Economies, societies, and governance institutions around the world end quote. The pentagon also released a Climate Change adaptation road map this year, detailing the militarys plans for a changing climate. The report states in no Uncertain Terms and i quote Climate Change will affect the department of defenses ability to defend the nation, imposed immediate risks to u. S. National security. Climate change will affect the department of defenses ability to defend the nation and poses immediate risks to u. S. National security. That would seem to me to be a phrase worth listening to. The business and Financial Community also see climate risk. Former bush treasury secretary hank paulson teamed up with form er new york city mayor and business tycoon, michael bloomberg, and indeed, former republican senator Olympia Snowe and others to put together an evidencebased assessment of the risks posed by Climate Change to the United States economy. The report found that between 66 billion and 106 billion worth of existing american Coastal Property will likely be below sea level by mid century. That price tag could top 500 billion by the end of the century. 500 billion worth of property below sea level by 2100. Extreme heat they also found could reduce Labor Productivity of outdoor workers by as much as 3 by the end of the century. They found that shifting agricultural patterns could cause states in the southeast and the lower great plains and in the midwest to see a 50 to 70 loss in average annual crop yields. Its a risk wed be reckless to ignore. One bright light of 2014 has been the proposed limits on Carbon Emissions from existing coal plants announced this year by the obama administration. That new standard will not only reduce emissions, it will change the way the polluters think. Now its no longer going to be free to pollute. Now that its no longer going to be free to pollute, i suspect that some new thinking by polluters will come. And some new thinking by polluters i suspect will be followed in short order by new thinking on the other side of the aisle here in the senate. Another bright light of 2014 was the obama administrations carbon reduction agreement with china, the Worlds Largest carbon polluter now. Followed by news this weekend from lima that every nation in the world is expected to put forward a plan to rein in its Carbon Pollution. The public is with us on this, too. A recent poll released by the insurance form munich ree showed that 83 of americans believe that climate is changing. The presiding officer the senators time has expired. Mr. Whitehouse may i ask one additional minute to conclude the page in front of me. The presiding officer without objection. Mr. Whitehouse seven americans in ten say we should use more solar and wind power to battle Climate Change. An a. P. Ole poll show that half of republicans favor regulations on Carbon Dioxide emissions. Our military, our business leaders, our president , and the American People all affirmed their commitment to fending off the worst effects of Carbon Pollution. So in 2015, congress will need to step up to the plate. Ive introduced carbon fee legislation that would provide a practical tool for getting this done. By charging a fee on Carbon Pollution we can correct the market failure that lets polluters unload the cost of pollution on the rest of us and compete unfairly in energy markets. And we can use those proceeds to reduce other taxes. Most important, we can significantly reduce harmful Carbon Pollution. We just need to wake up. Maybe 2015 will be the year. I thank the senator from oklahoma for his courtesy and i yield the floor. Mr. Coburn mr. President . The presiding officer the senator from oklahoma. Mr. Coburn im coming to the floor, ill consume what im out of if i may out of our remaining time, i hope to not use it all. But i come to the floor to talk about an issue that should be very important to every american. In less than 20 months, the Social Security disability system will be bankrupt. Out of money. And that may sound like just a scare tactic, but thats what the trust Fund Trustees say. And weve known this for some time, and my colleague and myself, carl levin, who he is chairman of the permanent subcommittee on investigations and myself as ranking, spent a great deal of time oversighting Social Security disability and we issued a report that had some pretty remarkable findings in it and i thought id go through some of those findings today because i have two major concerns. Someone that those people with true disabilities are going to see in 18 months a 20 cut in what they get paid each month, and theyre barely surviving on the disability payments we give them today. The second thing is the failure of the Justice Department when handed an absolutely, totally perfect case of not prosecuting criminals that are taking advantage not only of people with disability but of people of this country. Social Security Disability insurance is an important safety net for large number of people, about 11 million in this country. In the past five years weve gone from 11 million to 14. 1 million applications for disability, some of that associated with our our recession but some with true injury. But one of the things we did, we started out very meticulous as we looked at this and i want to applaud some of the employees of the Social Security administration because they were the ones that highlighted this to me, people who worked in the Oklahoma CitySocial Security office about the lousy quality of what was happening as these were being processed. And so what we did is we went to the Social Security administration, we asked them to randomly select 300 case files, 100 each from three different geographical locations throughout the country. And that included Oklahoma County in my home state, and what we looked at was a large random number of cases, most of them drawn from decisions made by the judges the Social Security administrations 1,500 Administrative Law judges. And what we found using Social Securitys own criteria was that 25 of the cases were decided absolutely erroneously. According to their own rules and their own guidelines. But that didnt surprise the Social Security administration because theyd been looking at it all along and they knew according to their records 23 to 24 of all the cases had been being decided erroneously. So our second step was to look where we saw this abuse the highest and that was in the huntington, West VirginiaSocial Security disability hearing office. So senator levin and i set our investigators about being a total and comprehensive investigation of that office. The problems we found, they were similar to the problems we found in our prior investigation and these three other offices except much worse. The Huntington Office got our attention in part because it processed more disability cases than almost every other Social Security office in the nation. Much of that to just one attorney by the name of Eric Christopher kahn. Despite practicing in a town of only 500 people, mr. Pecan had become the third highest paid disability attorney in the entire United States. He helped thousands of people get onto the disability programs and in 2010 he received 4 million in payments from the Social Security disability program. The only other attorneys receiving more from s. S. A. Were Charles Binder of binder and binder who i noticed filed bankruptcy this week, and that was 22 million, and thomas gnash of nba nash of chicago who received 6. 33 million. What we found were reasons for serious concern. While some of what mr. Kahn did involved outright fraud which we documented and proven, at times he was simply able to exploit loopholes in Social Securitys systems. Both of those things should be a concern to congress. To ensure the cases were approved, and his attorneys attorneys fees kept flowing, mr. Khan colluded with an employee named david b. Dougherty. They had hundreds of billions in fraud leapt claims. This is a Administrative Law judge. First judge dougherty needed to ensure that mr. Kahns cases were assigned to him. Normally agency rules require cases assigned to the a. L. J. s on a row takingal bases with the oldest cases to a hearing date first. This way one no judge receives too many of one attorneys cases. Judge dougherty, however, would at times intercept mr. Kahns cases and assign them to himself. If cases would slip past him and get assigned to another attorney, another judge, judge dougherty would inappropriately go into the Computer System and move the case to his jurisdiction. The next step in the plan involved judge dougherty calling mr. Kahns office every month to let them know what kind of additional evidence he needed for each client to be able to award a disability. Judge dougherty started a monthly call by relaying the name of each person he was ready to approve. He would say whether he needed a new piece of evidence should relate to a physical or mental impairment. The list of claimants would be typed up in mr. Kahns law firm, mr. Kahns lists referred to them as the d. B. List, the dougherty list. We reviewed these list every up with of them from june 6 through 2010. Each contained as many as 52 names east timor month. In total the d. B. List contained the names of 1,823 claimants who were approved, all approved for disability benefits. After judge dougherty told mr. Kahn the kind of medical evidence he needed the next step shifted to mr. Kahn to ensure a doctor provided that evidence. Fortunately for mr. Kahn he had a crew of doctors in his pocket ready to provide what he needed. To find doctors willing to go along him he searched the internet with ones with checkered pasts. Doctors he used often had histories of malpractice, some had had multiple license revocations, in multiple states. In fact, his goto there dr. Was the subject of numerous malpractice lawsuits and even had had his medical license revoked and suspended in several states. Mr. Kahn scheduled the claimants to be seen by his doctors. The doctors spent as little as 15 minutes evaluating, quote, each claimant and sometimes saw 35 to 40 claimants a day. Mr. Kahn paid the doctors that he useed 500 for each patient they saw. The doctors would complete a form used by the agency to determine a claimants residual functional can capacity to work in any job available in the national economy. While the evis provided by the doctors were supposed to be specifically tailored to the physical or medical impairments of each client, all of mr. Kahns forms were the same. They were prefilled out. He had 15 versions of the physical form and five versions of the mental form that was just rotated among the clients. As a matter of fact, the committee determined that 97 of mr. Kahns claimants approved by judge doeherty had exactly the same functional residual functional capacity, a statistical impossibility. Could not happen. Mr. Kahn would then submit the r. F. C. s, the residual functional capacity forms, and a brief description of the claimant to judge doeherty. Judge doeherty would then approve the claim for benefits in an abbreviated determination providing that the evidence by mr. Kahn outweighed all the other evidence provided by mr. Kahn, it owtwayed all the other evidence. The evidence at times could be thousands of pages long. The plan made mr. Kahn millions. In 2010, s. S. A. Paid mr. Kahn 4 million in attorney fees, as i stated earlier, making him the third highestpaid attorney in the country. He paid out almost 2 million to the doctors that were giving inscrupulous and illadvised a and unscrupulous and illadvised and absolutely erroneous premanaged outcomes. And judge doeherty mysteriously under our subpoenas had received some 100,000 into his Bank Accounts from cash deposits during this time. But judge doeherty wasnt just approving mr. Kahns cases. In the last five years of working for the agency, judge doeherty awarded more than 2. 5 billion inspect disability benefits. He approved more cases than any other a. L. J. In the entire United States. There was another judge, judge Charlie Anders, who played a major role in approving the fraudulent claims. He allowed judge doeherty to decide to approve a high number of claims. He and judge anders enjoyed accolades and National Recognition for this. The huntington o rosfficeto have the second fastest processing time in the entire country. No wonder. They didnt actually process. It was a slam dunk. You get under judge anders, you get under judge doeherty and youve got eric kahn, you get approved, no matter whether its true or not. Mr. Anders, as the acting superior judge, did nothing to stop mr. Kahn and judge doeherty. He actually colluded with mr. Kahn to target a whistleblower from his own office. And i wont go into the details but i will submit it for the record. The second thing that i would note about judge anders is he was not truthful in his testimony before the committee under oath and that we have evidence of his lying to the committee under oath. When all of this was exposed, the agency put judge anders on paid administrative leave and filed a claim with the merit system protection board. That was in january of 2013. In 2014, mr. Anders voluntarily retired according to a decision from the merit systems protection board. The complaint the agency filed against mr. Anders charged him with conduct unbecoming an a. L. J. , engaging in an apparent conflict of interest, lack of candor and unauthorized disclosures. Despite these charges, as part of a settlement agreement, the agency agreed to refrain from pursuing any disciplinary action against anders and to provide a neutral reference to perspective employers. And he retired with his pension. So a crook retires with their pension. So no disciplinary action is taken against Charlie Anders even after he turned a blind eye for years, admitting to conspiring to retaliate against an employee, was untruthful and lied to a committee of congress under oath, nor has the department of justice attorney general, nor has the department of justice taken any action against mr. Kahn or judge doeherty. In fact, mr. Kahn continues to represent disability claimants before the Social Security administration. These two men who actively committed fraud on one of the most important Safety Net Program our government runs. We should not let the actions of these individuals go unpunished. But thats whats happening. I recently had a visit with the i. G. From the Social Security administration, mr. Ko ocarrol. At this point, the United States attorneys in West Virginia and kentucky have both recused themselves and declined to prosecute mr. Kahn. Now, i wonder what he has over them. I wonder what what it is when you have a closed case prosecutorial case that you have to do no work on and the u. S. Attorneys will not prosecute a thief of the highest order. Since both u. S. Attorneys recused themselves, mr. Ocarroll is now trying to convince the Criminal Division of the department of justice here in washington, d. C. , to take action. But to date, no charges have been filed against mr. Kahn, judge doeherty or judge anders. If they do not take action against mr. Kahn, the Justice Department is sending the message that disability fraud will go unpunished. We need to be sending the opposite message, that these types of fraudulent practices by attorneys like eric kahn must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Otherwise, the disability program, no matter how much oversight we do on it, will continue to be abused, leaving those americans that have no choice but to rely on it with less than what they expected. I would add one final statement. In working with a lot of the disaibilityof thedisability come introduced this week what we hope the congress will take up in future years is a reform to the disability program. It takes the fraud out of it, the opportunity for fraud. It takes the ability to actually hold people accountable and also gives back the dignity of those that can get back to work and uses that to help them accomplish that very goal. I yield the floor. Mr. Hatch mr. President . The presiding officer the senator from utah. Mr. Hatch i sure appreciate the distinguished senator from oklahoma and the service that hes given us over all these years. Hes one of the great senators of all time, as far as im concerned. Mr. President , i ask unanimous consent that i be permitted to give this statement, which shouldnt be much more than 15 minutes. The presiding officer without objection. Mr. Hatch mr. President , as we wind down the final days of the 113th congress, it is a good time to both reflect on the past and look toward the future. Ive been very moved as ive listened to the farewell speeches