Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator. I wish to make sure I am fully protected and another Senator does not get ahead of me in terms of a second-degree amendment. Is that the assurance I am receiving from the Senator?

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator from Montana.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Reserving the right to object, may I say to the Senator from Montana, I would like to follow the Senator from Nevada for 5 minutes for the purpose of offering a second-degree amendment, if he can show me that courtesy.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I believe the amendment I offer on behalf of the Senator from Arizona, Mr. Kyl, and myself would improve the amendment offered by the Senator from Nevada and the Senator from Washington. As I listened to them talking, their concern is for emerging technologies, for businesses that are trying to develop emerging technologies to have time to plan, and so they offer a 1-year extension of the production tax credit, which gives a 1 cent per kilowatt hour tax credit to most emerging technologies producing electricity for commercial sales. Some renewable electricity sources receive a larger 2 cents per kilowatt hour credit. I would propose, along with Senator Kyl, that we make it a 2-year extension for emerging technologies. The way we would pay for that so it would not be any more expensive than the proposal they have offered is to do with wind what we have already done with solar: take it off the list of 2-cent-per-kilowatt- hour technologies and put it on the 1-cent list. In other words, we would be creating a 2-year extension of the production tax credit for renewable technologies. We would be treating wind the same way we treat open-loop biomass, small irrigation power, landfill gas, trash combustion, qualified hydropower, and wave and tidal facilities. They all would receive 1 cent per kilowatt hour. I think it makes much more common sense today, if we want to encourage emerging technologies, to treat them the same, especially because wind has had a preferential treatment since 1992. What has happened, Mr. President, is wind has gobbled up most of the money that has been spent through the production tax credit, and very little has gone to any of the other technologies. The taxpayer has spent an enormous amount of money to build large wind turbines in this country. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, we are committed to spending another $11.5 billion over the next 10 years for wind power alone, even though wind power produces less than 1 percent of all of our electricity and less than 3 percent of our clean electricity. Nuclear power produces nearly 70 percent of our clean electricity; that is, no nitrogen, no sulfur, no mercury, and no carbon for those concerned about climate change. If we were subsidizing nuclear power at the same rate we subsidize wind power for clean energy, we would be spending $300 billion or $400 billion over the next 10 years for nuclear power. So wind has been gobbling up the available money for renewable energies, and making it difficult to identify appropriate offsets to pay for long-term extensions of this renewable electricity tax credit. We have spent an extraordinary amount of money on wind. Wind has already proven that where the wind blows, it works. It is competitive. And where it does not blow, it is not competitive. In the Southeastern United States, for example, there is one wind farm. Because of the generous wind subsidies, this wind farm on the top of a lovely mountain, Buffalo Mountain in Tennessee, last August, in the middle of a drought when we were all sweating and turning up our air conditioners, was operating 10 percent of the time. It makes no sense to pay big subsidies to people in Chicago to build wind farms in places where the wind doesn't blow. So what we are suggesting, Senator Kyl and I, is to let us take the available money and let us extend for 2 years the production tax credit, and let us let some of it go to open-loop biomass, more to small irrigation power, more to landfill gas and trash combustion, and qualified hydropower and wave and tidal power, and it would also go for wind. It means the wind part of the tax credit would be for 2 years and wind would still receive about $1 billion of the $6 billion or $7 billion that the Ensign-Cantwell amendment would consume. So I ask my friends to seriously consider this not as an unfriendly amendment to renewable energy but as a friendly amendment. I have met with a lot of people who say we desperately need some certainty in business. Well, 2 years is twice as much certainty as 1 year, and there is no reason at this stage of development of energy why wind, which is well proven where the wind blows, and which has been subsidized so heavily since 1992, should continue to be subsidized at the expense of certainty in our tax policy and at the expense of all of the other renewable energies. So in summary, Mr. President--and I will have more to say about this next week--we believe the Alexander-Kyl amendment would improve the Ensign-Cantwell amendment by doubling the time the production tax credit is available to emerging renewable technologies. And the way we would pay for it is to treat wind the same way we treat open-loop biomass, small irrigation power, landfill gas, trash combustion, qualified hydropower, and wave and tidal power. They would be treated the same, and they would be given a chance over 2 years to flourish rather than 1 year. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment not be read further.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Reserving the right to object, I would like to ask the Senator from Montana if I could be recognized following the Senator from Nevada to offer an amendment to his amendment.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, there is much talk about change. I know one opportunity for real change that would affect nearly 7,000 young Americans every schoolday--5 students every minute. Gang violence? Drugs? No, neither of those. This is less flashy, but as serious. It is the persistently high number of high school dropouts. Twenty-five years ago, the landmark Federal report ``A Nation at Risk'' said: If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. In response the Nation's Governors and President George H.W. Bush set national goals, one of which was that the graduation rate would rise to at least 90 percent by the year 2000. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the national graduation rate was only 68 percent in 2006. There has been plenty of effort and some gains. Fourth graders nationwide recently scored higher than ever in reading, while both fourth and eighth grade students achieved record high math scores. Yet in 2006, among minority students, only 58 percent of Hispanic and 53 percent of African-American students graduate with a regular diploma, compared to 76 percent of White students and 80 percent of Asian Americans. When students drop out they lose, employers lose, society loses, and democracy suffers. These students are more likely to go to prison, to rely on public programs and to go without health insurance. The Alliance for Excellent Education estimates that dropouts from the class of 2006-2007 alone will cost our Nation more than $329 billion in lost wages, taxes, and productivity over their lifetimes. A recent landmark report by the National Academies of Science and Engineering called ``Rising Above the Gathering Storm,'' warns that Americans may be losing the brainpower advantage that has permitted us year in and year out to produce about 30 percent of the world's wealth for just 5 percent of the world's people, those of us who live in the United States of America. China, India, and other countries know that better schools, better colleges, and research mean better jobs and are determined to catch up. In response, Congress enacted the America COMPETES Act of 2007 to increase funding for science agencies, training for more math and science teachers and supporting more research. States are remodeling high schools, such as North Carolina's work with the Gates Foundation to create an academically rigorous curriculum. Mayors, like Nashville's Karl Dean, are holding dropout prevention summits. Also pitching in is America's Promise--the movement founded by Alma and Colin Powell and supported by four U.S. Presidents. Instead of relying on Washington wisdom, America's Promise will organize 100 community summits to find ways to change low graduation rates. After 30 years of fighting for and watching education reform, I wave one yellow flag of caution: Let's hope the talk at these summits will not be stuck in the same old educational ruts, but instead will be open to real change--such as offering high school juniors and seniors more options to enroll in college courses, giving low income students more of the same choices of so-called good schools that wealthy kids already have; giving all students more choices so they fit their school; measuring good teaching and finding fair ways to pay the best teachers a lot more; turning high schools as we now know them inside out so that they actually attract students; finding more ways to connect work and school so young people know the real world; and pushing standards higher so American graduates can compete in the world marketplace--and, yes, putting money behind real changes when they earn it. These are the real, hard changes that will help more of our youngsters realize America's promise. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I noticed the Senator from Texas was talking about all of those people recently moving to Texas. There was a point in our history in this country when half of Tennessee moved to Texas. In fact, almost every Texan you find has a Tennessee ancestor, whether it is Davy Crockett or Sam Houston or some other person. I wish to follow up on the remarks of the Senator from Texas and his focus on the family budget and his focus on the way this Senate is working. Senator McConnell, our Republican leader, has said often that in the Senate that process is often substance. When I was Governor of Tennessee, I didn't understand that very well because the job of a governor is to see an urgent need, develop a strategy for meeting the need, and then persuading half the people you are right. So I left the process to somebody else and probably didn't show as much respect for the process as I should have. When I was a university president, I was humbled a great deal and learned a little bit more about process. Now that I am in the Senate, I understand even more that the Republican leader is a very wise man when he says process is often substance. So first I wish to comment on the process we saw this afternoon when the majority leader, Harry Reid, a Democrat, and the Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, stood together with others of us and said we are going to work together and try to produce a housing bill. That was a very important event to say we'll come together and try to produce a housing bill that helps stabilize home values for American families and helps restart our economy. All it was, was process. Out of this messy situation we have here in the Senate, where 100 of us have a right to actually bring the Senate to a halt, we had the two leaders form a consensus about process and assign two of our more respected Members, the Senator from Connecticut, Senator Dodd, and Senator Shelby, the Senator from Alabama, the job of coming back to us tomorrow and giving us the next step. The leaders did this because the Senate recognizes we have a housing problem in this country. It is one that by and large may have to correct itself because of the huge free market we have, but there are steps we can take in the U.S. Government to help stabilize home values. That would be good for the family budget. It would help to restart the economy. It would be good for the country. I commend Senator Reid and Senator McConnell for their steps and think they are on the right course. I say that as I see the Senator from Colorado, who has done so much in this body to help us keep our eye on the ball and do what the American people expect us to do. The American people don't expect us not to have differences of opinions; of course we have differences of opinions. That is why issues are here. If they could be easily solved, they would have been solved at the county commission or at the State government level. But these issues have been kicked up to the national level and they are hard, tough issues, and we are expected to have differences of opinion. We have Democrats on that side and Republicans on this side because we have different principles that we emphasize sometimes. Usually they are the same principles, but they are often in conflict and we have to work those out. So in the Senate, we are going to have a big, strong, rousing debate about housing. No one should misunderstand that. But what the leaders have said is what the leaders ought to say in the Senate, which is that we see a real problem here with housing in the United States of America. We see families who are worried. We see home values that are at risk. We believe there are some steps we can agree on that would be good for the country, are within our budget and that would help stabilize home values and restart the economy. These are steps that will help the family budget, and the leaders have said that is what we are going to do. Of all of the things people say to me in Tennessee when we talk about issues, they basically say: Why don't you guys--or something less flattering--why don't you Senators stop the petty partisan bickering. Or, in my words, stop the kindergarten politics and go to work on big issues affecting our country and try to get a result. That is what the Senator from Colorado spends a lot of his time here in the Senate trying to do. I try to do that. Most of us try to do that. We are all here, I think, to get some result, and the leaders have given us an opportunity to try to get one here on housing. There are some good precedents for this. When people see us debating, they shouldn't think there is something wrong with that. We have big principled debates here. What they don't like is the kindergarten politics when we are here to stick our fingers in each other's eyes. The American people can smell that a mile away, and they hate it. They don't like it. But kindergarten politics is not what we used on the America COMPETES Act last year. Senator Reid and Senator McConnell cosponsored it because so many of us supported the idea. It wasn't so easy to pass. It was $34 billion of authorization to try to help us keep our jobs from going overseas by keeping our brain power advantage here. We had no limits on the debate. Everybody who wanted to offered an amendment and then we passed the legislation. The COMPETES Act is now in place, and we are working on funding it. It is helping low-income kids who couldn't afford advanced placement tests have them. It is helping universities train more math and science and physics teachers. It has put us on a path to double funding for the physical sciences in the Office of Science and in the National Science Foundation. These are all things we must do as a country if we want to keep our standard of living. So the Senate did that together. At the end of last year, we brought up an energy bill. Senator Salazar and I worked together on many energy ideas, but this was an especially important one. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the State of Tennessee has said to me repeatedly: The single most important thing you could do to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and to stop sending dollars overseas to some people who are trying to kill us is to reduce the consumption of oil by passing a fuel efficiency standard so we can increase the average mile per gallon of all cars and trucks. We did that. Now, the Senate had an argument about whether to have 20 billion more dollars of taxes, and some of us voted that down. But we didn't stop there and go home, take our football and leave the floor; we came to a result, and we did the most important thing we could do to try to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. And reducing our dependence on foreign oil, by the way, is the real way to stabilize and begin to bring down the price of a gallon of gas. So the Senate did that together. Then at the beginning of this year, the President and the House of Representatives got together to propose an economic stimulus package. In fairly record time we approved provisions that will help 2.7 million Tennesseans receive $600 or $1,200--or in some cases $1,800, if they have a couple of kids--of their own money for the most part, back, so they can spend it. This stimulus package will provide $50 billion in aid for businesses. In some of our smaller counties there are hundreds of small businesses which can take advantage of keeping a little bit more of their own money and maybe add jobs. And that stimulus is coming in time to help. We hear on the news today that consumer confidence is a problem. Well, the rebate checks and the small business deductions are about to go into effect, and that was something the Senate did together. We had principled disagreements, but we came to a result. One other example of working together is concerning the foreign intelligence surveillance bill. I mentioned a little earlier a very wise man, Samuel Huntington, once said that most of our conflicts are about principles with which we all agree. We agree, all of us, the Senator from Colorado and the Senator from Tennessee and every American, that the principle of liberty is important, and so is the principle of security. Well, those two principles came in conflict when we began to debate the rules for overhearing a conversation from an al- Qaida terrorist in the Middle East calling into the United States. For 6 months we debated that, but the Senate came to a result concerning liberty versus security. No one watching the Senate should think there wasn't a debate here. There was a vigorous, impassioned debate. It was the kind of debate we ought to be having, but it wasn't about kindergarten politics, it was about liberty versus security. Then the Senate came to a result. So on competitiveness, on energy efficiency, on economic stimulus, and on intelligence surveillance the Senate came to a result. What Senator Reid and Senator McConnell said today is that we are going to try to do the same thing on housing. Now, the second thing I wish to say is that there are several things going on within our financial situation today, and there are several solutions, so let's sort them out. First, Secretary Paulson and others have suggested a badly needed fresh look at our financial institutions and how they are regulated. That will take a while and isn't easy to do. It is very complex, and it ought to take a while to discuss. In this country of ours, we produce about 30 percent of all of the wealth in the world every year. We do it in this great big free market with many different parts to it. So any time we begin to change things about the regulations, we need to be careful about what we do. What we are talking about now in the Senate--and what the leaders announced today--is not down the road but instead is today and tomorrow. What can we do today and tomorrow to help the family budget? What can we do to stabilize home values, which we hope will help to restart the economy? There are a lot of good ideas out there. There are some that we in the Senate may be able to agree on fairly quickly. The last thing I want to try to do is to do the work of Senator Dodd and Senator Shelby for them. They have a big task. Their assignment from the leaders is to take a day, so they and their staffs will be working most of the night to see if there are a few things that most of us can agree on that can form the basis of what the Senate plans to do on housing. Then, as I understand it, we will begin to have votes, hopefully, on issues related to housing. My guess is that if there are important and controversial issues, in most cases it will require 60 votes. In other words, we will have a bipartisan core that Senator Dodd and Senator Shelby will propose, and then we will have a series of votes to try to improve the bill. Senators will have some differences of opinions about what improves it and what doesn't. For example, one thing that I think doesn't improve it--and many on this side don't think it improves it--is the idea of letting bankruptcy judges rewrite home mortgages for homes in foreclosure. It sounds good, and it might help a few people. Here is what else it would do: It would raise the risk for all of those who buy home mortgages in the future. If the risk is higher, the interest rate is higher. If the interest rate is higher, what does that mean for the family budget? It means higher monthly mortgage payments. The Congressional Budget Office says there could be higher interest rates. The Mortgage Bankers Association said there will be higher interest rates. They suggest that in the State of Tennessee it might be about $120, on the average, a month. I don't think it helps the housing slump if we pass legislation that has the effect of raising most home mortgages by $120 a month. That is a big raise for most people. So I think that is a bad idea. My guess is that this bankruptcy provision will be offered on the floor, we will debate it, and I hope we defeat it. At least we will be here on the Senate floor debating it and offering our reasons for and against it. If it comes up in that form, it reminds me of junk bonds--something that was cooked up in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They called them that because they were higher risk bonds. When they were placed into the marketplace, investors said: We will buy them, but we are going to require more of an interest rate return. There came to be other problems with these high-yield junk bonds, but the other problems are not what I am talking about. I am talking about the simple equation that if we introduce more risks into mortgages, then when people buy the mortgages they are going to require a higher interest rate. If there is a higher interest rate, that is a higher monthly mortgage payment for families in Tennessee, where the estimate is approximately $120 more a month. That is not an idea I hope is in the final result. One idea that might be in the final result that has substantial Democratic and Republican support is providing $10 billion in new bond authority for loan refinancing. Senator Bond has that provision in his legislation, for example. That would provide tax-exempt bond authority which could be used to refinance subprime loans, to provide mortgages for first-time home buyers and for multifamily rental housing. That would mean if you have a subprime loan and suddenly your adjusted rate jumped up to a level you cannot afford--and that is going to happen with a lot more mortgages in the next few months--then the State housing agency could make a deal with you to refinance that loan. In effect, this refinancing would pay off the old loan, and you would have a new one at a lower interest rate that you are comfortable with. Most of the money gets paid back, the house is not in foreclosure, and there is more stability in the market. This is an idea I could personally vote for, and I know it has support on both sides of the aisle. Another idea that has come from the Republican side but has attracted some interest on the Democratic side is the proposal of the Senator from Georgia, Mr. Isakson. He may be the junior Senator from Georgia, but he is no spring chicken. He had been in the real estate business for a long time before he came here to the Senate. He has been around long enough to have seen the housing slump in the 1970s. So he said: Let's not just invent some idea that might help; let's look back in our history a little bit and see if there was ever anything that worked in a similar circumstance that we could use to help preserve home values today. He pointed this out to us and introduced legislation, which I and others are cosponsors of, that would create a $5,000-a-year tax credit for three years for home buyers of homes that are new or in or near foreclosure. This tax credit would only apply for a limited period of time. Senator Bond included this provision in his housing legislation as well. Some work would have to be done to make sure this wasn't just for speculators. But the idea is a pretty simple one: Let's create some more home buyers through this incentive because that is good for homeowners. It is not just good for the person who has the foreclosed home but for everybody else whose house is not foreclosed, because if we stabilize the housing market by providing an influx of new home buyers, that will help preserve home values for everybody else in the market. And that will bring more confidence to the economy. I think that is a very good idea. It costs some money--about $10 billion to $14 billion over five years--in the form that it was originally introduced. Maybe it could be done at a little less of a cost. One thing we know is that a similar tax credit was tried before in the 1970s. Senator Isakson says that at that time we had a 3-year inventory of unsold homes, and that tax credit--at a lower figure then because the dollars were a little less then--helped reduce the inventory of unsold homes from 3 years to 1 year. That is an idea worthy of consideration. There is a lot of talk on both sides of the aisle about counseling for people buying homes. I have bought and sold some homes. I am trained to be a lawyer and I have been in Government. I would not think of buying or selling a home without a lawyer's help. I am not sure I could understand all of the forms I signed the most recent time I bought a home. We can do much better than that. The basic information ought to be up front so that people can understand, first, how long their mortgage lasts, what the interest rate is during the whole time, and what the monthly cost is. Those are the basic things. Then there are some other things that could also be clarified. Full disclosure-- the Senator from Texas talked about that earlier--and loan counseling are ideas that the Senate can help with. Senator Martinez, a former Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, was a part of the press conference the Republican leader called this morning to discuss several Republican ideas that we have and which we hope are considered in this debate. Senator Martinez has proposals about FHA loans, which are the loans that first-time home buyers often have, and for how to deal with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--the agencies that buy mortgages. There is a lot we can do in the Senate to help preserve home buying, and the way to find out what we can do is to do exactly what the Democratic leader and the Republican leader have given us the opportunity to do. Finally, I would like to say this, as I said in the beginning of my remarks. No one should believe, because the Democratic and Republican leaders and the rest of us standing behind them put us into a process to try to achieve a result, that it will be easy. No one should believe that there won't be a debate, or that there is any guarantee of success. Senator Dodd and Senator Shelby said that failure is not an option. I believe that, too, but we are going to have to discuss it to get there. It may take a few days. We are dealing with a big economy. So process may be a result, process may be substance, but either way, this is the beginning of the process toward a result. Also, at least from my point of view, I would not want anyone to think that I believe the Government by itself can solve this problem. We sometimes forget--particularly at a time when we have an economic slowdown, as we do today--what a fortunate country we are and what a strong economy we have. I mentioned earlier that year-in and year-out, this economy in the United States produces 30 percent of all of the wealth in the world, measured by GDP, for just 5 percent of the people of the world. And we will do it again this year, as we did last year and as we will do again next year. Five percent of us Americans live here, and we will produce this year about 30 percent of the wealth in the world, according to the International Monetary Fund. Now we are in a little bit of a slowdown. It is important to understand that we are being honest about that. It is a slowdown, and it is a housing slump, and we have a problem. We also have a big, strong economy--we have the biggest, strongest economy and the freest market, and our fundamental approach in Government ought to be to make sure that it stays that way. So, for me and for many on this side of the aisle--and maybe others on the other side too--there are fundamental long-term propositions to really balance the family budget. We can do this by having low taxes, having less Government, having 2-year budgets so we could have more time to conduct oversight and review regulations, which means less regulation. The way to have a strong economy is to have the right labor- management relations. In Tennessee, for example, when we were recruiting automobile plants, it meant the right-to-work law was very important to us as a State. We also need to have a first-class education system for all Americans, and that means dealing with disagreeable subjects like paying teachers more for teaching well or giving low-income kids more choices of good schools like the wealthy have. We need to also stop runaway lawsuits so that doctors don't move out of rural areas and so pregnant women don't have to drive 60 miles to Memphis to see a doctor for prenatal health care. That drives up health care costs. We also have to work together to find a way for every American to have health insurance. This is a long list, but if we really want economic strength, that is what it takes. I learned this in a small way as a Governor of the third poorest State in the 1980s. My goal was to raise family income. I kept working for ways to do that. We already had low taxes and we had a right-to- work law. Our good location helped. We had to get rid of the usury limit, and we had to improve the schools. Then I found that we needed four-lane highways. So there are many parts to a strong economy. These temporary measures we are taking, hopefully, in the next few days will help, I hope, preserve home values by stabilizing housing and restarting the economy. I see no reason why we cannot create more transparency and counseling and make it possible for more mortgages to be refinanced and give tax credits to home buyers to create more homeowners. We can do that, but these are short-term measures. Then we can have other principled debates in the Senate about whether we are going to have lower taxes and whether we are going to have less Government and whether we are going to have fewer runaway lawsuits. And discussions on whether we are going to be willing to pay teachers more for teaching well or whether we will have a research and development tax credit so our companies won't go overseas or whether we are going to create opportunities for skilled researchers and workers to come into the United States so that we can in-source some of the brainpower that creates all this wealth we have enjoyed for so long. I am glad to have the opportunity to come to the floor to congratulate Senators Reid and McConnell. They have done what leaders ought to do. They have put the Senate in a position to do what we should do, and that is to stand on our principles, offer our best ideas, work in good faith across party lines, and try to get a result and help the American people. The American people like to see the Senate acting that way. I am glad to have been a part of the Senate that acted that way on the America COMPETES Act, on the fuel efficiency standards, on economic stimulus, and on the foreign intelligence surveillance bill we passed recently. I am glad to be a part of the Senate that is preparing to act on housing slump. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I admire the amendment of the Senator from Massachusetts and I plan to vote for it, but there is not so much admiration for my amendment by some Senators. I wish to have a rollcall vote on it because I think it is time it became the law, and it has already been passed here before. So I will require a rollcall vote on my amendment.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, my amendment limits the encouragement of the development of natural gas resources beneath the Outer Continental Shelf to the coastline, off the coastline of the State of Virginia. Madam President, the estimates are that this year 400 billion American dollars are going overseas to buy oil. This amendment has some conservation measures in it, but it also allows us to proceed with the Department of Interior to develop oil from oil shale in the western part of the United States. It allows Virginia, which has asked to do it, to explore for natural gas off the coastline of Virginia. A ``yes'' vote is to bring down $3.50 gasoline prices. The supply of oil and gas is important if we want to bring down the price of oil and gas to Americans and make us less dependent upon foreign oil.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, as I understand the amendment of the Senator from Massachusetts, he would increase funding for the adult literacy programs to help Americans learning English. I think that is a terrific idea. Since 1906, immigrants have been required to learn English. No Child Left Behind, which the Senator helped to write, measures their progress in English. Legislation I have offered, and which the Senate has passed, gives people who are legally here and who seek to become a citizen a chance to become a citizen a year early if they become proficient in English. I support Senator Kennedy's amendment. In a moment, I will offer my amendment, which will stop the Government from suing the Salvation Army for requiring its employees to speak English on the job. That is a different matter. The Senator is right on this amendment, and I look forward to voting for it.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, in the 1990s, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., a prominent Democrat, a great friend of the Senator from Massachusetts, wrote a book about the ``Disuniting of America.'' He deplored the balkanization of our country. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is balkanizing our country when it sues the Salvation Army, as it did, for requiring its employees to speak our common language on the job. Any employer may require any employee to speak whatever language, but that is our national language. Only a few things unite us--our common history, the principles in our founding documents, and our common language. We should be valuing rather than devaluing our common language. A vote yes is for uniting America, a vote no on this amendment is for disuniting America, in the words of Arthur Schlesinger.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, there are only 2 ways to bring down the price of $3.50 gasoline and to keep electricity from going up. One is to reduce demand and one is to increase supply. The Senator from Florida and I agree on our amendments on several provisions, but he would take out the parts that will increase the supply of natural gas and increase the supply of oil, which will tend to reduce the price of gasoline and reduce the price of natural gas and make us less dependent on people in other countries who are trying to kill us. I urge a ``no'' vote if you want lower energy prices.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, this is another example of Senators in this Chamber working together on an important matter and getting a good result. It makes room for us to meet the President's number, to keep our investment in science and technology so we can keep our brainpower advantage and keep jobs from going overseas.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, no, I wish to have the rollcall vote on our amendment.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I have sent a modification of my amendment to the desk.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, there is no other Senator whom I know wishes to speak at this moment. Senator Domenici will be to the floor shortly.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the Senator from New Mexico, Mr. Bingaman, has been tireless in helping to create the America COMPETES Act, which passed unanimously here. But even more important than that, he did not walk away from it once it became law. He has attended to the details of trying to make sure we implement it. One of those details is what we are doing today. I wish to, in support of what he has said so eloquently--and I also commend Senator Domenici from New Mexico, who has had such a key role in this effort--I wish to tell a story that helps put in perspective what we are talking about. Two years ago, a group of Senators traveled to China, led by Senator Stevens and Senator Inouye. We were received very well because Senator Stevens had flown with the Flying Tigers. He flew the first plane to land in Beijing after World War II, and the top Chinese leaders had not forgotten. And, of course, Senator Inouye is a Congressional Medal of Honor winner for his heroic service to our country in World War II. So we saw President Hu, and the No. 2 man in China, Mr. Wu. What struck me about those two meetings--which were about an hour long, and during which we could have talked about Taiwan or Iraq or Iran or China's military buildup or America's intelligence system--the subject about which they wanted to talk the most and which animated them the most in their conversation was the subject Senator Bingaman just discussed: how China can use its brainpower to create a higher standard of living for the people of China. We are in an economic slowdown in America today, and we are debating and talking here about how we restore our level of progress economically. We are talking not only about the Federal budget, we are talking about the family budget. We are talking about family incomes. We are talking about jobs. That was the same subject the No. 1 and No. 2 men in China wanted to talk about as well. What were they focusing on? The fact of trying to give to China the same kind of brainpower advantage in creating a high standard of living we have had in America, since World War II especially. This year, despite the economic slowdown, the United States of America will create about 30 percent of all the world's wealth for 5 percent of the world's people, who are those of us who live in the United States. That is an astonishing fact. There are many reasons for it, including our free market system, our geography, our character, the immigration that has brought talented people from all over the world who are entrepreneurial in their spirit. But most people agree that the major fact in the high standard of living for this country since World War II has been our brainpower advantage. We have not only some of the best universities in the world, we have almost all of them. We have a set of national laboratories that is unequaled in the world. Until recently, at least, our system of kindergarten through the 12th grade education has been the envy of the world. As a result of all that brainpower, we have created a lot of jobs and a high standard of living. Increasingly, that is where the new jobs come from. That is why we like to have foreign students come here, because they become educated in our universities and we are, in effect, insourcing brainpower, so they create Google in the United States of America rather than in India or in China, and the jobs are here in the United States of America. So the America COMPETES Act, to which Senator Bingaman referred, had broad support here. It is the only legislation we have had in the last 4 years that I remember was supported by Senator Frist and Senator Reid. Then, when the Senate changed hands and the Democrats were in the majority, it was sponsored by Senator Reid and Senator McConnell. At one point, it had 70 Members of the Senate backing it, 35 Senators who are Democrats and 35 Republicans. It all came from a request that Senator Bingaman and I and others--including House Member Bart Gordon of Tennessee, the chairman of the Science Committee now--made of the National Academy of Sciences: Please tell us, in priority order, what are the 10 things we in Congress ought to do to help keep our brainpower advantage so our jobs will not go overseas. Norm Augustine, the former chairman of Lockheed Martin, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, assembled a group of Nobel laureates, university presidents, and others, and they came back with 20 specific recommendations in the Augustine report. There was also other important work being done by the Council on Competitiveness. We put all that together over 2 years. The President weighed in, in a big way, in two straight State of the Union Addresses and budgets. The Speaker of the House also weighed in, in an important way. So in this endeavor, on this important issue, we are all on the same team. But what we are doing today with this amendment is making sure we get where we have agreed we want to go. Now, for President Hu in China, all he had to do was walk over to their National Academy of Sciences in China, he convened them all in the Great Hall--and said: This is what we will do over the next 10 years. We are going to increase support for our universities and research through a percent of our domestic product. We are going to recruit from American universities talented Chinese professors who have distinguished themselves in the United States and they are going to come back and help improve Chinese universities. So, in China, the top man gave the order and they are on their way. Here, a lot more of us have to be involved, but we are all involved. The President has said we need an 18-percent increase for Fiscal Year 2009 to stay on a track to double funding for the physical sciences over the next 10 years; 18 percent for the Office of Science, which is our principal funder of our national laboratories and science programs, and 13 percent in the National Science Foundation. That is bigger than it normally would be because of the way the appropriations process worked last year. We didn't do what we all agreed we wanted to be able to do. So the Budget Committee did a pretty good job in reporting to the floor a budget resolution with sufficient provisions to fund this year's version of the America COMPETES Act. There are a wide range of those programs. There are opportunities for low-income children to take advanced placement courses which they now can't afford and to train the teachers who need to be trained to teach those courses. There are opportunities for summer academies at our laboratories and at universities to interest our students in math and sciences. The Augustine Commission reviewed programs all over America and recommended only a handful that ought to be emulated, and they included programs such as the UTeach program in Texas at the University of Texas which attracts outstanding students in chemistry and physics, for example, and gives them scholarships if they will agree to become teachers of chemistry and physics. Former Gov. Jim Hunt of North Carolina told me the University of North Carolina only graduated one physics teacher in one recent year. We are not going to learn much physics in America, to keep up with the Chinese and Indians and Irish and all the others who are trying to increase their brainpower to increase their jobs if we don't graduate physics teachers. So the Budget Committee did a good and important job. What we are trying to do is to get back on track to double funding for the physical sciences over 10 years, which is what we all agreed we should try to do. That was our goal. A huge majority in the House, the Senate, and the President himself, we are asking that the Senate make room in the budget for the President's number for the America COMPETES Act. That is what this amendment does. So I feel confident we will have substantial support, because so many of us worked so hard for so long on this idea. We Republicans are talking these days in unflattering ways about the Democratic budget. Senator Reid, the majority leader, said he hadn't heard about tort reform yet. Well, he will, before we are through. One way to help the family budget is to make it easier for pregnant women in rural areas to get medical care without driving 60 miles, and one way to do that is to put some limits on medical malpractice suits. That is tort reform. That will help the family budget. Lower taxes help the family budget. Lower energy costs help the family budget. But on this side of the aisle, we also believe that better schools and investments in science and technology, so we can keep our brainpower advantage and keep our jobs from going overseas, is an important part of a pro-growth plan. When I was Governor of Tennessee, Tennessee's taxes were the lowest in the country. I say this with great respect to the Senator from New Hampshire, who is also here. I double checked this fact when I came in. But we were the third poorest State. So we kept our taxes low, but we also had to enact some other pro- growth policies, which included getting rid of a usury limit, preserving the right to work law, reducing the number of employees in government, but it also included building highways. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that the single most important thing we could do to improve family incomes in our State was to focus on improving the quality of schools, colleges, universities, and research, so we began to pay teachers more for teaching well. We created chairs of excellence at the universities and centers of excellence at the universities. I believe that partly because of all those things together, our State began to increase its family incomes at a rate that was faster than any other part of our--any other State in the country during the 1980s. It was no coincidence we were also increasing funding for our education during that time at a rate faster than any other State. So an important part of a pro-growth plan--a Republican pro-growth plan, but obviously many Democrats agree with this as well--is fully funding the America COMPETES Act, making sure we keep our brainpower advantage so we can keep our jobs. I congratulate the Senator from New Mexico, Mr. Bingaman, for his leadership on this, and the senior Senator from New Mexico, Mr. Domenici, for his leadership on this. I thank the majority leader and the Republican leader for their co-sponsorship of this act. I say to Senators Conrad and Gregg, I am glad you made room in the budget for much of the America COMPETES Act. I hope we can complete the job with the Bingaman amendment so we can keep those jobs from going overseas. That is one good way to help advance a pro-growth plan that will help balance the family budget. I thank the President, and I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, this is not the first time I have offered this amendment. I offered it in the Appropriations Committee of the Senate in June of 2007. Enough Democrats as well as Republicans voted for it to be reported to the Senate floor as a part of the Commerce, Justice, Science appropriations bill. On October 16, 2007, the full Senate voted 75 to 19 to approve that appropriations bill, containing similar language to the amendment I have just sent to the desk. On November 8, 2007, the House of Representatives, with the support of 36 Democrats, voted 218 to 186 to instruct its appropriations conferees to recede to the Senate position on the EEOC. However, the Speaker of the House canceled the conference of the Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations Subcommittees over this issue, even though the Senate and the House both voted that a Federal agency should not be suing businesses that ask their employees to speak English on the job. The Speaker of the House, for some reason, thought it was so important that she canceled the entire appropriations bill rather than accept this language. So it must be a matter of great significance. I hope the Senate, having already passed this language before in the appropriations bill, as I have said by a vote of 75 to 19, will do it again when the opportunity comes tomorrow. Madam president, there are thousands of small businesses across America. They may be a Japanese restaurant where the owner may say: I would like for my employees all to speak Japanese. That is fine. They might be an Irish pub, and the owner might say: I would like for them all to speak with an Irish lilt. Or it might be a Chinese restaurant, and for a whole variety of reasons, the owner of the restaurant might say: We would like for all our employees to speak Chinese. That's fine. But in America, if the owner of a business wants to ask his or her employees to speak English on the job, that ought to not be an issue. You shouldn't have to go ask a lawyer to come up with a business reason why you can tell some Federal agency why you asked your employees to speak English on the job. There are practical reasons for it. There are safety reasons for it. There are communications reasons for it. There may be customer reasons for it. But it is a bigger picture than that. We have, in this country, valued English as our common language for a long time, and let me go back to the reasons why. One of our country's greatest characteristics is its diversity. But diversity is not our greatest characteristic. Our greatest accomplishment as a country may be that we've taken all that diversity and molded it into one common country. It is a source of our great strength. No other country has been able to do it as well. We see many European and Asian countries that wish they had our practice in inviting people from all over the world to come to their country and becoming one country. How do we do it? Because we say at the beginning in our Constitution that we do not make any distinctions based on race or gender or where your grandparents came from. We say to anyone who wants to become a citizen here: You must become an American. You have to raise your right hand. You have to say essentially the same oath that George Washington and his officers said at Valley Forge, and you basically renounce where you came from. You prove you are of good character. You wait for 5 years. You learn our history. You must learn our common language. Then we are all Americans. We are proud of where we came from, but we are prouder to be Americans. We have made that a great part of our tradition. The late Albert Shanker, the head of the American Federation of Teachers for many years, felt passionately about the importance of helping children and new Americans learn what it means to be an American. Once he was asked the rationale for a public school. He said the rationale of a public school is to help children learn English, to learn the ``three Rs,'' and what it means to be an American. The hope was that these students would then go home and teach their parents. Since 1906, we have required every new citizen to learn English. Federal law requires that all children learn English in public school. We have programs to help adults learn English--including the program I wish to put the EEOC's lawsuit money into. We have in No Child Left Behind, passed not long ago by this Congress, programs to help children learn English, and schools are held accountable for students learning our common language. When the Senate has recently debated immigration, it has passed two amendments to help value our common language. One was that by 64 to 33 we declared English as our national language. Another, I introduced, was to say that if a new citizen or an applicant for citizenship learned English to a proficient level, that person would be able to wait only 4 years instead of 5 years to become a citizen--a way of valuing our common language. We even said we will give a $500 scholarship to any applicant for citizenship who wishes to learn English, helping them learn English. So in many ways through the last century we have asserted the importance of our common language. I am sure many of us in the Senate--and many Americans--saw Ken Burns' epic series on World War II. My wife and I went to see a preview of that series last fall, and we were struck by how magnificent it was. Ken Burns said he felt, after doing years of work on World War II, the war was the period of the greatest unity in our country's history. Quoting a book by the late Arthur Schlesinger, ``The Disuniting of America,'' which was written in the 1990s, Ken Burns said: Maybe what we need is a little less pluribus and a little more unum. Where do we get our unum? We do not get it from race. We do not get it from gender. We get it from learning American history, and we get it from our common language. The reason we learn American history is so we can understand and learn the principles that unite us. It is those principles and that language which makes it possible for us to say we are all Americans. So the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has turned the civil rights laws upside down when it sues the Salvation Army and says: You cannot ask your employees to speak America's common language on the job. The purpose of the civil rights laws is to unify us, to say no distinctions based on race. We want to be one country. Well, if we want to be one country, we need to have a common language, and in this country that language is English. It was my hope when I was Education Secretary that every child would grow up to speak at least two languages well. One of them would be English. That is still my hope today. As I look at the motto above the Presiding Officer's desk, and I think about whose century this is going to be--is it going to be a Chinese century, a Japanese century, an Indian century, a European century, an American century?--part of it has to do with our economy, part of it has to do with our military strength, a big part of it is whether we can stay one country or whether we become just another version of the United Nations--the United States of America or the United Nations; whether we can say we are all Americans or whether we can't. One way to help us be able to say we are all Americans, one way to unite us is to value, not devalue, our common language. So in some ways this is a very small and simple amendment, taking the approximate amount of money that a Federal agency is using to sue the Salvation Army and other businesses to say: You can't require your employees to speak English on the job, and let's instead use that amount of money to help adults who want to learn English. We have been sacrificing our unity in the name of diversity for too long. Diversity is a great strength, but our most magnificent accomplishment is our unity. You can't become German, you can't become Japanese, you can't become French very easily, but in order to be a citizen of this country, you must become an American. The way you become an American is by showing good character, waiting 5 years, learning our history, and speaking our common language. The Federal Government ought to be consistently on the side of valuing that common language and not on the side of devaluing it. So I hope the Senate, when it has the opportunity, will find the same sort of bipartisan support that it had last year, October 16, 2007, when the Senate voted 75 to 19 to approve the Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill containing substantially the language in this amendment. We will then be able to say to American small businesses, of which there are hundreds of thousands: No, you don't have to go hire a lawyer to come up with some business reason why you need to ask your employees to speak English on the job. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, the great danger with these conversations about ``let's get the rich'' is, we got 115 of them, I think, with the so-called AMT tax. Today it traps, according to the Senator from New Hampshire, 20 million Americans. That seems to be the way things go. So I thank the Senator for his time, and I wish to move on to a different subject. We are talking really--it is the same subject--about the Federal budget and how to fix the family budget. The Senator from New Hampshire has eloquently described how the Democratic budget will wreck the Federal budget by raising taxes--which we have just had a beautiful speech about the need for higher taxes--more debt, and more spending. That is one view of how we move ahead in this country. The view on this side is that we wish to help balance the family budget. Now, the subject I wish to talk about has to do with where most families get their jobs. We balance the family budget by lower energy prices, which we talked about earlier, by lower taxes--that is one way to do that--by helping every American have access to health insurance without the Government picking their doctor. Another way is to make sure the small businesses of America have the opportunity to make a profit, to create jobs, to take some money home, and to avoid unnecessary costs. Amendment No. 4222 Madam President, I wish to speak for a moment about an amendment I propose to send to the desk in a moment that relates to keeping the family budget in balance by reducing the costs of small businesses, and it has the even more important advantage of helping to unify our country. The subject is the same subject that is chiseled into stone there: e pluribus unum--the motto of our country, what has been the motto of our country: one, from many. Let me begin with this story. In March of 2007, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a Federal agency, sued the Salvation Army for allegedly discriminating against two of the Salvation Army's employees in a Boston area thrift store. What had the Salvation Army done to earn this lawsuit from the Federal Government? Well, it had required its employees to speak English on the job. The English rule was clearly posted, and the employees were given a year to learn it. But this lawsuit, in plain English, means that a shoe shop in Tennessee or a small business in Missouri or in Washington State would have to hire a lawyer in order to make sure they have a clear business reason to require their employees to speak our common language on the job. So I have an amendment to bring some common sense to this subject. It would be to take $670,000 used by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which it is using to bring actions against employers who require their employees to speak English, and instead uses the money to help teach English to adults through the Department of Education's English Literacy/Civics Education State Grant program, which is one of the principal ways we help American adults learn our common language. So, Madam President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Jack Wells, a fellow on my staff, be granted floor privileges for the duration of the debate on the budget resolution.