Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from North Dakota for his courtesy. Senator Domenici is here and Senator Salazar is here. I send to the desk an amendment and ask for its immediate consideration. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I have some vague memory in my mind that in the late 1960s, or some time in that time period, a millionaire's tax was proposed. I am wondering if the Senator from New Hampshire remembers that and remembers how many millionaires it was to apply to, how many rich people was it whose money they were going to get?

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I wonder if I might ask the Senator from New Hampshire a question before he leaves the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, we are talking this week about the Federal budget. Senator Gregg, Senator Grassley, and others have pointed out, with appropriate response from the Senator from North Dakota, that in our belief we will wreck the Federal budget by raising taxes and increasing debt. At the same time we have an obligation on our side to say what our plan is, and we have a progrowth Republican plan which we have been detailing this week which focuses on lower taxes, less government, lower energy costs, making health insurance affordable for every American, without the Government choosing your doctor, support for better schools, the support for the kind of investments it takes to increase science and technology. That has been our plan. That has been our progrowth economic plan to help balance the family budget. So while they would wreck the Federal budget, we would help balance the family budget, and no part of that would be more important than dealing with energy costs. Energy costs to most American families worried about the family budget come down to $3.50 gasoline or electric bills that might be constantly rising. We have the goal of making sure that in this Nation, which consumes 25 percent of all the energy in the world, that we have a realistic policy for making sure we have a low- cost supply of clean electricity, dealing with the clean air issues-- nitrogen, sulfur, and mercury--and with the climate change issue, carbon, that we have a low-cost supply of clean electricity and that we gradually begin to reduce our dependence on foreign oil so we can clean up our environment, No. 1, and so we can stop shipping billions of dollars to people who are not friends of the United States, and so we can lower the price of gasoline over time to help balance the family budget. We will have other opportunities during this year to offer proposals for keeping energy costs low, realistic proposals, not proposals that fit some desert island which uses electricity occasionally but for the United States which uses 25 percent of all the energy in the world and whose demand for energy is growing, not declining. For example, in my part of the country, in Tennessee, we have the Tennessee Valley Authority, which is the largest utility in the country. It covers several States. They operate at about 27,000 megawatts all the time. Sometimes they go as high as 33,000 megawatts. That is 33 big, new nuclear powerplants and twice that many gas or coal plants. All that electricity for our local region is supplied by the Tennessee Valley Authority. So we have selected five different proposals which would create a deficit-neutral reserve fund to lower energy costs for families by encouraging energy efficiency on the one hand and increasing oil and natural gas supply on the other. There are only two ways we can reduce the price of gasoline or electricity. One is to increase the supply and the other is to reduce the demand. There are other ideas, but particularly in a big economy, that is what we need to do. No. 1, the Senator from Maine, Ms. Collins, has suggested one way to increase the supply of clean electricity would be to allow the Finance Committee or the Energy Committee to encourage the use of biomass by enacting legislation that would encourage the replacement of old, pre- 1920s wood stoves with new EPA-certified wood pellet or corn stoves, Environmental Protection Agency certified. These new EPA-certified stoves will help families save money on heating bills because the new stoves are up to 50 percent more fuel efficient than the old stoves. Given the rise of oil and natural gas prices, this idea would produce savings that would be much appreciated by families in Maine, all of New England, and in much of America. Secondly, the amendment allows the Finance Committee or the Energy Committee to encourage energy efficiency by enacting legislation that rewards the installation of smart electricity meters in homes and businesses. Let me give an example of what I mean by that. With this chart, we see how electricity is generated in America today. This is the reality. Half of it comes from coal, 19 percent from nuclear power, 7 from hydroelectric, 1.4 from biomass--that is what Senator Collins is talking about--and 20 percent from gas. We don't want the gas to go up because when it does, the price of natural gas goes up, and our chemical companies move to other parts of the world. Farmers pay four times as much for fertilizer. So we need to look for another way to create clean electricity. The first way to do that is through conservation. Let me take the hometown example of Tennessee. The TVA is a big utility, maybe the biggest in the country, $10 billion of revenue a year. I saw an article in the newspaper that said if we have plug-in hybrid cars, we will create a lot more pollution because we will have to build new plants such as coal plants. That is dead wrong because the Tennessee Valley Authority, even though it operates at 27,000 megawatts on the average every day, that is between 3 and 7 o'clock when we are all turning on lights, coming home from work, using our electricity. The TVA has lots of spare electricity to use at night, 7 or 8,000 megawatts. That is 7 or 8 nuclear plants for the Tennessee Valley Authority. We could plug in our hybrid cars in the middle of the night without building another new nuclear plant, another new coal plant, another new any kind of plant because we have excess capacity in our region and so does virtually every other part of the country. We encourage consumers to use smart meters so they know that electricity is going to cost more between 4 and 7 o'clock and less at night. Then if the car companies wanted to develop a plug-in hybrid car with advanced battery technology, we can operate on that electricity and reduce our dependence on foreign oil without building any new plants for that purpose. So that is the second proposal we have. The same applies to water heaters. People have their water heaters on at all times. Any utility should be able to make an agreement with the Senator from New Jersey or the Senator from Tennessee or from Colorado to say: Turn your water heater over to me and some of your other appliances, and I will turn them off and on at peak hours so your electric bill will stay flat or go down. We could save enormous amounts of electricity and avoid building new plants. That is what this amendment would do. This would permit us to clean up existing coal plants. Here is how we would propose to do that. Forty-nine percent of our electricity is produced by coal. We are the Saudi Arabia of coal. Other countries in the world are building coal plants because it is the technology they know how to build. Some people are putting up large wind turbines. We are spending $11 billion of taxpayer money on wind turbines, but it is hard to find wind turbines on this list for the United States because it doesn't produce much energy. But coal does. What we need to do is clean up the coal production. This amendment would allow the relevant committees of Congress to give tax credits to recapture the carbon that comes from coal. A great many people are concerned about climate change and the use of carbon. This would help meet that demand in a realistic way in the near term. A fourth idea: I said earlier there are two ways to lower the price of $3.50 gasoline. One is more supply, and one is less demand. The advanced battery technology car, the plug-in hybrid car that runs more on electricity than it does on oil, will help reduce demand. We have a proposal for that direction. Another proposal--and I am sure the Senator from New Mexico will want to say something about this--is the idea of, in appropriate places, using our existing oil and gas that exists offshore. Two years ago, the Senator from New Mexico, then chairman of the Energy Committee, pushed through legislation that permitted us to expand drilling in lease 181 in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas. We took some of those revenues and helped mitigate some of the problems that exist on the coast; in other words, used it for conservation purposes. For the first time, we put some of those revenues into the land and water conservation fund on a permanent basis, which has been a 40-year goal of the conservation community. The Senator from Colorado, Mr. Salazar, was key to that effort. I am proud of that bipartisan effort. We could do more of that. This amendment doesn't specify exactly what we would do. That would be up to the authorizing committees. But an example of the next step might be to allow the State of Virginia, as it has asked Congress to permit it to do, to go 50 miles out and look for gas and then take half the revenue and put it in a trust fund for the State of Virginia to improve beach nourishment or to keep taxes down or to have a trust fund so the already excellent higher education system can be among the best in the world. If I were Governor of Virginia, I would want to do that. I was Governor of Tennessee, and we don't have an ocean. But many States do. If they asked for that and if they can produce more oil and gas, which will lower the price of $3.50 gasoline, then they ought to be allowed to do so. Finally, oil shale development--the Senator from New Mexico will direct more of his attention to the oil shale development issue--the amendment would allow the Energy Committee to enact legislation that would increase domestic oil supplies by allowing the development of oil shale deposits in green basins in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. So what we have suggested is an amendment that is sponsored by Republicans, but we hope it is compelling enough to attract a great many Democrats to support it. It is an amendment that will help balance the family budget by lowering the cost of energy. It would be the Collins amendment to help use biomass--wood pellets, corn--in more efficient stoves in New England and other parts of America. It would be to create incentives for electricity meters, smart meters which could make more effective use of hybrid cars or water heaters and avoid building dozens of new powerplants. It would create room for the creation of incentives to allow existing coal plants to deal with carbon. If we want to deal with climate change in this generation, we have to deal realistically with the coal plants we have today which are producing one-half of the electricity we use in this country or 12.5 percent of all the electricity that is used in the world. To lower the cost of gasoline and natural gas or to stabilize it, we want to create new supply in two ways: By, in appropriate instances, allowing offshore drilling. We would suggest, not in this legislation but as the committee works on it, that it be offshore 30 or 50 miles and that the royalties go to conservation purposes or to the States. The final idea was to use our oil in shale. In conclusion, there is one glaring omission in this set of five recommendations that we have made, and we need to work on it. The Senator from New Mexico is the leading Senator on this subject, but we don't have anything in our amendment about nuclear energy. I believe it is important to repeat, every time we talk about electricity, if we want to talk about realism, the United States, in the next 10 years, having control of mercury, having control of sulfur and nitrogen so it doesn't create health problems, and dealing with climate change in this generation, that after conservation, nuclear power is the only real technology we have today for that purpose. We do want to recapture carbon from coal, but we cannot do that in a wholesale way yet. We will never be able to put up enough wind turbines to make much of a difference. Someday maybe solar thermal powerplants may make a difference. But if we are talking about the next 10 or 12 years, nuclear power will make the difference. Here is why I am saying that. As shown on this chart, this is the clean electricity generated in the United States of America last year. Sixty-six percent of the clean electricity--meaning electricity with no sulfur, no nitrogen, no mercury, and no carbon--came from nuclear power, a technology we invented in the United States in the 1950s, that our Navy has used without one single incident in submarines since the 1950s; nuclear power that has now been adopted by France: 80 percent of their electricity is nuclear power; nuclear power that has been adopted by Japan: They build a new nuclear plant every year or so. We appropriated $5 billion to lend to Westinghouse in this body to help China build nuclear powerplants. When are we going to get serious about cleaning up the air? So we have ideas about that--not in this proposal. One would be to reprocess the waste, reduce it by 95 percent, so we can store it more safely. That is one idea. Another idea would be giving increased credits for the production of nuclear power. If we were to subsidize nuclear power by the kilowatt hour in way proportional to how we subsidize wind, we would be subsidizing nuclear power with about $340 billion a year. So the Republican proposal to help balance the family budget on lower energy costs has five general areas as part of a reserve fund the appropriate committees can make a difference with. They have to do with conservation, and they have to do with increasing this supply. But what it means is, these are realistic ways to deal with the $3.50-a-gallon gas price and realistic ways to make sure we have large amounts of clean electricity, so we can deal with clean air as well as climate change in the near term instead of some later time. This is a real proposal and not a fairytale. This is for the country that produces 25 percent of all the energy in the world and not for some desert island. This will help balance the family budget. We hope it earns strong Democratic support as well as Republican support. Mr. President, I yield the floor. The next speaker is the Senator from New Mexico, the long-time chairman of the Energy Committee as well as the Budget Committee and the leading spokesman for nuclear power in the Senate. Thank you.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I will be happy to. Amendment No. 4196, as Modified

Mr. ALEXANDER. I will consume not more than 20 minutes. I would assume Senator Domenici would consume not more than 20 minutes.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I would be happy to proceed. Senator Domenici is going to join me in making our presentation.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I first commend the Senators from North Dakota and Iowa for the way they conduct this debate. This is always a model for how the Senate ought to work. Sometimes toward the end of the debate it is not but at least at the beginning it is. What we are supposed to do is act like grownups, deal with big issues, base our arguments on principle, and come to results. We often are able to do that, and these two Senators are among the leaders in helping to make that happen. This is a week during which we talk about the Federal budget. I want to talk more about the family budget because what we do with the Federal budget makes a big difference to the family budget. We know this week in homes in Tennessee, Iowa, and across America people are talking about their family budgets. They're worried about whether there will be enough money at the end of the month to pay the taxes that will be due in April and about whether there will be enough money to pay gasoline costs that are $3.50 a gallon or higher in some parts of the country. They are worried about whether there will be enough money to afford a reasonable health insurance plan and whether the homes so many Americans have been able to buy will maintain their value. They are worried about whether we are going to be able to keep our advantage and brainpower here in America so we can keep our jobs from going overseas. They are worried about whether our schools are going to be good enough to help our children have good jobs. Those working in small businesses are worried about the cost of runaway lawsuits. Women who are pregnant in rural areas are worried about having to drive 60 or 80 miles to a doctor because the high cost of medical malpractice insurance has run the OB/GYN doctors out of the rural areas. Women must go to the big cities and they have to drive long distances to have their babies. Those who work with the capital markets--and there are tens of millions of Americans who do--want to revive those capital markets. Those who are sitting in traffic jams want us to meet our obligations to build roads, bridges, railroads, and airports. We want simpler taxes. We would like to have less Government. All of these ideas would affect the family budget. We must maintain a good balance in management-labor relations, for example, by not getting rid of the secret ballot in labor relations or keeping the right-to-work law. Those are all important issues. I saw in my State of Tennessee that having a right-to-work law helped to attract the auto industry. Now, a third of our manufacturing jobs are auto jobs and our family incomes have gone up. So let me talk for just a moment about what Republicans want to do to help balance the Federal budget. So the question is whether we will adopt the Democratic budget which, according to evidence presented by the Republican leaders of the Budget and Finance Committees, would raise taxes, raise spending, raise debt, and wreck the Federal budget or whether we will adopt the Republican pro-growth plan which keeps taxes low, which lowers energy costs, which helps make it possible for every American family to have health insurance without the government choosing the doctor. I wish to talk about the other picture that taking the Republican pro-growth plan to help balance the family budget instead of the Democratic budget for more taxes, more spending, and more debt. Traditionally, this budget week when we talk about the Federal budget is usually a week in which we are so awash in a blizzard of charts and speeches, abstractions, and competing statistics that it is very difficult to make much sense out of the whole discussion. What I am suggesting is not very hard to make such sense out of--it is a debate we hear quite a bit. In December, when we debated the Energy bill, we on this side were willing to join with many Democrats and pass a fuel efficiency standard. This is one of the best things this Congress has done to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, thereby reducing our use of oil and helping to stabilize the price of gasoline. But, first, we had to stop an effort from the other side to add $20 billion in taxes. Earlier this year, most of us on this side joined with most on the other side to pass an economic stimulus plan. But, first, we had to reject $40 billion in more spending that the other side wanted to add to the proposal. My point is that more spending is not a new argument and that the other side would propose more spending, more taxes, and more debt, and this side of the aisle would say, let's have less of that. There is another part to the story on the Republican side of the aisle and exactly what we would do to help balance the family budget. Over this week, we will be hearing proposals to lower or to keep taxes low. There are a variety of proposals to do that. One would be to lower corporate tax rates from 35 to 25 percent. That would help keep jobs in America. That helps the family budget. One would be to index capital gains for inflation. That would help keep jobs in America. That helps the family budget. I would like to see us make permanent the expensing provisions that we passed in the stimulus package. That would help keep small businesses healthy in this country and create new jobs. Those incomes would increase family incomes, and that would help the family budget. We would like to lower energy costs as well and bring some common sense to the discussion about energy. That would mean, from our point of view, more nuclear power because that is the cleanest power. If we are really serious about climate change in this generation and about cleaning up the sulfur and the nitrogen and the mercury, we need to remember 66 percent of all the clean energy we produce in America is produced by nuclear power. Instead of wasting dollars by spending, for example, $11 billion to subsidize more large wind turbines, we could spend the money to encourage the building of nuclear power. We could encourage reprocessing of nuclear waste which would reduce by 95 percent the amount of that waste and storing it, thus making it easier for nuclear power. More oil would increase the supply of oil and reduce the price of oil. Simple economics tells us that. Most of us on this side of the aisle are ready to give States the option to drill for oil and gas off the coast of America. You can do that at a distance. It can't be seen and it can be done safely. Then a significant amount of the royalties from the revenue from that can be taken into the State, put in a trust fund, which could either lower taxes or protect the coastal areas or could be spent to improve the higher education system. The State of Virginia has said it wants to do this. Most of us on this side of the aisle, the Republican side of the aisle, say, why not? And why not take some of the royalties as well and devote them to conservation purposes, as Senator Domenici and Senator Salazar on the Democratic side of the aisle led us to do in the 2005 Energy bill. I would like to see us take some of the money that we are spending and use it to give incentives to utilities to increase incentives for using electricity in the off-peak hours. To put that in plain English, the Tennessee Valley Authority uses about 27,000 megawatts of electricity on any given day, a typical day, on the average. But at night, it has 7,000 or 8,000 megawatts it doesn't use. So if we had ways to plug in hybrid cars at night, we wouldn't have to spend money for new plants and could lower the cost of electricity, improve the quality of the air, and deal with climate change at the same time. That is all part of the Republican plan. Not just Republican ideas, but the Republican plan, which we hope is so compelling that it attracts Democratic support to help balance the family budget. On the Republican side of the aisle, we want to make sure every American has health insurance without the Government choosing the doctor. We have a variety of proposals for doing this. We want to integrate the idea of every American having access to health insurance with two words: private sector. We believe we can do that, and do that in a way that lowers the cost of health care and makes a basic health care plan available to every American. One way, of course, to lower the costs of health care would be, as I mentioned a little earlier, to stop runaway lawsuits that are driving up the costs of medical malpractice lawsuits and causing OB/GYN doctors to leave rural areas. We have pregnant women in Tennessee who drive 60 or 80 miles to Memphis for their prenatal health care or to have their babies because the OB/GYN doctors' health care costs--their medical malpractice costs--are so high because of unnecessary lawsuits that they have left town and gone to some other place. We could enact a small business health insurance plan, which has significant support on both sides of the aisle, but we haven't been able to get it through the Congress yet. It would help an estimated 1 million more Americans to have health insurance at a lower cost. These are some of the ideas we on this side of the aisle believe would make a difference in helping the family budget. Most Americans are concerned today about the values of their homes. There are a number of proposals that would simply add billions of dollars in spending as a way of approaching the housing slowdown. However, we would like to see proposals like that of Senator Isakson of Georgia that would adopt an idea--similar to what the government had in the 1970s--to give a $5,000 tax credit to home buyers who buy newly constructed or homes that are being foreclosed. This would bring back into the marketplace those who would buy foreclosed homes or new homes. Another idea, which I believe there is substantial agreement with on both sides of the aisle, is to increase the amount of money that would be available to State housing agencies to help refinance subprime mortgages or mortgages that are now headed to foreclosure or in foreclosure. In terms of education, I know for a fact if you want a stronger economy and higher family incomes, you have to have a focus on education. Better schools, better colleges, and better universities mean better jobs. And that doesn't always mean more spending. For example, giving parents more choices of schools, particularly low- income parents, with the idea of a Pell grant for kids would be one way of helping hard-working American families make sure their children have a chance to attend a good school. Another way to make sure there are good schools is to pay outstanding teachers more money for teaching well. This weekend, there was a story in the New York Times about a charter school in New York City where teachers are being paid $125,000 a year. And the manager of the school said: I would rather have a classroom with 30 kids and the very best teacher, rather than a classroom with 20 students and an average teacher. I agree with that, Mr. President. So let's double the amount of money we would spend for the teachers' incentive fund, enacted in No Child Left Behind, which would give to State and local governments funds to experiment with programs that reward outstanding teaching and outstanding school leadership by paying those individuals more. We have strong agreement about the America COMPETES Act. We understand that since World War II America's technological advances have been the source of its growth. Using some of the funding we have in this budget to have a sufficient amount of funding to give 1\1/2\ million low-income children an opportunity to take advanced placement tests, to hire math and science teachers according to the America COMPETES Act, and to put us on a path of double funding for the physical sciences are things that would be part of a Republican pro- growth plan to help balance the family budget. As we begin this debate on the budget, what we are likely to see are two very different visions of America's future.

Mr. ALEXANDER. So again, the question is whether we will adopt the Democratic budget which would raise taxes, raise spending, raise debt, and wreck the Federal budget or whether we will adopt the Republican pro- growth plan. Will we make room for the Republican pro-growth plan which would begin to keep taxes low, which would begin to lower energy costs, which would help make it possible for every American family to have health insurance without the Government choosing the doctor, which would stimulate home buying, which would make more room for science, which would adjust our spending so we are able to reward outstanding teachers and give parents more choices of good schools. This is a different picture of how we can move ahead in this country. We hear a lot of talk about change. A real change would be to stop more taxes. Stop excessive spending. Stop more debt. And focus more attention on the family budget. Have a Federal budget that emphasizes lower taxes, lower energy costs, lower health insurance costs, stimulating home buying, more for science and more for better schools. That's really the way to create better jobs. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Will the Chair please let me know when I have completed 15 minutes?

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent for 4 more minutes.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I stayed so that I could respond to not just the words but the spirit and the tone of the remarks of the Senator from Connecticut. He and Senator Shelby, and their committee, are in the best position to help make sure we do our job between now and the upcoming recess, and on behalf of the Republican leader, I wish to say that is our goal. Looking back just to the end of last year, this Senate was able to take up an energy bill, have a principled debate--including an argument about taxes--and come to a result. And we took a step--increasing fuel efficiency standards for the first time in 30 years--that, according to a top expert at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, will do more than anything else Congress could do to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Then we took up the economic stimulus legislation, and it was a smaller package than almost any of us would have preferred, because we had different points of view, but we agreed on it. We had a vote that kept out $40 billion in additional spending which that side wanted and this side largely didn't, but we came to a result, and the President signed it into law. We did the same thing on intelligence, with a very difficult issue, liberty versus security, and how do we balance that. We had a Rockefeller-Bond proposal on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that finally got 68 votes, and we sent it to the House. That is three straight. Now here comes housing. There is no reason we can't have a result here. I think all that we are saying on this side is that while the Democratic proposal may be a good start, we think it needs a lot of work. We do not, for example, want to put into law a proposal that many feel might turn home mortgages into junk bonds. We have some ideas in addition to those which have been proposed that we would like considered. There seems to be no reason in the world why the majority leader could not sit down with the Republican leader and say: Let's see if we can agree on a limited number of amendments. And we respect the fact that largely the Democratic side will want to pick its amendments, and we hope you will respect the fact that largely we would like to pick our amendments. Now, there is some negotiation there. It can't all be done out here tonight. But I think the point we would like to make is that there are 49 Republican Senators. We want to be a part of this solution, as we were in energy, as we were in with economic stimulus, as we were with intelligence, and we intend to be with housing as well. And we look to the chairman of the Banking Committee, Senator Dodd, and to the ranking member, Senator Shelby, and to Senators Grassley and Baucus on the Finance Committee to help us get to that position early next week. My colleagues will hear us on this side talking a lot about a pro- growth economic plan that goes beyond just housing--we believe in lower taxes, and we want lower health care costs and lower energy costs, and we want to implement the America COMPETES Act. We want a strong robust economy, and housing is a part of it. So there are some larger issues we might want to take up as part of the housing debate. Just which ones are appropriate ought to be something we could discuss and work out. So I appreciate the spirit of the Senator's comments. Our spirit is that we have 49 Members on this side of the aisle, and we would like to have our ideas included. We don't like the idea of just sending a bill up and saying: OK, here it is, let's vote it up or down. The majority leader said that really wasn't his intention, so maybe there is a misunderstanding, and maybe that can be cleared up over the weekend and we can get back to doing our job on housing, as we have done with the energy, economic stimulus, and intelligence bills. So I thank the Senator for his excellent remarks and his spirit, and I look forward to working with him.

Mr. ALEXANDER. And you didn't say you wanted to. So apparently, somehow, it didn't get through as clearly as it might have. Maybe we didn't hear it well or maybe it wasn't said as clearly. The Republican ideas, some of which we think are very strong, such as the Isakson amendment, for example, which has a lot of appeal, we want to make sure those ideas are included in the debate, and when that right is respected, we think we can have a good bill. So hopefully the majority leader and the Republican leader will have a chance to discuss that, and the chairman of the Banking Committee and the ranking member will help with that process as well.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, we have other Senators wanting to speak, and these will be my last comments. I don't disagree with that. I think we all know what needs to happen here. We don't want the majority leader picking all our amendments.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, the news came today that William F. Buckley died. For most Americans, that brings back a lot of memories. Since the early 1950s, he has been synonomous with public television. ``God and Man at Yale'' was an important book, even though he was a very young man when he wrote it. And William F. Buckley's style, his choice of words, his manner of speaking, and his unfailing courtesy have set an example for debaters of important issues in this country for more than half a century. In 1984, a couple of years after I had been a guest on ``Firing Line,'' which was William Buckley's television show, I sat next to him at a dinner. It was a Howard Baker fundraising roast in Washington, DC. William Buckley was the master of ceremonies. I wrote about that visit in a little book I put out after I was Governor called ``Steps Along the Way.'' ``When do you write?'' I asked him. ``Anytime,'' he replied. ``Books are about the only thing I write in a methodical way. I do them in Switzerland, after I ski, between about 5:30 and 7 p.m.'' I told him that when our family had visited Chartwell, Winston Churchill's former secretary said that Churchill sometimes dictated 5,000 words in a night. Buckley was surprised. ``I can do 1,100 or so in a couple of hours,'' he said, ``Sometimes more, maybe up to 2,800 words at a time, but 5,000 would be a very productive night. With the advent of computer technology I can know exactly what I do each time I write. For example, my last book took 112 hours.'' ``When do you make corrections?'' I asked him. ``I do that in about thirty minutes the next morning, before I go skiing.'' ``You mean that you finish off the last day's work so you can be ready to start when you return from skiing?'' ``That's right. Then I send the transcript to five friends. When the transcripts come back, I put the five edited versions side by side and decide what changes to make.'' ``What about your columns?'' I asked him. ``How long do they take to write?'' ``You mean after I get them in mind?'' He said. ``Yes.'' ``About twenty to thirty minutes. Westbrook Pegler once told me it took him eleven hours to do a column.'' ``Do you make changes?'' I asked him. ``No.'' Said William Buckley. ``I've been doing it for nineteen, no, twenty-two years. I know the rhythm, the internal consistency of the column. I have it down. I don't change it. That would be like asking a jazz pianist to change his improvisation.'' That was William Buckley in 1984. He was a pianist. He really preferred the harpsichord, the clavichord. He told me he played Bach because you played what you loved the most. He loved music. He loved talking. He loved people. He loved his family. He was, of course, a wonderful conservative leader. He changed the way many Americans thought about our Government and our society. And he always seemed to have the right thing to say. In 1996, after I had competed for the Presidency, I was at some dinner. He walked all of the way across the room. You never know what to say to someone who has lost an election. It is kind of like what do you say to someone at a funeral? But he walked all the way across his room and put his hand on my shoulder and said: That was a noble thing that you did. That has always struck me as the one of the nicest things anybody has said to me after having lost an election. So I will miss William Buckley. So will our country. So will the conservative movement. My family and I send our condolences to the Buckley family. We know they are proud of his life. They will miss him. I am glad to have these few minutes on the Senate floor to remember William F. Buckley's contribution to our public life. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I ask unanimous consent that following my remarks, the Senator from Oklahoma be recognized for 15 minutes.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I would like to take 4 or 5 minutes to say a word about William Buckley and then turn the floor over to the Senator.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Arizona, and I appreciate his remarks. I agree with his sentiments. I might start with that. I thought the Congress got off to a pretty good start this year. The President and the House of Representatives agreed on an economic stimulus package. All of us had different ideas about it, but the President and the House agreed on something, sent it over here, and we had what I would call a principled debate about it--a disagreement over whether to spend $40 billion more on it than the House-passed legislation, and the Senate objected to that. That was dropped. Then we passed it, sent it to the President, and he signed it. That spirit of having a principled argument, resolving it, and helping the American people got us off to a good start. We did the same thing on the FISA legislation Senator Kyl, the Senator from Arizona, just described. He was a major force in that. That was a principled debate as well. Samuel Huntington, the distinguished Harvard professor who is the former president of the American Political Science Association, says that most of our conflicts in our democracy are conflicts between or among principles, with which most of us agree--for example, liberty and security. Each American has a right to liberty, each American values security, and we debated that here for nearly 6 months, from August through today: If we are going to intercept communications from terrorists overseas calling into this country, under what conditions may we do that and still respect our traditions of liberty? Security versus liberty. Differences of opinion. The Judiciary Committee got in the middle of it. The Intelligence Committee was in the middle of it. In the end, the members of the Intelligence Committee produced a piece of legislation by a vote of 13 to 2, a bipartisan piece of work they believed respected liberty and security--and after a good debate here on the floor of the Senate, nearly 70 Senators agreed. That is about as well as you can do in the Senate when you have a major difference of opinion. And off that went to the House of Representatives. Well, if what happened here was an example of what Americans like to see from their legislators, what happened in the House of Representatives is not what Americans like to see. What I think most Americans want to see in Washington is not that we always agree. I mean, this is a debating society. It is the Senate. The issues are here because we don't agree, in many cases. So we have these debates on liberty versus security, for example, and then we resolve them. We show that in the end we resolve them. That is what people like. Then it goes over to the House of Representatives. And let me put it in the words of some Tennessee folks last week. I was in Tennessee last week when the Senate was out of session, and the most frequently asked question, the most frequently made comment went something like this-- and I will paraphrase, but just a little bit: Senator Alexander--someone in the back of the room at Ashland City might rise and say--I have a question for you. How is it that the House of Representatives has time to investigate baseball, has time to play politics with the White House staff members, has time to take a 10-day vacation, but doesn't have time to deal with an intelligence bill? And I had to say to them: I am disappointed with what happened in the House of Representatives because it did so well with the economic stimulus package that I thought we were off to the kind of start the American people would have agreed with. So I believe most Americans understand that the failure to deal with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act legislation means this: It means fewer surveillances. It means fewer companies and individuals willing to cooperate with our Government in overhearing conversations between those who would destroy us when they call in to our country to talk about it. And it means we are less safe as a result of that. My hope would be that we can deal with this Intelligence bill quickly and promptly. The House of Representatives is certainly capable of that. There are good men and women there. We recognized that when we basically adopted the House's economic stimulus package, with minor adjustments. Some Senators said: Well, the Senate ought to have a lot to say about that. Well, we--most of us in the Senate--are rarely guilty of an unexpressed thought, that is true, but it is not a bad idea for us also to recognize wisdom and good ideas when they come from the other part of the Capitol. We saw in the economic stimulus package some wise decision making and, for the most part, adopted it, with some amendments. My hope would be that the House of Representatives would do the same with the Senate's 68-vote decision on the Intelligence bill. My understanding is that there is a majority of Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives today who agree with the Senate bill and who would vote for it if it were brought up. If they will do that, that would be very helpful. I see the Senator from Oklahoma is here. Would he like to make some remarks between now and 4 o'clock?

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, could I be informed when 10 minutes is up.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I wish to thank my colleague from Tennessee for his comments on health care, for his leadership. He has been, on our side of the aisle, one of the principal actors in the effort to try to combine the idea of, as some say, ``universal access,'' with two other words, ``private sector.'' Four words that usually do not go together. I agree with him. If there was one agenda item on the Republican side of the aisle we could all agree on this year as a goal that we would like to start this year, it would be having every American insured. We would like to make it possible for every American family to have access to and to be able to afford health insurance. I would like to speak to that. First, I would like to comment on the majority leader's comments and those of the Republican leader. We respect the majority leader's right to set the agenda on the Senate floor, and he decided to bring up the Iraq debate this week. But if he brought it up, why doesn't he want to talk about it? We were here yesterday. We are here today. I came down last night and talked about the fact that even though I have had differences with the President on Iraq, we are moving in the right direction. We should say that to our enemy, to our troops, and to the world. Troops are coming out instead of going in; the mission is shifting province by province; we are identifying a long-term but diminishing role in Iraq; and diplomatic efforts are stepped up. Those are basically the three recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, which I wish the President had embraced. He didn't embrace the report itself, but he is headed in that direction. So we are glad to talk about it. Although I agree it would have been better to talk about the economy and housing, we are ready to talk about that as well. But if we are going to talk about housing and the economy, we are ready to take action this year, and we have some pretty big differences of opinion across the aisle. We were able to agree on a stimulus package. First, we had to stop $40 billion in extra spending, but we were able to agree on allowing individuals, largely, to keep their own money. Mr. President, 2.7 million Tennesseans will receive a so-called rebate this spring. There were provisions I liked so well that I am going to introduce legislation to make them permanent. These are the small business provisions that in Tennessee counties, such as Cheatham County where 400 different small businesses will be eligible for accelerated depreciation and expensing. This allows those businesses to keep more money, create more jobs, and stimulate the economy. In Washington County, it is several thousand small businesses. These are good provisions and a good start. I agree we should get on with the next steps to make sure we have a strong, vibrant economy. This is the economy that produces about a third of the money in the world for just 5 percent of all the people in the world. We are in a slowdown right now, but there are steps we can take to step it up. We would say, on this side of the aisle, that would be a bigger, bolder, broader pro-growth economic plan including such things as lower taxes. For example, making permanent the dividend, capital gains, and estate tax rate at 15 percent. Or lowering the corporate tax rate from 35 to 25 percent, so our companies can be competitive with the world and keep their jobs here instead of going overseas. Or a simpler flatter tax giving taxpayers the option of filing a one-page return with a 17-percent or so flat rate. We would support doubling funding on the physical sciences to keep our brain power advantage and can continue to grow jobs here, so these jobs would not go to India and China. That is part of a pro-growth Republican economic plan that would also attract significant independent and Democratic support. We would like to continue to in- source brain power by giving green cards to foreign students who are legally here and who want to stay here and work, creating jobs here instead of going back to India, Ireland, or China and creating jobs there. We would like to make the research and development tax credit permanent, so companies can create more jobs here. We would like to reward outstanding teachers and outstanding school leaders. We can debate that. We would like to give Pell grants to low-income kids so they can have more choices of schools. We would like to implement the America COMPETES Act which we agreed on in a bipartisan way. We would like to lower energy costs by more conservation and nuclear power. We would like to lower the cost of Government by fewer rules and regulations. As Senator Corker was talking about, we would like to lower health care costs. The words that we could most easily agree on on this side of the aisle--and there might not be so much objection over there either--are ``every American insured.'' There is a step-by-step process to get to that. We have over 800,000 Tennesseans without health insurance. We have about 47 million Americans without health insurance. We are at a time in our history where reports by distinguished journals of medicine, such as the New England Journal of Medicine, the Institute of Medicine, and the Trust for America's Health say today's children are likely to be the first generation to live shorter, less healthier lives than their parents. That is a health care crisis. At the same time, the most rapidly growing part of the Federal budget is spending for Medicare and Medicaid. It is growing so rapidly we can't sustain it, so we need an overhaul of our health care system. We need to lower health care costs for the average family so each family can be able to afford at least a basic health insurance policy that doesn't go away when they lose their job. On the way to lowering health care costs and giving every American access to such a health care insurance policy are several pieces of legislation, many of them bipartisan, which we could pass this year. For example, the Kerry-Ensign e-prescribing bill would provide for electronic transmittal of prescription information from the doctor to the pharmacists. In addition, we could pass legislation to allow small business health plans this year. Senator Enzi has been the leader on this issue, and he has worked on legislation that basically would allow small businesses to pool their resources in order to offer health insurance to their employees at an affordable rate--to let them do the same thing big businesses can do. Senator Enzi estimates that could provide insurance to more than 1 million Americans who are not now insured. Senator Martinez has introduced legislation to help get rid of fraud and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid. Tens of billions of dollars are wasted there, and it would lower health care costs to pass the Martinez legislation. Senator Gregg has offered legislation which isn't bipartisan but deserves to be. I hope it can be. It would put limits on punitive damages from lawsuits against doctors who serve pregnant women. Medical malpractice insurance has gone sky high, over $100,000 a year because of lawsuits in some States. As a result, the doctors are leaving the rural areas, and pregnant women are having to drive 40, 50, 60 miles for prenatal health care or to deliver their babies, because the doctors aren't there anymore. In a few places such as Mississippi, Texas, and Kentucky, steps have been taken to say: As long as you are damaged, you can collect, but there is a limit on the punitive damages in those States. Where the rules have been changed, doctors are moving back into those States and back into rural areas. That also lowers health care costs. I am here today as a cosponsor of three different health insurance bills which I hope will move us toward the idea of every American insured, and I would like to talk about two of them today. Senator Coburn, Senator Burr, and Senator Corker have one of those bills, and I am a cosponsor. Senator Wyden and Senator Bennett have another of those bills, and I am a cosponsor of that as well. It has six Republicans and six Democrats. I don't agree with every part of the Wyden-Bennett bill, specifically the mandates from the beginning, but I agree with the spirit of what they are trying to do. Most Americans like the fact that they are working across the aisle to try to make real the idea that every American can have access to health insurance, and they are willing to include--and we would emphasize--the private sector in that solution. We have a whole year. This is a Presidential year. That doesn't mean we should take a vacation. We got off to a pretty good start with the stimulus package. We got off to a very good start with the FISA bill. Unfortunately, the House took a vacation without acting on it. I suggest that Republicans are ready to join with Democrats and take steps this year toward the goal of every American insured.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, it is suggested we should not be discussing Iraq. Well, the last time I checked, the majority leader sets the agenda. The majority leader brought up Iraq, and if he wants to bring up Iraq, we can discuss Iraq. I too am wondering why it is being brought up because we have other important issues we could be dealing with. For example, I wish to see the Congress turn its attention to a pro-growth economic package, a discussion of how we can help this economy move. I think once we have that opportunity to debate, we will have a good, principled exchange of ideas here. My suspicion is that from the other side of the aisle we will hear a number of expensive spending proposals, and from our side of the aisle we will hear a different agenda, an agenda that says we want a bigger, bolder, broader pro-growth economic agenda so we can move this economy in a more positive direction. Part of that would have to do with lower tax rates for individuals, such as to permanently reduce the dividend, capital gains, and estate tax rates to 15 percent. Part of it would be to lower corporate tax rates, reducing the capital gains tax for corporations from 35 percent to 25 percent so our companies in America can compete in the world. Part of it would be indexing the capital gains tax for inflation so that double taxation of capital would at least reflect inflation. Part of it would be something that many Members of this Chamber have talked about for a long time: a simpler, flatter tax, giving taxpayers the option of filing a 1-page return with a 17-percent flat tax rate. I wish to see--and I plan to introduce within the next few days-- legislation that would make permanent the expensing provisions for small business that we passed in a bipartisan way before the recess in the pro-growth package to help stimulate the economy. Those provisions increased the small business expensing limits and allowed a 50 percent bonus depreciation. Now it is not unusual to hear Republicans talking about lower tax rates. But that is only a part of--a part of--what we would propose if our debate were here for a pro-growth economic package. I wish to see us bring up Senator Isakson's proposal, which would create a $5,000-a- year, 3-year tax credit for buyers of foreclosed or new homes to get buyers back in the marketplace. I wish to see us begin to more seriously implement the America COMPETES Act. That is part of a pro-growth agenda as well. We worked hard in this Chamber across party lines for 2 years to advance legislation to increase our nation's competitiveness in the global economy. The President made a priority of it. He said we ought to have an 18 percent increase in funding for the physical sciences in this year's budget. We should talk about that and make a commitment to make room in the budget for that so we can double funding in the physical sciences over the next 5 years so we can keep our brainpower advantage so our jobs will not go overseas. As one Senator, I want to see that we continue to in-source brainpower for new jobs by pinning a green card on the lapel of every foreign student who earns a degree in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics from a U.S. university, and who is legally here and passes a background check. We could have a good debate here in the Chamber about whether it is a good idea to do that. I think it is. We have 570,000-something foreign students here. Why would we attract the brightest people in the world to study here and make them promise to go home and create new jobs in India and in China? Let's create them here. We could make the research and development tax credit permanent. We could have a full-day debate about how to improve our schools. I see the Senator from New Hampshire is in the Chamber; he was one of the principal authors of the No Child Left Behind Act. There is a provision in that legislation which is called the Teacher Incentive Fund. It tackles one of the most difficult problems in American education. How do you reward outstanding teaching? Well, you cannot do it from Washington. But you can fund it from Washington, so in Philadelphia and in Phoenix and in Memphis school leaders and teachers are part of plans where you pay them more for leading well and pay them more for teaching well. I did that in Tennessee in 1983 when I was Governor. Mr. President, 10,000 teachers went up a career ladder. As soon as I left, its opponents killed it. But teacher after teacher comes back to me saying they wish it were still there. Every time we have a hearing on education, we hear the need to keep and attract outstanding teachers. We could talk about and debate--and I am sure we would debate--Pell Grants for Kids. Why not give vouchers to poor kids so they can go to some of the schools that people with money go to? Why not go ahead and implement the provisions in the America COMPETES Act for adding 10,000 math and science teachers, and give a million and a half more low-income children the opportunity to take Advanced Placement tests? If we want to talk about growing the economy, we can do that. We could talk about stopping runaway lawsuits and enacting small business health plans. We can talk about lower energy costs. We can talk about lowering the cost of Government. Or we can talk about Iraq. I have been one of those who, over time, has had some difference of opinion with the President on Iraq. I thought he should have embraced the Iraq Study Group plan as soon as it came out: Put Secretary Baker, Congressman Hamilton, and the other members of the Iraq Study Group up there in the Gallery and honor them and accept their suggestions.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the majority leader. Mr. President, I would say that last year I thought I had succeeded in doing something that no one else had been able to do. I unified President Bush and Senator Reid on Iraq in their opposition to our Iraq Study Group legislation. But my point is that while I have been one on this side of the aisle who wishes the President had taken a different tact, I think in all honesty we are talking about how things have changed in Iraq. If we look at the Iraq Study Group recommendations, what were they? First, transition of mission. Let's shift our military forces out of direct combat and into roles of supporting, training, and equipping Iraqi forces as security conditions on the ground permit. That is happening. It is happening province by province. That wasn't foreseen quite as clearly by the authors of the Iraq Study Group report. I am not sure any of us saw it. General Petraeus was wise enough to see it. He is helping Iraq have a transition of mission of U.S. forces from mainly combat to mainly support, training, and equipping. But the Iraq Study Group itself, while it set a goal for that shift of mission, explicitly rejected the idea of a deadline. As the Senator from Alabama said earlier, it explicitly rejected the idea of a deadline. The second recommendation of the Iraq Study Group was that we maintain a long term, but diminishing, presence in Iraq, with an emphasis on diminishing. That is happening. Troops are coming out instead of troops going in. Now, they are not coming out as rapidly as many had hoped, but they are coming out. They are coming out in the spirit of the Iraq Study Group report--not as rapidly as the report originally recommended, but as quickly as conditions on the ground will now permit. The limited mission the Iraq Study Group envisioned, in addition to supporting Iraqi forces, includes protection of coalition forces, counterterrorism operations, border security, intelligence- sharing, supporting provisional reconstruction teams, and search and rescue. Finally, the Iraq Study Group urged that we undertake a new diplomatic offensive, that we step up regional and diplomatic efforts to press others in the region to help Iraq succeed. Well, that has been happening. It may not be happening as rapidly as everyone in the Chamber would like, but these efforts are well underway, with a more expansive United Nations mission. But higher profile efforts are also needed, including by the President. So I would not stand here and say that the Iraq Study Group legislation that Senator Salazar and I introduced--supported by eight Democrats and eight Republicans, and which we unsuccessfully urged the President and this body to adopt a year ago--I would not say we should do that today. But I would say as one Senator that I believe that is the direction in which we are moving, and the Iraq Study Group has made a significant contribution to that effort. I, frankly, believe the bipartisan approach here by those 16 Senators also helped move us in that direction. Now, Senator Feingold's proposal and the Iraq Study Group recommendations are at odds. In the first place, the Feingold legislation sets a 120-day deadline for changing the mission of our forces in Iraq and requiring a massive withdrawal. The bipartisan Iraq Study Group specifically opposed such a deadline, saying that transition should be, as I said, subject to unexpected developments in the security situation on the ground. The Feingold amendment and the Iraq Study Group differ in another way: the continuing mission for the troops. My reading of the Feingold bill says that it would prevent American troops from being embedded with Iraqi forces, from securing Iraqi borders, from fighting terrorists who aren't known to be affiliated with al-Qaida, and performing various intelligence operations. Those missions are all supported by the Iraq Study Group. It is part of our long term, but diminishing, role in Iraq. As has been noted today, this is not a new subject for the Senate. We have had perhaps three dozen votes on Iraq last year. Perhaps we should have that many votes. What else is more important than Iraq? But at some point, we have come to a conclusion, and I think on the issue of the Feingold bill, this body, by a large majority, has already expressed itself. There were four previous votes on similar--not exactly the same but similar--funding cut and withdrawal proposals offered by Senator Feingold. Those were on December 18, 2007, and 71 Senators voted against that Feingold amendment. Then, on October 3, 2007, 68 Senators voted against that Feingold amendment. Then, on September 20, 2007, 70 Senators voted against that Feingold amendment. Then, on May 16, 2007, 67 Senators voted against that Feingold amendment. We have 100 Senators, and 49 of us are Republicans. Not all of us agree on Iraq. So that meant that a substantial number of Democrats consistently voted against those Feingold amendments. So I know Senator Feingold is sincere and passionate in his beliefs, but it would seem to me that four votes are enough on this subject, and--as important as it is--we could turn our attention to other issues. But if the majority leader, for whatever reason, feels a need to bring this issue to the floor of the Senate, then we are ready to talk about it. We are not all of one mind here, even on the Republican side. We have some on this side of the aisle who said when the Iraq Study Group report came out that it was a recipe for surrender. I disagreed with that and said so publicly and said so privately to the President. He was good enough to hear me out one-on-one. I find him to be a very good listener. I, for one, am enormously impressed with General Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy. I, like most of us, have had a chance to go to Iraq--in my case, two times to Iraq, and three times to Kuwait. I have had a chance last year in August to visit with General Petraeus and General Odierno and to go into the outskirts of Baghdad and to see an area where our soldiers were in camp and to have dinner with a group of sheiks. One of the sheiks' sons had been murdered in his front yard, and they were fed up with the al-Qaida terrorists and were convinced that because the American forces were there, that the Iraqis could risk their lives by teaming with the American forces to run the terrorists out of town, which in many places they have done. I still think it would have been better for our troops and it would send a clear message to the enemy if we had, as an administration and as a Congress, embraced the Iraq Study Group Report because it said basically what we are doing today. It said we need to change direction. We need to, No. 1, shift our mission, which we are doing. It specifically embraced the idea of a surge, if that was necessary. It rejected the idea of a specific deadline and said it should be subject to developments on the ground. It said we should identify a long-term but diminishing presence in Iraq, which we have been doing as a country. The Iraq Study Group Report said also that we should step up our diplomatic efforts. Its goal--not its binding effect but its goal-- was that all of its recommendations could be accomplished more rapidly than has been done. That is true. But at the same time, it recognized that it was all subject to security developments on the ground. So when we have a success--or it may be more accurate to say a series of small successes in a difficult arena such as Iraq--when we have military leadership such as General Petraeus and his team who have stuck to a new counterinsurgency strategy--at least new to Iraq that took our forces out of the Green Zone and placed them on the outskirts--when we have done that, then I think we ought to recognize that for what it is. I am glad to have this opportunity to talk about Iraq and the progress we are making there. I hope we can make more there. I would like for more of our Tennesseans to come home. In the National Guard alone, we have had more than 10,000 Tennesseans in Iraq, some for a year, some twice, some three times. They are our uncles, and they are our aunts. They are our neighbors, our deputy sheriffs, the mayor of Lexington, the postmaster from Robbinsville. They have mortgages. They have kids. Ninety have died, 90 Tennesseans in this period of time. So it is good to have this discussion. If the majority leader wants to bring it up, we should. But I think at the same time we ought to recognize it for what it is. We have changed direction. The troops are coming out instead of going in. The mission is shifting. The role is diminishing. It will be there for a long time, and the diplomatic effort is stepped up. If that is succeeding, then our country is succeeding, and we can spend more time on other issues. Tornadoes in Tennessee Now, if I may--I see the Senator from Florida may be wanting to speak, and if he would indulge me another 3 or 4 minutes, I wish to discuss what has happened in Tennessee with tornadoes in the last couple of weeks. On the night of February 5, tornadoes began to hit Memphis at about 6 o'clock. While many people were watching the Tennessee-Florida basketball game safely in their homes, a tornado touched down in Macon County, TN, and stayed on the ground for 21 miles. More than two dozen people were killed. Prior to that, it hit in Jackson, TN, nearly wiping out Union University. Fortunately, at Union University, president David Dockery had conducted drills, and the students had enough warning to get to the safest places in their dormitories, and no one was killed there. That was not by accident; it was because of good leadership. It was also because of a good early-warning system. The point of my remarks tonight is that we sometimes hear in connection with disasters--particularly since Hurricane Katrina--that our disaster response system and our emergency response system isn't as good as it should be. I can't speak to every case, but over the last 30 years, as Governor for some years and in the Cabinet for 2 years and now in the Senate, I have seen a lot of disasters and tragedies. I have never seen an example where the local officials, the Governor of the State, and the President of the United States acted more rapidly, more effectively, or more humanely. The Governor, Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee, a Democrat, was on the scene immediately. He gathered all of his information--not too rapidly because he knows it needs to be accurate--and he had it to President Bush on the night of February 7 at about 7 p.m. By 10 p.m. President Bush had approved it--had called the Governor and approved individual and public assistance for five of the hardest hit counties. The Governor then went on to commit that the State would pay half of the local share of the disaster aid that needs to be paid. I went with the President and Congressman Gordon and Senator Corker to the Macon County area on the Friday after it hit. I visited Jackson last week. What I found was that FEMA has already received 3,700 applications from 14 approved counties. FEMA has distributed $1.9 million in 14 counties. The first small business loan was approved on the day I was there. I visited those whose homes were blown away. It is a terrifying thought that in just 60 seconds everything is demolished. You don't know where to hide. But I also visited with the emergency responding team and a couple whose home was hit in Jackson, TN. They were told via the television at 6 o'clock that the tornado was coming, and they were told 10 minutes before it hit their house that if they lived on the north side of the interstate, the tornado would be there in 10 minutes, and it was. That was the kind of early warning system they had. And in Macon County, a tornado that hit at 9:30 at night has been anticipated. By midnight, FEMA personnel from Atlanta were at the Tennessee border at Chattanooga. And by 7 a.m. the next morning, disaster recovery centers were set up in Macon County. I wish to express my admiration, first, for the local officials for doing a first-rate job; second, to FEMA and TEMA, the Tennessee emergency management professionals who were there on the spot; third, to Governor Bredesen who could not have done a better, more thorough, more sensitive job; and fourth, to the President and the Washington officials who were on the ball. It is important occasionally to find the good and praise it in Government service, and in this case, I believe--well, I know--every single person I talked with in the west Tennessee area or the Macon County area felt as if the Governor, the President, and the local officials were doing everything they could to be helpful, and they were deeply grateful for it. I yield the floor.