Congressional Record, Volume 162 Issue 112 (Tuesday, July 12, 2016)

[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 112 (Tuesday, July 12, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4975-S4993]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

COMPREHENSIVE ADDICTION AND RECOVERY ACT OF 2016--CONFERENCE REPORT--
Continued

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask that the Chair lay before the
Senate the conference report to accompany S. 524.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the conference report to
accompany S. 524.
The bill clerk read as follows:

Conference report to accompany S. 524, a bill to authorize
the Attorney General to award grants to address the national
epidemics of prescription opioid abuse and heroin use.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
(The remarks of Mr. Alexander pertaining to the introduction of S.
3169 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced
Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.

Judicial Vacancies

Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. President, the American public is well aware that
there is a vacancy on our U.S. Supreme Court and, in addition, that
there is obstruction going on in terms of our path to do what the
Senate is supposed to do--confirm a President's nomination to the
Supreme Court. Because it is the Supreme Court, because that term has
come to an end and we have seen a number of 4-to-4 ties, because of the
consequence and the gravity of what it is that the Supreme Court does,
that has garnered a lot of attention. It has resulted in the calling
for the Republicans in the Senate to do their job, to not obfuscate and
declare that they won't hold hearings or won't schedule a vote on
President Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland. As a consequence, that
vacancy may persist for well over a year when all is said and done.
I rise today to draw attention to the fact that that is not the only
judicial

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vacancy we have here in the United States of America. We currently have
83 vacancies in the Federal courts, and 29 of those vacancies have been
declared judicial emergencies, meaning that the continuing vacancy has
caused serious problems and concerns, so they are deemed judicial
emergencies.
Currently, because of the work that has been done by individual
Senators, consulting with the President, and what the President has
done in terms of forwarding nominees to the Senate so that we can
exercise our role of advice and consent, so we can hold votes on
confirmations, and because of the work of the Senate Judiciary
Committee, currently there are 24 judicial nominees on the Executive
Calendar. All of them--every one of them--have garnered majority
support of the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee in order to
advance to the Executive Calendar. Every one of them is deserving of a
full Senate vote.
I rise to draw attention to one particular vacancy; that is, a
vacancy on the Seventh Circuit Court. One of Wisconsin's seats on the
Seventh Circuit has been vacant for more than 6\1/2\ years. Let me
repeat that. It has been vacant for more than 6\1/2\ years. Currently,
and not surprisingly, it is the longest Federal circuit court vacancy
in the country. Today marks 2,378 days that this circuit court seat has
been vacant.
The people of Wisconsin and our neighbors in Illinois and Indiana
deserve a fully functioning appeals court. We have a highly qualified
nominee who deserves a vote from this body.
Don Schott was nominated by the President on January 12 to fill this
Seventh Circuit Court vacancy. He has strong bipartisan support. Both
Senator Johnson and I have returned our blue slips. Bipartisan
majorities of the Wisconsin judicial nominating commission have given
their support to Don Schott and have voted to advance his nomination, a
bipartisan group of the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance his
nomination, and a bipartisan group of former Wisconsin bar presidents
support him. Don Schott has the experience, qualifications, and
temperament to be an outstanding Federal judge. He was rated
unanimously ``well qualified'' by the American Bar Association. In
talking to people in Wisconsin about this nomination, I have heard only
tremendous praise for Don Schott.
This nomination deserves a vote. As such, I rise today to urge the
majority leader, the Republican leader, to schedule a vote on Don
Schott, as well as all of the other judicial nominees who are on the
Executive Calendar. The American people deserve a fully functioning
Federal judiciary.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.

Miners Protection Act

Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, I rise today in defense of the bipartisan
Miners Protection Act. This is a little bit of a history class that is
going to be rolled into the facts of what we are dealing with today.
Our coal miners are some of the hardest working people in America.
Any of you who come from a family who had one as a relative--maybe your
grandfather, father, uncle--you know those patriarchs are tough. They
are hard-working but extremely patriotic. They basically dedicated
their lives to powering our Nation. We would not be the Nation we are
today if it had not been for the miners, who now seem to have been cast
aside and forgotten about. They powered this Nation. They brought us
into the Industrial Revolution, if you will, the industrial age, and
created the middle class and one of the largest unions, the United Mine
Workers of America. Back in the 1930s and 1940s, especially, if you
were working in the mines, you were in the United Mine Workers union.
That is just the way things were. But by the end of this year, tens of
thousands of our miners are going to receive notices that they are
going to lose their health benefits. They are going to lose their
health benefits.
I have come to the floor again to answer the points that were called
into question by my friend Senator Enzi from Wyoming. First, Senator
Enzi specifically questioned the promise that was made to the miners in
1946. He questioned the promise that was made to them in 1946, saying
that it was made between the coal companies and the unions, not the
Federal Government, so therefore we should not have an obligation to be
involved. He said there was never an agreement with the Federal
Government.
I don't know how else to say this except that I believe my good
friend was totally misinformed. That is not correct, not at all. Now I
will give you the facts. This is a lesson.
In May of 1946, the United States was in the midst of a robust post-
World War II economic recovery. I mean, everybody was working during
the war. We were trying to survive as a nation, trying to defeat
tyranny and basically save the world as we know it today. So everybody
was working. Now the war is over. We were fearing a shutdown of our
economy, and somehow we had to continue to keep this energy we needed
to keep the country and the economy moving.
The United Mine Workers were actively negotiating. They were actively
negotiating their contracts the way you do in a civil bargaining
agreement. You sit down and you work through that. President Harry
Truman knew the vital role the coal industry played in the economic
recovery efforts, and he feared a prolonged strike. He issued an
Executive order because he thought a strike would grind our recovery to
a halt. He feared a prolonged strike, and he issued an Executive order
directing the Secretary of the Interior to take possession of the
bituminous coal mines--can you believe that--take possession of all of
the bituminous coal mines in the United States and negotiate with the
unions. So basically he stepped in and started negotiating with the
unions, taking over the mines.
Senator Enzi stated that this agreement was made between the members
and the companies, not between the members and the American taxpayer.
In fact, the first line of the Krug-Lewis agreement--this was the
agreement that was signed, the historic document that created the
promise of health benefits and retirement security for our Nation's
miners. This agreement is between the Secretary of the Interior acting
as Coal Mines Administrator under the authority of Executive Order No.
9728, dated May 21, 1946, and the United Mine Workers of America. The
title of this agreement says ``Executed at the White House, Washington,
D.C., May 29 of 1946.''
I ask unanimous consent to have a copy of this agreement printed in
the Record, and I will be sending a copy to my dear friend.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

National Bituminous Wage Agreement

EFFECTIVE MAY 29, 1946, DURING THE PERIOD OF GOVERNMENT OPERATION OF
MINES EXECUTED AT THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C., MAY 29, 1946

AGREEMENT

This Agreement between the Secretary of the Interior,
acting as Coal Mines Administrator under the authority of
Executive Order No. 9728 (dated May 21, 1946, 11 F. R. 5593),
and the United Mine Workers of America, covers for the period
of Government possession the terms and conditions of
employment in respect to all mines in Government possession
which were as of March 31, 1946, subject to the National
Bituminous Coal Wage Agreement, dated April 11, 1945.
1. Provisions of National Bituminous Coal Wage Agreement
Preserved
Except as amended and supplemented herein, this Agreement
carries forward and preserves the terms and conditions
contained in all joint wage agreements effective April 1,
1941, through March 31, 1943, the supplemental agreement
providing for the six (6) day work week, and all the various
district agreements executed between the United Mine Workers
and the various Coal Associations and Coal Companies (based
upon the aforesaid basic agreement) as they existed on March
31, 1943, and the National Bituminous Coal Wage Agreement,
dated April 11, 1945.
2. Mine Safety Program
(a) Federal Mine Safety Code
As soon as practicable and not later than 30 days from the
date of the making of the Agreement, the Director of the
Bureau of Mines after consultation with representatives of
the United Mine Workers and such other persons as he deems
appropriate, will issue a reasonable code of standards and
rules pertaining to safety conditions and practices in the
mines. The Coal Mines Administrator will put this code into
effect at the mines. Inspectors of the Federal Bureau of
Mines shall make periodic investigations of the mines and
report to the Coal Mines Administrator any violations of the
Federal Safety Code. In cases of violation the Coal Mines
Administrator will take appropriate

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action which may include disciplining or replacing the
operating manager so that with all reasonable dispatch said
violation will be corrected.
From time to time the Director of the Bureau of Mines may,
upon request of the Coal Mines Administrator or the United
Mine Workers, review and revise the Federal Mine Safety Code.
(b) Mine Safety Committee
At each mine there shall be a Mine Safety Committee
selected by the Local Union. The Mine Safety Committee may
inspect any mine development or equipment used in producing
coal for the purpose of ascertaining whether compliance with
the Federal Safety Code exists. The Committee members while
engaged in the performance of their duties shall be paid by
the Union, but shall be deemed to be acting within the scope
of their employment in the mine within the meaning of the
Workmen's Compensation Law of the state where such duties are
performed.
If the Committee believes conditions found endanger the
life and bodies of the mine workers, it shall report its
findings and recommendations to the management. In those
special instances where the Committee believes an immediate
danger exists and the Committee recommends that the
management remove all mine workers from the unsafe area, the
operating manager or his managerial subordinate is required
to follow the recommendation of the Committee, unless and
until the Coal Mines Administrator, taking into account the
inherently hazardous character of coal mining, determines
that the authority of the Safety Committee is being misused
and he cancels or modifies that authority.
The Safety Committee and the operating manager shall
maintain such records concerning inspections, findings,
recommendations and actions relating to this provision of the
Agreement as the Coal Mines Administrator may require and
shall supply such reports as he may request.
3. Workmen's Compensation and Occupational Disease
The Coal Mines Administrator undertakes to direct each
operating manager to provide its employees with the
protection and coverage of the benefits under Workmen's
Compensation and Occupational Disease Laws, whether
compulsory or elective, existing in the states in which the
respective employees are employed. Refusal of any operating
manager to carry out this direction shall be deemed a
violation of his duties as operating manager. In the event of
such refusal the Coal Mines Administrator will take
appropriate action which may include disciplining or
replacing the operating manager or shutting down the mine.
4. Health and Welfare Program
There is hereby provided a health and welfare program in
broad outline--and it is recognized that many important
details remain to be filled in--such program to consist of
three parts, as follows:
(a) A Welfare and Retirement Fund
A welfare and retirement fund is hereby created and there
shall be paid into said fund by the operating managers
5 cents per ton on each ton of coal produced for use or for
sale. This fund shall be managed by three trustees, one
appointed by the Coal Mines Administrator, one appointed by
the President of the United Mine Workers, and the third
chosen by the other two. The fund shall be used for making
payments to miners, and their dependents and survivors, with
respect to (i) wage loss not otherwise compensated at all or
adequately under the provisions of Federal or State law and
resulting from sickness (temporary disability), permanent
disability, death, or retirement, and (ii) other related
welfare purposes, as determined by the trustees. Subject to
the stated purposes of the fund, the trustees shall have full
authority with respect to questions of coverage and
eligibility, priorities among classes of benefits, amounts of
benefits, methods of providing or arranging for provision of
benefits, and all related matters.
The Coal Mines Administrator will instruct the operating
managers that the obligation to make payments to the welfare
and retirement fund becomes effective with reference to coal
produced on and after June 1, 1946; the first actual payment
is to be made on August 15, 1946, covering the period from
June 1 to July 15; the second payment to be made on September
15, covering the period from July 15 to August 31; and
thereafter payments are to be made on the 15th day of each
month covering the preceding month.
(b) A Medical and Hospital Fund
There shall be created a medical and hospital fund, to be
administered by trustees appointed by the President of the
United Mine Workers. This fund shall be accumulated from the
wage deductions presently being made and such as may
hereafter be authorized by the Union and its members for
medical, hospital and related purposes. The trustees shall
administer this fund to provide, or to arrange for the
availability of, medical, hospital, and related services for
the miners and their dependents. The money in this fund shall
be used for the indicated purposes at the discretion of the
trustees of the fund; and the trustees shall provide for such
regional or local variations and adjustments in wage
deductions, benefits and other practices, and transfer of
funds to local unions, as may be necessary and as are in
accordance with agreements made within the framework of the
Union's organization.
The Coal Mines Administrator agrees (after the trustees
make arrangements satisfactory to the Coal Mines
Administrator) to direct each operating manager to turn over
to this fund, or to such local unions as the trustees of the
fund may direct, all such wage deductions, beginning with a
stated date to be agreed upon by the Administrator and the
President of the United Mine Workers: Provided, however, that
the United Mine Workers shall first obtain the consent of the
affected employees to such turn-over. The Coal Mines
Administrator will cooperate fully with the United Mine
Workers to the end that there may be terminated as rapidly as
may be practicable any existing agreements that earmark the
expenditure of such wage deductions, except as the
continuation of such agreements may be approved by the
trustees of the fund.
Present practices with respect to wage deductions and their
use for provisions of medical, hospital and related services
shall continue until such date or dates as may be agreed upon
by the Coal Mines Administrator and the President of the
United Mine Workers.
(c) Coordination of the Welfare and Retirement Fund and the
Medical and Hospital Fund
The Coal Mines Administrator and the United Mine Workers
agree to use their good offices to assure that trustees of
the two funds described above will cooperate in and
coordinate the development of policies and working agreements
necessary for the effective operation of each fund toward
achieving the result that each fund will, to the maximum
degree practicable, operate to complement the other.
5. Survey of Medical and Sanitary Facilities
The Coal Mines Administrator undertakes to have made a
comprehensive survey and study of the hospital and medical
facilities, medical treatment, sanitary, and housing
conditions in the coal mining areas. The purpose of this
survey will be to determine the character and scope of
improvements which should be made to provide the mine workers
of the Nation with medical, housing and sanitary facilities
conforming to recognized American standards.
6. Wages
(a) All mine workers, whether employed by the day, tonnage
or footage rate, shall receive $1.85 per day in addition to
that provided for in the contract which expired March 31,
1946.
(b) Work performed on the sixth consecutive day is
optional, but when performed shall be paid for at time and
one-half or rate and one-half.
(c) Holidays, when worked, shall be paid for at time and
one-half or rate and one-half. Holidays shall be computed in
arriving at the sixth and seventh day in the week.
7. Vacation Payment
An annual vacation period shall be the rule of the
industry. From Saturday, June 29, 1946, to Monday, July 8,
1946, inclusive, shall be a vacation period during which coal
production shall cease. Day-men required to work during this
period at coke plants and other necessarily continuous
operations or on emergency or repair work shall have
vacations of the same duration at other agreed periods.
All employees with a record of one year's standing (June 1,
1945, to May 31, 1946) shall receive as compensation for the
above-mentioned vacation period the sum of One Hundred
Dollars ($100), with the following exception: Employees who
entered the armed services and those who returned from the
armed services to their jobs during the qualifying period
shall receive the $100 vacation payment.
All the terms and provisions of district agreements
relating to vacation pay for sick and injured employees are
carried forward to this Agreement and payments are to be made
in the sum as provided herein.
Pro rata payments for the months they are on the payroll
shall be provided for those mine workers who are given
employment during the qualifying period and those who leave
their employment.
The vacation payment of the 1946 period shall be made on
the last pay day occurring in the month of June of that year.
8. Settlement of Disputes
Upon petition filed by the United Mine Workers with the
Coal Mines Administrator showing that the procedure for the
adjustment of grievances in any coal producing district is
inequitable in relation to the generally prevailing standard
of such procedures in the industry, the Coal Mines
Administrator will direct the operating managers at mines in
the district shown to have an inequitable grievance procedure
to put into effect within a reasonable period of time the
generally prevailing grievance procedure in the industry.
9. Discharge Cases
The Coal Mines Administrator will carry out the provision
in agreements which were in effect on March 31, 1946, between
coal mine operators and the United Mine Workers that cases
involving the discharge of employees for cause shall be
disposed of within 5 days.
10. Fines and Penalties
No fines or penalties shall be imposed unless authorized by
the Coal Mines Administrator. In the event that such fines or
penalties are imposed by the Coal Mines Administrator, the
funds withheld for that reason

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shall be turned over to the trustees of the fund provided for
in Section 4 (b) hereof, to be used for the purpose stated
therein.
11. Supervisors
With respect to questions affecting the employment and
bargaining status of foremen, supervisors, technical and
clerical workers employed in the bituminous mining industry,
the Coal Mines Administrator will be guided by the decisions
and procedure laid down by the National Labor Relations
Board.
12. Safety
Nothing herein shall operate to nullify existing state
statutes, but this Agreement is intended to supplement the
aforesaid statutes in the interest of increased mine safety.
13. Retroactive Wage Provisions
The wage provisions of this Agreement shall be retroactive
to May 22, 1946.
14. Effective Date
This Agreement is effective as of May 29, 1946, subject to
approval of appropriate Government agencies.
Signed at Washington, D.C. on this 29th day of May, 1946.
J. A. Krug,
Coal Mines Administrator.

John L. Lewis,

President, United Mine Workers
of America.

Mr. MANCHIN. I believe the Secretary of the Interior and the White
House were representatives of the Federal Government back in 1946, just
as they are today.
Second, my colleague from Wyoming stated: I worry about the claim
that we are helping all coal miners with this proposal.
West Virginia coal miners--union and nonunion--continue to suffer
from the devastating effects of the ongoing coal bankruptcies.
Senator, we are willing to help all miners. We truly are. Anybody who
has been devastated in this downturn, if you will, of the industry, but
we are focusing this particular effort on the United Mine Workers of
America.
They try to make this: Well, you are picking union over nonunion. We
are not picking union over nonunion. The agreement was made with the
UMWA because everybody working in the mines during that period of time
belonged to the UMWA. So we have to protect that promise that was made
in that Executive order that was signed and made 70 years ago. So I
invite the Presiding Officer and all of my colleagues to help us find a
way to move forward and help put this to rest.
Also, Senator Enzi stated he wants America to remain financially
solvent. Well, there is no one who wants that more than I do. I
understand that if you can't get your financial house in order you
can't do anything else.
In fact, let me tell you what happens if we do not pass the Miners
Protection Act. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which we have
in place, will shoulder the burden of the outstanding liabilities. In a
January letter to Congressman McKinley from West Virginia, one of my
colleagues on the other side, the Director of the Pension Benefit
Guaranty Corporation confirmed that if the UMWA becomes insolvent, the
Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation of America will actually have to
assume billions of dollars in liabilities causing negative ripple
effects for many more and for the financial insolvency of our country.
Passing the Miners Protection Act now means covering $3.5 billion in
health and pension benefits. If we do not enact this law, the pension
liability alone will carry a pricetag of over $6 billion. So, along
with my good friend from Wyoming, Senator Enzi, I do care about making
prudent decisions. That is a savings of $2.5 billion if we pass this
legislation--$2.5 billion in saving to the taxpayers.
The Miners Protection Act is important to my home State of West
Virginia because West Virginia has more retired union miners than any
other State in the Nation. Out of the 90,594 retired United Mine
Workers in the country in 2014, more than 27,000 still live in my
State.
I will say this. As to a lot of the devastation we have seen with the
floods we have had in West Virginia over the last couple of weeks, it
was horrific what happened. Every one of those little communities was a
coal mining community that got hit. So you just add more tragedy on top
of the already devastating tragedy that we have.
But the impact is going to be felt in every State in the Union,
including Wyoming. In fact, the Miners Protection Act will help over
900 health beneficiaries and over 2,000 pension beneficiaries in the
State of Wyoming. So I would just ask: What do my colleague who opposes
this legislation or any of my colleagues who might not be for this
legislation expect the widows and pensioners to do? First of all, they
have an executive order by the President of the United States in 1946,
over 70 years ago. On top of that, this pension plan was solvent and
sound until 2008. It wasn't their fault the crash happened. The greed
of Wall Street took down so many pension plans.
Most of these widows are making $550 a month. That is their pension--
$550 a month. So we are not talking about large amounts of money, but
if they lose that, it means the difference of whether they do certain
things out of necessity. What do they give up? How do you explain to
them that a 70-year-old commitment is now going to go unanswered? We
didn't care. We didn't mean it.
It is our responsibility to keep the promise to our miners who
answered the call whenever their country needed them. So I ask Senator
Enzi and all my colleagues to work with me to keep our promise to these
miners. Let us sit down and work together and make sure we all agree on
the facts.
I have always said this, and it has been said to me many times, we
are all entitled to our opinions. We are just not entitled to our own
facts. So the facts are very clear here. This is not only a promise, it
is a commitment and a responsibility we have to the United Mine Workers
of America and all those people who gave us the greatest country on
Earth, gave us the greatest amount of abundant energy--reliable,
affordable, and dependable. There is a transition going on now, and we
are working through this transition, but the bottom line is that to
walk away from an obligation and a commitment we made 70 years ago,
which helped us be the superpower of the world and the country we are
today, would be a gross neglect of our responsibilities and an
injustice to the United Mine Workers of America, the widows, and the
families who still depend on this. We have a responsibility to oblige
and make sure we take care of them.
With that, I hope the Chair will help me in moving forward on this.
We hope to get a vote in September. We were promised a vote in the
first part of September, when we come back, and that is one we are
counting on to carry this forward. I am hoping we will have our
colleagues supporting this.
With that, Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Ayotte). Without objection, it is so
ordered.

Climate Change

Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I come to the floor today to speak on
the issue of climate change. Before I do, I would like to read a quote.

What is a conservative after all but one who conserves, one
who is committed to protecting and holding close the things
by which we live . . . and we want to protect and conserve
the land on which we live--our countryside, our rivers and
mountains, our plains and meadows and forests. This is what
we leave to our children. And our great moral responsibility
is to leave it to them either as we found it or better than
we found it.

These are the words of President Ronald Reagan, and I agree with
those words. Climate change is one of the greatest threats to our
planet Earth. When I look at my beautiful grandkids, I feel a moral
responsibility to leave this world as well as I found it or even
better.
We can't continue to ignore the problem of climate change. How will
future generations judge us if we deny the reality of climate change
and say that it is just too hard to do something that might leave them
a safer, cleaner, better world? I don't think they will look on us
kindly. Future generations actually count on us.
Climate change is no longer debatable. The facts are in. Climate
change is real, and it is not some distant threat. From Hurricane
Katrina to Superstorm Sandy, from severe flooding on the Mississippi
River in 2011 in Illinois to the historic low water levels

[[Page S4979]]

just 1 year later and to the devastating drought and wildfires that are
searing the West Coast, extreme weather is the new normal.
So why are there still so many in the Chamber who deny the threat of
climate change, not to mention failing to do anything to solve the
problem? I have said on the floor before, and I will say again, that
there is only one major political party in the world today that denies
climate change, only one--the Republican Party of the United States of
America.
Well, part of the reason is because for decades the fossil fuel
industry and those who cater to them have tried to blur this debate, to
blur the science, to create divisions among us, instead of looking for
what we have in common to try to solve this problem rationally and
reasonably.
Make no mistake, there is a deliberate campaign, financed by the
fossil fuel industry--a campaign that uses the pseudoscience of
manufactured doubt. It is coordinated. I have seen the likes of it
before.
In 2006, the major tobacco companies in the United States were found
guilty of ``a massive 50-year scheme to defraud the public.'' Decades
before, tobacco company research had already shown that tobacco was
truly harmful and addictive. Instead of letting science and the moral
imperative behind it promote public health, the companies launched an
extensive campaign sowing seeds of doubt about the dangers of tobacco.
I know about this firsthand. I was a Member of the House of
Representatives about 27 years ago. I introduced a bill to ban smoking
on airplanes. It was opposed by the tobacco lobby, and the leadership
in both political parties--Democratic and Republican elected leaders in
the House of Representatives--opposed me. We called it for a vote, and
to the amazement of everyone, it passed. It turns out Members of
Congress are the largest frequent flyer club in the world, and they
knew how outrageous it was to suggest there were smoking and nonsmoking
sections on an airplane.
I led that initiative to ban smoking on airplanes, and I was joined
by the late Senator Frank Lautenberg who took up the cause in the
Senate, and 26 years ago we banned smoking. It made a difference. We
had to fight the tobacco lobby all the way. They denied that nicotine
was addictive. They denied there was a linkage between tobacco and
cancer. They created a pseudoscience. They paid scientists to come up
with theories that said tobacco really wasn't that dangerous.
Well, sadly, we are seeing that same thing today when it comes to
climate change. Just as the tobacco industry created a campaign of
manufactured doubt to protect their financial interests and profits, a
web of fossil fuel industry groups, aided and abetted by one of the
very groups that resisted anti-smoking laws, are behind this web of
climate denial.
A 1998 American Petroleum Institute, or API, memo has become public.
I just read it on my computer upstairs. At the time, the American
Petroleum Institute consisted of a dozen lobbyists, think tank members,
and public relations gurus. Science wasn't on their side in 1998, so
the group decided that misleading the public about the reality of
climate change--sowing seeds of doubt about whether there was really
climate change underway--was the best way to go. The 1998 API memo
claimed that ``victory,'' in their words, would be achieved when
``uncertainties'' about the science became part of the public's
perception.

In the year 2000, influential Republican pollster Frank Luntz
prepared a playbook for those who wanted to create doubt in the
public's mind about climate change. Mr. Luntz wrote:

Should the public come to believe that the scientific
issues are settled, their views about global warming will
change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make
the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the
debate.

So what is taking place right now with the effort of the fossil fuel
industry is a deliberate campaign to mislead the American public.
Sadly, this web of denial that started in 1998 is alive and well
today. Just last year, at an ExxonMobil-sponsored meeting of the
notorious American Legislative Exchange Council, the president of the
Heartland Institute stated:

There is no scientific consensus on the human role in
climate change. There is no need to reduce carbon dioxide
emissions and no point in attempting to do so.

This quote is in direct opposition to Earth scientists in one of the
world's most highly respected Earth science organizations--the American
Geophysical Union, or AGU.
This spring, a group of 254 Earth scientists cited these lies in a
letter as one of the many reasons why the American Geophysical Union
should decline to accept ExxonMobil's financial sponsorship of their
group. The Earth scientists also made clear that ExxonMobil distributed
scientifically false and misleading information, are members in or
financially support other climate-denying organizations, and donated to
climate-denying politicians and past misinformation campaigns.
ExxonMobil is not alone in spending money to influence elections and
affect environmental policy. The oil and gas industry pours millions of
dollars into election campaigns every year. In the 2012 election cycle,
energy and natural resource corporations, their employees, and industry
super PACs spent more than $147 million to make sure the right people
were elected in congressional seats, in Senate seats, and in the
Presidential campaign. During the current election cycle, they have
already spent more than $101 million, and they will likely contribute
millions more in the 4 months remaining. Experts estimate that, in
total, candidates, political parties, and interest groups, including
those funded by companies such as ExxonMobil, may spend up to $10
billion on Federal campaigns in 2016--$10 billion.
A poll conducted by the New York Times last year found that 84
percent of Americans believe money has too much influence in American
political campaigns. They are right. Our campaign finance system is a
mess. America needs a system to elect its candidates that rewards those
with good ideas and principles, not just the person who is the most
talented in raising money.
I reintroduced a bill last year called the Fair Elections Now Act.
This legislation would establish a voluntary, small-donor public
financing system for Senate campaigns. We would finally break the back
of Big Money's control over the American political system. The Fair
Elections Now Act can't solve all the problems facing us, but the bill
would allow us to fight back against deep-pocketed special interests by
dramatically changing the way campaigns are funded, encouraging small
donors and matches for those small donations.
As we grapple with important issues like climate change, we have to
recognize the influence of money in our political system and why one
major political party in the world today still denies climate change.
Until we embrace campaign finance reform and ensure that politicians do
not feel beholden to special interests like the oil and gas industry,
climate-denying politicians will continue to prevent us from taking
action.
It is unconscionable that some very powerful people put their profits
ahead of the future of the planet we live on, but we know it is true.
If we don't act on climate change, there is no backup plan.
Let me end on a hopeful note. When Pope Francis came to Washington,
DC, last September, he called for action on addressing climate change
and global warming. The Pope said:

All is not lost. Human beings, while capable of the worst,
are also capable of rising above themselves, choosing again
what is good, and making a new start.

Pope Francis is right. Let's not run away from our responsibility in
the Senate or in life to our children and our grandchildren. Let's work
toward solving the real challenges of climate change with both
political parties. It is not too late to make a new start, to do the
right thing, and to protect this planet that we call home.
Madam President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, we all want safety, security, health
and well-being for all of our fellow Americans. But it sometimes seems
impossible for us to agree on how best to achieve them. So when
Congress comes together to find solutions to an urgent crisis facing
the country, we should

[[Page S4980]]

pause briefly, mark that achievement, and consider how we got there.
That is what I hope will happen this week when the Senate votes on
the conference report for S. 524, the Comprehensive Addiction and
Recovery Act, or CARA.
CARA addresses the opioid crisis in a comprehensive way, by
authorizing almost $900 million over 5 years for prevention, education,
treatment, recovery, and law enforcement efforts. Last week, the House
of Representatives passed the report by an astounding margin of 407 to
5.
We have all heard the statistics about the epidemic of addiction to
heroin and prescription opioids that is gripping our country. I won't
belabor them today. When 129 Americans a day die from drug overdoses,
we don't need statistics on a page to tell us about this catastrophe.
We only need to listen to our constituents. I hear from Iowans all the
time about real-life examples of how this epidemic is hitting home.
A few years ago, I heard the story of Kim Brown, a nurse from
Davenport. In 2011, she lost her son Andy Lamp to an accidental heroin
overdose. He was only 33. She now speaks out around my State about the
need for expanded treatment options for those with substance abuse
disorders. She also advocates for increased access to naloxone, an
anti-overdose drug that can save lives.
I heard Kim Brown's plea--and the conference report helps fill these
and other critical gaps. I urge the entire Senate to demonstrate that
it has heard her, and thousands like her, by passing the conference
report, and sending it to the President for his signature before we
return home.
The Senate's vote this week will be the culmination of a process
marked by hard work, bipartisanship, and a commitment to addressing
this crisis in an all-encompassing way.
I convened a hearing on attacking the opioid epidemic in the Senate
Judiciary Committee in January. The Committee heard from Federal and
State officials in the law enforcement and public health communities.
We also heard from a courageous young woman who lost her daughter to a
heroin overdose and subsequently started a support group to assist
those in recovery.
The hearing continued for well over 3 three hours. Senators who
aren't even members of the Committee stopped in to listen, and learn.
By that time, a bipartisan group of four Senators had already
introduced CARA. Soon after the hearing, I sat down with Senators
Whitehouse, Portman, Klobuchar, and Ayotte--two Democrats and two
Republicans--to build on their outstanding work. The leadership of
those four Senators on this issue has been indispensable.
We agreed on some changes to CARA that facilitated its movement
through the Judiciary Committee. In particular, I worked to include my
accountability provisions, which help prevent waste, fraud, and abuse
of grant funds, and ensure that resources go to those who need them
most.
I also helped make sure that a fixed portion of the funds for first
responder access to naloxone is set aside for rural areas, like much of
Iowa, where access to emergency healthcare can be limited.
And finally, because methamphetamine remains such a problem in Iowa,
I made sure that the community-based coalition enhancement grants
created by the bill would also be available for communities suffering
from high rates of meth abuse, in addition to opioid abuse. In fact,
these enhancement grants are intended to supplement grants made to
community coalitions under the Drug Free Communities Act of 1997. I am
proud to have been the lead sponsor of that legislation in the Senate.
The CARA Grassley substitute, with these changes, passed the
Judiciary Committee unanimously by voice vote in February. I then
managed the bill on the Senate floor, where it was approved 94 to-1 in
March. Tackling important problems in a bipartisan way is important to
me. That is why, as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, I have moved
eight bills through the Committee, CARA among them, for which the lead
sponsor was a member of the Democratic minority. By way of comparison,
last Congress the Committee didn't report a single bill for which the
lead sponsor was a Republican in the minority. And every one of the 27
bills I have moved through the Committee this Congress has had
bipartisan support. That isn't just talking the talk on bipartisanship,
it is walking the walk.
After the Senate acted on CARA, the House of Representatives passed
its own package of bills by a vote of 400 to 5 in May. And so the task
fell to a bicameral, bipartisan committee to develop a conference
report that would blend the best of the two approaches together. I led
the Senate delegation that negotiated the report, along with Senator
Alexander, Chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and
Pensions. We concluded weeks of hard work and negotiations with a
conference committee meeting on July 6. I voted for a number of
improvements to the report during the meeting, offered by both
Republicans and Democrats.
In particular, I was proud to support Senator Murray's amendment that
will create an Office of Patient Advocacy at the Department of Veterans
Affairs to help ensure our veterans receive the care they deserve.
I am also pleased that the CARA conference report includes a bill
that I introduced with Senator Klobuchar, the Kingpin Designation
Improvement Act. This bill strengthens the ability of the Federal
Government to freeze the assets of foreign drug kingpins, who traffic
opioids, methamphetamine and other illegal narcotics into the United
States.

There are other parts of CARA that I feel passionately about as well.
Many people who abuse prescription drugs get them from friends or
relatives. CARA authorizes an expansion of the Federal initiative that
allows patients to safely dispose of old or unused medications, so that
these drugs don't fall into the hands of young people, potentially
leading to addiction. I am proud to have helped start these ``take
back'' programs by working with Senators Klobuchar and Cornyn in 2010
to pass the Secure and Responsible Drug Disposal Act. It has been a
highly successful effort. Since 2010, over 2,700 tons of drugs have
been collected from medicine cabinets and disposed of safely. Iowa also
has a similar ``take back'' program that is expanding rapidly. Anything
we can to do to encourage these programs is worthwhile.
CARA also authorizes funds for other valuable programs: those that
encourage the use of medication assisted treatment, provide community-
based support for those in recovery, and address the unique needs of
pregnant and post-partum women who are addicted to opioids.
It is no wonder that the CARA conference report has been met with
such widespread praise and support. The Addiction Policy Forum called
it a ``monumental step forward.'' Almost 250 advocacy organizations
have written to Congress in support of the report, concluding that
``this bill is the critical response we need.'' These organizations
include many influential national ones, such as the Community Anti-Drug
Coalitions of America, the National Criminal Justice Association, and
the National District Attorneys Association.
Iowa community organizations are well-represented in that group as
well, including the Partnership for a Drug Free Iowa, Kossuth
Connections, Siouxland Cares, the Iowa Alliance for Drug Endangered
Children, Community Resources United to Stop Heroin of Eastern Iowa--
Dubuque Chapter, Quad Cities Harm Reduction, which Kim Brown leads, and
many more.
The National Fraternal Order of Police wrote in support of the
conference report as well. The FOP explained that:

Law enforcement officers are almost always the first on the
scene--even before the paramedics arrive. In these life and
death situations, our officers are not looking to make an
arrest, but to save a life. Many States and jurisdictions
have successfully equipped their officers with [naloxone],
trained them to recognize the symptoms of an overdose, and
administer it on the scene. We believe that the final
conference report on S. 524 will help expand the use of
naloxone and give us one more tool to reduce the deaths from
this epidemic.

It isn't every day we can say that legislation we pass could help
save lives. But this is one of those times. I want to thank the
Republican leader for moving this legislation on the floor, and
providing the Senate the opportunity to pass it this week.

[[Page S4981]]

Indeed, heroin deaths spiked dramatically from 2010 through 2014,
more than tripling, from 3,036 to 10,574. But sadly, during this entire
time, the Democratic leader didn't make it a priority to move
comprehensive, bipartisan legislation on the floor to address this
epidemic.
Now, some of my colleagues have expressed concern that the conference
report, an authorization bill, doesn't also appropriate money for this
epidemic as well. But thankfully, under Republican leadership, the
appropriations committees have been doing just that. The current Senate
appropriations bills increase funding for this epidemic by 57 percent
over fiscal year 2016 enacted levels, and by 115 percent over fiscal
year 2015 enacted levels. So funding for this crisis is poised to more
than double since Republicans took control of the Senate. As this
funding continues to increase, the CARA conference report will be the
blueprint for where this money is most effectively spent.
This bill is just the latest example of the productive, bipartisan
work we have been doing on the Judiciary Committee this Congress. I
want to thank all of the Members for their hard work and for our
achievements together.
So I urge my colleagues to vote to send CARA to the President this
week. And when we come back in September, let's roll up our sleeves and
continue to build on this bipartisan success.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.

Tragedies in Michigan and Across the Country

Mr. PETERS. Madam President, I rise with a heavy heart to address
devastating tragedies that have shaken communities in Michigan and
across this country. Just yesterday, the community of St. Joseph, MI,
suffered a tragic shooting that cost the lives of two dedicated public
servants and injured several others.
I would like to extend my condolences to the families of bailiffs
Joseph Zangaro and Ronald Kienzle, who were fatally shot yesterday in
Berrien County, MI. Both Joseph and Ronald had distinguished careers as
public safety officers prior to serving as bailiffs in the Berrien
County Courthouse.
Joseph Zangaro retired from the Michigan State Police as post
commander of the Bridgman Post and had worked for the Berrien County
Trial Court for over 10 years.
Ronald Kienzle retired as a sergeant in road patrol with the Benton
Charter Police Department in Benton Harbor, MI, and was a veteran of
the U.S. Army.
I also want to wish Deputy James Atterbury and Kenya Ellis a speedy
recovery for the wounds they received during this attack.
Yesterday's incident illustrates a very important fact. Whether as a
member of a local police department, a rapid transit officer, or a
court bailiff, public safety officers risk their lives every day to
keep our families and our communities safe. This is a fact we can never
forget and a reality that confronts public safety officers and their
families every day.
Across Michigan, our hearts have been shattered by senseless violence
like this, and I know the grief of my fellow Michiganders because I
feel this grief in my own heart as well. Unfortunately, this is not the
first tragedy to strike West Michigan this year. We are still reeling
from the mass shooting in Kalamazoo in February, where six people were
killed and two were critically injured.
We are facing a very difficult time in our country's history. Last
week's tragedies further demonstrate this point. Within just 48 hours,
we saw two separate incidents where American citizens died at the hands
of those who were sworn to protect them. Then, what started out as a
peaceful protest in response to those deaths, suddenly morphed into an
unrelated and horrific attack on law enforcement--an attack on officers
who died to protect the rights of protesters to peacefully protest.
Let me be clear. Something is wrong when a hard-working and beloved
cafeteria supervisor is killed during a routine traffic stop. Something
is wrong when police officers, honorably serving and protecting their
communities, are killed during a peaceful protest. Something is wrong
when a salesman and a father of four dies while selling CDs. Something
is wrong when a police officer is ambushed and shot while responding to
a 911 call for help. Too many precious lives are being lost, not just
in Michigan but in States all across our country.
I was heartbroken by the tragic shooting deaths of Philando Castile
in Minnesota and Alton Sterling in Louisiana last week, only to wake up
horrified on Friday morning to learn of five Dallas police officers,
including Michigan native Michael Krol, who were struck down in the
line of duty.
We have seen enough violence. Across our countries, our communities
are outraged and heartbroken at the number of lives which have been
lost. While the events of last week are almost too much to bear, the
images from communities like Chicago, Staten Island, Ferguson, and
Baltimore have gripped this Nation's attention as well.
We have seen tears of sadness, burning storefronts, and
confrontations between police and young people, as well as peaceful
protesters marching through the streets. It is clear there is a
persistent and troubling problem in our country that is eroding away
Americans' faith in our justice system. With each troubling incident,
it becomes clear that justice in this country is sometimes neither fair
nor equal, and we must act now to address this inequity.
This problem isn't isolated to our African-American communities or to
our law enforcement communities. These injustices undermine the very
values our Nation was built upon. It is the responsibility of each and
every one of us to acknowledge that too many Americans are needlessly
dying, and we must come together to stop them.
More now than ever, it is time for us to unite as a country to
encourage understanding and compassion for our fellow Americans. Now is
the time for us to walk in another's shoes and acknowledge the
experiences that have shaped their views. Now is the time for this body
to come together to offer solutions. The American people need us.
It is crystal clear that the relationship between law enforcement and
the communities they serve is strained, and an overhaul of our criminal
justice system is long overdue. On top of these strained relations, we
are continuing to see rising prison populations and unsustainable costs
as public budgets remain tight.
We see too many at-risk youths being funneled out of our schools and
into our prison systems, continuing a vicious cycle in many of our
communities. We see too many people who have served their time only to
find that once they get out of prison, they can't find a good job or a
stable home.
We need a better understanding of the causes of these concerning
trends, and we need to identify solutions that will help ensure we are
administering justice in a fair and equitable way for every American--
regardless of who they are, where they may live, or their income level.
That is why I have introduced legislation with Republican Senators
Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas to create a
National Criminal Justice Commission. The Commission will be made up of
experts on law enforcement, victims' rights, civil liberties, and
social services who will be charged with undertaking an 18-month review
of our criminal justice system from the top to the bottom. It is
something that has not been done since 1965--more than 50 years ago
during another very difficult time in our Nation's history.
The goal of this Commission is to identify commonsense solutions to
the serious issues facing our criminal justice system, promote fairness
in our laws, build stronger relationships between law enforcement and
our communities, and strengthen faith--basic faith--in our criminal
justice system.
The Commission will focus on transparency, issuing recommendations to
the President and Congress, and making reports on its findings
available to the public and entities within the criminal justice
system. It will take a comprehensive approach to reviewing the criminal
justice system and will look at numerous issues in light of our current
climate.
When President Lyndon Johnson's 1965 Commission last conducted a
comprehensive review over 50 years ago, it was the first time police,
prosecution, defense, the courts and corrections were all examined as a
whole. That

[[Page S4982]]

Commission made more than 200 recommendations to improve the criminal
justice system, including creating the 9-1-1 emergency system that is
so ingrained in our society today.
Our country has changed significantly over the last 50 years, and
another top-to-bottom review of our criminal justice system is long
overdue. In fact, the President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing,
which was created after the troubling situation in Ferguson, strongly
recommended the creation of a national commission to evaluate the
entire criminal justice system.
The National Criminal Justice Commission that my legislation creates
will shine a light on the whole scope of our criminal justice system,
including police and community relations, our grand jury system, the
right to counsel in misdemeanor cases, the lack of speedy trials, and
the struggles ex-offenders face in finding housing, employment, and
support services after leaving prison.
This Commission is one critical piece of a larger puzzle. We must
also take swift action on our justice system, such as sentencing
reform. The Commission also has the support of a wide range of groups,
including the Fraternal Order of Police, the NAACP, the International
Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Urban League, and many
other law enforcement and civil rights groups.
The National Criminal Justice Commission is vital to understanding
the reforms and best practices that we need to reduce crime, help law
enforcement do their jobs safely and effectively, protect our
communities, and build a justice system that works for every American.
These problems are not easy, and there are no quick answers. It is
going to require all of us working together to make these vital changes
a reality, but together we can achieve the promise of this great
country--justice for every American, no matter who you are, where you
live, or how much money you may have in your pocket.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.

Climate Change

Mr. SCHATZ. Madam President, I hate conspiracy theories. I believe
most of the suspicious, confusing, frustrating, or unknowable things in
the world are the way they are not because there are 12 people in a
room wringing their hands trying to figure out how to trick all of us
but because the world is complicated, often unfair, sometimes
illogical, and we all operate with incomplete information. So even as a
climate hawk, I came to the idea of an organized misinformation
campaign with real hesitation. I didn't want to be that guy who
believes there is an evil empire that lies for a living. But here is
the thing: I have studied this, and I have learned that there really is
an organized, well-financed disinformation and misinformation campaign
on the subject of climate change. It is straight out of a bad movie
about politics, complete with PR guys, dark campaign money, fake
scientists, politicians in the mix, and a weakened media. It is like
Raymond Tusk actually exists.
I rise today to join my colleagues in combating a pervasive and
highly damaging campaign of misinformation, disinformation, and
outright lies. For decades, the same hired guns that tried to convince
the American people that there was no link between smoking and lung
cancer have been following the same playbook on manmade climate change.
They want to sow doubt where no doubt exists. Just like the tobacco
companies profited from denial, so too have the fossil fuel companies
profited by propping up front groups and sham think tanks that try to
convince us that the science on climate change isn't settled and that
no consensus exists between mainstream scientists, but of course that
is not true.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science said:

The science linking human activities to climate change is
analogous to the science linking smoking to lung and
cardiovascular diseases. Physicians, cardiovascular
scientists, public health experts, and others all agree that
smoking causes cancer, and this consensus among the health
community has convinced most Americans that the health risks
from smoking are real. A similar consensus now exists among
climate scientists, a consensus that maintains climate change
is happening and human activity is the cause.

It is worth pausing here to make two basic points. The first is one I
mentioned earlier, and that is that the same techniques which were used
to block science and prevent action on tobacco are now being deployed
to prevent action on climate. That stands to reason. If you are looking
for public relations techniques to essentially mislead the public so
you can squeeze additional years and decades of profitability, then you
would be wise to use the techniques, methods, and procedures that
worked in the past, so that sort of stands to reason. It shocks the
conscience, but it shouldn't shock us that this is happening. The
really shocking part is this. Of course they would use the same
techniques to mislead the public regardless of the issue, but the real
shock is that it is literally the same people. It is not the same type
of person or the same category of person, it is the same human beings
and the same professionals. They are the same PR firms, and they have
replicated the machinery of the Tobacco Institute, sharing processes,
procedures, personnel, and funding sources. But just as we did against
Big Tobacco, we are going to win the war of ideas against Big Oil and
Big Coal.
The truth is on our side, but the truth is not guaranteed to come
out. We actually have to expose their ecosystem of misinformation to
make real progress on climate, and so for a moment I will talk a little
bit about the media, which has played an unfortunate role.
Generally speaking, people in the U.S. media like to get ``both sides
of the story'' just to be fair, which under many circumstances works
just fine. After all, the definition of a bad story in a lot of
reporters' minds is to be one-sided. What happens when one side of the
story is factual and the other side is a house of cards? Many in the
media still report it as though, on the one hand, scientists say
climate change is real, and on the other hand, some say it is not. To
be fair, this has improved over the last year or so, but that was the
foundational weakness of the American media--their credulity when
reporting on deniers--that the climate denial apparatus took full
advantage of.

There are not two sides to every issue. Sometimes there are just
facts on one side and bull on the other. We don't argue about the
existence of gravity or whether the Earth is round or, thankfully,
whether smoking causes lung cancer. We have known since the 19th
century that carbon dioxide traps heat much like a greenhouse. We know
that burning fossil fuels releases stored carbon into the atmosphere.
We have seen the evidence of increasing temperatures and rising sea
levels for decades. The correlation between levels of carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere and global temperatures is absolutely undeniable. To
deny the reality of manmade climate change in this context requires
willful ignorance.
How is this happening? Academics from Yale and Drexel Universities,
among others, have researched and exposed the many sources of dark
money that are fueling the climate denial machine. My colleagues are
speaking today--and spoke yesterday as well--about some of the greatest
offenders, and I will focus my remarks on just two. One is a small
organization that most people haven't heard of, and another is an
organization that I think a lot of people who work in politics have
heard of. The first is the Center for Study of Carbon Dioxide and
Global Change, and the other is the Heartland Institute.
The Center for Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change is a family
project out of Tempe, AZ, that claims that global warming will be
beneficial to humanity. The center does not disclose funding
information because they believe doing so would bias the way people
perceive their purpose and publications, and that may be the only thing
they say that is true.
Transparency is crucial in the world of science because it allows the
scientific community and the general public to determine whether there
might be a conflict of interest. In this instance, there is a conflict
of interest. We know that at the very least, ExxonMobil and Peabody
coal have given significant sums of money to the center. When two
companies with a

[[Page S4983]]

long history of climate denial are paying you to deny the scientific
consensus on climate change, it is fair to point out that something
smells a little fishy.
Better known than the Center for Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global
Change is the Heartland Institute, which gained national attention
after putting up a billboard comparing those who believed in manmade
global warming to the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. This tasteless stunt
rightfully cost Heartland $825,000 in corporate donations, but
Heartland still receives millions of dollars a year from fossil fuel
companies and others with a vested interest in continuing the status
quo. They still have an outsize impact in the national conversation by
insinuating that the science on climate change is not settled.
Not surprisingly, Heartland follows the tobacco playbook to a T.
Their reliance on dark money means that Heartland's funding is
notoriously difficult to track. According to the watchdog group
Conservative Transparency, Heartland has received more than $14 million
from the Koch-initiated Donors Trust and Donors Capital groups, which
shield donors' identities. We know that ExxonMobil has contributed at
least $675,000 since 1998, and the Union of Concerned Scientists found
that 40 percent of those funds were specifically designated for climate
change projects. The money from these organizations, among others,
allowed Heartland to publish nearly 3,000 documents toward climate
change skepticism between 1998 and 2013. Heartland also organizes
gatherings of climate skeptics and defends fossil fuel funding experts
who continue to deny the reality of the changing climate we are already
seeing today. We have seen this movie before.
What is happening this week is historic. We are no longer going to
allow these front groups to pose as on-the-level think tanks. We have a
moral obligation to not only solve this problem but to also fix our
politics. We should all be making decisions about how best to solve
this problem.
Let's have this great debate. Let the two major political parties
have an argument about the best way to tackle climate change because
this isn't just a climate thing at this point, this is an integrity
thing.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.
(The remarks of Mr. Gardner pertaining to the submission of S. Res.
526 are printed in today's Record under ``Submitted Resolutions.'')
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gardner). The Senator from Minnesota.

Climate Change

Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleagues to
expose those who continue to deny the science of climate change and try
to deceive the American people. This is important because climate
change is an existential threat to our planet and to future
generations. By denying climate science and lobbying against efforts to
address climate change, these deniers are subjecting the planet and
everybody on it to great risk.
Climate change will have significant adverse impacts on all of our
States, including my State of Minnesota. Just look at our agriculture
sector, which is responsible for one out of every five jobs in
Minnesota. Warmer temperatures and more intensive droughts are going to
negatively impact this important rural economic engine. In fact, a
recent study estimates that with no adaptation efforts against climate
change, Midwest crop production could decrease by more than 60 percent
by the end of the century.
Climate change will also impact our waters, and that is important to
my State--the Land of 10,000 Lakes--which includes Lake Superior. Lake
Superior alone contains about 10 percent of the world's fresh surface
water, and it is warming by two degrees per decade. Because of this
warming, we are seeing more evaporation and lower water levels in the
lake. Plus, rising temperatures allow for more favorable conditions for
invasive species and hazardous algal blooms. Warmer temperatures could
also have severe consequences for fish like walleye pike and trout that
are so important to Minnesota fisheries and ecosystems.
And let's not forget the threat of climate change to our forests. As
in our lakes, warmer temperatures elevate the threat of invasive
species such as the emerald ash borer and gypsy moth that are rapidly
changing the composition of our forests--or the bark beetle in
Colorado, the State the Presiding Officer represents. They destroy
trees and cost economies and money and jobs.
So we can see that climate change poses a very serious threat to
Minnesota and to our country. I believe it is the defining issue of our
generation--an issue that demands immediate action. But, unfortunately,
there are some groups that have been trying to prevent action. These
groups have spent many millions of dollars muddying the water,
distorting the science, deceiving the American people, and, ultimately,
delaying the response that we desperately need.
Over the last two days, my colleagues have come to the floor to
expose this web of denial--the extensive network of groups and
individuals who are spreading lies about climate change--and I am here
today to expose one of the worst actors of all: the Heritage
Foundation.
The Heritage Foundation is a rightwing ideological organization known
for advocating for discriminatory social and economic policy--things
like attacking voting rights, privatizing Social Security, and favoring
tax breaks for the rich to the detriment of the middle class. They are
also a mouthpiece for climate denial.
If you go to the Heritage Foundation web site, you will find that it
says that climate change is ``used too often as a vehicle to advance
special interests and politically driven agendas.'' That is rich,
coming from an ideological organization devoted to promoting a partisan
agenda. No one can deny that.
The Heritage Foundation is notorious for trying to undermine the
science on climate change. Their favorite claim is that ``the only
consensus over the threat of climate change that seems to exist these
days is that there is no consensus.''
Even as recently as April, a report that the Heritage Foundation
issued referred to climate scientists as ``a field that is a mere few
decades old'' and that ``no overwhelming consensus exists among
climatologists.''
While these statements may grab headlines, they are utterly false.
Climate change science actually dates back to the 1800s--before Henry
Ford sold his first car, before Thomas Edison invented the light bulb,
and even before the first oil well was drilled in the United States. In
1824, French scientist Joseph Fourier proposed that the atmosphere
keeps the Earth warm--what we know today as the greenhouse effect.
In 1859, an Irish scientist, John Tyndall, attributed this warming to
several gases, including carbon dioxide. In 1896, a Swedish scientist,
Svante Arrhenius published the first calculation of global warming from
human emissions of carbon dioxide. In the more than 100 years since,
scientists all around the world have studied, debated, and researched
different aspects of the issue.
So when staff from the Heritage Foundation, none of whom actually
have advanced scientific degrees, write a report that claims climate
science is a new field that has little scientific consensus, they are
ignoring the nearly 200 years of research--a scientific body of
research that has led to 97 percent of climate scientists agreeing that
humans are causing global warming.
But every now and then, even the Heritage Foundation admits that
climate change is in fact real. But when they admit it, they pretend
that climate change isn't a big deal and that it is not worth our time
to combat it. In 2010, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage
Foundation--with a degree in law, not climate science, mind you--
declared that ``none of the scary stuff about global warming is true,
and what is true about global warming, what the science actually tells
us about man's role in changing the climate, is far from terrifying.''
Now all of this science denial and false propaganda might not be such
a big deal if climate change wasn't such a serious problem, but when
you look at the scope of the problem you quickly realize how the
Heritage Foundation is acting in an incredibly and deliberately
irresponsible way.
Last year, I traveled to the climate change conference in Paris and
met

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with a delegation of leaders from Bangladesh, a country that has
contributed little to industrial air pollution but is one of the most
vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change. It is estimated
that unless we act, rising sea levels will inundate 17 percent of
Bangladesh, displacing about 18 million people in this low-lying nation
by the end of this century. Even now, rising sea levels are impacting
Bangladesh through salt water intrusion, reducing agricultural yields
and ruining drinking water supplies. It is already having a profound
effect.
We are talking about a very poor country that doesn't have the
resources to deal with climate change. Bangladeshis will be uprooted
and turned into climate refugees without a home. I would bet these
individuals would disagree with the Heritage Foundation that the
impacts of climate change are ``far from terrifying.''
If you think the Syrian refugee crisis is difficult to deal with,
just think of the magnitude of what we will see if we do not address
climate change. For a lawyer at the Heritage Foundation to make this
claim is not only irresponsible but, frankly, dangerous to the welfare
of people around the world.
These are just a few examples of the falsehoods that the Heritage
Foundation spreads about climate change. If I had the time, I could go
on for hours--maybe, even, days--quoting more of those lies. In fact,
from 1998 to 2013, the Heritage Foundation published more than 1,600
documents contributing to climate skepticism, and they have published
many more since. So I think we can say the Heritage Foundation is
deliberate and unwavering in its fraud and deceit.
One might ask: Why would the Heritage Foundation work to deceive the
American people in such a way? What do they get out of it?
Well, I will tell you. It is because they are being paid to do so by
self-interested fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil and people with
major investments in fossil fuel companies, like the Koch brothers.
Perhaps you have heard of them. The Heritage Foundation's work to
espouse lies and prevent action on climate change directly benefits the
bottom line of the companies and brothers who are funding them. We know
this because over the past two decades ExxonMobil donated nearly $1
million to the Heritage Foundation; and the Koch brothers, the owners
of the fossil fuel conglomerate Koch Industries, contributed nearly $6
million. These companies and brothers are worried that if people knew
what their products were doing to the planet, they would stop buying
their products or transition to other renewable energy or public policy
would drive the markets away from their products. So in order to
protect their bottom line, they set out to misinform the public. That
is what they do for a living, and Heritage and many other similar
organizations, are helping them to spread their falsehoods. That is
what they do at the Heritage Foundation for a living.
The money paid to Heritage goes to supposed experts whose jobs are to
release thousands of bogus reports about climate change. These experts
are not climate scientists. They are lawyers and economists serving as
puppets for the fossil fuel industry. These same so-called experts
publish op-eds and do interviews in media outlets around the country--
talk radio--helping to spread disinformation or misinformation or what
we sometimes call lies. They also brief Congress and serve as trusted
authorities for staff in many Republican offices. So it shouldn't
surprise us that my Republican colleagues deny climate change when they
rely on these experts.
Despite the best efforts of the Koch brothers, the Heritage
Foundation, and other deniers, people around the country are not
fooled. In Minnesota we are seeing changes to our crops, lakes, and
forests. Instead of sticking their heads in the sand, Minnesotans are
taking action.
In 2007, under a Republican Governor, my home State established a
renewable energy standard to produce 25 percent of our power from
renewable sources by 2025. That same year, Minnesota passed an energy
efficiency standard to require utilities to become a little more
efficient every year. To top things off, Minnesota established an
aggressive goal to reduce greenhouse gases 80 percent by 2050. These
are the kinds of policies that we need to combat climate change, and
these are also the kinds of policies that the Heritage Foundation is
fighting tooth and nail to prevent.
It is not just the Minnesota legislature that is taking action.
Minnesota businesses also recognize the importance of fighting climate
change. Last year I joined Dave MacLennan, the CEO of Cargill, in
penning an op-ed in the Minneapolis StarTribune to highlight the threat
of climate change to agriculture, especially considering that global
population will reach 9 billion by midcentury. As the CEO of a food
company focused on agriculture, Dave is concerned about what climate
change is going to do to our food supply. He is not alone. We have
businesses all over our State that are installing wind turbines and
solar panels and manufacturing cutting-edge energy efficiency
technologies.
Minnesotans aren't fooled by the Heritage Foundation. On the
contrary, to them, climate change represents a Sputnik moment--an
opportunity to rise to the challenge and defeat that threat. In
response to Sputnik, we ended up not just winning the space race and
sending a man to the moon, we did all sorts of good things for the
American economy and society.
We did it before, and we can do it again. By rising to the challenge
of climate change, we will not just clean our air, but also drive
innovation and create jobs, and not only in the clean energy sector.
I have two grandchildren, and I am expecting my third later this
year. God willing, they will live through this century and into the
next, and in 50 years I don't want my grandson Joe to turn to me and
say: Grandpa, you were in the Senate, and you knew about the severity
of climate change. Why didn't you do anything to stop it? And also, why
are you still alive? You are 115 years old.
I will say it was all investments we made in our age. I want my
grandson to know that when we had the opportunity to put the planet on
a safer path, we seized the moment.
So let's not allow the Heritage Foundation and all of these different
members of this web to slow us down. Let's not let the selfish
motivations of shadowy donors with ties to the fossil fuel industry
prevent us from making the planet a safer and more habitable place for
our children, our grandchildren, and future generations.
It really is time to stand up to ignorance and denial. It is time for
all of us on both sides of the aisle to do what is right for future
generations.
I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

Order of Procedure

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that
notwithstanding rule XXII, at 11 a.m., Wednesday, July 13, the Senate
vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the conference report to
accompany S. 524. I further ask that following the cloture vote, the
Chair lay before the Senate the message to accompany H.R. 636, the FAA
bill; that the majority leader or his designee be recognized to make a
motion to concur in the House amendments to the Senate amendments; and
that the time until 1:45 p.m. be equally divided between the leaders or
their designees. I ask that following the use or yielding back of time,
the Senate vote on the motion to concur in the House amendments to the
Senate amendments with no intervening action or debate and that all
time allocated for consideration of H.R. 636 count postcloture on S.
524, if cloture is invoked.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. McCONNELL. For the information of all Senators, the cloture vote
on the CARA conference report will occur at 11 a.m. tomorrow, with the
vote on the FAA bill scheduled at 1:45 p.m. Senators should expect a
vote on adoption of the CARA conference report during tomorrow's
session.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lee). The Senator from Louisiana.

Zika Virus Funding

Mr. CASSIDY. Mr. President, I come as a Senator, but actually I come
wearing two different hats right now--two more hats aside from being a
Senator. One of them is a teacher. I still teach at the LSU Medical
School and have for the last 30 years, so I decided to do

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a presentation on something wearing my next hat.
In my life as a physician, I have done much work in public health and
have learned, by the way, that if you head off illness early, you save
a lot of money. You save a lot of money after that. I call it the
balloon theory. If you put a balloon up to helium and you squeeze the
nozzle, it inflates quickly, but if you pull it off the nozzle, it
remains deflated.
Right now, we have something at risk with Zika that will be like that
helium balloon--inflating rapidly unless we do that initial thing that
pulls the balloon off the helium so that it works.
I am a teacher, so I decided to do something different. If anybody in
the audience so chooses, they can put their phone and their QR code
reader up to the television or the computer monitor and they can scan
this barcode, and they will see the slides we are about to go over. So
if you are watching at home and you wish to follow, then you can
download these slides, and if you think them important, you can forward
these slides to another person. Again, that is my effort as a teacher
to try to speak about the spread of Zika.
This is Jose Wesley, born to a Brazilian mother who contracted Zika
probably in her first 3 months of pregnancy. When Zika went through the
momma's blood when Jose was in her womb, into the amniotic fluid or
through the placenta, it entered Jose's body and went to his brain.
That virus stayed inside his brain and terribly affected his brain.
Jose was born with microcephaly. You cannot really see from this
angle what microcephaly is, but what ``microcephaly'' means is ``small
brain.'' Here is a profile of a child with microcephaly. You can see
that--unlike the big head babies normally have--this is a very small
head. This is associated with severe neurologic deficits and early
death. This is a tragedy and potentially a preventable tragedy.
Again, the teacher in me wants to talk a little bit about Zika. The
spread of Zika historically gives us insight as to what we must fear
now. Zika was first discovered back in 1951 in Africa, Uganda. Then, at
some point in the three decades that followed, it spread quickly to
Asia, and then from Asia to Yap Island in 2007, which is in the
Pacific. In 2013 and 2014, it went to more Pacific islands. In 2015 and
2016, it entered the Americas. At some point, it began to spread
rapidly. This is important because it is now in the Americas
threatening Americans.
These are States which have cases of Zika. Here is the U.S. Virgin
Islands. Here is Puerto Rico. They have the most, but almost every
State is affected. Most folks have contracted it elsewhere and brought
it back to their State, but there are some folks who received it
sexually. So their partner contracted it, perhaps in Brazil, and came
back to Texas or Florida or Louisiana, where I am from, and they
contracted it sexually.
Nonetheless, the virus is in the United States. It is particularly a
problem in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. These are American
citizens. These Puerto Ricans, if they wish, can board a plane and
travel anyplace they wish in the continental United States. That is
their right as Americans. Similarly, these folks who are infected in
these States can travel anyplace they wish.
Why is that important? Well, theoretically, it is important because
these are the areas where the mosquitos that carry the Zika virus live
in the United States. So theoretically, wherever these mosquitos are--
and Hawaii should be on here someplace--the virus can enter and the
virus can be transmitted by the mosquitos to many other Americans.
By the way, though, it is not just that you have to live where the
mosquitos are. The first person to die from Zika in the continental
United States just died in Utah. She contracted it elsewhere but then
died in Utah. So the risk to our country is at least this. I will be
perfectly honest. It is particularly a risk for those on the gulf coast
because we have the sort of subtropical climate in which Zika
flourishes. That is why I am particularly concerned.
But wearing my other hat as a public health doctor, I know we have
this moment in time. Either we pull that balloon off so it does not
inflate with Zika, damaging our country, creating more Joses here in
the United States, or not.
Some of you may have seen the barcode that I held up initially. You
may have downloaded that. We will hold up that barcode again if you
wish to download these slides, but all of these are on the PowerPoint
presentation that you may download should you wish.
Public health emergencies are inevitable. Let's talk about the
response to this one. Mr. President, $600 million that was left over
from the Ebola fund has been released to CDC and other agencies to
mount a response against Zika. Now, $600 million was left over, and
only one-fifth of it has been spent. So there are still substantial
dollars available, but the CDC and other Federal agencies say they need
more.
Republicans have supported $1.2 billion in additional funding to
fight Zika. My colleagues on the Democratic side--we have a difference
over this. They are opposing this $1.2 billion to fight Zika because
they say the Republican bill discriminates against Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood is not mentioned in the bill, and the way it
discriminates--I have been in Washington--in the Senate, at least--for
2 years, and sometimes you have to kind of figure out why people are
taking offense at something. Even though Planned Parenthood is not
mentioned, the reason they object is because we specify that the money
needs to go to a public agency, one that sees Medicaid patients, the
State or territory Federal program that takes care of the uninsured.
Planned Parenthood is not a Medicaid provider.
So it is not that they are not mentioned; it is that they are a
private entity that, in Puerto Rico, does not accept Medicaid. So we
could carve in and say: If you are a private entity, you can also
receive these Federal dollars to provide family planning. It just so
happens that in Puerto Rico, Planned Parenthood does not.
So Republicans are trying to release $1.2 billion to pull the balloon
off the helium so it does not inflate with all kinds of cases, and one
more case of a Jose would be one case too many. But we are caught up in
this snafu about Planned Parenthood. It is the craziest thing in the
world, but unfortunately it is how Washington, DC, sometimes works.
As a public health physician, I find that incredibly offensive. As a
doctor who understands the critical nature of this, I am asking folks
on the other side of the aisle to accept that this bill may not be
exactly what they want--it is not exactly what I want--but it is
something that would give additional resources to the Centers for
Disease Control and others to begin to fight the Zika virus before it
comes more extensively to our Nation's shores.
We can anticipate that public health emergencies in the future are
inevitable. For example, we recently had Ebola. We had the West Nile
virus. We have already spoken about Zika. So aside from hoping that my
Democratic colleagues will agree to release the $1.2 billion to fight
Zika now, there is also something else I am proposing, but I don't want
to sound overly partisan because I am doing this particular bill with
my Democrats--with Senator Brian Schatz from Hawaii. We are putting
forward the Public Health Emergency Response and Accountability Act.
I am from Louisiana. We have had hurricanes. Hurricane Katrina is the
one that is the most famous. If there is a hurricane or another natural
disaster that hits an American State, then FEMA has a budget that is
automatically triggered. It does not have to go through this
appropriations process. We don't tie it down in discussions of
extraneous matters. It is something that immediately comes to bear to
bring relief to those affected by natural disasters.
The other thing that is done is that normal Federal contracting
processes are waived. So instead of having to get 10 different
signatures--which literally might be the case--for someone to travel
from Washington, DC, to Louisiana or Kansas or Florida, it is waived
and that emergency response coordinator may immediately go. There is
oversight, so this is not carte blanche, but it is a more effective way

[[Page S4986]]

to bring Federal resources, in partnership with local resources, to
bring relief to those affected. We bring that flexibility in the use of
funds while retaining accountability.
We call this the Public Health Emergency Response and Accountability
Act, and we anticipate entering this in very soon. Senator Schatz has
been wonderful to work with in terms of this aspect of what we are
doing.
So there are two issues. The $1.2 billion that we should release now,
that would immediately go--it is not a perfect bill, but we have to
prevent more cases of these children who are tragically born with
microcephaly, as well as more deaths, like the woman who recently died
in Utah. Then, No. 2, we need to have the response and accountability
act, which gets rid of this process we struggle through in order to
release those funds to bring the relief we need.
Let me summarize by saying this: This is a baby with microcephaly. I
think there have been three children born in the United States
already--not conceived here but born here--who have microcephaly. This
child's life is limited. She will most likely die at an early age, with
severe neurological deficits. If you just want to look at it in a
dollars-and-cents approach, this child will be a ward of the State for
the entirety of her life and will cost the Federal taxpayer millions of
dollars.
We have already had these babies born in Puerto Rico, New Jersey, and
Hawaii. There are two pregnant women in Illinois who tested positive
for Zika, and we had a death in Utah and Puerto Rico--not children but
adults. The question is, Will the Senate work to stop this? And again,
if you are watching and you wish, you can scan this barcode, you can
download this presentation.

Let me finish by saying this. I just said the Senate should work to
stop the spread of Zika. You can do something. We are a representative
democracy and we respond to you, the people, and if we don't, by golly,
you should vote us out. So I am asking you, if you are watching at home
and you think there needs to be a response quickly and efficiently and
effectively to combat the spread of Zika, you can either barcode this
or not, but whatever you do, call your Senator. Ask your Senator--ask
her or him--to support efforts to stop the spread of Zika, to release
the $1.2 billion, and to also support the bill Senator Schatz and I are
putting forward, the Public Health Emergency Response and
Accountability Fund.
Ultimately, we answer to you, the people. That is a good thing. I ask
you to perhaps use this tool to help us, to encourage us to answer to
you, as we should.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.

Climate Change

Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, I rise to join my colleagues from the
Senate Climate Action Task Force on the floor to bring attention to the
well-funded network of organizations that are deliberately misleading
the public on climate change. My colleagues have called them the web of
denial. We all gathered on the floor yesterday and today to bring
attention to these political front groups that are acting as major
roadblocks to the actions we must take as a nation and as a global
community to address the difficult and disruptive but absolute and
unequivocal scientific reality of climate change.
This web of denial is made up of dozens of organizations propped up
by dark money. These political front groups for wealthy and self-
interested donors like the Koch brothers--you may have heard of them--
peddle bogus theories that climate change isn't real or, at the very
least, the American public should doubt the overwhelming scientific
evidence and fear what might happen if we enact policies that move us
toward cleaner energy solutions. These organizations are promoting
policies that are completely counterproductive at a time when we
urgently need to take decisive action to combat climate change and to
protect the health of our children and future generations.
As many of my constituents know well, climate change has already had
a very real and costly impact in my home State of New Mexico, as it has
across our Nation and around the world. In New Mexico, we are already
seeing more extreme and prolonged drought conditions, larger wildfires,
shrinking forests, and increased flooding. This is the reality now, not
some far-off date in the future, and the longer we wait to act, the
more difficult and the more expensive the solutions will be.
That is why the fictitious narratives spun by this web of denial and
their organizations are so dangerous and why we, as policymakers, need
to stand and refute their lies. We need to disclose who they really are
and discredit their campaigns.
I am focusing this evening on the American Legislative Exchange
Council, or ALEC. ALEC is an organization made up of State legislators
across the Nation, and ALEC claims that nearly one-quarter of our
country's State legislators are affiliated with the organization. ALEC
calls itself a nonpartisan organization that promotes an exchange of
ideas to help create State-based policies that promote economic growth.
Sounds like motherhood and apple pie, doesn't it? But when you take a
look at who is behind ALEC's operations and you take a look at the
types of policy they are pushing in State capitols across this Nation,
you get a sense for their real agenda, and you can tell they are part
of the coordinated and well-funded campaign to peddle doubt and
skepticism about the settled science of climate change.
ALEC has been described as ``a dating service between politicians at
the State level, local elected politicians, and many of America's
biggest companies.'' ALEC writes ``model policy''--thousands of cookie
cutter, anti-conservation bills that legislators can introduce under
their own name, in their own States, in hopes of turning them into law.
Specifically, in the area of energy policy, ALEC pushes a concerted
legislative agenda that is in line with the rest of the Koch network to
promote climate skepticism and roll back laws that protect clean air
and water. ALEC's ``model bills'' read like they were written by the
biggest polluters in our country because they probably were.
There are resolutions condemning the Clean Power Plan, calling for
States to withdraw from regional climate initiatives and to reconsider
national environmental standards such as rules that reduce ozone
pollution--and, I might add, save lives. ALEC also pushes bills that
call for repealing renewable fuel standards that are moving our
electric grid toward cleaner energy sources.

ALEC has also written model resolutions that call for selling off or
turning over public lands, such as our national forests in Western
States like New Mexico and across our country. The current ALEC State
chair in my home State of New Mexico introduced legislation at the
Roundhouse in recent years called the Transfer of Public Land Act,
which would call on the Federal Government to turn our public lands
over to State management.
The only way Western States like mine could foot the bill for
administering America's public lands would be to raise taxes
dramatically or--and this is much more likely--sell off large expanses
to developers and other private interests. Over time, it would mean
public lands that New Mexicans go to every summer to hike and camp and
barbecue with their families, the national forests where they go to
chase elk and mule deer during hunting season would be closed off
behind no trespassing signs.
I have long believed public lands are an equalizer in America, where
access to public lands ensure you don't need to be a millionaire to
enjoy the great outdoors or to introduce your family, your children to
hunting and fishing and hiking. This land-grab idea is just as
ludicrous as denying climate change, just as detached from reality, and
similarly comes at the expense of our public health and protection of
our public lands and resources.
Frankly, you don't have to do a deep-dive investigation to figure out
what is going on. The so-called policy experts and leaders that make up
ALEC's board of directors are on the record as climate skeptics. ALEC's
CEO, Lisa Nelson, said: ``I don't know the science on that,'' when she
was asked if CO2 emissions are the primary driver of climate
change. Texas State representative Phil King, the national board

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chair for ALEC in 2015, said: ``I think the global warming theory is
bad science.'' And Connecticut State representative John Piscopo,
ALEC's national board chairman in 2013, said: ``The public has been
hoodwinked. . . . I have serious doubts about whether [climate change]
is manmade.''
We all know the reason ALEC's members and leaders say things like
this and promote these kinds of bills. It is because so much of the
funding for ALEC's operations comes from sources other than membership
dues. Over 98 percent of ALEC's revenues comes from corporations and
trade groups and corporate foundations. That is how ALEC works, by
sewing uninformed seeds of doubt to move the needle at the State and
local level toward anti-science, anti-climate action policies that
benefit their funders' bottom line.
ALEC is just one piece of a large web of similar dark money
organizations that promote climate skepticism and are dangerous fronts
for corporate interests to deliberately mislead the public and
influence lawmakers. To see just one other recent example of this in my
home State of New Mexico, I would like to take a moment to look at a
letter to the editor published last week in the Las Cruces Sun-News by
the Environmental Policy Alliance.
This is another one of those web-of-denial political front groups. In
the letter to the editor, they claim that conservation and monument
designations are really ``federal land grabs'' and the work of
``radical environmental groups'' trying to stop economic development.
These ``radical groups'' and ``green decoys'' are, according to the
letter, such dangerous groups as Trout Unlimited, the Theodore
Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, the Izaak Walton League, and
Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, groups that all stand up for the
interests of sportsmen and hunters and anglers--certainly not what most
of my constituents would consider radical.
A close look shows who the real decoy is. The Environmental Policy
Alliance is funded by the Western Fuels Association, another
organization in the web of denial, and it is a pet project of lobbyist
Rick Berman, who has also led deceptive public campaigns on behalf of
cigarette and alcohol companies and now dirty energy. This organization
doesn't care about the best way to manage our publicly owned lands or
preserving the ability of Americans--no matter what their stake in life
is, how much money they make--to experience our country's rich outdoor
heritage. Instead, the Environmental Policy Alliance wants to put our
public lands up for sale so the corporate elite can develop them for
their own use and their own profit.
The Environmental Policy Alliance has published similar letters in
dozens of small to midsized city newspapers all across our country in
recent years--canned letters with no connection to local sentiment.
The reality is, the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument in
Southern New Mexico, which this group has slandered, serves as a
national example of community-driven, landscape-scale conservation. In
fact, independent polling shows overwhelming local support for this
monument, and I am proud of my close work with the region's diverse
coalition and stakeholders that worked so hard for so many years to
make that monument a reality.
Two years into the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks designation, local
businesses in the Las Cruces area are attracting major tourism dollars
and economic benefits. The Lonely Planet guidebook has named Southern
New Mexico as a top 10 ``Best in the U.S.'' for 2016 destination, and
highlights the national monument as a reason to visit.
The tax revenues of the town of Mesilla have jumped over 20 percent
since the monument's creation, and Las Cruces' lodgers tax revenues are
up since 2015, in part because of new conferences and meetings
attracted to the area by the monument.
You can see how out of touch these groups are that want to instead
sell off this public land. The organizations that make up this web of
denial are promoting dishonest and deceptive campaigns that frankly run
directly counter to the public interest.
At a time when we desperately need to move our State and national
energy and conservation policies forward, we should be taking the
overwhelming and indisputable scientific fact of climate change
seriously, and we should make smart and forward-looking investments in
the sustainable, low-carbon fuels of the future.
I am convinced advances in energy efficiency and generation and
transmission of clean power offer us a roadmap that not only allows us
to combat climate change but to do it in a way that will create
thousands of new jobs and much needed economic activity in New Mexico
and all across our country.
That is the reality, just like climate change. Climate change is not
theoretical. It is one of those stubborn facts that doesn't go away
just because we choose to ignore it or if we listen to the company line
from self-interested Koch donor networks and organizations like ALEC.
I think it is time to call these ``Astroturf'' groups out for who
they really are and, frankly, who they really answer to. More
importantly, it is time to take action on the moral challenge of our
time--addressing climate change--so that our children can inherit the
future they truly deserve.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Perdue). The Senator from New Hampshire.
Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I rise today to join my colleagues in
speaking out against what I believe is the misleading and dangerous
campaign of some in the fossil fuel industry to undermine this Nation's
efforts to combat global climate change.
The science on climate change is beyond rational dispute. Climate
change is real. It is a clear and present threat to our planet, and it
must be addressed robustly and urgently.
Scientists have proven unequivocally that CO2 and other
greenhouse gases we release into the atmosphere when we burn fossil
fuels act to trap heat and form an invisible blanket to warm the
planet. Over the last century, the Earth's average temperature has
continued to rise, with 9 of the 10 warmest years on record occurring
since the year 2000.
True to form, 2015 was the Earth's warmest year on record. Rising
global temperatures have led to extreme changes in weather events and
in our environment. No country is insulated and no State is insulated
from the escalating effects of climate change.
In the United States, we are seeing it in this every region of the
country, and we are witnessing its effects very dramatically in my
State of New Hampshire. Rising temperatures are affecting our tourism,
our outdoor recreation, and our agriculture industries. We are
experiencing an onset of negative health impacts and increases of
insect-borne diseases--Lyme disease is one--all of which can be tied to
the effects of climate change.
In the United States and throughout the world, people acknowledge
that global warming is an existential threat that requires immediate
action to slow its pace and mitigate its effects, even while those
climate deniers are still out there, making noise.
According to the Pew Research Center, two-thirds of all Americans
acknowledge that climate change is real and that action must be taken
to address it. But there are some, an extreme but influential minority,
who argue that climate change is a hoax; that it lacks scientific
consensus; that the changes we observe are not due to CO2
and other greenhouse gas emissions, but they are due instead to
variations in the sun or cosmic rays; and that policies to limit
greenhouse gas emissions will ruin our economy.
Not surprisingly, these climate deniers are not scientists, though
they may pretend to be. They are front groups funded by the fossil fuel
industry, generally, and the Koch brothers, in particular. These front
groups are paid to spin a web of denial wrapped in ideology with the
aim of purposely deceiving the public about the dangers of climate
change. This is deceitful and it is wrong, and we are here on the floor
this afternoon to call out these groups by name so that the public
knows what to watch for and there is some transparency about what is
being said.
One of those groups is the Competitive Enterprise Institute, or CEI,
based in Washington, DC. This group describes itself as ``a public
policy organization committed to advancing the principles of free
enterprise and limited government.'' But if we look more

[[Page S4988]]

closely, we find that CEI is not an independent organization. It is
funded by powerful corporations designed to spread untruths and
disinformation on behalf of its corporate sponsors.
In recent years, CEI has taken up the issue of climate change. It has
been outspoken in disputing scientific evidence that human-produced
greenhouse gas emissions are driving global warming.
Some may recognize CEI not for its work on climate denial but for its
prominent role in misleading the public about the scientific evidence
linking smoking to lung cancer and heart disease. Legal documents from
major tobacco companies exposed the fact that CEI received more than
$800,000 from Philip Morris to launch coordinated media campaigns to
attack the Food and Drug Administration's efforts to regulate tobacco.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a series of these
documents be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

WRO Efforts

Beginning last fall, the assistance of the Washington Legal
Foundation, Citizens for a Sound Economy and the
Competitiveness Enterprise Institute was sought to define the
FDA as an agency out of control and one failing to live up to
its Congressional mandate regarding regulation of drugs and
medical devices.
Beginning in December, those groups conducted an aggressive
media campaign toward those goals, incorporating the issuance
of policy papers, conducting symposia, filing petitions with
FDA and taking other steps to keep the public and media focus
on the agency.
On the legislative front, a group of southern Democrats
began negotiating with the White House early this year on
behalf of the industry seeking to eliminate any role for the
FDA in the regulation of tobacco.
The quid pro quo in these negotiations would be voluntary
concessions on the part of the industry on the issue of youth
access to cigarettes. Leading the negotiations were Sen.
Wendell Ford and Rep. L.F. Payne. After nearly eight months
of discussion, the WH rejected the compromise.
Beginning in January, members of Congress--at the urging of
several outside groups including Citizens for a Sound
Economy--began taking a much closer look at the FDA
appropriations request. That scrutiny led to the successful
effort to eliminate $300 million sought by FDA to consolidate
its offices in a new federal campus, by any measure a major
setback for Kessler.
Meanwhile, Congress also was scrutinizing the regular
appropriations and voted to freeze the agency's budget,
effectively decreasing the level of funding for next year
when adjusted for inflation.
Language was inserted in that legislation to restrict
Kessler's authority to assign employees to various projects
and a list of questions was submitted to Kessler regarding
his investigation into tobacco, including what resources and
personnel were being devoted to the effort.
Congress has not been satisfied with his responses to date,
raising the issue of whether Kessler has been evasive or even
engaged in obstruction of Congress in this area.
Congress also initiated a series of oversight hearings
regarding the agency, conducted in the House by Rep. Thomas
Bliley and in the Senate by Sen. Nancy Kassebaum. Those
hearings focused on whether the FDA was fulfilling its
mission and included several demands by Congress for
documents and deposition.
At the Senate oversight hearing, former FDA Commissioner
Charlie Edwards testified, raising further questions of
whether the FDA was acting legally and responsibly in
pursuing a course that would lead to tobacco regulation.
As a result of the growing focus on FDA from inside and
outside Congress and the groundwork laid through the
oversight and investigations committee work, legislation to
reform the FDA was proposed earlier this year and is expected
to be formally introduced in September. A key provision in
the reform legislation will be to restrict FDA's regulatory
authority.
The House Agriculture Committee also requested that Kessler
supply all documents he was using in consideration of his
tobacco regulations. Kessler has resisted, and that effort
continues.
In recognition that Kessler ultimately would play some
regulatory role regarding tobacco, an aggressive campaign was
conducted over the past six months to educate members of
Congress and their staffs regarding the issue of regulation.
One result of that campaign was a July 15 press bipartisan
press conference led by Reps. L.F. Payne and Richard Burr as
a result of media reports that Kessler had sent his
regulatory proposal to the White House. Participants
circulated Dear Colleague letters throughout Congress and
submitted Op-Ed pieces to their hometown newspapers
challenging the need for FDA regulation.
Also, as a result of those education efforts, delegations
of elected officials met with White House officials in an
effort to derail federal intervention in tobacco regulation.
The groundwork that has been laid legislatively has been
designed to create a receptive atmosphere in Congress for
legislation that will be introduced to eliminate FDA's role
in tobacco regulation. The timing and specifics of such
legislation are under consideration.
Efforts in Congress also were made to identify unlikely
allies--those who generally are more concerned with the
politics of regulation rather than the substance--and
resulted in meetings with the WH with Sen. Chris Dodd and
Rep. Dick Gephardt. Labor also presented opposition to
Kessler's role in regulation.
Recognizing that legislators weren't the only point of
White House access, a conference of tobacco growers held this
summer focused on the ramifications of FDA regulation. Both
Sen. Ford and Rep. Payne spoke to growers, and efforts
continue to mobilize the agricultural community in opposition
to the proposed regulation.
The support of Administration political advisors was
enlisted to discuss the ramifications of FDA regulation, and
those efforts also continue.

State Activities

Efforts focused primarily on defining the issue of youth
smoking as one that properly should be addressed at the state
and local level, rather than having FDA intervene with any
regulatory scheme.
In all 50 states, the stated goal was to endorse or pass
reasonable marketing laws which stop minors from purchasing
cigarettes, with a minimum of government interference in the
marketing of the cigarettes to adult smokers.
State elected officials also were contacted to intervene
with the White House to stress the point that there was no
need for FDA regulation. In addition to the states' rights
issues, economic and political arguments were incorporated in
the discussions with Administration officials.
Support of the American Legislative Exchange Council--a
public/private consortium of conservative state legislators--
took a stand against FDA regulation, as did the Southern
Legislative Congerence, a group affiliated with the Council
of State Governments.
Meetings were held with the Southland Corp., one of the
nation's largest cigarette retailers, and with the Food
Marketing Institute and National Association of Convenience
Stores to brief those groups on potential adverse impacts of
FDA regulation and to enlist their opposition.
A working group was formed by the Tobacco Institute to
bring together industry representatives and the retail and
wholesale trade communities to join together and work toward
the common goal of compliance with laws prohibiting sales of
tobacco products to minors. Much of the focus centered on
employee education regarding underage sales. Covington and
Burling also was given the assignment of drafting appropriate
state legislation that could be used as a model in state
legislatures.
A blueprint was established to enable the company to
contact and mobilize legislative and retail association
allies to participate in the 90-day comment period once the
Kessler regulations were released and to support appropriate
Congressional action on the issue.
Third-party spokespeople were identified in each state to
address the issues of FDA regulation with local media, and a
state elected official in each state has been identified to
enlist his or her colleagues in upcoming legislative sessions
on youth access issues.

Internal Activities/Media Relations

Work began last year to formulate a PM program that would
address the issue of youth access, with a decision made in
December to hold those proposals in abeyance.
Company employees and outside consultants involved in the
issue were formally assigned roles as the FDA response team,
and efforts began in January to incorporate the various
elements into a comprehensive program addressing all
conceivable actions that could be taken by the Clinton
Administration or the FDA regarding tobacco regulation.
These efforts encompassed both public affairs campaigns and
potential legal filings. Press releases, statements, fact
sheets, video news releases, background video and other
materials necesssary to convey the company's position were
drafted and taped for each of the options considered.
PM representatives with scientific credentials were
assigned the task of meeting with various ``think tanks'' to
discuss the issue of FDA regulation and generate guest
editorials and comments to the media.
Those team members who were identified as taking a public
role in PM's response were given media/communications
training, focusing on the effective delivery of company
messages.
In late spring, the proposed youth access program was
resurrected and the company subsequently announced Action
Against Access, incorporating voluntary and proposed
legislative steps to address the issue of youth smoking.
The announcement of AAA was made at a New York press
conference and was accompanied by an aggressive media
outreach campaign, including the use of VNRs, background
video feeds, letters to elected officials and coordination
with third-party allies.

[[Page S4989]]

In early July, those involved in the FDA working group
participated in a simulation geared to measure company
response to an announcement by the FDA of full or partial
regulation of tobacco.
That exercise envisioned several different actions Kessler
could take on tobacco regulation, and measured the company's
response to an FDA announcement. Based on the results of that
exercise, the action plan was fine-tuned to deal with various
options Kessler was believed to have available.
By the time of Kessler's announcement of regulatory intent,
the company mobilized to battle the Administration proposal
on both the legal and public affairs fronts.
A lawsuit was filed as soon as the FDA notice of intent to
regulate was published in the Federal Register, and two hours
before President Clinton's afternoon press conference
announcing the action, PM held a press conference to announce
the lawsuit and register its objections to the FDA action.
By the time Clinton made his announcement, a video news
release and background video was fed by way of satellite to
television news departments throughout the country, and
satellite time was booked to provide those stations an
opportunity to interview PM spokespersons for local
broadcasts.
With assistance from Burson-Marsteller, PM press kits were
sent to all major Washington-area media in anticipation of
stories generated by those reporters.
While World Regulatory Affairs was dealing with the public
affairs aspects of the FDA announcement, the Washington
Relations Office mobilized its plans to reach legislative
supporters in Washington and in key southern states to mount
criticism of the President's decision.
All materials disseminated to the press also were
circulated on Capitol Hill to provide legislators with the
PM's position and rationale for filing suit. With information
in hand, several southern legislators were able to react and
respond quickly to media inquiries.
The PM briefings on Kessler's actions extended to
conservative columnists and think tanks, enabling them to
provide third-party views of the Administration's action.

Mrs. SHAHEEN. CEI lobbied politicians, conducted symposia, and
published policy papers and op-eds with titles such as ``Safety Is a
Relative Thing for Cars: Why Not for Cigarettes?'' CEI's then-policy
analyst, Alexander Volokh, even went so far as to describe the act of
smoking as a civic duty.
As the documents that we have just submitted for the record detail,
CEI's mission was to portray the FDA as ``an agency out of control and
one failing to live up to its congressional mandate.'' For a time, CEI
was successful. Congress took a closer look at FDA's appropriations
requests, and lawmakers slashed agency funding and passed language to
restrict FDA's authority to regulate tobacco. In fact, at one oversight
hearing, Members of Congress even questioned whether the FDA was acting
legally and responsibly in pursuing a course that would lead to tobacco
regulation.
If this sounds like deja vu, that is because it is. CEI and other
front groups are using the same playbook, the same tactics to deny
climate change that they used to deny a link between tobacco use and
fatal disease. CEI is now on a new mission to confuse and mislead the
public on climate change. It is financing and directing ad hoc groups
like the so-called Cooler Heads Coalition, which claims that global
warming is a myth and that many scientists are skeptical of climate
change. CEI has also produced two television ads that allege that the
polar ice caps are thickening, not shrinking, and that CO2
emissions are good for the environment.
CEI's ads sound more like something that Saturday Night Live might
come up with. For instance, this is their tagline about CO2:

They call it pollution. We call it life.

Of course, we all know that CO2 is necessary for plant
growth. But what that ad fails to mention is that too much
CO2 in the atmosphere can cause global temperatures to rise,
and that there is more of it in the atmosphere today than at any time
during the last 420,000 years. So there is more carbon, more
CO2 in the atmosphere than at any time during the last
420,000 years.
Just as in the case of Big Tobacco, one need only to look at who
funds CEI to see how they determine their messaging. We have a chart
here to show where their funding comes from. I would just point out
that this is data all compiled from publicly available records. We see
ExxonMobil Foundation. Then we see the Koch family and their
foundation. Then we see Philip Morris. So there is significant funding
from people who have an agenda about climate change.
My staff has determined that between 1985 and 2015, CEI has received
almost $15 million from rightwing organizations like the Donors Trust
and the Dunn's Foundation for the Advancement of Right Thinking. CEI
has also received more than $2 million, as we see here, from
ExxonMobil, and more than $1 million from the Koch foundations and the
Koch brothers personally. The strong ties between CEI's message denying
climate change and the interests of coal, oil, and gas companies are
clear and obvious. So it seems that while CEI has changed its client,
it is still in the exact same business of selling lies and selling out
the health and the future of ordinary Americans.
Another industry front group I wanted to talk about this afternoon
has been exceptionally loud in denying climate change. It is the so-
called Energy & Environment Legal Institute, or E&E Legal. E&E Legal
has several different aliases--the American Tradition Institute, George
Mason Environmental Law Clinic, and Free Market Environmental Law
Clinic--but its MO is one and the same. Like CEI, E&E Legal has a core
mission of discrediting climate science and dismantling regulations
that protect the environment. However, instead of rolling out ad
campaigns, E&E Legal has a different approach. Its specialty is
harassing individual climate scientists and researchers with the aim of
persuading the public that human-caused global warming is a scientific
fraud. Of course, the group's lawsuits are frivolous and baseless. But
this doesn't matter because the entire point of the lawsuits is to
disrupt important academic research that may help us anticipate, avoid,
or mitigate the impacts of global warming.
Once again, if we look at the funding behind E&E Legal, we understand
exactly why this group is attacking climate scientists and their work.
E&E Legal does not publicly disclose its donors. We have seen that
before. However, bankruptcy proceedings have identified that the group
is funded by Arch Coal and Peabody Energy, and that E&E's senior lawyer
has received funds directly from Alpha Natural Resources. These are
some of the largest coal producers in the United States. It is shameful
and dishonorable that these coal companies are funding the harassment
and intimidation of scientists. They are putting profits ahead of
people, and their disinformation threatens the scientific inquiry and
transparency we need in order to make smart climate policy decisions to
protect our Earth.
In conclusion, big corporations are using organizations that claim to
be independent to spread misleading messages to the American people,
knowing that people would be quick to discount these messages if they
actually knew they were coming directly from coal companies and from
Koch Industries. This campaign of disinformation and propaganda
endangers the health, environment, and economic well-being of people in
the United States and across the world. That is why Senators who
acknowledge the science of climate change, Senators who understand the
urgency of action to combat climate change are speaking up this
afternoon and for many days to come.
By coming to the floor, we want to expose groups like CEI and E&E
Legal for what they are--front groups whose role is to spin a web of
denial. By championing clean energy policies, we want to ensure that
the United States reduces its dependence on fossil fuels while creating
millions of jobs to support our economy in alternative energy and green
energy sources.
By supporting our country's leadership in negotiating the
international climate agreement concluded last year in Paris, we are
doing our part to slow global warming and help poorer nations most
affected by it. This is just the beginning. We will continue to come to
the floor to advocate for policies to reduce carbon emissions, to
strengthen our economy, and to protect our environment.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. REED. Mr. President, today I join many of my colleagues here in
encouraging the Senate to continue working on solutions to protect our
planet from the growing threats of climate change.

[[Page S4990]]

First, I would like to thank Senator Sheldon Whitehouse for his
leadership and tireless work on these issues. We both represent the
great State of Rhode Island, the Ocean State, and I am lucky to have
such a strong partner to work with to improve the health of our oceans
and fight sea level rise, beach erosion, and ocean warming and
acidification. I am proud to work alongside him as we respond to the
serious challenges of climate change. Indeed, he is the leader in this
effort in the Senate, throughout my State, and throughout the
country. I applaud his commitment to this endeavor and his efforts to
organize all of us to come here and to speak out on this growing
danger.

We are already shouldering the costs of climate change as Americans,
and these costs are increasing. Climate change is driving severe
drought and wildfires in the West, larger and more frequent floods in
the Midwest, and sea level rise and greater storm damage along our
coasts. Vulnerable populations, like children with asthma and the
elderly, are suffering from higher levels of smog in our cities and
longer and more severe heat waves. Farmers and ranchers are struggling
with crop and livestock losses from drought. Increasingly, acidic
oceans are harming shellfish populations and threatening fisheries.
Communities are struggling to pay for infrastructure damaged by fires,
more extreme storms, and coastal erosion.
In the face of this evidence, as my colleagues have all pointed out,
there is a systematic and organized effort to discredit, dismiss it,
ignore it, but Americans are sensing dramatically the effects in their
own lives, and they understand this.
One area I think is important to emphasize is that climate change is
not just a local issue or an issue that is associated with domestic
policy. It has profound national security ramifications. Indeed, to the
military, climate change acts as a threat multiplier, exacerbating
threats in already unstable regions of the world. Climate change
creates chokepoints for oil distribution lines and exacerbates our
dependence on foreign oil to fuel ships, tanks, aircraft, and tactical
vehicles.
To protect our national security, we must take action based on
scientific evidence presented by our Nation's best climate scientists.
Such experts have overwhelmingly warned us that the increasingly warmer
temperatures will mean oppressive heat in already hot areas. This
translates not only to geopolitical issues, but it translates down to
the individual soldier. For our infantry personnel, this means carrying
several pounds of additional gear across dry and arid regions. And
supplying these troops with fuel and water is becoming a difficult
challenge for our military leaders. Warmer temperatures also lead to
glacial melt, causing sea level rise and ocean acidification, affecting
our seafaring vessels and aircraft carriers, and increasing the
complexity for our Navy.
One of the more interesting moments I had on the Committee on Armed
Services was to listen several years ago to an admiral describe to me
that transit to the Arctic Ocean will become commonplace in just a few
years. To someone who was brought up in the 1950s and 1960s and served
in the military in the 1970s, that seemed completely implausible, but
that is happening. Yet there are groups that are organized that are
trying to make that disappear.
It is not disappearing for our military. They have to cope with it,
plan for it, and, indeed, ensure that our security is protected from
the ramifications.
In national security, decisions are made by a careful evaluation of
risk. Given the preponderance of scientific evidence, it only makes
sense that we address the major risks caused by climate change.
National security and foreign policy leaders across the political
spectrum issued a statement last year urging the highest levels of
American government and business to take domestic and international
action to fight climate change. These are the national security
experts. They are a bipartisan group of Americans who have dedicated
their lives to this Nation. They are not a self-interested group of
people who are profiting from a certain position. They include former
Secretaries of Defense, Chuck Hagel, William Cohen, and Leon Panetta;
Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and George Shultz; National
Security Advisors Zbigniew Brzezinski and Robert ``Bud'' McFarlane;
Senators Olympia Snowe, Carl Levin, and Richard Lugar; New Jersey
Governor and Chair of the 9/11 Commission Thomas Kean; and retired U.S.
Army Chief of Staff, GEN Gordon R. Sullivan. These and many others
agree that climate change is a threat to national security and have
called for U.S. leadership in the global effort to tackle the urgent
and complex problem of climate change. And yet, even these wise and
selfless Americans are being dismissed, if you will, by the organized
effort to undercut scientific evidence.
We took steps and have taken steps. Last December, in Paris, we took
a step forward with an international agreement. More than 150 countries
pledged to develop plans to tackle climate change domestically,
including countries once reluctant to act, such as China and India.
American leadership has been the key to getting these countries on
board and agreeing to do their fair share. These countries are also
acting because it is in their self-interest to do so--for their own
health and for their national security.
It is clear that no country can avoid the impacts of climate change,
and no country can meet this challenge alone. As a nation that has
contributed more than a quarter of all global carbon pollution, it is
our responsibility to lead, not to deny. As a nation already feeling
the effects and costs of climate change, it is also in our national
interest to do so. As we have seen time and again, other countries
would join us if America leads the way--not by denial but by dedication
to pragmatic solutions that can be achieved.
American companies must also do a better job in addressing climate
change. It is not enough just for America's government and military to
take action; the private sector also needs to step up to the plate.
Companies need to be transparent and provide fuller disclosure of the
impacts their industries have on our climate and environment and must
take full responsibility for their actions. Some companies have
improved their sustainability practices and have made strides to inform
consumers about their carbon footprint, and more need to join them. In
fact, many companies concluded it is in their economic self-interest to
do so, not just in the national or public interest to do so.
Information about the risks posed by climate change is also something
that is critical to investors, some of whom are demanding greater
disclosures. For example, Allianz Global Investors, which is a global
diversified active investment management with nearly $500 billion in
assets under manager has specifically called for ``achieving better
disclosure of the effects of carbon costs on the Oil & Gas companies.''
This is why I have introduced legislation to enhance climate-related
disclosures by publicly-traded companies to ensure that these companies
are providing investors with the information necessary to make informed
investment decisions.
These companies not only have an obligation, as we all do, to the
greater welfare of the country and indeed the world, but they owe a
very direct and fiduciary responsibility to their investors. Many of
these companies have information--I would suspect at least--that should
be disclosed, and we have to ensure that they do this so that the
market operates appropriately.
It is not just about broad statements of protecting the climate. It
is not just about feeling good. It is about making concrete information
available to the public, to investors, to the country as a whole--not
to deny, obfuscate, or ignore this information.
I urge my colleagues to support legislation that protects our air,
water, natural resources, and environment. The health of our oceans and
environment must be preserved for now and for future generations.
Indeed, in this effort, I can think of no one who is taking a more
forceful and constructive role than my colleague Senator Whitehouse.
Again, I salute him.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan.
Mr. PETERS. Mr. President, as ranking member on the Subcommittee on
Space, Science and Competitiveness, I

[[Page S4991]]

know how important it is for our country to invest in scientific
research and to make informed decisions based on those findings.
Sound science has played a critical role in the United States'
becoming a leader in fields like space exploration, medical research,
advanced manufacturing, and other high-tech industries. So when 97
percent of scientists in a particular field agree on a serious problem,
it is wise for our policymakers to listen.
The scientific community is sounding the alarm about the urgent need
to address the causes of global climate change. Scientists here in the
United States and across the world overwhelmingly agree that the weight
of evidence is clear: Global temperatures are rising, dramatic changes
in weather and climate have accompanied this warming, and humans are
largely responsible due to our emissions of greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere.
Military leaders, doctors, economists, and biologists are among the
experts warning us about global climate change and the fact that it is
major threat to national security, public health, our economy, and our
natural resources.
Unfortunately, powerful special interests, led by some organizations
and companies in the fossil fuel industry, are deliberately spreading
false information about climate change to influence public opinion and
to muddle the truth. The strategy to confuse the public about climate
change science and delay policy action has many parallels to the
strategy used by Big Tobacco to mislead the public about scientific
evidence linking smoking to lung cancer and heart disease.
The corporations spreading disinformation on climate change are the
very same interests that have the most to gain financially by stopping
meaningful action to reduce greenhouse gases, protect our clean air,
and address global warming for future generations.
The Koch brothers are a prime example of this fact. Charles and David
Koch made their vast fortunes from owning companies that profit from a
range of dirty industries. Much of their wealth is funneled into
activist groups that produce questionable information and the spin
necessary to support their own interests. The web of denial they have
created is a threat to sound science-based decisionmaking.
While some big polluters seek to confuse and cloud the judgment of
decisionmakers and the public, the American people continue to suffer
the consequences of our dependence on fossil fuels. These consequences
are not just limited to rising global temperatures. The people of
Michigan are paying for the costs of coal and oil pollution in many
ways, but I would like to focus on just a couple of them.
A few years ago, three-story, high piles of petroleum coke, or pet
coke, lined the banks of the Detroit River in the open air. Pet coke is
essentially the industrial byproduct that is produced during the oil
refining process. These particular piles were owned by Koch Carbon, a
company controlled by the Koch brothers.
Usually pet coke is shipped off to other countries, where it is
burned as fuel, worsening terrible air quality problems in places like
China and contributing to global climate change. In this case, the
banks of the Detroit River were being treated as a dumping ground to
store these mountains of pet coke. The wind would blow the pet coke
dust everywhere, including into the homes and lungs of those living in
the neighborhoods nearby. It was even documented blowing across the
river into Windsor, Ontario.
Not only was the air being contaminated, the pet coke was fouling the
Great Lakes, a source of drinking water for nearly 40 million people.
When it rained, pollution would run off from the piles into the Detroit
River, which is part of the Great Lakes system.
I joined residents in Detroit to call for these pet coke piles to be
moved, and only through a community-wide effort were they eventually
successful. I have also introduced legislation to study the health and
environmental impacts of this pet coke but, unfortunately, this same
area of Detroit that has had to deal with mountains of particulate
matter blowing into the air already had the distinction of having some
of the worst air quality in the Nation.
Research shows that exposure to air pollution at a young age can lead
to health problems like asthma, and air pollution can worsen asthma
symptoms. Detroit has the highest rated of asthma in young children
among the 18 largest cities in the United States. Over 12 percent of
Detroit children have asthma; the national rate is around 8 percent.
Most air pollution comes from burning of fossil fuels, and parts of
Detroit are dealing with high pollutant levels as a result. I wrote a
letter, along with Senator Stabenow, calling for a plan to reduce
sulfur dioxide levels in Southwest Detroit and comply with Federal
clean air standards. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality
finally just submitted their plan to comply--over a year past the
initial deadline.
These examples in Detroit show how protecting clean air and clean
water are often environmental justice issues. Those that are most
affected by pollution are often from low-income and minority
households. Addressing climate change will also improve the air quality
of these affected areas.
While these communities bear the brunt of fossil fuel pollution, the
Koch brothers and others pour hundreds of millions and even billions of
dollars into activities to avoid regulation of their dirty industries.
One of the tactics that powerful corporate industries use is to
bankroll numerous front groups to spread misinformation. The idea
behind this strategy is to use seemingly independent organizations,
such as think tanks, to deliver misleading messages that the public
might rightfully dismiss if they had heard them directly from industry.
They have calculated that it is better for business to mislead the
American public, rather than acknowledge the scientific evidence and
their role in climate change and join the effort to combat this growing
threat to our planet. It is a page taken right out of Big Tobacco's
playbook. By creating their own scientific studies and policy papers
from a network of surrogates, it gives the appearance that there is a
legitimate debate over the fundamentals of climate change science.
One example is the Cato Institute. For years, the organization has
received funding from fossil fuel interests such as ExxonMobil and the
Koch family. At the same time, Cato spreads climate skepticism. Over a
span of 15 years, the Cato Institute published 773,000 words and 768
documents expressing climate skepticism.
The web of denial is intended to manufacture doubt among the American
public in order to delay action, but the spending efforts by the same
corporations also specifically target elected officials and other key
decisionmakers to prevent meaningful action on global warming.
The Koch brothers have poured vast sums of money into election ads,
lobbying efforts, and campaign donations often funneled through other
organizations to hide the source of the funding. As a result, I have
heard many climate myths repeated in the Halls of Congress that were
carefully crafted by the network of climate denial front groups.
Late last year, the Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science, and
Competitiveness held a hearing that was specifically designed to cast
doubt on the scientific evidence of climate change. The witness panel
was stacked by the majority with prominent climate deniers. As the
ranking member, the one witness I was able to invite was RADM David
Titley, who, as the U.S. Navy's chief meteorologist, initiated and led
the Navy's task force on climate change. At the hearing, Dr. Titley
outlined how climate change is a serious threat to national security.
Admiral Titley explained that the military makes decisions based on
known information and calculations of risk. Often they must act on less
than perfect intelligence, but they understand risks and will take
action to prevent threats when given the chance. The admiral applied
this to the broad agreement among climate scientists, saying that any
military commander would take action ``in a heartbeat'' if there was a
consensus among 97 percent of the intelligence community about a
particular scenario. In fact, the military has already started taking
action

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to anticipate vulnerabilities and mitigate the impacts related to
climate change.
The brightest, most experienced minds in our U.S. military realize
that reliance on fossil fuel leaves our troops and citizens exposed to
more risks at home, as well as abroad. Unfortunately, Congress has not
been as quick to act. Efforts to pass meaningful legislation to address
climate change have been blocked. Existing administrative efforts to
reduce admissions or invest in clean energy have also been repeatedly
attacked.
We can and must pass legislative solutions to address global climate
change. Transitioning away from fossil fuels and investing in renewable
energy will create sustainable jobs and good-paying jobs here in the
United States. Taking bold action on climate change will strengthen our
public health, economy, and national security.
We must wake up and realize that those attempting to mislead and
confuse must not be successful. I am confident that we will overcome
this web of denial and use peer-reviewed, sound scientific information
to guide our decisionmaking in order to create a resilient future for
our children and grandchildren.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.

Honoring Our Armed Forces

Chief Petty Officer Adam Brown

Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, the Senate will pass legislation renaming
Post Office 620 Central Avenue in Hot Springs National Park after CPO
Adam Brown.
I have visited that post office many times as a child, as a
Congressman, and as a Senator. I can't say there is all that much
remarkable about it, but it will be remarkable after this law is
passed.
I didn't know Adam Brown, but Adam was about my age. Adam was a great
warrior and a hero. Three years ago on Memorial Day in Hot Springs, a
gentleman came up to me after I spoke and handed me a book titled
``Fearless'' by Eric William. It is a New York Times bestseller. It
tells the story of Adam Brown. That title captures his spirit. He was
fearless, relentless, and also a joyful and Godly man. As a child in
Hot Springs, he was the one who always lined up to hit the biggest kid
in football. He would jump off a bridge into the local lake and jump
out of trucks. Adam was an all-American boy.
During his teenaged years, Adam succumbed to addiction. He began to
drink, started to use marijuana, became addicted to cocaine, and that
led to many crimes. At one point, he had 16 outstanding felonies.
Larry and his mother Janice didn't know what to do, so they told the
sheriff where he was, and he was arrested. Adam went to Teen Challenge,
a Christian ministry dedicated to helping youth overcome addiction.
Through his faith in God, love of his parents, and the love of his wife
Kelly, he was able to fight back his addiction, although he continued
to struggle with it.
With the help of a good recruiter and out of a sense of deep and
abiding patriotism for his country, Adam cleaned up his life by
enlisting in the Navy. He didn't just enlist to do any job, though, he
enlisted to be a Navy SEAL. It entails some of the hardest training our
military has. Adam, of course, got his golden trident and went on to
display the same kind of fearlessness and relentlessness but also the
same joyfulness that so many people in Hot Springs and in Arkansas had
known.
As anyone who has been in the military knows, there are always some
guys in the unit who are downers, looking on the dark side of things,
wondering what was going to go wrong next, and Adam was the antidote to
that. He always looked on the bright side, always had a sunny outlook,
and always had a helpful word for a friend or buddy. He was always
ready to help the unit accomplish the mission.
Adam went through multiple deployments as a Navy SEAL, and there was
never any quit in him. In 2003, he was injured in a simulation round
during a training exercise with a miniature paint ball that the
military uses. Somehow it got underneath his eye protection and hit him
in the eye, and as a result he lost his eye, but, as he always did, he
looked on the bright side. He got a glass eye with an Arkansas
Razorback on it, and he would put on a pirate patch and play pirate
with his two little kids, Nathan and Savannah. It didn't stop him from
continuing to deploy as a Navy SEAL.
He was later involved in a multicar accident while deployed. His hand
was crushed and three fingers were severed. The doctors were able to
reattach it, but it could no longer be used. Of course, he was eligible
to leave the military because of his combat injury, but he didn't do
that. He learned to shoot with the other hand and use his other eye
when shooting. In fact, he went on to become a member of SEAL Team Six,
the most elite element of the Navy SEAL community.
He continued to deploy and fight but also showed deep compassion. In
Afghanistan, he noticed that many of the poor, little Afghan children
didn't even have shoes on their feet on the darkest, coldest days of
winter, so he arranged for a local pastor in his community to send
shoes that he could give to them.
On March 17, 2010, Adam was on a mission high up in the mountains in
Afghanistan. His unit came under intense enemy fire. Adam helped to
save the lives of his fellow SEALS, taking multiple rounds himself, and
he ultimately perished as a result of his wounds. Adam received a
hero's welcome in Hot Springs, where he rests today.
Adam's story is about faith, redemption, service, and love. When
little boys and little girls drive by that post office in Hot Springs
in the future, I hope they ask their parents who Adam Brown was. I hope
their parents can tell them his story and inspire them with his
example.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.

Climate Change

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to speak,
along with a number of my colleagues, about groups that have spun a web
of denial and to fight back against the regressive, fallacious, and
dangerous rhetoric of climate change deniers. They would disavow the
overwhelming evidence of one of our most significant environmental
crises. It is not only a quality-of-life challenge, it is a national
security crisis in our world today.
As a member of the Armed Services Committee, I know from our military
leaders how seriously they take this crisis, which is causing droughts
as well as unrest, and the challenges it creates when our military
needs to access certain parts of the world. Those consequences are
among the national security threats that climate change raises, and
deniers do no great service to our national defense.
Connecticut knows firsthand the visible impacts of climate change
because we see the mammoth storms that threaten to become the new
normal in our world, causing rising tides, destroying homes, literally
changing the nature of our shoreline and impacting our quality of life.
No one State can address climate change effectively, and that is why
we need the Nation to act together and why climate change denial is so
dangerous to our national security, not only in military terms but also
in the very real terms of how we conduct our lives in this country. We
need a coordinated, comprehensive approach, and yet some groups would
have you believe that no action is necessary--none at all. They say
that any measures are a waste of time and resources. They say that any
measures to stop food supplies from disappearing, forest fires from
spreading, and storms from raging are simply unnecessary. They have no
evidence to support their claims, but, indeed, they have to distort the
evidence that exists even to make those claims.
Just last year, we discovered that Exxon projects into its planning a
model that it described for itself as ``too murky to warrant
action.'' They planned for themselves but not for the people, including
their own customers. They would be ready for climate change but would
make sure that no one else could be by adopting a model and making it
their business model--or part of it--that implicitly, internally, they
felt they could not reveal publicly.

Some groups have adopted more covert efforts to sabotage science. The
American Legislative Exchange Council, better known by its acronym

[[Page S4993]]

ALEC, denies that its policy denied climate change. ALEC commits to
fighting science in the shadows because it has no facts to bring into
the sun. Indeed, its proposed bill, the Environmental Literacy
Improvement Act--a very innocuous bill--actually seeks to serve as a
stamp of approval on teaching climate change denial in science
classrooms.
These tactics exist because when groups like ALEC or Americans for
Prosperity stand ready to deny the truth, some part of our people will
believe it.
One leader of the Americans for Prosperity group, when asked about
the science of climate change, responded: ``I don't even want to argue
the point. To me, it's not that important.''
This web of denial has consequences. It delays and distorts common
awareness and consciousness about the truth and the need to act.
One of my colleagues compared this web of denial to actions of
tobacco companies decades ago denying that smoking and tobacco could
cause cancer or heart disease or any of the other serious illnesses
that tobacco use causes, in addition to the lifetime addiction to
nicotine that inevitably was a consequence to so many people who
believed those tobacco companies. That web of denial was similar to
this one. The tobacco companies knew the truth. They denied it. These
deniers also know the truth. Our purpose in being here today is to make
sure the American people know it as well.
Groups like ALEC and Americans for Prosperity may receive support
from the economic interests that have a stake in hiding the truth, but
ultimately the American people need to know it, they need to act on it,
and they need to appreciate the motives and interests of the web of
denial that is spun so artfully and relentlessly by these groups and
the special interests that underlie them and support them.
I wish to thank my colleagues who have come to the floor today,
particularly Senator Whitehouse, who has been so instrumental in
organizing this group.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator Arkansas.

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