Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I congratulate the Senators from Connecticut and Virginia for their leadership. Their presence in front of this bill makes a huge difference in this Chamber. I congratulate Senator Collins, Senator Coleman, Senator Dole, and the other cosponsors. The question before the Senate is not whether to act on climate change, or when to act on climate change, but how to act on climate change. How shall we, in this Congress, begin to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with the most certainty, least complexity, and the lowest cost? The Lieberman-Warner legislation prefers an economy-wide cap-and- trade approach. I prefer a sector-by-sector approach, that is, devising the lowest cost, least complex approach tailored to each of the three largest sectors of the economy that produce the most greenhouse gases. Since my first year in the Senate in 2003, first with Senator Carper and then with Senator Lieberman, I have introduced legislation to put a cap on carbon emissions from the first of these three large sectors, electricity powerplants. These plants produce 40 percent of the carbon dioxide and 33 percent of the greenhouse gases in the United States. I will now broaden my legislation to include two other major sectors of the economy, one, a low carbon fuel standard for the fuels used in transportation--transportation produces another one-third of America's greenhouse gases--and, third, an aggressive approach to building energy efficiency. I am grateful to the sponsors for including energy efficiency in their legislation. Tailoring our approach to only these three sectors--powerplants, transportation, and buildings--would cover about two-thirds of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. I believe I heard Senator Lieberman say the Lieberman-Warner bill would approach 75 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions. As we implement laws reducing emissions from these three large sectors, we could learn more and move on to the other sectors in the future. A sector-by-sector approach minimizes guesswork. For example, the United States has 16 years experience with a cap-and-trade program designed to reduce acid rain pollution from powerplants. The program costs less than expected. Utilities have experience with how it works, and we have in place right now the mechanisms we need to measure and regulate carbon from utility smokestacks. Cap and trade, which the Lieberman-Warner bill employs, and which my legislation employs for the utility sector, is a Republican idea, advanced by the first Bush administration in the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. With cap and trade, the Government sets the limits and the deadlines, and the market sets the price. With a carbon tax, on the other hand, the congressional tax committees and the Internal Revenue Service set the price. Cap and trade creates a more certain environment than a tax. Congress would have to revisit the carbon question to determine whether the tax is high enough to achieve the environmental goal, which could result in constantly changing limits and taxes. With a carbon tax there is more possibility that the cost of the tax will simply be passed along to the consumer. A sector-by-sector approach of the kind I advocate allows us to build on steps already taken. For example, in the transportation sector, Congress has already begun to mandate renewable fuels to reduce greenhouse gasses. This year the Senate enlarged that mandate and adopted fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks. I believe we should add to those steps a low-carbon fuel standard; that is, requiring transportation fuels to decrease gradually the amount of carbon in the gasoline they contain, which is a logical and manageable next step. In addition, both in the Energy bill of 2005 and the Energy bill the Senate passed earlier this year, Congress began to encourage more efficient buildings. Making those steps more aggressive holds the promise for enormous carbon savings at the least cost. I believe a sector-by-sector approach will do the least harm. It avoids imposing new regulations directly on the manufacturing sector, who nevertheless may have higher costs for fuel and electricity, and therefore avoids adding to the pressure to ship jobs overseas. By minimizing guesswork, my approach avoids grand plans that sound good but may turn out to invoke the high law of unintended consequences. I also believe a sector-by-sector approach is the easiest approach.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I believe it is the easiest approach for Members of Congress to understand and explain to our constituents these very complicated issues. As the recent debate on comprehensive immigration should have taught us, this is not an insignificant concern. The Lieberman-Warner economy-wide climate change legislation is an important contribution. I will not be a cosponsor as this point because I prefer sector by sector, but I will be a full participant in the committee and the Senate to produce a sensible piece of legislation in this Congress. The question before the Senate is not whether to act on climate change or when to act, it is how to act. And we should act in this session.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I congratulate the Senators from Connecticut and Virginia for their leadership. Their presence in front of this bill makes a huge difference in this Chamber. I congratulate Senator Collins, Senator Coleman, Senator Dole, and the other cosponsors. The question before the Senate is not whether to act on climate change, or when to act on climate change, but how to act on climate change. How shall we, in this Congress, begin to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with the most certainty, least complexity, and the lowest cost? The Lieberman-Warner legislation prefers an economy-wide cap-and- trade approach. I prefer a sector-by-sector approach, that is, devising the lowest cost, least complex approach tailored to each of the three largest sectors of the economy that produce the most greenhouse gases. Since my first year in the Senate in 2003, first with Senator Carper and then with Senator Lieberman, I have introduced legislation to put a cap on carbon emissions from the first of these three large sectors, electricity powerplants. These plants produce 40 percent of the carbon dioxide and 33 percent of the greenhouse gases in the United States. I will now broaden my legislation to include two other major sectors of the economy, one, a low carbon fuel standard for the fuels used in transportation--transportation produces another one-third of America's greenhouse gases--and, third, an aggressive approach to building energy efficiency. I am grateful to the sponsors for including energy efficiency in their legislation. Tailoring our approach to only these three sectors--powerplants, transportation, and buildings--would cover about two-thirds of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. I believe I heard Senator Lieberman say the Lieberman-Warner bill would approach 75 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions. As we implement laws reducing emissions from these three large sectors, we could learn more and move on to the other sectors in the future. A sector-by-sector approach minimizes guesswork. For example, the United States has 16 years experience with a cap-and-trade program designed to reduce acid rain pollution from powerplants. The program costs less than expected. Utilities have experience with how it works, and we have in place right now the mechanisms we need to measure and regulate carbon from utility smokestacks. Cap and trade, which the Lieberman-Warner bill employs, and which my legislation employs for the utility sector, is a Republican idea, advanced by the first Bush administration in the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. With cap and trade, the Government sets the limits and the deadlines, and the market sets the price. With a carbon tax, on the other hand, the congressional tax committees and the Internal Revenue Service set the price. Cap and trade creates a more certain environment than a tax. Congress would have to revisit the carbon question to determine whether the tax is high enough to achieve the environmental goal, which could result in constantly changing limits and taxes. With a carbon tax there is more possibility that the cost of the tax will simply be passed along to the consumer. A sector-by-sector approach of the kind I advocate allows us to build on steps already taken. For example, in the transportation sector, Congress has already begun to mandate renewable fuels to reduce greenhouse gasses. This year the Senate enlarged that mandate and adopted fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks. I believe we should add to those steps a low-carbon fuel standard; that is, requiring transportation fuels to decrease gradually the amount of carbon in the gasoline they contain, which is a logical and manageable next step. In addition, both in the Energy bill of 2005 and the Energy bill the Senate passed earlier this year, Congress began to encourage more efficient buildings. Making those steps more aggressive holds the promise for enormous carbon savings at the least cost. I believe a sector-by-sector approach will do the least harm. It avoids imposing new regulations directly on the manufacturing sector, who nevertheless may have higher costs for fuel and electricity, and therefore avoids adding to the pressure to ship jobs overseas. By minimizing guesswork, my approach avoids grand plans that sound good but may turn out to invoke the high law of unintended consequences. I also believe a sector-by-sector approach is the easiest approach.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I believe it is the easiest approach for Members of Congress to understand and explain to our constituents these very complicated issues. As the recent debate on comprehensive immigration should have taught us, this is not an insignificant concern. The Lieberman-Warner economy-wide climate change legislation is an important contribution. I will not be a cosponsor as this point because I prefer sector by sector, but I will be a full participant in the committee and the Senate to produce a sensible piece of legislation in this Congress. The question before the Senate is not whether to act on climate change or when to act, it is how to act. And we should act in this session.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 4 minutes, if I may, on the manager's time on the legislation.

Mr. ALEXANDER. That is correct. I thank the Senator from Wisconsin.

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, over the last several days, the Nation has watched Ken Burns' film on World War II. As I mentioned on the floor earlier, it is likely to take its place along with the series on ``Roots,'' along with Ken Burns' own film on the Civil War, along with Super Bowls, as a part of our collective memory. I saw a preview of Mr. Burns' film about 2 months ago at the Library of Congress. My wife and I went there with some others. He showed it. We got a sense of how remarkable it was. He said that it represented the time in our history when our country pulled together more than at any other time. Of course, all of us have seen how that ability to pull together, to be one as a Nation, prepared us for so many great accomplishments over the past half century--great universities, great military power, producing nearly a third of all the wealth in the world for 5 percent of the world's people. It also produced an era that is instructive to us on how well we as a country do when we work together. I think it is fitting this bill is on the floor at the time Ken Burns' film is on television. It is fitting because this war has been one that has divided us. We have not been able to unite on it, although I strongly believe we should speak with a single voice on it, and have said so by sponsoring--along with Senator Salazar and 15 other Senators--legislation that would give us a chance to do that by implementing the recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group. But I am not here today to argue the importance of what I believe the Baker-Hamilton recommendations offer us. I simply want to note it is appropriate that the pending bill is being managed by Senator Inouye and Senator Stevens. Senator Inouye is pictured numerous times during his service with the 442nd Division, which fought bravely in Europe during World War II. His heroism in that war won him the Congressional Medal of Honor. He was a Japanese American. Japanese Americans were, as the film reminds us, quarantined, reviled, discriminated against, but there he was, risking his life and limb to win the Congressional Medal of Honor. He was in the same hospital in Italy that our former Majority Leader Bob Dole was in. They were wounded about the same time, and they served here together in the Senate for many years. Then, on the other side of the aisle, the bill manager on the Republican side, is Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska. He was also in that war. He flew the first plane to land in Beijing after World War II ended. Senator Stevens was a member of the Flying Tigers, who are prominently mentioned in the film. A group of us Senators were in China last year, in a delegation led by Senator Inouye and Senator Stevens. They were received with enormous respect because the Chinese remember Senator Stevens' contribution to their country, and they know, of course, of Senator Inouye's heroism and leadership. I think it is appropriate, at a time when we are debating Defense appropriations, when we are considering the motto ``E Pluribus Unum,'' how we take this magnificent diversity in this country and make it one Nation, that we have the debate on this bill led on this floor by two men of that greatest generation, Senator Inouye and Senator Stevens. It is appropriate that they be managing this bill. I thought it important for us to acknowledge that. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, last week the Senate passed H.R. 3580, the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007, and sent it on to the President for his signature. This is the biggest drug safety reform in a decade, and I was proud to support it. Among other things, this legislation will help the FDA do a better job approving and monitoring prescription drugs and medical devices, encourage the research and development of medical treatments for children, and provide needed resources to the FDA. I am very pleased that the incentive which encourages more studies of medicines in children was preserved in the final version of this bill. Over the last 10 years, this program has helped provide worried parents and concerned physicians with information they need to make better decisions in prescribing treatment for young children. By extending drug patents in exchange for additional research on how these drugs affect children, this program has prompted studies on 144 products and led to 122 label changes on some of the most frequently prescribed medicines for children. Clearly the system works and should be continued, especially since to date only a third of drugs prescribed to children have been studied and labeled for children. I also am pleased that this legislation reinforces FDA's broad authority over prescription drug labels. Under current law, States are preempted from substituting their judgment for the FDA's scientific decisions based on exhaustive reviews of clinical data. If this weren't the case, medicine labels would become so overwhelmed with warnings designed to avert lawsuits that most Americans will simply stop paying attention to them. Additionally, Congress has decided to give FDA the authority to make expedited labeling changes, so that when prescription drug safety problems are identified the FDA and drug manufacturers can work together to quickly update product labels to ensure that the American people have the latest safety information. If a drug manufacturer comes to the FDA in good faith to discuss the possible need for an expedited labeling change--and if the FDA does not respond in a timely manner or decides that the science does not require a labeling change--then that drug manufacturer should not be subject to frivolous lawsuits. I am pleased that Congress came together in a bipartisan manner to approve this legislation. It can serve as a model for how the parties can come together to pass other meaningful bills during the remainder of the 110th Congress.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I compliment them for their leadership on this important issue. I ask unanimous consent that the debate time for the energy and resources conference report be preserved.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be added as a cosponsor to the legislation offered by the Senator from Connecticut and the Senator from Arizona.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, a lot is being said about whether Ken Burns included enough Latinos in his new television series on World War II. This is one more reminder that ``pluribus'' comes easy, but ``unum'' is hard. It would be a lot easier if ``e pluribus unum,'' the national motto displayed above the Presiding Officer's desk in the Chamber, were reversed and became ``many from one'' instead of ``one from many.'' Ken Burns's epic series on ``The War'' began last night on public television. It promises to stick in our collective memory as only a few television events have--for example, the Roots series, Burns' own Civil War series, and Super Bowls. In fact, our country is so splintered these days and so enthralled with our diversity that not very much becomes collective memory, as did, for example, McGuffey's Reader in the 19th century, or the three network newscasts in the mid-20th century. This diminution of our common core of beliefs and experiences is America's fundamental challenge because forging unity from our magnificent diversity is America's greatest achievement and has created our capacity for other achievements. At the Library of Congress some weeks ago, reflecting on his 6 years of work on this television series, Ken Burns said Americans were more united during World War II and its aftermath than at any other time. It was no coincidence that during this era the ``greatest generation'' also accomplished the most: Welcoming new citizens based upon beliefs instead of race, building overwhelming military power and the best universities, and producing nearly one-third of the world's wealth for 5 percent of the world's people. Quoting the late Arthur Schlesinger's book, ``The Disuniting of America,'' Ken Burns said America today could use ``a little less pluribus and a little more unum.'' Following World War II, liberals such as Schlesinger, Albert Shanker, and Hubert Humphrey were vigorous apostles of America's common purpose. Their Fourth of July speeches were as effusive as anybody's. But today, the left disdains, and the right seems to have forgotten the importance of unum, which means we are abandoning our greatest achievement. We see this in our work in the Senate. There is no constituency for consensus, only for division, and many of those who work hardest for consensus are retiring or near the end of their careers here. A good example is the debate on Iraq, a war that, unlike World War II, divides us instead of unites us. The President is conducting the war the way he wants to conduct the war, not recognizing that persuading at least half the people he is right is the only way he can sustain a long-term U.S. presence in Iraq. The Democratic majority, on the other hand, is working hard for a perceived political advantage, not recognizing that most voters would prefer we work together when Americans are fighting and dying. Both sides deserve an ``incomplete'' on their report cards. A unified country would speak with one voice on where we go from here in Iraq because our troops deserve to hear it; because the enemy needs to hear it; because one political party does not go to war, our country does; and, finally, because the Senate looks downright ridiculous lecturing Baghdad about being in a political stalemate when we cannot get out of one ourselves. We still have an opportunity to speak with one voice on Iraq. Seventy-eight of us in the House of Representatives and the Senate--35 Democrats and 43 Republicans--have cosponsored legislation making the bipartisan Iraq Study Group recommendations the policy of our Government. It is a consensus most Members, I believe, agree with. It is sitting there staring us in the face, waiting for us to adopt it and the President to sign it. At West Point a few weeks ago, 30 cadets told Ken Burns, after they had seen some of his World War II series, that they had watched his Civil War series with their parents and had decided then to attend West Point. We can only hope that Burns' new series can have as much impact and remind us of that time--World War II and its aftermath--when Americans pulled together, and remind us that today we could use a little less pluribus and a little more unum. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the names of the 78 cosponsors of the Iraq Study Group recommendations, on S. 1545 in the Senate and H.R. 2574 in the House. In the Senate, there are nine Democrats and eight Republicans among the cosponsors.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues, especially Senators Kennedy and Enzi, as well as their staff, in working together during discussions on the College Cost Reduction and Access Act to recognize the work of nonprofit loan providers and the services they provide to students and States. I would like to clarify with my colleagues the committee's intent regarding one of the provisions that relates to these nonprofit loan providers. It is my understanding that nonprofit entities that use eligible lender trustees to provide Federal loans to students--such as the one in my State, EdSouth--will benefit from the special allowance payment for not-for-profit holders in this bill. The language in this bill allows an eligible lender trustee acting on behalf of a nonprofit entity to be eligible to receive this payment on behalf of the nonprofit entity, as long as such nonprofit entity was acting as the beneficial owner of Federal student loans on the date of enactment. I ask Senator Kennedy and Senator Enzi whether my understanding of the provision is, in fact, what was intended by the bill. Our staff has all worked carefully on the language to ensure that the legitimate efforts of nonprofits can continue, without opening up loopholes that would allow for-profit entities to benefit from the special allowance payment differential. I thank my friends for their time today and again appreciate their efforts.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I would not want all the accolades to Senator Kennedy to come from that side of the aisle. Forty years ago, in 1967, I came to this body as a very young legislative aide to Senator Howard Baker, and Ted Kennedy was a very young Senator but already in his second term. All the talk for the first few months--and I imagine Senator Byrd can remember this--was about how long would it take for Senator Baker, a new Republican Senator, to break on some important issue with father-in-law, the Republican leader, Senator Everett Dirksen and after a few months we knew because Senator Baker walked across the aisle and joined with Senator Ted Kennedy and they fought against Senator Dirksen, Baker's father-in-law, and Sam Ervin, the most respected constitutional lawyer in the Senate, on the issue of one man one vote. I remember working with Jim Fluge, Senator Kennedy's friend who came back to work in the Senate 3 or 4 years ago. The upstarts won that debate; Baker and Kennedy beat Dirksen and Ervin on the one man one vote issue. That was my first exposure to working with Senator Kennedy. Several years passed and President Bush the first asked me to be the Education Secretary, and I came to Washington and what did I discover? I have to be confirmed by a committee chaired by Senator Ted Kennedy. That was 1991. That was 16 years ago. I was eventually confirmed and then we worked together for nearly 2 years on educational issues. Then, 4 years ago I came back and I am in the Senate and today I am serving on the committee that once confirmed me, and who is the chairman 40 years later? Senator Ted Kennedy. So I have had a very special privilege of working with Senator Kennedy and admiring him, both as a legislative aide and a Cabinet member and now as a colleague in the Senate. I can say as a practicing Republican what every Senator in this body already knows: Nothing will bring a Republican audience to its feet faster than a speech against high taxes, against Federal control, and against Ted Kennedy. But those outside the Senate might wonder, then, how could the Republican leader and others here hold him in such affection? I can give you one example. We have a tradition in the Senate still called the maiden speech. We think about what we might say when we first come here and make it a special occasion. My first speech was about what it means to be an American, how could we put the teaching of American history and civics back in its rightful place in our classrooms so our children could grow up learning what it means to be an American. This is the subject the Senator from West Virginia has worked on, spoken about, and legislated on many times. But after I made that remark and introduced a piece of legislation, who was the first Senator to come over and volunteer to go around among his Democratic colleagues and round up enough cosponsors so the legislation could pass and eventually funds be appropriated? It was Senator Kennedy. Who is the Senator who at least once a year takes his entire family to some part of American history and helps them all understand that? I remember his coming back and telling me how excited he was when the family went to Richmond and were in the church, I believe it was, where Patrick Henry was down on his knees and gave his speech about American liberty. That is a part of Ted Kennedy that those of us in the Senate, on both sides of the aisle, know. It is a part we respect and a part we appreciate. He cares about what it means to be an American because he and his family are such an important part of American history. It is a great privilege to serve in this body with Senator Kennedy.

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, during August, as many Members of this body did, I traveled to Iraq, met with Tennesseans there, met with General Petraeus, General Odierno. Then I traveled to Tennessee and discussed my visit and listened. I want to talk for a few minutes about where I believe we should go from here in Iraq. The strongest message I received, both in Iraq and in Tennessee, was this--not that we get out, not that we even win a victory of the kind we won in Japan or Germany, but it is time for the United States Government to speak with one voice on Iraq. A retired four star general from Tennessee, who has a lot of experience with the special forces, put it this way to me: He said our biggest problem in Iraq is we are divided and the enemy knows it. It is inexcusable that we in the Senate should spend so much time lecturing political leaders in Baghdad for their failure to come up with a consensus when we ourselves have not been able to come up with a consensus about Iraq. It is time for the Government to speak with a single voice about where we go from here in Iraq. Our troops deserve it and our enemy needs to hear it. I believe that one voice would be a new strategy to change our mission in Iraq from combat to supporting, equipping, and training the Iraqi troops, and then stabilizing Iraq province by province, neighborhood by neighborhood, tribe by tribe. If we adopt this new strategy as a nation, and if we speak clearly to our troops and to the enemy with one voice, I believe this would likely bring home half our troops within a year or two. Such a new strategy would put us on a path to finish responsibly what we have undertaken in Iraq. I believe there is a consensus within this body for such a new strategy. I believe that consensus is sitting there staring us in the face. The strategy I am describing would implement the unanimous recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group chaired by former Secretary of State Jim Baker, a Republican, and former Congressman Lee Hamilton, a Democrat. It would take into account the lessons and successes of the last few months under the leadership of General Petraeus in Iraq. Basically the new strategy I am describing would implement the recommendations of Baker-Hamilton province by province. The Baker- Hamilton strategy, the one I am describing, would be grounded upon three basic principles. First, the United States will begin immediately to move our forces in Iraq out of direct combat and into roles of support, training, and providing equipment as security conditions on the ground permit. This will proceed province by province as Iraqis demonstrate their capacity to manage their own security as they have, for example, in Anbar Province where President Bush visited yesterday. Generals Petraeus and Odierno told a group of us Senators about 10 days ago that they believe that 6 or 7 provinces are on the way to being ready for this sort of mission change and this sort of stabilization. We have seen it in Anbar. We saw it in northern Baghdad where we flew by helicopter to an edge of Baghdad where about 70 American troops were living in a neighborhood. We had dinner with two Sunni sheiks, two Shiite sheiks, and we talked about the progress there. What had happened is that the Iraqis had simply become exhausted with terrorists of various kinds killing their relatives and terrorizing their neighborhoods. One of the sheiks with whom we had dinner had seen his teenage son murdered in his front yard. When sufficient American forces, coalition forces, had come to the neighborhood to work with the fed-up Iraqis, they had proceeded basically to run the terrorists out of town. It was much easier for them to tell, as they said, who are bad guys than for us to tell who they are. They described them as various groups of thugs, criminals, insurgents, militias, all there for no good. But when the Iraqis began to man the checkpoints and when Iraqis worked on the neighborhood watch, and when 600 of their sons were sent to Baghdad to the police academy, as had been done with the prospect that they would then come back and help, then the American officers there said: It may not be long before we are able to shift our mission from combat to support, equipping, and training of the Iraqi troops for this area. Now, that is not to say that means instantly in every part of Iraq things will be safe. They certainly were not while we were there. Two province governors were assassinated within a 2-week period of time just before we came. Fourteen Americans lost their lives in a helicopter crash 2 days before we were there. On the day we were there, we found out later, two suicide bombers had gone to the nearest other outpost such as the one we visited and killed 4 people and wounded 11 others. There is plenty of danger left in Iraq. But there is no mistaking the fact that when we begin to see--and under Petraeus's leadership we begin to have--those outposts around Baghdad, and work with the Iraqis in certain parts of the country, significant military progress is being made. So the first principle of a new strategy would be to change the mission of our troops province by province. The second principle would be to maintain a long-term presence in Iraq but one that would steadily diminish over time. The troops who would remain would be there to keep Iraq from turning into a terrorist haven--troops who would be embedded with training Iraqi Army units and police, those troops necessary for force protection and for search and rescue and for intelligence. The final principle would be we would step up regional and diplomatic efforts to press others in the region to help Iraq succeed. Those efforts are now well underway with a more expansive United Nations assistance mission for Iraq. There is plenty of evidence that a new strategy such as the one I have described can attract a consensus here in the Senate and in the Congress, and I believe in the country. To begin with, while he has not adopted the Baker-Hamilton recommendation, the President has praised the report and has adopted parts of the report. The Democratic leadership has adopted many parts of the report and, in fact, the main difference, it seems, separating that side and this side in coming to a consensus is whether there should be a specific deadline, which the Baker-Hamilton commission rejects. Some have said, well, that means the Baker-Hamilton recommendations are toothless, do not have effect. Well, I see the Senator from West Virginia here. He will remember exactly what I am about to say. My grandfather was a railway engineer for the Santa Fe Railway. His job was to drive large locomotives onto what was then called a roundtable. The roundtable's job was to turn that huge locomotive around and head down a different track in a different direction. Once the roundtable had turned the locomotive around and put it on a different track, there was no getting on the other track. You might not know exactly how fast it would go down the new track, and you might have different engineers, but it was headed down a different track. I believe the Baker-Hamilton recommendations, as updated by General Petraeus's experiences, would begin to put our country on a new track with a new strategy in Iraq that would cause us responsibly to finish our job there and could begin to develop a consensus on both sides of the aisle. In the Congress there is now bipartisan legislation that would make the Iraq Study Group recommendations our national policy. In the Senate, the legislation sponsored by the Senator from Colorado, Senator Salazar, a Democrat, and myself, has 15 sponsors, 8 Democrats and 7 Republicans. In the House of Representatives, the Udall-Wolf legislation, the same legislation as Salazar-Alexander, has 60 sponsors, 26 Democrats, and 34 Republicans. If the President of the United States and the Democratic leadership in the Senate supported this bipartisan legislation, I am convinced it would get 75 votes and we would speak with one voice on Iraq to our troops and to our enemy. If the President and the Democratic leadership simply did not oppose this legislation, I believe it would attract a majority of votes in the Senate, maybe 60 votes. The Congress could enact this legislation by the end of the month. The President could sign it immediately. He could then begin to implement its recommendations moving us in a new strategy down a different track in Iraq and report to us, as the legislation requires, every 90 days. This is not a perfect option. The Baker-Hamilton group is 10 distinguished Americans--including Ed Meese, President Reagan's Attorney General; Vernon Jordan, from the National Urban League; Larry Eagleburger, Sandra Day O'Connor, President Clinton's Secretary of Defense, President Clinton's former chief of staff, Secretary Baker, Chairman Hamilton; Chuck Robb, a former Member of this body; Alan Simpson, a former Member of this body--a very diverse group, five Democrats, five Republicans. They met for 9 months. They were unanimous on their 79 recommendations. That did not mean they agreed with every single recommendation. But, taken as a whole, they said we can go from here to there in Iraq. This is how we do it. This is how we go. What are the other options? I can understand the Democratic leader wanting to have a vote on withdrawal immediately with a deadline. Many Members, maybe every Member on the other side, would vote for that. I respect that. But I would respectfully say we are not going to have a consensus on that approach. Too many of us believe it would strand people who had been loyal in Iraq. Too many of us believe it would not sufficiently honor the lives and the treasure we have invested in Iraq. Too many of us believe there is too great a risk of turning over Iraq to terrorists. And if none of those arguments make a difference, it is simply logistically impossible to move 160,000 American soldiers and marines and airmen out of Iraq overnight. So for all those reasons, while we might have a vote on withdrawal immediately with a deadline, there can't be the kind of consensus that we need in the Senate. On the other hand, I can understand those, many on this side, who say we should stay the course for a victory in Iraq. But this is not Japan or Germany. After World War II, we had millions of troops in Japan and Germany for a long time. We had an entire division in Germany which did nothing but wait to see where their might be trouble and then go to snuff it out. We were working with two countries which were homogeneous and which had been nations for a long time. We didn't have there the same circumstances we have in Iraq. There is not the possibility of the same kind of victory in Iraq that we had in Japan and Germany. We are spending $2 billion plus a week. We are losing two to three American lives each day. Our armed services are stretched thin. Most of the soldiers I talked with--and they are not complaining--were there for their second or third tour of duty, and some were expecting to come back again. Finally, I don't believe we can sustain a stay-the-course policy in Iraq because there is not the support for that among the American people. I suppose there is another option that one could try. The President and some on the ground in Iraq might be tempted to simply say: Let's continue the surge for a while longer because already in some places, as I have described--in Anbar Province, in four or five others, in northern Baghdad where we were--already in some places there is demonstration that we are having some military success. But a surge would be open-ended, a surge by itself. A surge is a tactic; it is not a strategy. We need a strategy about where we go from here. When I go back to Tennessee, I don't have Tennesseans rushing up to me to tell me what to do about Iraq. They expect me to have some idea about what to do about Iraq, to say where we go from here, and then they will critique that and tell me whether they agree. I believe there is not sufficient public support for the President simply to go before the American people and say: Let's continue the surge. We know if we put 25,000, 30,000, 40,000, 50,000 of our tremendous American troops in a particular place in Iraq, there will be some good results. We have already seen it. But a surge by itself does not answer the question. In fact, it never has answered the question: Where do we go from here in Iraq? How do we finish the job responsibly? That is the question. The surge can be a part of the new strategy. The Baker-Hamilton recommendations in December specifically said that as they called for a new strategy that included change of mission. But a surge was a tactic, a part of the strategy, not the strategy itself. If none of those options are promising for a consensus within this body and in the House of Representatives and the country, then where does that leave us? It leaves us somewhere in the middle, which is often, in a democracy, the right place to be. My father used to say: Finish what you start. We need to finish the job in Iraq. George Reedy, Lyndon Johnson's Press Secretary, wrote a book, ``Twilight of the Presidents,'' in which he described the job of the President--see an urgent need, develop the right strategy, but, third, persuade at least half the people he is right. We can and no doubt will have votes in this body on withdrawal with a deadline. We will probably have votes on stay the course and victory. We will probably have a vote on indefinite continuation of the surge. But there is not a possibility of consensus on any of these approaches. There is a good prospect for consensus on a strategy based upon the Baker-Hamilton principles, updated by the lessons and successes of General Petraeus. If the 10 members of the Iraq Study Group, the Baker- Hamilton group, over 9 months could agree unanimously on where we go from here in Iraq, surely 50 or 60 or 70 of us can agree on where we go from here in Iraq. I look forward to the President's report. I look forward to General Petraeus's recommendations. He has demonstrated that he is an exceptional leader. We Tennesseans have a special pride in him because of his leadership of the 101st Airborne Division. But once General Petraeus has made those recommendations, I hope the President takes a page from a former President of this country whom President Bush admires, Harry Truman. In 1947, Harry Truman found himself in about the same shape President Bush finds himself today. Americans were tired of war, even though in that case we had won it. The President's poll numbers were very low. The President had lost both Houses of Congress in the preceding election. The President had an urgent overseas mission that he hoped our country would adopt. According to David McCullough, the biographer of President Truman, Truman said if he sent a plan with his name on it up there to the Senate and the House, it would quiver a couple of times and die. So he called in General George C. Marshall who was his Secretary of State, and he called in Dean Acheson. He said: Let's call it the Marshall plan and go up to Arthur Vandenberg, the leader of the opposition in the Senate, and try to persuade him it is the right thing to do. We got the Marshall plan, and Truman today is remembered as a near great President. I am certain that President Bush believes as firmly in his heart that finishing the job in Iraq is as essential today as President Truman believed the Marshall plan was essential in 1947. But President Bush, I hope, will also remember the lesson of Harry Truman and borrow the recommendations and the prestige of the Baker-Hamilton group and borrow the lessons and successes of a distinguished general-- in this case General Petraeus--and give us a plan that is a genuinely new strategy, one that can attract significant support on that side of the aisle as well as this, one that, like my grandfather's big round table with the locomotive, can take our country and put it on a different track in Iraq that will assure us of that and that will cause us to change our mission for our troops from combat to supporting, equipping, and training, province by province, as soon as we honorably can. If it does, as I said earlier, I believe we will see about half our troops come home within a year or two. The principles also include a long-term but steadily diminishing presence in Iraq to fight counterterrorism and a stepped-up effort for diplomatic and political efforts especially in the region. But if the President were to do this, and if the Democratic leadership would make room for consensus in this body, we could end this spectacle of the U.S. Congress lecturing Baghdad for being in a political stalemate when we are in one ourselves. We can speak with a single voice. We are elected to be able to do so. Our troops deserve it. The enemy needs to hear it. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, let me ask, through the Chair, the manager of the previous bill, is he finished with what he would like to do this evening? If I could ask the Senator from Iowa, does he need any more time on the subject he has been talking about? I will be glad to wait.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Iowa.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Congratulations.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I mentioned a number of the Senators who had been so deeply involved in this. I mentioned the committee chairmen and the ranking members. But I would like to especially acknowledge the work of Senator John Ensign of Nevada, who was especially effective in reminding Republicans that investments in research and technology and science is as pro-growth as tax cuts. Senator Ensign was powerful on that subject. I believe it as strongly as he does. I believe he was more effective than I was. Senator Hutchison had been working with Senator Bingaman for years on advanced placement courses. Senator Mikulski was out front from the very beginning on this. There is an enormous list of Senators who made this happen. There is also a long list of Democratic and Republican staff members who deserve thanks. The list is too long for me to read all those names tonight, but I ask unanimous consent that this list of staff members be printed in the Record following my remarks, with the thanks of all of us for their work.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, this evening the Senate unanimously passed a piece of legislation which we call the America COMPETES Act. Earlier today, the House of Representatives passed it by a vote of 367 to 57. So anyone watching the work of the U.S. Congress must think: Well, that must either be not very important or not very hard to do. Nothing could be further from the truth. I would suggest that the America COMPETES Act will be as important as any piece of legislation the Congress passes in this session, and it has taken as much work as any piece of legislation that has been passed in this session. I would like to spend a few minutes acknowledging the work and describing the importance of the bill, but I think the first thing to do is to say actually what the bill does. The point of the America COMPETES Act is very simple. It helps America keep its brainpower advantage so we can keep our jobs from going overseas to China and India and other countries. The Presiding Officer is from a State that has benefitted greatly from America's brainpower advantage. There is a great deal of higher education and research in his State, and, as a result of that, a number of jobs. I have been in the Edison Museum in New Jersey, which is a good reminder of exactly what we are talking about. Thomas Edison used to say he failed 10,000 times until he succeeded once. That one success was the lightbulb, and then a number of other inventions, which created millions of jobs in the United States. The United States, this year, is producing about a third of all the money in the world. The International Monetary Fund says that almost 30 percent of all the wealth in the world is produced in our country, measured in terms of gross domestic product, for just 5 percent of the world's population. That is how many Americans there are. So imagine if you are living in China or India or Ireland or any country in the world, and you are looking at the United States. It is not so hard to look at other countries today with the Internet and travel and television the way they are. Someone in one of those countries could say: How can those Americans be producing 30 percent of all the wealth for themselves when they are only 5 percent of the world's population? They have the same brains everybody else does. They cannot work any harder than anybody else does. What is it? There are a variety of advantages we have in this country. But most people who look at this country, since World War II, believe our standard of living, our family incomes, our great wealth comes primarily from our technological advances, from the fact that it has been in this country that the automobile, the electric lightbulb, the television set, the Internet, Google have been invented. Or the pharmaceutical drugs that help cure disease all over the world, they also have come mostly from this country. It is that innovation that has given us our standard of living and given the rest of the world a high standard of living. That brainpower advantage we have is located in some pretty obvious places. One place, of course, is our system of higher education, the great university system. We not only have many of the best universities in the world, we have almost all of them. Another place is in the great National Laboratories, from Oak Ridge National Laboratory to Los Alamos and across our country. Another is in the great corporations of America where research is done whether it is in pharmaceuticals or whether it is in agriculture. Those great engines of research and innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit and free market that we have have given us this great advantage. We, therefore, talk a lot about progrowth policies. What causes our economy to grow? We, on this side--we Republicans--talk a lot about low taxes. I believe that is important and vote that way. When I was Governor of Tennessee, we had the lowest tax rates in the country. But I found very quickly that low taxes by themselves do not create a high standard of living because we had the lowest taxes in our State but we also were the third poorest State. I also found that better schools and better research were the keys to better jobs. That is what this bill is about. So as a result of the America COMPETES Act, over the next few years, we will have done something pretty remarkable. We asked the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, as well as other business leaders in our country, exactly what it would take to keep our brainpower advantage, and they have told us, and tonight we have done it. All that has to happen now is for the President of the United States to sign it, and I feel confident he will. I hope what he does is sign it and take credit for a lot of it, because in his State of the Union Address President Bush emphasized the importance of this and talked about his American Competitiveness Initiative 2 years ago. But this is what we have done. We have authorized the spending, over the next 3 years, of $43 billion to help keep our brainpower advantage by investing in science and technology. Most of that--and this was a part of the President's recommendation--helps to grow research at our major scientific laboratories and Departments by doubling their research budgets over a 7-year term. That would be the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Department of Energy Office of Science, which among other things, supervises the great National Laboratories in our country. As I said, the act authorizes a total of $43.3 billion, over the next 3 fiscal years, for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics research and education programs across the Federal Government. It will help to prepare thousands of new teachers and provide current teachers with content and teaching skills in their area of education. It will establish an advanced research projects agency for energy--a nimble and semi-autonomous research agency at the Department of Energy--to engage in high-risk, high-reward energy research. This is modeled after what we call DARPA at the Department of Defense which produced stealth technology and the Internet. Perhaps we can do the same as we look for new energy technologies. It expands programs at the National Science Foundation to enhance the undergraduate education of our future science and engineering workforce, including at our community colleges. There are many provisions in the bill to broaden participation in science and engineering fields at all levels. There are new competitive grant programs to enable partnerships to implement courses of study in math, science, engineering, technology, and critical foreign languages. There are competitive grants to increase the number of math and science teachers serving high-need schools. The bill expands access to advanced placement courses and international baccalaureate courses by increasing the number of qualified teachers in high-need schools. In other words, in plain English, it will help more children, including those who come from families with less money, have a chance to take the advanced placement courses that will give them a route into college, high achievement, and the ability to produce jobs not just for themselves but for the rest of us. It expands early-career research grant programs. It strengthens interagency planning for research infrastructure. It does all of this. Now, one might say: Where did all these ideas come from? Did the Senator from New Jersey just wander in one day and say, ``I have a great idea. Let's stick it in''? Or did the Senator from Arkansas say, ``Well, we have a little program over at Little Rock that we all like, so let's have some money for it''? Or did the Senator from Tennessee say, ``I was down at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory yesterday, and someone gave me an idea, so let's have $10 million for that''? That is not the way we did it. What we did is, 2 years ago, Senator Bingaman and I, and Representatives Bart Gordon and Sherwood Boehlert of the House of Representatives--two Democrats and two Republicans--we literally went to the National Academy of Sciences and we asked this question: Tell us exactly what we need to do to keep our brainpower advantage, to keep our jobs from going to China and India? And they took us seriously. The National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine appointed a distinguished committee of 21 Americans chaired by Norm Augustine, the former Chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. On that committee were some of America's most distinguished business leaders, three Nobel laureates, the president emeritus of MIT, teachers, and others, who gave up their summer, reviewed hundreds of proposals, and, in priority order, told us the 20 things we needed to do to keep our brainpower advantage. All of that was presented to us in a booklet called ``Rising Above the Gathering Storm,'' which is now well-known at universities, in schools, and in the business community as a wakeup call for the United States of America. It says we have been good--in fact, we have been way ahead of the rest of the line--but if we do not watch out, China, India, Ireland, England, and many of the other countries in the world, are going to catch up with us because there is no preordained right for Americans--no matter how bright we think we might be--to produce 30 percent of the world's wealth for just 5 percent of the people. Other people can do the very same thing in their colleges and universities, if they wish. The members of this commission had countless stories to tell that every American who confronts these issues will find. Every Senator who travels to China sees they have recruited a distinguished professor of Chinese descent at an Ivy League university to come home and help improve a Chinese university. That is happening all over the world, and it is creating a much more competitive environment. Last summer, Senator Inouye and Senator Stevens led a delegation of Senators to China. We were very well received because Senator Stevens was the first to fly a cargo plane into Beijing in 1944 at the end of World War II. He was flying with the Flying Tigers. Senator Inouye, of course, was a Congressional Medal of Honor winner in World War II. The Chinese remember well their affection for Americans in that war. So we were treated well and got to see President Hu, and the No. 2 man, Mr. Wu, the Chairman of the National People's Congress, for an hour each. These were interviews that many American delegations had not had before. What was interesting to me was that in those sessions with the No. 1 and No. 2 man in China, where our conversations ranged from Iraq to Iran to North Korea to Taiwan, all the issues one might expect, the issue that animated the leaders of China the most was their efforts over the next 15 years to create an innovation economy. They wanted to talk about how China caught up with America's brain power advantage because they know their skills, they know they are good, they know they can do it and they did it in their way. The month before, President Hu had walked over to the Great Hall of the People and assembled their National Academies of Science and Engineering and said: We are going on a 15-year innovation plan. We are going to invest 4 percent of our gross domestic product in research and technology. We are going to improve our colleges and our universities and our schools. We are going to create a brain power advantage for China that gives us a higher standard of living. They understand that. We did it a little different way. Two years ago, we walked down to our National Academy of Sciences. We invited them to give us this report, ``Rising Above the Gathering Storm''. We took the recommendations of the Council on Competitiveness which was already working. The President of the United States gave his recommendations in his American Competitiveness Initiative. And then we went to work in the American way. We don't announce 15-year plans here; our way is a little messier. So we had to go through three committees here in the Senate and two in the House of Representatives. I have to thank the senior Members of this body for the attitude they took toward this. For example, Senators Stevens and Inouye, Senators Kennedy and Enzi, Senators Domenici and Bingaman, Democrats and Republicans who put aside 3,000 years of seniority and 200 jurisdictional prerogatives and said: Let's just work together and see if we can get this done across party lines. That is not very interesting to people across the country, all this inside baseball about how the Senate works. But it has to work in order for something such as this to happen. It is not a simple thing to take the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences and actually do them in both bodies, and yet that is what we have done. Not only did we start 2 years ago, when this was a Republican Congress, but we passed this legislation during a Democratic Congress almost without missing a step. What happened was a bill that was sponsored by the leaders--last time it was Frist and Reid; now it is Reid and McConnell. They just changed the names because we had worked so well together--not only with ourselves but also with the Bush administration--that it was hard to tell whose bill it was. At one time, this legislation that Senator Domenici and Senator Bingaman first introduced had 35 Republican cosponsors and 35 Democratic cosponsors, and the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, when she was the Democratic leader, was one of the first out to support it. It is especially gratifying to me that Tennesseans, if I may say so, have taken such a role in it in the House of Representatives. Representative Bart Gordon, who is now chairman of the Science Committee, was the lead conferee on this piece of legislation. Representative Zach Wamp, who represents the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, gave I thought the best speech on the House floor today on the Republican side. So again, it was bipartisan. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at the end of my remarks an overview of the conference report we passed.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, which I will not do, while the majority leader and the Republican leader are on the floor, I would simply like to say that this is the Reid-McConnell bill we are passing, which represents the fact that so many Members of this body have been a part of it. After the Senator from Iowa makes his remarks, after wrap-up, I plan to make some remarks about this bill. But I would just simply say now that they have created an environment, in a bipartisan way, that permitted this bill to pass. It has been worked on for 2 years. It has had 70 Members--35 Democrats, 35 Republicans--cosponsoring it. I would judge that there will be no more important piece of legislation to the future of the country that passes the Congress in this session. I wish to thank Senator Reid, Senator McConnell, and Senator Frist from the last session for creating the environment that made it possible.