Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. At this point, let me ask the Senator from New Hampshire a question. I have heard you say, and I believe I said a moment ago, that in the 1990s, President Clinton raised taxes, as President Obama is planning to raise taxes, but that President Clinton used it to reduce the deficit.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I wonder if I may ask the Senator from New Hampshire about this. Some people may say, with some justification: You Republicans are complaining about spending, yet in the last 8 years you participated in a lot of it yourself. How would you compare the proposed spending and proposed debt over the next 10 years in this blueprint by the Obama administration with the last 8 years?

Mr. ALEXANDER. I see the Senator from Arizona, who is a longtime member of the Senate Finance Committee and pays a lot of attention to Federal spending and is the assistant Republican leader. I wonder, Senator Kyl, as you have watched the Congress over the years, to what do you attribute this remarkable increase in spending? We heard a lot of talk last year about change, but this may be the kind of change that produces a sticker shock. It may be a little bit more change in terms of spending than a lot of Americans were expecting.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator from Arizona for his leadership and the Senator from New Hampshire for his views. This is the beginning of a discussion about a 10-year blueprint offered by our new President about the direction in which our country should go. We on the Republican side believe American families cannot afford this much new spending, this many new taxes, and this much new debt. We will be suggesting why over the next 3 or 4 weeks, and in addition to that we will be offering our vision for the future. For example, on energy, some things we agree with, such as conservation and efficiency; some things we would encourage more of, such as nuclear power for carbon-free electricity. This is the beginning of a very important debate, and the direction in which it goes will dramatically influence the future of this country and make a difference to every single family, not just today's parents but children and their children as well. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Senator Kyl, to conclude our discussion, this is the beginning of a process in the Senate in which everyone in this country can participate. We are asking that they consider: Can you afford this amount of spending, this amount of borrowing, this amount of taxes? There is a different path we could take toward the future.

Mr. ALEXANDER. It is very hard to imagine, Senator Kyl. Just to make the point we are not being personal about that, my son attended the same school that the President's daughters attend when we were here and I was Education Secretary. School vouchers may not be the solution in every rural county in America, but in the District of Columbia, 1,700 children who are low- income children have a chance to choose among private schools, their parents are delighted with the choice, and a study is coming out this spring to assess what they are learning. I do not know the motive behind this, but I do know the National Education Association has made its reputation opposing giving low-income parents the same choices that wealthy people have. That is a poor policy and one we ought not to have stuck on an appropriations bill like that. The President has shown good instincts on education. His Education Secretary is a good one. But had we had a chance to debate this in committee and to hear from them, perhaps we could have had a bipartisan agreement that we need to pay good teachers more, we need more charter schools, and we need to give parents some more choices like these District of Columbia parents. I know our time is running short. I wonder if the Senator from New Hampshire has any further thoughts about spending.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, in the midst of much talk about bipartisanship and not much to show for it, I have a nomination for an issue upon which we can work together, and that is this: review the maze of conflicting forms, FBI investigations, IRS audits, ethics requirements, and financial disclosures to make it possible for President Obama and future Presidents to put together promptly a team to help them solve big problems. This is an urgent problem today because during the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression, the man in charge of fixing the crisis, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, apparently is sitting in his office without much help, at least from any Obama Presidential appointees. According to news accounts, among the key vacant positions at the Treasury Department are the Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy; the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy; the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis; the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax, Trade, and Tariff Policy; and the Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Tax Affairs. The first choice for Deputy Secretary of the Treasury appears to have withdrawn her name from consideration. Four months after the President's election, according to TheBigMoney.com, the list of vacancies on the Treasury Department Web site shows that ``Main Treasury Building is a lonely place, conjuring up visions of Geithner signing dollar bills one by one . . . , watering the plants, and answering the phones when he's not crafting a bank rescue plan.'' Of course, there are the career employees available and at least one holdover Assistant Secretary and various czars in the White House--but even one of the czars has expressed concern about the slow pace of filling Treasury Department jobs at a critical time. Part of the problem may be attributed to the Treasury Secretary's boss, our impressive new President, who is nevertheless subject to the criticism that he is living over the store but not minding it. Presidents have many problems to solve, but no one ever suggested that the wisest course is to try to solve them all at once. There is a tradition that Washington, DC, can only do one thing well at a time. And Presidents are supposed to exclude from the White House the merely important issues so they may deal with the truly Presidential problems, which surely must not include being distracted by debates with radio talk show hosts. President Eisenhower, who knew something about leading complex organizations, said in 1952: ``I will go to Korea.'' The country relaxed and elected him, confident that the general would end the Korean war. We need for President Obama to say in Eisenhower fashion ``I will fix the banks''--and then stay home long enough to do it. Then the country might relax a little and gain some confidence that this might actually happen, which is the first step and perhaps the main step in economic recovery. But the President needs a team at Treasury to help persuade the American people that he can and will get the job done. The President has brought on himself some of the difficulty of putting together a team. In addition to having too many balls in the air at once, in my opinion, his standards for hiring sometimes seem to have the effect of disqualifying people who know something about the problem from being hired to solve the problem. But another part of the President's difficulty in filling jobs--one that has afflicted every President since Watergate--is the maze of investigations and forms that prospective senior officials must complete and the risk they run that they will be trapped and humiliated and disqualified by an unintentional and relatively harmless mistake. I voted against the nomination of Secretary Geithner because I thought it was a bad example for the man in charge of collecting the taxes not to have paid them. And I thought his excuse for not paying was not plausible. But that does not mean that we should disqualify every Presidential nominee for minor tax discrepancies that result from the complexity of our Byzantine Tax Code, a Tax Code which has reached 3.7 million words, according to a January report by the National Taxpayer Advocate, and which is badly in need of reform. I suspect very few Americans with complex tax returns can go through a multiple-year audit without finding something with which the IRS might disagree. Take the case of former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk, President Obama's nominee to be U.S. Trade Representative, who headlines report paid back taxes primarily because he failed to list as income--and then take a charitable deduction on--speaking fees that he gave away to charity. Common sense suggests, and his tax preparer thought, what Mr. Kirk did was appropriate. After all, he did not keep the money. The IRS apparently has a more convoluted rule for dealing with such things. In any event, the matter is so trivial as to be irrelevant to his suitability to be the trade nominee. Tax audits are only the beginning. There is the FBI full field investigation during which friends of the nominee are asked such questions as: Does he live beyond his means? When I was nominated for Education Secretary a few years ago, one of my friends replied to the FBI agent: Don't we all? There are Federal financial disclosures. Then there is the White House questionnaire, and, of course, the questions from the confirming Senate committee. The definition of what constitutes ``income'' on some forms is different than the definition of ``income'' on others. It is easy to make a mistake. This is not as bad as it could be. We have a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress with big majorities in both Chambers. So the nominees have gone through fairly quickly. But when the Congress is of a different party than the President, the congressional questionnaires expand and sometimes delay the nomination for more weeks. Washington, DC, has become the only place where you hire a lawyer, an accountant, and an ethics officer before you find a house and put your kid in school. The motto around here has become: ``Innocent until nominated.'' Every legal counsel to every President since Nixon would, I suspect, agree that in the name of effective government, this process needs to be changed. Most have tried to change it, but in Washington style, new regulations pile up on top of old ones, creating a more bewildering maze. So I have this suggestion--and one of the Senators to whom I want to make the suggestion is here today, the Senator from Connecticut. I suggest Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins, who are the chairman and ranking member of the committee with jurisdiction over this mess and who have a tradition of working well together, should set as a goal to clean it up by the end of the year. Invite all the former White House counsels of both parties to give their opinions. Consolidate and simplify the forms so we learn only what we need to know. To help with this, I suggest that Senators Lieberman and Collins form one of those ``gangs'' that we occasionally form in the Senate, maybe a dozen or more Senators equally divided among both parties--some from the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and some not-- in order to limit the possibility that everyone will run away from the final recommendations because they fear someone might think Senators are not interested in ethical and good government. Good government right now means fixing the banks and having the best possible team to do it. As a Washington Post editorial writer said yesterday of the President: As he convened his ``health care summit'' at the White House . . . the stock market was hitting another 12-year low, General Motors was again teetering on the brink of insolvency and the country was still waiting to hear the details of the Treasury's proposal to bail out banks. Maybe we can make this grand bargain with our new President: If you will keep your eye on the ball--in this case, fixing the banks so the economy will get moving again--we will work in a bipartisan way to make it easier for you and for future Presidents to promptly assemble a team and govern us properly.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, while the Senator from California is here, I wish to acknowledge her role in helping to create the DC voucher program for low-income children. It was not an easy vote for her. I listened to her remarks as I have before about the importance of trying new ideas in American public education. The new Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, who I think is one of the President's best-- maybe his best--appointments, believes the same thing. I look forward to working with the Senator to see what the study, which comes out this spring, says about the first few years of this program. We know parental satisfaction is high.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Yes.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator. We do agree on that. The one area with which I respectfully disagree is that this was not the bill to put on restrictions and conditions to make sure the program ends. That is the reason we have an amendment, because someone thought it was important to say that the program needs to end unless it is approved by the DC City Council which, unlike the Mayor, opposes the program. That is why we have an amendment. Unfortunately, the circumstance we have is, unless we take very quick action in the Congress, the 1,700 children who are part of this program will not be a part of it after another year. The program will shut down. It is beginning to do that now, and it will not be accepting new applications. I also regret that the amendment is being offered, but that was necessary because of the restrictions and the conditions that were placed on the scholarship program in the omnibus. But that does not change my attitude about working with the Senator from California to look to the future. Mr. President, I ask that I be notified when 9 minutes is completed.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Chair. (The further remarks of Mr. Alexander are printed in today's Record under ``Morning Business.'')

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator from Illinois, and I look forward to working with him on helping the District of Columbia, including the mayor and the superintendent in the District who would like for this to continue. The question I have is: Why is it necessary for this legislation to insist that the program end in September of 2010 and that we add the provision the city council would have to approve it if it is continued by the Congress? Usually, when we have education programs whose authorization runs out, we continue them for a while as we go through the analysis the Senator talked about, such as the Higher Education Act which took us 6 years or the Head Start Act which took us 3 or 4 years or No Child Left Behind or so many others. Why is it necessary that we even address the ending of this program in this legislation?

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator from Illinois, and would only note that Senator Lieberman is a cosponsor of the amendment we would like to have a chance to vote on. Amendment No. 607

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I wish to discuss the DC voucher program, officially the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program. This is a program that was established in 2004 to provide low-income families with scholarships to attend private schools in the District of Columbia. The legislation we are debating, unfortunately, makes it harder for that program to continue. The fiscal year 2009 omnibus legislation includes language that would end the scholarship program in September 2010, and it says we could not continue it by appropriation, which is unusual. It would also add the requirement that the DC City Council would have to approve whatever we did. That is a very unwise situation, I believe. The U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, said yesterday that poor children getting vouchers to attend private schools in the District of Columbia should be allowed to stay there. He said that to the Associated Press. I am reading from that article where it says that Secretary Duncan opposes vouchers. But he says essentially that Washington is a special case, and kids already in private schools on the public dime should be allowed to continue. To quote him directly, he said that ``I don't think it makes sense to take kids out of a school where they're happy and safe and satisfied and learning. . . . I think those kids need to stay in their school.'' I think Secretary Duncan is right. I also think--and I said this at his hearing--that Secretary Duncan is the best of the distinguished appointments President Obama has made. He can be a real help to the children in this country. I look forward to working with him. I am an original cosponsor of an amendment that Senators Ensign, Lieberman, Gregg, Voinovich, Kyl, DeMint, Brownback, and Cornyn have introduced that would solve this problem, that would remove the language from the omnibus bill that would make it harder for the DC Voucher Program to continue. I think we should also take note that DC Mayor Adrian Fenty and Chancellor Michelle Rhee, both of whom are acting courageously to try to improve the schools in the District, favor keeping the program. The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal editorial pages have all voiced support of this program since this omnibus language was introduced in the House. The DC program is being singled out. I understand this may cause some problem with some House Members who would rather see us not amend the bill that came to us, but that is our job. This is the Senate. That is the House of Representatives. If, in a great big bill that spends $410 billion, we see some things that need to be improved, we ought to have a chance to improve them. In this case, there is broad agreement with the President's Education Secretary and many others that the DC kids need this and deserve this. There are 1,700 children currently attending private schools in DC using these opportunity scholarships of up to $7,500 a year. I make this point to call attention to the DC voucher program and the importance of making certain we have a chance to amend the omnibus bill--the bill before us--so we do not make it harder for the DC voucher program to continue. If that means we have to go on into next week in order to have a sufficient number of amendments, then we should do that. I appreciate the fact that the majority leader has adopted this year, as he should, the practice that the Senate is a place that is distinguished primarily by virtually unlimited debate and virtually unlimited amendments and then we vote. So a premature conclusion to this bill before we have a chance to improve it, such as keeping the DC voucher program, I think would be unwise. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the Associated Press article, the Washington Post editorial, the Chicago Tribune editorial, and the Wall Street Journal editorial.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the majority leader. On his comments about the omnibus appropriations bill, two brief points. One is that, of course, all Senators welcome the opportunity to debate and amend the bill. Senator Byrd has argued eloquently, as the majority leader himself has, that the opportunity to debate and amend bills is an important part of what makes the Senate unique. We often tend to argue that point more eloquently when we are in the minority. Amendments and debate are what make the Senate the Senate. It gives us a chance to represent the people who send us--the people for whom we work. All of us on the minority side appreciate that this year the majority leader has--as we believe he should, but nevertheless he has-- tried to create an environment in which we can debate and amend. Obviously, amendments aren't going to always be amendments we agree with. I don't agree with all the amendments that come from our side either, but I appreciate that chance to offer amendments, and we would like to see the Senate function in a way that gives us a chance to represent the people who hire us. Second, I suspect every member of the Appropriations Committee and most Members of the Senate hope we can get back to the practice of passing our appropriations bills one by one and acting on them before the beginning of the fiscal year, which is October 1. I would hate to think how much of the taxpayers' money we must waste each year by missing that deadline, but grouping these measures together into giant ``omnibus'' bills, and by passing continuing resolutions which don't take into account the differences of opinion among members of Congress and the administration about budget priorities. I would hope we could get back to the practice of finishing our work and taking the bills one by one as we did not so long ago. I appreciate the majority leader mentioning the fact that we will be debating all week on this appropriations bill, to try and give this massive bill the scrutiny it deserves. It would have been much better if these nine appropriations bills had been enacted last year, before October 1, and we could take them into account when we voted on the stimulus bill last week. That is the way we should have been able to do that, but we weren't.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the majority leader.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I have two topics I wish to speak about this evening: One on Iraq and one on higher education. First, on Iraq and Afghanistan. President Obama on Friday told marines at Camp Lejeune and the world how the United States plans to end the war in Iraq. The President's plan turns out not to be so different than the agreement President Bush signed with Iraq just before he left office. Add Senator McCain's name to the list because on Friday he generally supported President Obama's decision. For the first time, I think it can be said we have a bipartisan consensus--and a consensus between the Congress and the President--about how to honorably and successfully conclude the war in Iraq. Ironically, this is a bipartisan consensus that comes 2 years later than it could have. Because what President Bush and President Obama and Senator McCain seemed to agree on today is also a course that is consistent with the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group headed by former Republican Secretary of State James Baker and former Democratic House Foreign Affairs Chairman Lee Hamilton. That is not just my judgment. I asked Secretary Rice, the former Secretary of State, whether the agreement President Bush signed with Iraq is generally consistent with the principles of the Iraq Study Group, and she said yes. I asked Secretary Gates, who has been Secretary of Defense both for President Bush and now for President Obama and who, for a little while, was also a member of the Iraq Study Group, whether the direction in Iraq that President Bush had agreed to go in is approximately the same as the principles recommended in December of 2006 by the Iraq Study Group, and he answered yes. Unfortunately, instead of having, for the last 2 years, a consensus between the Congress--a Democratic Congress--and the President--a Republican President--we instead made it clear to our enemy and clear to our troops that we were divided in Washington about the course of the war and that we couldn't agree on how to conclude. I don't know whether we had reached agreement earlier by, for example, adopting the legislation that Senator Salazar and I and 17 Senators offered and that about 60 Representatives offered in the House, that would have made the principles of the Iraq Study Group the course upon which the United States would embark to successfully conclude the war in Iraq--I don't know whether, if we had done that in 2007, 2 years ago, the war would have been more successful or Iraq would have been better stabilized; if troops would have come home sooner and perhaps even American lives might have been saved; or if Iraqi lives might have been saved. I don't know about that. But I do know that we put in jeopardy--by our failure to agree between the Congress and the President over the course of the war in Iraq--we put in jeopardy the ability of the American people to have the stomach to see this mission all the way through to the end, which is an essential requirement, in my view, of any military endeavor in which the United States should engage. President Bush, nevertheless, persevered, and it became, in the view of many Democrats and others, Bush's war, and it seriously damaged the Bush Presidency. It seriously divided the country. At least we can use this failure to agree, this failure to come to some consensus, as a guide about how to conduct ourselves in future conflicts, starting with the war in Afghanistan. President Obama is sending 17,000 more Americans to Afghanistan. He is doing so after only a month in office. He says, quite candidly, he hasn't yet got a strategy, approved a strategy or, in his words Friday night in his interview with Jim Lehrer, an exit strategy. I assume that also means he hasn't yet decided upon what is even more important, which is a success strategy. The lesson of Iraq and of our failure to come to some agreement over the last 2 years is that we should give our new President time and support in his efforts to develop a strategy and then we should insist--we in the Congress--that we agree with him on a strategy; and if we can't agree with the one he comes up with, that he adjust it until we can, so we as a nation can have a compelling purpose, a clear set of goals, the money to supply more than enough force to reach those goals. So our enemies and our troops can hear clearly that the American people have the stomach to see the mission in Afghanistan all the way through to the end. In other words, it is important for our country not just for the success of the Obama presidency; it is important for our country that what some called Bush's war not be followed by what others might call Obama's war. The Iraq Study Group was created by Congress in 2006. It had a remarkable group of members, including Lee Hamilton and Jim Baker who both cochaired it. Ed Meese, the former Attorney General for President Reagan, was there. Vernon Jordan was a member. Secretary Gates was a member for a while. The first President Bush's Secretary of State, Larry Eagleburger, was a member. Leon Panetta, President Clinton's Chief of Staff and now CIA Director, was there. President Clinton's Secretary of Defense was a member. Sandra Day O'Connor, former Supreme Court Justice, was a member. They spent many months and went to Iraq, and they talked to a variety of people. They tried to see if they could come to a consensus about how the U.S. could honorably conclude the war in Iraq. They were bipartisan and unanimous in their 79 recommendations, which would be boiled down to three major points. I remember being very disappointed in early 2007 when, following that, President Bush didn't take advantage of the opportunity during his State of the Union Address to embrace the report. He knew then that a majority of Americans didn't support his strategy. He knew the strategy would have a more difficult time being sustained without their support. I think all of us knew, then, if he could get Congress to agree, the American people would be more likely to agree. The President could have invited the distinguished members of the Iraq Study Group to sit in the gallery during his speech and, as Presidents do often, introduce them. The President could have said: This is not my recommendation, it is theirs. I accept it for the good of the country, and I ask the American people now to accept it. If one goes back and reads the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group report made in December 2006, here is basically what it said we should do: Get the U.S. troops out of the combat business in Iraq and into the support business in a prompt and honorable way--maybe over the course of a year, they said. General Petraeus amended that to a little longer than a year. The Iraq Study Group said reduce the number of American forces in Iraq. The Iraq Study Group said there should be a limited military presence for the longer term in Iraq, and that would signal to the rest of the Middle East to stay out of Iraq. It said it would give support to General Petraeus and his troops for a military surge to make Baghdad safer. This was before President Bush authorized the surge. It would expand diplomatic efforts to build support for Iraqi national reconciliation and sovereignty. The Iraq Study Group would recognize, as Prime Minister Blair said, that it is time for the next chapter of Iraq's history to be written by the Iraqis themselves. Democratic Senator Ken Salazar--who is now a member of the Obama administration as Interior Secretary--and I wrote legislation that would make the Iraq Study Group recommendations national policy. As I mentioned, it attracted about nine Democrats and eight Republican Senators. In the House of Representatives, there were 27 Democrats and 35 Republicans. At that time, we were having vote after vote on Iraq. Some Senators said there should be an immediate withdrawal. Others wanted victory of the kind we had in Germany and Japan. I thought the Iraq Study Group recommendations made the most sense; and, apparently, today, so does President Bush, so does President Obama, and so does Senator McCain. Now, it is fair to say each of those men I just mentioned could find something in the Iraq Study Group report with which to disagree. I would respect those disagreements. But the 17 of us in the Senate could find within that report a course to agree about, just like the Commission itself of widely varying Americans could find enough unanimously to agree about, so they could say to the troops, to the enemy, and to the world: Here is our course forward. I suggest we would have been better off if we had done that. I pointed out that President Bush would not support the report. I respected that, but I disagreed with it. At the same time, Speaker Pelosi and the Democratic leaders would not allow our amendment to come to a vote. We asked and asked--but their reaction was, ``No, no, we won't do that.'' I guess they had their reasons. We don't question their motivation. President Bush persevered in the war, and Democratic leaders persevered with their opposition to the war. They didn't allow the Iraq Study Group resolution to come to a vote. So then we had an election. Senator Salazar said about the only way we could have united the President and the Democratic leaders was in their opposition to the Iraq Study Group--a set of recommendations that are now largely the principles upon which we are preceding as we seek to end the war in Iraq. But is the country better off for us not having had that 2 years of agreement? Here are some lessons: One, the Iraq war reminds us that nation building costs many billions of dollars and many lives. Whenever possible, we should use our military forces to defend America and use our ``shining city on a hill,'' which President Reagan talked about so often, as an example to spread freedom. If we must become involved in another country, as we are in Iraq and Afghanistan, then we must have a compelling reason, a clear mission, an overwhelming force to make certain we reach our goals. The second lesson is this: In order to reach those goals, we have to persuade the American people to have the stomach to see the mission we have adopted all the way through to the end. It is much better if the President and the Congress, even if they are of different political parties, agree on that mission. Technically, the Commander in Chief can wage a war, leaving us not much to do but fund the troops, which almost all of us, regardless of party, do. We saw in Iraq the failure to agree between the President and the Congress--which made the war harder and longer and President Bush's presidency much less successful. We were in the position often of being the oldest democracy lecturing Baghdad, an infant democracy, for not coming up with a political solution when we ourselves could not come up with one. Finally, we learned a lesson in Iraq about how to honor those who serve our country. Sometimes in airports now--unlike in the Vietnam era--passengers burst into applause when a group of service men and women appear. A great many Tennesseans have been to Iraq and Afghanistan. More are going this week to Afghanistan. Many have served two or three tours already--including men and women from the Tennessee National Guard and the 101st Airborne--and 100 have given their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hundreds have suffered wounds that will change their lives. They have performed heroically. I am glad to see that after 6 years, we finally seem to be united on a path which will bring the war to successful conclusion and hasten the time when most of those serving can come home. But it is disappointing that we did not take the advantage 2 years ago when we might have done it to agree on the principles of the Iraq Study Group. We had that opportunity. It might have shortened the war. It might have stabilized Iraq more rapidly. It might have saved lives. We should remember that as we look ahead to Afghanistan. We do not want to succeed Bush's war with Obama's war. Whenever we go to war, it should be an American war and the President should make certain he has bipartisan support in Congress.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I will be delighted.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I understand the majority leader may want to close, and I am happy to wait until he does, if he wishes.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, during the 1960s, American Motors Corporation president George Romney warned Detroit's automakers, ``There is nothing more vulnerable than entrenched success.'' The big three paid no attention. They were building the best cars in the world--highly profitable gas-guzzling vehicles we were quick to buy. Meanwhile, their future Japanese competitors were perfecting smaller, fuel-efficient cars. And today we are bailing out the Detroit companies that did not listen. American higher education would do well to heed the warning that George Romney gave the Detroit automakers in the 1960s. We have the best colleges in the world today, just as we had the best cars in the world then. But even brisk competition at home seems to have little effect on rising tuition costs. To deal with rising college costs, I suggest, No. 1, colleges offer some well-prepared students the option of a 3-year baccalaureate degree, cutting one-third the time and one-fourth the cost from a college education; and No. 2, make community college free for well- prepared students. This seems impossible when State community college funding is tight. In my State, Vanderbilt's endowment has declined 16.5 percent and Maryville College is under a hiring freeze. The University of Tennessee is trying to decide what positions to cut. Impossible, that is, unless college administrators are listening to students, States, and Members of Congress who are up in arms about rising tuition. What I hear in Congress is: Every time we increase Pell grants, colleges raise tuition. In their exasperation, Members of Congress then piled new rules on already overregulated colleges. The former president of Stanford University estimates complying with these regulations-- which today fill a stack of boxes 6 feet tall, which I have previously brought onto the Senate floor--adds 7 cents to every dollar cost of tuition. Last year, I even voted against the new higher education bill because it doubles those regulations. The greatest threat to the quality of higher education, in my opinion, is not underfunding, it is overregulation. But to persuade other Members of the Senate and the House of Representatives to stop adding these stacks of regulations, colleges are first going to have to show that they know how to lower college costs. Just as a plug-in hybrid car is not for every driver, a 3-year college degree is not for every student. But some well-qualified students may want to complete their work in 3 years--many today take 5 or 6 years--and in doing so save time and save money. This will require adjusting attitudes, faculty workloads, and using some campus facilities year round. Five upper East Tennessee counties already are offering free tuition to qualified local students at Northeast State Community College. Federal Pell grants and the State HOPE Scholarship pay most of the $1,300 semester tuition. The five counties and private companies pay the rest. Sullivan County's bill last year was only $80,000 for its share. These are very difficult times. We all know that here. But during the 1980s, when I was Governor of Tennessee, unemployment reached 11 percent, inflation reached 14 percent, and interest rates reached 20 percent. We were struggling then. Then the economy surged, as we hope it will soon again. Tennessee's higher education funding growth led the Nation for 3 consecutive years. This is more likely to happen again if higher education offers a 3-year college degree option and free community college tuition. That will help regain the support of legislators and families who are upset about colleges that seem able only to increase tuition every time legislators increase funding. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 3 minutes.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I simply wish to congratulate the Senator from Georgia for his leadership on housing. He has consistently, since he arrived in the Senate 6 years ago, been the Senate's foremost spokesman for housing, and we badly need it today. Housing helped us get into the economic mess we are in in the country, and housing will help us get out of the economic mess. As the Senator from Georgia has so succinctly said, there are a number of things we can do to keep us from going further down the hole and to help people who are in trouble and cannot pay their bills. But we want to get out of the hole, and the way we get out of the hole is to give people who are creditworthy and have money the opportunity to buy a home. The Isakson amendment, as originally passed by the Senate, provided a $15,000 tax credit and would do that. It would create demand. The idea of low-interest mortgage rates which Republicans have offered to give millions of creditworthy Americans, for the next year, an opportunity to have a low-interest mortgage to buy a home or refinance their home would help us get out of the housing hole. We are all in favor of helping those people who are hurting, but that is not going to end the economic crisis. We want to climb out of this economic mess, and the way to get out of it is to get out of the housing hole we are in. The way to do that is through the Isakson amendment that creates a $15,000 tax credit for homebuyers and to provide a low mortgage interest rate. I thank the Senator for his eloquence and his persistence. I hope more and more Members on both sides of the aisle and this country will hear his call to fix housing first. I yield the floor. (At the request of Mr. Reid, the following statement was ordered to be printed in the Record.)

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be dispensed with.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, may I be informed when 6 minutes of my 7 minutes has expired?