Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, once upon a time in the spring of 1968, even before Ted Stevens was a Senator, a young man with carefully combed hair came from Pascagoula, MS, to Washington, DC, and he moved into a spare bedroom in the house at the corner of Klingle Street and Foxhall Road. It was almost 40 years ago. I remember it very well, because I was already in that house along with four other single young men in our 20s. Our new resident from Mississippi was different in several ways than the rest of us. No. 1, we were single, and he was married. Tricia and Chet, then a baby, were still back in Mississippi. No. 2, he was a Democrat and we were Republicans. But at that age, that did not matter to us very much. And No. 3 is--and this is hard for anyone in the Chamber to imagine, for me even to say--I remember him as quiet. Maybe it was because he did not stay long, because he remembers that we were noisy--playing the piano, staying up late, as he said yesterday, having parties, and then getting up at 6 a.m. in the morning and going to work. So for whatever reason, maybe because of those differences, our friend from Mississippi moved out after a few months. Tricia and Chet came to Washington, I believe, and he continued his job with Mr. Colmer, the Congressman, from the area where he grew up. My other roommate was Glover Robert, who was from Gulfport and who had introduced us all to Trent, and who later was Trent's campaign manager in his race for Congress. I can remember Glover saying at that time that everybody in Mississippi knows Trent Lott is one of two young men in Mississippi who is going to grow up to be Governor of Mississippi. The other young man who Glover talked about was Thad Cochran, who we also met that year in 1968. He was also a Democrat in 1968. Neither of them grew up to be Governor of Mississippi, at least not yet. But one became the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and one became the leader of the Senate, and both are our friends. Now Trent, after 35 years in Congress, is moving on to the next chapter of his life. I understand his decision. We talked about it. As far as anyone can say from outside the Lott family, it looks like a wise decision on a personal basis. But on a personal basis too, I am truly sorry to see him go, because over those 40 years, we have been in different places most of the time--I mostly in Tennessee, he mostly here--but we have stayed in touch in many different ways. When our roommates got together at the Governor's mansion in Tennessee in the 1980s, I remember reading to the group after dinner from a book on manners. When I came to the Senate, I received a book, ``George Washington's Rules of Civility,'' that was inscribed, ``To my friend, Senator Alexander, the history professor, Trent Lott.'' In 1986, I became a little bit exasperated with the House Republicans from a distance and I called up Trent and said: What is going on? Are we Republican Governors and the House Republicans on the same page? He introduced me to Newt Gingrich, and a group of the Governors and the Republican leaders in the House met at Blackberry Farm in the Smoky Mountains for a whole weekend and had a terrific weekend, in terms of charting the future course for our party. A few years later I came to Washington as Education Secretary and immediately turned to Trent--who was always in some sort of leadership position, usually some different one--for advice and support. Those who follow the Senate know that Trent has, along the way, taught all of us various lessons. He has especially taught me lessons, particularly how to count. It is because of Trent Lott that a year ago, it was necessary for me to write 27 thank-you notes for 24 votes in the race for whip. I have worked hard to learn my lesson from him over a period of time. About 6 weeks ago, Trent and Tricia invited my wife Honey, me, and the Greggs down to their home outside Jackson. We spent a weekend. It was following up a nice weekend we had had in the mountains of Tennessee sometime earlier. Most of the remarks today about Trent have been about Trent in Washington, DC and they are all very appropriate. And here in the Senate we often think of Trent as having the wiliness of Lyndon Johnson and the joyfulness of Hubert Humphrey--two other great figures in Senate history--but it is more fun to see him in Mississippi. Going through the airport, every single woman in the airport in Mississippi wanted to talk to Trent Lott, and he talked to them all of the way through the Jackson airport. To see the number of buildings in Mississippi already named after him--and he is not even dead yet--and to see the beautiful home they have outside Jackson, MS is something to behold. Judd and I counted five different tractors in his garage, and we rode in most of them. We should have known, or I should have known, from seeing how happy he is there and how much he loves to do this, that his mind was probably more on becoming farmer of the year in Mississippi than it was on spending another 5 or 10 years in the Senate. Trent, transitions--I have had a number of them--are not always easy, but they have been for me the most rewarding parts of my life. I believe for you and Tricia this next transition will be the same-- liberating, not entirely easy, but perhaps the most rewarding period of your life. I tried to think of some words that would describe it, and I thought of words that better describe the Smoky Mountains where I am from than the Mississippi area where you are from. But the thought still applies. They are words from Emily Dickinson, which say: Goodbye to the life I used to lead and the friends I used to know. Now kiss these hills just once for me, for I am ready to go. It is a reassurance for us to know that you are not going far. I hope it will be reassuring to you to know that you are not going far, that your old friends are still here and we are still your friends.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, sometimes here in the Senate we have so many competing views and so many different kinds of votes, some of them procedural, that it is hard to tell when something good happens. I wish to talk about such an opportunity that we have right now. This is a little bit like something my late friend Alex Haley used to say: ``Find the good and praise it.'' We are on a path in the Congress now to do something the Senate did a few weeks ago, which was to take a step that our country's largest energy laboratory, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has testified before our committees would be the single most important step we could take to reduce our dependance on foreign oil. By reducing our dependance on foreign oil, we would do something that we could actually honestly say would help to lower the $3-a-gallon gasoline price over time, something that we could honestly say would help deal with the urgent issue of climate change, something that we could honestly say would put us on a different path toward clean energy in this country. And those are the new fuel efficiency standards. There is a clear consensus in this body--I gather in the House of Representatives, too--that for the first time in more than two decades, the Congress should say to everyone who makes cars and trucks in this country: You have to make cleaner cars; these cars have to use less oil one way or the other. We are not really saying to them, or at least I do not think we should say exactly how they achieve that; we are just saying that by the year 2020 the cars and the trucks have to average 35 miles per gallon. This is a big step. As I said, the Oak Ridge Laboratory testified in the Environment and Public Works Committee, this is the single most important step the Congress can take to reduce our dependance on foreign oil. We have already voted to do it in the Senate, and we have already voted to do it in the House, and we had a vote today to strip away the taxes that the Senator from Texas just talked about. So we are on a path, a clear path to send this bill back to the House and then to the President and, before the first of the year, to take the most important step we can take to reduce our dependance on foreign oil. There is a lot of talk and genuine concern about climate change. There is not as much commonsense talk about solutions. On the electricity side, we know what works, and we began, in 2005 with the Energy bill, to take those steps. That bill could have been called--should have been called--a clean energy bill because it started with aggressive steps on conservation and then it went to a renaissance of nuclear power. The inconvenient truth on solutions to climate change is that conservation and nuclear power are the only way we will be able to deal with climate change in this generation. We hope we will be able to move ahead to sequester the carbon from coal, but we do not have that technology yet in a way that it can be used in a wholesale way. We hope there will be solar thermal powerplants such as the one being built in California, and we hope photovoltaic solar panels will cost less and people can use them on their houses, but those renewable ways to create electricity only produce a very small percentage of what we need. So in this generation, on the electricity side, conservation and nuclear power, which today produces 80 percent of all of our carbon-free electricity, are the real ways to deal with climate change, and in our part of the country, in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, the real way to make the air clean. In the same way, on the fuel side in this country that uses about 25 percent of all of the oil and gas, the single most important thing we can do is what we have already voted for once in this body, the House has voted for once, and if they take this bill and send it on to the President, the Congress will have done it; it will be fuel efficiency standards that say to everyone who makes and sells cars here: Your cars and trucks have to average 35 miles per gallon by the year 2020. So in the midst of all of the procedural votes and debating these genuinely held differences of opinion, I simply want to put a spotlight on the fact that this Congress is poised to send to the President the most important thing we can do to lower prices, to reduce the dependance on foreign oil, and to deal with the climate change. It is the kind of result, the kind of bipartisan result that most Americans would like to see happen here. They know we have our differences. We will be back and forth on our votes. That is what we are here for. The tough issues come to the Senate. That is why we are a debating society. But in the end, we do not come here just to state our principles; we come here to get principled solutions. We are on our way to one of the most important principled solutions we can have in terms of energy efficiency. I congratulate the Senators who have been so much involved in this. I hope we will pass the legislation that the Senator has promised, the majority leader has promised to produce here. I hope the House of Representatives will pass it, as well, and send it to the President. I hope that over Christmastime, Americans will look at this Congress and say: Good for you on energy independence, on climate change, on cleaner air, on reducing our dependance on foreign oil. You took the most important step you could take, and that is what we think a Congress ought to do. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I would like to conclude my remarks, if that would be all right.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, the words I would like my colleagues to remember are ``farms, yes; residential, no.'' If the Alexander amendment is adopted, there would be subsidies for wind turbines up to 12 stories tall in agricultural areas, but there would be no subsidies for wind turbines in residential areas. This is called ``small wind.'' Twelve stories is not very tall, but I would not want to go home and explain to my constituents why I took their tax dollars and helped a neighbor build a 12-story-tall wind turbine with flashing lights in a residential neighborhood. Farms, yes; residential, no. I ask for a ``yes'' vote.

Mr. ALEXANDER. We yield back our time.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues from Colorado and Vermont. I say to the Senator from Iowa, what I will do is I will use a few minutes, maybe 5 or 10, summarizing the two amendments I have offered which I talked some about yesterday. Then I will yield the floor and sit down and allow the Senator from Colorado and the Senator from Vermont to use their 10 minutes each. Then Senator Harkin may want to use his 10 minutes. Then I will come back at the end. I probably will not use all of my time. Mr. President, I offer two amendments. They are at the desk. The first one has to do with land grant university research funding, to try to get back on track a terrific program the Congress passed in 1998 to properly fund value-added research for our land grant universities across this country. That is No. 1. No. 2 is to amend the amendment of the Senator from Colorado, which is a part of the bill, so that we would limit 100 kilowatt wind towers to farm areas and not residential areas. Those are the two amendments. I wish to begin by summarizing the land grant university research amendment. What amendment 3551 does is it adds $74 million over the last 3 years of the farm bill for agricultural research at land grant colleges. In my opinion, having been president of a land grant university, the University of Tennessee, I believe our land grant colleges and universities are our secret weapon in value-added products; in other words, taking soybeans and turning them into milk and creating higher incomes for farmers and more jobs in the United States. Let me take an example, one which I used yesterday. Those who live in the Southwest, which I do not, are apparently very familiar with the guayule plant. I might call it a weed. That might not be a friendly designation, but it looks like a weed to me. The University of Arizona discovered--one of our land grant universities, as a part of the program I am seeking to get back on track--that it could use this plant to develop nonallergic latex to go into rubber gloves. Why is that important? Because according to OSHA, allergic reactions from latex rubber affect 10 percent of the Nation's health care workforce. So we have not only helped health care through the land grant universities, we have helped create incomes in the Southwest where this is grown. We have helped grow jobs in the United States as well. There are examples of that all through our country. That is why the Congress, in 1998, created a program which is called the Future Agriculture and Food Systems Program. That very simply did, through the Department of Agriculture, which we do through many other parts of government, grants of research offered to land grant universities in a competitive way, not just doled out, not just pork, in a competitive way to try to help them create value-added products. The program has worked for a couple of years since 1998. It didn't work so well in other years. I summarized that yesterday. The bottom line is, both appropriators and authorizers during this time got away from the idea of competitive, peer-reviewed grants and began to earmark and designate their favorite universities for some of the money. Then on another occasion in 2005, the Congress, looking for a way to bring the budget under control, saw this as a pot of money that could be used and took the money from agricultural research and used it to do a better job of balancing the budget. There was a 2-year period, in 2001 and 2002, when under this program there were 183 grants to 71 of the 76 land grant universities, one in every State. Out of that came this research and a variety of other products. The purpose of this amendment is to get this program back on track. It was first authorized in 1998, had a couple of problems, but here is what my amendment would do. My amendment would add $74 million in the last 3 years of the farm bill. The House, in its version of the farm bill, has added $600 million in those 3 years. So the conferees could look at those two amounts of money and come to a reasonable adjustment and get the program back on track, competitively awarded grants for land grant colleges and universities, our secret weapon in raising farm incomes. How do we pay for it? The $47 million in funding over the last 3 years of the farm bill is fully offset by striking section 302 from the tax title. I described that yesterday. I will be glad to describe it again, if I need to. But it is fully funded. Let me go to my second amendment, No. 3553. It affects the so-called small wind tax credit. The small wind tax credit in the bill allows up to $4,000 for someone to put a 100-kilowatt wind turbine in either a farm or rural area or residential area. Since this is a farm bill and not a residential bill, what my amendment would do is limit the ability of this subsidy to go to wind turbines to farms and rural businesses as defined in the Internal Revenue Code. If I could put it in plain English: It will be very difficult for Members of the Senate to go home and explain to their neighbors, whether they are in Tennessee or Colorado or Mississippi, why they passed a law saying we are going to take some of your tax money and give it to your neighbor so he or she can put up a 12-story tower in his or her front yard next to you. I don't think that is an appropriate use of our tax money. I don't believe it is a wise way to create electricity. It doesn't show the kind of common sense we need to show in creating clean energy. The example I used yesterday, and which I could go into more detail later, is the $5 million tax credit in this bill for these kinds of towers would create only about 12 megawatts of electricity. That is a pretty puny amount of electricity. Common sense suggests it would be much wiser to use the $5 million to buy $2 energy- efficient light bulbs and give them to people in residential areas. That would save 8 times as much energy as these turbines would produce. There are other reasons the turbines are not necessary. One is that the wind industry is heavily subsidized already. For example, wind energy will receive $11.5 billion over the next 10 years from the production tax credit. By fiscal year 2009, the Federal tax subsidy for wind energy will be the largest subsidy for energy which is an astonishing figure when you take into account that wind provides less than 1 percent of the electricity we use. According to the Energy Information Administration, in the year 2020, it will provide not much more than that. Here we have billions and billions already going to subsidize wind power. That amount is half as much as all of the subsidies for oil and gas, and it is totally disproportionate to the value of the energy we get. I stand as a Senator who is very concerned about clean air and climate change. Since I arrived in 2003, I have had in place--first with Senator Carper, then with Senator Lieberman--a climate change/ clean air bill that would put caps on utilities which produce one-third of the carbon in the United States. That bill also included stricter standards than now exist in law on mercury, on sulfur, and on nitrogen. I was the sponsor in the last Congress of the solar tax credit which I believe is important. In the hearing the other day we had on climate change, I proposed and the committee adopted, a low-carbon fuel standard. I voted for, and hope to be able to vote for again in final passage of the Energy bill, the fuel efficiency standards which were in the Senate-passed Energy bill. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory has testified that is the single most important thing we can do to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. But I believe we should use common sense. I don't believe using tax dollars to give your neighbor up to $4,000 so he or she can create up to a 12-story tower in a residential neighborhood makes much common sense. My appeal is as much to common sense as anything else. My hope is the Senate would agree that it will be fine if we want to subsidize the building of even such large wind turbines in rural areas, but it is not all right to subsidize the building of those wind turbines in residential areas. My amendment would also make clear that nothing we did in this bill overrode local zoning ordinances that people use to decide what sort of towers they want to permit. That concludes my remarks. I will listen to my colleagues from Vermont and Colorado.

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

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. I will take just a few of those, unless the Senator from Iowa wishes to speak now. I appreciate the comments of the Senator from Colorado, and I know the Senator from Vermont as well has strong and deeply held views on this subject. So do I. I would only respond in these ways: I don't think it is necessary to destroy the environment in order to save the environment. I think there are more sensible ways to save the environment than to use tax dollars to encourage people to put up 12- story white towers of red lights in their own neighborhoods. There is some talk about Congress interfering with land use. Well, what happens here is that when the Congress gives out tax money--my tax money, your tax money--and says you can use it for this purpose, people do it. So the Congress is distorting land use decisions, in effect. So it is the other side that is interfering with local land use decisions. Maybe we have different conceptions of what the word ``small'' means. A 100-kilowatt tower is--can be 12 stories high. So we are not talking about your grandmother's windmill that snuggles up cozily next to the barn; we are talking about your neighbor in New Jersey or Tennessee or Vermont who comes in and says: Hey, I have a great idea. I am going to put up a 12-story tower in my front yard with your tax money. Now, if that person wants to do that and local ordinances permit that, then that is not the business of the Federal Government. We don't need to be encouraging it in residential areas. All I am saying is this is a farm bill, and what I am trying to say is we should limit these subsidies to rural areas. The Senator from Colorado said this would be a crippling blow to the wind effort. I believe that suggestion, if I may respectfully say, is overblown. The biggest--through the renewable electricity production tax credit alone, the U.S. taxpayer will spend $11.5 billion on wind energy over 10 years, between 2007 and 2016. This doesn't begin to count other Federal, State, or local subsidies for wind. So without this subsidy, we are spending $11.5 billion for wind. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, by the year 2009 this wind subsidy and the production tax credit that is already in the law will be the single largest Federal tax expenditure for energy in the United States. Yet it only produces seven-tenths of 1 percent of the electricity we use. To put it in a little perspective--and I mentioned this yesterday--according to the same Joint Tax Committee, all the subsidies we give to oil and gas through taxes, according to the Joint Tax Committee, are $2.7 billion in the year 2009. The wind subsidies are $1.3 billion. Well, we use oil and gas. We use about 25 percent of all of the oil and gas in the world in this great big economy of ours. We don't use much of it to make electricity, but we have a $2.7 billion taxpayer investment in that, and that is debated here. But nobody seems to notice that we are spending $1.3 billion--nearly half as much--on these large wind turbines, and they are not producing much power--not much power at all. Just so everyone understands, half of our electricity is produced by coal. Eighty percent of our carbon-free electricity is produced by nuclear power. I didn't hear my friends on the other side say a word about nuclear power. Climate change is an inconvenient truth, Al Gore said. I am not one of those who believe that just because Al Gore said it means it is wrong. I believe climate change is a very serious problem for our country and our world. I am working hard to change that through low carbon fuel standards, through putting caps on utilities, and through sponsoring solar energy. But why would we make such an extraordinarily disproportionate investment in wind turbines when they produce so little energy and, according to the Energy Administration, are likely to produce so little? So the only other points I would make are these: The Senator from Vermont mentioned the relentless melting of the Arctic. We agree. We need to deal with climate change. But I would suggest that conservation and nuclear power are the way to deal with climate change in this generation. That may be an inconvenient truth as well, but that is the way to do it. As I mentioned earlier, just spending the $5 million that is allocated for these big residential wind turbines and farm wind turbines, just spending that on efficiency lightbulbs would save eight times as much energy. That would make more common sense to me. The Senator from Vermont also pointed out that the UK--the United Kingdom--might power all of its houses with wind power. I read that article too; I believe it is the same article. But they are planning to do that with large wind turbines way out in the ocean where you won't be able to see them very easily. If they do have all of their power from wind power, I don't think I would want to live there because my computer and my lights and my air-conditioner and my heater would only work when the wind blows. Wind can't be stored in any effective way today, so it only works when the wind blows. It is not possible for it to be used as a base power of electricity. It is not a good peaking power. So what we are doing with these extraordinary subsidies for wind is we are encouraging people to build large wind turbines in areas where the wind doesn't blow just so they can make some money on it because of all of these huge generous subsidies, and we are deluding ourselves into thinking we are dealing with climate change when, in fact, we are ignoring the real solutions to climate change, which are conservation, No. 1, and--in this generation, at least--nuclear power, No. 2. So that is my reason for making this amendment. This is a farm bill. If we are going to subsidize wind turbines in the farm bill, let's do it on farms. Let's not take my tax money and your tax money and give it to your neighbor and say: You can put up a 12-story white tower next door, and we would like to encourage you to do that in your residential neighborhood. I don't think that makes common sense. Once it starts happening, neighborhood after neighborhood after neighborhood, I think a lot of taxpayers are going to be calling their U.S. Senator and saying: You did what? You did what? Why didn't you vote for conservation support? Why didn't you vote to have clean coal technology? Why didn't you vote to build more nuclear powerplants, which are the real way to do carbon-free energy? Why are you pretending to solve climate change by putting up 12-story towers or encouraging them to be put up in my neighbor's front yard? So I hope my colleagues will recognize that the wiser vote today is for the Alexander amendment because that will make possible new subsidies, in addition to all of the other subsidies, for wind turbines in rural areas. They call them small, but they are up to 12 stories tall. It will make it clear that there is no interference with local land use rules about what kind of towers may go up and down. Of course, the other amendment I proposed would help get the research programs back on track at our land grant universities which have been so valuable in helping raise farm incomes and creating jobs in this country. I thank the President, and I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, this is a wonderful opportunity to take wasteful Washington spending and turn it into higher farm family income by using our secret weapon, land grant universities' competitive grants to create value-added agricultural products to get that program back on track. It is fully paid for, $74 million, by striking a provision that uses taxpayers' dollars so taxpayers in Virginia and Georgia, for example, will pay for transmission lines in Tennessee and other States. Those should be paid for by utilities. The group that hopes Senators vote ``yes'' includes the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges, the National Coalition for Food and Agricultural Research, the National Association of Wheat Growers, and the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. I urge a ``yes'' vote.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I ask the manager of the bill if he wishes us to begin our 1-minute discussion?

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, just a few remarks. I appreciate the comments of the Senator, who is chairman of the Energy Committee, and I appreciate his support for nuclear power, which is 80 percent of our carbon-free electricity in America even though it is only 20 percent of our electricity. I will discuss briefly his point on my amendment that would seek to restore funding to the program for land grant universities. If the managers are able to find some extra money, that would be terrific, but it ought to be in addition to the $74 million I have proposed. The House proposes to spend $600 million over the last 3 years in the farm bill. I am proposing to spend $74 million. Second, one of the problems with the section I am seeking to strike is that it appears to apply retroactively to transmission towers. I see no reason for that. A larger problem is that wind doesn't need more subsidies. The Senator talked about subsidies to other forms of energy for research and development. I have yet to hear anybody contradict the fact that the taxpayer, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, will spend $11.5 billion on wind energy over the next 10 years, which today produces less than 1 percent of our electricity, and only when the winds blows. Even if you have wind turbines all over America, you still need nuclear plants, conservation, coal plants, and a base load of electricity. There is a long list of Federal subsidies for wind energy and, in addition, clean, renewable energy bonds, the Department of Defense energy incentive program, et cetera, including State programs. What is happening is that we are encouraging people to build wind turbines, as they have on Buffalo Mountain in Tennessee, in places where the wind doesn't blow, just to make the money the Federal Government provides in subsidies. Finally, I think the greatest, most specific argument against the idea of giving tax breaks to landowners, where you are going to build new transmission lines, is this: This would mean the Tennessee taxpayer would be taxed to pay for transmission lines in New Mexico or South Dakota, or the Georgia taxpayer would be taxed to pay for transmission lines in Pennsylvania or Virginia. Transmission lines should be paid for by the utility that builds them and the ratepayer who benefits from that, not by the general taxpayers. So if all of the other reasons go to the side, the major reason in support of this amendment is that it is inappropriate for us to require taxpayers in Maryland, Tennessee, and Texas to pay for utilities' transmission lines in New Mexico, South Dakota, and Illinois. They should pay for them themselves. Mr. President, that concludes my remarks.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I have up to 30 minutes to describe these two amendments, and then other Senators have time, I assume, to oppose the amendments. What I will do is--

Mr. ALEXANDER. Yes.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. ALEXANDER. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I believe I am recognized for up to 30 minutes?

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I rise to speak in support of amendments Nos. 3551 and 3553, which were previously offered on my behalf. The first amendment is No. 3551. This is an amendment which would add $74 million to the last 3 years of the farm bill for agricultural research at land grant colleges or universities. Specifically, it would provide mandatory funding for the Initiative for Future Agricultural and Food Systems as follows: $24 million in fiscal year 2010, $25 million in 2011, and $25 million in 2012. It would be fully offset by striking section 12302 of the tax title in the Harkin substitute amendment to the farm bill, which basically says that taxpayers in Georgia and in Tennessee, for example, will pay for transmission lines for ratepayers in North Dakota and South Dakota and in other States who want to build transmission lines through rural areas, primarily for wind energy. I am here today to talk primarily about farm incomes, and I am talking about America's secret weapons for farm incomes in the day in which we live, which are the land grant universities of America. Iowa State is a great land grant university. I imagine the University of Minnesota is a great land grant university in Minnesota. I know I was president of the University of Tennessee, which is our land grant university, and I confess to some bias because I think I am the only former president of a land grant university in the Senate. Why is that so important? Earlier this year, we unanimously passed, after 2 years of work, a bill we called the America COMPETES Act. What it did was recognize America's brainpower advantage is what has given us our incredibly high standard of living. In this last year, our country, the United States of America, produced about 30 percent of all the wealth in the world for about 5 percent of the people in the world--that is, our population. How did we do that? There are a variety of reasons, but primarily, since World War II, we have taken our brainpower advantage to create new jobs that have given us that great high standard of living. This amendment is about making sure we take advantage of that in the agriculture community. It will provide more competitive grants to our land grant universities so they can create value-added agricultural products, of which I have an example right back here. Congress recognized the importance of this brainpower advantage our land grant universities have when it authorized the 1998 farm bill. It created something called the Initiative for Future Agricultural and Food Systems. In addition to farm income, this research was to be for future food production for environmental quality, for natural resource management, as well as, as I said, farm income. Here is a specific example of the value-added opportunity I am talking about. There is a weed, I guess people would call it, called the guayule weed that grows out in the Southwest. Research that was done at the University of Arizona led to the development of a non- allergenic rubber product that is made from that plant that is as useful as latex rubber, for example, for gloves that we use with which to work. But it does not cause allergic reactions, as latex does, in 10 percent of our Nation's health care workforce. That is an example of the brain power advantage. The University of New Mexico and the University of Tennessee are taking opportunities to use manure as sources of energy and as ways to create nursery crop containers. At Texas Tech University, the research that has come directly from the program I described that was started in 1998 has led to the development of a less toxic version of the castor seed created by using genetic modifications. This means we can grow more castor oil in this country instead of having to import it. Now, one might say: Well, what is the big deal about castor oil? It tastes bad. It is what you take when you are sick. Not anymore. On the Defense Department's Critical Needs List there are multiple uses of castor oil for military purposes, including lubricants, adhesives, pharmaceuticals, waxes and polishes and inks. The Senator from Georgia and from Iowa will know very well the value- added advantage to our country of all the products that have come from soybeans. Our great land grant universities have led the way to create these extra farm incomes, these new jobs for our country. There are 76 land grant universities in America. During the 2 years where this program that was passed in 1998 worked well, 2001 and 2002, this grant program I am describing awarded 183 different grants, one grant at least in every State and in the District of Columbia. So these land grant universities, created in Abraham Lincoln's administration, have been at the forefront of our agriculture in America for a long time. If we want to keep high farm income, they are a major part of our ability to do that. We have had some experience now since 1998 with this grant program I am describing, which has a long name, called the Initiative for Future Agriculture and Food Systems. First, when it was appropriated, and the Senator from Georgia mentioned this to me, the appropriators got to the money and they canceled the appropriation and then increased another account and earmarked the money for their favorite university. That practice stopped in 2001 and 2002. Basically, we went through a period where the research grants were awarded in the way they are supposed to be, the way most of our research grants are awarded. One reason our great higher education system works so well is because it is a large marketplace; students may choose their school, Government money follows them to the institution of their choice, public, private, nonprofit, and the billions of dollars we spend on research to create jobs, giving us the brain-power advantage, is competitively awarded, usually peer reviewed. So in a couple years, that worked for this program. But then, the authorizers looked at what the appropriators had done and they said, in effect: We are going to earmark some of this money to our favorite universities. That happened for a while. Then, in 2005, we got into a budget crunch, and those trying to balance the budget said: Here is a place to get some money. They took the money that was dedicated for agriculture research and used it for the 2005 budget reconciliation. So only in 2 years since 1998 has this excellent competitive grant program worked very well, 2001 and 2002. Now, in the current House version of the farm bill we are debating today, they try to put it back on track. In the first 2 years of the bill, they appropriate the money to deal with the budget deficit that was dealt with in 2005. But in the last 3 years, they authorize money for this kind of research, $200 million in each of 2010, 2011, 2012, $600 million, amounts to about two-tenths of 1 percent of the total cost of the House version of the farm bill. The Senate version, unfortunately, well, fortunately in the first 2 years, does pay the money to deal with the budget problem. The decision was made a few years ago. But in the last 3 years, during the time when the House put in 600 million, the Senate puts in zero. So my amendment would restore $74 million of the $600 million, and in conference, hopefully, the conferees could decide this is an important provision. Since both Houses had provided money, we can put the program back on track. How do we pay for it? Well, by striking section 12302 from the tax title. Now, section 12302 of the tax title provides new tax breaks for large transmission towers that transmit electricity, primarily from wind farms, in remote and rural areas. In my part of the country, Tennessee, for example, wind farms barely work at all because the wind does not blow. But where they do work a little bit is up on top of some of our most scenic mountains. So what the effect of this provision would be is to say: We are going to give people who own the land an ability not to pay income tax on the income they get from running these big transmission towers from the top of our scenic mountains all the way down to where the electric grid is. That is unnecessary in the first place because the provision, as written, is retroactive. In addition to applying to future deals that will be made with landowners, it seems to apply to current and existing deals. No. 2, it provides tens of millions of dollars, about $55 million, in my computation, of new subsidy for wind. Wind already is, in my judgment and in the judgment of many others, over-subsidized in terms of an energy source. Third, and perhaps the largest objection, is transmission towers should be paid for by the utilities that build the transmission towers. If the Tennessee Valley Authority builds a transmission tower for whatever purpose, those of us who buy our electricity from TVA ought to pay the bill. We should not send the bill to the Colorado taxpayer or to someone who lives in southern Georgia or someone who lives in Iowa or New York, and neither should they send their bills to us. So I think it is inappropriate for all those reasons, to subsidize further the ability to build transmission lines, primarily from wind farms to the grid. What it tends to do is to create such extravagant subsidies for wind that investors see an opportunity to make a lot of money, and they build wind farms in places where the wind does not blow. That might sound to some like a ridiculous statement. But we have one of those in the Southeastern United States. It happens to be in east Tennessee. It is a TVA experimental farm. It is up on top of Buffalo Mountain, 3,500 feet up. It ought to be a particularly good place for it. You can see the big white towers and flashing lights, instead of seeing the mountain tops, which we prefer to see. What does it do? Not much. It cost $60 million over 20 years to TVA ratepayers to pay somebody to provide this energy. But during August, when we were in a drought and we needed to turn our air-conditioning on, it was operating 10 or 15 percent of the time. So there is a much better solution to the need for new electricity in our part of the world and in many parts of America than to encourage investors through extravagant subsidies to build huge transmission lines through rural areas to connect wind farms with grids that are a long distance away. If the market supports that sort of electricity investment, let it support it. That will usually mean, if you are going to build big wind farms, you will build them fairly close to the electric grid so you will not have to spend a million dollars a mile on the transmission line. That is the first amendment. We would take the $74 million from this unnecessary expenditure that causes people to pay, in one part of the country, for what should be an electric ratepayer's bill in another part of the country; gives an unnecessary amount of money to wind developers. It, in fact, takes an example of wasteful Washington spending and uses it for higher farm incomes. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter to Chairman Harkin from organizations stating their support for increased funding for research at land-grant universities.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I congratulate the Senator from New Hampshire. He is usually eloquent, and he was again today. But the subject matter is not just eloquent, it is critical in the State of Tennessee. There is a medical liability crisis, especially for women who live in rural areas. The fact is, as the Senator from New Hampshire has said, women who live in rural areas do not have access to doctors for prenatal health care. They do not have access to doctors to deliver their babies. According to data from the Health Services and Resources Administration, in 2004, in 45 of Tennessee's 95 counties, pregnant mothers had to drive for miles to get prenatal care or to deliver their babies. In 15 of those counties, pregnant mothers have no access whatsoever to any prenatal health care within their counties. The Tennessean newspaper, on July 20, 2004, reported that only 1 of 104 medical students graduating from Vanderbilt University Medical School chose OB/GYN. Dr. Frank Boehm said that: We must not lose sight of the fact that one of the side effects of our current medical malpractice crisis in OB/GYN is the steady loss of medical students who are choosing not to practice one of our most important medical specialties. If the decline continues, patients having babies or needing high-risk care will be faced with access problems this country has not yet seen. The same story is true at the University of Tennessee Medical School in Memphis. On any given day, there are more than 125,000 medical liability suits in progress against America's 700,000 doctors. There is a way to fix this. The State of Texas has shown us how, and it is similar to the way Senator Gregg has suggested. Put a reasonable cap on punitive damages, but let there be unlimited liability for any real damages. That was done in Texas in the year 2005, and in the following year, last year, more than 4,000 doctors applied for licenses to practice in Texas. OB/GYNs and other doctors are pouring back into Texas--up 34 percent from the previous year--because of a change just like the one the Senator from New Hampshire has suggested. I am happy for Texas, but I would like Tennessee and the rest of the country to experience the same thing. Senator Gregg is exactly right to point out the medical crisis that is caused when women who live in rural counties cannot have access to prenatal health care and care for their pregnancy and for their babies. Amendments Nos. 3551 And 3553

Mr. ALEXANDER. It would be my hope that this amendment would be accepted by the Senate. The effect of it would be to leave in place up to $4,000 support for building a tower that could be as large as that one, a 100 kilowatt turbine, in rural areas or for rural business. That would still be in place under my amendment. What would not be in place is the ability to use that in residential neighborhoods. The amendment would also make clear that nothing we are doing in this legislation preempts any local decision about the kind of decisions people will make. I am for caps on utilities. I am the sponsor of the solar credit. I am for cleaner air, more aggressively than the administration has been. I am ready to use smart meters. I am ready to try geothermal, almost anything, the low-carbon fuel standard. But I hope we will use common sense. Common sense says to me, with all due respect, that we should not encourage using other people's tax money for your neighbor to build up to a 12-story white tower in his front yard as a solution to the current concern about climate change. There are other, better ways to do it, starting with energy efficiency, other ways that make much more common sense. I yield the floor. Exhibit 1 Neighbors Fight, States Scramble Over Clean Power (By Thom Patterson) Atlanta, Georgia (CNN).--Curt Mann's neighbors are livid, accusing him of erecting an ugly wind turbine among their historic homes for no other reason than to show off his environmental ``bling.'' The 49-year-old residential developer is remodeling his 1920's house to be more environmentally friendly, including installation of a 45-foot-tall wind turbine in his front yard. ``It's really none of their business how I spend my money,'' Mann said. The towering turbine, which overlooks majestic trees and Victorian rooftops, pits preservationists in Atlanta's Grant Park Historic District against a property owner and his individual rights. ``It's unattractive and it's a nuisance,'' said Scott Herzinger, whose home is three doors down. Mann ``invaded the public view . . . when he put that tower up.'' In blustery regions, home turbines can cut power bills by up to 80 percent. But opponents claim Mann's wind turbine needlessly threatens neighborhood property values because Atlanta's low winds don't produce enough speed to make the device worthwhile. At a cost of $15,000, Mann said the turbine will shave at least $20 per month off his power bill--hardly a windfall. A proposed federal tax credit would bring Mann $3,000. Acknowledging it could be decades before his investment pays off, Mann said, ``even if it was a 50-year payback, at least we've done something to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels.'' Herzinger blames Atlanta, which ``let us down miserably'' when zoning officials sided with Mann. Said Mann, ``If regulations for historic preservation don't address modern-day issues, then they're not very sound.'' But Herzinger, 48, who shares Mann's support for wind power, said Mann could have considered many alternatives which would have helped the environment more than the turbine. ``After looking at the facts, it doesn't seem unreasonable to think of Mann's wind turbine as eco-bling.'' Although opponents filed a lawsuit in Fulton County Superior Court against both Atlanta and Mann, the squabble poses larger, far-reaching questions about how communities, states and the nation as a whole should tackle the ongoing shift toward cleaner energy. ``I don't think we're going to revolutionize the utility industry through wind turbines in the front yard,'' said longtime California energy consultant Nancy Rader, ``To really make a dent in the power sector we've got to have the big, central, bulk-generating facilities.'' At least 21 states and the District of Columbia have set deadlines or goals for utilities to obtain electricity from clean renewable sources instead of fossil-fuel burning plants. The scramble has triggered construction of large-scale wind farms throughout much of the nation, including proposals for the first U.S. offshore facilities. Delaware and Galveston, Texas, have offshore projects in the works, although a farm proposed off New York's Long Island was shelved this year due to high projected construction costs. Top New York energy official Paul Tonko said the push toward renewable energy became more urgent as oil prices hit a record $80 a barrel September 13. ``We have precious little time to adjust,'' said Tonko, president of New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. ``We are behind the curve of several leading nations who have moved forward with very aggressive outcomes.'' In Massachusetts, where utilities are under the gun to obtain four percent of electricity from renewables by 2009, builders await federal approval of a hugely controversial wind farm off historic Cape Cod. The Cape Wind project envisions 130 wind turbines each rising 440 feet above Nantucket Sound by 2011. State officials said the farm will eliminate pollution equal to 175,000 gas-burning cars. Like Mann's neighbors, Cape Wind opponents are rallying to protect historic properties. The Massachusetts historical commission said the wind farm's ``visual elements'' would be ``out of character'' and would have an ``adverse effect'' on more than a dozen historic sites, including the Kennedy family residential compound in Hyannis Port. James E. Liedell, director of Clean Power Now, a grass- roots group that supports the project, said he once asked Sen. Edward Kennedy, during a random encounter in 2003, what he thought of Cape Wind. ``It's the sight of wind turbines that bothers me,'' Liedell said Kennedy said, reminding Liedell that, ``that's where I sail, and I don't want to see them when I sail either.'' According to polling in northern Europe where wind farms are flourishing, residents eventually have come to accept turbine towers dotting the landscape, said Dr. Mike Pasqualetti, who has done much research on the topic. Communities near many California wind farms, which were built in the 1980s, have largely come to accept the turbines, said the Arizona State University professor. As the nation's fastest growing form of new power generation, wind-born electricity may soon fuel commutes for millions of Americans. ``If we power electric hybrid cars with electricity that comes from wind farms, it means you aren't polluting on either end of the equation,'' said Dr. Robert Lang, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech. ``It doesn't make sense to power electric cars with electricity from fossil fuel burning plants.'' Governments should consider offering property owners reduced energy rates or other incentives to win their support for green energy projects, suggested Lang. Washington state utilities are racing to obtain 15 percent renewable energy by 2020--much of that from wind. When the Kittitas County Commission unanimously rejected placing a 65- turbine facility near residential property, Gov. Chris Gregoire overruled the commissioners in a move that Chairman Alan Crankovich called disappointing and unprecedented. ``To have a land-use decision overturned by the governor, that scares me,'' Crankovich said. ``I'm concerned about it because this is the first step in weakening local authority and I hope she understands that.'' Bertha Morrison, 89, a lifelong resident whose property abuts the proposed site applauded the governor's decision. ``There'll be money coming from it to the county and that will keep our taxes down a little bit.'' Individuals such as Morrison, Mann and Herzinger can influence public energy policy, said energy consultant Rader, by participating in local government and casting votes on statewide initiatives. ``We're going to have to bite the bullet,'' said Rader. ``I think we need to do every damn thing we can to save this planet and everybody on it.''

Mr. ALEXANDER. Please let me know when there are 5 minutes remaining. Amendment No. 3553 Here is my second amendment. It is amendment No. 3553. I say it with all due respect to the Senator from Colorado because he and I discussed this. I am sure he will have more to say about this. But here is what this amendment is about. The question is whether every Member of this body--I hope a lot of Senators are watching or their staffs are watching, because you do want to help your Senator if you are a staff member go home and explain, wherever you may live in America, why you took $4,000 of their tax money and gave it to their neighbor to build a 12-story tower in that neighbor's front yard with a flashing red light on top. That is the question. The farm bill tax title, as reported by the Senate Finance Committee, says it is called a small wind tax credit. Now, I would ask those who can see this picture whether they would consider this tower an example of a small wind turbine? I think you can see the large crane next to it. You can see the telephone pole by it. Imagine if that is in your neighborhood, in the front yard of your neighbor. What the proposal in the tax title as reported says, that a small wind tax credit would give you up to $4,000 toward building a turbine of up to 100 kilowatts. That is a 100-kilowatt wind turbine. Now, you might build a smaller one, and the cost would vary--a 0.5 kilowatt turbine might cost about $1,900 and receive a $570 tax credit, which is 30 percent of the total cost. A 1 kilowatt turbine might cost about $4,000 and receive a $1,200 credit, which is also 30 percent of this turbine's cost. A 2.5 kilowatt turbine costs about $15,000 and would receive a $4,000 credit, which is 27 percent of the turbine's cost. But you could build one as big as the 100 kilowatt turbine depicted here with taxpayer funds under the provisions of this bill. I would like to ask my colleagues to think about whether they think that is an appropriate use of tax money. My view is the puny amount of electricity produced by these wind turbines is not worth ruining the character of our neighborhoods. So what my amendment would do is simply say: This is a farm bill. If the Members of this body and this Congress want to subsidize the building of 12-story white towers in rural areas for farms and businesses, then do that in the farm bill. But do not allow that to go into residential neighborhoods across America, which the bill, as presently written, does. Now, when I say a puny amount of electricity, what do I mean by that? Well, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, which has examined this provision of the proposed farm bill, it would encourage the installation of 12 megawatts of electricity. Electrical generators have something called rated capacity. The rated capacity is the power that an electrical plant generates when operating at its full capacity. A nuclear power plant, for example, in Tennessee on average operates at 90 to 95 percent of rated capacity. That is why so many Americans are beginning to understand that nuclear power is the way you deal with climate change, if you are serious about it, because they produce 1,100 or 1,200 megawatts of power 92 percent percent of the time, and that is clean power. That has no nitrogen, no sulfur, no mercury. It has no carbon. Nuclear power produces 20 percent of our electricity and 80 percent of our carbon-free electricity. The idea here is that by putting 12-story towers or up to 12-story towers in our neighbor's front yard or in our front yard, we could produce under this proposal an estimated 12 Megawatts of electricity. Probably turbines like that would operate 20, 25, 30 percent of the time. So it wouldn't be 12 megawatts of electricity, it would be 3 or 4 mega- watts on average. This is equivalent to two-tenths of 1 percent of the energy from a nuclear reactor or six-tenths of 1 percent of the energy from a single coal plant. My appeal is that we respectfully use our common sense as we think about how to deal with the various challenges we have with clean air, with climate change, with our need for energy. Common sense does not say we ought to subsidize the building of 12-story towers or up to 12- story towers in our front yards. For example, we would get a much better bang for the buck--$5 million is what is estimated to be spent-- if we simply bought energy-efficient light bulbs and gave them to our neighbors. Spending $5 million on $2 energy-efficient light bulbs would save eight times the electricity generated by these ``small wind turbines.'' So why should we ruin the character of our neighborhoods when we could do eight times as much good with the same amount of money by changing our light bulbs? That would be common sense. I am very much aware of the concern about climate change. Ever since I have been a Member of this body, I have had legislation in the Senate--first with Senator Carper, then with Senator Lieberman--to establish caps on utilities which produce a third of all the carbon in the country. That legislation, which I introduced with those two Senators over the last 5 years, also would establish more aggressive standards for nitrogen, mercury, and sulfur than the administration does. In addition, last week when we were debating climate change, the Environment Committee adopted my proposal for a low-carbon fuel standard which would be one of the most effective ways, probably the most effective way, to reduce quickly the amount of carbon in the fuel we use. In the last Congress, I was the principal sponsor of the solar energy tax credit. So I, like most Americans, am looking for ways for us to continue to power our huge economy but to do it in a clean way. I make a plea for common sense while we do this. I suppose it would be possible for us to give $4,000 to a homeowner and say: Build a big bonfire in your backyard, and then we will give you more money to sequester the carbon and bury it under the ground. That would be possible. But would it make common sense? No, it wouldn't make common sense. There are better ways to use the money. Why would we destroy the environment to save the environment, which is precisely what we are doing in residential neighborhoods with this proposal. I regret not that it allows farm families and farm businesses a small subsidy to build large wind turbines. I regret that we would extend that to residential neighborhoods at the same time. Let me say something else about the number of subsidies for wind power that exist today in our country. Sometimes the need for wind has become nearly a religion. Instead of looking carefully at whether we should use more efficient light bulbs or smart meters on utilities or solar panels or efficient appliances or green buildings, a whole variety of things we can do as a country to be green--instead of doing that, I think we have gone overboard on the idea of wind. Let me give a couple of examples of that, if I may. There are a great many subsidies already in existence for wind. The biggest, of course, is the renewable electricity production tax credit. Through that renewable production tax credit, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, the United States taxpayer will spend $11.5 billion on wind energy over the next 10 years. Let me say that again. The United States taxpayer is committed, through the existing renewable electricity production tax credit, to spend $11.5 billion on wind energy over the next 10 years. That doesn't count the value of various other Federal, State, and local subsidies for wind. There are the clean renewable energy bonds to help build the wind turbines. There are Department of Energy grants and incentive programs. There are Department of Agriculture renewable energy and energy efficiency grants and loans. There are various State subsidies for wind. Texas is appropriating billions of dollars for transmission lines for wind. That is their decision. It is not as if this were a form of energy which lacked support. I am afraid the result is that the extravagant subsidies for wind are causing people to build wind farms and to use wind where they otherwise would not. In testimony before the Environmental and Public Works Committee recently, one utility manager from Oklahoma said he is tripling the amount of wind they are using. I said: Why are you doing that? Can you use it as baseload power; that is, can you use it as reliable power all day long? He said: We can only use it when the wind blows. I said: Can you use it for peaking power? He said: No, we can't use it for that because the peaking power, the busiest time of the day or year, might come when the wind is not blowing. I said: Why are you doing it then? He said: To make the legislators happy. So we are not letting the market decide. We have become obsessed with the idea that this needs to be done. How big is that obsession? I think most Senators would be surprised to learn that by fiscal year 2009, the renewable electricity production tax credit will be the single largest tax expenditure for energy: $1.9 billion of that in 2009 would go for all renewable sources, but $1.3 billion would be for wind. We hear a lot about oil and gas and the subsidies for oil and gas. One might think that would be true since we have this massive economy. We use about 25 percent of all the oil and gas in the world. But according to figures from the Joint Tax Committee--and perhaps somebody will point out that the Joint Tax Committee is wrong, but this is what they say in the year 2009, the subsidies for oil and gas tax expenditures will be $2.7 billion from the taxpayers. The production tax credit for wind will be $1.3 billion. Wind, $1.3 billion; oil and gas, $2.7 billion. The reason I mention that is because of the disproportionate relationship between the value of oil and gas to an economy that uses 25 percent of all of it in the world and the amount of electricity produced by wind. In 2006, wind energy produced seven-tenths of 1 percent of the electricity we consumed in the United States, yet it is the largest single energy tax expenditure by the taxpayer. Something is wrong there. The Energy Information Administration estimates that by the year 2020, after we have spent presumably tens of billions of dollars of subsidies for large wind turbines in your front yard and backyard and side yard and our national forests, along our beaches, our most scenic mountaintops, after we have done all of that, according to the Energy Information Administration, wind is projected to produce about 1 percent of our electricity needs. I am skeptical of that figure. I think the Energy Information Administration is too conservative. It might be 2 percent. It might be 3 percent. Maybe it is 4 percent. But should the largest energy expenditure be to encourage the building of such towers, or should we be spending our money in different ways? We have other ways to produce electricity: 49 percent of our electricity is produced by coal. Would it be wise to spend money in finding a way to sequester that coal, perhaps through algae, perhaps through enzymes, so we can use it to reduce our dependence on foreign oil? I think it would. But the largest single energy tax expenditure is for wind. Twenty percent of our electricity is produced by nuclear power, 80 percent of our clean power. In my view, if we are serious about climate change in this generation, climate change is an inconvenient truth, the inconvenient solution is nuclear power and conservation. But the largest single energy tax expenditure is for large wind turbines. Hydropower is clean as well. It is only about 7 percent of the electricity in the United States. It will drop a little by 2020. But wouldn't there be ways to encourage that as well? It may be said that this is only a small matter. It is only $5 million. But it won't be a small matter in residential neighborhoods in Knoxville and Denver and Los Angeles, all across the country, when a neighbor comes in and says: I just got $4,000 of your tax money, and I am going to put up a 12-story white tower with a blinking red light on top because I want to do what I can for climate change. I think the proper answer is to say that is not the most commonsense thing we can do. There are many ways we can conserve. Efficient light bulbs would save eight times as much as this proposal would generate. Why don't we do that instead? If you think this is not going to happen in your neighborhood, I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record following my remarks a story from CNN.com about neighbors in Atlanta who are already squabbling about someone who has built a wind turbine in their front yard in a historic neighborhood. It makes no difference that the wind doesn't blow very much in Atlanta. The neighbor is just making a statement. That is the kind of thing that this will encourage.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, may I ask that I be notified when I have 5 minutes remaining? First, I would like to congratulate the Senator from New Hampshire for his, as usual, eloquent remarks, but I would like to congratulate him especially.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I unanimous consent that a fellow on my staff, Jack Wells, be granted the privilege of the floor for the duration of the debate on the farm bill.