We need the EPA to be defending us against the coal plants that are downwind that have dodged regulation for years.

They shouldn't both stop negotiations in Congress and then tell you that you shouldn't act until Congress has taken this up.

I was encouraged to see that the carbon pollution standards for existing power plants have been sent to OMB.

I think, frankly, that is an unfair comment when people make that because the polluting industries have basically got Congress locked down.

I thank the Senator from Mississippi and the two Senators from Alaska for participating in this bipartisan effort. Let me conclude by reading something that Chris Lischewski, who is the CEO and President of Bumble Bee Foods, wrote to me…

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider Calendar Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 4, treaty document Nos. 112-4, 113-1, 113-2, 113-3, en bloc; that the treaties be considered as having advanced through the various…

I thank the Presiding Officer. If there is no further business regarding these treaties, I yield the floor. ____________________

I ask for a division vote on each of the resolutions of ratification. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. A division vote has been requested. On treaty document No. 112-4, Senators in favor of the resolution of…

It appears that we will shortly be able to do that. This is a happy coincidence in which four Senators in bipartisan fashion have come to the floor to support action on four treaties that will help protect our fishing industry, and it…

thank you very much. Pirate Fishing Mr. President, we are coming to the floor today because the four of us serve as the cochairs of the Senate Oceans Caucus. I know the Presiding Officer from Delaware has a keen interest in oceans issues…

I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak and that Senators Murkowski, Begich, and Wicker be allowed to join me in a colloquy as they come to the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

I rise on behalf of my colleagues, Senators Harkin, Alexander, Casey and Isakson to submit the following statement for the Record. On October 30, 2013, the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee unanimously reported the…

I am on the floor for the 63rd consecutive week we have been in session to ask my colleagues to finally wake up to the threat of climate change. The evidence mounts of unprecedented and dangerous changes, from the latest Intergovernmental…

And then similarly, in Figure 6, there is a cost- benefit curve on the difference between an optimal climate policy cost and benefit...

And we are not exactly certain how this unprecedented change to our atmosphere and oceans is going to work out entirely, are we?

I do not think we do very well in government anywhere is the prototyping function.

We run the most disgracefully wasteful health care system in the world, probably by a factor of 50 percent, maybe more.

you do not end up with a net-zero benefit to the economy. You end up with a positive for the economy because of how you have shifted the tax burden.

Well, thank you very much. I am afraid in the same way that concern about the debt seems to vanish in front of the tax benefits for special interests, concern about properly operating markets is going to vanish in the face of the subsidies…

This has been a very useful discussion. I thank the Chairman and the Ranking Member for holding it.

You might actually find value in it as a screener of really bad ideas that nobody would put money behind.

We also tax work, income, earnings.

Did you mean to imply that, or am I reading that wrong?

Do you agree that there is at least a moral choice being made when we discount harm to future--there is something selfish about discounting that because we are not going to be around for it.

the social cost of these environmental externalities--carbon--are very, very large.