Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to engage in a colloquy with my colleagues for 30 minutes, if that is acceptable to the Democratic leader.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator from Hawaii. Mr. President, Republicans believe we ought to fix housing first, and we would like to talk about that for the next 30 minutes. Mr. Kyl, the Senator from Arizona, is here for that purpose. Senator Ensign is here, who is the author of an amendment that would provide 4 to 4.5 percent mortgages for up to 40 million Americans so they could buy new homes or refinance their homes. Senator Isakson is here, who is the author of an amendment to provide a $15,000 tax credit for the next year to home buyers. We believe these proposals would provide instant jobs. Housing got us into this economic mess and housing will help get us out of the economic mess. The Republican leader, Senator McConnell, stated that this is a big spending bill. I was on the telephone last night with the former budget chairman, Senator Domenici of New Mexico, who has been counting in his retirement. He said it took our country from the time of its founding until the mid-1980s to build up a national debt of $850 billion, which was the size of this so-called stimulus package when it came over here. So we are talking about real borrowed money, and our goal is to reorient the whole discussion: first, to housing; second, to letting taxpayers keep more of their own money; and, third, to get out of the bill those items that don't belong in the bill. The former Congressional Budget Office director in a previous Democratic administration, Alice Rivlin, said we needed two bills: one that would include legislation that created jobs now, and the second would be legislation that might take care of long-term investments that might help our country. She also said there should be a very high standard before we borrow money to spend on anything. Especially, as the Republican leader said, at a time when next week we may be hearing from Secretary Geithner that we need several hundred billion more for banks, and then more for housing, and then more for the annual appropriations bill, and then, on down the road, more for a health care bill. I see the Senator from Arizona, and he is a leading member of the Finance Committee, and as we think about reorienting toward housing, it would seem to me, Senator Kyl, that we should focus whatever money we do have on the problem we have, rather than borrowing money to dribble away on good-sounding projects that don't actually create jobs.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank my colleague for so clearly outlining the nature of the problem. I ask the Chair to let me know when we are about 3 minutes from the expiration of the time. There are two proposals we want to discuss which will be voted on here which will help fix housing first. The first is by the Senator from Nevada, Mr. Ensign. Senator Ensign's idea will create instant jobs and give a jolt to the economy by giving an opportunity for lower mortgage interest rates to those persons who can afford to buy or refinance their home. There are other proposals, such as one by Senator McCain, to help people who are in trouble with their mortgage. The focus of my colleague is primarily on creditworthy Americans who could refinance their homes, save money, and get the economy moving?

Mr. ALEXANDER. If I understand the proposal, if I am a creditworthy person, I can either refinance my home or buy a new home at this lower interest rate, which today would be between 4 and 4.5 percent for a 30- year mortgage. I would have that fixed mortgage all during that 30-year period of time.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank Senator Ensign for his leadership and the others on his proposal for their leadership. We hope it will attract significant Democratic support because I have heard a number of them say we need to reorient this toward housing. Senator Isakson was in the real estate business, and he often reminds us that this is not the first housing crisis we have had. As I understand, Senator Isakson, the proposal you made, which would be a tax credit to homeowners, was originally tried in the 1970s and worked?

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator from Georgia. Just to make sure it is clear, sometimes we confuse tax deduction and tax credit. This is a $15,000 tax credit. That means cash money, real money, that you can, instead of paying it to the IRS, put in your pocket. Am I correct?

Mr. ALEXANDER. You can invest it in your house. The Senator from Wyoming is here. Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, please let me know when 2 minutes is remaining. I thank the Senator from Georgia. We have now heard a proposal to give to all creditworthy Americans, which can be up to 40 million, the opportunity to buy or refinance a house with a Treasury-backed 4- to 4.5-percent mortgage. We have heard Senator Isakson's proposal to give everyone who buys a home within this next year up to a $15,000 tax credit. The Senator from Wyoming was a small businessman before he came to the Senate and is our only accountant here. What is the Senator's reaction to that, and how does he see housing fitting into the economic stimulus package that is being discussed?

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, how much time is remaining?

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record as well an article from the Wall Street Journal this week called ``A 40-Year Wish List'' as an example of the kinds of items that are in the stimulus bill that ought not to be if we are careful about the money we are borrowing to spend.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Now, there is another problem of running up too much debt. At the hearing where the Acting President pro tempore, the Senator from Virginia, and I were at earlier this week, I asked a question of the three witnesses: What can we learn from the rest of the world about how much debt is too much debt for the United States of America? The general answer was, today our debt is measured at about 40 percent of our annual gross domestic product. The estimates they gave suggested if the stimulus packages and if the other things that are going on continue to happen, we will be up to 60 or 70 percent of GDP. If the entitlement growth--the automatic spending we have in the Government from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid--keeps growing, and we keep adding at the rate we are doing, we will soon be at 100 percent of GDP. In other words, every year, government debt could equal everything we produced in this great country of ours--which produces 25 percent of all the wealth in the world every single year. We forget how fortunate we are. Twenty-five percent of all the wealth in the world, every single year, is produced in the United States of America and distributed among just 5 percent of the people in the world, which is us, those of us who live here. So we would have to take all that production for a whole year and use it to pay off our national debt. Those economists who were testifying before us said that is too high. Forty percent is OK. They thought 60 percent is getting into a little bit of a problem. Eighty percent is too much, and 100 percent is a real problem. The practical problem is, as that number goes up--for example, as the entitlement spending goes up and other debt goes up--it squeezes out our ability to do anything else. I worked last year across party lines with Senator Bingaman and many others, and Senator Warner worked in the private sector in this way, to try to do something about American competitiveness. We put into the law that we needed to double our investments in scientific research, and if we wanted to keep this high standard of living, we have a lot of work to do in high technology. If we keep spending all the money on welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and debt, we are not going to have anything left for the great universities in the country on a yearly basis or for investments in our future. Those are annual investments. We will be squeezing them out. That is another problem with debt. With a lower debt, we have more money for not just the investments in our future but for our national parks, our clean air, and the other things we need to do to have a desirable country. Let me go back to the stimulus package and ask: What do we need to do? We need to, in the words of Senator Gregg--and I believe it is fair to characterize Senator Conrad, the chairman of the Budget Committee, in the testimony this week--we need to reorient the stimulus package toward real estate, toward housing, and toward credit having to do with banks. First, fix the problem: housing. Every big mess has a way into it, and I believe--and many on this side, and I think some on the other side also believe--the way into it is housing. How would one fix that? Well, one suggestion by Glenn Hubbard--former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors and now at Columbia University is have the Treasury back, for a period of a year or 18 months, a 4-percent, 30-year fixed rate mortgage for creditworthy customers. In other words, a bank in Nashville would say to you, if you are creditworthy: We will give you a 30-year mortgage at 4 percent. If today's prevailing rate were 5.2 or 5.3 percent--which it is in the marketplace--the Government would make up the difference, and it would probably guarantee the loan. That would create a new demand for housing. I was talking with someone in the mortgage business yesterday who pointed out that for one of our large lenders in America, when the rates went down naturally after the Federal Reserve action a few weeks ago, the number of mortgages issued by that bank quadrupled. So if we were to say to the American people: If you are creditworthy, you can buy a house; you can get a 4-percent mortgage for a principal residence, and we are going to keep that option open for a year. That will cost us some money. That could be part of this stimulus. It would create demand in housing. It would create liquidity. It would get banks lending. We believe it would make a real difference. It would be a better way to start the stimulus package. A second idea, as Senator Isakson and others have suggested, is to create a tax credit for home buyers. We would say $15,000. So if you are sitting around thinking today, well, homes in Richmond have actually gotten down to a pretty good level, and I like that house--you could get a $15,000 tax credit when you buy the house, and when you file your income tax return, you get $15,000 back. This is real money, and you do not have to pay it back. If you had a combination of a 4- percent mortgage and a $15,000 tax credit for the next year, maybe we could get housing stabilized, maybe we could get demand stirring, and maybe we could get people confidence that there is liquidity in the market. That might not solve every problem, but it is the place to start. We would say first, fix housing. That is the way to restart the economy. Senator Gregg has suggested we take some of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's ideas about helping people who are stuck in houses that are about to be foreclosed on and help to relieve those foreclosures. There may be a way for us to encourage servicers for all of these mortgages out across the country to modify the loans as some banks are now doing. By modifying the loan, they simply say to you: What can you afford to pay? As long as you can pay that and pay the interest on a regular basis, we will change the loan to fit you. That way there is no foreclosure. The loan does not go bad. The houses on that same street do not go down in value because your house is foreclosed on. We suggest we should spend the next week talking about reorienting the money that we seek to spend to stimulate the economy on housing first. Second, we suggest the next component of a stimulus package should be tax relief that would help create jobs now. My own view is that temporary tax relief is nice. I like having the money in my pocket, but it does not stimulate very much. Permanent tax relief, the economists tell us--money you can depend on for the future--builds confidence and stimulates the economy. For example, the small business expensing provision, which would spur investments by doubling the amount that small business owners can immediately write off on their taxes for capital investments and for purchases of new equipment in 2009. Another example is the bonus depreciation provision, that would be helpful. Middle-class tax relief--this is the permanent tax relief I was talking about--by lowering the 15-percent bracket to 10 percent and the 10-percent bracket to 5 percent. Those are examples of permanent tax relief or business tax relief that could help create jobs now. Third, we should not spend this kind of money on many of these programs. We should not borrow this money when each family already owes over a half a million dollars. We should not borrow the money to spend on programs we do not have to have. That is not a wise use of our dollars. We ought to take all of that out of this stimulus bill. For example, there are small examples: buying new cars, money for contraceptives, rehabilitating off-road trails, honey bee insurance. We can find items like that which don't create jobs now. But the fact is, I am more concerned about the $190 billion of entitlement spending, the automatic spending that is in this $1.2 trillion. Every estimate is that $130 billion, $140 billion, $150 billion of that will never get out of the budget. The House put in almost $100 billion of new Medicaid spending for the States. Well, Governors and legislators are going to like that except we are never going to be able to reform the Medicaid Program. The Federal contribution to it is so rich that States cannot afford to take a fresh look at it. What is Tennessee going to do after it gets $2 billion--$1 billion a year--for the Medicaid Program for the next 2 years and, then, in the third year, gets zero of that money? That sort of money ought not to be in a so-called stimulus package. We need some truth in packaging. If it stimulates--and all of us can think of things that do--then put it in; if it does not, keep it out. Historic preservation fund grants, I love those, but they are not going to stimulate jobs in the next few months. Head Start, I was the principal sponsor of that. Pell grants, I was a college president. Next week, after the stimulus, we will be talking about how much we can afford in our budget to increase those. Federal spending for Pell grants has doubled in the last 6 years, but those things do not belong in a stimulus budget. Some things do. There are highways that can be built. There are Corps of Engineers projects that can be completed. There are National Park Service infrastructure projects that can be worked on next month. These are important improvement programs. That would help stimulate as well. We should be able to make an intelligent distinction between those things that can actually stimulate and those things that are just good- sounding things that we might vote for if we had the money and if we did not have to borrow so much of it. That is our third suggestion about what we should do. One other suggestion--here is an area where we actually have potential, I believe, for bipartisan support. We should do something, when we debate the stimulus package, about automatic spending, entitlement spending, and by that we mean Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. As I mentioned earlier, by the year 2015--not so far away--that will be 70 percent of our budget. In other words, when we come here, we get to vote to appropriate 30 percent of the taxpayer dollars we spend because 70 percent is automatically spent on those entitlement programs. That is forcing our debt up to 100 percent of gross domestic product. We had a breakfast on Tuesday here, the bipartisan breakfast we have on Tuesday mornings. It is a chance for us to get together across party lines. It was evenly divided, actually. There were 24 Members who came. The whole subject was the Senator Conrad-Senator Gregg proposal to create a commission that would come up with a way to deal with Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and present it to us. We would vote it up or down, and some way we would be forced to deal with this entitlement growth problem. Senator McConnell, the Republican leader, said in a speech a week ago today that he was ready to deal with the entitlement programs, but he was disappointed it was not dealt with in the last 2 years. He pledged to President Obama he would give him more support on dealing with it than the Democrats gave to President Bush during the last few years. You will remember President Bush tried in the beginning of his second term to deal with Social Security. He wanted private accounts. The Democrats said no to private accounts. So they just went down their parallel tracks and never got anywhere. Somehow they never got together and said: Well, let's drop private accounts, or let's try to do this; we can't do that. President Obama has made clear he is serious about this. Senator McConnell has made clear we are serious about it. We have a Conrad- Gregg proposal. We had 24 Senators meeting last Tuesday. We are meeting again next Tuesday. We believe something ought to be in this stimulus package that at least begins the process of dealing with entitlements in the long term so we can say to the American people: Yes, we are going to borrow some amount of money--maybe hundreds of billions of dollars--to stimulate the economy, and we know it contributes to the debt, but we are at least taking a step toward dealing with the long- term excessive debt we are experiencing in our country. Finally, after listening to the Budget Committee hearings this week, the conclusion I came to was that I wish we were doing it all now. Here is what I mean by that. I spoke a little earlier about all the things we have tried to do since October at the Washington level--some by Congress, some by the Federal Reserve, and some by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation--to restart the economy. Whether it was dealing with the banks or the auto companies or troubled assets, there has been a lot of effort here. After listening to the testimony in the Budget Committee, it seems perfectly obvious that we are going to have to do more. We are going to have to do more in housing. We would like to suggest we at least start addressing housing in this stimulus package, but if we don't do it here, President Obama and his team are going to have to recommend some steps for us to take in housing because that is how you restart the economy. Everyone who looks at the Nation's banks and financial institutions knows we are going to have to do something there. We passed a bill in October called the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, providing money to Treasury to address troubled assets. We thought it was going to be used to go get those bad assets off of the bank balance sheets so they could get back in good shape and lend again. That is what happens when banks fail or get in trouble. In normal times, the FDIC swoops in and takes the troubled assets out, sells them to another bank, and it closes on Friday and opens on Monday. Depositors are protected, and sometimes stockholders lose, but we go on and barely notice it. However, that is not what the money we passed was used for. It was used, basically, to give money to banks to capitalize, and the reason, apparently, was they were in such bad shape, they had to have it. So maybe it wasn't a bad thing to do, but it wasn't what we thought was going to be done, and now we still have the problem of bad assets. We asked the witnesses: How many troubled assets do we have in all of these banks? They said $1 trillion or $2 trillion. I am not talking about a stimulus package; I am talking about troubled assets in financial institutions in the United States. We said: Well, then, what are we supposed to do about that? They suggested that the ideas we are likely to hear--they did not represent the administration, but the administration is listening to many of the same people--was that they may recommend, for example, some entity that will actually take the troubled assets out of the banks at some price, and then the banks are free to go ahead and with confidence start lending again. And we can start borrowing again, the economy goes again, but then we still have this entity over here. If it is going to buy $1 trillion or $2 trillion worth of bad assets, where does it get the money? Some of it is going to come from the taxpayers. How much of it? One witness said as much as we can afford to put in. So maybe $500 billion, $600 billion, $700 billion, $800 billion more dollars, not to spend as the stimulus package does but to invest in assets that we hope to sell for at least as much as we paid for them. That could happen. We might lose some money, we might make some money, but we are not spending it. But it is a lot of money, and it is taxpayers dollars, and there will be a lot of concern in Virginia and in Tennessee and in every State when we have to do that on top of what we have done before--on top of this stimulus. So why aren't we considering that today? Why aren't we considering that bad bank or what we are going to have to do about troubled assets? So I think a better way to do it would be to say: Let's bring in the amount of money for troubled assets--is it $500 billion?--let's bring in the money to reorient toward housing, $200 billion or $300 billion, and then let's see what projects really do stimulate. Let's do it all together, and then let's see how much money we are talking about so that we are not surprised and the people we represent are not surprised. I would like to see us do it all at once. So next week in the Senate is a very important week. There is a good deal of talk about bipartisanship. We appreciate President Obama's efforts on that. In my view, he and his team have been genuine in their outreach to Republicans. Just because we don't agree with their ideas doesn't mean there is not a bipartisan spirit here. And as time goes on, maybe we will get into a situation where even though the Democrats have enough votes to pass most bills and we have enough votes to stop cold some bills and to slow down any bill, that is not the way we work. If we come up with a better idea, maybe the majority will adopt it and create a bill that builds confidence in the country. President Bush technically didn't need Congress's approval, except on appropriations, to wage the war in Iraq. Some of us thought it would be better if he had it, though, so Senator Salazar and I, along with 17 Senators and about 60 House Members across party lines, suggested that we adopt a resolution approving the principles of the Iraq Study Group as a way to conclude the war in Iraq honorably. President Bush didn't like that, and Majority Leader Reid wouldn't bring it up for a vote. We might have been the only group that unified Senator Reid and President Bush on the Iraq war, but we couldn't get it done. I think it is a shame we couldn't because Secretary Rice and Secretary Gates told me not long ago they thought where we were going to end up in Iraq under Secretary Gates' administration is about where the Iraq Study Group said we should. If we had adopted that as a Congress, perhaps the war would have been easier, and our enemies would have gotten a clearer message, and our troops would have gotten more support, and President Bush would have had a more successful Presidency. So we won the election, and we passed the bill. That is the recipe for passing many bills, but it is not the recipe for a successful Presidency. I think President Obama knows that, and that is why he has gone out of his way to visit with us and talk with us. I hope--with the stimulus package, with entitlements coming down the road and health care plans coming down the road--that the ideas we have on this side of the aisle, if they are good, are adopted on the other side of the aisle and we genuinely can work together in a legislative way. I think that can happen, and I would like for it to happen starting next week. Next week is important for the Senate and important for the American people. We on the Republican side of the aisle believe we need a stimulus package, but we believe it needs to be the right stimulus package. First, it should fix the problem, and the problem is housing. That would help restart the economy. And we have specific ideas about how to do that which I have suggested. Second, we should let people keep more of their own money. That means permanent tax cuts. That is a way to build confidence. Third, because we are borrowing this extraordinary amount of money and because we have other requirements for borrowed dollars, we should be very careful about what we borrow and what we spend it for and only spend it for those items that genuinely stimulate the economy and create jobs in the very near term. That is the truth in packaging. If we adopt those three principles, then I think there will be genuine bipartisan support next week for a stimulus. If we don't, there won't be. That is why we have the Senate. That is why we have the debate. That is why I think we are here. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record following my remarks an article by R. Glenn Hubbard and Christopher J. Mayer detailing the proposal for a 4.5-percent mortgage loan over 30 years.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, next week the Senate begins the debate of the so-called stimulus package. I wish to talk about that for a few minutes. It is $1.2 trillion of borrowed taxpayer money to be spent in an effort to help get our economy restarted. Here is my position on it, and I believe the position of most Republicans and of some Democrats. We believe that in order for the stimulus to be effective, it should be reoriented on housing. First, fix the real problem: housing. If housing is restarted, if home values are stabilized, and if people are buying homes, that will do more to help restart the economy than anything else. Second, we should let people keep more of their own money. A true stimulus is permanent tax relief. If people have more of their own money in their pockets, they will have more confidence. They will be able to buy more. After reorienting toward housing, that will also help restart the economy. Since we are borrowing so much of this money, especially, we believe it ought to be oriented directly toward those items that would specifically create jobs now. It should not go toward good sounding ideas such as Head Start and Pell grants for college students that we may want to take up later, maybe as early as the following week, in a regular appropriations bill. So that is our belief: reorient the stimulus toward housing, let people keep more of their own money, and get the stuff out of the bill that has nothing to do with creating jobs now, in the next few months or in the first year. We know Americans are hurting. Every single Senator knows that. Our country's economic turmoil is hitting every family where it matters, in the family budgets. More than 860,000 properties were repossessed by lenders in 2008, more than double the 2007 level. Manufacturing is at a 28-year low. Tennessee is a State that relies heavily on manufacturing. The unemployment rate is 7.2 percent, too high. It has been higher. I can remember at a time when I was Governor of Tennessee in 1982, the unemployment rate was 12 percent, but 7.2 percent is too high. There were 1.9 million jobs lost in the last 4 months of 2008. The long-term unemployed, people out of work for 27 weeks or more, rose to 2.6 million in December of 2008. So there are a number of steps we need to take as a government, and we have been taking them. At a hearing this week, where the Presiding Officer and I are both members of the Budget Committee--and we probably agree those hearings were excellent--Douglas Elmendorf, Director of the Congressional Budget Office, reminded us of the steps the Government is already taking. The Federal Reserve negotiated the sale of Bear Sterns to JPMorgan Chase, $29 billion, to form a new limited liability company. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the agencies that guaranteed half the home loans in the country, were taken over by their regulator and the Treasury put up $100 billion to stabilize that situation. The Federal Reserve extended $60 billion in a line of credit to the American International Group, the insurance company called AIG. We had a debate in October where on both sides of the aisle, two-thirds of Republicans as well as many Democrats voted to give the Secretary of the Treasury $700 billion to invest in troubled assets or to use in a variety of ways to try to keep our economy from going straight down. It has gone down, but it didn't go straight down; we believe this is partly because of the action the Congress and the President took at that time. What we had was, in effect, a wreck on the highway. There is an old Roy Acuff song by that title. I think that is the best way to explain what was happening. It was like a wreck on the interstate outside Knoxville and suddenly traffic is backed up all the way to Lenoir City or even Kingston. One lane was the money for the bank loan, the next lane was the money for your auto loan, and the next lane was for meeting payroll. As long as that wreck was on the highway, none of the money could get where it needed to go, and nobody could borrow on anything. It is better today than it would have been, but we still have a deeply serious problem. The law we passed in October temporarily raised the insurance for deposits from $100,000 to $250,000. Steps were taken to guarantee money market funds. The Treasury, Federal Reserve, and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation announced agreements with Citibank and Bank of America. They created a liquidity program for the banking system. The Federal Government, in all of its variety of agencies, has been very busy since October using taxpayer dollars, where necessary, or the Federal Reserve balance sheet, or Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation funds collected from banks to try to create a situation in which our economy can restart. We know, having visited with President Obama and his team of advisers, that they are thinking of even more things we may need to do. But next week in the Senate we will be talking about whether it is a good idea to borrow $1.2 trillion and spend it as the Appropriations and Finance Committees have recommended we spend it as a way of trying to restart the economy. What I am here today to say is: we believe there ought to be a stimulus, but we believe it ought to be reoriented toward housing, that it ought to be reoriented toward permanent tax cuts, and that we ought to take out of this so-called stimulus anything that doesn't stimulate jobs now. Let me try to give an idea of how much money $1.2 trillion is. It is more money than we spent on the Vietnam war in today's dollars. This comes from an article in Politico this week. It is more money than we spent on the invasion of Iraq. It is more money than we spent on the entire New Deal in today's dollars, and a lot more money than we spent on the Marshall plan. It is nearly as much money as we've spent on NASA ever since it started. It is a lot more money than we spent going to the Moon. This is a lot of money. We throw dollars around up here. Years ago Senator Dirksen said: A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it adds up to real money. This is a trillion, a number that is hard for us to imagine. It is borrowed money, which I will get to in a moment. Let me give one example of how I have been trying to describe how much money $1.2 trillion is. The Presiding Officer was Governor of Virginia. I was Governor of Tennessee. I looked around the Budget Committee the other day and almost every member there had been in State government in one way or another. In other words, we used to deal with real dollars. We couldn't print anything. At the end of the year, we had to balance our budgets. Sometimes we had to veto $25,000 programs for epilepsy. I had to do that in 1981, 1982, and 1983, when we had an economic turndown. That is why this amount of money is hard for me to get my arms around. I think it is hard for most Americans. Let me give you an idea about how much money it is. The previous Governor of Tennessee, one who came after me, Governor Sundquist, thought we needed a State income tax. He recommended Tennessee should have a State income tax. It was about 4 percent. It would have raised about $400 million a year. There was never a more unpopular act in our State than the Governor Sundquist proposal that we have a State income tax. Many people said he was courageous for recommending it, but it was rejected. People wouldn't even invite him to dinner for a few months. I would, but many other people wouldn't. That was $400 million a year. The State of Tennessee will receive almost $4 billion of this money. I am sure it will make life easier for the current Governor and the current legislature, but think about that. The State only collects close to $12 billion a year in State tax dollars, and it is going to get $4 billion over the next 2 years from this so-called stimulus package. This would be the equivalent of imposing about a 20-percent new income tax on the people of Tennessee for 2 years to raise that same amount of money. There would be a revolution in Tennessee if we did this. That is the amount of money we're talking about. We are not talking about giving the State of Tennessee $40 million or $4 million or $400 million. Its shortfall this year is $900 million, which is the worst it has ever had. We are talking about shipping $4 billion of borrowed taxpayer money to Tennessee. My point is, that is a lot of money. There is another aspect to this amount of money. I listed a number of things that the Federal Reserve Board and the Congress have done to try to create a better economic situation, to get housing going, to help stabilize banks, and even to deal with automobile companies. Almost all of those dollars we used either came from the Federal Reserve Board, which is not part of the Federal budget, not part of taxpayer dollars, or it was an investment. In Tennessee, people don't like the word ``bailout.'' It has come to be right up there with the top number. I voted twice, because I thought our country needed it, first to give President Bush, then to give President Obama the amount of money he needed to actually invest in banks or nonfinance companies so we could get the credit moving again. But in that case, we were investing dollars. We were not spending dollars. We hope and believe that we will get almost all of those dollars back for the taxpayer. When those dollars are put in a bank, for example, they pay 5 percent or 8 percent or even 10 percent interest, in some cases, back to the taxpayer. Maybe we will lose some of that money, but we don't intend to. It is not our goal. That is the purpose of it, investment. In this case, this is money gone. This is borrowed taxpayer dollars, more than $1.2 trillion. I get to $1.2 trillion because the Senate bill is $900 billion, and the interest over the next 10 years is another $300 billion. That is the real cost of the stimulus package over the next 10 years. It is borrowed money. Let me go to the borrowed money part. We print money in Washington. We Governors cannot. That is one of the adjustments you make when you come here. It just takes a little while to do, and I understand the difference. The truth is, there is a reasonable level of debt a strong industrial country such as the United States can tolerate and still continue to grow. As the country grows, the debt reduces as a percentage of our output. While it might be important for the State of Tennessee, as we always did, to balance our budget and almost never have any debt--and we did not even have an income tax--the Federal Government structure is different. I recognize that. But there is some reasonable limit to the amount of debt we should have, and there are good reasons there is a reasonable limit to that. I think it is important to understand exactly what the debt we have is. USA Today did a story last year that talked about each family's share of Government debt and Government obligations. By ``obligations,'' I mean what we owe for programs such as Medicare, what we owe for Medicaid, what we owe veterans. It is real money. It is money we are obligated to pay. It comes down to more than $500,000 per family a year. So I think the way to talk about this stimulus package is: Should we ask every American family to increase their $531,000 debt in order to spend money for a stimulus package to try to restart the economy? I believe we should increase our debt for some purposes, such as restarting housing or permanent tax cuts--that actually allows people to keep their own money. Or possibly increase our debt for programs that would, perhaps, actually do things in the next 6 months or 12 months to stimulate the economy. There are roads, and bridges, and national park maintenance that could happen right now that would create jobs that would be genuinely stimulative. But that is a very severe test we should ask the American people. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the USA Today article detailing the obligation every American family owes be printed in the Record following my remarks.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, Senator McConnell congratulated the President for reminding many in Washington, including many Republicans, that the American people want their leaders to work together to solve problems, not to set traps. He suggested that among the issues on which we could cooperate are reducing the national debt, energy independence, and lowering taxes. Specifically, Senator McConnell urged the President to follow up on his pledge to put the power of the Democratic majorities to work on entitlement spending, the automatic spending that threatens within just 9 years to consume nearly 70 percent of the Federal budget and to create a national debt that equals our Nation's annual gross domestic product. Already, each American's share of the national debt is $35,000. In order to do that, Senator McConnell said the President will have to reject the hyperpartisanship that exists in some quarters of Congress and engage Republicans on the merits of our ideas. Senator McConnell said that as Republican leader of the Senate, he would make this a firm principle of his dealings with the new administration, and he said that if the new President follows up on his promise to address entitlement spending, Democrats can expect more consideration from the Republicans than the last President received from them. This is a major statement by an experienced Senate leader who has proven he knows how to stop bad legislation but is offering to go to work with the new President to shape and improve good and needed legislation, if the new majorities will meet Republicans on the merits of our ideas. Some time ago, Senator McConnell invited President Obama to come to the Senate and meet with Senate Republicans. And we all hope that soon he may do that. The kind of cooperation Senator McConnell talked about in his speech on Friday did not happen often in the last few years. It did on energy, it did on American competitiveness, to some degree on foreign intelligence issues. Earlier, it happened on education and some other issues. But when President Bush, for example, made reforming Social Security the major thrust of his second term, Democrats said no. Neither side moved off their position, and so deficit spending and our national debt kept going up. If any subject over the last few years deserved cooperation, it was the war in Iraq. Senator Salazar and I assembled 17 Senators, 9 Democrats, and 8 Republicans, and there were 63 Members of the House almost evenly divided between the parties who sponsored a resolution to set as a goal for the country to end the war on the principles recommended by the Iraq Study Group. President Bush would not support our legislation. The Democratic leaders refused to bring it to a vote. I remember telling both President Bush and Senator Reid I believed we were the only ones who actually united them on Iraq. They were both against what we were trying to do. But if either President Bush had supported our resolution or if Senator Reid had allowed it to come to a vote, I believe the resolution would have been enacted, sending a message to our troops, to our country, and to our enemy that we were united in bringing an honorable and successful end to that conflict. Ironically, we are now headed in Iraq toward a conclusion that now seems to have the general support of both President Bush and President Obama, presided over by the same Secretary of Defense, who has served them both. That is approximately the same result that was recommended by the Iraq Study Group. That is not just my opinion. Toward the end of last year I asked both Secretary Gates and Secretary Rice whether the path toward conclusion of the Iraq war that was agreed upon by the Iraqis and the United States and is now basically being recommended by President Obama, whether that was the path recommended by the Iraq Study Group, and each of them said yes. There is a lesson here for the new administration. Technically, President Bush did not need Congress's approval to wage the war in Iraq. He is the Commander in Chief. But if he had won that congressional approval for the last 2 years of the war, that would have made the war easier, perhaps more successful, and certainly the Bush Presidency more successful. Technically, President Obama, with large Democratic majorities in Congress, does not need Republicans to pass most legislation. ``We won the election; we will write the bill,'' said Speaker Pelosi. That is the way to pass many bills, but as President Bush found out, it is not the way to have a successful Presidency. The President and the Democratic majorities on their own can pass many bills, and we Republicans, with 41 or 42 votes in the Senate, can block some things and slow down almost anything. But most of us Republicans agree with Senator McConnell: That is not what we are here to do. And what President Obama said in his inaugural address is that is not the kind of Presidency he wishes to have. The new President is off to a good start in his relationships with Republican Members of the Senate. Even the Senate Democratic majority is showing some encouraging signs of letting the Senate function as it is supposed to function, as a guardian against the tyranny of the majority, warned of by de Tocqueville, by allowing debates, by allowing amendments and rollcalls on major pieces of legislation. That is what we are here for; we are here to represent the men and women who live in our States on those issues. Tomorrow morning, there is a bipartisan breakfast, the first one of this year. We had them during the last 2 years. At that breakfast, we will be discussing the resolution of Senator Conrad and Senator Gregg to create a Bipartisan Task Force for Responsible Fiscal Action. In other words, to get serious about dealing with runaway entitlement spending. Already we have, I believe, 26 Members of the Senate, almost evenly split among Democrats and Republicans, who have accepted to come to that breakfast tomorrow morning. That is an unusual number of Senators for such an event. Republicans and Democrats will not always agree. We emphasize different principles. We have different solutions. We are here because we were nominated in partisan conventions or partisan elections. We are here to contend, we are here to debate, we are here to offer our ideas. But to get here, almost all of us had to earn Independent votes and some votes from the other party. When we got here, we all took an oath to represent all our constituents. What will make this Presidency and this Congress different is if after we conclude delivering our sermons to one another, we put aside the 20 percent on which we disagree, and see if we can come to some result on the 80 percent on which we agree, as Senator Enzi of Wyoming likes to say. This will not happen if the majority takes the position: We won the election, we will write the bill; or if the Democratic leader seeks to muzzle our constituents by not allowing amendments and debates and votes on the Senate floor. It can happen, as the Republican leader, Senator McConnell, said in his address on Friday, if we in the Senate act like grownups and have the courage to put aside hyperpartisanship and reject the advice of groups that protect narrow interests and find ways to work together to solve the real problems that are facing our country today. Exhibit 1 [From the Office of Senator Mitch McConnell, Jan. 23, 2009] Meeting Challenges: A Way Forward for Congress Remarks of U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (as prepared for delivery) National Press Club, January 23, 2009. ``Thank you, Donna. I also want to thank John Donnelly of Congressional Quarterly for inviting me here today. I'm delighted to be here, and I'm honored to be joined by such a distinguished group of reporters. ``For more than a century, the National Press Club has served a vital national purpose as a forum for newsmakers and those who cover them. A free press is essential to our Democracy. And today I thought I'd come over here to look for some free press. ``This past Tuesday, millions of Americans who are old enough to remember past inaugurations were reminded of one of the great hallmarks of our republic, and millions of young people experienced for the first time the rejuvenating effect of the peaceful transfer of power. Of all our civic rituals, few elicit the same feelings of national pride at home or more admiration abroad. ``But the inauguration of President Obama was somehow different, and not only because we were moved at seeing an African American take the oath of office from the steps of a building built by slaves. This year's inauguration was different because this year's election was different. ``For the first time in awhile, America has a president who isn't viewed by most people as an overly polarizing figure. Americans are intrigued by President Obama's promise of post- partisanship. And this afternoon I'd like to share some of my thoughts on the possibility of a new era of cooperation. ``As others have noted, the President does not govern alone. He can't sign a bill Congress hasn't already passed. He can't spend money Congress hasn't appropriated. If President Obama's promise of post-partisanship is to be realized, he'll first need some cooperation from Congress. ``And so, in the spirit of overcoming divisions, let me start out by saying that I agree with President Obama's assertion on Tuesday that many of today's problems are simply too great for us to pass over in the interest of protecting narrow interests. The normal constituencies must be widened. ``On issue after issue, members of both parties have too often fallen into the habit of asking narrow interest groups what they think should be done about something before thinking about what the average American thinks should be done. ``This is how a group like CodePink could end up having so much influence in a national debate about the conduct of a war. This is why a prominent labor leader thinks he can tell a reporter that he expects `payback' from Democrats for the support he gave them during last year's elections. And this is how vulgar insults hurled from overcaffeinated activists can suddenly pass for legitimate political discourse. ``When these things happen, it's easy to see why cynicism about government persists. ``And it's easy to see why something needs to change. ``Both sides are guilty. Republicans need to reevaluate the way decisions are made in Washington, and so do Democrats. But one thing is clear: every decision cannot be made based on a political calculation--because the usual interest groups so seldom agree. ``President Obama seems to understand this. His campaign was based on the notion that ordinary Americans would have a seat at the table in his administration. And broadening the old constituencies is, as he has suggested, one sure way to uphold that pledge. ``Once we do this, there are many issues on which we can cooperate. President Obama mentioned several of them on the campaign trail: reducing the national debt, increasing energy independence, and lowering taxes. There are others. But achieving any one of them will be impossible without cooperation between both parties in Congress and between Congress and the White House. ``Now, I realize that if you told most people Mitch McConnell was down at the National Press Club hoping for bipartisanship, they'd tell you that's like an insurance agent hoping for an earthquake. Most people don't exactly view me as the Mr. Rogers of the Senate. But, respectfully, I think reporters too often confuse being conservative with being partisan. And while my voting record clearly reflects my core values, it also reflects a long commitment to working with others. ``Senator Feinstein has been my closest collaborator in fighting human rights abuses in Burma. For years, I worked alongside Senator Dodd on the Senate Rules Committee, where we teamed up to pass the Help America Vote Act. And more recently, I took a lead role in brokering a bipartisan financial rescue plan just a few weeks before my own reelection bid in November. ``I fought for the rescue package because I thought the country needed it, even though my party could have done without it--and I ended up paying for my efforts. Soon after the deal was struck, one of the very people who had sat at the negotiating table with me ended up running ads against me on that very issue. He saw that it made me vulnerable back home, and tried to capitalize on it politically, which I certainly didn't expect. But these are the risks that politicians have to take from time to time in order to achieve something worthwhile. And it's a risk I was willing to take. ``There was, of course, a time when working on a bipartisan basis to achieve big things for the nation didn't mean exposing oneself to attack ads by one's own colleagues. For years, the Senate was a place where real friendships across party lines were common. One thinks of the breakfast meetings between Mike Mansfield and George Aiken; or Jim Eastland and Gaylord Nelson--men as far apart ideologically as you could find--spending time together after a long day's work. My Senate mentor, John Sherman Cooper, had a close relationship with President Kennedy. ``These friendships were always good for the Senate, and occasionally they paid major dividends for the whole country. One of the great examples of this in the modern era is the Social Security fix of 1983, brokered by Pat Moynihan and Bob Dole. And it's an example we could learn a lot from today. ``As Moynihan later recalled it, the genesis of that particular achievement came on the morning of January 3, 1983. Dole had published an op-ed piece in that day's edition of the `New York Times' in which he said that Republicans were eager to accomplish big things in the coming year. ``He cited Social Security as a case in point, arguing that the looming insolvency of Social Security should overwhelm every other domestic priority. By accelerating already- scheduled taxes and reducing future benefit increases, Dole said, Social Security could be made solvent for decades. ``At some point later in the day, Moynihan approached Dole on the Senate floor. If Dole really thought Social Security could be saved, he said, why not try to do it together? Well, 13 days later, an agreement was reached, and the Social Security crisis had passed. ``Twenty years later, Bob Dole could say that he had been the longest serving Republican Leader in history and the Republican nominee for president of the United States. But when a reporter asked him what he considered his proudest accomplishments in a lifetime of public service, the first thing that came to mind was the Social Security fix of 1983. Dole explained it this way: 'Those things that are lasting are bipartisan. If you don't have a consensus, it's not going to last.' ``This kind of bipartisan consensus has been increasingly rare in recent years, and the nation has suffered as a result. We saw this four years ago, when President Bush, newly reelected and with expanded Republican majorities in Congress, had the courage to put Social Security reform on the agenda. When he asked for bipartisan help, not one Democrat in Congress stepped forward. Every single one of them turned his or her back, reflexively choosing politics over governing--and the nation lost out on an opportunity to fix a crucial program in desperate need of reform. ``Today, Democrats have substantial majorities in the Senate and the House. They control the White House. And now Democrats assume responsibility for a number of pressing problems--including the one they refused to face in 2005. The problem with entitlement spending has not gone away. ``On Social Security in particular, the situation is increasingly dire: in 1950, 16 workers paid for every one person who received Social Security benefits. Today, it's about 3 workers per beneficiary. And within 10 years times, more money will be coming out of the Social Security fund than going in. ``Looking at entitlements in general, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs will soon consume about twice the percentage of the federal budget they did four decades ago. If we don't rein this spending in, soon we'll have only have a fraction left for things like defense, roads, bridges, and special ed. And this is not a problem that raising taxes will solve. In order to meet all our current entitlement promises, we'd have to extract $495,000 from every American household. ``The expansion of entitlement spending is a looming crisis that has been overlooked for too long. And with control of the White House and big majorities in Congress, Democrats now owe it to the American people to put their power to work on this vital issue. And here's my pledge: If they do so, they can expect more cooperation from Republicans than the last President received from them. ``President Obama has said he wants to tackle the entitlements crisis. But in order to succeed, he'll have to continue to reject the hyper partisanship that exists in some quarters of Congress. And he will have to engage Republicans on the merits of our ideas. ``The good news is that most people think ideas should be assessed on their merits, not on the senator or the president who proposes them. Our new President seems to think the same thing. And as Senate Republican Leader, I also pledge to make this is a firm principle in my dealings with the Obama Administration. ``President Obama's campaign reminded many in Washington, including many Republicans, of the aspirations that the Americans people have about their government. People want their leaders to work together to solve problems, not to set traps. The challenge now is for both parties to cooperate, not just in word but in deed. ``In all this, politics will have its place. But at this moment, achieving big things for the country is where my ambitions lie. Voters from both parties think Washington is broken. And that's a shame. But if both parties have helped create this cynical view of government, then both parties will have to work to correct it. And we can start, once the current debate over the Stimulus is through, by working to reform Social Security and Medicare. ``In this and in other efforts, there will be disagreements. But they can be principled disagreements, and the result of principled disagreement is often principled cooperation. The result won't satisfy everyone. As Bob Dole said of the 1983 Social Security fix, `No one got everything, and everyone got something.' ``But many of the domestic problems we face are simply too great to kick the can down the road any longer. We need to summon the courage to act on issues that are of grave concern to our nation's future. And the long-term sustainability of entitlements is one of them. ``As Republicans look for common ground in this and other areas where legislative progress can be made, some will no doubt accuse us of compromise. But those who do so will be confusing compromise with cooperation. And anyone who belittles cooperation resigns him or herself to a state of permanent legislative gridlock. And that is simply no longer acceptable to the American people. ``President Obama has shown himself to be a man of legislative ambition. He reaffirmed this on Tuesday when he called on the country to recognize collective failures, and when he called on politicians to step up to the unpleasant tasks and seek first the interests of the whole. ``Make no mistake: Some of our new President's proposals will be met with strong, principled resistance from me and from others. But many of his ambitions show real potential for bipartisan cooperation. And if we see sensible, bipartisan proposals, Republicans will choose bipartisan solutions over partisan failures every time. ``Thank you very much.''

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, on Friday, at the National Press Club, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell delivered an important address that everyone concerned about the future of our country ought to read. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks Senator McConnell's speech.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I congratulate the Senator from Arizona as usual for his very clear explanation of the issues. He is one of the legal scholars in the Senate with a great deal of experience. There is no need for me to go through the details of what he has just explained, so let me think about it and talk about it in a little bit different way. On Tuesday, a couple million people here and millions all over the world watched an eloquent ceremony from our Nation's Capital, the very moving speech by President Obama, and were reassured by his eloquence in a time of difficulty for our country. Among all of the difficulties we have, of course, the most important seems to be--or is--our economic troubles. The new President promised he would make his first order of business to get this economy moving again, get people working again, and to create new jobs. So it then becomes extremely important to say that is what the new President said, and we agree with him. I think we agree with that on the Democratic side and on the Republican side. The Democrats are in charge of the Congress, so it is important to see what their priorities are for fulfilling the President's promise to get the economy moving again. Would it be cutting payroll taxes so people have more money in their pockets? Would it be building new roads and bridges to try to create new jobs quickly? Would it be to extend unemployment benefits? Would it be new investments in energy research and development? All of those, one might expect, would be priorities. The President has talked about many of those ideas. But no, it is none of those. The first priority of the new Democratic Congress, which was already passed by the House and brought to the floor of the Senate without even being considered by a committee, and which we are debating today, is a trial lawyer bailout. Let's give our friends the trial lawyers a big bailout as the first order of business in our effort to help the economy. That is exactly what the Democrats' bill does. Why does it do that? The bill Senator Kyl talked about attempts to regulate a solution that is fair to employees and fair to business about a pay discrimination lawsuit, whether you are a woman or whether you are a man. You need to have a reasonable amount of time for the employee to file the cause of action, the act of discrimination, but you have to have a reasonable amount of time for the employer to know that the chances of that lawsuit being brought are limited. That is a part of every aspect of our law, and we call it the statute of limitations. You cannot sit in your backyard for 20 or 30 years with a cause of action in your pocket and then run up to the courthouse and say: Oops, I should have brought this 30 years ago, but I noticed now all the witnesses are dead, nobody is around to defend this; I am going to bring it now. That is, in effect, what we are talking about today. We have differences in our responses to the Supreme Court decision about what the reasonableness of a statute of limitations on a cause of action on pay discrimination might be. On this side of the aisle, Senator Hutchison's amendment on which we will be voting on later this morning says: Let's expand the current law and say that an employee should bring the lawsuit, not just within 180 days as the Supreme Court and the law now says, but whenever that employee could have known or reasonably should have known about the lawsuit. So that gives the employee even more fairness than the law exists today. On the other side of the aisle the solution is: Let's, in effect, abolish the statute of limitations and have never-ending lawsuits. What would the effect of this be in practical terms? I can speculate what the effect will be. I think it means that employers will have to keep more records. We are not talking about General Motors and General Electric here. They have big staffs who already keep lots of records and big law firms, in effect, that work for their companies. We are talking about the shoe shop owner, the filling station owner, and the small business owner who works 10 or 12 hours a day every day of the week. We are talking about the men and women in America on whom we are relying to create the largest number of jobs to spur the economic recovery that our new President talked about and that we all want. What are we saying to them? We are saying: Mr. and Mrs. Small Business Person, we want you to keep a lot more records. That means you might have to spend money you are earning to hire an employee to keep records going back interminably so you can defend a lawsuit. We want you to be careful about pay for performance, rewarding one person over another person, because under the law proposed by that side, years later, some son or daughter or relative of that person may say: Somebody wasn't fair to mama or daddy and bring a lawsuit after everybody is gone, particularly whoever knew about whatever this situation was. So employers and small business people will be discouraged from being more competitive by saying to one employee over another employee that we are going to have pay for performance, which is never easy to do. The legitimate complaints, people who are real victims of real pay discrimination, also are going to be hurt. The Equal Opportunity Employment Commission had 75,000 or so claims and most of them were not meritorious. That means everybody is delayed in terms of the meritorious claims, and this will open the floodgates and slow justice for the real victims. It will mean, if you are a small businessman in America and this law passes, if Senator Hutchison's amendment is not adopted, you better get ready to hire a recordkeeper, you better get ready to pay some settlements to lawyers because, for the interminable future, a lawyer and someone who used to work for you or is a relative of that person may come in and allege pay discrimination, even though it was 25 years ago and they knew it all the time. What does that mean for you? You better set aside $25,000, $50,000, $200,000 of money that you could use to hire more people or pay a dividend or get the economy moving again to bail out the trial lawyers. I am disappointed with the proposal on the other side of the aisle. I fully support Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who has a proposal that I hope we adopt at 11:30 this morning that is fair to employees and that is fair to small businesses. I would think the majority would have something better to offer the American people in response to the new President's eloquent suggestion that it is time to get the economy moving again than a bailout for their friends, the trial lawyers. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. When I was Governor of Tennessee--and I see the former Governor of Missouri here--nothing used to make me madder, to be blunt about it, than some Washington Congressman or Senator holding a press conference and telling me what to do because usually they would tell me what to do and not send the money, and then I would have to send the money on to the mayor, raise taxes, lower taxes. I would have to do something myself. We are perfectly capable of deciding whether we need a right-to-work law. Last year, the Senator from New Jersey was trying to ship New Jersey's laws to Tennessee with a national law. I cannot stand up and say we want a national right-to-work law and then argue against having New Jersey's laws in Tennessee, for States and counties that don't want those laws. So we want to fit those to our own circumstances. I greatly respect my colleague and friend, the Senator from South Carolina. On principle, he is right. There is another principle-- federalism--that we can decide for ourselves. We would undermine that principle. I urge my colleagues to vote against the DeMint amendment.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, if I were speaking in Tennessee, I would give the Senator from South Carolina an A-plus for his statement because it is exactly the law I want Tennessee to have. But what we are talking about here today is whether we want Washington to tell each State whether it can have a right-to-work law or agency shop or a union shop law. If Washington were to do that, Tennessee would not have a right-to-work law. We would not have permission to do that. We would not have an auto industry which is one-third of all of our manufacturing jobs. So I want my Republican colleagues, if I may say so, to be very careful here. Do we really want Washington telling us that the principle is they are going to say whether we can have a right-to-work law? I don't want them telling me that. Does that mean 1 minute?

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, how much time do I have remaining? I am supposed to have 30 seconds left.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I would appreciate being reminded when 4 minutes is up so that I may reserve the last 30 seconds of my time. The DeMint amendment would take away from States the right to decide whether they want to be a right-to-work State or a State that allows for an agency shop or a union shop. Now, on this very Senate floor, in 1947, after World War II, Mr. Conservative, Robert A. Taft, the leader of the Republicans, stood before the American people and said the law that was passed in 1935--the National Labor Relations Act--was wrong because it took away from States the right to make that decision, and there was a tumultuous argument on the Senate floor. Section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act was passed, and it gave the States the right to decide whether an employee would have to pay union dues or join a union in order to have a job. Since then, 22 States, including the State of Tennessee, have decided, yes; we want to be a right-to-work State under the principles supported by the distinguished Senator from South Carolina, but he wants to make that a national law. I don't trust Washington on this issue. What do you suppose would happen in the Senate if today we voted about whether to have a national right-to-work law or a national agency shop or a union shop? I think I know what the result would be, and I know what would happen. Thirty years ago I was the Governor of Tennessee and we were the third poorest State and we had no auto jobs. Nissan wanted to come somewhere in the United States, and they chose Tennessee because we had a right-to-work law. Tennessee had the right to make that decision, even though other States chose not to have a right-to-work law. Then Saturn built a plant, and the Saturn employees chose to belong to the UAW and the Nissan employees said, no; we don't want to be in a union. Since that time, 13 major companies have come to the States that have right-to-work laws, including South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. If we let the prevailing Washington view decide whether a State should have a right-to-work, union shop, open shop, or agency shop law, we wouldn't have had that advantage, and we might not even have had an auto industry in the United States today. That competition between the States brought the companies that came here, hired American workers, built cars in our country, and now build half of our cars. These companies are providing the competition that will help the Detroit part of our industry survive, I think, more so than Government bailouts. So I say to my Republican colleagues especially, be careful what you ask for. Do you want to ask the Congress to vote on whether States have the right to choose a right-to-work law? I do not. I don't think you get any smarter about that issue by coming to Washington, DC. Democratic and Republican Governors and legislatures in Tennessee for a long time have thought we were perfectly capable of making that decision. So I would urge my colleagues to say Robert Taft was right in 1947 and 1948. We don't want Washington telling Tennessee, North Carolina, Minnesota, or Maryland what their labor laws ought to be. Let Tennessee decide whether it wants a right-to-work law. I can think of nothing more fundamental to the prosperity of my State than preserving the principle that States have the option to decide whether or not to have a right-to-work law. So I respectfully oppose the DeMint amendment.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the majority leader for his remarks. Unless the Republican leader has some remarks, I would like to say a couple things.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, in August 1963, I was a law student and a summer intern in the U.S. Department of Justice here in Washington. I was standing at the back of a huge crowd on a hot day when Dr. King spoke of his dream that one day his children would be judged not ``by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.'' The inauguration of our former colleague, Barack Obama, the day after Dr. King's birthday, symbolizes both remarkable progress on America's most intractable problem--race--and a reaffirmation of our country's most unique characteristic--a fervent belief that anything is possible. I thought about this in the same way 4 years ago at almost this time. I formed a speech in my head that I wanted to make, but I did not make it. Senators are rarely guilty of unexpressed thoughts. I have said many things I wish I had not said, but this is one time I wish I had said, 4 years ago, what I was thinking. So I wish to say it today, right after President Obama's inauguration. And I am especially delighted Senator Martinez happens to be here too. What I was thinking 4 years ago as the new Senators were sworn in was that here were three Members of the new class who had especially unique characteristics, and they had special people in the gallery that day. I, with Senator Carper and some others, had been asked by the leaders to work on the orientation for the new Senators. So we had gotten to know the new Senators, including Salazar and Obama and Martinez, during that period of time. So here is what I was thinking that day--and let's take them one by one. Here was Senator Salazar from Colorado with a Spanish surname, but he will be quick to tell you that his family has been here for 14 generations and helped to found Santa Fe. He has had a distinguished career here now. On that day 4 years ago, his mother was in the gallery. Senator Martinez was sworn in 4 years ago as a new Member of the Senate, in this case from Florida. His story, which he has just published in a remarkably good book which I have given to many of my friends, is the story of a young boy growing up very happily in Cuba whose parents took him to the airport one day, after having bought him a new suit, when he was 14 years of age, and put him on an airplane to Miami, not knowing if they would ever see him again. He was in a foster home there, then moved to Orlando. The story is all in the book. He went to Florida State, met his wife Kitty, became the mayor of Orlando, then became a member of President Bush's Cabinet, then a Member of the U.S. Senate. A very remarkable story. His mother, who put him on the airplane in Cuba, was here that day. These same 4 years ago when we swore in these new Members of the Senate, we also had the Senator from Illinois. We all now know his story very well: a father from Kenya, a mother from Kansas. I don't need to repeat that extraordinary story, about which he has written so well in his autobiography. But what struck me was that his grandmother was in the gallery that day. It was either his grandmother or his grandfather, but I believe it was his grandmother. His father's parent was in the gallery that day on the first trip, I believe, from Africa to this country to see the son of an immigrant sworn into the U.S. Senate. So I thought 4 years ago, and I think again today on this day on which we swear in Barack Obama as President, what a remarkable country this is. Here in this Senate 4 years ago, the 14th-generation American Ken Salazar is now going into President Obama's Cabinet as Secretary of the Interior. Mel Martinez, having had a long career in public life as mayor in Orlando, as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, as U.S. Senator, is going on to other things in his life. Former Senator Obama, of course, is now the President of the United States. But what was remarkable to me was 4 years ago they came to this Senate, and in that gallery were their parents--and in one case a grandparent-- reaffirming what I think Barack Obama's inauguration represents for us today. It was historic in the sense that it helped us symbolize the overcoming of one of our most intractable problems, the problem of race. But just as important, it symbolized once again the characteristic that makes this country more remarkable than any other country, the idea that anything is possible. People in other parts of the world look at the United States, and they don't always approve of us, but they know one thing is different about us: that we are not a country based on blood or race or the color of our skin or where our grandparents came from; that we are based upon our common belief in a few ideas, most of which are incorporated in two founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But one of those ideas is just in our character, and that is this irrational, fervent belief that in this country, anything is possible. Senator Martinez, Senator Salazar, and former Senator Barack Obama all represent that beautifully, and that makes this a very special day. I thank the President, I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I voted today the same way I did in October because both the current President and the incoming President have said this is an essential insurance policy against financial catastrophe. This is not spending; this is lending money with interest that taxpayers should get back. I would not have voted this way if President-elect Obama had not assured us that he will use this money as it was intended: to keep credit flowing by strengthening financial institutions and housing markets, and not for new industry-by-industry bailouts.