Default Prevention Act of 2013--Motion to Proceed
Floor Speech
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, a colleague recently described on this floor his experience flying in a private aircraft when a fire broke out in the cockpit of the plane. He observed that putting out the fire distracted the pilots from flying the aircraft and that they precipitously lost altitude. This tea party shutdown and the tea party's threat to our country's credit, like that fire in the cockpit, are distracting us from flying the plane.
I dispute the notion that those who caused the shutdown have good standing to come to this floor and criticize the way the Obama administration is implementing a shutdown that we don't want on our side of the aisle and that the Obama administration does not want. The tea party and Speaker Boehner, for their insistence on lighting that fire in the cockpit, are answerable to history and their consciences.
In the spirit of getting back to flying the plane, I will talk about, as I usually do, a real and looming crisis--not the manmade fire the tea party has lit in the cockpit of our government. That tea party shutdown could end tomorrow if the Speaker of the House would simply call up the measure the Senate passed. He refuses to do so, and it is his continued indulgence that keeps this shutdown going.
Climate change is for real. It is not manmade, nor is it something the Speaker can turn off with a vote. It is coming at us, and it is time to wake up to what carbon pollution is doing to our atmosphere and ocean.
Regrettably, one of the reasons Congress is still asleep is that the worst culprits--the big corporations that do the worst carbon polluting--are pretending it is not that bad, it is not that serious, and they should keep doing what they are doing; the status quo is fine. It causes me to wonder why it is that corporations seem never to admit they are wrong. Why is ``oops'' a word they can't seem to use?
When it turned out that people would be a lot safer with seatbelts, did the car industry say: Oops. We should have put those in and put seatbelts in the cars. No. They fought and they had to be defeated, and then we got seatbelts.
When cigarette makers found out their product made people really addicted and really sick, did they say: Oops. We better figure out a way to not kill so many people. No. They fought and they lied for decades.
When it turned out that lead paint damaged children's brains, did the lead paint companies say: Oops. We better warn folks about that and clean it up. No. They fought against protections and had to be defeated. Indeed, they are still fighting.
When it turned out that aerosol refrigerants and propellants were eating away at the Earth's ozone layer, did the manufacturers say: Oops. That is dangerous, and we better come up with a safer product. No. They fought the change, but they lost, and now they are making money making new safer products.
When acid rain was killing off the fish in the northeastern lakes, did the big utilities say: Oops. We better clean up our emissions. No. They fought the changes until they were forced to clean up.
When the flame-retardant industry found out its product was dangerous and ineffective, did they say: Oops. This flame-retardant stuff is hurting people and doing creepy things in nature, so we better knock it off. Nope. It is still fighting while whales turn into swimming toxic waste.
Now that carbon pollution has blown through 400 parts per million of CO
2 in the atmosphere--a first in human history--and launched the most rapid acidification ever seen in the oceans--and by that I mean going back to geologic time--are the polluters saying: Oops. We better take our billions of dollars in profit and trillions of dollars in capital and invest seriously in new fuels and power sources. Fat chance.
Corporations that are harming people never say ``oops,'' and for two big reasons. One reason is there is a lot of money at stake. They would not be in the business if they were not making money, and they don't want to stop. The other reason is that corporations don't have consciences, they have reputations. A reputation is something you can manage. Huge chunks of Madison Avenue and K Street are dedicated to managing corporate reputations. So with no conscience and only a reputation, you manage the problem that you are harming people.
By now, the strategy for managing a corporate reputation while hurting people is well developed. It is a common one across cigarettes, acid rain, lead paint, flame-retardants, refrigerants, and now carbon pollution. There is a playbook, and guess what. The big carbon polluters are following the playbook: one, pretend to care--that is important; two, attack the science, and if you can't attack the science, attack the scientists themselves; three, claim it will cost consumers a fortune; and four, make your goal not victory but doubt.
Pretend to care.
I don't know if you remember those phony-baloney Exxon ads that were all over the place a while ago with guys in lab coats, and they had these Lucite molecules floating around. They wanted you to believe they were out there looking for tomorrow's clean fuels. Well, you got had.
Since 2005 ExxonMobil has been making tens of billions of dollars in profit every year. It is hard to pick through their numbers, but sources report that over that same time it only spent tens of millions per year on clean energy--about what it spent on advertising. They spent as much advertising their clean energy, it appears, as they did investing in it, and it was a tiny fraction of their profits, let alone their revenues.
Remember BP and their green Sun baloney? BP pulled completely out of solar and completely out of U.S. wind investments once it had laid down a fat barrage of advertising about being beyond petroleum. Pretend to care.
Attack the science and even the scientists themselves.
The polluters have to do this through proxies. Nobody will really believe it if Exxon's fingerprints are all over the attack on the science, so others do the dirty work.
One example is Virginia's tea party attorney general Ken Cuccinelli, who attacked the top climate scientist at the University of Virginia. He used his powers of office--the special powers of office that are entrusted to attorneys general. Having been an attorney general, I know something about how precious and special those powers are. He used those powers to harass and subpoena a college professor. UVA's lawyers stuck up for the professor, and the Virginia Supreme Court threw that nonsense out. But for the polluters behind it, it was right out of the playbook.
You may remember the polluters whipping up a phony scandal called climategate, pretending that a group of climate scientists were doing dishonest work. The scientists had to endure audit after audit, every single one of which gave them a totally clean bill of health. It turned out it was the cooked-up, phony scandal that was dishonest, but the polluters had a field day in the meantime. It was right out of the playbook.
Claim it will cost consumers a fortune.
This is a playbook classic. The big polluters are always talking about how it will cost you to clean up their act. Implicit is that they are going to put all the costs on to you and that they are not going to eat any of it and that their shareholders are not going to bear any of it.
Let's get past that. What they conveniently overlook is that, for instance, under the Clean Air Act--yes, complying with the Clean Air Act did cost utilities a lot of money, but for every $1 that was spent cleaning up to comply with the Clean Air Act, Americans have saved about $40. They spend $1, you save $40, and they want you to believe that is a big problem?
The Office of Management and Budget does a little calculation called the social cost of carbon. The latest cost is $36 per ton of CO
2 emitted. For every ton of carbon pollution the polluters don't sell, we save $36.
But they will never tell us that side of the story, nor that there are more jobs now in green energy than in the entire oil and gas industry, nor that we are in an international race for tomorrow's clean energy technology innovations. It is a race these big international corporations are perfectly happy to have America lose. It is no skin off their nose.
Last, their goal is not victory, it is doubt. They don't want to convince anyone that climate change isn't happening. They don't need to do that. Of course, they couldn't do that in any kind of a fair debate. All they need to do, the playbook strategy says, is to convince us, as we are driving down the road listening to the radio, that nobody is sure yet; that there is some doubt, but we don't need to do anything just yet; that people can move on to their next worry; this one is still up for grabs. They will keep trying to push action on carbon pollution over that horizon of doubt, never having to prove their case.
The American people are being played for chumps in this game. It is a racket, and we are the mark.
Even so, even with all of that, the facts around us--what is happening to our woods and shores and farms and weather--are becoming so clear that even with the playbook they are losing, just like they ultimately lost on cigarettes and seatbelts, on lead paint and acid rain and the ozone hole.
Here is what Americans are saying: 61 percent of Americans say the effects of climate change are already affecting them personally or they see it happening in their lifetime.
Fifty-eight percent said the country should do more to address climate change, including 51 percent of Independents, while just 14 percent--14 percent--said we are doing enough already.
Sixty-five percent of voters support ``the President taking significant steps to address climate change now''--65 percent. That number jumps up to 70 percent when looking at voters under 40 years old.
Sixty-six percent of young voters--two out of every three--say climate change is a problem to address, while just 27 percent say climate change is a natural event that humans can't affect, and only 3 percent don't believe climate change is happening.
Fifty-three percent of people say they would be less likely to vote for a politician who did not understand that climate change is a real problem.
Even in the red State of Texas, 70 percent believe global warming is happening, and more than half say more should be done about global warming at all levels of government.
Today is day 10 of the tea party shutdown. As we have pointed out over and over, it is a manufactured crisis. It goes away the instant Speaker Boehner stands in the House and calls the measure the Senate has passed, without amendments and without gimmicks, to the floor. It will pass. The crisis will be over.
This crisis is different. This is not a crisis of a fire in the cockpit that is being kept burning by Speaker Boehner who could stop it at any time; this is for real. This is Mother Nature--400 parts per million for the first time in 800,000 years is serious.
The tea party Republicans are wildly out of step with the American people on both issues, and it is time for them to wake up.
Mr. President, I have a unanimous consent request, if I may ask the distinguished Senator from Georgia to yield for one moment.
I ask unanimous consent that Senators on the majority side be limited to 10 minutes each until 1 p.m.
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