Chapter Nine

The Crash, Leaders, Sexual Harassment 2.0, and the Sudden Partisanship of the Environment

In late September 2008, I was spending a weekend at home, when my phone rang.

“Barbara! It’s Harry Reid.”

It was unusual for Harry to call me on the weekend, but then he went on.

“I’m on the line with about thirty Democratic senators—everyone I could reach,” he said. “We have a crisis on our hands. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson asked for this emergency call and Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke is also on the line.”

It was less than two months before the presidential election, at the climax of the campaign between Barack Obama and John McCain. Hank Paulson sounded like he was nearly hysterical. He told us in a quick, tense narrative that our economy was “on the brink of failure” and the housing crisis had caused all the problems.

“The banks have been issuing new kinds of derivative securities backed by mortgages,” he said, “and some of these mortgages turned out to be pretty shaky. Not only that,” he went on, “the new securities don’t have just one mortgage behind them, but slices and dices of a whole bunch of mortgages.” He talked about “credit default swaps” and “collateralized debt obligations” and a few other terms that were new for most of us on the call. I don’t remember all the questions the senators asked, but I could tell everyone was in shock. Someone wondered aloud, “How could we be sitting on a devastating economic earthquake when just a few weeks ago President Bush said the economy was on solid ground?”

I asked whether taxpayers would ever be repaid by Wall Street and the big banks. “Is this a total giveaway?” I said. Bernanke said we would hold papers, become partners with all these firms, and yes, taxpayers would be made whole when we “get out of this mess.” I was skeptical. He was right, as it turns out.

We pressed for the bottom line. Paulson wanted close to one trillion dollars in taxpayer money to bail out the banks, and as far as we could tell, he wasn’t suggesting any regulatory reform nor one idea of holding anyone accountable.

Those of us on the call knew we had to act, but we also agreed not to give a blank check to an administration that caused all these problems in the first place by turning a blind eye to Wall Street and the greed and excesses they exhibited. On that call it was clear that we Democrats would insist on better oversight and regulation if we were going to bail out the banks. You could hear it in our voices—tense verging on angry.

On October 3, 2008, one month before the presidential election, we passed the bailout bill. We molded it from its original incarnation to be far more balanced—we included greater FDIC protections for bank depositors which, as I said on the Senate floor, was “crucial to deterring an epidemic of bank closures—something that was at the heart of the Great Depression.”

Supporting this bill was not pleasant for me. That’s an understatement. My gut told me we had to pass it to save the economy from total collapse, unfreeze credit, and restore confidence. But my heart kept reminding me that those reckless, selfish Wall Street players should just sink.

The problem was if we didn’t act everyone would sink.

It didn’t help that in my mind was a constant replay of the secretary of the treasury, Hank Paulson, standing just two feet in front of me at an urgent meeting answering questions from nervous senators. I raised my hand. “Mr. Secretary, can you explain in simple terms what a credit default swap is?” He looked down, placed both his hands at the sides of his head and said quietly, but emphatically, “Not now!” Not a confidence builder.

We cut $300 billion from the package and then added $16 billion in incentives for renewable energy business and billions more for tax relief for businesses and individuals, since, as I pointed out, we’d “lost 84,000 jobs in August alone.”

The guts of the bill loaned $115 billion to banks by having the government purchase their preferred stock. We attached needed oversight and included help for homeowners facing foreclosure by requiring the treasury to both guarantee their loans and assist them in adjusting mortgage terms through a new program. We simply had to do whatever we could to stop the foreclosures and the crash in the housing market.

An oversight committee was set up to review transfers, purchases, and sale of mortgages. We needed to make sure that the terms of mortgages were fair and the lender was capable. The committee was comprised of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and leaders of the SEC and other agencies.

We allowed the treasury to negotiate a government equity stake in the companies that received assistance. We added limits on executive compensation of rescued firms who could no longer deduct as an expense any executive compensation above half a million dollars, a common practice.

Most if not all economists believed the bill was necessary because a record $140 billion had already been pulled out of money market accounts by worried investors moving funds to U.S. treasuries. That started the credit freeze, and without the ability to raise capital, many firms were in danger of going bankrupt, as had Lehman Brothers. The credit freeze was a disaster for most businesses and for state governments as well.

California’s governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, weighed in heavily, as well as then State Treasurer Bill Lockyer, to say that without a bill California was sinking. They called me in a panic, telling me that they couldn’t even borrow overnight funds to keep the state government going.

The entire $700 billion was never spent on the bank bailout; $350 billion was lent out in 2008, and when Obama became president, he used the remainder of the funds toward his economic stimulus package. At the end of the day the financial crisis was averted, but as I said at the time in a speech on the Senate floor, “We must never forget why it was caused.”

I blamed deregulation and the tearing down of the firewalls that had separated various financial institution activities that used to protect mortgage lenders and savers. The destruction of those regulations allowed many opportunistic bankers to become gamblers with depositors’ money. My legislation to ban future bailouts of Wall Street firms passed as the very first amendment. I was proud of that, because I believed that if “too big to fail” became the common belief, then the gambling by these large financial banks would never end.

“I hope this package will do what is needed to restore trust in the short term,” I went on, “but in the long term we need regulatory reform and change that will bring us job-producing investments in America, not in foreign lands.” And then came my refrain for all those years: “Remember, ten billion a month is going to Iraq. We need those dollars here at home.”

After the bailout bill, it was time to turn to the stimulus package.

About two weeks after Obama was inaugurated, I went to the Senate floor to talk about how a thousand people showed up in Florida for thirty-five firefighter jobs.

“I want to help the middle class and the working poor, the backbone of America,” I said, “because without that, we have nothing. We’re in a deepening economic crisis in my home state of California where the unemployment rate is 9.3 percent. We all know California is trendsetting, but this is one trend I hope the rest of America will not follow. But, by God, if we do nothing, if we don’t embrace the bipartisan package, which I know is not perfect—but if we do nothing, in my view that would be a hostile act. Not a passive act, because to do nothing endorses the status quo and the status quo includes 2,589,000 good-paying jobs America lost just in 2008.”

When the Republicans tried to stop the bill, we overcame their filibuster with the necessary sixty votes and got the job done. The spending package, called the “stimulus,” passed by a hair and was signed by President Obama on February 17, 2009. We needed it desperately to put people to work, because that month more than 200,000 jobs were lost. It was a time of high anxiety as we debated. Jobs were bleeding away and we desperately needed a tourniquet.

Looking back on the bank bailout and the $800 billion stimulus bill, I realize what a delicate and frightening time we lived through. But we stepped up and we avoided Armageddon. The great recession lost us more than eight million jobs and it was an arduous climb back. I give a lot of credit to President Obama and I think history will bear me out. We finally got those jobs back; it started with the bailout bill and continued with the successful stimulus package known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Most Republicans vilified both of these bills, but they were wrong.

On July 21, 2010, President Obama signed the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and there were finally some reforms on the books. One of best was the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This was the idea of Elizabeth Warren, a professor at Harvard Law School. Consequently the Republicans vowed to block her nomination to head the agency, so President Obama appointed Richard Cordray instead.

Being mindlessly rejected in this kind of political warfare was shocking to Elizabeth, and to a lot of us, but this turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I called her and urged her to run for the Senate in Massachusetts against the incumbent, Republican Scott Brown.

“Don’t get mad, get even,” I said.

A hackneyed phrase, but perfect for the occasion. Elizabeth ran, she won, and she’s continued to be a fierce defender of the middle class. I love the passion she’s brought to the Senate.

But the economic crisis was only part of the three-legged big mess Bush left us. The other elephants in the room were the two wars he put on the credit card: the first in Afghanistan, the second in Iraq.

On February 27, 2009, just one month after his inauguration, President Obama announced that “by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end.” Consequently, by August 19, 2010, the last combat brigade exited Iraq. What remained were troops to train Iraqi forces and a counterterrorism mission. I could breathe easier, even though I knew from the start that the war’s supporters had unleashed a nightmare of sectarian civil war and terror on the region that is still playing out.

Leaders in the Congress have such a critical role. While their first responsibility is to their membership, if they’re in the same party as the president, they also have an obligation to work well with the White House. This isn’t always easy and sometimes it’s near impossible.

Since I went to Congress in 1982, I’ve been led by, among others, two Toms (Foley and Daschle), two Richards (Gephardt and Durbin), and one Harry. Other Democratic leaders I have served with include Jim Wright and George Mitchell.

Harry Reid in particular is perhaps the least understood and most underappreciated leader with whom I’ve ever worked.

Harry Mason Reid was born in Searchlight, Nevada, on December 2, 1939, which makes him about a year older than I am. A year wiser, too, but also part of the same post-Depression, pre-war generation that came of age before the baby boomers.

To say that Harry was born poor is an understatement. He grew up in a house with no toilet, telephone, or even running water. In order to attend high school, he had to move in with relatives forty miles away. Harry told me many times about a high school coach who helped him in his athletic pursuits as a football player and a boxer.

Eventually Harry graduated not only from high school, but from Utah State and George Washington University Law School, while he worked for the U.S. Capitol Police. After his education, he returned to Nevada, became city attorney for Henderson, and was elected as an assemblyman. He served as lieutenant governor and then was the chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission from 1977 to 1981.

Reid notified the FBI when he was targeted with a bribe by a criminal element in the state. He set up a sting operation with law enforcement and the criminal activity came to an end. The story goes that Harry was wired, and became so enraged when the actual bribe became a reality in front of him that he screamed an expletive at the criminal and actually tried to physically assault him. After the mobster served six months in prison, Harry’s wife, Landra, discovered a bomb attached to one of their cars. Harry has always suspected it was connected to the bribery incident.

This tendency to use his fists started even earlier in his life. Harry met Landra Gould when he was a junior in high school and she was a sophomore. The first time he went to pick her up for a date, Landra’s father, a Jewish immigrant, vehemently opposed his daughter dating a man with no discernible religion who came from a truck-stop town with nothing but brothels and gambling. But Reid was so determined to go out with Landra that he and her father got into a scuffle about it. He actually punched his future father-in-law in the face, grabbed Landra, and they ran out together.

“It wasn’t the greatest beginning,” Harry said. But her parents realized that it could be something serious, even though the last few years of courting were a difficult time.

Harry and Landra eloped during college, and finally her parents came around to accepting him.

“They said, ‘We did everything we could to stop the two of you… now we’re going to do everything we can to make your lives a success.’”

Harry and Landra decided to convert to Mormonism, but always kept a mezuzah on the door of their home, Harry told CNN in March of 2015, and until Landra’s parents died, they celebrated major Jewish holidays, like Passover, as a family.

The Reids have five children, one daughter and four sons. As they raised their kids and as Harry rose through the political ranks in Nevada and in the U.S. Senate, the two have rarely been apart.

In fact, while many lawmakers like to socialize and hobnob with other powerful people, that’s the last thing that Harry ever wanted to do. He always preferred to stay home and have a quiet night with Landra. Stew and I love to be with them in those rare moments when we can entice them out to dinner, and even once to stay with us in our California desert home—where I actually cooked, to Harry’s disbelief.

Harry arrived in the House the same year I did, 1983, then left for the Senate in 1987.

Harry then succeeded Tom Daschle as the Senate minority leader in 2005; he became majority leader after the 2006 election. He’s one of only three senators—along with Alben W. Barkley and Mike Mansfield—to have served at least eight years as majority leader. After the bruising loss of the Senate majority in 2014, Harry became minority leader again.

Unless you have served in the Senate as part of a party caucus, it is almost impossible to understand what a majority leader or a minority leader does. It’s like learning about how a bill becomes a law. It seems simple, but it isn’t. I often thought about writing a book entitled How a Bill REALLY Becomes a Law but that might discourage all but a brave few from running for Congress, and we’re already having a hard enough time recruiting enthusiastic candidates.

In the simplest of terms, the majority leader in the Senate must hold his or her caucus together. That is a challenge few can master. Lyndon Johnson did it magnificently, but he had the luxury of a huge majority—more than sixty Democrats.

Regardless of the number, to keep that crowd of senators together is no small feat. During the long years of the Iraq war, Harry had to deal with both hawks and doves. During the recession, there was the tax cut crowd versus the stimulus crowd. During the environmental debates, there was the oil state crowd versus the coastal state crowd. During the gun debates, there was the gun control crowd versus the NRA crowd. During the healthcare debate, there was the public option versus the no public option crowd.

Harry had to deal with ideological splits in his own caucus—from the deep blue senators like me, to the purple state senators, to the red state senators. And not one was shy or humble.

Harry knows how to listen, and listen well. A man of so few words, he’s uninterested in small talk (unless he has a spare moment). When you call him or he calls you and the business is done, he will usually say something like “got it,” and before you can say thanks, he’s gone, and you smile at the phone because you know that when Harry says “got it,” it’s taken care of.

He’s very interested in the stories of his colleagues, because he knows how his own story shaped him. A good majority leader needs to understand what makes each of us tick, where our lines in the sand are, so that when he needs us to move on an issue and he is counting votes, he knows what is even possible. A few years ago, Harry started a tradition in the caucus lunch in which every couple of weeks a senator would tell his or her life story. I always found it fascinating because it opens up a colleague in a way that is unique and important, when you know what has touched our hearts and souls, and how and where we got our value system.

Harry Reid’s sensitivity and empathy gave him valuable insight into his fellow senators’ passions, so he knew who to call on in a crunch. Early one snowy evening in late 2009, I got a call from Harry and Chuck Schumer. They were trying to negotiate the last issue on President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly called the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare, which was stuck in the Senate, held up by a Republican filibuster.

Not one Republican was going to vote for the bill, even though it had many similarities to a 2007 Republican bill and was patterned after Republican Mitt Romney’s state healthcare plan when he was governor of Massachusetts. No matter how it was revised, the Republicans were going to vote against it, in accordance with their policy of opposing anything President Obama did. So we needed every single Democrat, all sixty, in order to invoke cloture and end a Republican filibuster.

Cloture is a Senate rule allowing a cutoff of debate in order to force a vote. In the 1939 movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, the hero, played by James Stewart, launches a twenty-four-hour, nonstop speech on the floor of the Senate to prevent a vote on a “corrupt appropriations bill.” His exhaustion pays off when the scandal is unmasked. He clearly mastered the art of the filibuster, but in more recent times, a cloture petition would have been filed, and it would have forced a vote to end debate if sixty senators so determined.

But we’d reached a stumbling block, the last holdout before we had sixty votes for cloture, and that was Ben Nelson of Nebraska. Ben had been the governor of Nebraska from 1991 to 1999, and was now its Democratic senator. But as one of the most conservative Democrats in the Senate, one who frequently voted against his party, Ben had a major problem with the ACA. Since so many Americans were going to receive subsidy payments for their health insurance, it would mean federal funds going toward insurance that covered abortion, and he was solidly anti-choice.

Harry knew my position and he knew Ben’s. He and Chuck knew how upset I would be to see those middle-class American women being denied affordable access to a legal procedure simply because they weren’t wealthy. They also knew Ben was not going to relent. If we didn’t figure this out, the fifty-year drive for near–universal health coverage would be lost.

Harry had not one vote to spare. If Ben and I couldn’t reach agreement, the bill would die. Pro-choice senators would not vote unless we fixed this to their way of thinking, and anti-choice senators were just as adamant on the other side.

It started out seeming quite hopeless. Harry and Chuck were sitting in Harry’s Capitol office looking grim and anxious. They were great negotiators, yet they couldn’t seal the deal. Chuck said he would be the go-between, passing proposals between me and Ben, because they’d established a trust even though no agreement had been reached. If Chuck believed anything I came up with could be sold to Ben, he would present it. Kind of like a mediator, a role in which he excels.

I appreciated this plan, because I wanted to focus all my energy, and the energy of my chief of staff, Laura Schiller, on coming up with idea after idea rather than taking time out to sell each one to Ben.

Every time we came up with a good idea, Chuck literally ran over with it through the underground tunnel to Ben’s office in the Hart Building, about fifteen minutes away. His staff was working there, coming up with their own ideas. Hours and hours passed. Patty Murray and I talked on the phone and her staff was also very helpful.

The problem centered around Ben’s firm belief that the federal government should not in any way pay for insurance that covers abortion. To me, of course, the whole thing seemed so wrong. Abortion is a legal procedure, so if we don’t worry about vasectomies being covered by government-subsidized insurance, or Viagra, for that matter, why discriminate against women in this way? But I realized that I couldn’t focus on disagreements. I had to solve the problem or millions of uninsured Americans would never get health insurance—and why? Because of abortion. That story was not one I wanted out there in any way, shape, or form. We simply couldn’t let health care die because of an ideological dispute among Democratic senators!

Finally, we hit on an idea that could work for everyone. “Why don’t we make sure that the amount of the premium that covers abortion is paid by the individual and not by the government subsidy?” I suggested. “In this way, women would get coverage, with the government only paying for the non-abortion part of her premium, and she can simply pay for the abortion portion out of her own pocket.”

The amount was relatively small, so my first idea was for the woman to write a separate check for the abortion coverage. We called some of my outside advisors from Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America to get their thoughts. They hated it, so eventually we figured out a way to do two transactions electronically—one for the government payment and the other for the individual’s payment for the abortion coverage.

Chuck went over and presented this latest proposal to Ben. Lo and behold, after thirteen hours straight of negotiation, Ben agreed to support the bill! Ben came down to Harry’s office, and we shook hands and actually hugged, both of us knowing that if we failed to reach agreement, the bill would have been deader than dead. I finally left the Capitol in the wee small hours of the morning, a blanket of white snow covering the streets and my Prius. I wiped the soft white stuff off the windshield and drove the six blocks to my D.C. home. I couldn’t wait to tell my family the inside story of the healthcare bill. But as it should have been, everyone was fast asleep by the time I arrived.

On December 23, 2009, the Senate had a cloture vote to end the filibuster with a vote of sixty to thirty-nine. Every one of the sixty was a Democrat. Let me be clear, nobody liked our abortion compromise—not the pro-choice side and not the anti-choice side. But people could live with it and the bill was saved. In the caucus lunch before that vote, both Ben and I sold the deal to our colleagues. It worked and the bill passed.

On March 23, 2010, Barack Obama signed the most significant reform of the United States healthcare system since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965.

Now I see the uninsured rate in California going down by more than 40 percent. I thank God that we came to that agreement. Looking back, I know that as one of the Senate’s most vocal pro-choice leaders, I had to be the one to cut the deal. The point is that Harry knows whom to call on in a crunch. He knew if I could go with this compromise, other pro-choice senators would no doubt follow, and if Ben could accept it, other anti-choice senators would follow. He was right.

People in California ask me from time to time, why is Harry the leader? He’s not great on TV. He doesn’t seem strong. He’s not charismatic or eloquent.

Harry once went on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show. He looked drawn and tired and he answered in a monotone. Harry’s not a show-biz guy. The pundits keep writing about how Harry uses unintended words and speaks so softly you have to read his lips. But let me say this: When it comes to standing up to the far right for what is right, he is right there—in the room, on the floor—when others try to slip out of it by dodging or ducking or running scared.

He doesn’t care about bad press, or reviews, or threats to destroy or defeat him. Once a colleague came up from the Republican side and said, “I hear you need more bodyguards since the healthcare act,” with a big smile on his face.

Around the Senate, it was a known fact, particularly during the Obamacare battle, that Harry received death threats. The right wing was hysterical about Obamacare, constantly saying the president’s plan featured “death panels”—groups of bureaucrats deciding whether you would get care and be saved, or be denied care and die. Utter insanity. News outlets like Fox News fanned these claims, and because Harry was leading the charge on passing Obamacare, he became a huge target of some decidedly unstable individuals.

Harry responded to the cavalier comment of his colleague and shot back: “Yes, we are getting more death threats, and you think that’s funny?”

Harry is collegial with everyone, but the glib remark by that Republican was out of line, so Harry made his point with just a few short words.

Barack Obama has had the roughest presidency since FDR. The 2008 recession, the housing crisis, two awful wars, the new threat of ISIL, huge deficits, Ebola, an inherited immigration crisis, an inherited healthcare crisis, a mean-spirited, impossible Republican congress, a country divided on race and guns… and this is just a partial list.

History will show that he handled all of this with calmness and determination that allowed our nation to land and stand on its feet.

I shudder to think about what would have happened if the Republican ticket had won with McCain as president and Palin a heartbeat away.

I also feel that the president hasn’t received enough credit for Obamacare. Millions more Americans now have the security of knowing they’re no longer one paycheck away from disaster from an unexpected illness, that they’ll no longer be punished with no insurance if they have diabetes or their child has asthma, and that they won’t find out in the dead of night that they’ve capped out on their annual health insurance limit. Thanks to Obamacare, there are no more limits or prejudices of any sort allowed.

Unfortunately, the rollout of Obamacare didn’t go smoothly. That’s a nice way to put it: it was a disaster. That’s one of the reasons why we Democrats took such a beating at the polls in the 2014 election cycle. But those technical problems were solved, and health care is on its way to becoming far less of a problem for the American people than it was. Healthcare costs are going down and hospital errors are going down too. I’m so glad I provided a necessary vote to ensure one less recurring crisis for American families. It’s an issue that will never disappear, because of the ideological fervor of Obamacare critics, but as more and more people benefit, it’s clear that the worst is over.

If I have one criticism of President Obama, it’s that, with the notable exceptions, of course, of Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry, the people he’s chosen to be around him are too taciturn. I understand that the president himself has a “no drama” approach. I admire that in so many ways, but I have always believed that those of us in office should surround ourselves with those who have a different style.

Picking Hillary Clinton as secretary of state was a very smart move. Her star power made it possible for our president to stick close to home and deal with the economic pressures of the moment. “No Drama Obama” describes our president, but I would have loved to see someone like the former governor of Vermont, Howard Dean, as head of Health and Human Services or Surgeon General. And maybe former governor of Michigan Jennifer Granholm as labor secretary. Her passion about middle-class jobs would have made a strong contribution in the debate over income inequality.

President Obama is smart, deliberative, and has the toughest, most time-consuming job on earth. I know critics say he doesn’t spend enough time with members of Congress, but I defend him mightily on this point. Not that I think spending more time wouldn’t have helped. Barack has an incredibly wise, empathic, winning personality. So, sure, the more he can meet face-to-face with both sides of the aisle, the better. But with so much on his shoulders every day, he has little time to waste. It’s crucial for him to make time and keep it real with his family and close friends—those who want nothing from him, who root for him without fail, and who will tell him if he’s off track. I am sure many would disagree that keeping time for your family and friends is more important than meeting with members of Congress. But I believe, given the unprecedented crises President Obama has faced from day one, it was necessary.

Okay, I know it sounds contradictory. On the one hand, I think members of Congress needed more schmoozing, the kind Bill Clinton did as he talked to you. It was like no one else was in the room. And when his hand was on your shoulder, you felt you were part of history. On the other hand, instead of schmoozing, I applaud President Obama for thinking, planning, strategizing—addressing how to clean up the gigantic, outrageous mess he was handed by George W. Bush. Add to all of that raising two young daughters in the challenging preteen and teen years. How well I remember what that’s like.

I should add that the president did in fact try to reach out time and time again to Republican leaders in the Senate, though with little success because, with few exceptions, they never wanted to in any way be part of his team. He probably felt that he didn’t have to do that with Democrats and that we would understand. Some did and some didn’t. But the bottom line is, President Obama is not a schmoozer. I’m not a schmoozer either. I get it. Yes, I interact constantly with colleagues, but after hours, I want to be with my family.

His historic significance is not only tied into what he’s accomplished but who he is, and the pressures of that. How difficult it must be to know that some political colleagues can’t get past the color of your skin. I have watched those colleagues oppose the president with disrespect, calling him a socialist, a foreigner, a traitor. It’s sickening. I don’t know why else they would say those things.

I remember what President Obama said when George Zimmerman was acquitted of shooting Trayvon Martin in Florida:

“When Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is, Trayvon Martin could have been me thirty-five years ago.”

By saying that, the president explained to the American people that as an African-American man, he faces challenges that other presidents before him have not.

As I think is clear by now, I know something about discrimination as a woman in politics. When I started out, people couldn’t accept the fact that I was a woman, hinting that there was something wrong with me for wanting to be in office, abandon my children, and anyway, how much could I know about finance? Racism isn’t the same as sexism, but being a Jewish girl from Brooklyn has inspired plenty of prejudice against me, too. And it’s never stopped, really. I wish I had a dollar for every time I was called “brash” or “pushy” or “overemotional.” “Overemotional,” believe it or not, is what some colleagues called me when I decided to read the names of the war dead on the Senate floor.

It’s infuriating. Someday all those prejudices will die of their own stupid weight and Barack Obama will go down as the Jackie Robinson of the presidency. One of my favorite pictures of President Obama is proudly displayed in Harry Reid’s office, just as you walk in. It’s a picture of Barack bending down so that a little African American boy can touch the president’s hair. The message is so clear to this little boy. He too, with hair like this president, can be anything he wants to be.

Someday the prejudice will all seem ridiculous, just as having to walk to the back of the bus because you look different is ridiculous. Someday, politicians like Iowa Congressman Steve King, who talk about Hispanic workers with “thighs like cantaloupes,” will be kicked out of office in a heartbeat. And someday, anyone running for office who tries to tell a woman what decisions to make about her own body will be a nonstarter.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, by their very strong personalities and talents, challenge these prejudices. They’re together in history as rivals, friends, and colleagues. I’ve been privileged to work with both of them in ways that make me proud not only of them but of our work together. About this rivalry, I wrote words to “Three Coins in a Fountain.” In part, they read:

Two stars in the Senate.

One became the President.

One would hire the other.

I hope she follows where he went.

The Senate treatment of Anita Hill played such a huge part in my election to the Senate in 1992 and the Bob Packwood case in 1995 confirmed how important it was to have strong women in Congress.

In 2011, there was another egregious case of the sexual abuse of power in the Senate. I had become chairman of the Ethics Committee in 2007. (Bob Dole was indeed prescient when he asked sarcastically during the Packwood affair: “Why don’t we turn [the policing of the Senate] over to the senator from California?”)

The story begins on June 11, 2009, when Douglas Hampton, the chief of staff for Senator John Ensign of Nebraska, had sent a letter to Megyn Kelly, a Fox News reporter, in which he said that his boss was having an affair with Hampton’s wife, Cynthia. He wrote, “The actions of Senator Ensign have ruined our lives and careers and left my family in shambles. I need justice, help and restitution for what Senator Ensign has done to me and my family.”

Fox didn’t do anything with this story at first, but somehow it was leaked to the New York Times, who, on June 16, published a report by David Herszenhorn.

Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada, admitted he had an extramarital affair with a member of his campaign staff… Mr. Ensign led the Republicans’ campaign efforts in 2008 and had been contemplating a run for president in 2012. An aide said the consensual affair took place between December 2007 and August 2008 and that the woman worked for both Mr. Ensign’s campaign operation, Ensign for Senate, as well as a conservative political action committee, Battle Born PAC, from December 2006 to May 2008. Mr. Ensign is honorary chairman of the PAC. The woman’s husband was a member of Mr. Ensign’s official Senate staff. Mr. Ensign, 51, is married and has three children. During college at Colorado State University, he became a born-again Christian and he and his wife, Darlene, were active in the Promise Keepers, an evangelical group.

Democratic majority leader Harry Reid, who is Nevada’s senior senator, issued a statement expressing concern for his fellow Nevadan.

“This is a very personal matter,” a spokesman, Jon Summers, said in a statement. “Senator Reid’s thoughts are with Senator Ensign and his family as they go through this difficult time.”

What a shock. I knew John Ensign. I had worked with him on several bills, one near and dear to my heart: an after-school programs for kids. Together we achieved the first ever federal funding for after-school programs, which for many years since has given one million children a year a chance to be safe and to continue learning in those dangerous hours after school, when some have no parents at home.

John had been very helpful in getting Republican votes on that bill and he did it by explaining that he had a very tough life until his mom remarried. If there been after-school care, he would have stayed out of trouble, he told us.

John was a doctor of veterinarian medicine who’d represented Nevada’s first congressional district based in Las Vegas for two terms in the House of Representatives in 1994 and 1996 before becoming the second senator from Nevada in 2000. He and Harry actually had a pretty good relationship, and worked frequently together on Nevada issues. John was ambitious and was planning a June 1 trip to Iowa, which some interpreted as a foray into a 2012 presidential run.

But then the story broke, and the awful truth about his behavior was revealed. It’s painful to recollect how this soap opera gradually emerged as a clear case of an egregious abuse of power by a senator over a distraught and passive female victim. It chilled the bones of all of us on the Ethics Committee. We had to take action, and fast.

In May of 2010, we sent investigators to Las Vegas, where they spent several days interviewing every witness they could find who had knowledge of Ensign’s dealings with the Hamptons. Apparently the affair had gone on longer than what we had originally estimated, from 2006 to 2008, and the details were sordid. Ensign saw Cynthia repeatedly, saying he wanted to marry her, giving her money for clothing, hotel rooms, and to pay for her therapy. After Douglas Hampton discovered the affair, John refused to give it up. Both Douglas Hampton and his wife were 100 percent reliant on the senator for their livelihoods, which essentially trapped them in a bizarre triangle.

In February 2011, we appointed a special counsel to lead the investigation. Just hours later Ensign said that his re-election campaign was increasing its fund-raising efforts. I guess he didn’t want to lose his Senate seat, and felt the need for a bigger media effort to offset the scandal. But in April, three weeks before we were scheduled to deliver our findings to the Senate, Ensign announced that he would resign his seat, effective May 3, 2011, stating that he “will not continue to subject my family, my constituents, or the Senate to any further rounds of investigation, depositions, drawn out proceedings, or especially public hearings.”

In any case, after investigating for twenty-two months, on May 12, 2011, as chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee, I told the Senate upon release of my committee’s report that the evidence was “substantial enough to warrant the consideration of expulsion” had Ensign not resigned in early May. We referred our findings to the Justice Department and the Federal Election Commission, since the Ethics Committee had no more jurisdiction in the matter.

The Ensign case disturbed me for many reasons. John was a fellow senator whom I had liked and trusted. How could he have done such awful things and gotten into such terrible trouble? It was such a twisted story of lust, power, and recklessness. And of course my sadness and compassion reached to his victims.

The whole story is in the public record because the Ethics Committee felt the people needed to know why Ensign resigned. None of the three Republicans or three Democrats on the committee wanted to hush it up in any way. In all the years I was either chair or vice chair of the committee, we’ve had total bipartisanship, of which I am extremely proud.

My Republican counterpart on the Ethics Committee was Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia. Our politics are night and day, but when it comes to the Ethics Committee we work very closely together and share the same sense of what is ethical and what is not. Our work is clear: to ensure that senators understand the critical importance of the basic rule of a senator’s behavior: Do not bring shame upon the Senate.

Meanwhile, a woman is beaten in America every nine seconds, even today. So having women in powerful positions, including as our president, is important. And protecting women is something I’ve tried to do every day of my political life. As more and more women are elected it’s grown from a lonely effort to a coalition. As more and more young men are elected, we have received help from those Senator Mikulski calls “Sir Galahads.”

This battle takes many forms. For example, the battle over a woman’s right to choose is about respect for women. It’s also about freedom of religion. That’s right. If your religion prohibits abortion, then, if you wish to follow that religion, you absolutely should. If your religion, or lack of it, doesn’t prohibit abortions, then make your decision in accordance with your beliefs. The point is, everyone should be free to follow what they believe, with their God, or their family, or their doctors. Choice means respect for an individual’s beliefs.

But somehow, this battle has intensified every year, and I think it is so unfortunate. We should find common ground and ensure that women can plan their pregnancies and then allow Americans to follow their own consciences. I don’t understand how the Republican Party can talk about preventing the government from becoming Big Brother, while it also wants to put senators in the most private moments of their constituents’ lives. But the beat will go on and on, until voters speak more clearly on the issue.

I saw life before Roe v. Wade, and it was deadly for women. Many lost their fertility as well as their lives. It’s difficult for younger women to imagine that women and doctors in America could again be treated as criminals when abortions are performed. And who will pay the ultimate price? Women.

Democratic and some Republican women have been able to fend off the worst of these assaults on women’s rights in the Senate. There were bills from the Republican House to criminalize doctors and even put grandmothers in jail if they wanted to help their granddaughters. They tried to interfere with a woman even if she sought to end a pregnancy because it might paralyze her or make her permanently infertile if the pregnancy was carried to term. There have even been Republican bills opposing birth control.

Dozens and dozens of bills have been passed by the Republican House, but women in our Senate coalition like Patty Murray, Dianne Feinstein, Maria Cantwell, and others have stopped them. Male colleagues like Frank Lautenberg and Bob Kerrey were champions for women’s rights, adding their voices to ours. They stood up to Senator Rick Santorum, for example, who acted like he knew more about giving birth than women do. Santorum would often appear on the Senate floor with diagrams of a woman giving birth. I’m not kidding. He would lecture us about what childbirth is like. This didn’t go down well with the women of the Senate.

Santorum and I went at it tooth and nail repeatedly. Once he asked if he could have a small child in the Senate gallery to hear him lecture women on giving birth. His point was that this child could have been aborted but wasn’t. The child wasn’t old enough to sit in the gallery according to longstanding Senate rules, so I objected. I also didn’t think it was such a hot idea for a five-year-old to hear Santorum intoning about “killing” and “murdering.” Nor did I think it appropriate for the little one to look at those charts of women’s private parts that Rick continually used to make his points.

Santorum had a fit and told the child’s mother to tell me she was “praying for me.” No problem. After battling with Rick, I was happy to take all the prayers I could get. One of my biggest prayers was for Santorum to lose his seat, and he did—to Bob Casey, who is pro-life but far from radical.

Santorum continually took my words out of context, telling crowds that I believe a baby is born when the baby is taken home from the hospital. Really! Since I gave birth to two premature children and kept them in the hospital for weeks, I know very well when a baby is born.

Anyway, when did he ever give birth? Rick and I did manage to work together on a couple other issues—the Syria Accountability Act and an environmental bill or two. That is amazing, considering our insane debates on choice, but such is the art of tough. You have to get over it.

The right can have a mind-boggling tin ear sometimes. For example, have you heard of “legitimate rape”?

The longtime anti-abortion activist Todd Akin was a congressman from Missouri from 2001 to 2013, and then the Republican party nominee for Senate in 2012. When a reporter from KTVI St. Louis television asked him whether women who’ve been raped and become pregnant should have the option of abortion he said:

“Well, you know… from what I understand from doctors… if it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

My colleague Claire McCaskill from Missouri, who was defending her seat against Akin, was all over it.

“No, Todd,” she told him. “Rape is rape.” And a woman who is raped can’t just tell her body not to get pregnant!

Claire demolished him and held on to her seat in a very difficult state for Democrats.

One of my favorite responses to Akin came from Karen Hughes, former advisor to George W. Bush, of all people, who wrote in Politico, “And if another Republican man says anything about rape other than it is a horrific, violent crime, I want to personally cut out his tongue. The college-age daughters of many of my friends voted for Obama because they were completely turned off by Neanderthal comments like the suggestion of ‘legitimate rape.’”

But Rick Santorum doesn’t care what Karen Hughes, or anyone else, for that matter, says. Here’s another quote from him:

“Rape victims who become pregnant should make the best of a bad situation,” he proclaimed. “Women in such a position should not get an abortion but instead welcome their ‘horrible gift from God.’ I think the right approach is to accept what God has given to you.”

Can you believe it? That is the kind of outrageous, out-of-the-mainstream thinking that I have fought against my entire career. I also realized early on that having more pro-choice men take on these anti-woman diatribes is very important. Sometimes the men feel we women want to handle it alone, but of course we really want their help.

Richard Blumenthal, the Democratic senior senator from Connecticut, is so strong on this issue and a welcome male voice in our fight for women’s health.

On another front, Congress became sharply divided in 2013 over the reauthorization of the original bipartisan 1994 Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) authored by Joe Biden and Orrin Hatch. We fought hard to include the LGBT community and Indian tribes. Harry Reid was on our side, and I give an enormous amount of credit to Patty Murray and Amy Klobuchar for laying out the strategy for enactment. There was a move to leave those communities out, but once Chairman Pat Leahy saw how determined the women were, he joined with us, and our collective toughness won the day.

Although women in Congress united, even across party lines, when it came to VAWA, it was a different story, particularly with respect to sexual assault in the military. Of course women can’t agree on everything, but here was a case where I wish we had.

This had been an ongoing problem for several years. There was the notorious Tailhook scandal of 1991, the Aberdeen scandal in 1996, and the 2003 Air Force Academy sexual assaults. Not only that, but in 2007 the New York Times reported that a significant number of women soldiers who served in Afghanistan and Iraq had screened positive for sexual trauma.

A 2012 Pentagon survey revealed that about 26,000 women and men reported cases of unwanted sexual contact, but just 3,374 of these were officially reported, and only 302 were prosecuted. And another investigation reported that only one in five females and one in fifteen men in the U.S. Air Force would actually report being assaulted if they had been.

The problem was that the issue stayed within the system itself. It never left the chain of command, leaving the military hierarchy in charge of investigating, charging, and prosecuting the case, even when the crime was committed by a senior officer whom the commander knew. Talk about a blatant conflict of interest! The victim would be blamed, harassed, and even driven out of the military, if not out of her mind. It was like the foxes guarding the henhouse, the victim being punished while the assailant usually got off with a rap on the knuckles, if that. Therefore the victims—both men and women—feared retaliation or the end to their careers if they reported their complaints. And this military culture had been going on for decades.

A 2013 Rand Corporation report states that the cost of sexual assaults in the military in 2012 alone was $3.6 billion. These criminal acts are despicable and costly for all of us.

It seemed simple to me. All you had to do was look at the small number of cases of sexual assault that were being reported in the military: 10 percent. In the civilian world it’s still too low at 50 percent. Victims told us one by one that they would not report their assailant to their commander. Clearly, change was needed so these heinous crimes are reported and then acted upon fairly.

In 2013, Kirsten Gillibrand, the junior Democratic senator from New York who’d won a special election when Hillary Clinton left the Senate to become secretary of state, was leading us in the right direction with her proposal to leave these cases to be prosecuted within the military, but putting them in the hands of legal professionals outside the chain of command. This would inject fairness, objectivity, and skill into a process that is severely broken. Kirsten, a member of the Armed Services Committee, was passionate and effective, and we became very close friends during this time.

Kirsten proposed legislation co-sponsored by Republican senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz to enact her ideas, but the bill failed to gain enough votes to break a filibuster in March 2014. We had twenty female senators serving at that time. We knew we had a fight on our hands, and we knew if all the women were on the same page we could win. Unfortunately, that was not to be.

Senator Claire McCaskill led the charge against Kirsten’s proposal. I didn’t for one minute doubt that she believed she was doing the right thing, but that doesn’t change the fact that we needed five more votes to end the filibuster and Claire led three of the twenty women senators to defect. Claire had her reasons. She had been a prosecutor and had reservations about such a dramatic reform. She didn’t like making commanders step to the sidelines. She was confident in her views. But I’ve been around long enough to know that there’s a moment in time when real change is possible, and that was it. Unfortunately, Claire’s opposition gave some of our male friends on both sides of the aisle something to hide behind and it deeply hurt our cause. We got fifty-five votes but needed sixty.

Change is hard. Very hard. You ruffle feathers, shake it up, and those who have the power hate change. There is so much resistance to real change, and yes, Claire gave the “status quo-ers” an out. After all, this issue was about protecting women and she had much credibility in that space. We did, however, get some very unusual supporters in addition to Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, like Chuck Grassley of Iowa. Kirsten and Claire, moreover, made other changes, such as making sure a woman who is attacked gets an advocate, and I had an amendment that became law to end asking irrelevant questions of a rape victim at a pretrial hearing. But we couldn’t get the prize: real change for victims.

One footnote of this story: after this battle, Kirsten and Claire teamed up to fight against rape on college campuses. They know the art of tough, which is that even after an emotional disagreement, we must come together for the good of the country.

Another footnote to this story is that on January 10, 2013, when the Senate Armed Services Committee held hearings to confirm President Obama’s nomination of Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Dr. Jo Ann Rooney to the higher position of Assistant Secretary of Defense, Senator Gillibrand asked her what she thought about taking prosecutions of sexual assault outside the chain of command.

She was totally against it.

“I believe the impact would be decisions based on evidence rather than in the interest of preserving good order and discipline,” she said.

What? Unit cohesion should trump following the evidence and getting the perpetrator? Clearly she had no idea what justice is supposed to be about. So I objected. I said no to her promotion.

The media had a field day.

Per the Associated Press in USA Today, “Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat from California, said she was shocked by what Rooney wrote, saying, ‘It sickened me.’”

They also reported that Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat from New York, was furious.

“‘The United States legal system is based on evidence, justice and due process. Why isn’t this good enough for our service members who risk everything to protect those freedoms?’ Gillibrand said, adding, ‘Jo Ann Rooney’s testimony should send chills down the spine of any member of the armed services seeking justice.’”

We fell under heavy pressure to promote Rooney. Kirsten ultimately lifted her objection, but I would not. I was lobbied up and down and inside out by the Obama administration and also by some of my Democratic colleagues on the Armed Services Committee. But how could I in good conscience support someone who didn’t understand what was real justice for sexual assault victims? I told them, including my dear colleague Carl Levin of Michigan, who was then the chairman of the Armed Services Committee—whom I had dubbed “my rabbi,” that’s how much I respected him—that I simply would not cave on this matter.

I’d never approve a nominee for Assistant Secretary of Defense who believed that unit cohesion trumped the evidence of a heinous crime. Rooney stayed where she was.

I had a dream that Republicans and I were on the same team, leading the charge for a healthy and clean environment. I dreamed that then President Nixon signed the Clean Air Act in 1974; and George Herbert Walker Bush signed the Clean Air Act Amendments in 1990 and Gerald Ford signed the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974. And I thought my dream included Senator John McCain leading the fight to put a price on carbon in order to fight climate change.

But wait. That was no dream. That was history. I was there and saw it all happening. It made me appreciate that saving the environment was an American value, not a partisan gotcha. So what a rude awakening it was for me to see this issue, one of the driving forces of my career, becoming such a lightning rod once again, and provoking some interesting right-wing blog postings, one of which called me “pathetic.” Another, Hotair.com, called my pro-environment speeches “mortifying.”

The attacks against me escalated during January of 2014, when I began to express my extreme concern about the controversial Keystone XL, a proposed pipeline that would bring a huge quantity of tar sands oil, the dirtiest sludge on the planet, from Canada to Port Arthur, Texas. I was head of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and I worried about how this tar sands oil would affect human health. There was research that showed increased cancer rates among people who lived near the oilfields in Canada, and Canadian doctors testified to this.

“Children and families in the U.S. have a right to know now—before any decision to approve the Keystone tar sands pipeline—how it would affect their health,” I told reporters on Capitol Hill. I knew from the tar sands already being shipped into our country from Canada, without the pipeline, that “misery follows the tar sands.” I knew this because community leaders from Port Arthur, Texas, where the tar sand is refined, told me about a huge increase in asthma cases and breathing problems.

I also talked with community leaders in the Midwest, where pet coke, which is the waste product from refined tar sands oil, is stored. More than once it blew around a Little League park, causing kids to run off the field, some covered in black dust. All this misery from a small amount of imported tar sands oil, while the Keystone XL, which would vastly increase imports of tar sands oil, hasn’t been built yet. I joined the coalition of environmental groups to stop that pipeline.

Politicians don’t usually live near refineries. Politicians don’t generally live where oil is being excavated or along a pipeline that can burst. Years ago communities in Michigan and Arkansas experienced bad spills from the existing pipeline carrying tar sands. It turns out they still haven’t cleaned up the spills after months and years, because they’re so difficult to clean up.

I stood with nurses and public health doctors from our country who are concerned about the health impacts of the tar sands. If the pipeline is built there will be a 45 percent increase in tar sands imports. Because far more carbon is released, it will undo a lot of the progress we have made in our fuel economy efforts, not to mention add to the woes of climate change. On November 3, 2015, the Obama administration announced its decision not to approve the pipeline. My sigh of relief could be heard for miles.

Years ago, I compared climate deniers to tobacco deniers. But I didn’t realize at the time how real that comparison is. Big Oil is using the same techniques that Big Tobacco used in their shameless and ultimately unsuccessful effort to convince people that smoking cigarettes was not really harmful to their health. Anyone with a heartbeat and a pulse knows what a dangerous campaign of lies that was.

The Union of Concerned Sciences in January of 2007 released an amazing report about this. And they included some damning quotes. This one, for instance, from the tobacco company Brown and Williamson:

“Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the body of fact that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also a means of establishing a controversy.”

Doubt? Controversy? Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? That’s exactly the plan of today’s polluters—the big oil, coal, and other industries who deny climate change. Make climate change controversial. Sow seeds of doubt, even though there is overwhelming evidence that of course climate change is here, now, a scientific reality.

Shame on the elected officials who were on that team and are now on the climate denial team. “I am not a scientist!” is their rallying cry, the latest lame excuse meant to plant doubt in the minds of the American public.

From the time the Republicans took over the House in 2011, I was forced to spend far too much time burying their anti-environmental amendments—almost one hundred of them within just two years—that would weaken toxic waste laws, clean air laws, safe drinking water laws, the Endangered Species Act, and virtually every other strong, protective environmental law.

They’ve tried to derail our landmark laws through the back door. I fear that’s their continuing plan, since they can’t possibly come straight at these laws. Clean air and water are just too popular among voters for any politician who wants to get re-elected to oppose them openly. So the big-polluter–controlled Republicans try to starve the Environmental Protection Agency, weaken enforcement, and roll back American leadership on the environment around the world in every way possible. The word they substitute for “rollback” is “reform.” The word they use to undermine the word “protection” is “regulation.” These Republicans title their anti-environmental bills in such a way that you would never know what they’re really about.

For example, the Clean Air Strong Economies Bill, S-2833, introduced in 2014 by John Thune, the Republican senior senator from South Dakota, actually freezes the EPA from improving air-quality standards until an impossible list of conditions is met. The net effect is the exact opposite of clean air.

In 2013 there was S-1006, the Preserve the Waters of the United States Act, from John Barrasso, the junior senator from Wyoming, another Republican. This one actually prohibits the EPA from protecting waters covered under the Clean Water Act. It’s hard to read this doubletalk without laughing! It’s truly a page out of George Orwell’s novel 1984, where government, Big Brother, tells people, “War is peace. Freedom is slavery” as a way to brainwash the people.

And my favorite—S-485, The Clear Skies Act of 2003 by Senator Jim Inhofe, senior Republican senator from Oklahoma, which permits increased air pollution by millions of tons over the EPA’s scientists’ recommendations and also delays enforcement of smog and soot pollution standards.

Makes you sleep better at night, right? Let me be clear here: In all my years in public life, not one person, Democrat or Republican, has ever come up to me and said: “Barbara, the air is too clean and the water is too safe.”

What used to be a bipartisan consensus issue has become a divisive partisan one. The Republican Party that used to stand for environmental protection now stands with the powerful polluter lobby, doing everything it can to please them, and to ward off harsh primary challenges for polluter-backed candidates. They’re on a mission to derail an American value that their party once championed. The travesty of Flint, Michigan’s drinking water is the poster child of Republican policy. It’s revolting!

The seeds of my motivation to be a leader on environmental protection in the United States Senate were planted the day I set foot in California for the first time in 1962. The beauty of California took my breath away. Coming from Brooklyn, which had its verdant spots—but not in my neighborhood—we used to joke that only in Brooklyn could one large, strong, and resilient tree have inspired a successful novel and movie called A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. (Just to be clear, however: Brooklyn was a wonderful place to grow up and is now “way cool.”)

Almost every book I’ve read about California history begins with a description of our unique environment—from the coast of the Pacific Ocean, to the ridge lines, to the mysterious fog that cools us down; from our bays, to our deserts, the redwood groves, the wetlands, the green and brown mountains, the lakes and rivers, the national and state parks, the snows in the northeast, to the amazing and productive farmlands and fisheries. What a state!

I never want to see that beauty destroyed. I know it is an ongoing battle. The good news is that in California respecting our environment is still a much shared value. In Washington, D.C., much less so.

One of the harshest battles I have ever had to endure involved protecting us all from harmful chemicals.

This is a story of deception, manipulation, special interest influence, and the revolving door.

It started two months after I lost the chairman’s gavel of the Environment and Public Works Committee, in January 2015, when my Republican colleague, David Vitter, sporting a 5 percent lifetime positive record on the environment, teamed up with my Democratic colleague Tom Udall to introduce the Frank Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act.

That bill, which would reform TOSCA (the Toxic Substances Control Act), was based on a bill that had been introduced by Vitter and Lautenberg just three weeks before Frank died in June 2013.

That bill had stunned me, because it had completely contradicted Frank’s incredibly fabulous record on the environment, which had included four previous bills, starting in 2005, on the same subject, that I had enthusiastically co-sponsored.

Frank’s usual health and environmental allies, including groups fighting for children’s health and against cancer, told me that the Vitter–Lautenberg bill was a disaster, worse than current law, and that was saying a lot because the current law was weaker than the palest tea.

I used my power and influence when I had the gavel to keep the Vitter–Lautenberg bill from moving forward, but now that I had lost the chairmanship and Senator Jim Inhofe had taken my place, the equation changed and the chemical companies saw an opening—and did they take it!

News articles appeared telling the world that the American Chemical Council had actually written the Vitter–Udall bill, but it didn’t seem to matter to colleagues who were being pressured to sign on and put this unpleasant battle to rest at last.

Well, the bill with a beautiful name, Frank’s name, was a shuck-and-jive. It claimed to protect our families from toxics but it actually made it impossible to ban a chemical at the federal level while preempting state action. That won it the wrath of attorneys general in eight states with strong and protective chemical laws. But still, the momentum was with the chemical companies.

Four hundred fifty health organizations vigorously opposed it: the American Nurses Association, Safer Chemicals, the Asbestos Disease Awareness Fund, children’s cancer groups, Physicians for Social Responsibility, to name a few. Still, I couldn’t stop this bill from gaining co-sponsors.

The chemical companies had spent, according to the New York Times, four million dollars rewarding their supporters in the 2014 election, and clearly they wanted a return on their investment. They pushed. Senator Lautenberg’s former staffer pushed, and Frank’s widow, Bonnie, pushed and pushed.

I found myself in hand-to-hand combat with so many on this bill, and I could tell that many colleagues in my own party were really annoyed with me. I could see it in their eyes. Some told me they couldn’t resist the bill because it was named after our beloved Frank. Bonnie was begging them over and over. Finally, one colleague who was known for her directness said: “I am telling you for your own good, you are now the most unpopular colleague in the Democratic caucus.”

I admired her for telling me the truth, but I said: “What is this, high school? I will not back down. This is a health issue. Kids are getting cancer from these chemicals.”

I proved her point with my comments. I was annoying. I got it, but I had no choice. I knew too much about this bill.

Inhofe called a hearing on the bill on March 18, 2015. It was a chance to point out its dangerous flaws. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse called out a defect he named “the death zone,” a long period of time during which no jurisdiction could stop a dangerous chemical.

The only good news part of this story has to do with a few of my colleagues and my brilliant staff director, Bettina Poirier, and her team.

After the hearing, Senators Sheldon Whitehouse, Jeff Merkley, and Cory Booker offered to help make the bill better. I was glad, because my relationship with Vitter was not conducive to negotiation, so I blessed their effort. They did a good job in improving various aspects of the bill, and I was grateful. But the bill still had many problems and the “good guy” organizations were still strongly opposed. I was ready to make the bill better still and had one bit of leverage.

You have probably heard that one senator can hold up a bill and force days of delay. I did just that. In an effort to get me to back off and allow the bill to move forward, I was finally invited to negotiate for more positive changes.

We worked overtime and won big improvements to the preemption clause with a more workable state waiver. We put in faster timelines for the EPA to assess a chemical. We preserved tort law. We made persistent biocumulative toxic chemicals that build up in your body, like asbestos, a priority. We won inclusion of a provision to give assistance to localities in which there are childhood cancer clusters as well as making it a priority to assist when chemicals get into drinking water.

Finally, the bill was no longer dangerous. It still wasn’t what it should be: the strongest protection for our families with a specific provision for the states to do even more. But it was no longer dangerous. Whew!

Now for the sad personal story that shook me to my core and was an experience I have never had in my forty years of elected life.

When Bonnie Lautenberg called to ask me to stop opposing the Vitter–Udall bill, named after her husband, I told her straight from the heart that in good conscience I could in no way support that bill and neither should she. I tried to tell her the problems with it and the groups that opposed it. She didn’t want to hear any of it and kept telling me to back off.

I told her Frank deserved a real legacy. I promised her I would work to make the bill better and worthy of him.

I asked her to trust me; I would work night and day.

She would not relent. I could sense her extreme frustration with me.

Recently, she told reporters that I had actually lobbied against the original Vitter–Lautenberg bill on the way to Frank’s funeral. I have no words to express my sadness at this.

Stew and I well remember that flight from Washington, D.C., to New York. We sat in the front of the plane reminiscing with colleagues about Frank’s amazing accomplishments and remembering his long list of jokes, too risqué to repeat here, which he told over and over, enjoying them each time as much as we did.

I lobbied no one. I did answer questions about the bill if someone asked me if they should co-sponsor it. I said:

“Be careful. Vitter has a horrible environmental record. Let’s make the bill better.”

I have given so much thought to this entire sad and discouraging episode. How did this happen?

I have only one theory, besides the power of the American Chemistry Council.

It turns out that Frank’s staff member who advised him and then Bonnie on this bill, who actually sat next to her at the March 2015 hearing, went to work for a lobbying firm that put out a notice on the web on May 7, 2014, months before the hearing on the bill.

They wrote that this staffer’s “new practice includes advising companies on legislative proposals to overhaul the Toxic Control Substances Act.”

So when this former staffer sat next to Bonnie at that March hearing, he was no objective advisor pushing for the best bill, but he was actually being paid by a company that boasts a long list of chemical companies as clients.

So if anyone ever asks you what is wrong with Washington, tell them the true story of how a bill really becomes a law.

There is an overriding, depressing story on the changing nature of being an environmentalist lawmaker: Republicans with whom I served and who were actually leaders on climate change have turned away with a vengeance. I still can’t understand it. The only explanation is that they have grown to fear the consequences of getting some powerful and rich corporations and people angry. If I am right on this, then we are in serious, serious trouble, because huge money in politics is not going away, unless there is a change in the Supreme Court or a huge majority of Democrats in Congress—both houses. In the meantime, we do nothing on such a burning issue.

Here’s where we are on the climate change debate. We have colleagues listening to 2 percent of scientists who claim there’s no such thing, instead of paying close attention to the 98 percent of scientists who have proven that there is. If we don’t add another dimension to this fight in the face of the overwhelming facts, I fear for our grandchildren. This new dimension must be overwhelming public support to match the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is a catastrophic global problem.

People are going to have to move the issue far up on their list when they consider whom they’re going to support for office. It will take massive organization to overwhelm the big money being thrown at candidates in both parties to systematically deny, downplay, or rationalize not taking action.

I’ve sat through many a hearing of the Committee on the Environment and Public Works where scientists were attacked by Republicans who were led by “Mr. Climate Change Is a Hoax,” senator, chairman of the committee, and my friend, Jim Inhofe.

I’m sure you are wondering how Jim could be my friend, but he is. He and I know that we come from different planets when it comes to climate change, and we embrace the debate. But on other issues that come before the committee, such as rebuilding our infrastructure, we work very well together, and most important, never undermine each other or use tricky parliamentary maneuvers to prevent an open discussion.

Nevertheless, Jim stands by his astonishing analysis of what he calls the hoax of climate change. Even more astonishing are Republican leaders in Congress, Boehner and McConnell, who, when confronted by the hottest August, September, and October 2014 in history, witnessing extreme weather, out-of-control wildfires, historic droughts, and contaminated drinking water in America’s heartland, all simply said the same silly thing:

“I am not a scientist.”

How true that is. So why in heaven’s name don’t they listen to the scientists who tell us how devastating it will be if we don’t change to a clean energy economy? How arrogant can they be when so many more American families will feel the pain if they do nothing about climate change?

I guess, according to them, if you are not a scientist, you don’t listen to the scientists. Got that? In particular, you don’t listen to the 98 percent of scientists who agree that climate change is happening even faster than originally predicted and is already a major disaster.

That is beyond crazy.

I can assure McConnell and Boehner that if either of them went to the doctor and were told they had large cancerous tumors and they saw the X-rays of those tumors and the results of the biopsies that showed them malignant, they wouldn’t walk out of there saying, “I don’t know, I’m not a doctor.” Yes, they might seek a second opinion, but if there was a 98 percent certainty of the diagnosis, they would take care of the problem and call anyone who would try to stop them from doing so a dangerous lunatic. And they would be right.

When I took the chairman’s gavel of the U.S. Senate’s Committee on the Environment and Public Works in 2007, it was so different. I initiated an attempt to place a price on carbon, which is the smartest way to move toward clean energy. We were doing it in California and our clean energy sector is booming with really good jobs and lower prices for consumers, who are benefiting from solar and wind power.

During my first hearing on climate change, many Republicans—including Olympia Snowe, John McCain, and Judd Gregg—either testified or put statements into the record about the need to address climate change as a scientific fact. I must have had an inkling of the trouble ahead, because I put all their testimony into a book that my Environmental and Public Works Committee printed up and put a binder around just for posterity, and also as a way to remind everyone that there once had been bipartisan agreement about the clean air crisis on our committee. Most of those Republicans who testified so eloquently are either gone from the Senate or have backed away from their views.

I led a committee trip to Greenland. You know how people say they felt the earth move? Well, we saw the glacial ice move pretty steadily as it melted, moving toward the ocean on the way to rising sea levels. Everyone was amazed. I thought I’d won over my Republican colleagues who were on that trip. But they backed away too. What they saw with their own eyes was subjugated to their campaign coffers and fears over their next election.

Does that sound harsh? It is.

Even after we had a hearing in which a brilliant call to action on climate change was made by none other than five Republicans leaders from both the Reagan and Bush administrations, the partisan divide remained. I think our witnesses were as shocked as we were. Nobody could break through the wall of resistance built brick by brick by the big, old polluting industries.

My hopes for more bipartisanship lie with Maine Independent Angus King and his Republican colleague Susan Collins. Angus has been eloquent on the threat of climate change to the lobster fisheries in Maine and Susan is working with Connecticut senator Chris Murphy to go after certain super pollutants, such as black carbon and methane, that are very potent sources of carbon. Susan is my biggest hope for greater enlightenment from the Republican Party at this point. Maybe her action will give some courage to others. I certainly hope so. And if she leads on this, history will notice.

It has been lonely to take on a lot of these battles.

Standing alone, all by yourself, isn’t a lot of fun, but there is no choice once you decide what is right. You must go forward. At least that is how it is for me.

I was one of fourteen votes against the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, which tried to make it impossible for same-sex couples to marry. I was one of thirty-three votes in favor of my own amendment to stop “Don’t ask, don’t tell” from being put in place in 1993, forcing those who were homosexual to live lives of lies in the military. In 1999 I was one of eight votes against repealing the Glass–Steagall Act, which regulated bank investments and which many feel would have prevented the worst of the Great Recession. I was one of twenty-three against the Iraq war brought to us by Bush and Cheney in 2002. I stood entirely alone in the Senate to protest the Ohio electoral vote after the 2004 election. And more recently I stood with a minority of the Senate supporting the Iran nuclear deal, in which Iran gives up its path to a nuclear weapon in exchange for relief. So far, so good on that one.

These are just a few examples, but I can tell you this: you don’t forget those lonely moments and you develop a bond with those who stand with you.

There is one time where and I was one of thirty “no” votes, however, that I’ve grown to regret. That was my vote against Ben Bernanke as Federal Reserve Bank chairman in January 2010. I was just so frustrated with the blind eye the Fed had toward the mortgage gambling that I felt I needed to vote no. I believe I was wrong on that one and told him so after he proved he would move mountains to help our country get out of the worst recession since the Great Depression, while Republicans did as little as possible on this issue in Congress. But as I look back to those times that I stood with just a few, it makes me proud because I wasn’t afraid.

I was tough.