectable secular increase in sea level rise. they also report that no increase in the rate of sea level rise has been detected for the entire 20th century." closed quote. this is a group they throw in a few sciencey words like decatal variability. this is at odds with the conclusions of virtually every scientist who studied this issue, including scientists at virginia universities, old dominion university, marine sciences at william & mary. those scientists says sea level

rise -- on the virginia coast it's anywhere from one and a half additional feet to 7 feet by the year 2100. now, they will acknowledge some question about is it going to ab foot and a half. is it going to be 7 feet but they don't challenge the basic science surrounding sea level rise. so which is it? one and a half to 7 feet or you don't need to worry about it? don't worry, be happy. without getting a ph.d. in atmospheric science and building your own quantitative models, how do you know who is right? here's a clue. look at who funds these organizations. in the case of william & mary, the virginia institute of marine sciences which is one of the most preemmeant marine sciences institutions in the nays in woods hole, massachusetts, it's not hard. they are state universities. they're funded by the general assembly of virginia which is two republican houses. and they are reaching a scientific conclusion that says climate change is serious. but with the science and policy institute, it's a bit nebulous

and it's kind of hard to figure out. but there's online sources that enable you to track how organizations are funded through foundations with ties frankly to the energy industry. according to those -- one of these sources it's called the something blog -- smog blog, the science and public institute's major funders is the donors capital fund which has distributed 170 million to various conservative causes and describes itself as being dedicated to the ideals of limited government, personal responsibility and free enterprise. a "new york times" article as far back as 2003 documents a connection between this foundation and an organization that also has a point of view, exxonmobil. exxonmobil is a funder or in the past has been a funder of this organization. now, why don't -- why does an exxonmobil or conservative organization just public the material on their own websites under their own bylines?

well, my guess is that they have scientists who actually know the science and there's been recent information about exxonmobil. they understand the climate science. they couldn't publish this under their own byline and meet their own standards of truthfulness but they are providing funding to an organization that's denying climate change. in other words, the organization is a delivery vehicle for information that is meant to be seen as impartial scientific information but is in fact not impartial at all. so when you see one group saying that there's been no sea level rise and another saying there's been a lot and we could be in for more and if you're wondering who to believe, take a look at who's funding the research. here's another organization, the virginia institute for public policy. quote -- here's a quote from them. "regulations prescribing a reduction or complete cessation of virginia's co2 emissions will have absolutely no effect on global climate. " if there's virginia regulations that even eliminate

virginia co2 it will have no effect on global climate. that's an interesting quote because it's not technically a lie because it's literally true. virginia's share of world co2 emissions is infinite test mall. it wouldn't affect the entire globe in a measurable way but that's like saying one vote? your vote is not going to make a difference or one cigarette won't hurt you so go ahead and have one. this argument is a kind of a classic hide the ball argument that makes a statement that's technically true but it essentially is promoting a false point of view that oh, well, we shouldn't do anything about it. so again it's the use of a literal truth that's basically designed to pitch a message that's grossly misleading. so let's ask about this group, the virginia institute for public policy. who funds a group that would say something like that? again the donors capital fund that funded the first organization i discussed as well as the chase noun daition of virginia and -- foundation of

virginia and the row foundation which support a list of conservative causes. if you call an organization the virginia institute for public policy it sounds kind of neutral and probably trying to do a good thing. but if you go back and look at who's funding it and you find the funding sources are heavily linked to the energy industry, groups like exxonmobil you understand they're not quite as impartial as they suggest. another group called the co2 coalition, quote, concerns about carbon dioxide being a pollutant are not valid. climate change is proceeding very slowly and the likely increase of the temperature for the 21st century is 1 degree celsius or less, closed quote. well, yes, is that technically true? the temperature of the earth is increased by 1 degree since industrialization and 197 countries just signed an agreement in paris last year to try to limit any further increase to no more than 1 agree a-- 1 degree additional.

this group make it is sound like who cares about 1 degree. 100 degree is 1.4 degrees more than normal, enough to make you sick. the number of .08 sounds tiny in the abstract but if that's your blood alcohol content, that gives you a dui in virginia. the number sounds small. gosh, why would that make a difference? that gets you a dui because you're impaired. so, yes, the group using the one temperature, one degree in temperature makes it sound like it's not that big a deal but it is that big a deal. now, here's the last one i want to say, madam president, before i close. this is kind of a doozy because it's from an open letter to pope francis on the topics of the pope -- on the topic of the pope's environmental encyclical. the group is called the cornwall alliance for the stewardship of creation. not like going big if you're going to pick a name for yourself. their quote starts with a quote

from the 19th psalm. the heavens declare the glory of god and the fairmment claims his handiwork. then the group goes on to declare in their own words, by using fossil fuels to generate energy to lift billions of god's children, precious children out of poverty, we liberate from the tomb of earth the carbon dioxide on which plants and therefore all the rest of life depend. in light of these considerations, we believe it is both unwise and unjust to adopt policies requiring reduced use of fossil fuels for energy. so somebody is really using scripture to argue that making our energy production cleaner, safer, cheaper violates the christian tenet of caring for the poor? i'm a christian and many of us in this body have a deep faith background in one faith or another but i'll use a non-christian phrase to describe that argument. it takes a lot of hudz pa to

claim yourologyious faith and compassion, especially when the organization refuses to reveal how it is funded. in closing, madam president, we certainly don't want to imply that all groups that, you know, have an agenda or have a point of view are motivated by funding sources. but the web of denial that the senator from rhode island is asking us to come out and talk about tonight is one that includes a number of organizations that are climate dedeniers. they are denying science, that they actually in my view know to be true. there comes a point when the truth becomes so hard to deny that those who deny it or simply not credible. and you have to ask the question then why are you denying it? i assert that most of these organizations understand the science and they accept the science. and they realize it to be true. why do they deny the science? the answer is greed. that's the basic answer. many of the organizations that we're discussing are funded

primarily by fossil fuel interests, and if they can delay even by a year or two years or five years or even six months, the enactment of policies that would move us toward fewer fossil fuels, it will hurt their bottom line. and so rather than come up here and argue about what the right transition should be, they're handing funds over to organizations that are trying to confuse the american public about science itself. so let me close and read from pope francis' -- the cornwell institute on the stewartship. i'll read a quote. is it realistic to hope that those who are obsessed with maximizing profits will stop to reflect on the environmental damage which they will leave behind for future generations? where profits alone count there can be no thinking about the rhythms of nature, its phases of decay and regeneration or the complexity of ecosystems which may be gravely upset by human

intervention. once we start to think about the kind of world we are leaving to future generations, we look at things differently. future generations. we look at things differently. we realize that the world is a gift which we have freely received and miss share with others. since the world has been given to you, we can no longer view relate any a utilitytarian way geared entirely to our individual benefit. intergenerational solidarity is not optional but a basic question of justice since the world we have received also belongs to those who will follow us. science and faith have a number of things in common, but one of the most important things they have in common is their first duty has to be to the truth. i hope all actors in the political process, whatever their views, will remember that and have that same commitment. thank you, madam president. with that, i yield the floor.

mr. sullivan: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from alaska. mr. sullivan: madam president, my colleagues from virginia, rhode island, hoif a lot of respect for, have been on the floor talking about important what my colleague from virginia called a today issue. well, i'd also like it talk about a "today" issue as well, that i think certainly the american public is interested in. madam president, in the past week, we've had a lot of "today" issues. as a matter of fact, there have been in the last week new developments globally relating to our national security, the defense of the united states, and the importance of our military in a way that is pretty dramatic. so i'd like to list some of these. this is literally in the last seven days. today secretary announced that -- today secretary carter announced that from iraq, where

he is right now, the u.s. will be deploying another 560 troops in our fight against isis. a lot of us support additional troops. secretary announced that. on friday, at the nato summit, president obama announced the u.s. will be deploying 1,000 troops, u.s. troops, in a separate brigade headquarters to poland, as part of an effort by nato to strengthen its eastern flank against russian aggression. the president was actually quoted in the "financial times" extensively. he stated -- quote -- "this may be the most important moment for our trans-atlantic alliance since the end of the 0 cold war" and then he talked about all the different national security crises -- isis, the terrorist attacks in orlando and paris and brussels, conflicts from africa to syria, russia's aggression in

the ukraine. this is the president in "the financial times," right here. these are "today" issues. i always call them "today" issues. on saturday, north korea launched another submarine-based ballistic missile off the country's eastern coast. didn't go that far, but they're learning. you know, madam president, you and i were over there recently. they're learning. that's a continuing threat. then last wednesday before the president went to the nato summit, which by the way was a successful summit. i applaud the president, secretary carter for that summit. the president announced that he plans to leave 8,400 american troops in afghanistan, more than he originally planned to keep, to combat the taliban. again, a lot of us applauded that decision. could have been more, but certainly better than the trajectory he was going on. -- to go to zero. and during an armed services committee last week, former nato

ambassador nicholas burns, former supreme allied commander marine general james cones discussed a report -- jones discuss add report coauthored by the atlanta council, talking about the importance of nato building up our military forces, not only the eastern flank you about in the arctic, and area, as an alaska senator, i am very interested in, where the russians have dramatically, dramatically expanded their military footprint and exercises. over the weekend in "the wall street journal" it was reported that even after reaching the iran nuclear deal, iran continued trying to illegally procure nuclear equipment from germany. so we have the iranian threat, which definitely is not going away after the ill-gotten and misguided nuclear deal by the president. and tomorrow -- tomorrow morning there's going to be big news. there's expected to be a

tribunal ruling on what's going on in the south china sea. again, madam president, you and i were there recently in that region of the world, in singapore, for the slang gri la dialogue, to secretary carter's credit, admiral harris' credit, we had two carier battle groups out there recently, two. very important. so this is what happened in a week. this is what our military is facing in one week. so what did this body do? what did the united states senate do as it relates to actions in terms of our military in dealing with all these threats, in just one week? what did we do? led by the senate minority leader and my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, we filibustered spending for our troops. that's what the senate did.

we filibustered spending for our troops. that's right. we blocked funding for our military that's going to deal with all these issues. now, i know it was in the dead of the night, i think it took place around midnight. i'm sure some of my colleagues were hoping nobody saw it. but this is not like an anomaly, madam president. as a matter of fact, this was the fourth time that the minority leader has led my colleagues on the other side of the aisle into filibustering the defense appropriations bill that funds our troops and keeps our nation safe. let me threept. not once, not twice, not three times -- four times in the last year. this is the bill the minority leader likes to filibuster more than anything.

and this is despite the fact that when this bill came out of committee last year, out of the appropriations committee, it had huge bipartisan support. i think only three members of the committee voted against it. and this year it came out of the committee unanimously. so what does this bill do? we just talked about the threats that everybody agrees exist. i'll just cover a few of the highlights. first, and very importantly, it's actually consistent with the bipartisan budget agreement of 2015. so any discussion how it's not fitting what we agreed to, it is not true. it is consistent with that. readiness -- we all know we need readiness for our military. it funds $212 billion in terms of base, operation, maintenance accounts, training, enormously important. shipbuilding -- a significant

portion goes to shipbuilding, makes sure we have a strong navy. similarly with regard to aircraft procurement to have a strong air force. significant -- billions of dollars of funding for our air force. it even has for the first time funding for an icebreaker, which more and more of my colleagues in the congress are recognizing is critical to our national security. missile defense, with the growing threat from north korea, iran, there's significant funding for missile defense. national guard and reserve equipment account. madam secretary, you have been -- madam president, you have been a leader in the national guard and reserves. almost $1 billion for the national guard and reserve equipment account, which is lacking. and of course military pay. the defense appropriations bill fully funds an active duty end strength of $1.2 million and reserve component -- 1.2 million

members of the military and a reserve component end strength of 800,000. afunds a 1 -- and funds a 1.6% pay raise. that's some of the highlight hif the bill we need and some of the highlights of the bill that was filibustered in the wii hours of the evening on thurs shall -- in the wee hours of the evening on thursday night. you know this, our nation need this bivment our troops certainly need this bill. our allies need this bill. we've held hearings on the armed services committee. you remember when secretary kissinger came and testified, said the u.s. is has not face add more diverse and complex arave crises since the end of world war ii. even the president last week in "the financial times" stated "possibly the most important moment in terms of the trans-atlantic alignment since the cold war." you and i actually had the honor to go recently to see the new secretary of the army review the

troops, review the old guard. you and i probably represented the senate. we have a new secretary of the a.m., he's going to do a great job. the chief of staff of the a.m., general millly, he spoke at that. and you know what he said? he said one of the most important things the senate and the congress can do in the next five weeks was to make sure there's a budget. -- for the u.s. military, for the u.s. eamplet that's what he said. so he certainly laid out what he thought was important. as a matter of fact, serving together on the armed services committee, we hear this from every single general and admiral, including secretary carter. fund the troops. certainty. but the minority leader thinks it's fine to block funding for our troops. maybe he knows more than secretary carter. maybe he knows more been general

milley. and, unfortunately, he's made a habit oust doing this. -- out of doing this. my short time in the senate, one and a half years, this is the bill that the minority leader has decided to filibuster more than any other bill since i've been here -- four times. think about that. the american people -- i hoirp a watching-- --i hope you're watching. four nims a year the bill -- four times in a year the bill that gets picked on more than any other bill is the one that funds the troops in our national security, and it happened again in the wee hours of the night last week. so why does he do this? i have no earthly idea why he does this. if you asked americans back home in iowa in alaska, democrats, republicans, any state -- doesn't matter the party -- the

would say that -- the people would say that the national defense and funding our froops is probably the most -- troops is probably the most important thank we do. certainly one of the top one or two. but the minority leader last year said the defense appropriations bill was -- quote -- "a waste of time" and last week he put out a statement saying he need add commitment that this bill abide by the bipartisan budget deal. well, guess what? the bill does abide by the bipartisan budget deal. there's no one who's making that argument that is it doesn't. so i have no idea, i have no idea why he singles out funding for our brave men and women in uniform, thousands of whom, by the way, are serving overseas in combat -- yes, this combat -- right now. we're not going to fund them, though. we'll filibuster that. maybe he can come down here and explain it. but here's something else i really don't understand.

and i really don't understand this. why so many of my colleagues follow his lead on this. to filibuster funding for america's military, not once, not twice, not three times, but four times. why are my colleagues following his lead? i don't know why. but dwhie know -- but what i do know is that we should not be heading out on a two-month recess without voting again on funding our troops, without voting to fund our troops, especially given all the challenges that we just listed here. we know they're there. the president was talking about them. we talk about them. but we don't want to fund the troops? we owe it to the american people

and our troops to have a vote on this defense appropriations bill again. let me colleagues come down to the floor and explain why they're going to vote to filibuster this bill again, because when we bring it up again -- and i certainly hope we do this week -- if they vote to filibuster again, that'll be the fifth time inside of a year. wh, madam president, is bring back a long-standing tradition that used to exist in the senate, which was the bipartisan funding of our military. that's certainly what we're all focused on. that's what we thought we were going to do when we got the budget deal. that's what we thought we were going to do when we saw these big bipartisan numbers coming out of the appropriations committee. and yet every time we try to bring this bill to the floor, this year and last year, the minority leader filibusters it. the american people are watching. the american people are watching. you know, there was a political

article that talked about this recently. a defense analyst from the heritage foundation said -- quote -- "i think it's pretty disappointing, but sadly not surprising. there used to be a bipartisan consensus that defense was a priority, but sadly i think that consensus no longer exists. with the senate democrats stopping d.o.d. appropriations, the pentagon will have to wait until after the election for its budget, or maybe even in the next calendar year to get its budget because we -- not we -- my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are filibustering this bill. how does that help our troops? how does that help the national defense of the united states? somebody please come down here and explain this to me. i agree with this analyst where he said this was sad. i hope we'll bring this bill to the floor again and drop what

has been happening, which is playing politics with our troops and funding our military. madam president, i want to conclude by saying after the vietnam war, the democratic party gained a reputation as the antimilitary party of america. and they struggled for years to shed this reputation. now i don't think having any of america's major political parties being viewed as antimilitary is good for us as a nation. support for our military should never be a partisan issue, and i proudly serve with you and others on the armed services committee, on the veterans' affairs committee, and i know for a fact that my colleagues on those very bipartisan committees, democrats and republicans, support our troops, support national defense, support the military. and i know many of my colleagues in this body, many on the other

side of the aisle who have served with distinction in the military for decades and are strong supporters of our men and women in uniform. i've seen it. i've seen it my entire short time in the senate. but, madam president, four filibusters blocking funding for our troops inside of a year. it certainly makes one wonder what's going on with the leadership of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle when it comes to supporting our troops. i hope they come down and explain it this week. what we need to do this week is vote again on the defense appropriations bill and do the right thing. and we all know what the right thing is, and the american people nope what the right thing is. we need to fund our troops. we need to keep them safe. and we need to keep our country safe. i yield the floor.

mr. schumer: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from new york. mr. schumer: thank you, madam president. i'm here to speak on the koch brothers. but first i just wanted to say briefly to my good friend from alaska, instead of playing political games if he wants to pass a defense bill, we all know it has to be done in a bipartisan way. you don't just take a bill, throw it down and say take it or leave it. that's what happened last year. we worked in a bipartisan way p. defense spending got an increase. so let's stop all the rhetoric and politicizing this issue. let's work together and get it done. now i want to talk about the issue before us here, and that is the ammazing influence of the koch brothers, two people on what's going on in this country and particularly when it comes

to climate change. i want to thank both senator kaine who spoke before me and particularly senator whitehouse who has not only organized our speeches but has been the leader in our caucus on focusing on this issue, and it's getting good resonance with the american people. now, we have talked, we have failed to act on a number of issues in the last few weeks. zika, on funding the opioid crisis, on sensible gun safety measures, on a supreme court nominee, and lots of other judicial nominees. it's stunning how little we have done our job. but probably at the top of the list, which deserves attention is the congress has not done its job on climate change. why? why? it's so apparent. just look at any map of the globe. and senator kaine and senator whitehouse are exactly right about the reason.

far right groups dominated by the koch brothers, they hide where they send their money but they dominate it all. they and other deep-pocketed energy interests have funded campaign after campaign against action on climate change. we know that the n.r.a. has a stranglehold on gun reform. well, the koch brothers with a stranglehold on any legislation on climate change, at least as long as our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are in the majority in either house. one of the key strategies, how do they do this? lots of different ways. you've seen those ridiculous commercials. they're afraid to say who they are. they have these ads, lots of poor people, minorities. the koch brothers are hurting -- are helping. koch industries. then they have one little sentence. get rid of regulation, that's all they say. so they have lots of different mechanisms for hiding what they

believe, but profoundly influencing america. but one of the ways they've done that is to fund think tanks and academic institutions to deliberately cast out on the science of climate change in order to protect their own financial interests. the koch brothers earned their billions leaving the private oil, chemical and manufacturing conglomerate koch industries. in short they are the premier, the premier anti-environmental propollution duo of the 21st century and over the past two decades they have mastered a strategy meant to confuse the american people about climate change by funding think tanks -- quote, unquote -- university programs -- quote, unquote -- that adhere to their antiscience agenda. take the pher -- mercada center.

they should call it the koch center. it has received tens of millions in funding from the koch brothers, $300,000 at least from big oil. it should come as no surprise that the center publishes research that closely mirrors the ideology of the koch brothers and routinely advocates for policies that are in their business interests, especially climate change denial. they cloak their views in an academic guise, but if you just examine it, you know what's going on. mercada center funded by the koch brothers talks against climate change. you think that's objective? i don't. of let's look at some of the activities of the center. in 2001 they suggested global warming would be beneficial and would -- quote -- "stimulate

plant growth and make humans better off." these are the koch brothers. during the early years of george bush's presidency, w. bush, "the wall street journal" reported that 14 of the 23 regulations targeted for repeal by the administration were suggested by guess who? the nonpartisan, objective, nonfunded by the koch brothers, mercada center including roll back of e.p.a. pollution rules. in 2006 the mercad center attacked the bipartisan work to reduce tailpipe emissions. in 2007, mercadus was able to install staffers at the bush office of management and budget in charge of regulations. in 2009mercadus attacked the obama administration's plan to monitor greenhouse gas emissions. some might be thinking sho what. this is just a few academic

papers and policy recommendations. why does it matter? it matters because this private-sector funded research is being used to give the false impression there's a legitimate academic debate about climate change. and then that debate is used by colleagues as an excuse for no action. it's no different from how the tobacco industry funded research that minimized health dangers of smoking cigarettes, so they could turn around and argue there is no conclusive evidence that cigarettes are dangerous. no need to regulate us. millions of people died because that happened. and millions of people are getting ill, and many millions more will lose their jobs and we will lose our globe because of what the koch brothers are doing. we now know how deceptive and cynical their strategy was. well, that was the tobacco industry. it's happening today and it's having the same serious

consequences. 97% of climate scientists agree that climate change is happening. democrats know that climate change is happening and want to do something about it today. but congressional republicans, following their koch brother funders, holding studies by the mercatus center funded also by the koch brothers refused to being the a and even deny it exists. you know i'd say to the koch brothers, at least be honest. if you really believe what you say, why not come clean? why not put out a commercial that says koch brothers: we don't believe in climate change. koch industries: we don't believe that we should regulate the environment. put that on tv so when we're watching "morning joe" we don't have these glossy ads that give the exact opposite impression.

you know why? they know no one's going to believe them. they want to use their money as power, secret power. and one of the secret power ways they use that money is through institutions like the mercatus institute. before all of us can come together on climate change and do something significant -- it's not easy -- we have to start agreeing about how immediate and incredible the challenge is. and with things like the mercatus institute throwing sand in the gears that becomes more difficult not for a legitimate reason, but because special interest money cloaks its beliefs in academic centers that stall progress. anyone who participates in this should be ashamed of themselves. not just the koch brothers, but so many others who put out these studies, who take the money.

shame. future generations and our generation are going to pay the price. mr. president, i -- madam president, i yield the floor. mr. whitehouse: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. whitehouse: i understand that the majority leader will be coming to close out the senate shortly and then allow us who are speaking to continue after that. i see senator scott here, so let me yield to him. mr. scott: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from south carolina. mr. scott: thank you, madam president. madam president, i believe our nation is in desperate need of a family conversation. the american family as a whole needs to sit down, come to the same table and talk with our relatives -- that means each of us talking to each other --

about the challenges that we've seen in our nation over all of last week. a challenging week in america's history without any question. a challenging time period in americans all over this country, without any question. protests, riots, challenges that we haven't seen in a very long time. we stand here today, madam president, at a crossroads. our nation is experiencing turmoil we haven't seen in generations; decades since we've seen this type of turmoil all around the country. my heart breaks for all of us. this week on this floor i will give a series of speeches in hopes of illuminating some of the issues before us as well as

what i believe are essential steps toward closing both the wounds newly opened and others that actually never healed. in other words, madam president, there are wounds that have existed for more than a generation, and it's time for the american family to work together to heal some of these wounds. last friday, deep in the heart of texas, we saw both the best and the worst of humanity. only in america would you see police officers alongside protesters who were protesting police brutality. and in this scene, if you just take a step back and just picture, if you would, just for a moment, here's a scene of police officers protecting

professors who are protesting police brutality, and in this picture, we don't see tension or animosity. we see smiles. we see police officers working, taking pictures and making sure that everyone was having the appropriate time. and for some, even an enjoyable experience with law enforcement. but then the shots rang out, police turned very quickly to protect those protesters and protesters helped police identify where the shots were coming from. somehow at the exact same time, dallas came together, and at the

exact same time was torn apart in what appears to be one man's warped mind, retribution became his answer to frustration, and his hate left five police officers dead and seven other officers wounded. we continue to mourn for them and their families today, mr. president. we must not, we must not become a society where revenge is the rule of the day. our nation is dependent on the rule of law, and to enforce the law, we need honest, hardworking men and women to take up the shield, for the overwhelming majority of cops is a calling,

it's not a job. it's in the fashion of romans 13, a chapter that speaks very clearly about the fact that government officials wearing a sword can be ministers. in other words, sharing love and affection and appreciation for those that they guard and having the ability to provide punishment when necessary. we're talking about men and women who work for a very low wage all over the country who see their job as a calling, and so many of them, the vast, vast majority do it so well. law enforcement officers simply want to do two things, mr. president. protect and serve. we cannot allow the actions of a few to overwhelm the good of the

majority. to illustrate this, i want to share just a few stories so that we can put in frame, put in focus the sacrifice and the commitment that so many officers exhibit every single day throughout our nation. my first story, the story of a young lady named jillian smith, a young african-american female police officer from just west of dallas in arlington, texas. in december, 2010, officer smith responded to a domestic violence situation. she arrived and met an 11-year-old girl, beautiful girl, and her mother. both fearful, these -- i just want to stop for a moment here and make sure we get the frame. sheer comes an officer, officer smith, who shows up to make sure

that the folks who called them were safe. the people that called were an 11-year-old girl and her mother who were fearful that the mother's boyfriend would show up and do something dangerous, and dangerous he did do something incredibly brutal. officer smith, hearing gunfire, in an instant jumped on top of the body of the 11-year-old, and as the bullets rang out, she kept herself on top of that 11-year-old girl. the girlfriend's boyfriend would end up killing the mother and

then killing himself, but before he did so, he killed officer smith. but without a second thought, without a second thought, officer smith did what so many law enforcement officers do instinctively -- protect those who are exposed. officer jillian smith, a true american hero, gave her life, gave her life to protect the life of an 11-year-old girl she had never met before knocking on that door. you see, madam president, this story and other stories aren't unusual. they just want to serve and

protect. and we saw this same heroism last friday evening, as told by shatamia taylor. miss taylor was at the protest. she was there exercising her first constitutional right. and then the sniper started shooting. miss taylor came there with her four sons. she, for lack of a better word, freaked out. bullets flying. she ran to cover her one son. and before she knew it, according to her her account, her account of the situation, before she knew it, there was a cop who was covering her and her son. and then the next thing you knew, another cop at her feet, another cop towards her head. she in the midst of a sniper

shooting at cops found herself surrounded, covered by police officers. just doing their job, risking their life for this mother and her son. what a picture. the best of america, very clear. the sniper, the worst of america , just as clear. miss taylor made a very good point when discussing what happened. here's her quote. she said these are the people you call when you're in a

situation. what are we going to do if they stop policing? let me ask the question that miss taylor asked one more time. what are we going to do if they stop policing? who are you going to call? these are the stories that should give us faith in law enforcement. so while we certainly have issues that demand solutions, and i, too, have had some issues with law enforcement that i'm going to share in my next speech on wednesday. i will be giving three speeches. this is the first one. the next one i'll talk about some of the issues that so many folks have -- have experienced. i want to spend time on that, but this is a moment in time when we should stop the camera,

create a frame, let's focus on the fact that our law enforcement officers are true american heroes, period. when you're looking for a hero, sometimes you look for athletes, maybe not the best place, you look for entertainers, maybe not the best place. you look at congress, 9% approval rating, probably not the right place, but our men and women who put on a law enforcement uniform, these folks are real american heroes. and i'll tell you, in my state, south carolina, officers like greg alia gave his life last year in columbia, south carolina. officers like allen jacobs gave

his life in greenville, south carolina. and in charleston, joe madascolivic, who was killed by a man shooting through a door, body slumps over, and my mentor who i have spoken about for so long, john moniz's son, i call him a brother from another mother, was the first deputy on the scene who dragged the lifeless body of his friend, his colleague from that door, trying to get that body completely out of harm's way. you see, to me, as i said a few seconds ago, brian moniz and sheriff's deputies and police officers, those are our heroes,

and we should focus on that for a moment. we must come together. we must find solutions. we must get to a point where the american family, our family has a real conversation about the things that divide us, the differences of our experiences, but yet remain a single family with a single mission and make sure that every part of the american family feels valued. i'm starting tonight with our law enforcement. the part of the family that we depend on, as miss taylor so

perfectly stated. and if we do have this necessary , painful conversation as an american family, we can say with a new freshness god bless america. we can say with new focus to our american heroes god bless our law enforcement community. i will tell you i don't expect to give such a speech without having some folks respond positively and some even negatively, but this night, this day, knowing that tomorrow in

texas our current president, our former president and a number of folks throughout the state of texas will be together and a part of our family territory, celebrating the sacrifices, mourning the loss but doing something that needs to be done, and it is simply this, madam president. not coming as a democrat, not coming as a republican, not coming as a black american, not coming as a white american, not coming as an hispanic american, but coming to a family gathering for a family funeral, plural, which hopefully will start a family conversation that i will look forward to continuing on

wednesday. madam president, i thank you. mr. mcconnell: mr. president, before he leaves the floor, i just want to commend the senator from south carolina for an extraordinary speech, and i look forward to hearing the -- the two subsequent speeches the senator from south carolina is going to make on this subject. no one better expresses in stronger, more persuasive terms what needs to be said in the wake of these tragedies than the senator from south carolina. i want to congratulate him on his outstanding remarks. madam president, i ask unanimous consent the senate be in a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak therein for up to ten minutes

each. the presiding officer: the majority leader. without objection. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to the consideration of s. res. 525 submitted earlier today. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senate resolution 525 designating august 16, 2016, as national airborne day. the presiding officer: is there objection to proceeding to the measure? without objection. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent the senate proceed to the consideration of s. conres. 44. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: senate concurrence resolution 44 recognizing the sun flower as the flower for military caregivers. the presiding officer: is there objection to proceeding to the measure? without objection. mr. mcconnell: i ask unanimous consent the concurrent resolution be agreed to the

preamble be agreed to and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mr. mcconnell: so, madam president, i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today, it adjourn till 10 a.m. tuesday, july 12. following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day. further, that following leader remarks, the senate resume consideration of the conference report to accompany s. 524 with the time until 2:30 p.m. equally divided between the two leaders ors their designees -- or their designees. 12:30 p.m. equally divided between the two leaders or their designees. finally, the senate recess from 12:30 until 2:15 to allow for the weekly conference meetings. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mr. mcconnell: so for the information of all senators we can now expect the first roll

call votes to occur after the conference lunches tomorrow. if there's no further business to come before the senate, i ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order following the remarks of senators merkley and white house. -- whitehouse. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. a senator: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. merkley: madam president, i've risen on several occasions to bring attention to the challenges confronting our we the people republic. our system of government which president abraham lincoln so eloquently described all those years ago as one of the people by the people and for the people. i've talked about the powerful special interests working to corrupt the nature of our republic thanks to the unchecked wealth flowing into our political system because of the supreme court's series of misguided decisions.

in buckley v. valeo, in citizens united and speech now.org. today i am honored to join my colleagues from minnesota and new hampshire and connecticut organized about i my colleague from rhode island who will be speaking in a moment to show how these same special interests are using their vast wealth and resources to sway national policies and public debate to benefit their interests at the expense of the american people and to turn in our government into one of, by and for a powerful special interest. there is no better example of what i mean than the debate surrounding one of the most critical issues facing our nation and the world today, climate change. senator daniel patrick moynihan once famously stated that everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not to his own facts.

well, manmade climate change is a fact. scientists, universities, government agencies across the world have all said that manmade climate change is real, that it endangers our planet, and that we need to address it quickly if there is any hope for the future. back in 2005, 11 science academies from around the world including brazil, italy, japan and russia signed a joint letter stating that there is now strong evidence that significant global warping is occurring and that it is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities. five years later the pentagon stated very directly -- quote -- "the danger from climate change is real, it is injure sent -- urgent, it is severe." fast forward five more years to 2015 and the american association of the advancement of science warned that -- quote -- "we face risks of abrupt,

unpredictable and potentially irreversible changes with potentially massively disruptive consequences to societ societied ecosystems." but the fact is we don't really need to turn to our scientists or to studies to know that climate change is real. we simply have to look at the world around us. we can see and feel it for ourselves. we saw it in 2014 when 2014 became the hottest year on record, but then we saw it in 2015 when 2015 became the hottest year on record. we see it as our forests come under assault from longer fire seasons and insect infestations because the pine beetles are not killed by cold enough winters. we see it in our waters, our loss of snow pack as fishermen

fish in ever smaller and warmer steams for trout and salmon and our farmers face less water for irrigation. we see it in the oceans, oceans that are 30% more acidic today than they were before we started burning coal at the dawn of the industrial revolution. that is acidic ocean is endangering our sea life, killing coral and causing real challenge for our shellfish. we see it in the droughts that hurt our farms and the increasing powerful storms that regularly devastate communities and businesses and people's lives. so why with all of this proof from the scientific community, with all of the proof from the facts directly before our eyes to such strong opposition -- that such strong opposition remain to the effects of climate change. we know the answer. it's because a powerful moneyed

interest has spun a web of deceit. working for years and continuing to work to undermine mainstream scientific research and deceive the american people about the dangers and causes of climate change. these members are part of a special interest that has made their fortunes from fossil fuels. if they acknowledge the realities of climate change, they would suggest that their industry would have to dramatically change and dramatically change in a very short period of time. in fact, according to conventional science, we have to keep 80% of fossil fuels in the ground if we are to have any hope of keeping carbon emissions within a range that does not trigger catastrophic, catastrophic consequences. that's why in the minds of this

industry it's better to lie to the american people than to risk their businesses and their fortunes. now, we've seen this movie before when the tobacco industry lied to the american people for decades to discredit the emerging science, the emerging evidence that tobacco was killing millions of americans. and now the fossil industrial complex is lying to the american people, but this time it's not just the health of americans at risk. it's the health of the entire planet. the union of concerned scientists published a report last summer which showed that for decades the fossil industrial complex knownly worked to deceive the american public about the realities and risks of climate change. one of the main ways they do this is by funding third-party organizations, funding think

tanks, funding advocacy groups to produce counterclimate research, make people question which facts and information they can trust. we know that this is happening because various studies have revealed incredible level of for nation between different groups and researchers who already receive corporate funding and who all work off the same script. justin ferrell, a sociologist at yale university offered a study last november which examined 20 years worth of articles and policy papers and transcripts from 4500 individuals associated with 164 different groups known to be skeptical of climate change science. comparing the work of those who had received this special interest corporate funding and those that had not, he found a clear effort among the corporate groups that cast doubt on the idea that greater amounts of manmade carbon dioxide endanger

our planet. talking about his study, ferrell said that -- quote -- "this countermovement produced messages aimed at the very least of creating ideological polarization through political sizized tactics and scientific census -- scientific findings of their own." we know these groups are backed by special interests. all we have to do is follow the money. that's how we know, for example, that between 1998 and 2015 exxonmobil donated at least $30 million to groups and organizations whose main purpose was to spread misleading information about climate change. and it was discovered in paperwork connected to its bankruptcy between 2014 and 2015 alone that peabody energy funnel -- funded at leas least -- throh

organizations involved in attacking climate science and clean energy policies. but as much as thes for till fuel companies have contributed to these efforts over the years, the titles of the mastermind, the kingpin of climate science denial, those titles rest with charles and david koch. these oil and coal bearing brothers whose estimated $830 billion fortune comes from oil refineries and coal reserves in texas, alaska, minnesota and elsewhere who control over -- roughly 4,000 miles of pipeline, these are the same business men who have pledged that they and their network of contributors will spend the better part of a billion dollars by the time the polls close on november 8 to try to influence the outcome of this year's presidential and

congressional elections. since 1997 the koch brothers have directly funneled more than 88 million to think tanks and trade associations and advocacy groups and foundations, academic and legal programs which deny the existence of clip mat change -- climate change. according to a 2013 study from drexel university, they're effective at getting their friends to give money as well. the studies show that most of the other largest contributors, the anticlimate science movement were associated with the koch brothers. the foundation run by the devos family or art pope, a retail magnet from north carolina, a regular part of the koch brothers donor network. that same drexel study also shows as a public opinion about climate change has shifted in recent years, the sources of funding for many of these organizations has become untraceable. on paper, for instance, koch affiliated foundations have

pulled back significantly on publicly visible funding for organizations that deny climate change. it just happens that funding from other sources, like donors trust, a donor directed foundation where funders cannot be traced has risen dramatically at the same time. the traceable funding of this network of deceit has decreased and the untraceable funding has increased. according to its website, donors trust specializes in being untraceable -- quote -- "our trust is for those who wish to keep your charitable giving private, especially gifts funding sensitive or don't controversial issues. know that your contributions to your donor trust account that have -- have to be reported to the i.r.s. will not become public information." in 2003, only about 3% of the

denial movement came from donors trust. but by 2010 as the drexel study shows the foundation responsible for providing a quarter of all traceable foundation funding used by organizations engaged in promoting systemic denial of climate change. so the source says the denial movement are being laundered so the american people do not have a direct vision of those responsible. but we know from all this evidence who is responsible. could it just be coincidence at the same time that the koch brothers reduced their traceable donations to climate-denying groups, climate science denying groups that the amount of untraceable amount of money decreases dramatically? yes, i suppose it's possible but it would be a very large coincidence. so we know that the koch brothers have been prolific

contributors to the climate change movement over the years and continue to contribute to large organizations like donors trust. but what is the result of all this? what has been the return on their investment? we have seen report after report from groups like the koch founded and koch funded cato institute with titles like -- quote -- "apocalypse not: science, economics and environmentalism." climate of fear: why we shouldn't worry about global warming. we know a grant helped fund a nonpier-reviewed study which -- nonpeer reviewed study which claims climate change doesn't affect polar bears. i do a number of it town halls, 36 a year in oregon, approaching

300 town halls since i was elected to office. many of these are in rural areas where people get a lot of their information, well, to put it simply, from web sources and e-mails and lists that are often directly driven through a right-wing propaganda machine. these are the types of things that the koch brothers try to spread in order to undermine what is happening before our very eyes. and when i talk to my rural town halls about the challenge, i say you know what? climate change is impacting you all most of all. it's attacking our forests and our fishing. it's attacking our farming. and i go through the evidence on the ground in the state of oregon, and people start shaking their head. yes, they're aware of the pine mill, they heard about the oyster industry in trouble because of the increasing acidity of the pacific ocean.

they're aware of how the klamath p basin has suffered the three worst ever droughts in a 15 year period because the snowpack in the cascade changed so much in the past few decades reducing the amount of irrigation water flowing to the region and the amount of rain falling in the region. they're aware of these things. then they understand it, and then they see the reality. and then there's a glimmer of understanding that the messages put out by this vast web of denial is false and there on the front line rural america is on the front lynn. reports and -- front line. reports and studies funded by the koch brothers muddy the water of scientific fact, making it much harder for the average person to sort through and sift through the information that's available and know what the real story is. where we see the koch brothers

and friends money paying off the most is the influence they're able to manifest here in washington, d.c. as we work to take on this challenge, the equivalent of approaching meteor bent on destroying a good portion of the planet, as we work to take it on, they work to make sure we don't take it on. undermining the legislation that's being put forward to incentivize a rapid transition from a fossil fuel economy to a renewable energy economy. obviously an emphasis of pivoting from fossil fuels to renewable energy would undermine the value of the koch brothers holdings. it would undermine the value of the fossil industrial complex. and so they lie to the american people.

we see one substantial strategy after another. we know that the summer that cap and trade was being debated in 2009 and climate change started to become a focus of tea party rallies that a lot of that was organized by americans for prosperity, yet again a koch-founded and koch-funded organization. the issue seeped into town halls and public forums. what some members of the audience planted at various events to raise the issue. anti-cap and trade members of congress regularly quoted from a study by the heritage foundation, another koch-funded organization. they predicted the bill would add thousands of dollars to americans' energy bills and lead to devastating unemployment, claims thoroughly debunked by

the congressional budget office. but in the koch brothers' climate denier fossil industrial complex world, facts don't matter. that our planet is at risk doesn't matter. they even used piles of letters sent to members of congress that falsely claimed to come from actual constituents. they worked to build pressure from outside groups and eventually the koch brothers and their allies won. the cap and trade bill never came up for a vote here in the senate, even though it had passed the house. that was a type of return on investment the koch brothers sought. they were able to use their money and their resources to stop legislation that could have helped the american people and the world begin to reverse course on the tragic direction we are headed. madam president, that is not a

government of the people, by the people, and for the people. that is a government against the people. that is instead a government of, by, and for a powerful special interest. every one of us mere has a public responsibility to act on behalf of our nation's national interests. we are stewards of the public trust. we're responsible for helping guide the united states and helping the united states guide the entire community of nations into a future of greater well-being. to do that, we must take back our republic from the special interests like the koch brothers who are determined to corrupt our public bodies and our public debates for their own greedy self-interest. we must work together to restore the "we the people" government

our founding fathers envisioned. so i'm proud to come here to the floor to join my colleagues from rhode island and minnesota and new hampshire and connecticut, and i particularly appreciate my colleague from rhode island for organizing this series of speeches to expose the special interests behind the anticlimate science forces and ensure as president lincoln so eloquently declared on that hallowed field of gettysburg, government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from this earth. thank you, madam president. mr. whitehouse: madam president? the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. whitehouse: madam president, i will be the final speaker tonight, and the

point that i want to make is that when we spend this time talking about the web of denial that sabotages america's ability to respond to the climate crisis, we don't just use this word rhetorically. you can go into the academic research and see the web depicted in peer-reviewed scientific research. you can see the means by which it operates, the climate change denial machine in academic research. you can hear about the think tanks that are used in this web of denying. constantine busalis of trinity

college and dr. travis cohen of university of exeter tkpeupbd more than 16 -- examined more than 16,000 tkoupls published between 1938 and 2013 by these 19 conservative think tanks. their study demonstrated that in spite of the broken global heat records over the last decade, rising sea levels and the accelerated melting of our polar ice sheets, these 19 conservative think tanks actually increased their attacks on climate science in recent years. these 19 think tanks, the authors tell us -- and i quote them here -- "provide a multitude of services -- services to the cause of climate change skepticism." end quote. these include offering material support and lending credibility to contrarian scientists, sponsoring pseudo scientific climate change conferences,

directly communicating contrarian viewpoints to politicians which is how we get infected with that nonsense here. and disseminating skeptic viewpoints through a lackadaisical media that can be talked into believing them. the american enterprise institute, cato institute, center for global, competitive enterprise institute, committee for constructive tomorrow, citizens for a sound economy, frazier institute, foundation for economics in the environment, heartland institute classic with the poster with the billboard comparing climate scientists to the unabomberer. the heritage foundation, hudson institute, manhattan institute, george c. marshall institute. takes a lot of nerve to steal that man's name. national center for policy analysis, national center for

public policy research, pacific policy research, research foundation, science and public policy institute. they're there to provide a multitude of services to the cause of climate change skepticism. well, they're not alone. harvard professor naomi oresky and her colleague from nasa, no fool, examined the long history of corporate-financed public relations efforts designed to sow confusion and skepticism about scientific research on topics like tobacco, acid rain, the ozone hole and climate change. these are the schemes of the merchants of doubt. the title of their book and also of the recent documentary film which, by the way, is playing in the capitol tonight birthday and oreskes is actually here. there is justin farrow of yale

university. he describes the web -- this is his diagram of the web of denial as a complex network of think tanks, foundations, public relations firms, trade association and other groups that are -- and i quote him herd promoting skepticism and doubt about scientific consensus on climate change." end quote. farrow describes the function of the network as, one, the production of a contrarian discourse. and, two, to create ideological polarization around climate change. that's right. the polarization that we see in this building and in this chamber on this issue is a product created by this web of corporate-funded climate denial front groups. congressional inaction is the sabotage their product has wrought in our democracy.

here's how dr. farrell describes it. well-funded and well-organized contrarian campaigns are especially important for spreading skepticism or denial where scientific consensus exists. such as in the present case of global warming or in historical contrarian efforts to create doubt about the link between smoking and cancer." these researchers and many more help map out an intricate, interconnected web of denial which encompasses over 100 organizations including trade associations, conservative think tanks, foundations, public relations firms, and plain old phony polluter front groups. each of the front groups my colleagues and i will be calling out this week appear somewhere in the research of these individuals, and i thank them.

now there are also groups at work exposing the web of denial. one group is american bridge 21st century founded by david brock which launched real kochfacts.com to highlight the truth about the koch agenda and what it means for working families and states around the country. american bridge last month reported on the 48 groups that signed a letter attack being the u.s. virgin islands attorney general for serving a subpoena on the koch-funded competitive enterprise institute. according to real koch facts, 43 of the groups that signed on the letter defending climate change denial are koch linked, and 28 of the organizations are either koch front groups or the beneficiaries of regular koch funding, groups like the james madison institute, the john locke foundation and the

american legislative council which we will talk of tomorrow. the kochs blow their dog whistle and the hounds appear. american bridge exposed it. then there is pro-publica, a group founded by paul steiger, an independent nonprofit newsroom that promotes investigative in the public interest. their reporting helped shed light on some of the ways that the dark money flows through the koch brothers networks and into politics, providing the elections back stop to this web of denial. climate nexus is an organization dedicated to highlighting the wide ranging impacts of climate change and clean energy in the united states. they recently released an opinion, an analysis, i should say, of 20 years of "the wall street journal"'s editorial opinion on climate change. they found -- quote -- "a consistent pattern that overwhelmingly ignores the

science, champions doubt and denial of both the science and effectiveness of action and leaves readers misinformed about the consensus of science and of the risks of the threat. among their findings, of 201 "wall street journal" editorials relating to climate signs or policy dating back to 1987, 201, mind you, not explicitly acknowledges the fossil fuels cause climate change. of 122 columns published since 1997, just four accept the fact that fossil fuels cause climate change or endorse any policy to reduce emissions, and between april, 2015, and may, 2016, as global heat records were falling every month, the journal published 100 climate-related op-eds, columns and editorials, of which 96 failed to acknowledge the link between

human activity and climate change. their report points out "the wall street journal" consistently highlights voices of those with vested interests in fossil fuels, presenting only the dismissive side of the climate discussion and calls this a failure of journalist responsibility. into this failure of journalistic responsibility by "the wall street journal" editorial page has stepped the partnership for responsible growth, which is running a 12-part ad series in "the wall street journal" right on the editorial page to bring accurate mainstream climate science to the readers of this publication's opinion page. the first one reads exxon's c.e.o. says fossil fuels are raising temperatures and sea levels. oxon's c.e.o. -- exxon's c.e.o. says that. why won't "the wall street journal"? their second one said carbon dioxide traps heat on earth. if we can agree on that, we can

have a conversation. the third says the earth has warmed. and we did it. the fourth says what goes up doesn't come down. co2 emissions stay in the atmosphere for centuries. the fifth says your assets are at risk. beware the carbon bubble. climate change poses huge financial risks to investors. the free market solution to climate change was at seven and the free market solution to climate change is, by the way, and i will quote a, a market-driven policy that conservatives and liberals can both embrace because it promotes growth, creates jobs and makes u.s. companies more competitive.

what it is is a revenue-neutral carbon fee. the one after that, the pentagon sees climate change as a serious national security threat, and they do. it turns up in the quadrennial defense reviews, it turns up in the speeches by the leaders of the different armed services, it turns up in our intelligence reports. if the pentagon sees climate change as a serious national security threat, shouldn't you? and their most recent one is this -- like any problem, climate change has solutions. these straightforward, broadly accepted statements may be the first honest words about climate change on "the wall street journal" editorial page, so thank you to the partnership for getting them there. the union of concerned scientists is another group working to expose this web of denial. it has as its mission to put

rigorous independent science to work to solve our planet's most pressing problems. the union of concerned scientists recently signed a letter with 30 other leading national scientific organizations telling us in no uncertain terms, and i quote, climate change is occurring and rigorous scientific research concludes that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver. for over a decade, the union of concerned scientists has been working to defend science and expose misinformation and manufactured uncertainty. they published articles on how exxonmobil used the big tobacco denial playbook to promote misinformation and doubt on climate science. union concerned scientists also were the ones who recently published information about how peabody coal fund money into

denial groups from 2014-2015, the fossil fuel industry feeding the web. greenpeace does great work to expose the web of denial. last december, actually, greenpeace u.k. staff posed as consultants for fossil fuel companies and pretending to work for fossil fuel companies, they approached climate skeptic professors. both of the professors agreed to conceal the sources of the funding they were offered and to write reports in support of fossil fuel use in developing countries and the benefits of carbon dioxide. you wonder why i call them payrolled scientists. greenpeace's work has also exposed donors' trust role as a conduit with financial donations between fossil fuel companies and the web of climate denial

organizations and other u.s. fossil fuel funding used to hire scientists for hearings, reports and other public communications on climate change. greenpeace was the group that released the documents that showed that one of those hired payroll scientists had accepted over $1.2 million from fossil fuel interests, including the charles g. koch foundation but didn't report those sources of its funding. exxon's secrets is another greenpeace project which visually explains the network, the web of organizations, lobbyists and paid for scientists that are part of this web of denial. the climate investigation center founded in 2014 by kurt davies is another organization that monitors this web of denial. corporations, front groups, trade associations, individuals that delay or deny the implementation of sound, legislative solutions to climate change.

davies is no stranger to the web of denial. he launched two programs at greenpeace. exxon's secrets that i just mentioned and polluter watch which tracks and calls out organizations and individuals funded by fossil fuel interests to sow doubt about climate change and sabotage reasonable climate policies. i thank all of these investigative groups for their work. there are also authors who are picking apart the web of denial. the executive director of climate nexus is jeff nesbith. jeff is the former director of legislative and public affairs at the national science foundation. and a communications official at the white house during the administration of president george h.w. bush. he recently published an investigative book titled "poison tea" that examines, as the title implies, how big oil

and big tobacco invented the tea party and captured the g.o.p. as a consultant for the koch brothers front group, citizens for a sound economy, nesbit was there in the room when citizens for a sound economy, to quote him, proposed an unholy alliance -- end quote. here's how he describes it. philip morris money so mingled with koch meltdown -- commingled with koch money to create antitax front groups in a handful of states that would battle any tax that moved. it would make no difference what kind of tax. the front groups could battle secret, excise taxes in the northeast and refined oil fees at the coasts. any tax for any purpose was bad, and these front groups would tackle them all, with philip morris and the kochs behind them. nesbit's book shines a spotlight on how rich think.

the former president of the charles g. koch charitable foundation, together with charles koch, and i quote here, forged a partnership and created the framework for successful action in the political realm, with this -- this web of denial at the heart of that framework. in her recent book, "dark money, " jane mayer describes in depth the system by which fossil fuel interests use their wealth to sabotage the american political process. first she describes they pay intellectuals and universities who come up with ideas friendly to the fossil fuel industry. then they pay think tanks to transform these ideas into -- quote -- marketable policies. as an environmental lawyer who mayer quotes in a ten article for the new yorker explained, here's the quote, you take corporate money and give it to a

neutral sounding think tank, which hires people with pedigrees and academic degrees who put out credible-seeming studies. but they all coincide perfectly with the economic interests of their funders -- end quote. ms. mayer describes this system as creating what she calls the think tank as disguised political weapon. and then from there they go on to phony grassroots organizations to propagate the message. it's a big web, this web of denial. steve coll is the dean of the columbia university graduate school of journalism. he wrote the prize-winning investigative book "private empire, exxonmobil and american power." he reports lee raymond, chief

executive of the company from 1993-2005 saying about exxon i'm not a u.s. company, and i don't make decisions based on what's good for the u.s. gee, we hadn't noticed. tellingly, listen to coll describe the influence environment of this web of denial and the fossil fuel industry role in it. this is a quote from his book. this increasingly was the underlying structure of washington policy debates. a kaleidoscope of overlapping and competing influence campaigns. some open, some conducted by front organizations, and some entirely clandestine. strategists created layers of disguise, subtlety and subterfuge. corporate funded -- quote -- grassroots -- end quote,

programs, and purposes-built think tanks as fingerprint free as possible. in such an opaque and untrustworthy atmosphere, the ultimate advantage lay with any lobbyist whose goal was to manufacture confusion and perpetuate controversy. on climate, this happened to be the oil industry's position. exxonmobil, coll reports, through its public affairs chief, and i quote here, directed a network of allies and grantees in washington who created havoc in the climate science debate. which brings us to inside climate's new series, "exxon, the road not taken," named a finalist for a 2016 pulitzer prize. journalist neela danerjee, john

cushman and david and list song revealed what they knew about climate change, including its own research with the falsehood exxon used to sell to the public, usually through this web of denial. the series had surely honored the organize's purpose to cover the issues that aren't being covered by the mainstream. on the internet "time" magazine recognized desmog blog which i have mentioned as one of the best blogs of 2011 describing it in these terms. time magazine said this. fossil fuel companies have spent millions funding antiglobal warming think tanks purposely creating a climate of doubt around the science. desmog blog is the antidote to

the obfuscation. in addition to its regular posts pie lighting egregious examples of climate denial, desmog blog also maintains a comprehensive disinformation research database to expose this web of denial. madam president, the scholar shm of all these academic, all these organizations and all these authors, the detectives who are exposing the web of denial has shined a bright light into its dark corners and illuminated its concerted effort to dupe the american public and sabotage climate action in america, all to protect the fossil fuel industry that funds it. it's sickening but it's big. the denial web is designed to be big and sophisticated enough that when you see its many parts, you're fooled into

thinking it's not all the same beast, but it is. like the mythological hydra, many beasts -- sorry, many heads, same beast. professor brulle likens what he calls the climate countermovement to a stage production. here's how professor brulle describes it. like a play on broadway the countermovement has stars in the spotlight often prominent contrarian scientists or conservative politicians, but behind the stars is an organizational structure of directors, script writers, and producers in the form of conservative foundations. if you want to understand what's driving this movement, he says, you have to look at what's going

on behind the scenes. the web of denial is what is behind the scenes. the web is so big because it has so much to protect. remember, the international monetary fund is pegged the effective subsidy to the fossil fuel industry every year just in the united states at nearly $700 billion. and if you don't like that number, you can do some math yourself. just multiply the millions of tons of industry carbon emissions by the government's own social cost of carbon. you still get to a huge, huge subsidy. the web is complex. it is organized into multiple levels. first it cooks up polluter friendly nonsense among academics that it funds in dozens of universities. for its money the web gets a also scholarly -- a little

academic polish on its propaganda. then all fat product goes to the think tanks that are the disguised political weapons described by dark money author jane mayer to be turned into policy. then the astroturf organizations get cranked up to retail that polluter friendly policy. but let me wrap up with this observation. one thing needs to be absolutely clear about this web of denial. truth is not its object. truth is actually its adversary. the web has to mislead to be effective. it has to do what a koch brothers' operative described as the goal when this whole web was being developed.

here is what the koch operative said. and i quote. it would be necessary to use ambiguous and misleading names, obscure the true agenda, and conceal the means of control. ambiguous and misleading names and ob secured true agenda -- obscured true agenda and concealed means of control that lead back to the fossil fuel industry. welcome to the web of denial. and thank you to those who are working to expose it. it is a filthy thing in our democracy. our yield the floor. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the senate stands adjourned until 10 a.m. tomorrow.

>> also, this week, we expect a measure extending faa funding through september 30th. this is had the last week the senate will be in session before they take time off for the political season and the summer. >> tom -- tonight on the communicators, kathleen abernathy, talks about 5g and what it means for the u.s. she

will discuss why it is needed for the internet of things, self-driving cars and the expansion of virtually reality. she is joined by howard buscar. >> the goal is to say we have the spectrum, the vision thing going about where we want to go with wireless, and we will push ahead to insure the u.s. maintains its global leadership in the wireless arena. that is terrific for our country and i would argue it is essential. this is an area where there are tremendous benefits from a technological and jobs perspective. >> watch the "the communicators" tonight at 8 eastern on c-span2. loretta lynch heads to capitol hill tomorrow and in a statement fraument bob gadlat members

suspect to question her about what the gop as the polytic of the state department. our road to the white house coverage continues on thursday and friday as republicans determine the rules for next week's convention in cleveland. live coverage on c-span, the c-span radio app, and cspan.org. coming up next, a portion of today's washington journal and the talk on how the findings found by the fbi last week on hillary clinton's servers could impact the information available to the public. >> we are here to talk about the issue of transparency and government and a lot of is coming to play with the situation of hillary clinton's e-mail server. what did we learn from that and government information and how transparent it is? >> it has been an unusual year

in the public discussion of what went on in hillary's e-mail. it is not typical the freedom of information act or record management is such a huge issue it is part of the public debate. we learned there are serious failures on secretary clinton's part to manage the information the way it is intended to be managed. there is a variety of investigations and overnight and interests in correcting the situation, making sure it doesn't happen again and obviously a great deal of political interest in sorting out who is at fault. >> one of the phrases we heard coming out of this was the freedom of information act. what is that? >> the freedom of information act is the law that gives anyone, not just americans, but anyone in the world, the right and ability to request documents from the government and then the government is obliged to hand over the documents. it gaves a great deal of power

to requester to say i would like the calendar dockms and if the government doesn't turn it over we have a right to request it and we can sue even. and judges can compel the government to release information. that is responsible for a much more empowered press and lots of things we know are only because people are looking out and requesting documents so they can be analyzed. >> does it matter where the document lives? does it have to be on a government server or does it matter where it lives to gain access to information? >> that was a question considered by the courts over the last week or so it was decided even if the information from a public official is managed in a private account the freedom of information act should still apply. that means if you are trying to keep it secret or manage it on your own personal server it doesn't matter. the government has an obligation

to release records. >> one thing you wrote, this was from the fbi recommendations, you wrote today's recommendation from the fbi reinforce trying to avoid the freedom information act is wrong but not illegal and weakens up holding public access. can you expand? >> sure. when the fbi announced over last week they are not announcing a prosecution that offends people because they have a sense secretary clinton was trying to hide something. that is probably right. she probably setup an e-mail server to prevent public access to her records or congressional oversight of what she was doing. the problem is that is not illegal and i am not sure it is possible to make it illegal. it is normal to setup a meeting with someone and saying let's have a personal conversation and take this off e-mail because there is a greater sense of discretion or personal interaction.

sometimes people do that because they don't want a record of what they have said. and that is not really an enforceable discussion. that is very difficult to get into -- it happens in some situations but it is difficult to regulate speech in a way that says this must be written in a way the records can be requested. that is really what we are getting at. second clint demonstrates it is difficult to require interaction to happen in a they are subject to overnight. >> would would have to be done to make the changes? does it need to be changed in the rules of government or elsewhere? >> the way it currently works, the term illegal is difficult to use. they are supposed to do business in a way that is professionally managed and the records are saved appropriately and managed

in a way they are preserved. the problem is that over the last couple decades, electronic records have expanded so dramatically, almost every government agency does a terrible job of this. if you said it is illegal if your records are not properly saved everyone is breaking the law and that doesn't help the situation. that is not getting into the legal question at stake in the fbi investigation which was about the handling of classified information and so when you talk about classified information there is obviously a much higher standard about how information is managed. >> john wonderlich to talk about transparency and if you want to ask questions the call-in numbers are on the screen. our first call for you comes from kay, kay is in missouri on our independent line. thanks for calling, kay. go ahead. >> caller: i don't have any

confidence in the system. >> host: would you share that sentiment? >> guest: i think a lot of americans share that sentiment. it has been reinforced in polling that americans have a decreasing sense of trust in their government, and that that is a problem that has been getting worse. it certainly applies to congress, to how our government is managed and it is happening in other governments as well. >> host: from the democrats line, larry. >> caller: i think people don't trust the government because we let 9/11 happen. it was a full on investment and the proof is in iraq.

>> host: june from edinburg, virginia. republican line. >> caller: hi, thank you for taking my call. what i want to say is when it comes to transparency in government, this is the least transparent government we have had in all the years i can think back. i am an old person so i know. but i tell you what. i think the political correctness is what keeps the transparency the way it is. it needs to change and that is the reason i support donald trump. i really think there will be a change. he has a big mouth and i think a big mouth that stands up and says what he thinks. they think he is a loose cannon but i think he is a smart cookie. >> guest: on the question of -- i would assume we are talking about the obama administration

being the most transparent and that is something that is up for debate and is hotly debated. the obama administration has been far more transparent in many important wap ways and in some ways less transparent. one thing that is clear about the obama administration is they have repeatedly committed to open this and made it a part of the platform at home and around the world trying to push the idea of stronger governments and accountability that includes transparen transparency. that is something despite points of criticism we should not take for granted. >> host: give an example of how the left has been far more transparent and how far less? >> guest: on far more transparently the obama administration, the first few laws passed dealing with the financial crisis and stimulus, all of the lobbying that

happened to implement dodd-frank and the stimulus had to be disclosed on agency web sites. so as those important laws were being implemented we had a strong window into the lobbying that was happening and influencing what the government was doing and that is an action they don't get enough credit for. on the far less transparent, i would say the question of drone strikes is a pretty dramatic question and that is one where the obama administration was secr secr secretive for years. we like to think as transparency being proportional to power and when a president gets access to a new kind of power it raises questions about how transparency is being wielded. >> host: who are the people within the administration responsible were making sure the information is ceased and becomes transparent?

>> guest: so, there are a lot of different ways information is managed. two important ways, one is when information is being preserved for the historical record the national archives, which is an independent agency, is responsible for setting regulations that say if it is an e-mail and you are a mid level official at the treasury it should be saved for a certain period of time unless it per tains to a certain decision. you can imagine how complicated that gets. but they are responsible for the regulations about retaining records. the freedom of information act, which someone requests a record through an official process, that goes to the freedom of information officer that is an employee of the agency, and they follow regulations and guidelines that are set by the department of justice. but information policy can be a tricky questions with something as large and complicated as the entire u.s. government. >> host: doug from oklahoma,

democrats line, you are on. >> caller: question about the fbi director's testimony about the e-mail. i would like to ask you to comment about his decision on that and also -- well it may not be a transparency question but i think if hillary clinton was -- when she said she was allowed, i think she was referring to at that time the former secretary of the state did the same thing and one of them has a book about it talking about colin powell and i wondered if you had any comments. >> guest: on the second part, hillary clinton's claim she was allowed to use e-mail i don't think that was a defense that

was offered in good faith. she was allowed in the sense no one stopped her but i don't think it was a think that was permitted or encouraged by any means. it is not one thing she sought out clearance or permission to do so i don't think that defense was a very strong one at all. and on the question of comey's testimony and the fbi's decision not to recommend prosecution there is a number of different layers to this which i think are complicated but one of them is when the fbi director says case history shows no one else, or few others, would prosecute. in my eyes that is correct. that is the tradition when you look at the statute and the which cases have chosen to be prosecuted the prosecutions are around cases where there is an additional layer of some sort of intent. secretary clinton didn't demonstrate -- the intent she demonstrated was to avoid oversight and that is different

than intending to leak secret or being a spy. in terms of the tradition i think the recommendation is accurate. in terms of its consequences, that is why we are concerned about the future of eversight and freedom of information act. >> host: from tallahassee, independent line, ms. mini. . >> caller: in reference to the fbi, he didn't exonerate her. what he said was in his traces of america, there is no statute of precedent to prosecute prose hillary clinton because no one has ever done what she did. so that is the reason he recommended no prosecution

because there is no history of it. and in the reference to transparency, i would like to know where she and obama were in reference to benghazi. i wanted it make another question in response to polling. i have been polled and the gentlemen said something about the questions and that is true. some of the questions i got were either and/or, black or white, and i didn't like either one of them so i said i didn't want to make any comments. >> host: got you. that was from the last segment. we appreciate it. >> guest: what i think is pasinating about the director's statement and congressional testimony is that was unusual. the fbi doesn't decline the prosecute and then have a press conference about their sense of someone's intentions. but that doesn't mean it is a terrible thing. part of the situation is that we are talking about a major

party's presumptive nominee for president who will be responsible for the department of justice which the fbi is part of. so there is a reason why the fbi needs to make sure it is understood why they made a recommendation. overnight is coming from a body that will eventually be overseen by the person -- assuming that secretary clinton were to win the presidency she will be responsible for the doj. this is one of the reasons i think the director made a point of going out publically and saying this is a professional decision managed by a team of people participating in good faith so we can have some faith in even application of justice. >> off of twitter, a viewer asks why do americans think they are entitled to classified information and do other countries allow it as a foll follow-

follow-up? >> guest: there is a given and take about whether classified information should be disclosed and for how long it should be classified. i think the tug of war over that question is entirely appropriate because without public pressure on secrecy and classification, public officials would just classify anything they would like to keep secret. that is why we have a rules and law-based process for determining whether things should be classified and reviewing that decision. and as long as we are not releasing secrets, and we don't have a problem of freedom of information request resulting in secrets that become public and harm people. that is not where harmful leaks have come from. i think one solid ground defending the idea there are lawful fights over secrecy. >> our text within the administration open for a freedom of information? text exchanged between members? >> within the administration, yes. now in practice, how often that

is able to be tracked down i am not sure. but if it is an official record and being used in correspondence in the administration, yes, it is covered by the freedom of information act. members of congress are exempt and not covered at all. >> host: why is that different? >> congress declined to apply the freedom of information acts to themselves which is something that happens often in the states as well. in each of the 50 states, some of the legislatures have the state level of the law version applied to them and some states don't. that is an active question for debate is whether congress should have more of the freedom of information act applied to them and certainly it should at some level. it would be a great public policy question to determine what parts of congress could be better off with the law applied to them. >> host: no matter who is in control of the chamber they have all generally said they will

apply the foia to their bodies? >> guest: right. it is a law saying these cover laws at a certain level and congress is not covered in this. you can request it but you cannot sue. the law doesn't apply to the congress or the president which is understandable but there may be other ways. that is the limitations of the foia that congress and the president is excluded. >> host: dorothy from kansas, republican line. >> caller: thank you for taking my call. i have a question. if hillary lied four times and that is a felony how come she is not prosecuted and her husband lied a couple times and he wasn't prosecuted.

how can we trust these people if they were going to lie? if hillary clinton gets in it will be hillary, obama, and bill in the white house all over again; isn't that true? >> host: one of fbi's director comey's comments before congress and he watched the overnight hearing -- if you watch the oversith he hearing you can see him answer questions of he didn't see any evidence of her lying to them. that would be illegal if she died during the questions. it is frustrating when politicians lie to the public but making that illegal would probably cause an even greater problem because everyone would be trying to prosecute their enemies and that might cause more chaos than prevent. >> host: from maine, democrats line, helen, good morning. >> caller: good morning. my question is about the sun light foundation.

specifically, does your group look at so-called shadow government specifically regarding it contracts by the federal government with private business? it has been years since i was a federal worker but my experience with it was that it was boondoggle after boondoggle and a tremendous waste of taxpayer's money spent on incompetent private contractors who never seemed to be able to get things right. i am wondering if you can comment and perhaps it is better now and what impact this has on the current sense of trust among public officials regarding their -- >> guest: sure. i would say the failures are just as bad or worse in terms of the government contracting it. the healthcare website and electronic records were long,

expensive projects that largely failed until rescued. big massive failures. what is changing is a number of people have identified fixable problems with the contracting system. if you look at the u.s. digital service we are at 18-f and these are government-led groups of people trying to change the way the government buys technology and change the way the government building technology neither of which were a major source of pride in the past. we went to the moon so we should not have no pride but in term of procuring it it has been a terrible failure. i would encourage you to look at 18-f and the incredible changes. people are making it possible to have government contracts for a $500 project within it.

just changing how the system works and preventing the billion dollar, ten year failures that have characterized the government. >> "the communicators" is next with a look at 5g technology. then the annual aspen ideas festival hosts a discussion on the u.s. of capitol punishment and then later a look at efforts to address poverty in the u.s. >> host: former fcc commission kathleen abernathy is our guest and she is currently executive vice president of frontier communications. what is frontier? >> guest: it is a wireline base broadband company delivering voice, video, content and broadband services to 29 states across the u.s. many, many, rural and some not. >> host: what do you mean by pure play? >> guest: we have no wireless asset.