[inaudible] >> we are very supportive of the taylor forest act and i hope we will be able to enact into law one way or another in the very near future. >> thank you. do you have any on tears, whether it's senator flake still to fight back on the tariffs. >> the trade issue as all of you know -- >> the u.s. senate gaveling back in. we will show you the briefing later on. we take you live to th the senate floor here on c-span2. chieve the american dream. mr. heller: as a member of the senate banking, housing and urban affairs committee, i'll tell you this legislation is years in the making, and i do want to thank the chairman of the committee, chairman crapo, and my fellow colleagues that

are on the committee for their efforts to get us where we are today. for years the economy had been growing slowly after the great recession. like a truck with a bad transmission, it was moving but it wasn't going to go anywhere fast. and today everything has changed. the american economy has been primed. the engine has been started. through the work of the senate and this president, president trump, the gas pedal has been hit. our economy is finally going full speed ahead. just a few months ago we paftd historic -- passed historic tax cuts for nevada families and businesses. a typical family of four will roughly get a $2,200 tax cut. we lowered the individual rates across the board, doubled the standard deduction used by most nevadans allowing them to keep more of their paycheck. this bill included my efforts to double the child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000, further easing

the tax burden on working families. overall, these tax cuts accomplished my three major goals: creating more jobs, increasing wages, and making america more competitive around the world. i'm proud to have worked on these tax cuts because congress can do more, and, mr. president, that is why we are here today. the economic growth, regulatory relief, and consumer protection act we are debating is the next major step we must take to shift our economy into another gear. it tailors financial regulations to protect consumers and help nevadans who have more access to financial resources, more access to economic opportunities. i will give nevadans -- it will give nevadans more choices when it comes to finding a loan for a house, perhaps to buy a car to get to work, to start a business, and for that matter, even to grow their business. finally, this bill helps to ensure that lowell lenders can -- local lenders can grow

their services to every community in nevada. this is the oil in the economic engine. it keeps not only cities like has vegas and reno running but all companies -- all communities in nevada like mesquite, carson city and fallon. this includes many bipartisan proposals i fought for and i'm pleased that the legislation i worked with with senator menendez. in committee i offered an amendment based off the legislation i worked with with senator warner that required regulators who work for credit unions to public annual budgets and hold a public hearing on budget. it would increase public transparency and ensure nevada credit unions have a voice here in washington, d.c. working with my friend, senator tester, we were able to include language to increase congressional oversight of the

federal reserve and treasury department in order to ensure our best interests are represented at international insurance discussions on capital standards. i was also pleased with the language authored by senators purdue, tester, donnelly and myself was incorporated to provide credit bureaus to provide free and timely credit freezes to consumers. it provides credit bureaus consumers of notice at any time of their rights and for them to tell consumers on their websites that they have a right to request a security freeze, fraud alert and active military duty fraud alert. this bill includes the community lender exam act that i coled with with senator donnelly which would require lenders to be examined every 18 months instead of 12 months. this will help safe and sound local lenders to growth for time

and capital to ensure regulatory supervision. mr. president, with this bill, we're seeing something rare in washington, d.c. democrats and republicans working together to help americans have more economic opportunities. let me say that again. this bill will help americans have more economic opportunities, and that's why i'm here in the senate, mr. president, to give every nevadan the opportunity to live the fullest life and to achieve their goals. i look forward to voting to support this legislation and would encourage all my colleagues to do the same. thank you. with that, mr. president, i yield the floor.

i'd note the absence of a quorum. quorum call:

a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from north dakota. a senator: thank you for the opportunity to come today and hopely -- hopefully set the record straight. the presiding officer: we are in a quorum call. ms. heitkamp: i stk the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. ms. heitkamp: i'm here to discuss senate bill 2155, a bill

i've been working on since coming to the senate in 2013, a bill that addresses the concerns of rural financial institutions, particularly those in our rural communities, a bill that was drafted to address access to capital concerns and consolidation of small banks in areas where i live, which is in the state of north dakota. it's a bill that i am incredibly proud of. i know there's been a lot of statements made about this bill in the last week, and i'm here to set a lot of those straight. but before i start, i want to talk about what it is like in rural communities where i grew up. i find it interesting when i hear that this bill is about wall street banks and big bank bailouts. last time i checked, lincoln state bank, which is my small community bank in the community that i went to high school in hankerson, north dakota, is not on the fortune 500, not on the

fortune 100. it is a small community bank that has been operating and has been available to consumers in my community to help them achieve their family goals, achieve their farming goals, and achieve their needs going forward for capital. i don't recognize the bill that's being debated here in the united states senate because it's not the bill that has been written and it's not the bill that has, in fact -- is hopefully going to pass the united states senate. and so i don't think that it's any mistake when you look at the five primary sponsors of this bill, the five of us who wrote this bill, that most of us are from predominantly rural states. i think we understand the needs of those living in our states and the needs of those living in our rural communities. when you look at an opportunity

to fix regulation and to respond to concerns that people have, one of the constant arguments that i get when i come home is there is no longer any common sense in washington, d.c. they don't understand where we live. they don't understand who we are. they don't understand that we live in communities and that we support and protect each other. instead, they write one regulation that's supposed to be one size fits all. well, that's certainly not what this is. this is an attempt to write a bill that would give direction to the federal regulators so that small banks could be treated as small banks and large banks could continue to be regulated and treated as a large systemically significant institutions that they are. let me give you just a few statistics that i think everybody should understand. 30 years ago, there were approximately 14,000 banks in the united states.

today there is approximately 5,000. since the passage of dodd-frank, the united states has lost about 14% of its smallest banks. meanwhile, small banks' share of u.s. domestic deposits and banking assets have decreased, and the five largest u.s. banks, which don't benefit from our bill, appear to have absorbed much of this market share. what i have said consistently is dodd-frank was supposed to stop too big to fail, and the net result has been too small to succeed. the big banks have gotten bigger since the passage of dodd-frank, and the small banks have disappeared, and they have retreated from their traditional role of relationship lending, first out of fear for regulation and that they might be doing something wrong, and then out of fear for the cost of regulation if they are going to work towards compliance. so i want to just make one simple point. this bill was not written by

wall street bankers. it was not written by wall street lobbyists. if it were, it would be a completely different bill. this bill would actually provide relief to wall street banks and wall street bankers, and it does exactly the opposite. it gives relief to those institutions, whether they are regional banks or small community banks that can be effective competition for the largest institutions in this country. and so it is absolutely essential that we set the record straight that this bill is to give our relationship institutions, whether they are credit unions or banks or our regional institutions that are not doing anything more sophisticated than the work that's being done in our small community banks, to get them the regulatory relief that they need to effectively compete against the biggest banks in this country. and to tailor our regulations, to set our regulations in a way that reflects the common sense of the american citizens.

so i want to just take a minute because i think a lot of things that have been said about this bill have been incredibly reckless, and these inaccurate claims, if left unchallenged and undiscussed, will create the legislative history of this bill which could, in fact, then be used by many of the same institutions that we believe are not affected by this bill to argue that they were entitled to some sort of protection. we can't let that happen. so let's start out first by saying this is not a giveaway to wall street. it is not a giveaway to the largest institutions. our bipartisan bill makes targeted, commonsense fixes so it will provide tangible relief to community banks and credit unions so that they can lend to borrowers in rural america and support rural communities. it leaves in place rules and regulations that hold wall street accountable. in fact, the big banks aren't necessarily happy with this bill because it doesn't benefit them

much, and when we ask the current regulators, such as federal reserve chairman jerome powell, he basically has said that he believes that the bill gives the regulators the tools they need to continue to protect and prevent against financial collapse. let me say how the bill doesn't help the largest institutions. it does not make any significant changes to the regulations facing the largest wall street banks so that they continue to be reined in from causing havoc to the financial system like they did during the financial crisis. it does not make any structural changes to the consumer financial protection bureau. it is allowed to continue to protect consumers. it does nothing to weaken or repeal the volcker rule. the only institutions which will be given any relief from the volcker rule are those banks which are under $10 billion in

assets. that is not j.p. morgan, that's not citibank, that's not goldman sachs, that's not the largest institutions. $10 billion or less, the only institutions that get relief from the volcker rule. and it does not change the way the federal reserve regulates foreign banks. second, this bill will not lead to another mortgage lending crisis. let's just go back and examine what happened in 2008. we had a significant number of buyer loans, subprime lending which drove the mortgage market. that was troublesome and problematic in and of itself, but the real problem came when those mortgages were securitized and sold into the secondary market. that's when the trouble began. it was trouble enough they were putting institutions at jeopardy, but they were passing along that risk to the public

through these securitized products, derivatives. guess what? when the whole thing collapsed, we looked behind and we saw these risky mortgage loans. we saw what actually created some of the problems on the front end before it was securitized. nothing in this bill changes qualified mortgage standards. nothing in this bill removes the protections that we -- that dodd-frank has provided to the secondary market. the only thing this bill does as it relates to mortgages is it says those small institutions, the small community banks that i'm familiar with, they can make mortgages without worrying about the qualified mortgage standards. they can go ahead and do that. but the one thing they can't do is they can't sell those mortgages into the secondary market. they have to keep those mortgages on the books. and when you have a requirement that they keep them on the books, do you really honestly believe that these institutions are going to take unnecessary

risk? the answer is no. guess what? they didn't take unnecessary risks before 2008. they did not cause this problem. but yet they are incurring the bulk of the expenses to fix this problem. so to suggest that we are in fact risking, risking the financial security of this country, of our institutions because we gave a small, discrete break on mortgages to the smallest of institutions who have to keep these mortgages in portfolio is absurd. it's not only absurd. if you don't want to believe me, let's look at what congressman barney frank, one of the architects in dodd-frank, said yesterday. he said nothing in this bill in any way weakens the prohibition about making shaky loans, loans to people with weak credit, and packaging them into securities. our bill restores the balance for small community banks in the

mortgage business without opening up the door to excesses that led to the predatory lending standards which led to the financial crisis. to suggest otherwise is disingenuous and simply not true. and so we have to -- we have to push back against this idea that somehow we are rolling back the clock. in fact, in this same interview, congressman barney frank said about 95% of dodd-frank as it is written will remain intact after this bill passes. 95%. you would not believe that to listen to the dialogue and the diatribe that we've heard on the floor. so the third misstatement is that we will somehow scrap the rules for the largest wall street banks and allow regional banks with up to $250 billion in assets to follow the same rules and regulations as the tiny community banks. again, not true.

far from scrapping the rules, our bill simply provides that the federal reserve has the ability to tailor just one piece of dodd-frank, and that is section 165 regulations, and for certain regional lenders, that means that if they do not pose systemic risk, they will not be subject to the requirements of 165. but if the fed determines that they could, as in the case as you have heard of countrywide, if there is another countrywide out there and the fed discovers another countrywide, they can, in fact, include that institution in 165. and so let's not exaggerate the impact of this bill. let's talk about how we simply have moved the assumption from 50 or 100 to 250 in terms of what is systemically risky, knowing that the fed can always go back and include a smaller

institution if they in fact see the challenges. i think the other thing that we need to point out about the dodd-frank regulations and consistent regulations moving forward is that our bill still requires very rigorous stress testing for these regional institutions. regional institutions would have to have the ability to meet those stress tests, and chairman powell at his confirmation hearing called the framework of this bill a sensible one. he affirmed that he would like to continue meaningful and frequent stress tests on banks between $100 billion and $250 billion, as provided in this bill. while confirming that it isn't necessary to stress test the smaller banks. i think that this position is supported again by janet yell janet -- by janet yellen who said i think it is appropriate

to tailor resignations to the footprint of organizations and called our bipartisan senate bill a move in that direction that i think would be good. moreover, our bill does not change risk-based capital and leverage regime for these regional institutions under basil three reforms again. our bill does not change the fact that comprehensive analysis review or what we call ccar to these banks. the fed has said it will continue to implement enhanced standards. so in addition to stress tests that are required under this bill, for some banks under $100 billion, we have all these other requirements and the requirement that they continue to meet qualified mortgage standards. they can sell these mortgages into the secondary market if they meet those standards. and so it's critically important that we be very, very clear about what this bill does and does not do for our mid-sized or

regional institutions. fourth and probably the most hurtful of claims that have been made is that those of us who care deeply about preventing and eliminating discrimination in lending somehow have opened the door to allow for discrimination in lending by changing the hmda standards. that is an outrageous claim and particularly hurtful for the members of this body who have spent their life fighting discrimination. when i talk about the facts, our bill continues to require that all lenders, irrespective of size, collect the traditional hmda data, which includes information on race, gender, and ethnicity. contrary to what some have said, our bill only relaxes the new additional data requirements for some of the smallest lenders in the country. by that, those who make less than 500 loans a year.

this data only makes up 3.5% of all the data collected under hmda. think about that. we are claiming that people are discriminating and allowing discrimination because we are relaxing the standards for the smallest institutions, and it only amounts to 3.5% of the total data collected. 3.5%. this is an outrageous statement, and it needs to be corrected on the record. so you might say why even change the 3.5? because for those small institutions, the 44 pages of data that they're required to collect may, in fact, mean that they are nop longer interested in doing those kinds of mortgages. and so it is -- it is really very, very important that we correct the record, and, in fact, i asked chairman powell during a recent banking

committee to clarify whether he believed the change in 2155 would result in or lead to additional discrimination in lending. he said he did not believe that it in any way would affect their ability to enforce the fair lending laws in this country. fifth, some inaccurately alleged the change from may to shall in the tailoring is a dangerous provision that empowers big banks to secure more favorable treatment from the federal government. i think that that claim does not stand up to scrutiny. first, it's just common sense that we should tailor federal regulations so that they're implemented in a practical and effective way. second, in our bill we retain the broad rule of construction under section 165, which provides the federal reserve with wide latitude to tailor prudential standards to any company or category of companies based on any risk the fed deems appropriate. pretty broad authority on the part of the federal government. third, in the event of a lawsuit, the fed would be given

strong deference by the courts to interpret what might apply to 165. sixth, our bill would not open up targeted reforms to the supplement leverage ratio between three custody dates. under the plain reading of this bill the three custody banks are the only three institutions that are predominantly engaged in custody business. of course, the regulators retain the discretion to make appropriate adjustments to s.l.r. and to be clear, there is broad agreement among the regulators that the unique business model of custody banks warrants tailored treatment under the s.l.r. provisions. this is why a substantially similar bill passed the house financial services committee, no light-hearted people there on the minority side, by a vote of 60-0, and passed on a voice vote in the house. finally, our bill will not gut

oversight of foreign merchant megabanks operating in the united states, such as bark -- barclays and deutsche bank. these three institutions which have over $150 billion in assets, will be subject to 165 of dodd-frank. that means that foreign banks will still be subject to foreign banks stress test requirements, liquidity stress testing and basel iii requirements. it subjects foreign banks u.s. operations to requirements similar to those imposed on u.s. banks. chairman paul, again, in the march senate banking committee hearing was asked about this, and he said he did not believe that this bill would exempt foreign banks from tough oversight under dodd-frank. additionally, the substitute amendment for this bill has

affirmed that large foreign banks do not escape dodd-frank supervision. i think it's really important that we debate the actual merits of this bill and not the bogeyman merits, the statements that this bill will somehow lead to catastrophic downfall of our financial system. as i said, even barney frank disagrees with that evaluation of this bill. it's important that we set the record straight on what this bill does and does not do and that we make sure that when a court is reviewing this provision, if in fact there is ever litigation, that the court has a record to go to on the floor of the senate and in the committee which corrects misstatements and refocuses the bill on what the actual intended outcome is and how the bill was actually written. and so, with that,

mr. president, i'll yield the floor, but i'll say that i intend to submit a document for the record in the next discussion which hopefully will provide a written document outlining the myths versus the facts of this bill so that we can have an actual record that the courts can look to that documents the intent and the purpose of this legislation beyond the hyperbole and overstatement that you've heard. so thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. ms. heitkamp: mr. president, i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from massachusetts. ms. warren: mr. president, i ask that the quorum call be lifted. the presiding officer: without objection. ms. warren: thank you, mr. president. i've come to the floor of the senate five times over the past week to talk about how the bank lobbyist act puts american families in danger of getting punched in the gut in another financial crisis. i've talked about how it rolls back important consumer protections and how, if it passes, 25 of the 40 largest banks in this country, banks that suck down collectively almost $50 billion of bailout money during the crisis -- nobody went to jail -- could be

regulated like tiny, little community banks. i also talked about how the bill will roll back the rules on the very biggest banks in this country. j.p. morgan chase, citigroup and the rest of them, banks that broke our economy in 2008, banks where no one went to jail, banks where the taxpayers coughed up $180 billion to bail them out. and i talked about how washington is poised to make the same mistakes it has made many times before. deregulating giant banks while the economy is cruising only to set the stage for another financial crisis. i'm not the only one who has talked about problems with this bill. "the wall street journal," bloomberg, the fdic, the congressional budget office, the naacp, the urban league have all talked about parts of this bill that cause problems and would cause problems in our economy. today i want to talk about

another part of the bill that keeps me awake at night, the part that guts our ability to find and go after mortgage discrimination by exempting 85% of banks from reporting data about loans they make under a law called the home mortgage disclosure act, or hmda. there's a long and shameful history in this country of discriminating against communities of color when they try to buy homes. from 1934 to 1968, the federal housing administration led the charge actively discriminating, by refusing to ensure loans for qualified buyers in minority communities, while helping white families finance their plans to achieve the american dream. this policy was not a secret. nope, it was not the product of a hand full of racist government officials. nope. it was the official policy of

the united states government until 1968, in my lifetime and the lifetime of 90 senators who serve today. the official policy of this government was to help white people buy homes and to deny that help to black people. and because the federal government set the standard, private lenders enthusiastically followed in washington's lead. homes in the way that millions of families build economic security. they paid down an asset that over time often appreciates. a home serves as security to fund other ventures, to start a small business or to send a youngster to college. and if grandma and grandpa can hang on to the home and get it paid off, they can often pass along an asset that boosts the finances of the next generation and the one after that. and that's exactly what white

people have done for generations. but not black people. systematically over many decades, government policies that encouraged mortgage companies to lend only to white borrowers cut the legs out from underneath minority families trying to build some family wealth, and the result has been exactly what you'd predict. it's contributed to a staggering gap of wealth between white communities and communities of color today. here's one statistic from massachusetts. according to the boston globe, the median net worth of white families living in boston is $247,500. and the median net worth for a black family is $8. that's something that all americans, regardless of race, should be ashamed of.

when i was traveling around the country in the aftermath of the financial crisis, it became clear to me that the crash had made the problem worse. subprime lenders who had peddled mortgages full of tricks and traps had specifically targeted minority borrowers. that meant that during the great recession, a huge number of minority borrowers lost their homes. and when rising home prices helped white americans regain some financial security, communities of color, with their lower homeownership rates and their hire foreclosure rates, were often left behind. again, just one example. according to pew, between 2010 and 2013, the median wealth of white households grew by 2.4%. but the wealth of hispanic households in that same time fell by 14.3%. and the wealth of african

american households fell by 33.7%. mortgage discrimination didn't end in the 1960's when formal redlining policies were abolished. it didn't end with the tightening of mortgage rules following the financial crisis. lending discrimination is still alive and well in america in 2018. according to a new report that just came out from the center for investigative reporting and reveal, in 2015 and 2016 nearly two-thirds of mortgage lenders denied loans for people of color at higher rates than for white people. this problem affects both big lenders and small lenders, and it's nationwide. minority borrowers were more likely to be denied a mortgage than white borrowers with the same income in 61 different

cities across america. and how do we know that? because of hmda data. that's how we can see how much black families were charged for a mortgage or how often latino families were denied a chance to take out a mortgage, and we can compare those numbers with white borrowers who have the same incomes and same credit scores. but we can't do that if the data are missing. it is impossibly to detect and fight mortgage discrimination without hmda data. the bill on the floor of the senate says that 85% of banks will no longer be required to report hmda data, including the borrower's credit score and age, the loans points, fees, and interest rate, and the property value. 85%. these data are essential to figuring out whether the borrower got a fair deal or not.

if this bill passes, there will be entire communities where there won't be enough data to figure out whether borrowers are getting ripped off. entire communities where it will be impossibly to monitor whether people are getting cheated because of their race or gender. entire communities where federal and state regulators won't be able to bring cases and independent groups like reveal won't be able to hold these groups accountable. sure, banks will save a little money by not having to fill out the hmda data. but when communities of color are once again left behind, there will be no way to prove it. and that's why civil rights groups around the country have spoken up against this bill. the leadership conference on civil and human rights said, and i'm quoting, exempting the

overwhelming majority of our nation's banks and credit unions from an expanded hmda requirement that would better enable federal regulators, state attorneys general, fair housing advocates, and others to identify and address discriminatory and predatory mortgage practices is unwise. the urban league and the national community reinvestment coalition wrote in a newspaper column that the bill, quote, would be a giant step backwards for the public and national groups who use this data to ensure that banks treat all borrowers equally. and according to the naacp, the bill, quote, would devastate our attempts to determine and potentially rectify racially discriminatory lending or loan approval patterns at play. this is about basic fairness. hmda data is an investment we should be making to make sure

that all qualified americans have the same chance to buy a home. throughout our history, washington has always fallen short of that goal. gutting hmda allows our country and our government to ignore discrimination, letting history repeat itself. communities of color will pay the price if this congress makes the same mistakes again. it isn't too late. we can stop this bill from becoming law. thank you, mr. president. i yield and i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from ohio. mr. portman: are we in a quorum call. i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. portman: mr. president, today i want to talk about the tragedy of human trafficking and i want to talk about it today because this is an issue that i hope the entire united states senate will take up within the next week. we have legislation we've worked on a bipartisan basis over the last couple of years and we have an opportunity late this week or early next week to address this growing problem. i spent a lot of time focused on this issue over the last couple of years because of the growth of trafficking and my sense that we can do something construct i here about it and others have been involved as well. today i will be a the white house at a meeting that ivanka trump is hosting and other advocates and others who have a commitment to treasing this --

addressing this issue. we will get this legislation to the president's desk and women and children exploited online. we will talk about lots of kinds of trafficking, including work trafficking and other human trafficking, but the one i want to focus on this afternoon is sex trafficking. the reason is we have a legislative solution, we think, for addressing the biggest problem. unbelievably in this country right now sex trafficking is increasing. that's based on all the best data we're getting from the experts around the country. they say it's increasing for one simple reason, and that is the internet. the great increase is happening online. as some have said, this is because of the ruthless efficiency of selling people online. as victims tell me when i'm back home in ohio, rob, this moved from the street corner to the

smart phone, and there is a ruthless efficiency about it. anti-trafficking organizations such as the national center for missing and exploiting children, shared hope international and others have told us that the majority of the online sex trafficking encounter occurs through one single website, backpage.com. they said that it is involved with 75% of the online trafficking reports it receives from the public. shared hope international says it's more than that. i chair a group called the permanent subcommittee on investigations, and learning about what was going on online, we decided to do an in-depth investigation to find out what was really happening and how to address it. we spent 18 months studying this and quickly online trafficking study led us to backpage.com. what we found was really shocking. not only was backpage, as other

websites have in the past, selling women and children online, but this organization, and others, are actually explicit in these -- complicit in these crimes. in other words, they knew more than we previously thought. weep found that backpage was knowingly selling people online. we did this through a subpoena process that had to be aced proved here in the -- approved in the united states senate because the company objected to responding to our subpoenas. we had to come to the united states senate for the first time in 21 years to get approval to enforce the subpoenas. we then had to take it to the supreme court because they appealed all the way up, and we won. and through this we were able to get about 1 million documents. we went through the documents to find out what was happening. what we learned was that this website was actually actively and knowingly involved in

selling people online. when a user would post an ad that might have a word that indicated that the girl that they were selling was underaged, for instance, it might say cheerleader or reference the age of the girl, 16, 17, younger sometimes. packbeige, -- backbeige, instead of rejecting it would clean up the ad. instead editing out the words that someone was underaged. they didn't remove the post because they didn't want to lose the revenue. this is a lucrative business. this also covered up the evidence of the crime so this was harder for law enforcement to find out who was involved in the selling of women, girls online and underaged girls. it also increased the company's

profits. that's what we found out in our report. we also found out that for years and years people who had tried to hold these websites accountable in court had failed and they had failed and been unsuccessful because of a federal law that, in essence, said to these websites, you have an immunity to be able to do this. you couldn't do it on the street corner, but online you can do it. i recommend a powerful documentary, it's called i am jane doe. it's on netflix, and it tells the story of underaged girls who have been exploited on backpage. it also talks about the trauma that they experienced and finally it talks about their frustration with their inability to hold these websites accountable. again, what might surprise you is that the reason these websites are not accountable cialg the more we --

accountable, the more we dug into it, it was clear that because washington passed a federal law that has been misinterpreted, but has been interpreted by the courts to say that these websites have no risk, that they are not liable, they have an immunity under federal law. it's called the communications decency act. it was enacted in 1996 when the internet was in its infancy. it was intended to protect websites from liability based on third-party posts on that website. so, you know, i understand the intention of congress, but it now protects websites when they knowingly allow this criminal activity, the crime of sex trafficking to occur through their site. i believe congress meant well when enacting the law. part of the intent was to protect children from indecent material by holding individuals

liable for sending explicit material to those children and now that same law is being used as a shield for those who promote online sex trafficking with immunity. i don't believe congress wanted this, to actively and knowingly allow sex trafficking, but the legal interpretation of the law has led to this. that's why 50 state attorneys general and so many others have called on others to amend the communication indecency law and fix this injustice, really this loophole. last year a pim ping charge was thrown out against back page. this is what this judge said. the judge said, and it quote, if and until congress sees fit to amend the immunity law, the

section 230 of the communications act even those that allow the exploitation of others by human trafficking. end quote. that's not just a suggestion, it's an invitation, and invitation to this congress to act. calling on us to do what we were sent to do here which is to craft laws for justice. for too language victims have been denied the justice they deserve. now we have the opportunity here in the united states senate i hope within the next week to be able to fix that. last august i introduced legislation called the stop enabling sex traffickers act with a bipartisan group of 24 cosponsors, including my coauthor senator richard plumben hall and heidi heitkamp and others. sest a would provide justice for online sex trafficking victims and hold accountable the websites that intentionally facilitate these crimes. we do this by making two very narrowly crafted changes to federal law.

first, we remove the communications decency act's broad liability protections for a narrow set of bad actors that knowingly facilitate sex trafficking crimes. high standard, knowingly. second, the legislation allows state attorneys general to prosecute websites that violate federal trafficking laws, existing federal trafficking laws. it simply says if you're violating laws, our a knowingly facilitating it, then you have to be held to account. that seems to make all the sense in the world and it will make a big difference for these girls and these women who are being exploited online. our bill protects websites that are doing the right thing, by the way. in fact, it preserves what's called the good samaritan provision of the communications decency act which protects good actors who proactively block and screen their sites for offensive material. thus, it shields them from frivolous lawsuits. i think that's appropriate. we simply carve out a very

limited exception in the communications decency act's liability protections for those that knowingly facilitate sex trafficking. by the way, there are already exceptions for things in this law, exceptions for things like copyright infringement. so this isn't a new idea. so unless you think protecting copyrights is more important than protecting women and children from the trauma of trafficking, you should be for this. even those who support section 230 otherwise should strongly support this. if a prosecutor can prove in court that a website has committed these acts, sesta allows that to be held liable. biff the way, 68 senators now, more than two-thirds of this body, have signed on as cosponsors of this legislation. a majority of republicans and a majority of democrats. that doesn't happen very often around here. the house of representatives passed sesta as an amendment to a broader antisex trafficking bill just a couple of weeks ago by an overwhelming margin, more

than 300 votes. the trump administration has endorsed a solution and again shown a commitment to the issue. so sesta has overwhelming support from the white house, from more than 300 house members and from the 68 senators who signed on to be part of this solution. i think one reason it's gotten so much support is because of the logic of the legislation, the fact that we narrowly grew up the legislation not to affect internet freedom, to be sure we were listening to people who had concerns but also and more importantly, because we're all hearing about this issue back home. we're all hearing the stories. and they are powerful and they are compelling and they're heartbreaking. so kubiiki pride comes to congress to our subcommittee as we were looking into this issue and tells us her story. in testimony she says, my daughter ransom away from home. -owe. she'd gone missing. she'd been missing for several

weeks. obviously i was very concerned. i couldn't find her. someone subjected to look on this website called backpage. so i did. and she said, i found my daughter. i found my daughter. 14 years old. but found her daughter in very sexually difficult photographs, photographs of her beautiful daughter. so she calls backpage.com and says, you know, i'm cam kubiiki pride. that's my daughter on your website. she's 14 years old. i'm so glad i found her. thank you for taking down that ad. she's 14 years old. you know what the person on the other end of the phone said? did you post the ad? this is how evil these people are. no, i didn't post the ad. this is my daughter. been trying to find her. she's been missing for several weeks. you didn't post the ad, you didn't pay for it, you can't take it down.

and we won't take it down. that's what we're dealing with here. eventually she found her daughter. got her daughter back. went through the proper process to be able to hold backpage accountable and guess what? the court said sorry. under section 230, the communications decency act, congress wrote this bill, this website has immunity. even though she's 14 years old and she was being sold online. so i think that's why 68 senators have said let's step up and do this. this is something we can do around here that's not partisan, that isn't about politics. it's about people. it's about human dignity. it's about ensuring that more girls like kubiiki pride's daughter don't have to go through this trauma, that more women and children can live out their life's purpose without having to go through this trauma. i think that's why we've been able to find so many members who

want to step up and do something here and to do something that will merely make a difference. so let's vote on this legislation in the next week. let's get it signed into law so that more children, more women are not exploited through this brutally efficient process online of selling people. if we do this, mr. president, we're going to be able to provide justice to those victims who deserve it and we're going to be able to make this world a better place. i urge the senate to vote in this next week. and for those members who are not yet part of this legislation, we urge you to join us. wouldn't it be great to have everybody on board. to correct this injustice, to close this loophole, and to ensure that everyone has the ability to meet their god-given purpose in life. i yield back, mr. president. i suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call:

quorum call:

quorum call:

mr. flake: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from arizona. mr. flake: are we in a quorum call? the presiding officer: we are. mr. flake: i ask unanimous consent to vacate the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. flake: mr. president, today i rise once again to urge this body to address the critical issue of securing the border and protecting those young immigrants impacted by an uncertain future of the daca program. last week i offered legislation to extend the daca protection for three years and provide three years of increased funding for border security. unfortunately, some of my colleagues chose to block that measure. let me first say i understand and sympathize with my colleagues' concerns. i, too, believe that daca

recipients deserve a permanent solution, and i repeatedly stated my strong preference for such a measure. but we've tried to find this permanent solution through republican-led bills, democratic-led bills and bipartisan bills. yet, somehow, each time we're incapable of finding a compromise that can garner 60 votes here. it's clear that we cannot achieve this goal right now and no one is more disappointed about that fact than me. i'm the first to admit that this solution i proposed is far from perfect, but it provides a temporary fix to those crucial and critical problems. it begins a process of improving border security and it ensures the daca recipients will not lose protections or be left to face potential deportation. these young immigrants brought here through no fault of their own cannot wait for these

protections. now likewise, border communities like those in my home state of arizona cannot wait for increased security along the southern border. as i've said before, we in congress have two regularly confused action with results and have become entirely too comfortable ignoring problems when they seemed just too difficult to solve. that's why if this measure is blocked again today, i'll be returning to the senate floor repeatedly until we can pass some sort of solution. to put it as bluntly as possible, it's simply not something we can any longer ignore. i'd like to again thank senator heitkamp for joining me as a cosponsor of this bill. she has always been a valuable ally and in a bipartisan effort to secure the border and to pass other immigration reform measures. we may not be able to deliver a permanent solution to these problems at this time, but we

can't abdicate the responsibility of congress to at one point solve them. there are many people whose lives and well-being depend on our ability to deliver meaningful results. therefore, mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of calendar number 300, h.r. 1551. i further ask the. mr. flake: substitute amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to, the bill as amended be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid on the table. the presiding officer: is there objection? a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from georgia. a senator: reserving the right to object. our hearts are very similar. but a temporary solution such as the senator from arizona's proposed is not a solution as he just said. it's rather another failure of congress to provide real border

security for the american people that only provides 25% of when we need to secure that border for the next three years. mr. perdue: does anybody really think that's acceptable? something the president and the american people have in common is that they want this border secured. in addition, members of this body and the administration have spent a great deal of time over the last year, as a matter of fact, talking about a potential daca solution. and i'm happy to report, frankly, that people on both sides want this daca situation solved permanently. i think the senator from arizona and i have the same desire there. further, as a result of reentsz decisions by -- recent decisions by federal district courts, daca recipients are free to continue renewing their status unless and until the supreme court overturns those lower court decisions. it will likely be over a year, frankly, before the supreme court would even hear such a case. it's my opinion that we should take that time right now and continue to work on the permanent daca solution as well as the other legal immigration

issues that we know are within reach rather than settling for a temporary solution that doesn't address the problem. that permanent solution should also be one that ensures we're not back here in the future dealing with the same issue again. the bill the senator from arizona is now proposing would only take us further away from fulfilling our congressional responsibility with a three-year delay. i would be happy to work with the senator from arizona and any of our colleagues in this body to try to address any of the concerns he and they have with the secure and succeed act which we just voted on a couple of weeks ago. that bill is exactly what the president said he would sign into law. therefore, mr. president, i respectively reject. the presiding officer: the objection is heard. mr. perdue: i would suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

quorum call:

quorum call:

the presiding officer: the senator from vermont. mr. sanders: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that i be permitted to use -- the presiding officer: the senate is in a quorum call. mr. sanders: i ask the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. sanders: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that i be permitted to use an oversized visual poster display during my remarks. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mr. sanders: and i ask unanimous consent that senator wyden be added as a cosponsor to my resolution s.j. res. 54. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. sanders: mr. president, i

rise today along with senator murphy and senator lee to talk about one of the most important jobs that the united states congress has, and that is to fulfill its constitutional responsibility about whether or not the united states of america engages in military action. we can disagree about the merits of this or that military action, but there should be absolutely no confusion that sending men and women of the united states military into conflict is the responsibility not of the president of the united states alone, but of the united states congress. and let us be very clear -- and i say this especially to my

conservative friends who talk about the constitution all of the time. let me remind you what article 1, section 8, of the constitution says in no uncertain terms, and that is, and i quote, congress shall have the power to declare war. end of quote. the founding fathers gave the power to declare war to congress, the branch most accountable to the people. for far too long congress, under both democratic and republican administrations, has, in my view, abdicated its constitutional role in authorizing war, and we are moving down a very, very slippery slope where congress is now becoming increasingly irrelevant in terms of that

vitally important issue. and in my view, the time is long overdue for congress to reassert its constitutional authority. and that is why senators lee, senator murphy, and i, that is what we are doing with senate joint resolution 54. and i'm proud to have as cosponsors on that resolution senator durbin, senator booker, senator warren, senator leahy, senator markey, senator feinstein, and senator wyden. mr. president, many americans are unaware that the people of yemen, one of the poorest countries in the world, are suffering terribly today in a devastating civil war, with saudi arabia and their allies on one side and houthi rebels on the other. in november of last year the

united nations emergency relief coordinator said that yemen was on the brink, quote, of the largest famine the world has seen for many decades. so far thousands of civilians have died. the last count that i have seen is about 10,000. over 40,000 have been wounded in the war. 15 million people lack access to clean water and sanitation in an infrastructure which has been devastated. more than 20 million people in yemen, over two-thirds of the population, need some kind of humanitarian support with nearly ten million people in acute need of assistance. this is a humanitarian disaster. and the picture here is very, very sad picture of a young child facing starvation is what

is taking place throughout this country. sadly, this is not the only child in that position. famine is a serious and growing problem in yemen. further, more than one million suspected cholera cases have been reported, representing potentially the worst cholera outbreak in world history. and the pictures that i have here today are taken by photo journalist in yemen attest to this human disaster. many americans -- this is one of the problems that we have is that unfortunately foreign policy is not an issue that we talk about enough down here on the floor, and certainly not talked about enough in the media. but many americans today are not aware that american forces have been actively engaged in support

of the saudi coalition in this war, providing intelligence and aerial refueling of planes whose bombs have killed thousands of people and made this crisis far worse. my colleagues and i, along with all of our cosponsors, believe that as congress has not declared war or authorized military force in this conflict, the united states involvement in yemen is unconstitutional and unauthorized, and u.s. military support of the saudi coalition must end. without congressional authorization, our engagement in this war should be restricted to providing desperately needed humanitarian aid and diplomatic efforts to resolve this terrible civil war. and that is why senator lee and senator murphy, and i introduce

this joint resolution pursuant to the 1973 war powers resolution calling for an end to u.s. support with the saudi war in yemen. war powers resolution defines the introduction of u.s. armed forces to include, quote, the assignment of members of such armed forces to command, coordinate, participate in the movement of or accompany the regular, regular forces of any foreign country or government when such military forces are engaged or there exists an imminent threat that such forces will become engaged in hostilities. end of quote. assisting with targeting intelligence and refueling warplanes as they bomb those targets clearly meet this definition. and i'm going to yield now, but i just reiterate the point that i look forward to a colloquy with senator lee and with

senator murphy. here is the bottom line. if the united states congress wants to go to war in yemen, vote on that war. but i believe, and the cosponsors of this legislation do not believe that the authority to go to war is now appropriate. and we think what is going on now is unconstitutional. and unless congress authorizes this war, it should be ended, and ended immediately. and with that, i would yield to senator lee, who has been very active on this issue from day one. senator lee, thank you. mr. lee: thank you, senator sanders. and thanks for your leadership on this. it's an honor to be here with my friend and colleague, the senator from vermont, to talk about our joint resolution to force a vote on u.s. military

involvement in a civil war going on in yemen. whether you're present in the senate chamber today or whether you're tuning in from home, i hope you'll listen closely for the next hour or so so that we can fill you in on the unauthorized middle east war that your united states government is supporting. this war in yemen has killed tens of thousands of innocent victims. human beings, lest we forget, each with immeasurable, innate, god-given dignity. this war has created refugees, orphans, and widows. it has cost many millions of dollars. and believe it or not, at the end of the day, according to at least one u.s. government report, it is arguably undermined our fight against terrorist threats such as isis

rather than advancing those efforts. i'll expand on those facts in a few minutes but for now let's focus on this, our military sroflt in yemen has not -- involvement in yemen has not been authorized by the united states congress. article 1, section 8, of the constitution is pretty clear on this point. it says that congress shall have the power to declare war. congress, not the president, not the pentagon. but congress. this is the branch of government most accountable to the people at the most regular intervals. and it makes sense that this power would only be granted to that branch of government. yet, in 2015 president obama initiated our military involvement in yemen without permission from congress, without an authorization for the use of military force, without a declaration of war. the current administration has continued obama's war. so senator sanders and i, along

with senator murphy and our six other cosponsors, are giving congress a chance to fix this error by debating and voting on our nation's continued involvement in this illegal, unauthorized war in yemen. now if, as our opponents claim, if this war is necessary, then surely they'll be willing to come down to this floor within the senate chamber and defend it. surely they'll be willing to come on to the floor of the senate and on to the floor of the house and seek authorization from congress as the constitution demands. let's have an honest reckoning about this war today. now at this very moment a tragedy is unfolding in yemen. and very sadly, it's a tragedy for which our nation shares some blame. here are just a few facts about

this war in yemen, which is now approaching its third year. 15 million human souls in yemen lack clean water and sanitation. eight million are at risk of starvation. the yemeni people have been visited by the worst cholera outbreak in recorded human history. over a million cases. every ten minutes, a child under the age of 5 dies of preventable causes. a total of 10,000 civilians have been killed in this war. 40,000 more civilians have been wounded in this war. i think it's important to discuss the human toll that this war is inflicting. i think it's especially important to have discussions like this one at the outset so that as we go into a conflict

the stakes are clear. for thousands of human beings, the decision we make in this chamber will make the difference between life and death. this is one of the many reasons why it's so important to keep reminding ourselves that the founding fathers were really clear about this. they didn't leave any real ambiguity in terms of identifying who has the power to make a decision like this one. who has the power to decide when we go to war. article 1, section 8, says that congress shall have the power to declare war. now, from time to time, i hear it argued that declarations of war are somehow antiquated, they're outdated, they are anachronisms, akin to ceremonial relics like powdered wigs or the keys to the city. akin to a society whose

principal mode of transportation involved the horse and a buggy. but it isn't true. these principles are as true today as they were then. nothing about those principles has become outdated. if you read the founding fathers, it is really clear that they thought the power to declare war was, in fact, important. and they deliberately considered the matter and withheld it from the president for a reason. they did not vest this power in the office of the presidency, and that was a conscious, deliberate, and i believe wise choice. to quote alexander hamilton in federalist number 69, the founding fathers wanted their president to be much inferior in power to a king. kings declare war unilaterally. they can make life-or-death military decisions on a whim if they want to. they don't need to go and seek

support from the public before doing so. in our system, presidents by contrast have to garner the support of the public and of the legislative branch before initiateing wars. far from a unilateral decision, the decision to go to war in america is supposed to be based on collaboration and consensus so that our nation will be united to the greatest degree possible. when we go through trying conflicts, at that moment when unity is what's so badly needed, which does the modern executive resemble more today? a president, as the founding fathers understood that term, or a king? the answer is uncomfortably clear from the string of unauthorized military excursions that presidents from both

political parties have initiated in recent decades. now, of course, some people claim that the president has broad constitutional authority to make war as the commander in chief of the armed forces. now, they're absolutely right. the president of the united states is, in fact, the commander in chief of the armed forces, but this is not the beginning and the end of the question. this does not mean the president may authorize at-will military excursions around the globe for any reason or no reason at all without authorization from congress. it does not mean that. it means nothing close to that. only congress can authorize a military campaign. once congress has done so, then the president has broad authority, vast discretion to decide how specifically to command the armed forces to victory. now, there is one important notable exception to this big principle, and that exception arises specifically in the event

of an attack on the united states. the founders, you see, were wise. they anticipated that there could be threats to the homeland, so serious that it might be physically impossible for congress to respond quickly so they reserved for their president the power to, quote, repel sudden attacks, close quote, in the words of james madison. but clearly, this strategy, this a break glass in case of emergency kind of strategy, it's that kind of power. it is a break glass in times of emergency kind of power. it's supposed to be used only under extreme extraordinary circumstances, when congress cannot convene in time to save the nation. the founders did not intend for the commander in chief power to

be used to justice military intervention in civil wars 8,00. that authorization can come only from this body in the form of a declaration of war or in the form of an authorization for the use of military force. to date, we have not considered either one of these, much less voted on them and passed them in the case of this civil war in yemen. so i'd ask my colleague, senator sanders from vermont, how long can the american people be expected to ignore our involvement in a foreign war? mr. sanders: before i answer that very important question -- and thank you very much for your remarks, senator lee. i think you were right on on virtually everything you said. i want to bring senator murphy into this colloquy. senator murphy has been ahead of his time on focusing attention on what's going on in yemen, and he is one of the original sponsors.

senator murphy, what's your thoughts on this issue? mr. murphy: thank you very much, senator sanders. thank you, senator lee, for allowing me to step in and say a few words before we have a short colloquy about the resolution that we're bringing before the floor. i have brought this chart down to the floor before, and i hesitate to keep it -- excuse me floor before, and i hesitate to keep it up for more than a few moments. it's very, very disturbing to look at, but this is the reality of yemen today. this is the reality of a country in which thousands and thousands of civilians have been killed by a bombing campaign that the united states is facilitating, facilitating with intelligence sharing, facilitating with targeting assistance, facilitating with midair refueling, facilitating with the sale of munitions that end up being dropped on the homes of families like this. this is, as has been stated,

perhaps the worst cholera outbreak in modern history. and let's talk about why that happens. why are over a million people in yemen today suffering from cholera, a disease that is entirely 100% preventable? the reason is that the water treatment facilities inside yemen have been bombed, have been rendered useless, such that there is no means by which you can keep the water that these young children drink clean. bombs sold to the saudi coalition by the united states, bombs dropped from planes refueled by the united states air force, bombs that are directed via targeting centers in which u.s. personnel are embedded hit water treatment facilities inside yemen such that there is now the worst cholera outbreak in our

lifetime. i can't do a better job than senator lee did of explaining to the body why we believe that it is so important for congress to exercise our article 1 responsibility to declare war. he laid it out better than i can. but the founding fathers believed, as he said, that when there were matters of great import to the national security of this country, when there were decisions that the executive was making with respect to hostilities with other nations that included serious consequences for the united states and the world, that should not be simply an executive function. very specifically, as senator lee said, that power, that power of declaring war, of entering into hostilities against another nation is housed here in the congress. and so it is relevant to talk

about what is happening in yemen today, what is the degree of the hostilities, and does it come with serious national security concerns for the united states of america, for the constituents that we represent? we are absolutely engaged in hostilities today. there is no way that what you see in these charts could not be categorized as hostilities. the bombs that ruined this entire neighborhood once again are made in the united states, are dropped by planes refueled by the united states, are directed by a targeting center that involves u.s. personnel. this is clearly an act of hostility that the u.s., in partnership with the saudi coalition, has entered into against the yemeni people. remember, this is a civil war

inside yemen. there are not so good people on both sides of this civil war. the ehudies have been responsible for major catastrophic acts in the country just as the coalition has, but we are only on one side of that so it makes sense for us to focus on the hostilities that have been entered into by the united states and saudi coalition. but let's just for a second talk about the other implications for u.s. national security. what has happened inside yemen as this civil war has persisted? al qaeda and isis have grown in strength. for a period of time, aqap, the arm of al qaeda inside yemen that has the most direct intentions to hit the united states had captured a major port inside yemen and was drawing substantial revenue, allowing them to become stronger than

ever before. by continuing to feed weapons into this civil war, the united states is helping to expand the reach and the power of two entities inside yemen that the administration argues they do have authorization to fight, al qaeda and isis, and many of us would draw issue with the interpretation of an aumf passed a decade and a half ago as it applies to isis. but no doubt the administration has the ability to pursue war against al qaeda, and al qaeda is growing in strength because of the continuation of this civil war. if you talk to yemeni americans, they will tell you that inside yemen, this is not seen as a saudi bombing campaign. this is seen as a u.s. saudi bombing campaign. what they will further tell you is that yemenist are becoming radicalized against the united

states because there is a u.s. imprint on every single bomb that is dropped and every single civilian death in that country. while we may talk a good game about humanitarian relief, we may enter into occasional efforts to settle this conflict through negotiations, all they know is that for three years, the united states has been supporting a saudi bombing campaign that does not end. we have been supporting a saudi-led coalition that has blocked humanitarian relief from entering this country. you may hear a lot about the money that the saudis are putting into humanitarian relief. you don't hear as much about the fact that at one point they completely closed the port through which the majority of humanitarian relief flows, and although now it is technically open, they are still, they are still narrowing the channel greatly through its relief supplies yet to this country. so nobody should applaud the united states or the saudis for providing relief to a country

that they indeed are bombing. i am not setting aside the culpability of the houthis for substantial atrocities in this civil war as well, but we are only on one side of it. this is clearly covered by the powers vested in the united states congress to make war, and if it isn't, it unlocks a horrific pandora's box. if the president can enter into hostilities against another country so long as all they are doing is providing vast logistical support to a coalition partner, then there is no end to what the president can do, so long as he doesn't put a troop on the ground. our involvement in the saudi-led coalition has serious national

security implications for the united states, aside from the fact that it has resulted in the death of thousands of civilians and has set off the worst humanitarian catastrophe that the world has seen today. so, as a member of the foreign relations committee, i just want to bring these consequences to bear for our colleagues to think about, our colleagues who may not think this rises to the powers invested in the congress by the constitution. there are very few more serious conflicts with respect to the united states than this one. i guess i would wrap back around that question that senator lee posed to senator sanders. if the united states doesn't weigh in here, then when? what is the precedent that is set by congress remaining silent even when you have a

humanitarian catastrophe and circumstances that are this big. mr. sanders: let me thank senator murphy for his comments and senator lee before that. i think they touched on the most important issues. i want to respond to what senator lee and senator murphy both said, but i want to make a point that needs to be made again and again. this is not a partisan issue. we're talking about democratic administrations acting militarily without congressional authorization, we are talking about republican administrations. senator lee is a republican, senator murphy is a democrat, and i'm an independent in caucuses with the democrats. if you're talking about bipartisanship, you're talking about it here. there are many organizations around the country, conservative and progressive that are raising the exact same issue as we are

raising here, and that is congress has to reassert its congressional authority over the issues of war. if you want to go to war. if you think the war in yemen makes sense, that's fine. come down here on the floor, tell us why you feel that way, tell the american people, tell your constituents why you think it is a good idea to work with saudi arabia to wreck horror on one of the poorest countries in the world, fine. come and tell us. what we have got to do from a precedent point of view is finally say to a republican president, a democratic president, enough is enough. listen to the constitution. the founders of this country were amazingly smart on this issue. they understood that before we send our young men, and now women, off into war to die and

get maimed, there better be a good reason we have to explain to the people who elected us, not just somebody sitting in the oval office, and that's why the authority to go to war are invested in the people who are elected for two years or six years. i would also point out that this is not the first time that the u.s. congress has weighed in on the devastating war in yemen. in november of last year, the house of representatives, and i hope my senate colleagues know this, by a vote of 366-30, not even close, overwhelming support among democrats and republicans, they passed a nonbinding resolution stating that the united states involvement in the yemen civil war is unauthorized. democratic leadership support it

and as did the republican chairman of the foreign affairs committee ed roise. mr. president, here is the bottom line. the bottom line is that congress has ducked its responsibility for many years, and if we continue to duck our responsibility on the all-important issue of u.s. military intervention, this congress and in fact the people of the united states become increasingly irrelevant on this most important matter. so we are bringing forward a privileged motion. there will be a vote on this issue in one form or another. and if you like the war in yemen, then be prepared to defend why you think it is a good idea to work with the saudis to destroy the infrastructure, to create a situation where famine and cholera is rampant in that

country. if you want that, come down and tell us why is this a good idea. if not, i hope you will vote with us to end this war, to allow the united states to bring the warring parties together to see if we can bring peace, to see if we can bring humanitarian relief to these terribly suffering people. with that, i would yield top senator lee. mr. lee: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent to display an oversized visual display. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mr. lee: i'm not sure what constitutes oversize, but i have it on authority that a picture this big is not allowed without unanimous consent. this picture leaves an impression that itself is oversized, that itself demonstrates the humanity of this conflict. you see a child standing in what appears to be a school, an

ordinary learning environment that's been rendered unusable by the devastating impact of war. war does happen. conflicts do arise. this is one of the reasons why it was built into not only our system of laws, but our foundational governing structure in the constitution. the founding fathers understood that war would arise from time to time but they carefully divided up the power, recognizing how devastating the implications could be, recognizing that less bad things will happen if it is concentrated in the hands of a few. over time congress and the presidency have had a little bit of a tug of war, as i referenced earlier, about where the commander in chief power ends and the war power begins. in 1973, congress reasserted its constitutional role and tried to clarify some of what has been described as gray area by

passing the war powers resolution. the crisis that led congress to create this important law in many ways was reminiscent of the conflict that we're discussing today. the war powers act was passed in response to the vietnam war. that war began with the insertion of just a small handful of u.s. military advisors in 1950. but their ranks grew and grew gradually but steadily so that our commitment in vietnam spiraled into a decade's long bloody conflict. presidents have both parties abused their authority in order to wage this far-off war. finally, in 1973, congress decided it was time to bring our boys home so it repealed the limited legal authority for the

war and it granted to then-president johnson seven years earlier. in defiance of congress, president nixon continued the war, citing his authority as commander in chief. so congress drafted the war powers resolution to give itself a way to remove our armed services personnel from unauthorized, unlawful, unconstitutional war zones. the war powers resolution states that the president must notify congress within 24 hours of committing american troops to hostilities. it goes on to provide that the president must remove troops from the conflict. if congress does not authorize their presence within 60 days or in a maximum of 90 days in the case of certain emergencies. congress' passage of the war powers resolution was a bold assertion of its constitutional

responsibility in the face of a chronically overreaching executive branch. in fact, congress' xies to up -- desire to uphold the constitution was so strong that it actually overrode president nixon's veto of the war powers resolution. members of congress today can certainly learn a thing or two from their predecessors' commitment to constitutional duties, to the limited power possessed by each branch of government. since the war powers resolution was passed in 1973, defenders of a royal executive have tried to go around it, tried to circumvent it all together by claiming that their unauthorized wars somehow do not qualify as hostilities. we heard this claim by president obama in response to libya and we heard it again in response to

yemen. it is the official position of the u.s. department of defense that we are not engaged in hostilities in yemen unless our troops are actively engaged with units of powers with hostile units. close quote. to translate, the u.s. government really claims that it's not engaged in hostilities unless u.s. troops are on the ground being shot at by the enemy. now, it stretches the imagines and it stretches the english language to assert that our military is not engaged in hostilities in yemen. consider for a moment what it is that the u.s. military is doing as part of the saudi-led

coalition effort against the neighbors of saudi arabia -- against the saudi-led coalition yemeni neighbors. u.s. military personnel were assigned to the joint planning cell in saudi arabia where they are sharing military intelligence with the saudis and helping to target enemies within yemen for attack. our forces are also refueling coalition bombers mid-air on combat missions. if sending our military men and women to foreign lands to fuel our country's bombers and and hand pick its targets does not qualify as hostilities, then those wodz have lost -- words have lost their meaning. what does the word hostility mean if it cannot be said to encompass that? but as it happens the war powers

resolution was designed to stop secret, unauthorized military activities such as these. so congress is well within its right to vote on whether these activities should continue. that's why this joint resolution awrtdzorred by senator -- authored by senator sanders and senator murphy and myself and six others represents a significant chance, a constitutional moment for congress to do the right thing, for congress to do its job, for congress to represent the american people. this, after all, is their blood and their treasure that's being put on the line, that's why the constitution and war powers resolution alike contemplate action by congress and not solely unilateral action by the executive branch. so i would ask my colleagues, senator sanders and senator murphy, isn't it arguable that

by overreaching in this instance, we might, in fact, be making matters worse? could we be putting our country in a position of less security than more? mr. sanders: i think that is an excellent question. that is just the question i was going to ask of senator murphy because i think we understand that in recent history when there is chaos and confusion in a country, it provides an extraordinary opportunity for al qaeda and their allies to move in and we have spent billions and billions of dollars fighting al qaeda and their affiliates and i fear very much, as you've indicated, that what -- that the situation we're creating in yemen is, in many ways, making life easier for them. i would ask senator murphy, and

maybe listeners might be surprised by this, what side of this battle is al qaeda on in yemen right now? mr. murphy: senator sanders, thank you for the question. this is incredibly important to understand. there was great consternation at the beginning of this war, when the united states, in the obama administration, that the saudis were only targeting the houthis. as the al qaeda wing inside yemen was getting stronger and stronger, no matter how much we asked, no matter how much we pushed, the saudi-led coalition would not drop bombs on al qaeda, would not send any of their forces near them. they were only focused on the houthis. and the answer as to why that was happening is very simple. the enemy of your enemy tends to be your ally, and inside yemen, the houthis were drawing fire

from the saudi-led coalition and al qaeda. so in the early stages of this fight, the purpose of the saudi coalition was to have hands off al qaeda and that made al qaeda stronger and stronger. admittedly, recently, we have been more successful in getting the emratis to take on targeted missionings against al qaeda, but that is only a recent phenomenon. and it is frankly belied by the fact that we have new information that at the same time the emarotis are taking out operations, sometimes dangerous operations in risk of life to their forces against al qaeda, they are also supporting other militias inside yemen. solfas emissions that in -- militias that are just as radical and recruiting the type of troops that one day may join

isis and al qaeda. targeting against the united states. so this is a very chaotic space in which very purposely for a period of time, the coalition allowed for al qaeda to grow. even though that policy has changed recently, there are still signs that there are some very dangerous people to the united states that are being supported on the ground by members of our coalition. i know senator durbin is here. so i want to turn it over to him. i want to say two more quick things on this point. one is to note that our resolution does continue to allow for the united states to target al qaeda. we build into this resolution a carveout for any military activities that are currently authorized by the current 2001aumf. the administration interprets that to be al qaeda and affiliated follow-on

organizations. so let's be clear that if you care about the united states targeting al qaeda, that can continue here. finally, to senator lee's point about this interpretation of hostilities. let's be clear how narrow a definition that is. there have to be american troops on the ground exchanging fire in order for the war powers act to be triggered. that is not what congress intended because in fact, then, that would allow the administration to perpetuate an unlimited air campaign dropping unlimited munitions devastating, ruining a country without any input from congress. and even if you would say, well, that does involve u.s. personnel flying overhead so maybe that is potentially putting u.s. troops in the line of fire. remember, we are also entering an era of robotic warfare in which u.s. personnel are going

to be less into mnl to -- instrumental to hostilities that will still have grave consequences to the until. so clearly, the notion of war and how you fight it has changed over the years. the founding fathers never imagined air campaigns and yet the intense -- the intent and the language of the war powers act and of the constitution is clear. when war is being waged, when hostilities are being entered into, congress has to have a say. and please look at any of the pictures that we are putting before you and tell us that the united states is not engaged in hostilities if the effect in the country of yemen is this. i thank senator durbin for joining us on the floor today and i'd yield to him. mr. durbin: mr. president, i want to thank my colleagues, senator sanders, senator murphy, and senator lee for this

bipartisan effort. why are we here today? why are we discussing wars so far away? we're here because of this book. this is the constitution of the united states. the constitution very expressly tells us what we're supposed to be doing here. in article one, section eight trks lays out the things we are responsible, for the men and women who serve in congress. and among the things that congress shall have the power to do is to, quote, declare war. declare war. why did the founding fathers make certain that it was clear that congress would be involved in that decision on the declaration of war? because when they created congress, the idea was that the people of this country far and wide would at least have a voice in the decision through the people they elected. and we would be held accountable for our decisions to declare war or not to declare it. because we're up for election. so congress has this responsibility. and over the years, congress has not exercised this responsibility in a responsible

way many times. i've got a question. i bet if i brought in every united states senator and asked them the following question, very few would be able to answer it. how many countries is the united states military currently involved in fighting? how many countries are we in today fighting? would you guess two? iraq, afghanistan, for sure there. five? ten? 20? brown university's cost of war project recently published data saying that the u.s. fought terror through direct fighting, training, or military support to other forces or through drone strikes in 76 countries. between october 2015 and 2017. is that the right number today? i'm not sure. none of us know. we're often surprised to learn we are sending our military and

fighting in another country. and when something awful occurs, americans are killed, for example, sometimes members of congress hear for the first time oh, we're in what country fighting? i take this pretty seriously and i have over the years. when it comes to the authorization of using force. because it isn't just a matter of projecting american power. it is life and death. these are decisions that will be made by congress or by the president, sometimes both, and the net result of it, even under the best of circumstances, is that americans will perish. funerals will be held in illinois and utah, in vermont and in connecticut and in wisconsin. that's the reality of the decisions that we reach. i can remember the debate right after 9/11 on the floor. it was one of the most important of my career. and it was a question about whether or not we would authorize the president of the united states, president bush at the time, to use military force

to respond to 9/11. if you remember the debate, there were two real options on the floor. one was use military force against those responsible for the attack on the united states and to send that force into afghanistan. the other was to go after the so-called weapons of mass destruction in iraq, two parallel debates but two debates that i saw very differently. i was skeptical from the start about this iraqi invasion. nobody ever connected the dots between saddam hussein and 9/11. we were talking about the threat that he was to the rest of the world and yet we voted here on the floor of the united states senate in 2002 to authorize the use of military force to go into iraq. sadly, we are still there today. sadly, iraq is in shambles politically and physically and the war continues. i voted no.

i remember that night because it was in october in 2002. i remember that night because the vote was taken very late and there were two or three of us who stayed on the floor here. kent conrad as well as paul wellstone of minnesota. paul wellstone was up for reelection. we wondered if that vote would affect him in any way and i remember going up to him and saying paul, i hope that vote, your vote against the war in iraq doesn't cost you the election. wellstone said to me, it's all right if it does. people know where i stand. they expect nothing less. he didn't live to see the election, if you'll remember. he died in a plain crash with his wife and staffers just a few days after that vote. but that's the gravity of this decision. that's the importance of this decision and that's why i want to thank my colleagues for bringing us together, just a few of us, but enough of us maybe in the senate to remind people of our constitutional responsibility. the vote on afghanistan was one

i voted for, the invasion of afghanistan. the message was clear. you attacked the united states. we'll come right back after you, al qaeda, and we did. i recently asked the secretary of defense, when i voted that way in 2002, i did not imagine that 15 or 16 years later that war would continue. how does this war ever end? afghanistan? he didn't know the answer. didn't come up with one. all he could say to me was, if we left, it would be worse. well, you can say that a lot about other countries in the world, but what we're talking about today is what we are going to do in terms of this horrid situation in yemen. i was in my office looking down on this debate through c-span, and i saw the photos that had been displayed here. the utter human and physical devastation that has taken place. mr. president, senator sanders is asking a simple but deeply important question here today.

senator lee and senator murphy join him. here is the question. who authorized the united states military action to help saudi arabia fight the houthis in yemen? i didn't. i don't remember that there was ever a vote. so how are we doing this? by what authority is our government doing this? this is not about the merits of the fight in any way or a vindication of the houthis troubling role in the more arrive imyemeni civil war. it's rather congress follows its constitutional responsibilities. it's rather the american people have a voice in this decision, the same people who will send their sons and daughters to bravely serve in our military. so i'm happy to be a cosponsor of this resolution that halts any such u.s. support without congressional authorization. i call on this congress to deal with revisiting the 2001-2002 authorizations of force that i believe had been stretched by multiple administrations beyond any credible limit.

there are real threats to the safety and security of america. al qaeda and its successors and others. but we in congress have the responsibility to authorize those conflicts and regularly update them as necessary. congress and the senate have been absent without leave when it comes to article one, section eight, and our authority and responsibility to declare war. we have other looming threats. north korea, iran, but any u.s. war against those countries or others short of protecting against an imminent attack as allowed under the war powers resolution requires the vote of congress regardless of who the president may be. mr. president, when it comes to the declaration of war, we simply cannot see this as an annoyance. we must do our part. we must follow the constitution even when it's difficult. i yield the floor. mr. sanders: senator durbin, thank you very much for your per

septemberive remarks and -- per septemberive remarks and reminding us the time is long overdue for the united states congress to accept its constitutional responsibilities. i want to ask senator lee -- we're running out of time here -- if you had some closing remarks here. mr. lee: thank you, senator sanders. i appreciate your remarks, your leadership on this and i appreciate the remarks of senator durbin and senator murphy. it has added to this discussion. i wanted to point out in addition to being unlawful, unconstitutional, our involvement in yemen is unproductive in the fight against terrorism. the houthis we are fighting are a regional force, one that doesn't harbor ambitions of attacking the united states homeland. and while the houthis are certainly no friend of ours, neither are they a serious threat to our country. yet we're diverting considerable resources to fighting the houthis, resources that would be

better spent fighting more substantial threats, threats that harbor rather openly ambitions of bringing down the united states, of attacking the united states. threats like al qaeda or isis. and on that point, the best evidence we have suggests their involvement in yemen is arguably undermined our fight against isis. the state department's most recent study, its most recent country reports on terrorism says that the -- which, by the way, happens to be the authority on that subject for congress and the american people -- it says that we have inadvertently strengthened isis by killing off its antagonists, the houthis. this just reinforces the forc forceical character that they have the potential to undertake. we bomb with one hand. we give humanitarian aid with

the other hand. we whack at terrorists from one group and another springs up in its place. defenders of our efforts in this war in yemen often claim that the real reason we're fighting the houthis is because they are a proxy for iran, which is the true threat to our nation and to the world. this would be perhaps a reasonable rationale but there are conflicting reports about the houthis and their ties to iran. iran has expansionist views. the houthis do not. hezbollah is an officially listed -- houthis are not. they're not a threat to america, not at least yet. by helping the saudis bomb them, we only give the houthis reason to start to hate us. our involvement in yemen, then, detracts from our ability to be

a diplomatic resource and the peacemaker in the region. and so in closing, the substance of the resolution offered by senator sanders and cosponsored by senator murphy, myself, and others is simple. a it puts our war against the houthi rebels to a vote. it concerns the houthis and only the houthis. if members are convinced that our fight against the houthis is worthwhile, then so be it. congress will have done its part, and the fight will go on. but if members are not willing to pay the heavy price tag for this war, calculated in dollars and in innocent human lives, then our resolution will bring u.s. operations to a close. this resolution is an opportunity for members of congress to stand up and be counted on a matter of life and death. it's an opportunity to end the

executive's unconstitutional dominance over matters of war and peace and restore in its place a khrab are -- collaborate process whereby congress declares war and presidents wage war. thank you, senator sanders. mr. sanders: let me conclude by thanking senator lee and senator murphy and senator durbin for their remarks this afternoon, thanking senator booker, senator warren, senator leahy, senator markey, senator feinstein, senator wyden for their cosponsorship of joint resolution 54. let me summarize it very briefly in this way. congress cannot continue to abdicate its responsibility on the all-important issue of how and when the united states becomes involved in military intervention. we cannot continue to run away

from that issue. and if you think that the war in yemen in siding with the saudis on this war makes sense, when you come down to the floor of the senate, make your position clear, tell your constituents what you believe, and then vote for the war, but have the courage at least to accept your responsibility as a member of the united states congress and not abdicate it to the president. and with that, mr. president, i would yield the floor.

a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from florida. mr. nelson: mr. president, we have a series of senators that are going to be speaking about what is happening as the result

of climate change, sea level rise, which is particularly having its effects in my state of florida. few states are as vulnerable to climate change than what we find particularly in south florida, miami beach being ground zero. because what's happening, as the sea level is rising -- and this is not projections, it's not forecasts. this is actual measurements, measurements by nasa and noaa over the last 40 years, that the sea has risen in south florida five to eight inches. we see the effects of that at the seasonal high tides.

now more increasingly along with the cycles of the moon each month that water typically is slushing around in the streets. it's sloshing over the curbs. and as a result, the city of miami beach has had to spend tens of millions of dollars in big, huge, expensive pumps and have also had to raise the level of the road beds. noaa's most recent worst-case scenario projections predict a two-foot sea level rise by 2060. and if you take it all the way to the end of the century, six feet by 2100. now needless to say, in a peninsula that sticks down into

the middle of what we know as hurricane highway, six feet would inundate so much of the coastal areas. by the way, that's where 75% of the population of florida, our 21 million people, 75% of that is along the coastal regions. and that puts all of the entire nation's low-lying coastal cities at risk of major flooding, not to mention our military installations along the coast. the seas are not just rising. they are also warming. and they're rising because they're warming. and of course i've explained this several times on the floor of the senate. as the sun's rays come in and

hit the earth, some of the heat is absorbed, but some of it is reflected off the earth's surface and is radiated out into space. when you put up an extra abundance of greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide and methane, and they move into the upper atmosphere, they serve like a glass ceiling of a greenhouse. thus, that's the term, the greenhouse effect. they then, as that heat is reflected off the earth that would normally radiate out into space, it's trapped. and thus, the entire earth starts to heat. two-thirds of the earth's

surface is covered by oceans. 90% of that heat is absorbed into the oceans. and what happens to water when it's heated? it expands. and so you see the reasons that we find that warmer water means the sea levels rise. and you know what else it produces? more frequent and more ferocious hurricanes. after the back-to-back punch of hurricanes harvey, irma, and maria, imagine how much we would have to spend in federal disaster aid if we had a hurricane season like last year every year.

well, that's why it's so critical to continue funding climate and weather research and to keep improving noaa's hurricane models. this information can make the difference in a life-or-death situation. we see what havoc that the hurricanes visited upon texas and then florida after it had already crossed puerto rico. but then along comes maria, hits the island directly, and as of today -- how many months? five going on six months after the hurricane, here poor island of puerto rico, our fellow american citizens, 17% today do not still have electricity.

and so indeed there's been a lot of loss of life as a result of hurricanes. now our coastline in florida is blessed, as a hurricane is approaching, with a natural break water. it's called the florida reef track. it's along the southeastern coast. and of all the major barrier reefs in the entire world, florida has the third-largest. it starts south of key west. it continues all the way up the keys, all the way north up to fort pierce, florida. this florida reef, it is the only barrier reef in the continental u.s.

and healthy reefs are able to reduce storm damage by taking a lot of impact. but climate change, ocean acidification and an unprecedented coral disease outbreak are hurting florida's reefs and diminishing their ability to act as a shoreline buffer. and i'm not even talking about all the other things that reefs do, which is the natural place for all the fish and the critters of the sea together, and swimming in and around and among all of the coral reefs. so that's why last week i wrote a letter to the secretaries of commerce, of agriculture, and of

health and human services, calling for an interagency strike team to be formed to finally diagnose the coral disease and the attempt to save the remaining reefs. i want to show you an example, mr. president. i want you to see the difference between a healthy reef and a diseased reef. look at this difference. here's the healthy coral. look how the diseased reef has actually been bleached out. so time is running out on this third-largest barrier reef on the planet. we have to respond to the causes and effects of climate change now. the longer we put it off, the

harder and more expensive it's going to be to mitigate. i want to thank senator whitehouse and my fellow colleagues who are speaking out on this critical issue. mr. president, i yield the floor. mr. schumer: mr. president. the presiding officer: the democratic leader. mr. schumer: thank you. first let me thank my good friend from florida. his state may be more affected by climate change than just about any other. we hear about the water lapping up on the shores of southern florida already, the constant flooding. we hear -- we've seen these amazing pictures that equal 1,000 words, about the coral reefs. and he even talked about a word we rarely use in brooklyn -- critters. but we want to save the critters too.

so he has been eloquent not just today but constantly on the issue of climate and does it in such a practical perspective that just about every american of every ideology, part of the country, thought process can understand. so i thank him. of course i want to thank our great leader on this issue, the senator from rhode island, sheldon whitehouse. he's passionate, and his passion carries over into effective action. there has been no more voice more clarion, more constant, more effective in remembering that we cannot ignore this issue. constantly reminding us how important it is. and i thank senator whitehouse not only for pulling this all together tonight, but for his just great strength and constancy on this issue. now i join my colleagues to shed light on the subject of climate change that has received scant

attention, unfortunately, from president trump and this republican senate. despite decades of incontrovertible evidence that climate change is harming our planet, president trump and the republicans have done nothing about it. in fact worse than doing nothing, they have weakened our environmental laws, decrying the science that has helped men and women progress through the centuries. republicans in congress have undone the environmental protections that hold corporations accountable for polluting our streams. through an unrelated tax bill, congressional republicans opened up the alaska national wildlife refuge to oil drilling. over in the executive branch, e.p.a. administrator pruitt has implemented an extreme

deregulatory agenda, unwinding the rules that keep our air and water clean. worst of all president trump announced that he would pull the united states out of the paris climate accord which would make america the only country in the world that isn't part of that agreement. while the world comes together to negotiate sensible climate change policies, while other nations, other foreign businesses grab the mantleship on green energy, the united states used to be such a leader on so many issues, can only sit and watch from the sidelines all because president trump decided to pull out of the paris accord. what a remarkable mistake. it will go down in history as one of the worst days in american history as are -- as

the world gets hotter and climate change takes its toll on our country and the world. mr. president, climate change is real, human activity is driving it, and it's happening right now. now, this these are facts. this is not specks -- speculation. this is not someone spinning a tale. these are facts not in dispute. scientists know it, businesses know, it the world knows it, and the american people people know it too. we in new york learned about the devastating impact of hurricane sandy. it took so long to rebuild our coastal communities and all of long island understood that climate change was real and devastating when you do nothing about it. the storms are getting more powerful, storms like sandy, more frequent, and there's no doubt that climate change is playing a role. we watched three record-breaking

hurricanes buffer our cities and coastlines, devastating texas, puerto poart and the virgin islands inn islands. according to noaa, 2017 was the most expensive year on record for natural disasters in the united states, costing hundreds of billions of dollars many we are running out of time to do something about this issue. so, together with my colleagues this evening, led by senator whitehouse who will be giving his 200th "time to wake up" speech, i urge all americans, particularly younger americans who understand that this planet will decline if we don't do something, and it's their planet, i urge everyone, younger americans, older americans, and everybody to contact republican senators and comment and tell --

congressmen and tell them to wake up on climate change. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the assistant democratic leader. mr. durbin: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, for the past six years, senator sheldon whitehouse of rhode island has delivered weekly addresses on the senate floor on climate change saying, quote, "time to wake up". each time he discusses the disastrous effect of global warming. climate change threatens our

national security and our local communities. climate change drives global conflict and its far-reaching national security issues. there is growing evidence that climate change is making drought more frequent and severe. it has contributed to the drought in syria and rapid urbanization in somalia. the pbs news hour reported that more than a million smoilies -- smolis were forced from their home. increasingly severe drought has led to a scarety of land and water. farmers who fled the city claim herders burned down their home and turned their farmland into grass land. this has pushed farmers and herders to the city and most end

up in camps, burdened by poverty, a tinderbox. last march 110 people died from starvation prompting the president of somalia to declare the drought a national disaster. still, 1.2 million children under the age of 5 are projected to be malnourished in 2018. somalia isn't the only country where the effects of climate change have created national conflict. syria will mark the seventh year of its civil war, research by the national academy of sciences reports that climate change has are contributed to the crisis in syria. extreme drought in syria between 2006 and 2009 was most likely due to climate change and that drought was a factor in the uprising in 2011 when more than a million displaced farmers joined pro-democracy protests.

last year a pulitzer-prize winning "new york times" columnist wrote about migration from the sahara desert to libya the migration was driven in part by drought made more extreme by climate change. as climate instability drives more extreme and frequent droughts and the scarcity of fertile land, water, and food, it will trigle major -- trigger major conflicts. as one of the largest contributors of greenhouse gas emissions the united states has a moral responsibility to act on this crisis. here in our country, my constituents in illinois have experienced adverse effects of climate change. climate models suggest if current global warming trends

continue, illinois will have a climate similar to the coast of texas. for illinois farmers, these changes in the environment have a direct effect on their livelihood and for all of us a direct effect on our food supply. wetter springs and more frequent flooding will keep farmers from planting. it will stunt the growpth and hurt crop yields. it will make it heard for families -- harder for families to put food on the table. in historic years illinois has seen isoric storms an droughts that has cost millions of dollars in damage. last week scientists reported that this february was the wettest on record beating the last record by over half an inch. an average of five inches of rain fell. streeter, illinois had five

inches of rain and aurora had a recorded 26 inches. rainstorms and melting snow caused flooding in illinois with 20 counties placed under a flood warning. as the water levels of rivers continued to rise, several communities had to evacuate. multiple communities were ee veterans improvement act waited. -- evacuated. flooded roadways claimed the life of an illinois resident. climate change is likely to increase the frequency and severity of flooding in illinois as well, and my constituents are concerned about their ability to recover from repeated flood events. how much is flood damage costing us in illinois. last july 3,200 residents were impacted by flooding. this damage cost millions, but often doesn't rise to the level where anybody qualifies for

federal aid. from 2007 to 2014, flooding in urban areas has costs $ 2.3 billion in damages. in the last decade extreme weather events and fire cost the federal government over $350 billion according to o.m.b. these costs will rise as the climate changes. the evidence is clear. we need to get serious about addressing the cause and effect of climate change. ignoring it threatens our national security and safety. our generation, i believe, has a moral obligation to leave the world in better shape than we found it. let's not run away from our responsibility tower children and grand -- to your children and grandchildren. let's work towards solving the challenges of climate change. this is a difficult issue to explain from a political point of view. the only major political party in the world today that denies climate change is the republican party of the united states of america. it's hard to imagine that a

great party that once was actively engaged in a positive way in this debate is now absent without leave. it's hard to explain the party of richard nixon, who created the environmental protection agency, now is in complete denial when it comes to climate change and global warming. it's hard to understand that they are missing the obvious indicators and evidence from every corner of the world about the impact of global warming, and it's almost impossible to understand how they can ignore the impact this will have on the lives of our children and grandchildren. is it too much to ask our generation to make a little sacrifice to spare them the devastation that will come from climate change? is it too much to ask us to be a little more sensitive in our use of energy so that our kids and grandkids can enjoy a good life in their years on earth? that usual is a responsibility most generations expect, but we're being told it is just too much to ask current americans to

come forward and do something as thoughtful, meaningful, to reduce energy consumption and reduce emissions and pollution. i think that's a horrible situation. i think it's one that we shouldn't be proud of at all. i thank my friend sheldon whitehouse for coming to the floor regularly and reminding us of what's happening in this world today and how we each have a responsibility to future generations to alleviate the suffering, the pain, and damage that has been caused by this global warming. mr. president, i yield the floor. a senator: this evening inspired by the determined efforts of my colleague, sheldon whitehouse of rhode island. mr. coons: he is committed to raising awareness and urging action on this threat to our environment. let me speak briefly as someone

trained in science and chemist. i have been here to advocate for science. we live in a time of unprecedented scientific advances. we turned to science toll solve domestic and international crises. science was there to fight the ebola outbreak and the dangers of cigarette smoke, it was scientists who provided a cure and provide early warning and led to policies to stronger consumer standards. the scientific method has saved lives and ensured survival. why don't we look at science, mitigation and a daptation -- adaptation? climbing is happening although it is gradual and slow to see. it will affect the health, agricultural production and

unbelievable ranges. i have colleagues who aren't convinced or don't understand that climate change is a real and pressing threat. let me site one study. it surveyed 13,950 peer-reviewed articles on climate change, and found 24 of them rejected global warming, less than0.2%. although there is not unanimous opinion, when there is 99.8% agreement in the science community, we should agree this is enough to take action. an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, which dates back to the early 1700's. let's change our ways and work together to lower greenhouse gases and slow the impact of climate change. as someone who represents the state of delaware, i'm passionate about this because we are the lowest mean elevation state in america. i've heard from folks up and

down the first state, from my colleague senator colleague, from our governor, from our community leaders, from concerned loordz -- leaders that they are concerned about sea-level rise and its likely impact on our statement we need to do more because in my small state sea-level roo rise is -- rise is happening at twice the rate. everyone in delaware will finally have a beach house, just not the way they want it. we need we need for look forward, not backward. we need reaction. we need policy, not politics. we should act today, not tomorrow. mr. president, i want to say again to senator whitehouse, thank you. it was my pleasure to have him visit my home state of delaware and see what we're doing to plan for and combat sea-level riefs as a result of climate change. it was an honor to join you this evening and lend my support to you, the environment and the fight against climate change. mr. president, i yield to my senior colleague from our shared

home state of delaware. mr. carper: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from delaware. mr. carper: i'm tom carper, and i approve this message. mr. president, i had the privilege of serving on the environmental and public works committee for -- oh, my gosh -- 17 years and now serve as the senior democrat on the committee. i've had the opportunity serving with sheldon whitehouse for more than half those years. he's a senior member of our committee, a good friend and i think someone who is respected by democrats and republicans and independents alike here in the united states senate. he's a senior senator from rhode island but he casts a long shadow on a lot of issues, none less than the issue that we're discussing here today. i just want to join my friend, senator coons, in thanking sheldon sincerely for his passion, for his persistence in

highlighting what the vast majority of the world recognizes as the greatest environmental challenge of our time and that is climate change. our friend from rhode island is a well known climate champion, but what some may not know is that sheldon has bee spent over0 hours on the senate floor reminding all of us that it is long past -- here it is -- long past time to wake up. time to wake up and to get serious about addressing this ever growing threat. there's something to be said early on here in the senate that to get anything done we have to be per tis tent -- persistent and stay on message. the theme is always time to wake up. time to wake up. for nearly six years now, sheldon whitehouse has reiterated what the constituents in the ocean state and constituents in our state see every day. climate change is real.

human beings are making it worse. and it is threatening our economy and our way of life. those of us living in coastal states also know all too well that we can no longer ignore this issue or wait to take real action. while our friend from rhode island is -- as they like to say in rhode island, wicked smart, wicked smart, you don't have to take his word for it that climate change is a growing threat. leading scientists in our country and around the world have been saying this not just for a couple of years but for decdecades. scientists and medical professionals have also linked climate change to increased air pollution, deadly high temperatures, and more pests in our food and water, all of which negatively impact our health and disproportionately affect the most vulnerable among us. these days you don't need a degree in science or medicine to see the disastrous effect of climate change on the world in which we live.

rising sea levels and extreme weather events from climate change are the new norm. in 2017 alone, we had multiple category five hurricanes i think maybe for the first time in history. second hottest year on record, catastrophic fires in the west, severe flooding in the east. these events place extreme burdens on the american people, on our economy, on our budget costing our federal government literally hundreds of billions of dollars not over the last ten years, last year. last year, in one year. and the effects of rising sea levels are even more harmful in low-lying states, coastal states like delaware. senator coons explained delaware is the lowest lying state in america, the highest piece of land in our state is a bridge. the -- it's a combination of things going on in coastal states like ours. in our state the land is sinking

and the sea is rising. that's not a good combination for delaware or any other place. and our friends from rhode island know of which i speak. i'm delighted that senator whitehouse is a member of the environmental and public works committee with many of us because whether we're discussing environmental policy or infrastructure investments, the senator from rhode island never fails to remind our colleagues of the unique and significant challenges that coastal states face as a result of climate change. many people may not know this, but as i said before, lowest lying state. you can go to delaware. you can come with me and drive south on route 1, make a left turn on the drive to the edge of the chesapeake beige, look -- chesapeake bay -- delaware bay rather, look across toward new jersey and there's a concrete bunker -- i don't know -- maybe 500 feet out of the water, poking up out of the water, and that's -- what used to be at the water's edge was a parking lot

where people used to park their car, trucks, vans, and launch their boats and go out and fish, whatever. that bunker out in the ocean, out in the delaware bay used to sit 500 feet west of the dune line. it's now out in the ocean largely covered when we have high tide. well, i invite my colleagues who deny climate change to visit our state. come to delaware. see firsthand what i just described at the beach. come to a place called south ridge, the southern edge of wilmington, delaware or odessa, 0 miles south of wilmington. the strongest storms ravaging our beaches and the sea level rises i mentioned earlier, prime hook beach. our colleagues -- one colleague who has been to delaware more than a few times is sheldon whitehouse. i like to call him affectionately the white house. but senator whitehouse, a few years back he came to the state to see a spectacular natural event that delaware is lucky to

host every year, the arrival of the se birds who fly thousands f miles from south to north, north to south. and they stop for lunch in delaware. they eat the eggs of horseshoe crabs and they refuel for their journey. they're not this big. they're maybe half the size of the birds that are right here. but they can fly literally thousands -- almost 10,000 miles before stopping to refuel. each year the delaware bay hosts tiny birds, the red owe owe from the southern tip of south america all the way up to the arctic circle. they stop and go over to feed on horseshoe, crab eggs and refuel for the rest of their journey. it is an incredible journey for

such a small bird. it's a must-see event as our friend from rhode island can attest. you might think a bird as hardy as this which flies across the globe every year might be able to escape the effects of climate change but warming temperatures, ocean acidification and is he-level rise are affecting their food supply and their nesting grounds all along their journey. if nothing else we should be working together to ensure that our children and grandchildren will be able to experience natural phenomena like the arrival of the red birds for years, for decades, for centuries to come. we should also recognize that we share a home with these creatures. it's not just our planet. it's their planet, too. if we allow climate change to determine their fate trks will undoubtedly determine ours eventually. i'll close with this. i know fighting climate change is a personal matter for me. i also know the same is true for

our friend from rhode island. we're fighting for our constituents' way of life and our senator from rhode island and i will continue to speak truth to power. to climate science deniers that are out there, i will borrow the fitting words of our ocean state colleague. it's really time to wake up. it's really time to wake up. climate change is no longer? the distant future. it is here. and it is now. and we need to meet that challenge head-on. mr. president, i reserve the balance of my time. actually, i want to yield my time to the -- to whoever follows me. we have the senator from hawaii. i will yield my time to the senator from hawaii.

mr. schatz: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from hawaii. mr. schatz: climate change feels daunting. in the united states we have historic wildfires, storms and floods. severe weather has upended people's lives, destroying businesses and homes. it's now costing the economy tens of billions of dollars every year. around the world sometimes it can seem even bleaker. cities are running out of water. drought has distressed entire regions pushing people out of their homes and fueling conflict. meanwhile here in, the trump administration is actively undermining our ability to address climate change and at the e.p.a. in particular, scott pruitt is allowing polluters to violate the clean air act and the clean water act. he plans to eliminate limits on methane emissions and protections that keep toxic chemicals from polluting our waterways. he's rolling back the clean power plan and fuel efficient standards that keep too much carbon from polluting the air.

he's cut the number of fines for polluters by more than half. and he's reduced e.p.a. staff so that it's down to the same level that it was in 1984. 700 e.p.a. employees, including 200 scientists have left since the beginning of the trump administration. in other words, this administration isn't just ignoring climate change and its impacts, it's actually throwing fuel on the fire. so, is there any reason for hope? well, let me give you three reasons to actually be hopeful. first, the rest of the word is going to move forward with or without leadership. every single nation in the world is working to lower their emissions and meet their commitments as part of the paris agreement. experts say that even without the united states, the paris agreement can succeed if nations follow through. and there are some promising signs that this is happening. in china experts predicted that coal consumption would peak between the years 2020 and 2040

but brookings just reported earlier this year that the country's consumption of coal has already peeked. one-third of renewable energy today come from china. in 2018 they will likely make up half of the global market for new solar installations. and china is not the only one making progress here. the world is in a race for clean energy. a coalition of 22 countries and the e.u. is investing more than $30 billion a year in clean air research and development. that brings us to the second reason to have hope on climate change and that's economics. here in the united states, financial incentives remain the law regardless of what scott pruitt wants the law to be. we stirl have the investment -- we still have the investment tax credit and production tax credit for solar and wind. and they are pushing us towards clean energy. last year more than half of the new energy generation that came online in the united states was wind and solar.

more than coal and natural gas combined. the fact is that clean energy is now cheaper than dirty energy. clean energy is now cheaper than dirty energy. in 2009, coal cost $111 per mega watt hour, natural gas $83, wind $135. utility scale solar cost a whopping $359, about three and a half times the cost of coal. by 2017 -- listen to these numbers -- $102 for coal, $60 for natural gas, $45 for wind, $50 for utility scale solar. so now wind and solar are 20% cheaper on average and coal is now twice as expensive as clean energy. even the fossil fuel energy understands that we are moving towards a low carbon economy. that's why their investors are demanding accountability. last year a majority of shareholders forced exxonmobil to start reporting on how the

fight against climate change will impact the oil economy, which is -- excuse me, the oil company which is the largest oil company in the world. and transcanada canceled its plans to build an oil pipeline that would have carried 1.1 million barrels of oil a day because of changing economic and political considerations. third and finally, the united states may not have the president's leadership on climate change, but when it comes to the paris agreement, corporations, states and cities have stood up and declared we are still in. thousands of mayors, governors, c.e.o.'s, tribal leaders and average americans are working to meet our commitments under paris. and here's just one example at the state level. more than half of the states have clean energy policies in place, and many have capped emissions. in hawaii we will transition to 100% clean energy by the year 2045 and analysts are optimistic that we may even reach our goal sooner than that.

and these efforts are making a difference. researchers at carnegie-mellon found the united states can meet our original commitments of paris regardless of what rex tillerson and donald trump and scott pruitt wanted, even if the e.p.a. undermines our effort, we are still on track. george washington once said that perseverance in spirit have done wonders in all ages. he also said it is infinitely better to have a few good men than many eufrpb different ones. -- different ones. there is hope in the congress. senator sheldon whitehouse will be remembered by the epit my of perseverance and spirit when it comes to climate change. when you look at the senators joining him on the floor this evening it is clear we have more than a few good men and women on this issue. we will continue to shine the light on the -plt ways that this

administration is failing the american people by ignoring climate change. but we will also continue to hope because the absence of leadership from this president has not stopped the rest of the country or the rest of the world from acting on climate, and it won't stop us from moving forward. i yield the floor. ms. warren: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from massachusetts. ms. warren: thank you, mr. president. mr. president, i rise today to join the citizens of massachusetts who are making their voices heard and sending a clear message to president trump. the commonwealth of massachusetts stands strong in opposition to his reckless proposal to expand offshore drilling. we stand strong in opposition to yet another handout to big oil executives who are willing to put corporate profits ahead of

the health of our coastal families, and we stand strong in opposition to this administration's willful ignorance of climate change and the world's ongoing clean energy revolution. president trump may say that his drilling plan is about jobs, but the truth is that this offshore drilling proposal is a slap in the face to every hardworking coastal family. president trump is willing to put corporate profits for his big oil buddies ahead of shipping crews in boston, ahead of the fishermen from gloucester to new bedford, ahead of the mom and pop diners all along the cape, ahead of every tourism industry worker, and ahead of the families of all of these workers. president trump is willing to gamble with the livelihoods of over 600,000 north atlantic coastal and ocean workers. the people of massachusetts, the

people who depend on a clean coast, are not willing to take that gamble. our coastal communities remember when the b.p. deep water horizon oil spill happened in 2010. one-one offshore oil well blew and caused deepwater horizon drilling rig to explode. it killed 11 workers, injured 17 others and unleashed one of the worst environmental disasters in human history. nearly five million barrels of oil gushed into the ocean, contaminating more than 1,300 miles of coastline and nearly 70,000 square miles of surface water. millions of birds and marine animals died, suffocated by thick coatings of oil and poisoned by other toxic

chemicals. the gulf fishing industry lost thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. the spill devastated the gulf's coastal tourism economy. the environmental and economic devastation hit working families and small businesses across the region. but the trump administration insists on padding the pockets of big oil while small coastal towns bear all the risks that something will go wrong. the local towns bear the risk of a devastating oil spill. the local towns bear the risk of climate change impacts, including increased coastal habitat destruction, fisheries threatened by ocean acidification and rising sea levels. president trump and this republican congress want to bury their heads in the sand, or bury their heads under big piles of

big oil money. but the reality is this, climate change is happening. the evidence is all around us. and the consequences worsen with every single day of inaction. make no mistake, we are in the most critical fight of our generation, and we are running out of time. we are in a fight to save our coastal towns, a fight to save our farmers, a fight to save our fishermen, a fight to save good-paying clean energy jobs, a fight for our children's future. will winning the fight against climate change be tough? you bet it will. we will need to retool to install offshore wind turbines instead of offshore drilling rigs. we will need to invest in faster clean energy deployment, modernize the electric grid, build sea walls to protect our coastal towns, and much, much more.

it is a big job ahead. but there is no country and no workforce in the world that is more willing and more able to tackle the challenges of climate change head on than the united states of america. yes, it is hard, but it's what we do. it is who we are. we are a nation of unrelenting workers who clawed our way out of a great depression, who fought two world wars, who put a man on the moon and who electrified the nation with 20th century fuels, and with a level playing field, we are a nation of workers who can electrify the world all over again with the 21st century fuels of wind, solar, and other clean energy sources. the american people deserve leadership that understands just how innovative and how persistent we are.

leadership that knows the fearless strength of the american people, leadership that believes in the innovative get-it-done attitude of the american worker, leadership that will stand up to big oil executives hellbent on protecting their profits at our expense, leadership that knows that our best days are ahead of us but we have to fight for them. leadership that will not ignore the challenges of climate change. leadership that will not chain our economy to the fossil fuels of yesterday and instead that will support the good-paying clean energy jobs of tomorrow. and leadership that refuses to put our coastal families at risk of another devastating oil spill. the american people deserve leadership that doesn't work for

big oil. the american people deserve leadership that works for them. mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll.

the presiding officer: the senator from ohio. mr. brown: thank you, mr. president. i thank -- the presiding officer: the senate is in a quorum call. mr. brown: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent to dispense with the quorum call. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. brown: thank you. i first thank senator whitehouse, one of my best friends in the senate. we came to the senate on the saeuplt day and he will -- same day and he will go down in history as the best advocate in this body for combatting climate change. he has taken the floor over and over again. he's continued to make sure that people listen to something so, so important. we all appreciate that leadership. climate change affects ohio jobs that rely on lake erie.

the great lakes are as vital to our industrial heartland as the rockies are to the west as the atlantic coastline is to new england, as the gulf of mexico is to the presiding officer's home state of florida. 84% of north america's fresh water -- 84% of north america's fresh water is in these five great lakes. polarized caps contain more fresh water than does the great lakes. lake erie is one of the biggest lakes in the world. it's also the shallowest of the lakes. it contains only -- this is an amazing statistic. lake erie, the shallowest and among the smallest in surface area of the great lakes, lake erie contains 2% of all the water in the great lakes, yet contains 50% of the fish in the great lakes because it's warmer and shallower and conducive to aquatic life, fish life. it's shallowness makes lake erie particularly vulnerable to storm water runoff and the algae

pwhraoplgs it causes. the -- blooms it us causes. the maumi river p basin is the largest drainage basin of any of the great lakes, the largest river that empties into the great lakes is the maumee. climate change makes these algae blooms off the coast of toledo in the western basin of lake erie, climate change makes those blooms worse. it contaminates our lakes. it threatens the ohio businesses and communities that rely on lake erie, and i believe three summers ago lake erie, we had to get drinking water, bottled water to the citizens of toledo and the surrounding areas in northwest ohio because the water was not potable at that time. according to the national oceanic and atmospheric administration, we know one effect of climate change in the great lakes region has been a 37% increase in the gully washers, the heavy rain events that contribute to algae blooms.

i've talked to farmers who have been farming in the western lake erie basin for decades just a few weeks ago, i did a roundtable in that part of the state. my staff member jonathan mccracken has done some before and since. they tell us they're experiencing heavier rain events more often and with greater intensity compared to even 15 years ago let alone in the life span of many of these farmers. hotter summers, shorter weurpbts make this problem worse. the effects of algae bloom have profound effects on the entire ecosystem. that's why this matters. protecting our lake is one of the biggest environmental challenges facing the entire midwest. it's the biggest challenge facing ohioans. we have made progress over the last eight years thanks in large part to the p great lakes restoration initiative. the great lakes restoration initiative, the glri is working. everybody knows it does. i remember how polluted lake

erie was when i was growing up. i grew up about an hour, hour and a half from there. my family occasionally a weekend or two in the summer would drive north to gem beach and i remember the dead fish. i remember the smell of the lake. i remember that this lake was in big, big trouble. we have made progress cleaning up its tributaries, we have increased access to the lake, we have improved habitat for fish and wildlife. it's been a bipartisan success story, and it took the federal government -- the city of cleveland couldn't do it, the city of lorain, san dusty, port clinton or ashtabula, they couldn't clean up the lake. the state of ohio didn't have the -- the ability to clean this lake up and the resources. it took the federal government and the us-epa to have the strength and the dollars and the mission to clean up this lake. that's why it's been a

bipartisan success story all over our country. we need to make sure that glri has the funding it needs to keep up its work, not eliminate it as the president proposed again in his budget. taking a hatchet to glri would cost ohio jobs, it would jeopardize public health by putting our drinking water at risk. so many of us, if you're over 50 years old, you remember what that lake looked like, you remember what that lake smelled like, you remember how people didn't swim there, how people's drinking water was threatened. you were a member of that before e.p.a., before there was this bipartisan commitment to clean up one of the greatest of the great lakes. you remember that. this president obviously doesn't know this. this president won his elections based on winning these great lakes states, and he's abandoned these states by eliminating -- by drastically cutting funding for the great lakes restoration initiative. those of us along the great lakes didn't stand for a budget that eliminated glri last year.

nothing has changed this year. ohioans on both sides of the aisle will go to the mat for our lake. climate change, budget cuts are terrible for this. climate change will only make it worse. when i was young, people wrote off lake erie as a polluting, dying lake. as i said, i remember seeing it, i remember smelling it, i remember hearing people talk about it. many, many people thought there wasn't much future for this great lake. it would be impossible to clean up. but people have had a habit in the past not just of writing off lake erie but of writing off my state. we proved them wrong time and again. we proved them wrong back then, we proved them wrong today. we'll prove them wrong in the future. our lake is improving, it's supporting entire industries, it supports the jobs they create. it's providing drinking water and recreation and so much else to communities across our state. we can't allow climate change to ruin that progress. we can't write -- we cannot

write off lake erie, we cannot write off the millions of ohioans and people from indiana and michigan and pennsylvania and new york and illinois and wisconsin and minnesota that depend on these five great lakes. i see it up close. i live only five or six miles from the lake. i know what it means to my community. i know how important this is to the future, the environmental future of our country, the economic future of my state. it's so important that all of us bipartisanly come together. i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

a senator: mr. president, are we in a quorum call? the presiding officer: we are. mr. king: i ask unanimous consent the quorum call be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. king: i also ask unanimous consent that a fellow in my office, melissa siren, be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the session. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. king: mr. president, i rise today to join my colleague from rhode island to talk about climbing. first i want to make a comment about my good friend and important member of this body, senator whitehouse of rhode island and what he has done. in the 1930's, a lonely voice stood on the floor of the houses of parliament warning of the

impending catastrophe of the rearmament of germany and the advent of world war ii. people didn't listen. often he spoke to a lonely house, but his voice was clear, and his voice was prescient and what he said was important. i refer, of course, to winston churchill. today, senator white house has performed that -- senator whitehouse has performed that same function over the past many years of warning us, of trying to wake us up to a challenge that is impending, that is catastrophic, that is significant, and also is at least somewhat preventable. senator whitehouse has talked about climate change in terms of ocean acidification, temperature changes, sea level rise, drought, famine, the effects throughout the world, and often

this chamber is empty, but his warnings are important and should be heeded nonetheless. so the first thing i want to do is to thank him and compliment him for the work that he has done over these many years and continues to do, and i can see his sign as i see it on c-span and here on the floor that says wake up, and wake up is what we need to do. now, people often talk about climate change as if it's some abstract thing that's going on and it's in scientific journals and it's a kind of environmental movement but it doesn't really affect real life that much, it's just sort of something that goes on out there, one of the many issues that we have to deal with. it is real, and i'll tell you how i know. because the fishermen of maine have told me so. just this past saturday, i spent

the evening with a fisherman 40 years in the gulf of maine, and he said he has never seen the kind of changes that we have seen in the last ten years. they are catching fish that have never been seen before in the gulf of maine. a lobsterman told me of pulling a sea horse up in his lobster trap. sea horses aren't supposed to live in the cold water of maine. this isn't an abstract question for us. lobstering is a $1.7 billion a year industry for maine. lobstering used to be a major industry in rhode island and massachusetts, and now it is largely gone. there are a multiplicity of explanations, but one of them is that the water is warming, and our species, whether it's lobsters or trees or bears, are

sensitive to small environmental changes. we have had record lobster harvests in maine in the last five to ten years, although i have to say in the last two years they have been down. we don't know whether the declines are a blip or a trend. we deeply hope that it doesn't represent a trend. but we can't ignore what happened to the lobster population to our south. the water is getting warmer in the gulf of maine. the water in the gulf of maine is warming at the fastest rate of any body of water on earth except the arctic ocean, and it has wrought changes already in the nature of our natural resource-based economy. maine is a natural resource state, dependent largely upon fisheries and lobster, upon

aquaculture and farming and forestry. that is who we are. and of course another part of our economy is the millions of tourists that come to maine each summer to visit our incredible coastline. so, mr. president, climate change isn't an abstract for us. it's a very real phenomenon. and i want to just emphasize not only my friend, the fisherman who just told me this weekend, and i have heard this from fishermen all over maine for the last four or five years of the changes that they are seeing. this guy isn't a scientist, but he's out on the water, and he knows what he's catching, and he knows that he is catching fish he has never caught before, never seen. tropical warmwater fish now being caught in the gulf of maine. but the other factor i think we need to talk about is a dollars and cents question, and that relates to sea level rise, because we are talking about billions of dollars just on the

part of the united states government to preserve the coastal infrastructure that we have in connection with our armed forces. the city of norfolk is already experiencing what are called sunny day floods. the city of miami, the presiding officer's hometown, is experiencing sunny day floods, floods that aren't caused by great storms, by great pertubations in the atmosphere. they are just caused by high tide. the cost of dealing with this in miami or new york or maine is going to be enormous. and we tend to think of the ocean as a fixed commodity, as something that's always been the way it is now. and it turns out we have been fooled. we have been lulled into a sense of confidence about the level of the sea because for the past

8,000 years it has been the same. but this is a chart that shows the depth of the atlantic ocean over the past 24,000 years, and it turns out that 24,000 years ago, which was the height of the glacial period, the waters off the coast of maine were 390 feet shallower than they are today. 390 feet shallower. what you see here is the melting of the glaciers and the refilling of the oceans. now, the problem is from our historic point of view, it got to a plateau about 10,000 years ago, and that's all we know. that's human history right here. we don't remember this very much because it appeared before recorded human history. now, there is an interesting moment in this chart, and it's right in this period about

15,000 years ago, and it's called the meltwater pulse 1-a. that's what scientists call it. you see a very steep rise in the ocean level during this period. interestingly, this rise is about one foot per decade. that's what happened during that time 15,000 years ago. well, a year and a half ago i went to greenland with two climate styness, one -- scientists, one of whom focuses on sea-level rise. their estimate was that what we're facing now is one foot of sea-level rise per decade for the rest of this century. has it ever happened before? yes. is that an outrageous estimate? no, because it has happened before and it can happen again. why? because the last remnants of

glaciers are in anartica and greenland and there is 250 additional feet of sea-level rise. greenland is melting at an unprecedented rate and there's a huge ice shelf in anartica that is poised to fuel the ocean. if that happens, it will cause sea-level rise just as dropping an ice cube in a glass of water does. the indications are overwhelming of what this issue means for the future of this country. this is not an academic question. here is another example of what is happening in a relatively short period of time. the volume of ice in the arctic ocean has fallen by two-thirds since 1979. a 40-year period. the arctic ocean is more clear today than it has ever been in

human history. anybody who says nothing's happening or it's just routine or the weather changes all the time isn't paying attention to the facts. and, again, my concern about this is practical. the cost of sea walls, the cost of shoring up our infrastructure, just the cost to the government of protecting the naval facilities in norfolk. and, of course, one of the problems in the presiding officer's state is the rock is porous limestone so it's very difficult to build a seawall because the water will simply come under it. so you're talking about a very serious, practical issue that's going to cost our society billions, if not trillions, of dollars. can we stop it? probably not.

can we slow it? yes. but it's going to take action today, and every day we wait, it makes the action harder and more expensive. and if we wait until the waves are lapping up over the seawall in new york city or over the dikes in new orleans or over the streets in miami or along the coast of maine at our marshes and low points, it will be too late. then all we can do is defend and not prevent. and i believe we can make changes now that are not totally disruptive to our economy but will be protective of our economy and will be much cheaper now than they will be ten, 15, 20, 30, 40 years from now. what we are doing is leaving the

problem to our kids just like we're leaving the deficit to our kids, just like we're leaving broken infrastructure to our kids. tom brokaw wrote a book after world war ii called "the greatest generation" that was the generation that sacrificed during world war ii and then they built a highway system and paid for it and paid down the debt that was accumulated in world war ii. we are just the opposite. we are increasing our debt on all levels at a time of relative prosperity. the economy is at low unemployment and yet we're passing trillion dollar tax cuts that add to the deficit that these young people are going to have to pay off. we're not attending to the problem of climate change. whose going to have to pay to build those seawalls? not us, our children and our

grandchildren. so i believe this is a moral and an ethical issue as well as a practical issue. so i'll return to where i began, to compliment my colleague from rhode island for raising the alarm, for pointing out what we can do, how we can do it. the consensus of scientific opinion and the reality of what we're facing. we can do better, mr. president. we don't have to avoid and ignore and waste the resources and the time that we have now, the most precious resource we have now to confront this problem is time, and every day that goes by is a day of irresponsibility. it's a day where our children and grandchildren are going to say, where were you when this was happening? why didn't you listen to that guy from rhode island? who told you what was going to

happen, who told you how we could do something about it? why didn't we listen? i don't want to be a person who says, i didn't listen because i was too busy or it was inconvenient or was afraid it might change a little bit of how we power or automobiles or got electricity. i think it's a question we can face. this body can solve big problems. it's done it in the past, but recently our pattern has been instead of solving problems, avoiding problems, putting them off until next year, next month, or decades from now when this problem is no longer a problem but a catastrophe. so, mr. president, i salute and thank my colleague from rhode island for keeping the focus on this issue and i look forward to continuing to work with him as we will continue to urge and plead with our colleagues to join us in reasonable steps that

can be taken to ameliorate what is coming at us. this is a moment in time when we have it within our power to do something important for the future of our country and the future of our children. mr. president, i hope that we can seize that moment and serve not only the american people today but the american people that will come after us and will judge us by the extent to which we confronted a problem and saved them from having to solve it themselves. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from new jersey. mr. menendez: mr. president, i come to the floor today to

amplify the efforts of my colleague senator whitehouse as he gives his 200th climate speech here on the senate floor. he really has become a modern day paul revere on one of the most critical issues of our time that very well dictates the future of our planet and our way of life as we know it. and i believe that history will record that senator whitehouse riveted the senate, or attempted certainly to do so, and the nation on the real threat that is climate change. climate change may be an inconvenient truth to some but it is a threat to new jersey, to the united states, and to the security and stability of our world. it is a challenge we cannot afford to ignore. and i agree with my distinguished colleague from rhode island.

it's well past time for this congress to wake up and demand climate action from this administration. we often hear trump administration officials and even some of our colleagues here in congress suggest that, quote, we don't know enough about climate change to take action. when the truth is we know too much not to take action. we know about the greenhouse gas effect and how gasses like carbon dioxide trap heat in our atmosphere. we know that since 2010 we've experienced the five warmest years on record and that momentary cold snaps in our weather do not detract from the indisputable reality that around the world temperatures are steadily rising. we know that 97% of scientists

agree manmade climate change is real and that the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities has led to unprecedented levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere and in our oceans. we know that experts at noaa have concluded that since the industrial revolution, our oceans have become 30% more acidic, the greatest increase in 300 million years. likewise, we know the arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world and that as ice caps melt, our sea levels rise, endangering the coastal communities. in new jersey we know the real threat posed by climate change and we know that threat is real. my constituents bore the brunt of superstorm sandy when it devastated the jersey shore. we know that rising sea levels

and the powerful storms that accompanied them jeopardize our coastal communities. from commercial fishing to property values totaling $800 billion, millions of families in new jersey depend upon a healthy coast and a safe climate. while i may be partial to the jersey shore, the reality is that nearly 40% of the american people live along a coast. that's 40% of our country threatened by rising sea levels, stronger storm surges, and more extreme flooding. of course, climate change is far from just a coastal problem. from life-threatening heat waves to crop-destroying droughts to record-breac breaking while fires, it is not up for debate. climate change will impact every

human being and every living thing on this planet if -- if we fail to take action. and the american people know it. in october of 2017, the associated press found that over 61% of americans want us to respond to this historic challenge, 61%. even president trump's department of defense gets it. earlier this year the pentagon reported that about 50% of all department of defense sites already -- already face risks from climate change and extreme weather events. and as the ranking member of the senate foreign relations committee, i'm particularly concerned that we have done little to address climate change's role as a threat multiplier, whether it's disruptions to the food supply or forced migration from sea-level rise or disruption wreaked from storms, climate

change will involve conflict and humanitarian crisis around the world. president trump's willful ignorance risks leaving the united states unprepared for the 21st century. there is no question that this willful ignorance is borne out of this administration's cozy relationship with the fossil fuel industry. from the department of energy to the environmental protection agency to the department of the interior, president trump has stacked his cabinet with individuals who seem more concerned about big oil profits than the safety of our people and the future of our planet. nearly a year ago the president announced his plan to withdraw the united states from the paris climate accord, leaving us isolated on the global stage. now is not the time to hand our precious waters and protected public lands over to special interests. now is the time for congress to

incentivize the investments that will modernize our energy infrastructure, create new high-paying jobs, and grow our clean energy economy. that's why i introduced the coast anti-drilling act to permanently ban offshore drilling in the atlantic and protect the coastal community so vital to new jersey and other states. that's why i introduced legislation with other colleagues to eliminate taxpayer funded subsidies for the five biggest oil companies. that's why i worked on the senate finance committee to extend incentives for wind and solar and other clean energy technologies, and that's why i backed legislation that would help harness the potential for limitless clean wind power off of our shores. these initiatives represent modest, commonsense steps towards a thriving clean energy economy. but ultimately it's not enough. we need to think bigger and act

bolder. that's why i'm here on the floor today with senator whitehouse calling for action on climate change. it's time we take action to reduce carbon pollution, create new high-paying jobs, and accelerate the adoption of innovative clean energy technologies. it's it's time this administration wake up and put the long term economic and environmental and security interests of the united states ahead of fossil fuel profits. and it's time the united states reclaims its rightful place as the global leader on climate change. the american people demand it and the future of our planet depends on it. and that future to a large degree is going to be hopefully achieved because of individuals willing to stand up for a cause, being principalled about it and

willing to fight for it and continuing to be a laser beam on focusing the attention of the senate, the congress, and the american people. senator whitehouse is that person and i salute him as he gives his 200th speech today. with that, i yield the floor.

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from new mexico. mr. udall: thank you, mr. president, for the recognition. i also -- i know you haven't been here the whole time, but many senators have been speaking about climate change. and i know that in your, the presiding officer's state, we see that in glacier national park which i think kind of tells it all. here you have a national park created around glaciers and they're disappearing rapidly. but i come to the floor today, first of all, to thank sheldon whitehouse for his remarkable leadership on the issue of climate change. his weekly wake-up call speeches, i think, have inspired a lot of us. the articles he's covered --

this time called the climate wake-up for the 200th time. he's been down here religiously taking on this issue. this article, one of the major leaders in the environmental movement said about sheldon's speeches, his speeches have been critically important in drawing attention to the need for climate action. she also said demand for climate action is only growing. and certainly we give him credit for his leadership in that effort. very, very true. i remember traveling with sheldon whitehouse to paris when all of us were very much enthused to see the world come together and sign the paris climate agreement. we were all very excited thinking this effort had been going on for 40 years.

and here the countries in the world were finally getting together. and i watched sheldon in making those arguments over there. he was always -- he always argued his case persuasively. and he wins converts easily. so we all are here to thank him for his leadership. in particular, i would also like to talk about climate change, its impact on the southwest, and where we're headed in my home state of new mexico and the greater southwest. climate change is here and now. i want to talk about that impact in the southwest which is severe. my home state of new mexico is right in the bull's eye. our nation, our earth cannot afford for us to sit back and do nothing the next three years. but this is precisely what's happening under this administration and this

congress. our executive and legislative branches are not only sitting on their hands in the face of climate change, disruption, and devastation, they are aggressively halting all progress we are making. i was so discouraged when i saw the administrator of the environmental protection agency take down a climate change website that had gone from a republican administration to a democratic administration, had been going on i think for almost ten years. this was covered in "the washington post." and the administrator on -- administrator pruitt on taking office took it down and said oh, we're going to update it. well, here we are more than a year, and if you try to look at that website, it just says we're in the process of updating it. i don't think we're ever going to see it again would be my guess. let's look at some of the reasons how the progress is

being halted here. there are a number of reasons for this, but i think the biggest and most insidious is money. billions of dollars in campaign contributions. the president and congressional majority are delaying, suspending, and stopping policies and programs that combat climate change because of the dark money in politics. oil and gas, coal, power companies, and other special interests feed their campaign and pack coffers while the clear public interest is ignored. we must reform our campaign finance system or our climate and the american people will pay a greater and greater price. and sheldon whitehouse has made a contribution there with his book "capture" where he talks a lot about this dark money in depth. and i would say that's another

piece of scholarship that really adds to what's happening on this campaign finance front. while the president, his e.p.a. administrator, and his interior secretary are openly hostile to climate change science, career government scientists and professionals are still hard at work doing their jobs evaluating climate impacts. last november the u.s. global climate change research program consisting of 13 federal agencies issued volume one of the fourth national climate assessment. it is the most authoritative federal government resource on climate change. it concludes, and i quote here, this period is now the warmest in the history of modern civilization with record-breaking climate-related weather extremes and human activities, especially greenhouse gas emissions are the

extremely likely dominant cause. pretty strong statement from the scientists. with climate change the southwest is expected to get much hotter and drier, especially the southern half of the region. in the last 18 years new mexico has seen one reprieve from drought and the trend is unmistakable. we are seeing less snow pack, earlier melting, and less run yurunoff. even when we do get snow, new research shows we're getting less runoff from it. our scarce water resources are even more strained. here's a drought map of new mexico from just last week, march 6. virtually the entire state faces drier conditions, and you can see here we're talking about the northern part of the state with extreme drought, most of the

middle and northern part of the state in severe drought and the southern part of the state in modern drought. so virtually the entire state of new mexico in a very serious drought situation. in fact, some experts are saying we need to stop thinking about this phenomenon as a drought but instead as a dry region becoming permanently drier. this is a direct threat to our way of life in new mexico and the southwest. now, elephant butte reservoir is our biggest reservoir in new mexico. it was built close to a hundred years ago for flood control, for irrigation. its supply comes from the rio grande, our largest river in new mexico. and as we know, a 1,900-mile

river that flows through several states. it's the border for close to a thousand miles or more and flows into the gulf of mexico. but for the decade ending 2010 on the rio grande, flows in the retherio grande decressed 23%, t one-quarter from the 20th century average. here are the photos from elephant butte reservoir from 1994 and 2013. now, these are photos that were taken from a satellite. this is this top photo is the 1994. and you can see what a remarkable reservoir and how deep and extended that reservoir is. and now you jump forward about 20 years, here's elephant butte reservoir in 2013. and look. the picture says a thousand

words. the reservoir rapidly, rapidly disappearing. you can see the dramatic decrease in supply over that short time. our farmers and ranchers depend on this supply and they are struggling. this year the snow pack in the upper rio grande is half of what it should be and that will force the reservoir even lower. across the southwest, the average annual temperature has increased about 1.5 degrees fahrenheit. the last decade from 2001 to 2010 was the warmest in over a century. and now new mexico is really feeling the heat. we are the sixth fastest warming state in the nation. since 1970 our annual average temperature increased about .6 degrees per decade or about 2.7

degrees over 45 years. and it's not over. average annual temperatures are projected to rise 3.5 to 8.5 degrees by 2 2100. difficult to control wildfires have mul multiplied killing tres and other vegetation, threatening live, destroying homes and costing millions of dollars. new mexico experienced its largest wildfire in 2012, the whitewater complex fire that burned over 290,000 acres. the fire burned in the southwestern part of the state but caused air pollution hundreds of miles away in lass cruces to the east and santa fe in the northeast. agriculture is the mainstay for the southwest economy. we produce more than half of the

nation's high value specialty crops. and crop development is threatened by warming and extreme weather events. likewise, another key economic sector, tourism and recreation is threatened by reduced stream flow and a shorter snow season. ski santa fe used to always open thanksgiving weekend. that hardly ever happens anymo anymore. reduced snow and higher temperatures have been an economic disaster for the slopes all over new mexico. the southwest 182 federally recognized tribes are particularly vulnerable to climate change, such as high temperatures, drought, and severe storms. tribes may lose traditional foods, medicines, and water supplies. similarly, our border communities are in greater jeopardy because they don't have the financial resources to protect against climate change

impacts. they are vulnerable to health and safety risks, like air pollution, erosion, and flooding. the president and his administration have taken aim at federal programs that would address all these impacts to my state and the southwest. the president unilaterally withdrew from the paris agreement. e.p.a. put the power plan on hold. secretary zinke has done all he can to halt b.l.m.'s methane waste prevention rule. public lands are open for coal and oil and gas drilling. the president's budget/climate science funding and the list goes on and on. this is not what the american people want. they believe science. they understand that human activity is causing climate change and they want robust policies in response. climate change presents the greatest threat our nation and

world now confront. it is the moral test of our age, the moral test of our age. we will be judged by future generations by how we respond now. we owe it to our children, our grandchildren, and beyond to meet this challenge head-on. i call upon my colleagues across the aisle to listen to the science and the american people and work with us to take action. mr. president, i would at this point yield the floor and -- and i believe senator whitehouse's colleague, the senior senator from rhode island, is here to speak next. mr. reed: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. reed: thank you, mr. president. let me thank senator udall for his timely remarks and his great leadership. i rise today to add my voice to his voice and so many other of my colleagues in calling attention to the growing threat

of climate change and to encourage the senate to take meaningful action. first, let me join all of my colleagues in recognizing and thanking my colleague, senator sheldon whitehouse of rhode island. his tireless work to raise awareness about the devastating impacts of climate change have truly made a remarkable difference in our country and around the world. senator whitehouse comes to the senate floor every week to tell us why it's time to wake up, and i am pleased to be able to join him as he gives his 200th such speech. these 200 speeches provide at least 200 reasons why we should be acting quickly and decisively to address climate change. just one of those reasons, which i would like to highlight, is the impact of climate change on our national security. climate change acts as a threat multiplier, exacerbateing other problems in unstable areas around the world. it is already creating conflict

relating to a lack of resources, whether it be access to food, water, or energy. i was just traveling through djibouti and somalia adjacent to yemen, and one of the great crises in yemen is not just the conflict on the ground, it's a water crisis that is causing massive drought. then i moved on up to jordan. there speaking with our representatives, water crisis in jordan also, another threatened drought. these national security problems are in climate problems, and these climate problems are national security problems. and when it comes to our national security, decisions are made through a careful risk and we must be sure to include risk caused by climate change. so it is particularly troubling to me to see that the current administration is choosing to ignore the reality of the scientific consensus by removing all references to climate change

in documents like the national security strategy and the national defense strategy. the department of defense must be able to execute its missions effectively and efficiently, so it is disconcerting that climate-related events have already cost the pentagon significant resources, measured in both monetary recourse as well as negative impacts on military readiness. in fact, secretary mattis, who understands these issues very well, and despite the official publications of the department of defense speaks very candidly and directly, has declared before the senate armed services committee, in his words, where climate change contributes to regional instability, the department of defense must be aware of any potential adverse impact. climate change and impacting areas of stability in the world where our troops are operating today, and the department should be prepared to mitigate any consequences of a changing climate, including ensuring that our shipyards and installations

will continue to function as required. across the globe, we see our forces in context. they are there in the horn of africa. they are there facing not just radical fighters but drought and environmental issues, and here at home we have shipyards and naval bases on the coast that are seeing rising waters that are going to cost us hundreds of millions of dollars to remediate so they can continue to function. if we don't respond, if we put our head in the sand to the issues of climate change, our national security will be endangered. i was very pleased as the ranking member of the armed services committee to support our colleagues when they were included in the fiscal year 2018 national defense authorization act a direction to the department of defense to conduct a threat assessment and deliver a master plan for climate change adaptation. that was a bipartisan bill led by chairman mccain, supported

by a vast -- by vast members on both sides of the aisle who understand that climate change must be addressed. it also codified several findings relating to climate change and expressed the sense of congress that climate change is a threat to our national security. we are on record as a congress saying that national security is jeopardized by climate change. that has to be embraced by the whole of government, not just the senate or the house acting together. i must commend our colleague, sheldon's colleague and my colleague, santa ana jim langevin of rhode island because he pushed for the same measure in the house of representatives, and he was successful. just like other threats to our national security, it's critical that we recognize, plan for, and take steps to address climate change. combating climate change may not be seen as urgent as other threats we are facing today, but i would argue otherwise, and if we don't begin to take aggressive action to protect ourselves from the effects of climate change, we will face

ever-increasing and unfair consequences. because of his clarion call to pay attention to climate change, senator whitehouse is advancing our national security interests in an important way, and i stand here to commend him and thank him, and i thank you, mr. president, and i yield the floor. ms. baldwin: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from wisconsin. ms. baldwin: mr. president, i rise to join and thank senator whitehouse for his ongoing commitment to giving a voice to the issue of climate change and the threat it poses to our country and frankly our world. senator whitehouse has provided

real moral leadership on this issue, and i want to express my gratitude for his unrelenting focus. mr. president, let there be no doubt -- climate change is real. the question is not whether it's happening but how we will address it. are we going to do all that we can to leave the next generation a safer and healthier world? as my friend from rhode island has impressed upon us with due urgency week in and week out, climate change will be tremendously costly to our economy and to our very way of life, and the longer we wait to act, the more costly these impacts will be. mr. president, the state of wisconsin has been a proud home to environmental leaders who have worked to pass on a

stronger environment to future generations. i think of aldo leopold, i think of john muir, i think of senator gay lord nelson, -- gaylord nelson, the founder of earth day. as the senator from my great state, it is one of my top priorities to follow in this legacy and to preserve our natural resources and quality of life for future generations. it's not hard to see why wisconsinites deeply value environmental protection. looking out at the crystal clear waters of lake superior from its south shore or standing atop rib mountain, gazing at the forests and farmlands of central wisconsin, to casting your fishing rod in a world-class

trout -- in the world-class trout streams of the driftless region in the southwest of our state. there is no question that we are blessed. we are blessed with natural beauty in the state of wisconsin. but, mr. president, the impact of climate change can already be seen on these very landscapes, and the economies that they support. we see it in agriculture. growing seasons are shifting and extreme weather events are harming our crops. we have increasing concerns about drought and groundwater. in fact, nasa recently warned that droughts will not only become more severe but our ecosystems will be increasingly slower to recover from those droughts. decreased soil moisture will put stress on farmers and their

livestock, on private wells and our municipal drinking water systems. these prolonged droughts combined with the increased intensity of storms and changing temperature patterns will force farmers to change how and what they grow. it's extremely troubling as agriculture is an $88 billion industry in the state of wisconsin. we also see the negative effects of climate change on our great lakes. in lake michigan, for example, our -- we see changes in precipitation and evaporation patterns due to climate change that may cause more dramatic fluctuations in lake levels than we have already seen. data from the environmental protection agency shows that average surface water temperatures have increased in all five great lakes since 1995.

warmer surface water temperatures disrupt the food chain and facilitate the spread of invasive species, threatening our native fish with disease. changing water levels create challenges for property owners and communities along the great lakes. each of these changes will strain our local economies. tourism is also a major part of wisconsin's economy, and the north woods is a beloved place to fish, camp, hunt, and snowmobile, but last year, for only the second time in its 45-year history, wisconsin's famous burkabinder cross country ski race was canceled because of warm temperatures and lack of snow. the impacts on tourism,

recreation, and the landscapes that we hold near to our hearts are already here. they will only become more drastic. the threats may be daunting, but we cannot allow the challenges to overwhelm us into inaction. wisconsin's motto is just one word -- forward. the people of wisconsin have never been afraid of the challenges that we faced. we have a strong, progressive tradition of confronting our challenges and working together to shape our future for the next generation. many of wisconsin's most successful companies are leaders in energy efficiency and renewable energy and clean technology. in 2014, one of wisconsin's

major health care systems became the first in the nation to use entirely renewable energy. wisconsin companies are strong innovators and provide opportunities for workers of today and tomorrow as they lead the way. mr. president, i believe in smart investments by governments at all levels, by companies and institutions and by citizens. this will help us confront the challenge of climate change while positioning wisconsin for economic and ecological resiliency. this opportunity is great, and we must meet the challenge head-on, going forward, the wisconsin way. and i'd like to once again thank

senator whitehouse for his laser focus on this issue that is so critical to our home states as well as the nation and the world that we will pass on to the next generation. thank you, and i yield the floor. mr. whitehouse: mr. president. mr. president, let me thank the senator from wisconsin. like wisconsin, rhode island has a one-word motto as well. hers is forward. ours is hope. together they point the right direction. mr. president, americans are dissatisfied. opinion surveys tell us that only 35% of americans believe that our country is headed in the right direction. why this alarming dissatisfaction? we don't have to guess. popular opinion tells us quite plainly. in a survey taken after the 2016

election, 85% of voters agreed that the wealthy and big corporations are the ones really running the country. that includes 80% of voters who supported trump. it's not just opinion. academic studies have looked at congress and confirmed that the views of the general public have statistically near zero influence here, that we listen to big corporate special interests and their various front groups. even our supreme court is not immune. in a 2014 poll more respondents believed by 9-1 that our supreme court favors corporations over individuals. even among self-identified conservative republicans, it was still a 4-1 margin. so hold that thought.

the wealthy and powerful corporations control congress and people know it. as i give my 200th "time to wake up" speech, the most obvious fact standing plainly before me is not the measured sea-level rise at naval station newport, it's not the 400 parts per million carbon dioxide barrier that we have broken through the atmosphere, it's not the flooding maps that coastal communities like rhode island must face, nor is it the west aflame. it is not even the uniformed consensus about climate change across universities, national laboratories, scientific societies, and even across our military and intelligence services have warned us that climate change is fueling

economic disruption around the world. the fact that stands out for me at number 200 is the persistent failure of congress to even take up the issue of climate change. one party won't even talk about it. one party in the executive branch is even gagging america's scientists and civil servants and striking the term climate change off of government websites. in the real world, in actual reality, we are long past any question as to the reality of climate change. the fact of that forces us to confront the question, what stymies congress from legislating or even having hearings -- no, i intend to give my remarks. i appreciate the senator's intervention. about climate change.

what impels certain executive agencies to forbid even the words? before the citizens united decision was delivered by the five republican appointees on the supreme court, a decision, by the way, that deserves a place on the trash heap of judicial history, we were actually doing quite a lot in the senate about climate change. there were bipartisan hearings, there were bipartisan bills, there were bipartisan negotiations. senator mccain campaigned for president under the republican banner on a strong climate platform. what happened? here's what i saw happen. the fossil fuel industry went over and imported in the supreme court for the citizens united decision, the five republican

appointees delivered, and the fossil fuel industry was ready and set up the mark when that decision came down. since the moment of that decision, not one republican in this body has joined one serious piece of legislation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. our senate heartbeat of bipartisan activity was killed dead by the political weaponry unleashed for big special interests by those five judges. the fossil fuel industry then made a clever play. they determined to control one party on this question. they determined to silence or punish or remove any dissent in one political party. this created for the fossil fuel industry two advantages. first, they got to use that party as their tool to stop climate legislation, and they

have. if you remember the movie "men in black," i would make the analogy that today's republican party bears the same relation to the fossil fuel fossil fuel as to climate change that the unfortunate farmer in "men in black" bore to the illen who killed him and -- alien who killed and occupied his skin during the movie. complete occupation without nothing -- with nothing left but the skin. they could also camouflage their special pleading as partisanship and not just the muscle and greed of one big industry wanting to have its way. that is why we are where we are. that is why talking to republicans about climate change resembles talking to prisoners about escape. they may want out, but they can't have their fossil fuel wardens find out. climate change is a prime

example of how our institutions are failing in plain view of the american people. small wonder the public holds congress in low esteem and thinks we don't listen to them. frankly, it's amazing there's any shred of esteem remaining given our behavior. congress remains a democratic body on the service with all of the trappings of democracy, we hold votes and there are caucuses and hearings, but on issues like clienl climate change -- climate change, congress no longer provides america a truly functioning democracy. underneath it is dark money. massive infrastructures have been erected to hard that dark money flow from the sunlight of public scrutiny, to carve out sub tear rainian caverns where

the dark money flows. if you want to understand why we do nothing on climate, you have to look into the chambers and understand the dark money. of course it's not just the spending of dark money that's the problem. once you let unlimited money loose in politics, particularly once you let unlimited dark money loose in politics, you empower something even more sinister than massive anonymous political expenditures, you empower the threat of massive political expenditures, the sinister whispered threat. once you let a special interest spend unlimited dark money, you necessarily let it threaten or promise to spend that money. those sinister threats and promises will be harder to detect even then the most

obscured dark money expenditures. you may not know whose behind a dark money expenditure, but at least you will see the smear ads. you may not know what's up, but you will know something's up. but a threat, a couple of people, a backroom, a silent handshake, that's enough if you give a thug a big enough club, he doesn't even have to use it to get his way. this is -- this is the great insidious evil of citizens united and this, i believe, is why we are where we are. the senate in the gilded age was described as having senators who didn't actually represent states but, and i quote here, principalities and powers in business. one senator represents the union pacific railway system, the

other the railway central. so we cannot pretend that it is impossible for the united states to be disabled and corrupted by special interests. our history refutes that thought. so we need to keep our guard up as americans against corrupting forces and this unlimited dark flow of money into our politics is a corrupting force. congress is embarrassing and culpable failure to act on climate change is one face of a coin. turn it over and the opposite of that coin is corruption exactly as the founders knew it, the public good ignored for the special interests wielding power. in this case the power of money. climate failure, dark money, dark money, climate failure.

two sides of the same even coin. -- evil coin. if that thought is not cheerful enough. wait, there's more. there's the phony science operation that gives rhetorical cover to the dark money political science operation. this is a big effort with dozens of well-funded front groups participating, supported by bogus think tanks, well-described as the think tank as disguised political weapon. today's phony science operation has a history. it grew out of the early phony science operation run by the tobacco industry which was set up to create doubt among the public that cigarettes were bad for you. how did that work out? well, i'll tell you how. that effort was so false, so evil that it was determined in

court to be fraud, a massive corporate-led fraud. after the tobacco fraud apparatus was exposed, it didn't disappear, it morphed into even more complex apparatus to create false doubt about climate science. the goal, exactly like the tobacco company's fraud, is to create something that looks enough like science to confuse the public but which has the perverse purpose to defeat and neutralize real science. it is a science denial apparatus. and, by the way, this fossil fuel-funded science denial apparatus has some big advantage over real science. first, the science denial apparatus has unlimited money behind it. the i.m.f. has put the subsidy of the fossil fuel industry at

$700 billion per year in the united states alone. to defend a $700 billion annual subsidy, you can spend enormous amounts of money. so money is no object. second, the science denial apparatus doesn't waste time with peer review, the touchstone of real science. slap a lab coat on a hack and send him to the talk shows, that's enough. the science denial apparatus is public relations dressed up as science so it behaves like public relations and goes straight to its market, a public to work its mischief. third, they have the advantage of madison avenue tacticians to shape their phony message into appealing soundbites for the public. have you read a scientific journal lately? the madison avenue message gets through a lot more sharply.

fourth, the science denial apparatus doesn't need to stop lying when it's caught as long as they are getting their pop ganda out, the -- propaganda out, the truth doesn't matter. this is not a contest for truth. it's a contest for public opinion, so debunked zombie arguments constantly rise from the earth and walk again. and, finally, they don't have to win the argument, they just have to create the false illusion that there is a legitimate argument, then the political muscle of those five justices gave this industry can go to work. i would like to suggest 200 speeches in that it's time we stopped listening to the industry that comes to us bearing one of the most flagrant conflicts of interest in

history. it's time we stopped listening to their fraudulent science denial operation. it's time we put the light of day on this creepy dark money operation and stopped listening to its threats and promises. if we're going to stop listening to you will of that, who should we listen to? how about pope francis who called climate change one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day. how about the scientists whom we pay, hundreds of them across the government, whose salaries our appropriators are funding right now, and who, under president trump, released this report, under president trump. this report says there is, and i quote, no convincing alternative explanation for what it calls global long-term and unambiguous

warming and record-breaking climate related weather extremes. it is our human activity. or how about listening to our intelligence services whose national threat assessment issued under president trump signed by our former colleague, the director of national intelligence, dan coats, it actually has a chapter entitled environment and climate change. here are the identified consequences in that report. humanitarian disasters, conflict, water and food shortages, population migration, labor shortfalls, price shocks, and power outages, and most dangerously, the prospect of, and i quote, our national intelligence, worldwide threat

assessment here, the prospect of tipping points in climate-linked earth systems that can create abrupt climate change. or how about listening to donald trump, and donald trump, jr., and ivanka trump, and eric trump, and the trump organization in 2009 when they took out this full-page ad in "the new york times" saying the science of climate change was irrefutable and its consequences would be catastrophic and irreversible. donald j. trump, chairman and president. where did that guy go? or how about listening to our own home state universities.

every one of us can go home to ole miss or ohio state, to the university of alaska or l.s.u., to utah state or west virginia university or texas a&m, we can each go home to our home state's state university, and they don't just accept climate change, they teach it. they teach it. or, if you can listen quietly, you can listen to the oceans. they speak to us, the oceans do. they speak to us through thermometers and they say, we're warming. they speak to us through tide gauges and they say, we're rising along your shores. they speak to us through the howl of hurricanes powered up by

their warmer sea surfaces. they speak to us through the quiet flight of fish species from their traditional grounds as the sea water warms beyond their tolerance. if we know how to listen through simple ph tests, the oceans will tell us that they are acidifying. the oceans will tell us that they are beginning to kill their own corals and oysters and ter pods -- and pteropods. or we could go out and check and see the corals and the oits teres and the pteropods corrode and die before our eyes. it's happening. the fishermen who plow the ocean surface can speak for the oceans. as one rhode island said to me, sheldon, it's getting weird out

there. this is not my grandfather's ocean, said another. he'd grown up trawling with his grand dad on those waters. it's not just oceans. i went out on lake erie with seasoned professional fishermen who told me everything they'd learn in a lifetime on the lake was useless because the lake was changing on them so unnoticeably -- so unknowably fast. we choose here in congress whom we're going to listen. it's time we started to listen to the honest voices and the true voices. if you don't like environmentalists or scientists, listen to your ski industry. listen to your fishermen and lumbermen. listen to your gardners and

birders and hunters. listen to those who know the earth and the oceans and who can speak for the earth and the oceans. it is an evil mess we are in, and if there is any justice in this world, there will one day be a terrible price to pay if we keep listening to evil voices. the climate change problems we are causing by failing to act are a sin, as pope francis has flatly declared. but that's not the only sin. to jam congress up, fossil fuel interests are interfering with and corrupting american democracy and to corrupt american democracy is a second and a grave sin. the science denial apparatus, to

mount a fraudulent challenge to the very enterprise of science, that is a third grave sin. and perhaps worst of all is that the world is watching. it is watching us as the fossil fuel industry, its creepy billionaires, its front groups, its bogus think tanks all gang up and debauch our democracy. from john winthrop to ronald reagan, we have held america up as a city on a hill with the eyes of the world upon us. from daniel webster to bill clinton, we have spoken of the power of our american example as greater in the world than any example of our power.

lady liberty in new york harbor holds her lamp up to the world representing our american beacon of truth, justice, and democracy. i have a distinct memory, mr. president, traveling with our friend, john mccain, to manila and waking up early in the morning to go visit our american military cemetery. the sun coming up over the rows of white gravestones standing over our dead. the massive, gleaming marble arcade of names carved on walls stretching high, high over my head, of the americans whose bodies were never recovered, over 17,000 in all remembered in

that cemetery. after their sacrifice, after the accomplishments of the greatest generation, can we not do better than to sell our democracy to the fossil fuel industry? what do you suppose a monument to that would look like, i wonder? america deserves better, mr. president, and the world is watching us. we, this city on a hill. with gratitude to the many colleagues who have joined me today, i yield the floor. a senator: mr. president, when we discuss climate change, we

often speak about the future, a future in which rising temperatures and seas displace millions from their homes around the globe, devastate agriculture, and damage critical infrastructure. ms. hirono: this future is not far off. climate change will impact every state in our country and every country in the world. and in island and coastal communities like hawaii, they impact -- the impact will be particularly severe. climate scientists agree that without decisive action, seas will likely rise by at least 3.2 feet by the end of the century. to put this in context, a child born today will likely experience these effects in their lifetime. i will focus my remarks today on the foreseeable impact on hawaii. the state of hawaii investigated and issued a chilling report about what a 3.2-foot sea level

rise would mean for our state. 3.2 feet of sea level rise, the report concluded, would inundate more than 25,000 acres of land across hawaii. over 6,500 hotels, malls, small businesses, apartments, and homes would be compromised or destroyed, and 20,000 residents would be displaced in the process. the economic cost of this damage, $19 billion. if anything, this is a conservative estimate of the total economic cost of climate change in hawaii. the state's report, for example, doesn't estimate the total cost of damage to hawaii's critical infrastructure. climate change and sea level rise will damage sewer lines in urban honolulu and other low-lying areas across the state. these phenomenon will also lead to chronic flooding across 38 miles of major roads, such as

the hawaii, on ohau or the highway on maui. the state's reports certainly outlines the serious challenges climate change will pose for hawaii in the future, but we are already living with its effects. each summer and winter, the specific placement of the sun and moon combined with the rotation of the earth produce ebbs trod nairl high tide -- extraordinarily high tides. we call them king tides. most years scientists can predict when these tides will happen and how bad they'll be. last year's king tides, however, were the worst in record. scientists believe that these historic king tides provide a glimpse of the increasing severity and frequency of coastal flooding driven by climate change. hawaii also experienced an exceptionally rare king tide on nenew year's day and a larger tn

normal north swell caused major coastal erosion on ohau's north shore. coastal erosion is a critical issue for hawaii where our beaches draw millions of visitors from around the world every year. according to research from the university of hawaii sea grant college program, 70% of beaches in hawaii are eroding and 13 miles of public beaches have eroded completely. in other words, they're gone. during last year's king tides, sea grant mobilized citizen scientists to document their impact on the state. from sea grants research, we learned that these record high water levels caused localized flooding and erosion across every island in the state. waikiki beach was particularly impacted last year when the king tides overwashed the shoreline during peak tourist season. climate change will make events

like this more frequent and severe, adversely impacting our environment and our economy. waikiki beach on ohau alone generates $2.2 billion for hawaii's economy every year, and it could be completely submerged by the end of the century. there is a clear urgency to act, and we need our president and the federal government to acknowledge the threat and to lead. we need more funding for programs like sea grant that help state and local governments develop plans and policy to help our beach, our coasts and our economy adapt to climate change. but at a time when we should be increasing funding for grant colleges, the trump administration is zeroing out this funding. we are able to protect funding for sea grant last year and i him prepared to make sure it receives the money it needs to do its important work. we also need our federal

agencies to invest in research that will help us better understand climate change's long-term impact on our states and communities. but donald trump has appointed and his republican allies in the senate have confirmed, aggressive, dangerous and extreme nominees who are undermining critical climate change research. last may the department of interior under the leadership of ryan zinke put out a news release about a report on climate change-related sea level rise coauthored by two hawaii scientists without ever mentioning in their release the words climate change. earlier today i asked secretary zinc yes at a hearing to comment on this incident and to clarify whether it is the department's policy to censor announcements about climate change research. secretary zinc yes acknowledged that the comment of press releases is his prerogative but

he would not censor the contents of the documents or the reports themselves. however, but not referring to the term climate change in a press release on a report about how climate change drives sea level rise, he is towing the president's line that climate change is a hoax. the problem is press releases from agencies like interior serve as indicators of the federal government's priorities. by eliminating references to climate change in these releases, the department is sending a clear signal that climate change is not a priority. in the absence of federal actions, states like hawaii are stepping up and taking the lead. hawaii was the first state in the country to enact legislation to implement the paris climate agreement after president trump announced he would withdraw the united states from this agreement without much reason. standing up to the challenge of climate change also means

developing our renewable resources of energy and moving away from dependence on fossil fuels. hawaii has set the forward-thinking goal of generating 100% renewable electricity by 2045. through a decisive action, hawaii's already generating 27% renewable electricity while cutting oil imports by 41% since 2006. as the most oil-dependent state in the country, this is significant progress. over 97% of climate scientists agree that the climate is changing due to human activity, and the vast majority of the american public also acknowledges this. our nation's military recognizes the threat climate change poses to our national security and the urgent need to confront it. mr. president, i agree with my colleague from rhode island. it's time to wake up.

i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from minnesota. ms. klobuchar: mr. president, i rise today to join my friend and colleague, senator whitehouse, on the day of his 200th weekly climate change floor speech. for years, we came in the same class, so i have been a witness to this, for years, he has come to the floor every week the senate is in session, often to an empty chamber, to speak on this critical issue. he has been a leader and an unwavering voice on climate change, calling for action week after week. i think that's why so many of us are here tonight. 200 speeches is truly a milestone, and you can just look at the wear and tear of his time to wake up floor sign to know that this actually happened. but not only does he come to the floor to talk about this issue and to share new data and information with all of us on

the need to act now, i have also seen him take on climate change deniers as a member of both when i was on the environment committee and also on the judiciary committee. and i have experienced his dedication to moving the needle on this issue as a member of the senate action task force that he has led for several years. i have been part of the meetings where he has pulled together senators and advocacy group leaders to strategize on how to move forward on legislation and meetings where he has brought together senators and private sector leaders like greg paige, the former c.e.o. of cargill, to talk about how we change the public dialogue about sustainability in supply chains. he is truly committed to finding solutions, and i'm pleased to join him tonight for his 200th speech. people talk about climate in many places in my state. from hunters and snowmobilers in northern minnesota to business

leaders in the twin cities to students at the university of minnesota. when president trump announced that the united states would withdraw from the climate change agreement this summer, the worldwide international climate change agreement, i heard an outpouring of concern. 195 countries made a pledge to come together to combat climate change, and in withdrawing, the u.s. was first one of only three countries that wouldn't be in the agreement. the other two were syria and nicaragua. then, guess what? syria and nicaragua signed the accord. now the united states is the only country not to sign the accord. it is a big step backwards. it's the wrong decision for our economy, and it's the wrong decision for the environment. as military and security experts have reminded us, climate change is a threat to our national

security, increasing risks of conflict, humanitarian crisis as we have already seen because of droughts with substance farmers in africa coming up then as refugees and damage to crucial and critical infrastructure. i'm a former prosecutor, and i believe in evidence. every week seems to bring fresh evidence of the damage climate change is already causing. minnesota may be miles away from rising oceans, but the impacts are not less of a real threat in the midwest. more severe weather, heat waves that could reduce our water supply, extreme rainfall that could damage critical infrastructure, a decrease in agriculture productivity. it goes on and on. impact on the great lakes and people respond. we are going to keep talking about the importance of making a

global commitment and a united states american commitment to address climate change. we should not be the last one in. we should be the first one. this is a great nation with a history of democrats and republicans coming together to conserve our land, to care about our environment. we are going to keep pushing climate change deniers on their facts, and we're going to keep working on policies that encourage energy efficiency, renewable energy, and a decrease in greenhouse gases. many of my businesses in minnesota, with cargill that i have already mentioned in the lead have taken on this cause. they know that when they have business all over the world, it matters. they know that it matters to their shareholders, it matters to their employees, and it matters to their customers. they also know that we deal with the rest of the world, and when businesses go to meetings in

other countries, they don't want to hear well, i guess your country is not in the climate change agreement but china is, so maybe we'll all buy our stuff from china. that's what people are hearing at business meetings. we need to be part of that paris climate change agreement, and we need to lead the way in the u.s. in the last administration, we had some commonsense policies put forth to reduce greenhouse gases, but this administration has pulled back on them. i disagree. i think we could have made that work. and even though we are not seeing the action we would like out of this administration, we are seeing it in cities, in states, in businesses, and universities. they have said if this administration doesn't do it, we will. so i want to thank senator whitehouse for his leadership and let all of those listening to this series of speeches in

tribute to doing something about climate change and his 200th speech tonight that there are those in this chamber that stand with you and that believe in science and believe that we need to do something about climate change. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. mr. merkley: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. merkley: mr. president, i thank my colleague from minnesota for laying out the case so clearly on the challenge. i'd like to call it taking on climate chaos. my wife mary comes from minnesota. i know they value the land of 10,000 lakes. every time i have said that before, i always say the land of a thousand lakes. senator klobuchar corrects me. i just can't quite envision 10,000, but a land with incredible wildlife, a land that certainly has seen the impacts of climate chaos, as is my home state. so thank you so much for your remarks and for being here to

help celebrate our colleague, our friend, our senator from rhode island, senator whitehouse who is -- was speaking tonight just a few minutes ago for his 200th time to say wake up, wake up, america. we have a significant challenge, the sort of challenge that you may not notice from one day to the next. we may wake up tomorrow and not realize that the damage being done to our planet is greater than the day before. we may not be able to wake up a week from now and realize the damage is more. but nonetheless, it is if looked at over any significant span of time a huge, huge force wreaking havoc on our planet, and it will just get worse with time if we do not take on this pollution of the atmosphere by carbon

dioxide. back in 1959, an eminent scientist was asked to speak to the 100th anniversary of the petroleum industry. that -- that scientist was edward teller. edward teller gave his speech at this 100th anniversary, 1959, but he said to the gathering of the fossil fuel industry you do realize that you will eventually have to look for a different form of energy to invest in, first because the amount of fossil fuels in the earth's crust is limited and it will run out. he said second of all, there is some interesting fact that many of you might not be aware of, that when you burn fossil fuels, it creates carbon dioxide. carbon dioxide might not at first seem like a pollutant because it's invisible, it's odorless, but it has this quality where visible light

passes through it but heat energy is trapped. and as a result of trapping heat energy and changing the makeup of our atmosphere, we will start to do major damage to the planet. and he talked about how it would affect the melting of ice on the poles, the rising of sea levels, and that humankind lived by the oceans and therefore this pollutant, this carbon dioxide would do enormous damage and it would be important to transition off of burning carbon fuels, to have of burning fossil fuels. 1959. that's a long time ago that we have had the information about the damage wreaked on our havoc by this pollutant carbon dioxide. henry david thoreau, the philosopher, challenged us and said what is the use of a house

if you don't have a tolerable planet to put it on? yet everywhere we see our planet crying out for us to pay attention, never as much, however, as in this last year. here in america, fierce forest fires from montana across idaho into washington down to oregon and into california clear into december. smoke covered much of my state for month after month this last summer. it had an impact on people's health. certainly having an impact on our economy. or we can look at the storms of last year, the hurricanes, the storms of harvey and irma and maria assaulting texas and florida and puerto rico and the virgin islands, and those storms

were unusually damaging. and part of the reason for that is because the energy of those storms is taken from the temperature of the ocean, and the ocean has been collecting 90% of the increased heat on the planet from carbon dioxide pollution, and therefore produces more powerful hurricanes. so we saw it in the fires. we saw it in the hurricanes. but you really can start to see it almost everywhere. you can see that the pine beatles are doing much -- pine beetles are doing much better because the winters aren't cold enough to kill them and the trees are doing much worse. or that the ticks in new england and maine and minnesota are doing much better because the winters are not cold enough to kill them. therefore, they are killing the moose. or you can look at the impact of that rising ocean temperature on

coral reefs around the world, which are a small part of the ocean but have a significant role in the fisheries on our planet. in my home state, in oregon, the warmer temperatures and the acidity of the ocean caused a billion baby oysters to die in 2008. well, that's quite an impact on our seafood industry, and i can tell you that scientists were mystified because they couldn't imagine at first that it had to do with the water quality. they thought it must be a virus or must be some form of bacteria. it just turned out that the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere not only results in the warming of the ocean, but it's absorbed in the ocean and becomes carbonic acid, and that greater acidity of the ocean damages the ability of baby oysters to form

shells. so now we have to artificially buffer the ocean water. and we see it in spreading diseases, diseases like malaria as they follow the mosquitoes and zika as it follows the mosquitoes into greater territory, or a really diabolical disease that now is coming into the united states with sand flies. my point is everywhere you look, if you open your eyes, climate chaos is having a big impact and hurting us. so the answer is simple. we have to stop burning fossil fuels. this is where the 100% notion comes from, from my bill of last year, 100 by 50 or, if you prefer, mission 100. it just means you have to transition from the energy that we gain from fossil fuels to

substituting energy from clean and renewable sources 100%. stop burning fossil fuels. and, folks -- and folks a few years ago said, well, that will be a big damage to our economy because renewable energy is so much more expensive than cheap fossil fuels, but we have been blessed. we have been blessed in taking on this challenge because it's no longer true that renewable energy is more expensive than fossil fuel energy. we have had an incredible drop in the price of solar energy over a short period from 35 cents per kilowatt hour, down to 5 cents per kilowatt hour, and there was a proposal that was put out at 2 cents per kilowatt hour. in other words, it's cheaper to

have clean and renewable energy than to burn coal in an already depreciated fossil fuel coal electric plant. and wind -- wind has gone from 13 cents or so per kilowatt hour down to five cents per kilowatt hour and the same brought in bids at 3 cents per kilowatt hour. as we have seen the prices drop dramatically on solar and wind we have seen installations of solar and wind surge. on the solar side in 2015, we installed 12 gigawatts or 12,000 megawatts, that's a lot of energy. but to put it differently, one-fourth of installed capacity in the united states of america went in this just 2017. that's the dramatic upsurge in

installation. think of a world where we can have every flat business roof, every manufacturing plant with solar rays on its surface or canopies over parking lots because this energy is so cheap to collect and we can collect it in places where the grid already exists. and wind -- wind in 2016, eight gigawatts of new capacity went in and again, a tremendous upsurge in the amount of wind installed, and now we're seeing roughly half of our utilities scale new capacity being renewable energy rather than being fossil fuel energy. so the transition is under way, but we need to accelerate it. we need to move it much more quickly and then we need to move our consumption of energy over

to the electric grid. what does that mean? well, it means, for example, heating your house with the heat pump which uses electricity rather than a gas furnace. it means changing the way you heat water from a gas hot water heater to an electric hot water heater. it means, for example, proceeding to get a plug-in vehicle, an electric vehicle. and let's stop and talk a little bit about electric vehicles. because while we've been seeing the production of carbon dioxide from making electricity come down in america, we have seen the carbon dioxide from driving vehicles go up. so it is a major area that we have to take on. five years ago, i bought a volt,

which is a plug-in hybrid. it has a range of 35 miles on electricity and then it also has a gas backup. and that car really worked exceedingly well. we did three out of four miles on electricity even though we used gasoline to drive all the way to south dakota and back, but what we found was that the cost per mile on electricity was only about three cents a mile and the cost of running it on gasoline with oil and maintenance and so forth, closer to ten cents a mile. so it's three times cheaper to drive it on electricity. so there's a big incentive. now, my son, unfortunately, had an auto accident and we had to replace that car, and because the range over five years has increased, we were able to get a

full electric car, a leaf, a nissan leaf. the rage had -- the range had gone up in 2016 from roughly 80 miles to about 107 miles, well, that extra 127 miles was enough that my wife could do her work in home hospice potentially being assigned on the west side of monom county to back on the east side and back and forth every day and make it on a single charged battery. and now we're starting to see with the proliferation of charging stations the ability to work much more closely to the way we behaved, if you will, previously with gasoline vehicles, being able to drive hundreds of miles and recharge. we have seen that with the volt that has come out to replace the

volt which is now over 200 miles on just its battery alone, and more if you drive cautiously. buses are another big piece of this. i went down to eugene, oregon, a couple of weekends ago and rode on their first electric bus, the first in the state of oregon. that bus looked just like the old diesel buses we've had serving our metro systems across america, but it cost a lot more. it costs $200,000 more than the diesel bus. and you might say, well, that's way too much. but here's the interesting thing. it saves about $40,000 to $45,000 a year on fuel. it doesn't take a math genius to realize then after five years of service you paid off the cost difference and after that you're saving money. so we're going to see a huge transition because simply of the

economics. well, this is the challenge before us that we've been given the gift of affordable solar that's cheaper than fossil fuel energy, affordable wind that's cheaper than fossil fuel energy, a greatly declining cost of battery power to be able to help supply demand. but at the federal level we're paralyzed. the koch brothers really are the puppet masters of this chamber i'm in, this wonderful senate. it's supposed to be the place where we deliberate to have government of, by, and for the people. but right now we have deliberations that are of, by, and for the koch brothers, of, by, and for the wealthy and well connected. that is not the vision of america and we have to reclaim the vision of america and the

people of america have to understand that we have this enormous, enormous challenge that we must undertake to save our beautiful, beautiful blue-green planet. since the federal government isn't operating, we see companies and cities and places of worship jumping in to fill the gap, adopting 100% resolutions, resolutions to transition to 100% clean and renewable energy, to stop burning the fossil fuels that are damaging our planet. burlington, vermont now uses a mixture of biomass and hydro and wind and solar so that 100% of electricity comes from renewable generation. 58 other cities across america have made the transition and are laying out an action plan. families can do the same, places of worship can do the same, companies are doing the same all

across our nation. and we see many of our fortune 500 companies that are stepping forward to be real leaders in this. they want to attract employees who know that they care about our planet, they care about stopping this pollution that edward teller, an imminent scientist, pointed out in 1959. so when hen tridavid tiewr rowe said -- thuro said what use is a house if you don't have a planet to put it on? we need to look at this beautiful orb that we call home so let's fight to save this beautiful planet. it's the only one we have. we have no other. it's under serious threat and we

need here in this chamber to tell the koch brothers to go and sit on their fossil fuel fortune, invest it as they want somewhere else, but to join us in the most important work they could possibly be hard of -- part of in the years that they have remaining to live here in america, and that's to join us in this fight to take on climate chaos and wind. thank you, mr. president. mr. rounds: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from south dakota. mr. rounds: thank you, mr. president. i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to executive session to the consideration of

the following nomination, executive calendar 298. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. the clerk will report. the clerk: nomination, department of commerce, gilbert b. kaplan of the district of columbia to be under secretary of commerce for international trade. mr. rounds: i ask unanimous consent that the senate vote on the nomination with no intervening action or debate, if confirmed, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, the president be immediately notified of the senate's action, that no further motions be in order, and that any statements relating to the nomination be printed in the record. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. the question is on the nomination. all in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes appear to have it. the ayes do have it.

the nomination is confirmed. mr. rounds: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the senate resume legislative session for a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak for up to ten minutes each. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. rounds: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the senate proceed to the immediate consideration of calendar number 308, s. 2286. the presiding officer: the clerk will report. the clerk: calendar number 308, s. 2286, a bill to amend the peace corps act and so forth and for other purposes. the presiding officer: is there objection to proceeding to the measure? without objection. mr. rounds: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the committee-reported amendments be agreed to, the corker amendment at the desk be agreed to.

the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mr. rounds: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. rounds: mr. president, i know of no further debate on the bill. the presiding officer: is there further debate? if not, the question is on passage of the bill as amended. all in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes appear to have it. the ayes do have it. the bill, as amended -- the bill is passed as amended. the presiding officer: mr. president -- mr. rounds: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. rounds: i ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding rule 22, the postcloture time on senate amendment number 2151, as

modified, expire at 3:00 p.m. 45:00 p.m. on wednesday, march 14, further, if cloture is invoked, the time counts as invoked at midnight on wednesday, march 14. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection, so ordered. mr. rounds: mr. president, i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 9:30 a.m., wednesday, march 14, further, that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and morning business be closed. finally, i ask that following leader remarks the senate resume consideration of s. 2155 under the previous order. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mr. rounds: and, mr. president, if there's no further business to come before the senate, i ask that it stand adjourned under

the previous order. the presiding officer: the senate stands adjourned until senate stands adjourned until the senate today continued work on a bill for the dodd frank financial regulation law that applies to small banks. the senate gavels and tomorrow. >> sunday on c-span q&a, colorado college professor talks about his book and the idea of america. >> it is very empowering in terms of this country stands for something very special and the great writers