[Pages S1138-S1142]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           EXECUTIVE CALENDAR

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the nomination.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read the nomination of Travis 
Greaves, of the District of Columbia, to be a Judge of the United 
States Tax Court for a term of fifteen years.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.


                                Abortion

  Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, I rise to have a dialogue. Let me 
start it this way. My brother and I did not always agree on things. I 
know that may be shocking that two brothers did not get along on 
everything. Maybe in your house you got along on everything, but my 
brother and I, growing up, did not agree on everything.
  In fact, growing up, I distinctly remember the day we reached epic 
levels, and we actually got masking tape out in our room and put a line 
down the floor that ran from one wall across to the other wall. We had 
an old-school stereo record player in our room. The line ran up the 
record player so that on one side he had the tuning knob and on the 
other side I had the volume knob. We would have to reach some sort of 
detente to listen to anything. If he turned it to a station I didn't 
like, I could turn the volume all the way down. We would have to work 
things out. The line even went through our closet, with his clothes and 
my clothes on it, and we had a clear line of separation that you could 
not cross that line. The rules were very clear in our room. For 
whatever reason, our mom put up with it for quite a while as we had our 
``Don't cross the line into my side'' kind of moment.
  It is interesting that today in the Senate there was in some ways 
kind of a line-drawing moment to not draw a line but to try to figure 
out where are our lines, where are our boundaries on an issue that 
Americans talk about all the time, in many ways, but always get nervous 
in that dialogue. It is the issue about when is a child a child.
  We have this weird dialogue as a nation because we have a great 
passion for children. We spend a tremendous amount of money, 
personally, on our families and in our communities and in nonprofits 
and Federal taxpayer dollars to walk alongside children to do 
everything we can to protect the lives of those children.
  We have some in this body who have proposed Federal taxpayer dollars 
for children in their very first days of life to have childcare that is 
available for them, but literally 3 days before that, they have also 
proposed Federal tax dollars for abortion to take that life.
  It begs the question: Where is your line on life? What is that 
moment? For me, I go with the science. It is conception. That is a 
dividing cell that has DNA that is different than the mom and different 
than the dad. That dividing cell is a uniquely different person. Every 
science textbook, every medical textbook that you look at would 
identify that DNA is different than any other DNA in the world. That is 
a different person. As those cells grow and divide and as that child 
grows and divides, whether they are 50 years old or whether they are 
only days old still in womb, the DNA is the same. All the building 
blocks are in that child from their earliest days.
  Others will look at it and will ask the question--like the Supreme 
Court did in 1973, when they ruled on Roe v. Wade on the issue of 
viability. That is when the Supreme Court said, in 1973, that States 
can engage and try to make some laws dealing with abortion, which is 
based around this issue of viability. Viability, in 1973, is very 
different than it is now. We have many children who are born at 21, 22, 
23, 24 weeks gestation who are prematurely delivered, spend months in a 
NICU facility, and thrive as adults. That viability question is 
different now than it was in 1973, but we also know more about the 
science now than we knew at that time as well.
  We know that a child--some would say on the science side of it--as 
early as 12 weeks old of development, still in the womb, can feel and 
experience pain. Certainly, by 20 weeks, 21, 22 weeks, they have 
developed a brain and have developed a nervous system. The system of 
experiencing pain is all in place. If anything happens to that child, 
that child will experience the pain and the effects of that.
  The New York Times had a really interesting article in October 2017, 
talking about a young man, Charley Royer. When he was just at 24 weeks 
development in the womb, the parents made a very difficult decision to 
have a surgery in utero. It is spina bifida. The child would be 
paralyzed. The New York Times writes about how they did this surgery--
this very intricate surgery--that happened at Texas Children's Hospital 
at Baylor College of Medicine. They basically delivered the child, 
doing surgery on that child, reinserting the uterus and the child back 
into the mom's womb, and then stayed all the way through until full 
gestation and was delivered.
  Charley is apparently doing very well. It was a remarkable surgery. 
During that surgery, they made sure they helped that child and gave him 
additional medications to protect him from pain because they were doing 
surgery on someone who felt the effects of the surgery at 24 weeks.
  Today we had a vote in the Senate to ask Senators, if you don't agree 
with me on this that the line should be conception, to consider that 
child a child at conception, would you consider that child a child when 
they can experience pain? They have a beating heart. They have a 
functioning nervous system. They have 10 fingers, 10 toes.
  This is not a tissue we are talking about. This is what a child looks 
like in the womb at 20 to 22 weeks. That is a child. The question is, 
Is your line when that child has a beating heart, has a functioning 
nervous system, can experience pain? Is that your line?
  We had that vote today. Unfortunately, this Senate body said no. The 
line is not at conception, and the line is not even when they look like 
this and can experience pain. That bill was voted down.
  There are only four countries in the world that allow abortion on 
demand at any time--four countries left in the world that still abort 
children who look like this, who experience pain, who are in late term. 
It is the United States, North Korea, China, and Vietnam. That is all 
that is left in the world that looks at this and says that is just 
tissue; that is not really a baby.
  This Senate voted again today to affirm that same club that we are in 
with China, North Korea, and Vietnam. That is not a club I want our 
Nation to be in. They are some of the worst human rights violators in 
the world, and they don't recognize the value and the dignity of life. 
We do, or at least I thought we did, but that is not where our line is, 
apparently.
  Today we took another vote in the Senate, and it was a very clear 
line as well to say: OK. If your line is not at conception, and if it 
is not when the child can experience pain, and it is not a late-term 
abortion when the child is actually viable, maybe your line is actually 
when they are delivered, when they are fully out of the womb. We took a 
vote on a bill called the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. 
It is a very straightforward bill. It is not about abortion at all. It 
is about a child who is fully delivered.
  In medical practice, there are times when there is a late-term 
abortion that in the procedure itself to actually conduct the abortion, 
instead of the child being aborted and killed in the womb, it is a 
spontaneous birth that actually occurs, and the child is actually fully 
delivered. The intent was to destroy the child in the womb, but that is 
not what happened. What happened, instead, in a small percentage of 
abortions, was that child was actually delivered. Now the question is, 
the child is no longer in the womb. The child is literally fully 
delivered and is crying on the table in front of you. What do you do? 
We asked the question of this body: Where is your line? Is your line at 
delivery? Even if the intent was originally abortion, that didn't 
occur, is your line at delivery? Unfortunately, this body voted no. We 
could not get 60 Senators of 100 to say even if a child is fully 
delivered outside of the womb,

[[Page S1139]]

crying on the table, that is a child. That is a frightening statement 
about where we are in our culture.

  I have had all kinds of folks say: Well, this is not about 
infanticide. Infanticide is already illegal.
  I said: Yes, that is true.
  In 2002, there was unanimous support in this body, in the Senate, to 
pass a bill saying that if a child is delivered, that would be 
infanticide. The problem was, it left no consequences at all and 
allowed what still happens today where if a child is fully delivered, 
there are no consequences for allowing them to die on the table.
  A couple of years ago, Kermit Gosnell was fully delivering children 
in his abortion clinic. He was fully delivering them, and then he would 
take scissors, flip the child over, and snip their spinal cord to kill 
them. He is in prison right now for carrying out that act because that 
was considered infanticide. But what is still legal is allowing the 
child to just lie there on the table until they slowly die.
  Jill Stanek is a nurse who has practiced for years in Illinois. She 
gave testimony in a hearing not long ago and testified multiple times 
about what is going on in some of these abortion facilities and what 
happens when a child is fully delivered and they are still alive. In 
her experience, what she has watched before, she has noticed that 
children will live outside the womb. These are viable children lying on 
the table, or in her particular hospital, they literally took the child 
to a linen closet and closed the door and left him there. They would 
live somewhere between an hour and, some children, as long as 8 hours, 
just waiting to die. Ladies and gentlemen, in ancient times, it was 
called exposure when you would take a child and set them outside to die 
without medical care.
  Our vote today was, if a child is fully delivered, should they get 
medical care, or should we just allow medical facilities to just back 
off and allow them to slowly die? And today this Senate could not get 
60 votes to say we should at least give medical care to that child 
instead of allowing them to slowly die on the table on their own--a 
child literally crying, kicking their feet, but ignored. I would hope 
we are better than that as a country, but apparently the line has still 
not been discovered for the value of a child. I am one who believes 
that a child has great value, a child has great worth. Whether that 
child is a kindergartner or in the womb, that child has value. As a 
culture, we should stand for the value of every child.
  I am amazed, absolutely amazed when I think about the fact that 100 
years ago, my wife, my mom, and my daughters would not have been able 
to vote. I can't even process that 100 years ago, my wife, my mom, and 
my daughters would not have been allowed to vote in America. What were 
we thinking as Americans that we did that?
  I am amazed that there was a time in America not that long ago where 
if you were of Japanese descent, they rounded you up, put you in camps, 
and held you, as an American citizen, just because you were of Japanese 
descent. I can't even process the fact that we did that as Americans.
  I cannot believe there was a time in America where we looked at 
African Americans and said: That is three-fifths of a man. I cannot 
even process that was in our law, that we declared a human being three-
fifths of a person.
  I am so grateful that we no longer round up people because they are 
of Japanese descent, that we allow women to vote, and that we consider 
all people equal. I am so grateful that time has passed. I long for the 
day, which I believe is coming, that we as a nation look back and say: 
What were we thinking that we allowed children to live or die based on 
our convenience? And if a child was inconvenient, we just killed them 
or we set them on the table and allowed them to slowly die from 
exposure because they were inconvenient in the moment. There will be a 
day when we will look back on this season in American history and we 
will say: What were we thinking that we considered some children more 
valuable than others, that we considered some lives worth living and 
some to just be thrown away?
  What is your line? When is a life worth protecting? When does life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness actually apply to you in America? 
I wish it was conception or at least when they can experience pain or 
at least when they are fully born, but this body has not yet found the 
moment when we can agree that life is valuable. I long for the day that 
we do.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                           Election Security

  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Madam President, I rise today to once again call upon 
the Senate to take immediate and urgent action to prevent Russia or any 
other foreign power from interfering in our 2020 elections. Since the 
last time I came to the Senate floor to talk about this issue, it has 
become only more urgent. The clock is ticking, and each day that goes 
by without the Senate taking action, this body becomes more complicit 
in the hijacking of our democracy by Vladimir Putin or other foreign 
powers that try to interfere in our elections.
  Just in the last week, we have seen significant new developments. We 
know that the intelligence community briefed the House Intelligence 
Committee about ongoing Russian interference in our current elections.
  We also know that upon learning about that briefing, upon hearing 
that the intelligence community was doing its job in keeping Congress 
informed about election interference, President Trump erupted upon 
hearing the news. He did not want the House of Representatives to know 
what the Russians were up to.
  We know that soon after that briefing, President Trump 
unceremoniously fired his Acting Director of National Security, Joseph 
Maguire, who is a military veteran and a career public servant of great 
integrity. All of that, we know. And we know that President Trump 
replaced Mr. Maguire with an Acting Director who has no prior 
experience in the intelligence community and whose only qualification 
appears to be to tell President Trump what President Trump wants to 
hear when it comes to intelligence information or other matters.
  None of us should be surprised to learn that the Russians are 
interfering again in our elections. They did it in 2016. That was the 
unanimous verdict of all our U.S. intelligence agencies. In fact, that 
was the verdict by the head of agencies who had been appointed by 
President Trump. That was also the bipartisan finding of the Senate 
Intelligence Committee. They found that there was some level of Russian 
interference in the 2016 elections in every State in the country, all 
50 States. It was also the well-documented conclusion in the Muller 
report that brought a number of indictments against Russian operatives 
of the GRU.
  Just last November, the leaders of the intelligence agencies--again, 
leaders appointed by the current President--all warned the Congress and 
the American people that the Russians and other foreign powers would 
seek to interfere in our elections in 2020. Those agencies included the 
heads of the NSA, the CRA, the FBI, the DNI, and others. Last November, 
all of them warned us about expected Russian interference in our 
elections. So it really should be no surprise that we learned last week 
of a briefing in the House where the intelligence community said: We 
told you so.
  We have determined that the Russians are interfering right now in the 
ongoing 2020 elections. That shouldn't be surprising. What is 
surprising and what is shocking is that the Congress has done virtually 
nothing to prevent it. Think about that. We were warned in 2016. We 
have been warned repeatedly since then that the Russians are going to 
interfere in our 2020 elections. We now have a briefing about ongoing 
interference and still nothing. What does the President do in response 
to that information? He fires the head of the intelligence community. 
He fires him because he doesn't want him to tell Congress what the 
Russians are doing.
  Just last month, in February, the Senate Intelligence Committee 
issued another report. It was another bipartisan report. What they did 
was they went back to look at what happened in

[[Page S1140]]

the 2016 elections--specifically in the lead-up to the 2016 elections--
and asked themselves the question: Why, when we learned that there was 
some Russian interference, did we not notify and alert the country?
  Their findings were interesting. They found that there were various 
political reasons. People had concerns about making that information 
public. In fact, the Republican leader, the majority leader here, was 
one of those who said: No, we should not inform the American people 
about that interference.
  The Senate Intelligence Committee drew lessons from that, saying: We 
shouldn't be caught once again unprepared. That is what they said in 
the report just last month, and now we are sitting here today with the 
intelligence community telling us the Russians are interfering right 
now as we speak, and we are doing nothing about it. Our democracy is 
under attack, and we are just pretending things are going on as normal. 
You would think we would all agree that when our democracy is under 
attack, we should unify immediately and take every action necessary to 
prevent that.
  What could and should we do?
  We should harden our election systems. We should make sure that 
voting systems around the country are harder to hack. We should make 
sure that voter registration information is harder to hack, and we have 
dedicated some additional resources to that. We haven't done enough, 
but we have taken some small steps in that direction, as we should.
  This is a situation in which the best defense is a good offense, and 
as long as Vladimir Putin and the Russians don't pay any price at all 
for interfering in our elections, it should be no surprise that they 
are going to keep on doing it. It is cost-free to them. In fact, they 
are gaining major benefits, and we see them around the country. They 
are succeeding in helping to divide Americans against one another. They 
are succeeding in undermining public confidence in the democratic 
system. That is exactly what Vladimir Putin wants to do here in the 
United States and among our allies in Europe and elsewhere around the 
world.
  What should we do about it?
  After we learned of what happened in 2016, Senator Rubio and I 
introduced a bipartisan bill. It is called the DETER Act. In addition 
to Senator Rubio and me, we have Republican and Democratic cosponsors.
  What does the bill do?
  It is pretty straightforward. It says to Vladimir Putin and other 
foreign powers: If we catch you interfering in a future election, you 
will pay a price. That price will be immediate, and it will be severe. 
So, if you are thinking about what benefits you might gain from 
interfering in an American election, you will know there will also be a 
big price to pay.
  That is the legislation that Senator Rubio and I introduced back in 
2017. It has not gotten a vote here in the U.S. Senate. It has not 
gotten it. It didn't have a vote in the last Congress, so we 
reintroduced it in this Congress.
  Now, last fall, when we were taking up the National Defense 
Authorization Act, the NDAA, the Senate agreed that part of our 
national defense meant defending our democracy and part of our 
defending our democracy meant defending the integrity of our elections. 
So we unanimously, by a voice vote here in the Senate, said that the 
Defense authorization bill should include a provision like the DETER 
Act, that it should include a provision that says to the Russians and 
other foreign powers: If we catch you interfering in an election, there 
will be a severe price to pay.
  When I talk about a severe price, I mean sanctions on their 
economies, sanctions on their major banks, sanctions on the energy 
sectors--real economic pain, not imposing sanctions on a few oligarchs, 
but real pain. That is what the Senate said we should do as part of the 
NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act.
  Guess what happened?
  When the conferees--when the negotiators--went behind closed doors, 
the White House essentially told the Senate conferees: Huh-uh, we don't 
want you adopting these important protections--protections to defend 
the integrity of our democracy.
  So, despite that unanimous Senate vote, it just disappeared in the 
middle of the night from the negotiations over the Defense 
authorization bill.
  What do we do?
  The clock is ticking, and it is time for the Senate to do now what it 
said it wanted to do when we unanimously passed that motion to instruct 
the conferees to pass something like the DETER Act as part of the 
Defense bill, and we are, right now, engaged in ongoing discussions 
with the chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs 
Committee to try to finally get this bill--this bipartisan bill--out of 
the U.S. Senate. I hope we make progress because what appears to be the 
situation is that the White House is essentially putting up a massive 
roadblock to progress on this matter.
  It is not our job in the U.S. Senate to simply do the bidding of this 
President or of any other President. It is the duty of this Senate to 
protect our democracy against what we know is an ongoing attack on the 
integrity of our elections.
  That is why I am here on the floor right now, because we just got the 
news last week that everything we had been warned about in terms of 
expected Russian interference in our 2020 elections is coming true. So 
we have a missile aimed at the integrity of our elections, and the 
Senate is doing nothing about it. It is unbelievable and grossly 
negligent to know, in realtime, that our elections are being undermined 
and to take no action.
  I just want to say to my colleagues that, if we don't move forward on 
the bipartisan DETER Act in the coming days and make progress in the 
coming days, I will be back here on the Senate floor next week, and I 
will ask for unanimous consent to bring it up. If Senators want to come 
down here in the light of day and say no--no to bipartisan legislation 
that protects our democracy--they can do that, but we are going to keep 
at this, and with every day that goes by, we learn more about what is 
happening now.
  I close with what I said before: We should not be surprised that 
Vladimir Putin is interfering in our elections. He did it in 2016, and 
we have been told ever since then that he will do it again. What is 
surprising and shocking and grossly negligent is that this body has not 
taken action to date to protect our democratic process. We are going to 
keep fighting until we get that done.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Would the Senator accept a question?
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Yes, I would be delighted to entertain a question.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, just for the reference of everyone, 
I believe the majority leader is going to come in for his closing 
script. When he does, that will end whatever little colloquy we will 
have had here, and I will then do my ``Time to Wake Up'' speech.
  In the time that it takes the majority leader to get here, I am 
interested in hearing the Senator from Maryland say that the White 
House--our White House--the President of the United States--is a 
massive roadblock to protecting the integrity of our upcoming election 
from foreign interference. How does that make sense? Why would it be an 
American President who doesn't want to defend the integrity of an 
American election from foreign interference?
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I thank the Senator from Rhode Island for the 
question.
  All I can say is we have seen a pattern from this President. We saw 
this President, President Trump, in Helsinki a few years ago, standing 
next to Vladimir Putin, and our President was the one who threw our 
intelligence community under the bus. He said he trusted Vladimir Putin 
when Putin told him, Don't worry, President Trump. We didn't interfere 
in your elections.
  President Trump said: OK. I think President Putin may be right about 
our intelligence community.

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. He did say it very strongly.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. He did, and we have seen that pattern over and over 
again.
  We just learned of this briefing that took place in the House of 
Representatives this week. The response from President Trump was not, 
Oh, my goodness. Let's pass this legislation. It was to fire the guy 
who was in charge of the intelligence community.

[[Page S1141]]

  So what do you think?
  It is a mystery to all of us as to why the President is taking this 
action other than the fact that, of course, he did call on Russia in 
the last election and welcomed its support. We all saw him on national 
television when he did that.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Yes.
  In fact, even the Mueller report showed that there was considerable 
Russian activity and support in the election that made Donald Trump our 
President. They couldn't prove an ongoing conspiracy between the Trump 
campaign and the Russian election interference effort, but they 
confirmed that there was a Russian election interference effort. If I 
recall correctly, they confirmed that the Trump campaign was witting of 
it, just not conspiring with it, just not directly engaged with it.
  So I don't know. Perhaps it is just the hope that, perhaps, he will 
get elected again with foreign interference and that he doesn't want to 
close off that option, but it is a little bit odd for the President of 
the United States not to take the protecting of the security of the 
American election more seriously.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I am glad Senator Whitehouse made that distinction 
with respect to the Mueller report.
  It is true that they did not find a criminal conspiracy, meaning they 
did not find some agreement between the Trump campaign and the Russians 
to interfere, but they found plenty of evidence of the Trump campaign's 
welcoming the intervention from the Russians.
  Of course, we have more recently seen President Trump spreading the 
conspiracy theories that were launched by Vladimir Putin that it was 
not the Russians who interfered in the 2016 elections: Oh, my God. It 
was the Ukrainians who interfered in the 2016 elections.
  There is this famous videotape now of Vladimir Putin's saying: Thank 
God, they are not blaming the Russians anymore. They are blaming the 
Ukrainians.
  Translation: Thank God our propaganda is working, and even the 
President of the United States and some Members of the House of 
Representatives are parroting our conspiracy theory, the ones that we 
cooked up.
  It is really alarming that a foreign government--someone like 
Vladimir Putin--is so successful in spreading its misinformation within 
our system.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I appreciate the concern of the Senator from Maryland 
on this, and I wish him success with his legislation.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I thank the Senator for his questions.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.


                             Climate Change

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I come to again raise an alarm about 
the massive carbon pollution that we are dumping into our natural world 
and to tell the stories of two ocean creatures that are suffering from 
that pollution. Now, we may mock or ignore these creatures--these 
lesser creatures so far down the food chain from us--but we are fools 
to ignore the message of what is happening to them.
  Matthew 25:41 admonishes, ``as you did it to one of the least of 
these . . . you did it to me.'' So we ought not mock and ignore these 
lesser species because they also have a lesson for us, a warning. If we 
keep up what we are doing to them, it will soon enough be we who 
suffer. As Pope Francis warned: Slap Mother Nature, and she will slap 
you back.
  Let's start, before we get to the two species, with an overview.
  First, it is not just these two species. Science writer Elizabeth 
Kolbert has warned that we have entered a sixth great extinction--the 
first and only great extinction in humans' time on the planet--and that 
this great extinction is driven by manmade pollution and climate 
change. Scientists from around the globe have just issued one of the 
most comprehensive reports ever on Earth's biodiversity, and the head 
of that panel, Sir Robert Watson, summarized its findings this way.
  I quote him here:

       The overwhelming evidence . . . presents an ominous 
     picture. The health of ecosystems on which we and all other 
     species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever. We 
     are eroding the very foundations of our economies, 
     livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life 
     worldwide.

  The legendary David Attenborough warns that we face what he calls 
``irreversible damage to the natural world and the collapse of our 
societies.''
  He says: ``It may sound frightening, but the scientific evidence is 
that if we have not taken dramatic action within the next decade, we 
could face irreversible damage to the natural world and the collapse of 
our societies.''
  In all of this, we need to remember our oceans. Oceans are warming 
and acidifying and literally suffocating ocean species as oxygen dead 
zones expand. Earth's oceans warm at the rate of multiple Hiroshima 
explosions' worth of heat per second--per second. They acidify at the 
fastest rate in at least 50 million years. They are also fouled with 
our plastic garbage and polluted by runoff from farming and stormwater. 
Our oceans' warnings are loud and clear and measurable. They are 
chronicled by fishermen and sailors and measured with thermometers, 
tide gauges, and simple pH tests that measure acidification.
  It is this acidification that takes me to these two species. The 
oceans are absorbing around 30 percent of our excess carbon dioxide 
emissions, and they do that in a chemical interaction that takes up the 
CO<inf>2</inf> but acidifies the seawater. Don't pretend there is any 
dispute about this. Acidification is a chemical phenomenon. You can 
demonstrate it in a middle school science lab. You can demonstrate it 
with your breath, an aquarium bubbler, a glass of water, and a pH 
strip. In fact, I have done so right at this desk.
  Here is the first species pictured--the tiny pteropod. It is an 
oceanic snail about the size of a small pea. It is known as the sea 
butterfly because it has adapted two butterflylike wings that can 
propel it around in the ocean.
  Acidifying waters make it harder for pteropods and a lot of other 
shelled creatures to grow their shells and develop from juveniles to 
adults. Researchers in the Pacific Northwest have reported what they 
called ``severe shell damage'' on more than half of the pteropods they 
collected from Central California to the Canadian border.
  These images show the pteropod's shell when the creature's underwater 
environment becomes more acidic--not good for pteropods. Maintaining 
their shells against that acidity requires energy--energy that would 
otherwise go into growth or reproduction. So acidification makes it 
harder for species, such as the pteropods and other shell creatures at 
the base of the oceanic food chain, to survive.
  Who cares? Who cares about the lowly, humble pteropod? Who cares 
about some stupid ocean snail? Well, for one, salmon do. Half the diet 
of some salmon species in the Pacific is pteropods. Salmon fisheries 
support coastal jobs and economies across our Pacific Northwest. 
Offshore fishing in the United States is a multibillion dollar industry 
connected to hundreds of thousands of livelihoods. If you care about 
our fisheries industry, you should care about the humble pteropod. An 
entire food chain stands on its tiny back, and we are in that food 
chain.
  Move up the food chain a little, and you find another creature facing 
peril from acidification--the Dungeness crab. You see this crustacean 
on ice in your local fish market. It is an important commercial catch 
along our west coast. In 2014, the last year the Pacific States Marine 
Fisheries Commission did a comprehensive report, the Dungeness catch 
was worth $170 million. It is Oregon's most valuable fishery, and it is 
important also for Washington State and for California, where annual 
landings run between $40 and $95 million. Up north, in 2017, Alaska's 
commercial landings of Dungeness crabs totaled more than 2.1 million 
pounds.
  Last month, marine scientists reported that acidified oceans are 
dissolving the delicate shells of Dungeness crab larvae. The acidic 
environment is not just damaging the shells but also damaging the 
larvae's mechanoreceptors, the hairlike sensory organs that crabs use 
to hear and feel and make their way around the sea. The damage to the 
crabs is bad news, but worse is that we are seeing it now. Scientists 
thought hardy Dungeness crabs wouldn't be affected by acidification for 
decades. Richard Feely, senior NOAA scientist and coauthor of the 
study, reports that these ``dissolution

[[Page S1142]]

impacts to the crab larvae . . . were not expected to occur until much 
later in this century.''
  The sentinel implications for the entire ecosystem are grave. If the 
Dungeness are feeling the effects of ocean acidification now, what 
other creatures are feeling those effects too? Another lead author of 
this study said: ``If the crabs are affected already, we really need to 
make sure we start to pay much more attention to various components of 
the food chain before it is too late.''
  These concerns about the Dungeness crab and its happening too soon 
echo what scientists actually said of early findings about the 
pteropod. Oceanographer William Peterson, who is the coauthor of an 
early study on the pteropod, said: ``We did not expect to see pteropods 
being affected to this extent in our coastal region for several 
decades.''
  So we are way ahead of schedule in terms of what scientists have 
predicted for ocean acidification outcomes for these foundational 
creatures in our ocean ecosystem. Together, the pteropod and 
the Dungeness crab send a common message, one echoed by a Rhode Island 
fishing boat captain who told me: ``Sheldon, things are getting weird 
out there.''

  And they are getting weird faster than expected. The rapid ocean 
acidification that we are measuring now and that we are causing now 
with further carbon pollution is nearly unprecedented in the geological 
record. Scientists look back to try to find historical analogs for what 
is happening. The closest historical analogs scientists can find for 
what they are seeing now in the oceans go back before humankind. There 
is no analog in human time. You have to go back before humans existed, 
back into the prehistoric record, back to the prehistoric great 
extinctions, back when marine species were wiped out and ocean 
ecosystems took millions of years to recover. That is the historical 
analog that best matches our current direction.
  In his encyclical ``Laudato Si,'' Pope Francis, who is a trained 
scientist himself, reflected on what he called ``the mysterious network 
of relations between things'' in life. In that mysterious network of 
relations between things, the pteropod and the crab larva give their 
lives to transmit food energy from the microscopic plants they eat, 
which would be of no use to us, up to the fish that consume the 
pteropod and larva--fish, which we, in turn, consume--all in that great 
mysterious network of relations between things.
  What is happening to these two species is more than just an event. It 
is a signal. It is a signal of a looming global ecological catastrophe. 
Lesser species, species that we may mock or ignore, can sometimes be 
sentinels for humans, like the legendary canaries taken down into coal 
mines. When the sentinels start to die, it is wise to pay attention.
  What happens when, in our arrogance and pride, we refuse to heed the 
warnings from creatures so humble as the pteropods or crab larvae? 
Well, remember why Jesus was so angry with the Pharisees. What was 
their sin? Their arrogance and their pride blinded them to the truth. 
The Senate, this supposedly greatest deliberative body, has blinded 
itself to the devastation fossil fuels are unleashing on our Earth's 
mysterious network. We careen recklessly into the next great 
extinction.
  Pope Francis says:

       Because of us, thousands of species will no longer give 
     glory to God by their very existence, nor convey their 
     message to us. We have no such right.

  Indeed, we have no such right.
  So I come here today to challenge us to see the damage we have done--
the damage we are doing now, today, to this mysterious network of life, 
this mysterious God-given network of life that supports us. I challenge 
us also to turn away from dark forces of corruption and greed--
specifically, the fossil fuel industry forces that have deliberately, 
on purpose, crippled our ability in Congress to stop their pollution.
  I close by challenging us to heed the message of the humble creatures 
sharing this planet with us--the least of us, who share God's creation. 
They suffer at our hands, and in their suffering they send us a 
message, a warning, that we would do well to hear.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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