had been no significant warming in 18 years. Cruz voted against the Water Resources Development Act of 2013 that would have created the National Endowment for the Oceans and authorized more than $26 billion in projects to be built by the Army Corps of Engineers, at least $16 billion of which would have come from federal taxpayers. He voted against the bill because it neglected "to reduce a substantial backlog of projects, to the detriment of projects with national implications, such as the Sabine–Neches Waterway". Cruz said the Corps' responsibilities were expanded without providing adequate measures for state participation. Proponents of the bill argued that it would provide steady funding to support research and restoration projects, funded primarily by dedicating 12.5% of revenues from offshore energy development, including oil, gas, and renewable energy, through offshore lease sales and production based royalty payments, distributed through a competitive grant program. In 2017, Cruz was one of 22 senators to sign a letter addressed to Trump urging him to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. According to OpenSecrets, Cruz has received more than $2.5 million in campaign contributions from oil, gas and coal interests since 2012. He has a lifetime score of 3% on the National Environmental Scorecard of the League of Conservation Voters. Cruz is a supporter of TransCanada's Keystone XL Pipeline, and following the Republican senate whip, was a cosponsor of legislation in support of the pipeline. Federal Reserve In a 2014 opinion editorial in USA Today, Cruz wrote that auditing the Federal Reserve System was a top Republican priority in 2015 and that he supported legislation that would allow the Government Accountability Office to evaluate the Federal Reserve's monetary policy. Federal Reserve chairwoman Janet Yellen, whose confirmation Cruz tried to prevent, said in her confirmation hearing that she opposed any audit of the Federal Reserve and that "for 50 years Congress has recognized that there should be an exception to GAO ability to audit the Fed to avoid any political interference in monetary policy." Foreign affairs In 2015, Cruz voted for the USA Freedom Act, which reauthorized the USA Patriot Act but reformed some of its provisions. Cruz has been an adamant opponent of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a 2015 international nuclear agreement with Iran negotiated by the U.S. and other world powers, calling it "catastrophic" and "disastrous". In 2013, Cruz said that the U.S. had no "dog in