mr. whitehouse: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from rhode island. mr. whitehouse: we are presently in a quorum call? the presiding officer: we are. mr. whitehouse: may i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be lifted? the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: thank you, mr. president. i'm here to close the senate for the day, but before i do that i wanted to speak for a moment about the ongoing and deliberately overlooked problem of carbon pollution and what it is doing to our planet. and in the context of these remarks, i want to first ask unanimous consent to put into the record an article entitled "game over for the climate," written by jim hanson and published in yesterday's "new york times." the presiding officer: without objection. mr. whitehouse: what this article says, it begins with two simple sentences: "global warming isn't a prediction. it is happening." he talks about the dangers of the canada tar sands and what that means for us if we go ahead with t

mr. whitehouse: thank you, mr. president. i rise today to speak about a subject that i know is dear to the presiding officer's heart, and that is the sorry state of our campaign finance system and the need for the disclose act of 2012. we call disclose 2.0. the supreme court's 2010 decision in citizens united v. the federal elections commission opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate and special interest money in our elections, bringing about an era in which corporations and other wealthy interests can drown out the voices of individual voters in our political system. worse still, much of this spending is anonymous, so we don't even know who is spending millions to influence our elections. here's how my home state newspaper, the providence journal, explained it when the ruling came down: "the ruling will mean that more than ever big-spending economic interests will determine who gets elected. more money will especially pour into relentless attack campaigns. free speech for most individuals will suffer, because their voic

mr. whitehouse: thank you very much, mr. president. let me thank senator conrad for his leadership on this important issue. i would note for the record that with the conclusion of senator toomey's remarks, following senator reed's, i think for the first time in the history of the senate, we had back-to-back presentations by two separate senator graduates from lasalle academy in rhode island. but i did note in his remarks his references to the mag i mage of this chacialtion to the full-blown crisis that he perceives, that the completely unsustainable nature of our outward debt, to this being too big and too important not to address, and that this is the single-most pressing problem our country faces, all of which might lead one to conclude that this would be the most important thing that they would pursue. and yet we know it is less important to them to address our debt problem than it is to protect oil and gas subsidies for big oil at a time when their profits are unprecedented. it is less important than protecting tax loopholes that a

mr. whitehouse: i would ask consent that i follow senator franken and we will see to it that the presiding officer is excused fippl timely at 4:00. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. franken: i thank the senator from rhode island. last week my colleagues on the other side of the aisle blocked a vote that would have eased the burden of debt for millions of college students in minnesota and across the country. my republican friends disagreed with us about the best way to pay for this legislation, so a minority of senators kept us from helping millions of families and taking a step toward keeping our nation's workforce dploabllworkforce glo. but, madam president, this debate is not just about helping studentstudents pay for college. i want to talk a little bit about the two competing proposals to pay for this critical legislation. i'd like to talk about our national priorities and our national values. now, on one side, the democratic proposal would close a loophole that allows some of the wealthiest americans to avoid paying taxes that they should owe to the federal government. thi

mr. whitehouse: thank you very much. i would like to address a slightly different topic, which is the continuing conference on the highway bill. we passed a very good highway bill in the senate. we passed it on time for the march 31 deadline when the highway trust fund was going to expire. we passed it in bipartisan fashion, with 75 senators supporting it. we passed it after it came unanimously out of the environment and public works committee, with the support of both the chairman, senator boxer, and the ranking member, senator inhofe. we passed it after a very transparent and open floor process in which around 40 amendments were agreed to, either by vote or agreement. and it has the support of everybody from the u.s. chamber of commerce to the labor, from the pavers to the environmentalistists, so it is a good piece of legislation. it was done right. it's problem is that it's running up against a time deadline. as my director of transportation tells me, if we delay this too long, he has to start dropping projects off o

mr. whitehouse chief of staff, can you prove this by assert date? we need this. unbelievable. let me put up one last thing because i know a matter of time and want to get to the ranking member. we have the full chairman here. chairman of the full committee. we had mr. daschle may put up with the secretary said to us two months ago when questions that i asked. mr. secretary, how about john bryson, former chairman, now secretary of commerce, did that in any way influence your decision to give a loan guarantee to break source? secretary said no. did the white house ever call you were taught to about any of these prospective companies? to someone from the white house chief of staff, someone from the white house call you in the secretary said no. >> mr. chairman, i think we have to have the secretary back in here because this is certainly his response and doesn't square with e-mails we got in it 30,000 documents on friday from break source. >> with the gentleman yield? >> i will commend to you that we will invite the secretary back to clarify the record alone when it letters to the

levin, wyden, nelson of nebraska, shaheen, blumenthal, boxer, feinstein, whitehouse, merkley, rockefeller and johnson of south dakota. mr. reid: i now move to legislative session. the presiding officer: without objection the senate moves to legislative session. mr. reid: i move to proceed to executive session to consider calendar number 647, jerome powell of maryland, to be a member of the board of governors of the federal reserve system. the presiding officer: the clerk will report the nomination. the clerk: nomination federal reserve system, jerome h. powell of maryland to be a member of the board of governors of the federal reserve system. mr. reid: i send a cloture motion to the desk with respect to that nomination. mr. reid: the clerk will report the motion. the clerk: cloture motion. we the undersigned senators in accordance with the provisions of rule 22 of the standing rules of the senate hereby move to bring to a close the debate on the nomination of jerome h. powell of maryland to be a member of the board of governors of the federal reserve system. signed by 18 senators as follows -- mr. reid: mr. president, i

mr. whitehouse: mr. president, i would like unanimous consent to speak as if in morning business. the presiding officer: without objection, the senator is recognized. mr. whitehouse: mr. president, earlier this week, the conference committee on the surface transportation reauthorization, more commonly known as the highway bill, met for its initial meeting. in the opening remarks that were made on tuesday, it was encouraging that there seemed to be a general agreement on how important that transportation bill is to our nation. as i will describe later, it's 2.9 million jobs that are associated with this bill. i should be specific and say 2.9 million job years, since those jobs do not extend for eternity. but it's the most important piece of jobs legislation we could consider. i appreciated hearing from the senator from utah about the jobs concern of his energy proposal. these are real jobs, they are immediate jobs, they are jobs that everybody understands, building our roads, highways and bridges. these l

mr. whitehouse: thank you, mr. president. i want to take a few moments this afternoon to do something that has become a bit of a ritual with me, and that is to try to take some time each week to speak about the damage that we are doing to our atmosphere, to our oceans and to our climate with the relentless carbon pollution that we are discharging. as each week goes by, the information continues to pile up about the harms that we're causing. a recent story says that rising temperatures could eliminate two-thirds of california's snow pack by the end of this century. the snow pack that helps provide water for california's cities and farms could shrink by two-thirds because of the climate change according to new research submitted to the state's energy commission. higher temperatures appear likely to wipe out a third of the golden state's snow pack by 2050 and two-thirds by the end of the century. the scripps institution of oceanography found. "science daily" reports that black carbon aerosols and tropospheric ozone emitted predo