National Sea Grant College Program Amendments Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I am pleased that it looks like we are going to be voting this afternoon on a measure that would, for the first time, give American families access to GMO information about the food they buy.

As my colleague from Kansas prepares to leave the Chamber, I just want to express my thanks to him, to his staff, to Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and her staff, and a lot of others, including members of my own staff, and the administration--especially Tom Vilsack, the Secretary of Agriculture--for the work that they and many others have done to bring us to this point in this important debate.

I was with the Aspen Institute seminar visit to Tanzania about a year ago. We got into a discussion with a lot of young African leaders and scholars, and a number of Democratic and Republican House Members and Senate Members.

The debate ended up going into an area I never expected it to go. We ended up talking about drought in Africa. We ended up talking about what is going on with climate change that exacerbates their problems with raising crops. We talked about how it might be possible for them to use genetically modified seeds to better endure and survive drought and to enable them to maybe raise some crops that would be healthier for their constituents. We ended up in an interesting debate on sound science with respect to sea level rise and climate change.

The message from our Democrats who happened to be present at that seminar was this: Our Republican friends should be guided by sound science when it comes to climate change and sea level rise. Delaware is the lowest lying State in the country. We are especially mindful of this issue.

Republicans, after we had reminded them of the need to rely on good science with respect to climate change and sea level rise, had this rejoinder for us Democrats. They said: Well, maybe if we were to agree to that, you guys--Democrats present--should agree to be guided by good science with respect to genetically modified organisms.

As it turns out, close to 98 or 99 percent of scientists around the world believe that climate change is real, sea level rise is real, and we human beings are directly contributing to that. I am told that 98 or 99 percent of the scientists on the other side of the issue with respect to genetically modified organisms have concluded--again, we have had recently, just in the last several weeks, additional confirmation of this--that most of the scientists in the world who follow this think we ought to be guided by sound science with respect to genetically modified organisms, and that food is safe for us to eat.

I don't know if this is the home stretch yet. I hope, as we come down on the debate on this important issue of genetically modified organisms and the safety of our food, that we will keep in mind the debate that took place almost a year ago on the other side of the world.

I have said to my colleagues around here any number of times that people ask me what is one of the proudest things that I have done in my life. I have discussed this issue. I don't know if the Presiding Officer remembers it. I am proudest of all of raising two--actually, three--boys who are now all grown up and off into the world on their own. My wife and I wanted to make sure they grew up healthy, sound, and strong. They had nutritious food to eat. As Governor of Delaware and chairman of the National Governors Association, I felt we did well, and I want to make sure that kids--not just my own kids but young people all over the world--and not so young people have the benefit of eating healthy and nutritious food.

I understand the calls from parents who want to know more about the food they are putting on their tables in this country and other countries as well. I believe the Stabenow-Roberts compromise for GMO labeling will help all consumers make more informed choices no matter where they live in America.

Part of our job in Congress is to ensure that our Federal regulations set forth a reasonable framework for American businesses, too, so they can grow and thrive. A week ago, our country's first human labeling law took effect in one State, Vermont, but that law regulates only food being sold within that State's lines.

Again, I call myself a recovering Governor, but as a former Governor, I know a patchwork approach to regulations that apply to interstate commerce is very problematic. Businesses want and need certain predictability. For food businesses, large and small, waiting for each State to produce its own labeling laws, its own rules, would create a haphazard and totally unmanageable regulatory landscape.

I believe it is absolutely critical that we act on the Federal level to create labeling requirements that give consumers the information they need and deserve without creating a logistical nightmare that would stifle American businesses. The question is, Can we have both or are they mutually exclusive of one another? I think we can have both.

Under the Stabenow-Roberts compromise, in the next 2 years, all foods that contain GMOs will be labeled with a QR code that sends consumers directly to the producer's Web site and outlines clear information about what is in the product that consumers are about to buy or considering buying. That means consumers in the dozens of States that haven't yet acted to require GMO labeling will have better information about their food, no matter where they buy it.

Sometimes a little common sense goes a long way, and this is a commonsense solution to an issue our constituents asked us to address. Not only am I pleased by the agreement that we have reached, but I am also pleased by the way that we got here. My wife says I am an eternal optimist--maybe too optimistic some days, but I hope the bipartisan work we have done to get here, led by Senator Stabenow and Senator Roberts, reminds our constituents that they, too, can be optimistic about the ability of Congress to get things done.

This comes on the heels of the bipartisan work done on the Toxic Substances Control Act, where Democrats and Republicans worked together with the administration to pass one of the best environmental laws that we have done maybe in decades in this country.

Finally, I would like to address some of the critics of this compromise who assert that we didn't go far enough to protect Americans from GMOs. We talk often about the overwhelming scientific data that proves our climate is changing at a troubling rate and that humans are the primary drivers of that. On GMOs, the scientific data is also overwhelming.

I mentioned earlier in my remarks that at a seminar at the African institute in Tanzania last year, both the Democrats and the Republicans exchanged ideas that both of us should be guided by sound science on GMOs or sea level rise climate change.

More recently, in May of this year, the National Academy of Sciences released an independent report that determined genetically engineered crops are just as safe to eat as conventional crops. I will say it again. In May of this year, the National Academy of Sciences released an independent report that determined genetically engineered crops are just as safe to eat as conventional crops.

More recently, more than 100 Nobel laureates sent a letter to Greenpeace, the United Nations, and governments around the world. What did the 100 Nobel laureates have to say? They urged all the folks that they wrote to end opposition to GMOs.

I think our Federal Government should take a reasonable, principled, and science-based approach to addressing the issue of GMO labeling. That is exactly what this bipartisan bill seeks to do. I believe that is what it does.

I thank our colleagues, Senators Roberts and Stabenow, and their staff for working so hard with ours and others to achieve a compromise that I think is a win for consumers, companies, and farmers. It shows the country that Congress can work together across the aisle to get things done.

Mr. President, I want to change gears here for a moment if I could.

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Mr. CARPER. I will be happy to yield.

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Mr. CARPER. Reclaiming my time--boy, I am glad I yielded. Thank you so much for those words and for the opportunity to participate in this process. Isis

Mr. President, I want to change gears to talk about another battle going on in another part of the world, and it is a battle to degrade and destroy ISIS. Recently on the Senate floor, I heard a couple of our colleagues in the majority, I believe, claim that the President, the current administration, is not doing enough to fight ISIS. However, I say to my friends--and they are my friends, they know that--that the majority are forgetting some of the key facts, and I just want to revisit that.

The truth is, they are taking the fight to ISIS, and we are making serious progress in the battle to degrade and destroy them. As I like to say, it is not time to spike the football. We are not in the end zone. Maybe we are in the red zone, but progress is being made. I want to talk a little bit about that today.

I want to start by directing my attention to this map. For folks who are trying to figure out what this map says, it says that this is Iraq, a big part of this area here is Iraq. Right down here is Iraq. Right here is Baghdad. That is Syria over here. We have Turkey up here, and Iran is over here on the other side of Iraq.

A couple of years ago, these folks in ISIS decided they were going to establish their own caliphate, if you will, a country. That would be a theocracy guided by their perverted view of Islam, not the view held by most Muslims in the world.

Islam is one of the great religions of the world. The more I learn about it, I am struck by the similarities between the faiths. I am Protestant. I am not sure what our Presiding Officer is, but we are here and are people of different faiths. Whatever your faith happens to be, almost any faith in the world--I don't care if you are Protestant, Catholic, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist; even Confucius used to embody and embrace the Golden Rule to treat other people the way you want to be treated. There is a section in the New Testament, Matthew 25, where we read about the least of us: When I was hungry, did you feed me? When I was thirsty, did you give me a drink? When I was naked, did you clothe me? When I was a stranger in your land, did you take me in? When I was sick and in prison, did you come and see me? There is a passage in the Koran that is actually very similar to what we have in the Bible, the New Testament.

Nonetheless, the folks who have this perverted view of Islam launched an effort about 2 years ago in this area that we see here--I am going to call this a salmon-colored area, and the area that is more of a green color is the area that ISIS seized control of 2 years ago, and there are other pockets around these two countries, Syria and Iraq. That is what they took over--rolled right over the Iraqis. A lot of the Iraqi military units fled and left, and the leaders did too.

We had a fight on our hands. The bad guys got within 20, 25 miles of Baghdad, and they got no further. The President of our country has helped lead the way to put together a 60-nation coalition. Some are Arab; some are Protestant or Catholic--mixed religions. A lot of different religions represent the coalition. Some are democracies; some are not. Some have a King or a Queen. It is an interesting group and a diverse group. But 60-some nations were put together.

I mentioned before that I spent a fair number of years of my life as a naval flight officer, 5 years in a hot war in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam war and another 18 years beyond that right up until the end of the Cold War. I had the opportunity to participate in missions that involved U.S. naval assets aircraft like the P-3 aircraft, which I was a flight crew member of. I worked with submarines, U.S. naval submarines with the U.S. naval ships, and it is not always easy to do that. Communications are difficult. Conditions are difficult. When we tried to introduce and work with units from other branches of other countries' military units, other naval units, it was even more difficult.

Imagine trying to put together a coalition and 60 different nations speaking different languages with different modes of operation, different aircraft, different ships, different artillery and trying to get us all to pull in the same direction to take on this battle. It has taken a while.

You know what is happening now? Here is what has happened. The land that ISIS took over 2 years ago has been cut by almost half--47 percent, almost half. While the area of Syria controlled by ISIS is a lot smaller than the land in Iraq, 20 percent of that land has been recaptured from ISIS.

Last year, Iraqi counterterrorism forces, backed by U.S. air support, scored key victories in Ramadi to the west of Baghdad, 30, 40 miles to the west of Baghdad. And then a place called Tikrit--we remember Tikrit because it is the birthplace where Saddam Hussein grew up. In the last couple of weeks, there was some more good news. Fallujah, which is right here--these three cities, Fallujah, Ramadi, and Tikrit, make up what is called the Sunni Triangle. It is where a lot of Sunnis in Iraq live. It was once controlled by ISIS, and they have now fallen to the alliance, our forces.

As we speak, Kurdish, Iraqi, Syrian democratic forces backed by U.S. Special Forces are training and making preparations to retake other key ISIS strongholds. Here is Baghdad. You go to the north, northwest, up here next to the areas controlled by the Kurds, which are part of Iraq but controlled by the Kurds, and over here--almost due west from Mosul, over here to Raqqa, which is the spiritual capital of ISIS. Those are where the fights are headed next.

For weeks American airpower has conducted scores of airstrikes on these two ISIS strongholds, Mosul and Raqqa, in order to clear the way for our Iraqi and Syrian partners on the ground. We are using F-15 and F-16 aircraft--in some cases, carrier-based and out of the Persian Gulf. We are using drones and A-10s. We are using B-52s, which are being staged in a variety of places, including Qatar and as far away as a couple of thousand miles, I am told, to conduct precision strikes all over the planet to target ISIS.

All in all, the United States and our allies have taken about 25,000 ISIS fighters off the battlefield and killed more than 120 key ISIS leaders since the beginning of this conflict. Recent reports indicate that coalition allied forces kill an ISIS leader every 3 days on average. Last week, coalition airstrikes killed the ISIS deputy minister of war and ISIL military commander in Mosul.

We haven't done it by ourselves. We have done this with a lot of partners. As I said earlier there are 60 in all. Our President, his administration, and our military folks have built an anti-ISIS coalition that consists of 60 countries, including some you expect to hear, such as the United Kingdom, Canada, France, and Germany, but, frankly, a lot you would not expect to hear about. The coalition also consists of some of Iraq's and Syria's Arab neighbors, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Egypt, just for starters. As a result of these partnerships, we have not only taken territory away from ISIS, but we have also cut off its main sources of supplies, its reinforcements, and its funding.

In recent weeks, anti-ISIS forces have surrounded a place called Manbij, Syria, which is up here, just north of Raqqa, and cut off the route through Turkey that ISIS previously used to smuggle oil, money, and move fighters. As of June 29, less than a month ago--maybe a couple of weeks ago--about 300 airstrikes against the Islamic State's oil network in Iraq and Syria conducted over the last 2 years have cut the terrorist group's oil revenues by at least half. It is estimated that ISIS now collects about $15 million each month, down from $30 million and $42 million each month at its peak. Cash reserves held by ISIS have also been hit hard. Over the past year, coalition airstrikes have destroyed $500 million and $800 million in ISIS funds--cold cash. Our partnership has helped to keep ISIS from getting reinforcement from outside of Iraq and Syria too.

The flow of foreign recruits has been dramatically reduced from a high of about 2,000 a month in 2014--coming from all around the world to joining the ISIS team--to 200 a month in June. It went from 2,000 to 200 over the course of the last year. About a year or so ago in the United States, we had 10 Americans per month leave the United States to join the ISIS folks. Last month there was about one--one per month. This has happened because people all around--and certainly people in the United States--are learning the truth about ISIS. They don't want any part of it.

In cyber space, over 125,000 pro-ISIS Twitter handles have been taken offline. For every pro-ISIS Twitter handle, there are now six anti-ISIS handles challenging ISIS's twisted ideology and criticizing its actions. That is a real game changer.

At home, the FBI is cracking down on recruits as well. Over the past 2 years, the FBI has arrested nearly 100 individuals on ISIS-related charges.

Just because we have made clear progress on these fronts, it does not mean there is not more work to be done, because there is. There is a lot more work that needs to be done, and it is not going to be done by us. It is a shared partnership and the United States helps in a lot of ways, but this is not our responsibility alone.

The recent ISIS-related attacks in Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Bangladesh show that ISIS still has the ability to mobilize its followers to carry out attacks on soft targets. The terror attack in Orlando last month serves as a reminder that disturbed and mentally imbalanced young Americans are susceptible to the twisted propaganda of ISIS.

In November, before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, renowned counterterrorism expert Peter Bergen told the committee that ``every American who's been killed by a jihadi terrorist in this country since 9/11 has been killed by an American citizen or resident.'' Think about that. Every person who has been killed by a jihadi terrorist in this country--in America--since 9/11 has been killed by an American citizen or legal resident. Think about it. The threat doesn't come from Syrian refugees or those who travel here as tourists or on the visa waiver programs. The greatest threat to our country now comes from within--from American citizens and legal residents.

When these young Americans carry out attacks in ISIS's name, much like the Orlando killer appears to have done, they help to project the image that ISIS is all-powerful and ever present.

We need to do a better job of countering ISIS's narrative here in the United States. Right now, ISIS portrays a winner's message, or at least they sought to, even though the results on the battlefield are beginning to show otherwise.

We need to make sure the truth is told about ISIS and all the defeats they are beginning to absorb. They are cowards, not heroes. They are oppressors and killers of Muslims. They imprison and enslave women. They are not protectors of Islam.

As we help the Sunni Arab world free itself from the horror and oppression of ISIS, we must also ensure that the truth about ISIS gets out in order to undermine ISIS's recruitment propaganda. Congress can strengthen our ability to fight the ISIS narrative by empowering the Department of Homeland Security to build partnerships here at home.

The Senate Homeland Security Committee passed legislation that I had worked on, along with others, that empowers the Department of Homeland Security to build partnerships with the Muslim community here and with faith leaders, civic groups, and other nonprofits. These partnerships will help to develop local solutions for countering ISIS messages and to stop the recruitment of young Americans.

I will say in conclusion that the battle to defeat ISIS is far from over, but I think we are on the right track. We need to make it clear every day that ISIS is not the winning team they present themselves to be. They might have been 2 years ago, maybe even a year ago, but not today. In fact, they are well on their way to becoming a losing team, and if we keep working hard and pulling together in the same direction with our coalition partners, they will be a losing team. All of us, Democrats and Republicans, have a role to play in making that clear to all Americans, especially those who are susceptible to ISIS's silent song. I hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will keep that in mind as we go forward.

I hope we can also work together without the partisanship of this election cycle to come up with constructive ways to help enhance the ability of this administration and our military men and women to join with the other 60 or so nations to finally defeat ISIS.

With that, as I look around the floor, I believe one of my colleagues from Oklahoma is poised to address us, and I will yield for the Senator.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

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