Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Thank you.

Mr. President, in my 1 minute, I just wish to respond to what my friend, the Senator from Arizona, said. We are very keen to get a good, strong cyber security bill passed.

My concern about the amendment process is that amendments that will strengthen the bill and make it a better cyber bill ought to have a chance to get a vote. I have one that I worked out with Senator Graham, who I think has good national security credentials and whom Senator McCain respects, and another one with Senator Blunt, who also has good national security credentials and whom I think Senator McCain also respects. I believe both of the bills have now been cleared by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, so they don't have a business community objection. But I also fear that if we followed the majority leader's proposal, he would file cloture and they wouldn't survive a germaneness test.

So I think our leader's offer, basically, of a specific list of amendments--none of which are ``gotcha'' amendments, all of which relate to this bill--would be a very good way to proceed, get on the bill, and get something passed.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I want to start my remarks with this photograph I have in the Chamber, which is a photograph of--I guess the miniplanet is what they call it now--Pluto. Why do I start remarks on climate change and carbon pollution with a picture of Pluto? I do so because of the amazing achievement it was for our NASA scientists to fly a craft close enough to Pluto to take that picture. That is a heck of an accomplishment by our American NASA scientists.

But that is not their only one. While this craft was shooting by Pluto taking these pictures, they had a rover rolling around on the surface of Mars. They sent a vehicle the size of an SUV to the surface of Mars and are driving it around. Do you think these scientists know what they are talking about when they say something as simple as climate change is real? Of course, they do.

But our Republican friends can't acknowledge that. They have even said these NASA scientists are in on a hoax. Can you imagine anything more demeaning to the people who put a rover on Mars and shot this picture of Pluto than to say: Oh, they do not know what they are talking about. They are in on a hoax. Forget about it. That is just not true.

The real issue is this. Here is Kentucky's electric generation fuel mix. That is its fuel mix. Guess what the gray is? Coal. That is basically all they have. There is a tiny little strip of blue at the bottom for the hydro. There is a little tiny strip here of red for oil. And there is a tiny little bit of natural gas here at the top, for which you need a magnifying glass. You can look and, with a magnifying glass, you can see this tiny little green line at the top that is their entire renewables portfolio. Really?

The last I heard the sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home. Right? So why no solar? None. How about wind? Do you think the wind blows through the Kentucky hills? None. You have to use a magnifying glass to see it. They are not even trying. They are not even trying. The coal industry has that State so locked down they are doing nothing.

Go to Iowa. There are two Republican Senators from Iowa--hardly some liberal bastion--and they get about 30 percent of their electricity from wind. It is not a Communist plot. It is not a Socialist fabrication. It is Iowa, and the farmers love it.

But no, we have to protect coal at all costs. So this is the GOP signal for what they are doing on climate change. I think it would probably be wise to take out the smile and actually put a little band of tape over the mouth so that it is clear that nobody is allowed to say a word.

This is really astonishing. Here we are, in which every State--just ask your home State university if climate change is real. You don't have to go far. Ask the University of Kentucky, ask the University of Louisville, ask your home State university. They know. Everybody knows. The problem is the coal industry and the Koch brothers have this place locked down, and it is ridiculous.

The Koch brothers have pledged to spend $889 million in this election through this group called Americans for Prosperity. And they have also said that ``anybody who crosses us on climate change will be at a severe disadvantage.'' When you are swinging a $900 million club and you are telling folks, disagree with us and you will be at a severe disadvantage, this is what you get--no plan on climate change.

You are going to hear endless complaining from our friends on the other side about the President's plan. What are you not going to hear? What their plan is. What is the alternative? What have they got? If you have nothing, if you have nada, zip, you really have to get into this conversation because even your own Republican young voters are demanding it. Republican voters under the age of 35 think climate denial is ignorant, out of touch or crazy--their words in the poll, not mine.

So it is time we broke through. It is time the majority leader got away from this 100-percent coal situation that he is defending, allowed the future to take place, and allowed a conversation to take place here in the Senate. We are ready for it. We are ready for it.

I yield the floor to my wonderful colleague, Senator Markey, who has been working on this a good deal longer than I have.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, before the Senator from New Hampshire leaves the floor, I wish to thank her for her work on the comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act. She has been a very good partner in that effort. I know her home State, like Rhode Island, is suffering an extraordinary wave of opioid addiction and opioid fatalities. I know she is also working hard to make sure we get a hearing in the Judiciary Committee under present leadership. I am getting good signals on that. I hope we can pin that down before too long. I think this is a very important issue for us to get a hearing on, and I think it is one that all of the Presidential candidates are seeing. It is one so many of us see in our home States.

One of the smallest towns in Rhode Island is a little town called Burrillville. It is a beautiful place. It is in the northern rural area of our State. People laugh when I say ``the rural area of Rhode Island,'' but we really do have them. Burrillville is a very bucolic area, and there are very wonderful people there.

In the first quarter of this year, in little Burrillville, six people lost their lives to overdose. When I went to the Burrillville High School to do an event there about this bill and to listen and get ideas for our legislation, there were three recovering folks who came to talk about their situation. Like so many folks in recovery, they were unbelievably inspiring and noble in the way they discussed it. All three of them had gone to Burrillville High School.

It is a real problem, and I appreciate very much the leadership of the Senator from New Hampshire.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Mr. President, this is actually the time of the week for me to deliver my 109th ``Time to Wake Up'' speech. I find it a little bit frustrating these days because climate change used to be a bipartisan issue. Over and over again, we had bipartisan, serious climate change bills. In fact, the first big climate change bill in the EPW Committee was Warner-Lieberman--John Warner, Republican of Virginia, and Joe Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut. But then came Citizens United and all that dark money began to flow, all that fossil fuel money began to flow, all that Koch brothers money began to flow. Now, even as the evidence of climate change deepens to irrefutability, it is hard to find a Republican in Congress who will do anything. Here is the formula: Duck the question, deny the evidence, and disparage the scientists. Duck, deny, and disparage. That is some strategy for an issue which so many people take seriously.

As Congress sleepwalks through history, the warnings are painfully clear. Carbon pollution piles up in the atmosphere. Temperatures are rising. Weather worsens at the extremes. The oceans rise, warm, and acidify. These are all measurements. This isn't theory. The measurements confirm what the science has always told us about dumping so much excess carbon into oceans and atmosphere.

So hurray for the President's Clean Power Plan. For the first time, we have a national effort to reduce carbon pollution from powerplants, which are the largest source of U.S. carbon emissions. This plan is big. This plan is good. And this plan is urgently needed. I congratulate the President, I congratulate Administrator McCarthy, and I congratulate the good and public-spirited people of the EPA and other Federal agencies who worked hard to listen and make this plan final.

Of course, we will still have the usual complaining from all of the usual suspects. The Senate majority leader, the senior Senator from Kentucky, opposes any serious conversation about climate change. In fact, he is ready to lead his modern version of massive resistance against the Federal Clean Power Plan. The Republican leader has written to Governors urging defiance of the EPA regulations, calling them ``extremely burdensome and costly,'' which would be a more credible conclusion had he not reached it months before the regulations were even finalized.

Actually, if we want to get into the actual world here, a report just out from that famous liberal, Socialist bastion Georgia Tech found that the clean power rule could be enacted in a very cost-effective manner and could lower folks' energy bills in the long term. But let's not let the facts get in the way when there are fossil fuel interests to be placated.

As the Washington Post reported, folks expect to comply with the Clean Power Plan with relatively little effort, even in Kentucky. ``We can meet it'' is what Dr. Leonard Peters, Kentucky's energy and environment secretary, has to say about the Clean Power Plan. ``We can meet it.'' In fact, Dr. Peters praised the EPA for working with States like his to build this rule. ``The outreach they've done, I think, is incredible,'' he said. EPA had an ``open door policy. You could call them, talk to them, meet with them.'' The Kentucky experience was echoed around the country, as EPA listened closely to the concerns of utilities, regulators, experts, and citizens. They have made big adjustments to accommodate the concerns of stakeholders in the States.

When the usual complaining comes from the usual suspects, please ask them: What is your plan? How would you do a better job of addressing the carbon emissions that are polluting our atmosphere and oceans? What is your alternative?

Spoiler alert: You will look far and wide before finding a Republican plan. Don't look here. Don't look in the Senate. Republicans in the Senate have exactly zero legislation for addressing carbon pollution in any serious way. None. Zip. Nada. Duck, deny, and disparage is all they have. Don't look at their Presidential candidates. In recent weeks I have used these weekly climate speeches to look at Republican Presidential candidates' views on climate change. It is pathetic. There is nothing. What are we up to--87 Republican Presidential candidates? And not one has a climate change plan. OK, I was exaggerating about the 87.

Florida, ground zero for sea level rise, two Republican Presidential candidates, and what do the two of them have? Nothing. Republican mayors from Florida, State universities in Florida, the Army Corps office in Florida--nothing gets through to the candidates. Duck, deny, disparage is all they have.

The Wisconsin Presidential candidate ignores his own home State university, his own State newspapers, and his own State scientists. But Governor Walker can actually top duck, deny, and disparage. His response to climate change? Use your budget to fire the scientists at the State environmental protection agency.

How about our Presidential candidate, the junior Senator from Kentucky? What do we hear from him? He has said that the EPA rules are illegal, and he has predicted that they will result in power shortages--no lights and no heat. But does he have an alternative he would prefer? No. He has nothing, and, like all the other got-nothing Republican Presidential candidates, he is out of step with his own home State.

Kentucky isn't just easily able to comply with the Clean Power Plan; agencies and officials all across Kentucky are working seriously on climate change.

By the way, here is a look at why compliance is easy in Kentucky: Kentucky's fuel mix, which this charts, is a wall of coal. As the song says, the Sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home, but good luck finding any solar in there. You will need a magnifying glass to find this tiny little green line at the top that is barely visible that is solar and wind combined. I mean, really? Iowa can get to 30 percent wind. Iowa has two Republican Senators. It is not impossible. In Kentucky, they haven't even tried.

Kentucky's cities--Lexington, Louisville, Frankfurt, Bowling Green, and Villa Hills--get it.

They have signed the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement in order to--quoting officials from Lexington--``act locally to reduce the impacts of climate change by lowering (manmade) greenhouse gas emissions.''

The hills of Kentucky are some distance from the shores of Rhode Island and the shores of New Hampshire as well. Living by the sea, I have to worry about climate change and what it is doing to our oceans and coasts. Kentucky is landlocked. So imagine my surprise to read the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources warning about sea level rise. I will quote them.

With the predicted increases in severity of hurricanes and tropical storms, coupled with potential shoreline losses in Florida and throughout the eastern seaboard, people may begin migrations inland. If and when these events occur, Kentucky may experience human population growth unprecedented to the Commonwealth.

So I say to our candidate from Kentucky, the junior Senator, and our majority leader, the senior Senator, with Kentucky, their home State, projecting that people on the coasts will be hit so hard by climate change that we may have to flee inland to landlocked Kentucky, I hope the Senators from Kentucky will understand my persistence on this issue when their own State thinks that my citizens might have to flee to Kentucky to get away from this threat.

Kentucky is renowned for its horses. So I turned to Horse & Rider magazine and found a great article on ``how climate change might affect our horses' health.'' Horse & Rider's expert was none other than Dr. Craig Carter of the University of Kentucky. He had specific concerns in the article for equine health, but he also offered us this general reminder:

It's not just horses (and people) at risk: crops are being affected, as are trees, due to beetle infestations. Climate change affects all forms of life.

That is from Dr. Carter of the University of Kentucky.

Kentucky Woodlands Magazine reports that ``the world is changing right before our eyes. ..... [O]ur natural systems are changing as a result of a warming climate.'' The magazine even warns that ``climate change is happening as you read this article.''

Meanwhile the Senators from Kentucky are not sure why that may be. The junior Senator has said that he is not sure anybody knows exactly why all of this climate change is happening. The majority leader invokes that climate denial classic: I am not a scientist. Well--and I say this thankfully--the scientists are here to help, including Kentucky scientists.

At Kentucky's universities, the science seems pretty clear about exactly why all of this climate change is happening. Dr. Paul Vincelli is a professor at the University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service. He says:

In the scientific community, it is widely accepted that the global climate is changing and that human activities which produce greenhouse gases are a principal cause. Greenhouse gases have a strong capacity to trap heat in the lower atmosphere, even though they are present at trace concentrations.

Elsewhere, Professor Vincelli and his University of Kentucky colleagues write:

Scientific evidence that our global climate is warming is abundant. ..... Practicing scientists consider the evidence of human-induced global warming to be extremely strong.

The University of Kentucky is not the only place. Eastern Kentucky University offers concentrations in environmental sustainability and stewardship, including courses on global climate change. Northern Kentucky University signed the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment, pledging Northern Kentucky University to ``an initiative in pursuit of climate neutrality.''

At the University of Louisville, Professor Keith Mountain is the chair of the department of geography and geosciences. He has lectured about ``how climate change is a measurable reality and how people have contributed to the trends.''

Despite all of the experts in Kentucky saying that human-caused climate change is real, despite the harms that State and local officials foresee for Kentucky and the rest of the country, and despite the easy steps being taken in Kentucky to comply with the President's Clean Power Plan, the Senators from Kentucky have no plan--nothing. They are part of the ``duck, deny, and disparage'' caucus.

And the Presidential candidates? There is almost nothing they won't make up to try to jam a sick in the wheels of progress--imaginary wars on coal when it is really coal's war on us, imaginary cost increases that have been completely debunked by actual experience, imaginary reliability failures when the real reliability problem is already happening around us thanks to climate-driven extreme weather. On and on they go. Yet they offer no alternative. Republicans simply have no plan other than a shrug.

Why do they have no climate plan? Why do they present nothing by way of limits to carbon pollution? Here is a clue: Look where the money comes from. It comes from fossil fuel billionaires and fossil fuel interests. Look at the beauty pageant hosted this weekend by the Koch brothers in Dana Point, CA, where Republican Presidential candidates went to display their wares to the big donors.

Do you think the Koch brothers want to hear about climate change? Here is another clue: Americans for Prosperity, part of the Koch brothers' big-money political organization, has openly warned that any client who crosses them on climate change will be ``at a severe disadvantage''--subtle as a brick from an outfit threatening to spend part of the $889 million total that the Koch brothers have budgeted for this election. And yes, $889 million in one election is big money. ``For that kind of money, you could buy yourself a president,'' said Mark McKinnon, a Republican and former George W. Bush strategist and a good Texan. ``Oh, right,'' he continued, ``that's the point.''

Even the Donald called the Republicans out on this one, calling the Koch brothers' California event a ``beg-a-thon,'' and saying: ``I wish good luck to all of the Republican candidates that traveled to California to beg for money, etc., from the Koch Brothers.''

What a shame, to be a Presidential candidate willing to ignore your home State universities, ignore your home State newspapers, ignore your home State scientists--unless, of course, you are trying to fire them--ignore your own home State farmers, foresters, and fishermen, all so you can prance successfully at pageants for the big-money fossil fuel interests that today control the Republican party. Duck, deny, and disparage is what gets you through the beauty pageant. So duck, deny, and disparage it is.

Eventually, the Republican Party is going to have to come up with a plan on climate change. The American people are demanding it, Independent voters, whom they will need in 2016, are demanding it. Even Republican voters demand it, at least if they are young ones. And it really matters that we get this right. It is the responsibility of the United States of America, as a great nation, to set an example for others to follow and not just sit back and wait for others to act.

Failing to act on climate change would both dim the torch we hold up to the world and give other nations an excuse for delay. Failure, I contend, when the stakes are so high becomes an argument for our enemies against our very model of government. How do we explain the influence of this special interest interfering with what must be done? There will be no excuse when a reckoning comes to say: I really needed the political support of those fossil fuel billionaires; so, sorry, world.

President Abraham Lincoln, a native Kentuckian, warned us that ``the dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.'' Before the present gets too stormy, I urge my colleagues from Kentucky to heed the experts in their home State, heed the local leaders in their home State, and wake up to what needs to be done.

I yield the floor.

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