Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I am happy to.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I congratulate Senator Kennedy and Senator Enzi and the members of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee for their work on this bill. I have been around awhile, but I have not been in the Senate for very long, and we have been working on this bill since I came to the Senate, which was 4 years ago. It needed to be reauthorized some time ago. But similar to some other things, it has gotten a little better with age, and it is a very good bill. Although we have been working on this bill for some time, I believe it has gotten better over time. It has a number of excellent provisions in it. There is one major concern I have which I intend to speak on. Let me say what that is at the outset before I begin to talk about what I like about the bill. My late friend, Alex Haley, used to say, ``Find the good and praise it,'' and I can do that with this bill, but I do have one concern. My concern is the creeping regulation of higher education. I believe the single most important thing we could do to help improve excellence in higher education in America, which is already pretty good--the best in the world--is to deregulate, not add more federal regulations. Unfortunately, with this bill, we significantly add to the stack of regulations that college and university presidents all over America have to wade through every year in order to accept students who receive Federal grants and loans. Let me talk about some of the good things about this bill. In the first place, it was an excellent decision to separate this piece of legislation from the work we acted on last week--what we call the reconciliation bill. This reauthorizes the Higher Education Act for the next 5 years, and it has separate provisions which deserve separate attention. For example, it increases the amount of Pell grants from $4,300 to $6,300 over the next 5 years. Pell grants are for the lowest income students. They don't help the middle-income families very much because the dollars don't get up to that level. Those families are eligible for other aid from universities and other grants and loans. But $6,300 for a Pell grant is a significant amount of money. For example, if you go to Harvard, it doesn't come close to paying the cost, but if you go to the University of Tennessee, it pays almost the entire tuition for the year. In fact, if you go to the University of Tennessee with a Pell grant, you are very likely to show up with what we call a HOPE scholarship, which also pays for tuition. So you would start off with a HOPE scholarship of--I think the amount is about $4,000--plus your $6,300 from the Pell grant, if you needed that additional amount of money. So the Pell grant would be increasing from its current level of $4,310 to $6,300. If there are families across the country who are watching our debate and thinking they can't go to college, it is important for them to know that the community colleges of America cost several hundred dollars a quarter, and that the great State universities of America typically cost $5,000 or $6,000 or $7,000 a year in tuition. Now, that does not include living expenses, but we all pay living expenses, whether we are in college or we are not in college. This decision to move up the Pell grant to $6,300 is a big help. I hope it sends a signal across this country to families without means that their son or their daughter may start their higher education, for example, at a community college for 2 years, living at home and paying a few hundred dollars and letting the Pell grant pay for the total cost of the tuition, the total cost of the books. So there will be zero charge for that family for 2 years, and then after 2 more years, go on to a State University, where the tuition might not be very much more than the Pell grant. In addition, the Pell grants will be even larger for students who are majoring in math, science, critical foreign languages, and thereby encouraging students to pursue those fields. This Congress is taking a number of steps to try to refocus our country's attention on our brain power advantage, to make sure we keep that so we can keep our good jobs from going overseas. Senator Kennedy and Senator Enzi and Senator Frist last year changed the law and created the SMART grants to focus on our competitiveness, and the increase to the Pell grants do that significantly more in this legislation. In addition, this legislation, in an overdue way, recognizes the importance of a year-round Pell grant. Many people still have in their mind the idea of the traditional college student on the traditional campus. That life has changed. Many of the students who take Pell grants have to work. They are older. They may be moms going back to school to get the training to get a better job or a dad doing the same, and they may not have time to take the summer off, or that might not fit their schedule. The way the law has been, they couldn't get the Pell grant, if there were, say, three quarters, they could only get it for two. This says that--and Senator Clinton, I congratulate her for working on this as well. A number of Senators have worked on making the Pell grant a year-round opportunity. I am also delighted about legislation I introduced, again with Senator Clinton, to expand Teach For America. Teach For America attracts some of the brightest young men and women in our country who have a passion for serving. There are many ways to serve our country. Some of our most valued are in Iraq and Afghanistan. Others are in the inner city helping children who haven't had a chance to learn to read, to learn to compute, and learn to have a chance in this country. As Lyndon Johnson used to say, we want people to be equal at the starting line, but we need to help some people get to that starting line, and through Teach For America, young men and women can do just that. This will build a corps of young college graduates who will spend 2 years in those schools, and it will expand the group of influential alumni of Teach For America who care about our public schools. I actually think that what may end up being more important about Teach For America than their service for 2 years in the inner city schools is that we will expand these young men and women who will grow to be the leaders of this country in a relatively short period of time. Then they will always have within their personal missions the idea of giving every student an opportunity to go to a first-class public school. Having a corps of Americans who value education and who value public schools, especially, will do our country more good than almost anything I can think of. Mr. President, I believe we have the best colleges and universities in the world. We don't just have some of them, we have almost all of them. They have their problems, but we should recognize the asset that they are. One of my primary goals as a Senator is to relieve the burdensome, oppressive paperwork that the Federal Government places upon our colleges and universities, freeing up scarce dollars to spend on improving quality teaching and research rather than paperwork. The higher education system--and I want to be careful saying this because I don't want to drive anyone away from this idea--is a Republican's dream, a conservative's dream. We have 6,000 autonomous institutions. Some are public, some are private. Some are religious, some are secular. Some are historically Black, some are Native American, some are Jewish. Some are in cities. There is Harvard and there is the Nashville Auto Diesel College. There are 6,000 autonomous institutions that compete. We don't give money directly to those institutions, for the most part. We give the money to the students, and students take those vouchers--one-half of America's college students attend our autonomous institutions with a Federal grant or loan that helps them to pay for college, and they are flat out vouchers. I have introduced several times a Pell grant for kids, saying that is what a voucher is for K-12, but we will reserve that discussion for another day. Since World War II, quite by accident, we have said to the world: Here is the way we organize our education. It is a marketplace of 6,000 institutions, where (1) colleges compete for students, (2) Government money follows those students to the institution of their choice, and (3) the Federal research money is, for the most part, competed for in peer-reviewed efforts. The rest of the world is scrambling to catch up with our system. In China, they are deregulating. In France, they are deregulating and creating a more competitive system and trying to emulate the model that we have. So what concerns me about our Government's attitude toward higher education is the number of forms each institution has to fill out. I have a stack of forms this tall in my office. I didn't bring it here to the Senate floor. Every institution has to fill that out in order to accept students who bring with them Federal grants or loans, which are almost all of the students. That means the small church-related schools have to hire somebody else. They have to go through all that. The President of Stanford--not a small, church-related school--said 7 out of 10 cents of every tax dollar is spent on complying with Government regulations. Would it not be better if we allowed Stanford and the small schools and the Nashville Auto Diesel College, as well as Harvard, to use more of their money to help students and less to comply with paperwork? With passage of this bill, we will require the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Aid to review regulations imposed under the act and report to the Secretary and Congress ways to reduce regulation, streamline procedures, and simplify for the benefit of students. That will be one small force moving in the right direction. It would create a discretionary grant program for an institution of higher education to maintain a Web site that keeps track of Federal regulations that have an impact on institutions of higher education. A small, church-related college might only have to hire a person who spends half of his or her time keeping up with the rules and regulations because the Web site might have done it for them. We require the Secretary to develop an annual compliance calendar for disclosures required by the Higher Education Act. These provisions might seem not very important, but I can guarantee you, as a former president of a university, they can make a lot of difference. I would like very much to have spread out before me a calendar from the Government that said we have listed all of the rules and regulations and forms and papers that you have to file. That would mean I knew what it was and that would save me a lot of time in figuring it out. Despite that good news, I am afraid there are, nevertheless, problems in this bill. Currently there are 24 reporting categories and 74 reporting requirements with hundreds of data points. That is today, before this bill passes. My staff has identified 26 new categories and over 100 new reporting requirements imposed on higher education with this law, and that is even before the department starts its regulations. So I hope we can figure out a way to create competitive forces in favor of deregulation. It is as bad on our side of the aisle as it is on that side of the aisle. Very often, my Republican friends say, for example, prices at colleges have gone up, so let's put on price controls. When the pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts, they said we know what religious oppression is, so let's practice it ourselves. We are supposed to be for markets and choice and less Federal regulation. So let's apply that to Federal higher education. I have worked on a number of provisions in the bill, and I thank Senators Kennedy and Enzi for permitting me to do that, working with others, including Senators Gregg and Reed, and I have worked on provisions that have been included that simplify the application form for students who apply for grants or loans. As I mentioned, I worked with Senator Clinton to help allow students who have Pell grants to use them year-round so they can finish earlier and get back to work and back with their families, rather than the antiquated requirement that they may only use them part of the year. I mentioned the compliance calendar to make it simpler for colleges, and the Teach for America plan, which Senators Harkin and Reid and others have cosponsored. There is an accountability research grant and a state data system pilot project. I thank Secretary Spellings for agreeing with these. As a result of her study of higher education, which pointed out a number of important things, we do have a fine system of higher education, but it needs to be challenged if we are going to keep our advantage. I felt that the Secretary, in her recommendations, was going too far in federalizing higher education, whether it be transfer of credit provisions, or whether it might be proposals mandated from Washington about student accountability. I thought that was a good goal but the wrong way to go about it. So Secretary Spellings has agreed to step back and focus instead on challenging our State boards of education and our college boards of trustees and our university presidents and our Governors and legislators to do their own on accountability. We are not going to kick it to Washington, DC, and let us conduct oversight of how they are doing their jobs, rather than to try to impose more of the one-size or a few-sizes-fit-all ideas from Washington. A part of doing that would be these new grants from the Department. In this bill, we have provided grants from the Secretary to create new measures for assessing student achievement in higher education. There is a difference in the Harvard classics department and the Nashville Auto Diesel College. I mention that because Harvard classics might be the best department for classics. I know the Nashville Auto Diesel College is the best training for mechanics. There is no need for us to figure out what is the appropriate accountability at those institutions. With great respect to the chair and Senators Kennedy and Enzi and the Department of Education, the institutions of higher education know more about accountability in higher education. We ought to make sure they are doing their job, not try and do it for them from here.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I guess the parliamentary procedure is that I can speak on the bill.

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the managers of the bill for giving me the opportunity to speak. I wish to say a few words--general words--about the student loan program in our country. The Direct Loan program--the program by which the Federal Government itself loans money to college students across our country--began when I was the U.S. Secretary of Education, and the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts was chairman of the Health and Education Committee. We had a Democratic Congress and a Republican President named Bush, although a different Bush. Senator Kennedy will remember the Deputy Secretary was David Kearns, a very distinguished former business leader, head of Xerox. Bill Ford was chairman of the House Education Committee. Chairman Ford very much wanted a so-called Direct Loan Program. He wanted the Government to loan money to students. The law we have today is named after him. He made a great contribution to our Nation's education. I thought about the Direct Loan Program at the time and, generally speaking, I wasn't in favor of it. There were three reasons for my skepticism then. One was that it seemed to me the enormity of the program would mean the Government--our Federal Government--would suddenly find itself being a massive bank. Ever since Andrew Jackson, the idea of a big national bank had been something our country hasn't liked. We let the private sector have the banks. The problem with the government operating as a bank was we would have to borrow a lot of money and add to the Federal deficit. Second was the size of the student loan program. Millions and millions of students--one-half of our college students across the country--have a Federal loan or grant to help them pay for college, and may choose among any of the accredited colleges. We have about 6,000 institutions that qualify or receive students with these loans. So it is a massive administrative challenge. I could not see how the Federal Government--the department I was in charge of at that time, the U.S. Department of Education--with the personnel, as dedicated as they are--could do a better job than the private sector on such a big administrative challenge. Finally, while I didn't know at the time, I didn't believe there was a way for the Federal Government, with its built-in efficiencies, to do a less expensive job of managing this massive program than the private sector could. I was relying on my gut instinct, which is generally that if you can find it in the Yellow Pages, the Government probably ought not to be doing it. So I came down on the side of having a federally backed student loan program, a generous one, which has grown since then, but that was managed by the private sector. The Government can do a great many things well. Regulation is one of the things it does well. One of the things it generally doesn't do as well--with the exception of the military--is manage large programs. The result of that debate was the creation of the Direct Loan Program. In the end, I saw that as an advantage for the country because it at least would give us the opportunity to measure the way the Government would administer a loan program against the way the private sector did it. In other words, it was something we could look at and compare. That is the way we have operated over the last 15, 16 years that this has been in place. Now, I have not changed my view on the so-called Government program, or the Direct Loan Program. I believe almost every aspect of our higher education system in our country can be viewed as a success, including the FFELP student loan program. There are roughly 3,200 lenders today participating, with a loan volume of over $50 billion in the current year. The Direct Loan Program was approximately $13.5 billion. The total outstanding amount of loans, FFEL and direct loans, now approaches half a trillion dollars, about $448 billion. We are talking about an immense program that creates great benefits for students all over America. Now, the question that is before us is, if we have this private sector program out there--and we have been debating this in committee and we have had innumerable meetings on it and we had a vote earlier today--is the subsidy for the private lenders set at the right level? Obviously, we have all agreed that it is too high. Congress agreed it was too high last year. The President agreed it was too high this year, and he proposed some cuts. Now our committee in the Senate is making additional cuts. My concern is that we are guessing what the subsidy level ought to be. We have our finger up in the wind and are making arbitrary judgments. I am interested in the auction model that has been introduced into this bill. I think that is a useful way to find out what the private markets would tell us about what the right level of taxpayer subsidy is, so this program which loans money to students, who aren't the best credit risks, is at about the right level. But the last auction program was a colossal failure. So that auction program may not tell us much. Another way we might find out the proper level of subsidy would be to try to develop a body of knowledge in the same way that State utility commissions do. In Tennessee and other States--well, Tennessee is different because we have the Tennessee Valley Authority. But in most States, a State utility commission regulates the rate set for telephones or electricity, and it allows the private company providing that service a reasonable profit. Over the years despite there being a lot of politics involved, which I remember that very well--there has developed quite a body of knowledge around the idea of what is an adequate level of subsidy for private companies providing a public service, such as electricity or telephones or, as I suggest, federally backed student loans. Perhaps that is something we could do more of. There was talk about asking the Government Accountability Office to study the subsidies in this bill. I don't know whether that sort of study ended up in the legislation. I hope it did. Looking ahead to the next time we reauthorize this ordeal with student loans, I would like to find out if there is a way to set up an appropriate way to measure what the level of subsidy ought to be for a private company. So we have, first, the idea of the auction which might teach us something. We have the cost of the Direct Loan Program. That could teach us something about the appropriate cost. Finally, perhaps in this legislation, before it is through, if it is not in already included, we can ask GAO to create indices that would help legislators make a better judgment than guessing what an appropriate level of subsidy is. We have an indication from the marketplace. Last week, an equity firm that was seeking to buy Sallie Mae, I believe, said our changes in the level of subsidy made that deal such that they felt it was not profitable for them. So as I understand it, they have backed down. That is a signal the levels we are setting in this bill may make it more difficult to attract a large number of private lenders to the program and, in effect, turn the student loan program more and more towards the Direct Loan Program. In other words, by cutting the subsidies deeper and deeper, we will be driving banks out of the business, especially the smaller ones--the ones that serve students perhaps in rural areas or in different areas-- and we might be reducing the opportunities students have to benefit from the services that these banks offer. I know some of my colleagues would prefer we turn the whole thing over to the Government. I hope we don't do that--through the front door or through the back door--by squeezing out all of the private lenders. My concern is not for the lenders; my concern is for the students who today get loans from 3,200 lenders. I like for students and universities to have those choices. And over the last 15 years, generally speaking, they prefer the program that involves private lenders instead of dealing with the Direct Loan Program that the Government runs. Eighty-three percent of the schools prefer to use the privately backed student loan program, and 76 percent of the student loans are originated by those lenders. Only 1,310 schools participated in the Direct Loan Program, which is a small proportion of the loan volume. The reason may be that the consumers who like choice and who like to have different options have looked at both options--the program run by the Government and the program run by the private lender--and they find, the universities and the students, that the privately operated program is better for the students. I am here today more to talk about looking ahead, not condemning this bill or the effort that has been made here. I am here today also to say that the work of the Senate and House committees and some of the States has uncovered abuses by student lenders, some of which have been corrected and the rest ought to be. There is absolutely no excuse for that. But correcting abuses by private student lenders is one thing; cutting the rates to such a point that we end up through the back door pushing the student loan program into a Government-run program, or largely into a Government-run program, is another thing. It would be an unwise step for us to take, and if we are to consider that step, I hope we will do that on a very careful basis. In conclusion, my opinion has not changed based on experience over the last 15 years about the merits of a program largely run by private and nonprofit organizations--3,200 of them right now--to offer choices to millions and millions of students who attend 6,000 universities. To me, almost by definition, the Government is not a good manager of such a large program. In fact, if it were a Government-run program, the Government would have to contract it out. In general, I still support a properly regulated and appropriately subsidized program that allows for the maximum number of student private lenders leaving students and universities choices. Second, I am not persuaded that the Government-run program costs less than the student program. I know there are reports and studies which suggest that it might, but that is because we count money up here in strange ways. If you just take real dollars and compare them to real dollars, I have seen no real evidence that the Direct Loan Program is cheaper for the taxpayers than the program run through the private lenders. Finally, I don't like the idea of the Federal Government suddenly beginning to assume a debt which approaches a half trillion dollars and put it on our books at a time when we are trying to reduce the deficit. If it doesn't cost less, and if the Government is not likely to manage it better, and if we don't need another half trillion dollars of debt in the Federal Government, then why would we want to encourage the growth of a Government-run program over a privately run program? I appreciate the chairman being here while I am making these remarks. I look forward to working with him because he has long experience on this program and he has distinct views on it. I suggest that one of the most constructive things we can do over the next few years is try to create, either through the auction suggestion or by listening to the private markets or from the Government Accountability Office or some other way, something other than a guess about what the private level of subsidy is. Otherwise, we will be doing through the back door something that I really don't think we should be doing through the front door either. I thank the Senators from Massachusetts and Wyoming for their time. I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record some elaboration of my remarks that have to do with the cost comparisons of the Federal and the private programs, the evidence, or lack of it, that the Government can do it better than the private sector, and some questions about why the Federal Government would want to assume more debt.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Reserving the right to object, could we have the next Republican speaker be Senator Alexander?

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, with this political stunt tonight, the Senate has reached the approximate level of the Iraqi Parliament in dealing with the war on Iraq. There will be no more votes for a fixed deadline for withdrawal from Iraq at 3 a.m. than there would be at 3 p.m. This demeans and trivializes the foremost issue facing our country. It does not show the proper respect for the men and women who have been fighting there and their families. Here we are, issuing milestones, talking about benchmarks to an infant democracy on the other side of the world, issuing reports and report cards about how well they are doing on what we have told them to do, talking to them about why they haven't passed oil sharing and debaathification and why they have not had more elections, and we cannot come up, ourselves, with a consensus about what we are doing in Iraq. Here we are, the oldest democracy in the world, alleging ourselves-- the Senate--to be the greatest deliberative body in the world, and we are lecturing Iraq, a new democracy, an infant democracy. We are lecturing them for not coming up with a consensus when we can't come up with one ourselves. I think it is important for the American people to know it is not necessarily that way in the Senate. I began this day at 8 a.m. at a breakfast, as I did last week, as I did the week before, which we call our bipartisan breakfast. This morning we had about a dozen Republicans and Democrats around the table--only Senators. Last week, we had two dozen around a table. Our subject was Iraq and the Defense authorization bill. I will not say any more about what was discussed because one of the benefits of this breakfast is it is the only time during the week, except for our prayer breakfast on Wednesday, when we are not in team meetings, when there is not a group somewhere plotting what this side will do to that side or what that side will do to this side. It is amazing what sort of discussion we can have when we sit down around that sort of table. We have many of the same principles who have talked tonight on the Senate floor, people who have strongly held views and they are different views and they were stated clearly and explicitly and each of us respected those views. We heard them. But at least as strong as the difference of opinion in that bipartisan breakfast--as it is each week when we talk--was the feeling that our main job was, as soon as we could, to come to some sort of consensus about where we go from here. Because the single most important thing we can do as a government, other than fund our troops, is to send them a clear signal that we agree on why we sent them there to fight and perhaps be wounded and perhaps to die and we failed in that responsibility. To compound it, we are in the midst of a political stunt which does not do anything to encourage us toward a consensus. In my remarks tonight, rather than heap oil on the fire, what I would like to do is talk for a moment about how we could come to that consensus and about both Democrats and Republicans in this body who are working that way. Mrs. Feinstein, the Senator from California, mentioned a number of Senators who do that. My experience with Members of this body began when I came to work here for the first time 40 years ago this year as a very junior aide. I have only been a Member of the body for 4 years. My experience is that most of us prefer to conduct ourselves like grownups, to not engage in petty kindergarten games, to not have partisan efforts where we taunt one another and try to put one another at a disadvantage but actually recognize we are here to look at big, difficult issues and to see if we can come up with a solution for one. If there is such an issue that demands such a solution, it is America's role in Iraq. How would the Senate--if I am right that most of us would like to have that kind of result--how would we go about working toward consensus, when we obviously have strongly held different views? For example, Senator Levin and Senator Reed, two of the most senior Members of our body--one a distinguished graduate of West Point, one who has served as chairman or ranking member of the Armed Services Committee for a long time--they strongly believe, as the Senator from California believes, that unless the Congress imposes upon the President a fixed deadline for withdrawal, that we will not have any motion in that direction. I respect that. I disagree with that. I believe that interferes with the constitutional prerogatives of the President. I do not believe it is practical in a time of war to say that a group of legislators, 100 generals here in this body, can guess a year out, even if that is the direction we want to go, exactly how to do it and exactly when to do that. That is why we have a Commander in Chief. The Founders didn't pick this particular President, but they picked a President, a Chief Executive, with that responsibility. I respect that. That is of a difference of opinion. So we have profound and real and honest differences of opinion and they are reflected all the way across our country. I hear them in Tennessee. The Presiding Officer hears them in his State. We hear them everywhere, and we feel them especially strongly because so many of our men and women have been there. In my State, 10,000 members of the National Guard and the Reserves have been to Iraq and Afghanistan; almost all of them more than once. We think of General Petraeus as almost a hometown boy because he commanded the 101st Airborne Division. When he was there as its commander, he was accidentally shot through the heart in a training exercise. His life was saved, when he went to Vanderbilt Hospital, by none other than Bill Frist, our former majority leader, who was then a heart surgeon at Vanderbilt University. So we have unusual respect for General Petraeus. We are the ``Volunteer State.'' We have sent more men and women to fight, we think, than almost any State, and we instinctively have great respect for the President of the United States. That is where we start in our State. But, still, there are a great many Tennesseans who say to me it is time for a new strategy in Iraq. It is time for a change. We have helped depose Saddam Hussein. We have helped Iraq have an opportunity to have a democratic government. We have stayed a long time to help build their security. But now it is time for us to agree on a different strategy. How would a country and how would a body such as the Senate go about that? One way to do it might be to pick 10 people from outside the Senate, 10 of the most distinguished Americans, and say to them: We are stuck here. We have a problem. The country has a problem. We need a shift of direction. We have a Senate that is divided, a President who is insisting on his constitutional prerogatives, and we have men and women fighting and dying in Iraq--what do we do? Ten Americans, let's pick five Democrats and five Republicans, to give it a little bit more prestige. That happened last year. Frank Wolf, a Representative from Virginia; John Warner, Senator from this body, was a part of this as well--they created something called the Iraq Study Group. The Iraq Study Group was cochaired by Jim Baker, the former Secretary of State for President Bush, and by Lee Hamilton, the former Democratic chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. There were 10 prestigious Americans who served on the Iraq Study Group--if all of us were to put in a hat the names of Americans who might be good members of such a commission to help us unravel this problem, the 10 who were picked would come out of that hat pretty fast, in pretty good order, with a lot of Members on both sides of the aisle suggesting them. For example, Larry Eagleburger, the former Secretary of State for the first President Bush; Vernon Jordan, the former president of the National Urban League and a very close associate of former President Clinton; Ed Meese, President Reagan's Attorney General; Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who was the first woman to be appointed to the United States Supreme Court by President Reagan; Leon Panetta, who was President Clinton's Chief of Staff and who now in California has his own institute, the Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy in Monterey, CA; Chuck Robb, our former colleague, married to Lynda Bird Johnson. We have been thinking about that family these past 2 weeks with Lady Bird's death; Chuck Robb, a former marine, former Senator, a member of that panel; Allen Simpson, who had the No. 2 position right over here, a whip in the Senate from Wyoming; and, at one point, Robert Gates, the current Secretary of Defense, was a member of this panel before he had to step aside when he went to the administration. So those 10 people--five Democrats, five Republicans. It would be hard to improve on that. Then, let's say you said to this group of 10: This is an especially difficult problem. The Senate is fractured, the President is insisting on his prerogative, and the country is divided and tired, and we need a solution. So what we need for you to do, commissioners, is not come back with a majority vote, not come back with a filibuster, not come back with an all-night political stunt, but come back with a unanimous set of recommendations of where we go from here in Iraq, you five Democrats, you five Republicans with years of experience. That is precisely what they did in December of last year, after 9 or 10 meetings all over America, and meetings in Iraq, with a distinguished staff that consisted of an honor roll list of generals and experts. They visited with former President Clinton, former Vice President Mondale, former Secretary of State Albright, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Warren Christopher, they visited with Colin Powell and George Shultz, Tony Lake, General Scowcroft, to ask about everybody whose judgment one would hope they would ask, and they came up with 79 recommendations in December, and they released it to the public. They unanimously agreed in 9 months about what to do in Iraq. They also did not pull any punches. They said in December, even though this was chaired by Jim Baker and Lee Hamilton, they said: The situation in Iraq is ``grave and deteriorating.'' They said there is no magic bullet. But they did unanimously agree, unlike the Levin-Reed amendment, that we did not need a fixed deadline. They unanimously agreed that troop deployments should be subject to conditions on the ground. So what did they recommend? Well, in a few minutes I cannot summarize 79 recommendations, but I can boil it down to three points. First, we should move our troops from a combat mission to a support, equipping, and training mission as soon as we honorably can. They said, as a goal, that should happen in about a year, which then would have been the first quarter of 2008. Now, some time has gone past since then. But they said in about a year. The practical effect of that would have been to remove about half our combat forces--to reduce the number of American forces in Iraq by about half. And, rather than subject that goal of reducing troops to a fixed deadline, as the Levin-Reed amendment says, they said it should be subject to developments on the ground, which is practical in a time of war, and respects the Commander in Chief's constitutional prerogative. They said, No. 2: We should have a long-term interest in Iraq. It should be a limited interest, but there should be sufficient troops to help make certain that in that new mission we deal with that interest. They listed some of the things the troops would be expected to do who stayed: guard the Embassy, search and rescue, intelligence, special forces to go after al-Qaida--the point being, even though our troops have a different mission, out of a combat role into a support, equipping, and training mission, there would be enough of them there to send a message to the Middle East and the rest of the world: Stay out of Iraq. Give Iraq a chance to succeed, while also protecting U.S. forces that remained there. That was the second point. The third point was step up. Step up the political and diplomatic efforts in the region by a significant amount, including talking with everybody in the region, to try to bring a result in Iraq. So those are the three points. One, move out of the combat mission to the support, equipping, and training mission over about a year, without a deadline; two, a long-term but limited interest in Iraq, with some specifics; and, three, step up political and diplomatic efforts. Plus, the Iraq Study Group emphasized that we would still have a considerable presence in the region in Qatar and Kuwait and in Bahrain. So that is what the Iraq Study Group said. What happened with the Iraq Study Group report? Well, I was very disappointed by the reaction to the report, especially when I saw that the recommendations were unanimous. When I first saw who were the distinguished members of that panel, I was convinced that at the State of the Union Address, President Bush would seat them in the gallery, and at the appropriate time, as Presidents often do, he would say: There they are, from the Reagan administration, from the Clinton administration, from my father's administration, and they have unanimously agreed on where we go from here in Iraq. And it is not exactly my proposal, it is their proposal, but because it is important to our troops and to our country and to the world that we move forward in a unified way, I accept their recommendations. I will develop a plan based upon their report. I ask you and the Congress to accept it. I think there is a good chance that the Congress would accept such a plan, and an important part of that reason is because even the President needed someone else to help him develop support for whatever proposal he came up with. So that would be the first thing I think we would do if we were trying to solve this problem: go ask 10 of the most distinguished Americans of both parties to tell us what to do in specific recommendations, and do it unanimously. Now, what is the second thing we would do? Well, I think we would come to this body and say: Every time we turn around there is a political stunt going on. Someone has had an early morning meeting and decided we are going to do this to the Republicans, and then some Republicans get excited, and they have an early morning meeting and say: We are going to do this to the Democrats. And you do not have the kind of discussion that these 10 Americans had or the kind we have in our bipartisan breakfasts. But the second thing that needs to be done to move us in a consensus on where we go from here in Iraq would be to find some Senator in this body who would say: We are going to accept this Iraq Study Group report, and we are going to ask that the President agree to it and develop a plan based upon it and report to us on it in 90 days. That is precisely what Senator Salazar did with his legislation. After saying in January that I was disappointed the President did not adopt the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, I made a speech on the floor in March. I find that sometimes you have to say things more than once in order to have anybody pay attention. I said: Why didn't the President, in March, take the Iraq Study Group down off the shelf and use it for something other than a book end? And then I made another speech to that effect, and Senator Pryor of Arkansas came by to see me and said: We need to do something about this. We need to find a way to work together rather than to continue to have Democratic and Republican votes on Iraq. Then Senator Salazar called me and said: I have been working with Secretary Baker, and with Lee Hamilton and their staffs. I put together legislation that accurately reflects the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. And it simply adopts those recommendations as our law. If the President agrees to it, he is asked to develop a comprehensive plan based on those recommendations. Since that time, there are now 14 of us in the Senate on both sides of the aisle who are cosponsors of that idea. Senator Salazar is the leader. He has done a terrific job on that. He is a Democrat from Colorado. In addition to my cosponsorship, we have been joined by Mark Pryor, a Democrat from Arkansas; Bob Bennett, a Republican from Utah; Robert Casey, a Democrat from Pennsylvania; Judd Gregg, a Republican from New Hampshire; Blanche Lincoln, a Democrat from Arkansas; John Sununu, a Republican from New Hampshire; Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine; Pete Domenici, a Republican from New Mexico; Bill Nelson, a Democrat from Florida; Mary Landrieu, a Democrat from Louisiana; Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri; and Kent Conrad, a Democrat from North Dakota. My guess is that if the Democratic Senate leadership would back off a little bit, if the President would be more flexible, there are probably 60 votes coming from both sides of the aisle for the Baker-Hamilton report, and if that should be adopted by the Congress, we can move forward, which brings me to my final point. What would be the third step in having a bipartisan consensus for our country that would say to our troops and the world: We agree on why you are there, and we support that mission? It would be for the President to embrace the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. The President of the United States does not want to do that. I respect that. He has an absolute constitutional right to say: Our Framers created the Executive, I am the Commander in Chief, we cannot have 100 generals, I will develop the plan, and I will command the troops. That is my job. He is right about that, except he has another part to his job. George Reedy, who was the Press Secretary to former President Lyndon Johnson, wrote a book called, ``Twilight of the Presidency.'' In it he defined the President of the United States. He said, No. 1, his job is to see an urgent need; No. 2, to develop a strategy to meet the need; and No. 3 is to persuade at least half of the people that he is right. I do not believe that President Bush, even if he is right in September, is likely to be able to persuade enough people to support his strategy to be able to sustain the strategy. Let me say that again. Even if he is right in September, even if he takes many parts of the Baker-Hamilton group and announces it as his strategy, at this stage in our history, I do not believe he can persuade enough Americans to support his strategy to sustain the strategy. I believe this strategy should be sustained. So how does he do that? The way he does that is to embrace those who wrote this and those who support this so that it is not just his strategy, so that it is our strategy, so that he can say to the troops in the Middle East, and to the rest of the Middle East, and to the world: The Congress and I have come together around a set of principles. I am developing a plan on those principles. And not everyone agrees, but a consensus of us agree, which is why I would say to the Democratic leader, with respect, I do not mind requiring 60 votes on the Iraq issues. We need a consensus. We do not want to have an Iraq policy that passes by 51 to 49. We need a consensus. I believe we can have it. There are some who say adopting the Iraq Study Group principles, the Salazar-Alexander legislation, is toothless. I respectfully disagree. My grandfather was a railroad engineer, a Santa Fe railroad engineer. He lived in Newton, KS, and his job was to drive the big locomotives onto the roundtable it was called. And that was how you turned a locomotive around. A locomotive might be about as hard to turn around as a country in the middle of a war. But that is what my grandfather did. He turned that locomotive around. And it was turned around. They put it on a different track and off it went in a different direction. If we and the President were to agree on the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, it would be just like my grandfather putting that big locomotive on the roundtable in Newton, KS. It would be turned around and sent down a different track. And, for now, at least, those on the other side would pick another engineer. But the engineer cannot do much about that track once he is on it. It would be headed down the track, the world would know it, and in good faith we could work together. When I was an impatient young man working in the White House 40 years ago, a wise man named Bruce Harlow said to me: Lamar, just remember that here--he meant the White House--just a little tilt makes big waves out there. If this Congress and this President adopted together the Iraq Study Group recommendations this week, that would make big waves out there, and that would be a new consensus for our country. Some said: Well, the Iraq Study Group is a little stale. It is out of date. It was done in December. Lee Hamilton, the Democratic cochairman said: No. He said: We said in December the situation was grave and deteriorating. It still is. We said in December we need to move from a combat mission to support, equipping, and training. We still do. This week he said: In addition, we need to have a long-term limited role in Iraq. And we still do. And finally he said: We need to step up our diplomatic and political efforts in Iraq, and we still do. To the President, I would say with the greatest respect, because he is a member of my own party, and I have talked with him about this before, I would say: Mr. President, I do respect your prerogative. I know you can draw the plan up. I know you want to sit down first with General Petraeus, whom we all respect and whom I especially do, as a friend, because he spent so much time in Tennessee. But the Salazar- Alexander legislation has no chance of taking effect until September. And all it asks you to do is to draw up a comprehensive plan based upon the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. The first person you sit down with can be General Petraeus. And I would ask the President whether it be better for him to ignore the Iraq Study Group and come up with his own plan, or would it be better for him to come to the Congress and say: Congress, I will adopt these. Why don't you adopt these and let's send our troops a message that we are united in what they are fighting for? So there are 14 of us, 8 Democrats, 6 Republicans at this point, who support and cosponsor the Iraq Study Group. But I believe there are many more of us who could be comfortable with it, who could vote for it, even if it is not our first choice. So I regret this all-night political stunt, but I respect this body. I see it every week in those bipartisan breakfasts, talking like the people of this country wish we always would when confronted by a major issue. I salute Senators Salazar and Pryor and those on that side, and Senator Gregg, Senator Bennett, Senator Collins, and those on this side who are working together to fix that. I hope more of our colleagues will join us soon. The President and the Congress could agree on the Baker-Hamilton recommendations, and we would say to our troops: We not only will fund you, but we can now also say to you and to the Middle East that we agree on your mission, on why you are fighting, and why you are being wounded, and why you are dying. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator from Virginia for coming back to the floor from another engagement and offering his comments on our proposal. He has made an extraordinary effort to do that at a late hour in the evening. I am grateful to him for that. I hope he will not mind my saying that I have seen him agonize over this war. We have talked about it privately, going many months back before many Senators did, about how do we reconcile our national interests with the lives of young men and women from Virginia and Tennessee, which we have to think about every day. He was one of the first to raise questions about our strategy. Because he did and because of his background as Navy Secretary and his service in World War II and in the Korean War and his senior position on Armed Services, everyone paid attention when John Warner spoke. We have paid attention to his advice every step of the way. What I would like to say, very briefly, in response to my friend from Virginia, is this: I would hope that over the next few days as we consider this, that he will think a little differently about his own contribution to the shift in direction our country needs. His first contribution, in addition to his statement, is the Iraq Study Group report. He was a little too modest about it. He had a major role in getting it started. If he had not, we would not have the kind of membership on the Iraq Study Group that we had with Secretary Baker and the leaders of so many different administrations. Their recommendations need not be put on the bookshelf as a bookend, they need to be used. Having said that, I can understand how he and the President and others might be concerned that if one were to read our proposal too prescriptively, they would say: Well, how can we pick up 79 recommendations and say, Mr. President, do all of those things. The way I read our amendment, we do not do that. The way I read our amendment we say very simply that the President and the Congress agree the way forward in Iraq is to implement this comprehensive set of recommendations, and the President himself should formulate a comprehensive plan to do so. In another part of the amendment, when we get to the part about when the troops come home or when the troops' mission moves from a combat mission to a support and equipping mission, that is all subject to unexpected developments in the security situation on the ground. So I would say with respect to my colleague from Virginia, that another way--and perhaps I am reading it wrong, but the way I read it, another way to read this is to say: Let's take the wisdom of this group of 10 people, one of them who has ended up as Secretary of Defense in this administration, and say: That gives us a framework. We can adopt that together. And then, Mr. President, you take these recommendations and you draw up a plan. This is not going to be a plan that the Senator from Colorado and I drew up. The President is the only one authorized to draw it up. As it affects troops, it is subject to security developments on the ground; there is no fixed deadline of any kind here. I assume that what the President would do, if he were to receive this as a law, which might be September by the time it got all the way through the conferences, the first person he would sit down with is General Petraeus and say: Tell me again about the surge. How are things on the ground? What is your recommendation? The second thing he might do is sit down with General Jones and say: Tell me, General, what have you found out about the position of the Iraqi forces? Then I think he would call in the Joint Chiefs and the intelligence folks and say: I have to develop a plan. Give me your advice about what works and what does not work. Then he would present us the plan within 90 days. But it is not subject to our approval. It is his plan. Now, we can then do what we can do with our constitutional duties about it. But the one thing I am afraid we will miss if we do not move to adopt the recommendations now of the Iraq Study Group is the bipartisan support that was in that group that the Senator from Virginia helped to create and the bipartisan support that is on this floor for those recommendations. The President doesn't have that now. Without that, he cannot sustain a long-term mission in Iraq of any kind, I am afraid. I think we have to have one of some kind over a long time. So I think this goes about as far as it can within this group to say to the President: Okay. We can agree with you. But now you draw up the plan according to these structures. I greatly respect the Senator from Virginia. I will continue to listen to him. I am deeply grateful to him for coming back to the floor tonight. I thank him for his direction in helping to make possible the Iraq Study Group plan, General Jones' study. I know we will have many more discussions. But the one thing I do not want the President to lose is the opportunity to borrow for our long-term strategy the bipartisan support in this document and the bipartisan support on this floor. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the Presiding Officer, Mr. Salazar, the Senator from Colorado, for his impressive leadership in helping our Senate and our Congress and our President and our country find a consensus about where we go from here in Iraq. That is, as he said, truly our most urgent and difficult issue. It is on the minds of every single Senator every day. It is the first thing on my mind. It deserves to be. Adding up the lives, the dollars--$10 billion a month, 3,600 lives, and many wounded--it is a difficult situation. Mr. President, the occupant of the chair has said this himself. It struck me that we should spend less time in what we think of as the world's greatest deliberative body lecturing Baghdad about coming up with a political consensus and more time working together ourselves to come up with a political consensus about what to do in Iraq. After all, they are an infant democracy and we are the oldest democracy; we ought to be able to do more than make speeches and have partisan votes. Of course, we respect each other's positions, but at some point, there is consensus about where we go from here. We owe it to our troops fighting there, when they look at Washington, not to see us shouting at one another but saying, yes, we can agree on why you are there, where we are going to be in a while, what our goals are, and say to the rest of the Middle East that we know what we are doing in Iraq, give them a chance to flourish and say we in the U.S. have free debate, but we are capable of coming to a conclusion, especially on our most urgent issue. That is why this report is so important. When I saw this report in December, what attracted me about it was, first, the members of this group--Larry Eagleburger, Secretary of State for Bush 1; Vernon Jordan, National Urban League, a close friend of President Clinton's; Ed Meese, President Reagan's Attorney General; Justice Sandra Day O'Connor; Leon Panetta, President Clinton's Chief of Staff; William Perry, Secretary of Defense for Clinton; Chuck Robb, former U.S. Senator; Alan Simpson, the former Republican whip; and, at one point, Roberts Gates, who is now the Secretary of Defense in this administration. They unanimously agreed, after 9 months, about what to do in Iraq. In 9 months, they unanimously agreed. I thought that perhaps President Bush, in January, in the State of the Union Address, would invite them to sit in the gallery, as Presidents often do, and point to them and say: There they are, nine of our most distinguished Americans who have been working for 9 months trying to understand where to go on our most difficult issue. They say there is no magic formula. They say it is grave and deteriorating. They say the consequences of the cost, but they have a recommendation and it is a sensible recommendation, and the President might have said it is not my recommendation, it is theirs, but I accept their recommendation and I invite you to do the same. I think the President would have received a good deal of bipartisan support in this body had he done that. The President and our country need that. A President's job is to see an urgent need, to develop a strategy to meet it, and to persuade at least half the people he is right. Even if President Bush is right about the current strategy, he hasn't persuaded a broad enough number of Americans that he is right or a broad enough number in this body that he is right in order to sustain his policy in Iraq. A part of Presidential leadership is recognizing that adjustments have to be made to take into account the views of others and then, having done that, to go forward. That is Presidential leadership. It is not Presidential weakness. It is what I wish President Bush had done in January, and I said so then, and I said so in March on the floor of the Senate. I have learned sometimes you have to say things two or three times around here before anybody hears. Senator Salazar heard it. We talked about it and the outgrowth is this legislation that Senator Salazar worked so well on to develop, and so expertly, which Secretary Baker and Congressman Hamilton have told me accurately represents the recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton group. Exactly what does Baker-Hamilton do? One, it establishes a long-term presence for the United States in Iraq but a limited one. Two, it says as soon as security conditions on the ground permit--and it estimates that would be a year--we would move our combat forces out of the combat business and into the support, training, and equipment business in Iraq. And third, it steps up regional and diplomatic efforts to cause others in the region to help Iraq succeed. That is it. Those three things. There are 79 recommendations in this book. I am not sure all of us would agree with all of them. But that is not the point. There is a new direction for the United States in Iraq in this book, and if we were to adopt it and the President were to agree with it, what our legislation says is the President should formulate a comprehensive plan to implement the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. That in plain English to me means the President would take all these recommendations, call together his advisers, come up with a plan, and do his best to implement it. Would he be able to implement every provision? I doubt it. Would he say this was recommended in December and I didn't get the law until September, so I am going to adjust some timetables? I would expect so. Would he have some improvements to make and some suggestions to make? I would guess he would. But he would come up with a comprehensive plan, and then he would proceed with it. Then, of course, we would have our constitutional duty to review it. We don't have to approve it under our recommendation, we just review it and we appropriate money and we have other things we could do. But what we could say to our troops, the world, and the country is that we have found a common way forward in Iraq. We know what we are doing, and we are doing it together. And that is the job of our Government. The Senator from Colorado dealt with a couple of objections that have been made. Let me deal with three or four very quickly. We will have other time to do that. I see the Senator from Arkansas is here. I am looking forward to what he has to say. One objection that was made was this may be dated. It was December. One Senator said this was a snapshot taken some time ago and times have changed. I don't see this as a snapshot. I see the war in Iraq as more like a movie. You go into it after 15 minutes or you go into it 30 minutes after it started and it is the same movie. You see the same characters. It is the same story. A few adjustments might have to be made, but it is the same story. And as Lee Hamilton said, the recommendations are as relevant today as they were in December. And I would say that February would have been a better time than March to adopt the recommendations. April would have been better than March. Today is better than last month, and last month would be better than today. The sooner they are adopted, the better. A second point. One Senator said this doesn't have many teeth in it. I used to work in the White House for a wise man named Bryce Harlow 40 years ago. I was an impatient young man. I said: Mr. Harlow, we need to do more of this or more of that. I forget the issue. He said: Lamar, in the White House, just a little tilt here makes a great big difference out there. That was a very wise statement. If the President of the United States and the Congress of this country were to agree this month on a new course in Iraq that defined a limited long-term role, shifted the mission from combat to training, support, and equipment over a period of months, subject to unexpected developments on the ground, and stepped up our diplomatic and political efforts, that is a major shift in strategy. Next, I have heard from the other side that it has too many teeth, too prescriptive on the President. That is not the way I read it. Sometimes that comes from this side. The White House has some worries about that as well. But that is not the way I read our amendment. It is the sense of the Congress that the President and the Congress should agree that the way forward in Iraq is to implement this and the President should formulate a comprehensive plan to do so. I assume the way the President does that is he gets the law in September, and he sits down with his advisers. I suppose the first person he would sit down with is General Petraeus whose advice we are all looking forward to. He would ask his advice about the surge, ask the Joint Chiefs what they think, ask a lot of people, and then within a few weeks, send us his plan. That is what we ask him to do. It is not so prescriptive either about the changes in troops on the ground because it says in another section, section 1552, that while we intend to move our troops out of the combat business into support, equipping, and training business--and the goal is within about a year to do that--that it is subject to unexpected developments on the ground. Here is what the report itself actually said: By the first quarter of 2008, subject to unexpected developments in the security situation on the ground, all combat brigades not necessary for force protection could be out of Iraq. At that time, U.S. combat forces in Iraq could be deployed only in units embedded with Iraqi forces, in rapid-reaction and special operations teams, and in training, equipping, advising, force protection, and search and rescue. Intelligence and support efforts would continue. Even after the United States has moved all combat brigades out of Iraq, we would maintain a considerable military presence in the region, with our still significant force in Iraq and with our powerful air, ground, and naval deployments in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar. In other words, when we move out of the combat business into these other areas, we still have troops there, we still are able to go after al-Qaida, we still can protect the troops who are there, and we are sending a message to the rest of the Middle East: Stay out, give Iraq a chance to flourish. The other thing I have heard, and I say this in conclusion--I thank you, Mr. President, for your time--is that all people hear in the debate in the Senate is discord. I hear another message. It is not as loud as the discord, it is not as loud as the partisan votes, but I hear a lot of consensus. It may surprise some people to hear me say that. I hear a lot of consensus and the seeds of that consensus are in the Iraq Study Group report. For example, the administration has already begun to act on some of the recommendations in the Iraq Study Group report by increasing the number of troops embedded in Iraqi forces, using milestones to chart progress, by meeting with Iraq's neighbors, including Iran and Syria. The President's National Security Adviser has pointed to the Iraq Study Group report as valuable. The President himself has spoken well of it. Across the aisle on the Democratic side, where there is a great desire by many Members for a fixed timetable, which is not a part of the Iraq Study Group, the Democratic proposals still have been guided by this document. For example, working on milestones for improvement in Iraq, limiting the role of the United States to one of training and equipping and counterterrorism operations and stating as a goal the drawdown of combat forces by a year from now. That is all part of over there. I hear more consensus than I do discord. I guess my message to my colleagues is much the same as the Senator from Colorado said. We have a responsibility to vote and state our convictions, but we also have a job to do, and our job to do is to look for a way to come to some consensus about where we are going from here in Iraq and agree on it so when our troops look back, they know we support them, we really support them because we know what they are doing. And when the Middle East looks it up, they know to stay out. And when the rest of the world looks at this great deliberative body, they know occasionally on the foremost issue facing our time, we can come to a conclusion, we can join hands with the President, even though we may debate with him and say, OK, Mr. President, let's have a new strategy, one on which we agree, we together, and that we need to do. We have an opportunity that is very rare, and it is impressive to have seven Democratic Senators and six Republican Senators on this subject at this time supporting a comprehensive recommendation. One of our former colleagues, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, wrote a book about Boss Plunkitt of Tammany Hall. Since I said some respectful advice to my colleagues about what I thought our job was, I say to the President respectfully: Mr. President, one of Boss Plunkitt's favorite maxims was: When you seize your opportunities, you take them. This is an opportunity for the President to develop bipartisan support for a way forward in Iraq that has a long-term presence there, but limited, with a different mission for our combat troops and enhanced political and regional support. I respectfully suggest that January would have been the best time to seize this opportunity, but today is a much better time than September. I thank the Chair and I congratulate him for his leadership. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I would like to say a word about Lady Bird Johnson. We have had many graceful First Ladies in the United States, but Lady Bird Johnson can truly be said to have been the First Lady of America the Beautiful. Her husband used to joke that he would hear rustling in the hall at the White House. It would be, as he would say, Lady Bird and Lawrence Rockefeller meeting to work on conservation projects. Her legacy was the Highway Beautification Act of 1965. She understood that we have a great many important issues in our country but that one of our great characteristics is the beauty of our country. Italy has its art, Egypt has its pyramids, and we have the great American outdoors. Lady Bird Johnson knew that for everybody--not just the wealthy with big homes and big lawns--the beauty of our country was something to preserve. She did that, and she changed our entire national attitude about its importance. She brought out the best in us in terms of appreciating the beauty of America. I visited the Wild Flower Garden in Austin, TX, before. I have seen the blue bonnets there in the spring, and I have seen how she influenced the flowers to grow in the rights-of-way on Texas highways. They even adopted the motto in Texas ``Don't mess with Texas.'' I am sure that is a legacy of Lady Bird Johnson as well. But not only did flowers begin to grow along the rights-of-way in Texas, they did in Tennessee and in a lot of other places--in States such as Colorado. Lady Bird Johnson has made her mark in our country. Our family had the privilege of knowing the Johnsons and especially Linda and Luci--Linda married to Chuck Robb, a former Senator. We were good friends. We spent many times together at Governors' conferences, and our children know one another. We express to Linda and Luci and that family our sympathies. We know they have great pride in their mother as well as their father. But we think of their mother tonight as we think of her as the First Lady of America the Beautiful and remember her contributions.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I congratulate the 2006 winners of the Alfred P. Sloan Award for Business Excellence in Workplace Flexibility, which recognizes companies that have successfully used flexibility to meet both business and employee goals. As I did last year, I wish to draw attention to the Sloan Awards because I think these companies are to be commended for their excellence in providing workplace flexibility practices which benefit both employees and employers. Achieving greater flexibility in the workplace--to maximize productivity while attracting the highest quality employees--is one of the key challenges facing American companies in the 21st century. For 2006, businesses in the following 17 cities were eligible for recognition: Boise, ID; Chandler, AZ; Chattanooga, TN; Chicago, IL; Greater Dallas/Fort Worth, TX; Dayton, OH; Detroit, MI; Durham, NC; Long Beach, CA; Long Island, NY; New Orleans, LA; Providence, RI; Richmond, VA; Salt Lake City, UT; Seattle, WA; Tampa, FL; and Washington, DC. The Chamber of Commerce in each city hosted an interactive business forum to share research on workplace flexibility as an important component of workplace effectiveness. In these same communities, businesses applied for, and winners were selected for, the Sloan Awards through a process that included employees' views as well as employer practices. In Boise, ID, the winners were American Geotechnics, American Red Cross of Greater Idaho, Chatterbox, DJM Sales & Marketing Inc, Healthwise, Hewlett-Packard Company, Idaho Shakespeare Festival, the Ashley Inn, and the Cat Doctor. In Chandler, AZ, the winners were Arizona Spine and Joint Hospital, Chandler Chamber of Commerce, Civil Search International LLC, Clifton Gunderson LLP, Hacienda Builders, Henry & Home LLP, Intel Corporation, Jewish News of Greater Phoenix, Martinez & Shanken PLLC, RIESTER, State Mortgage, and Technology Providers Inc. In Chattanooga, TN, the winners were Center for Community Career Education at the University of Tennessee: Chattanooga, Chattanooga's Kids on the Block, First Tennessee Bank, G.R. Rush & Company P.C., Jewish Community Federation of Greater Chattanooga, and Tricycle Inc. In Chicago, IL, the winners are Association Forum of Chicagoland, Ernst & Young, KPMG LLP, and Maxil Technology Solutions Inc. In Greater Dallas/Fort Worth, TX, the winners are Brinker International, Community Council of Greater Dallas, Fleishman-Hillard Dallas, Kaye/Bassman International, Lee Hecht Harrison, McQueary Henry Bowles Troy LLP, the Beck Group, and the Salvation Army Greater Dallas Metroplex Command. In Detroit, MI, the winners are Albert Kahn Associates Inc., Amerisure Insurance Company, Brogan & Partners Convergence Marketing, Detroit Parent Network, Detroit Regional Chamber, Farbman Group, Menlo Innovations LLC, Rossetti, and Visteon Corporation. In Durham, NC, the winners are Community Partners, Inc., Dow Reichhold Specialty Latex, Durham's Partnership for Children, Nortel, Shodor Education Foundation Inc., and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at Research Triangle Park. In Long Beach, CA, the winners are Boys & Girls Clubs of Long Beach, Klaris Thomson & Schroeder Inc., Long Beach Chamber of Commerce, Office Furniture Group, Inc., and PeacePartners Inc. In Long Island, NY, the winner is Atlantic HVACR Sales, Inc. In Providence, RI, the winners are Clarendon Group Inc., Embolden Design Inc., Lefkowitz Garfinkel Champi & DeRienzo P.C., and Rhode Island Housing. In Richmond, VA, the winners are Bon Secours Richmond Health System, Capital One Financial, and Lee Hecht Harrison. In Salt Lake City, UT, the winners are Carter & Burgess Inc., Cooper Roberts Simonsen Associates, Creative Expresssions, Jones Waldo Holbrook & McDonough P.C., McKinnon-Mulherin Inc., Stayner Bates & Jensen P.C., and Utah Food Services. In Seattle, WA, the winners were ColorsNW Magazine, DHI Technologies Inc., Macy's Northwest, National Court Appointed Special Advocate, CASA, Association, NRG::Seattle, Personnel Management Systems, Inc., Puget Sound Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology, U.S. Government Accountability Office, and WithinReach. In Tampa, FL, the winners were Kingery & Crouse, and Retail Merchandising Xpress. In Washington, DC, the winners were Bailey Law Group P.C., Capital One Financial, Discovery Communications Inc., and KPMG LLP. The Sloan Awards are presented by the When Work Works initiative, which is a project of the Families and Work Institute in partnership with the Institutefor a Competitive Workforce, an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Twiga Foundation. The When Work Works initiative is sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Building on the success of the first 2 years, the next phase of the When Work Works initiative will extend the number of participating communities to 24 in 2007 to include Aurora, CO; Brockton, MA; Cincinnati, OH; Houston, TX; Morris County, NJ; Melbourne-Palm Bay, FL; Savannah, GA; and Winona, MN. Again, I congratulate the 2006 winners of the Sloan Awards, and I look forward to the continuing expansion of this exciting initiative.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Wyoming. I have enjoyed the remarks, as always, by the Senator from Pennsylvania. It is not a bad idea to consider labor-management relations in a bipartisan way. A good place to start doing that is in the Senate committees, where this discussion belongs, rather than bringing directly to the floor the question of whether we should just one day decide to get rid of the secret ballot in elections. The Senator from Pennsylvania has done a beautiful job of looking at history. Let me point to some history as well. May 13, 1861, was the day set aside in North Carolina for the election of delegates to the State Convention on Secession from the Union. This is a book by William Trotter about bushwhackers. Part of the United States in which I grew up and my family has come from is where counties and families were divided during the Civil War. On that day, May 13, 1861, according to Mr. Trotter's book, there was to be a vote about secession, and one of the most visible people in the square on that misty spring day was the sheriff, who was an ardent spokesman for secession. He had been elected, according to the author, and supported by the wealthier farmers and merchants, nearly all of whom favored the idea of secession. The sheriff had gotten a little whiskey and was boisterous and encouraged by his supporters. He went around town making it clear the prevailing sentiment in the county was for secession. He was in an exuberant mood because he knew, at the end of day, secession would be ratified. So exuberant was he, that he shot one of the Unionists, and that person's father then shot the sheriff. That day is called ``Bloody Madison'' in western North Carolina. But the point is that when the secret ballots were counted, despite the sheriff and the wealthy farmers and merchants, there were only 28 votes for secessionist delegates, and 144 voted to stay with the United States of America. The secret ballot they exercised that day was for a reason. It made a difference. In a little more personal way, a few months ago, we had a contest here among friends for our No. 2 position on the Republican side of the aisle. I sought it. So did my friend of 40 years, Trent Lott, the Senator from Mississippi. Going into the election, I had 27 votes. When the votes were counted, I had 24. The secret ballot we employ in our Senate caucus we employ for a reason. It makes a difference. The unions, in the 1930s, when they were gaining a foothold and being established, insisted on a secret ballot. They still have a secret ballot when the vote is to decertify a union. In our democracy, the right to vote is prized. We keep candidates away from polling places. We don't want people looking over your shoulder while you vote. We help you, if you can't read the ballot. We got rid of the poll tax to give you access to the ballot. The Voting Rights Act has become the single greatest symbol of the civil rights movement in the 1960's. The right to vote is the essence of our democracy. This proposed legislation is brazen kowtowing to union bosses. This bill creates the possibility that large union recruiters might come stand around you at the work site and encourage you to sign a card. They might visit your home. They might make phone calls. They might be like the sheriff in Madison County, elected by the powerful and very persuasive, going around with his pistol or his gun or his influence, or looking over your shoulder while you voted. Fortunately, instead of that scenario, we have a secret ballot, and we ought to keep it. What is next if we get rid of the secret ballot for union elections? Will we get rid of the secret ballot for union leaders, for Senators, for Governors, for managers of the pension funds? Even most union members want to keep the secret ballot. According to a Zogby poll in 2004, 71 percent said that the secret ballot process is fair, and 78 percent said they favored keeping the current system in place. So whether it is voting day in Madison County at the beginning of the civil war, whether it is the Senate caucus on the Republican or Democratic side, or whether it is a union election to organize or to decertify, the right to vote is precious in America. Not having someone looking over your shoulder while you vote makes that precious right even more precious. There is a reason we have a secret ballot. It makes a difference. I intend to vote no on cloture. I urge my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator from New Mexico for the courtesy of the next 10 minutes, and I would ask the Chair to let me know when 1 minute remains. Mr. President, I compliment both Senators from New Mexico for their work on energy. As they did 2 years ago, they have made some important proposals. The 2005 bill was a terrific step forward, and there are some important suggestions in this bill. I want to especially say a few words about the tax part of the bill that came out today, and I will have more to say about that tomorrow and amendments to offer. It is probably not the first time it has been said of the Senate that there is too much wind here, but I would like to suggest there is too much of that in the tax bill that has been reported to the Senate. Here is the tax bill. As I read the figures: $28.5 billion more over the next 10 years, $10 billion of it for wind. Almost all of it is for subsidies to wind developers. 34 percent of the bill's total goes toward this tax credit. This isn't the first time the Senate has been generous to wind. In the 2005 bill it was 19 percent. Why would I say that is a little too much wind? It is because in many parts of the country the wind doesn't blow sufficiently for us to rely on it for electricity. We have had some debate about Senator Bingaman's proposal, which might work very well in New Mexico or some other States to say that 15 percent of the electricity ought to be from renewable energy, mostly wind under this definition. This map of the United States shows that much of the wind in the Southeast and Eastern United States doesn't blow enough for that to happen there. So under that proposal, the one we were debating earlier, called the renewable portfolio standard, I am afraid Tennesseans would have to pay basically a tax of 2 cents per kilowatt-hour, which would be $410 million a year. We have one wind farm in the entire Southeast, and it is in Tennessee on Buffalo Mountain. Last August, while we were all sweating and perspiring with our fans on the front porch, the wind farm operated for 7 percent of the time. Most of us want our air conditioners when it's hot--not just when the wind blows enough to make electricity. We are not the only ones who are beginning to see the limits of wind. Yesterday, the President of Pacific Gas and Electric in California, which likes wind power and is using wind power, said, according to California Energy Markets, that they will not make substantial new investments in wind generation, and ``we think we are approaching in California itself the limit on wind.'' So why then if we are going to spend $28 billion for energy sufficiency--that would mean reliable, clean electricity for the country in the world that uses 25 percent of all the energy in the world--why then would we develop a national wind turbine policy instead of a national energy policy? Isn't $10 billion more--which would make our total investment over the next 10 years more than $2 billion a year for wind turbines--isn't that too much wind? I am not even talking so much about the fact of what these look like. I think I have said many times on this floor that in Tennessee I don't like the fact that these only work, when they work, on our most scenic ridgetops. We would prefer not to have them. That is not the case with everybody, I understand that. But it is important for people to know these aren't your grandmother's windmills. These are twice as tall as the sky boxes at the football stadium, and the rotor blades go from the 10-yard line to the 10-yard line. So there are limits as to where they should go. Across the country, even when performing well, they only work a third of the time. They often blow at the wrong time--at night, when people are asleep and not using so much electricity. And you can't store the wind. Basically, a utility makes a big investment, paying somebody $20 million--in the TVA Buffalo Mountain case $60 million for 20 years--to buy wind, whenever it comes, and if it comes at night when the lights are off, tough, they just lose it. If it comes 7 percent of the time in August, when everybody's air conditioners are up, it doesn't help very much. Of course, even if you had it, you still need nuclear or coal or something else because most people want their computers and their electricity on when they want them on. As I mentioned, it is very difficult to store. It only uses about 1 percent of our current electricity needs. It does little to clean the air because we already have caps on sulfur and nitrogen, which I would like to accelerate, and it means lots of new power lines. So we have a 400-percent increase in wind capacity that would produce no change in emissions of nitrogen, no change in sulfur, and very little in carbon. My point is, I believe there are better ways to spend that $10 billion of the $28 billion we propose to spend over the next 10 years, better ways to spend one-third of all this money than on a national wind policy, since it doesn't work very well, it is not very reliable, and much of the country can't use it at all. For example, take fluorescent lighting. I know Senators Bingaman and Domenici have talked about this, but if we spent $2 billion a year just in tax credits for fluorescent lighting, we could save enough energy to equal eight 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactors, or 18,000 1.8-megawatt wind turbines. Let's take another idea. What if we took the $2 billion a year and gave a credit for appliances, such as dishwashers, washing machines, and refrigerators. There is such a credit in the tax bill, and that is good. It costs about $100 million a year to encourage that. Why don't we extend that to 10 years? That would be $1 billion of the $10 billion we are spending on wind. It would save more electricity than we would get building wind. We talk about not just carbon but clean air. I know Vermont wants clean air. We want clean air in the mountains in Tennessee. For $2 billion a year we could buy six new scrubbers a year at $300 million a scrubber. A scrubber takes the sulfur out of the air that contributes to the unhealthy aspects and to the soot and to the smog that is unhealthy for people and interferes with our view of the mountains. Or take utility bills. The average utility bill for Tennesseans is $100 a month. This is $2 billion a year. We could just give the money to Tennesseans, 1.7 million households, for a full year. One month's electric bill for 20 million households, that is what we could do for $2 billion. If we were a little more creative, we might go to the metering that some utilities are now putting in homes and say: If your electric bill is $100, and you reduce your use of electricity by $20, we will match it by $20 and we will collect all that information in the utility. And as a result, you will get a $60 bill instead of a $100 bill each month--instead of investing in more wind. Or you could use that money for clean coal power plants. The 2005 bill that Senator Bingaman and Senator Domenici worked on had a number of initiatives for nuclear, clean coal, IGCC, and a number of things that are underfunded. We don't have enough money for them. Well, if we don't have the money for those things--which we decided by consensus in 2005 was the best way to create clean reliable electricity for a country that uses 25 percent of all the energy in the world--if we didn't have the money in 2005, why don't we take this $28 billion over the next 10 years, or at least some of this $10 billion for wind, and put it in clean coal or these other areas?

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I wanted the Senate to know that of the $28 billion, one-third of it goes to wind turbines. We have a national wind policy instead of a national energy policy. We will be spending $2 billion a year on wind subsidies. And there are many other wind subsidies in the Federal Government. You get bonds to build them, you get accelerated depreciation, and then there are the State subsidies. So I am suggesting there is too much wind, and a wiser use of at least half that $10 billion would be for conservation, efficiency, scrubbers, and other forms of energy that are reflected in the 2005 Energy bill. I thank the Chair and the Senator from New Mexico for the time.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, if the Senator will yield.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, if I can say to the Senator through the Chair, the Senator still would like to have a chance to talk with Senator Domenici. In the meantime, both Senators Warner and DeMint have brief statements they would like to make. We are working quickly on Senator Salazar's amendment.

Mr. ALEXANDER. The Senator has a worthy amendment of which I am proud to be a cosponsor. At the moment we are checking with Senator Domenici, so if at this point the Senator wishes to speak to his amendment and give us a few minutes, we would appreciate that.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I think now would be a good time for a former Governor to enter the discussion with my two distinguished colleagues. I think the biggest compliment I have been paid in the short time I have been a Senator was by some Washington insider who said, ``Well, the problem with Lamar is he hasn't gotten over being Governor yet.'' I have said to my constituents in Tennessee, ``If I ever do, it is time to bring me home.'' As I listened to the discussion between the Senator from New Mexico and the Senator from Idaho, I was greatly encouraged by the discussion of the Senator from Idaho until the very last part. I think there should be an opt-out. Why should there not be? What wisdom is there here in Washington, DC that is not there in state and local government? When I was in Tennessee, I thought I was at least as smart as the Congress of the United States. I woke up every day trying to do what was best for my State. I fought for better schools, clean water, clean air, raising family incomes, paying teachers more. If I had to wait on Washington to do it, we would never have done it. I knew of a lot of people who flew to Washington and suddenly got smart, but I didn't think they were smarter than we were. On issues of clean air, we Tennesseans, for example, feel like we care about it a lot. I live right next to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I grew up there. Five generations of my family are buried there. We have a great big clean-air problem. I might say, both Senators from New Mexico are two of the very finest in our body in terms of their ability, intelligence, dedication, and purposes. I happen to have a little disagreement on this issue with Senator Bingaman from New Mexico, but let me go back to my point. Growing up and living at the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park makes me very aware of clean air and the need for it, which is why, 2 or 3 years ago, with Senator Carper, I began to work in the Congress for stronger standards so we could do more in Tennessee. That is why, as Governor of Tennessee, I pushed ahead for more and why, as a citizen of Tennessee, I went to the Tennessee Valley Authority and encouraged them to adopt standards that would get more of the sulfur out of the air and more of the nitrogen out of the air. That is why I have encouraged the Governor of Tennessee to go further than the Federal Government is in getting mercury out of power plant emissions into the air, 90 percent instead of 70 percent. That is why I have been meeting with mayors and local county officials in Tennessee to clean the air. We care about it in Tennessee. It is not necessarily true that it takes wisdom from Washington to cause us to want to have clean air or carbon-free air. Witness the fact that we are already on the honor roll of states leading the way in emissions-free electricity generation. I see the Senator from Vermont, right in front of me, presiding. He should be very proud of Vermont as his state is No. 1 in the country in terms of carbon-free emissions. Vermont generates its electricity from forms that are free of carbon emissions. I assume that among Senator Bingaman's goals in the energy legislation before us is to encourage carbon-free emissions so that we can deal with climate change. I happen to be one of those who believe climate change is a problem and that human beings are a big part of the problem. I am ready to help deal with the problem. But I think that we already are helping in Tennessee--that is my point. In this case, we need Washington to recognize what States are doing to solve this problem and not assume that a one-size-fits-all idea which might be good for New Mexico, or which might be good for North Dakota, also is good for Tennessee. Tennessee is 16th in terms of carbon-free emissions. In other words, we produce about 40 percent of our electricity today from nuclear power and from hydroelectric power. All forms of power have their issues. Hydroelectric power means you dam up rivers. Some people don't like that. I have some problems with that, too, sometimes. With nuclear power, we have to get rid of the waste, and we have not solved that problem yet. But the one problem we have solved with hydro and nuclear is that they are clean in terms of emission--no carbon, no mercury, no sulfur, no nitrogen. That is 40 percent of the power in the Tennessee Valley Authority region, and in the State of Tennessee. I might say: I have a great idea. I am now in Washington. I am not Governor anymore. I want to require everybody in America to have a 40- percent emissions-free energy standard, and the way they should do it is to have 33 percent nuclear power and 7 percent hydropower because that is my idea. That is the way we do it. So, North Dakota, have at it, start building nuclear plants, start damming up whatever river you have left. I have an idea. That is the way you should it. I wouldn't say that because I believe in federalism. I believe that a lot of the best ideas come up from States toward the Federal Government. I have noticed how, over time, California has led the country in terms of clean air and clean water. I know Senator Bingaman's bill would permit us to go further in some ways, but it does not in other ways. What happens with the amendment from the Senator from New Mexico is this: Even though we are on the honor roll in Tennessee, and getting better--I mean, not only did the TVA just reopen the Unit 1 reactor at the Brown's Ferry Nuclear Plant, it is operating today at 100 percent capacity. I will say a little more in a minute, if my colleagues will tolerate it. The one wind farm we have in the whole Southeastern United States, the Buffalo Mountain Project in Tennessee, operated 7 percent of the time in August when we are all sitting on our porches, sweating and fanning ourselves and wanting our air-conditioners on, so wind energy doesn't help us in our part of the country. So we are at 40 percent emissions-free electricity generation. So how about a 40-percent portfolio standard for the whole country, with 33 percent nuclear power and 7 percent hydropower? That probably wouldn't be fair to North Dakota. It might not be fair to some other States that have, as the brown color indicates on this chart here, a good bit of wind. They can use wind. They like wind. They don't mind having great big 300-, 400-, 500-foot white towers with flashing red lights you can see for 20 miles. If they want to see them, I guess that is their business. If they want them and it makes sense out there, fine. That is their State. But no more would I impose our formula for being clean on them than should they impose their formula for being clean on us. That is the problem with the Bingaman amendment, I respectfully suggest. Here we are on the honor roll for being clean. We are getting better. TVA is thinking we might open a second nuclear reactor, maybe a third nuclear reactor. Maybe within 10 years--which in energy-producing time is a short period of time--we would be up to 40 percent of nuclear power, 7 or 8 percent of hydropower, and we might be in favor of making everybody do a 47-percent renewable portfolio standard based on our formula. We hope by that time that biomass, which is permitted under the amendment from Senator Bingaman, as I understand it, will increase in Tennessee. We have a great capacity, we believe, for biomass, especially as fuel for cars. The President of the University of Tennessee was here this morning-- Dr. Peterson--talking with me about a demonstration project they have, about ethanol plants that are planned there. We are right in the center of the nation's population. We have a lot of land. We have a good agricultural base. Switchgrass could replace the tobacco income we used to have in Tennessee. We used to have 60,000 to 80,000 farms with a little independent income up in the mountains like you have in the great northern kingdom of Vermont. That would be great for us, so we hope biomass really works. We like solar. I am the sponsor of the solar tax credit that passed Congress 2 years ago. It is not enough, but I sponsored it. I got an award from the solar industry for being for that renewable power. I also worked with the Farm Bureau on renewable power called biomass. We have the largest production plant for solar technology in America in Memphis in the Sharp plant, producing the solar panels you put on your roof. We hope all this works. We even hope there might be maybe a solar thermal steam plant someday. It is not there today. TVA needs 31,000 or 32,000 megawatts of power every year to provide us with clean, reliable, inexpensive electricity, and the potential for solar with the present technology, the TVA says, is less than a Megawatt. The solar industry would say it is more. What if it is five times more? What if it is 10 megawatts, or 20 megawatts? There is not sufficient potential in the next 10 years for solar and wind in the southeast--which I will show in a moment we have virtually none of--to meet this idea. So, what do we get to do? We get to pay a big tax, a great big tax. What good does the tax do us? It comes out of our pockets. We send it to Washington, and we never see it again. How much is it? It is $410 million a year, according to the Tennessee Valley Authority's scientists, to meet Senator Bingaman's 15 percent renewable portfolio standard. That is real money. By the end of the ramp-up time in the Bingaman amendment, which is the year 2020, it would cost, according to the Tennessee Valley Authority, which supplies Tennessee with electricity, it would cost the ratepayers $410 million to do what, to pay a tax to Washington, DC. It wouldn't clean our air. We are already on the honor roll for emission-free electricity production. It would just increase our cost. In fact, that money might come from money we might otherwise spend to clean our air. But here is what we could do with $410 million. We could give away 205 million $2 light bulbs and have the energy savings equivalent to two nuclear power reactors, or it would be the equivalent of 3,700 great big wind turbines that would stretch along all the scenic ridge lines in east Tennessee, and nobody would come to east Tennessee to visit, to see our mountains. Most people who live there would go hide under a rug so we wouldn't have to see these white towers with flashing red lights that you can see from 10 or 12 miles away instead of the mountains. We could pay the electric bill for every Tennessean for a month and a half each year with $410 million or we could purchase a new scrubber. We have some coal-fired powerplants. About 60 percent of our electricity comes from coal. TVA has done a fairly good job of cleaning up the air with that, but they have a long way to go. Sulfur scrubbers are the main thing they need. They are very expensive, and we could put a new one on every 9 months with $410 million cost per year. That is what we could better do with $410 million rather than send it up here to Washington, DC. Here is a letter I got today from the mayor of Chattanooga, TN, Harold DePriest--not the mayor, president and chief executive officer of the power company in Chattanooga. I probably should let Senator Corker read this letter since he used to be the mayor in Chattanooga. But he says: The Bingaman amendment, if enacted into law, would have an enormous adverse economic impact on our community. It would result in a two-cent per kilowatt-hour tax on all electric kilowatt hours that are used in the Chattanooga EPB service area. We have projected the cost burden that will be imposed upon those in our service area during the years 2010 through 2020. It appears the local government, local schools, the universities, businesses and all citizens (including those in fixed incomes and having a difficult financial time as it is) will have to pay the additional sum of more than $133,000,000 . . . over 10 years for their electrical service. Those are the workers, and those are the businesses. When businesses come to Tennessee--when Nissan comes or Saturn comes, when Eastman thinks about staying--what is one of the things they want to know? Can we get reliable, low-cost electric power? Today, we can say yes. Every time we add an unnecessary charge on that rate, we drive jobs out of Tennessee and we cause people who cannot afford their bills to pay them. I believe Senator Bingaman would say, and I will let him say it on his own behalf, as we develop more renewable power or other forms of power--I am a big subscriber to this--we bring down the price of natural gas. I helped introduce a bill called the Natural Gas Price Reduction Act, and I worked with Senators Bingaman and Domenici to try to stimulate growth in other forms of power to bring down the price of natural gas. So he is absolutely right. If we create new forms of energy, we will have less reliance on natural gas, and we want less reliance on natural gas. We don't want to be using natural gas to make electricity. As we say often: It is like burning the antiques to make a fire. So he is right about that. Why shouldn't we say but one other form is nuclear power. It is clean, it is reliable, and it is another form to consider. And the more we have it, the less natural gas we have to use. I also have a letter from Huntsville. This is in Alabama. I would not want you to think I was only arguing on behalf of one State. Huntsville, Alabama. ``Dear Senator Shelby,'' in this case. The letter goes on to talk about the severe penalties and the extra costs and the objection they have to this new tax. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at this point the two letters.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I see some other Senators on the floor. I see Senator Domenici, Senator DeMint, and there are other Senators here. But I want to wind up my comments in this way with a couple of pictures to summarize the point. It is a laudable goal to move us as rapidly as we can to renewable energy. But we should allow the States to move in ways that fit those States. So I think there should be an opt-out for States. I think Tennessee should be able to say: We have a 40-percent clean power standard, but it is nuclear and hydro. We are working hard on biomass. As soon as we get that going, we will have 50 percent. But we do not have sufficient wind resources not located in our scenic mountains. In addition, wind is enormously subsidized. We will be getting more to that this year. Let's put up this chart. TVA looked all around for a place to locate the first and only utility scale wind energy project in the southeast. First they looked down on Lookout Mountain. The people there spent 30 years restoring the natural beauty to this historic location. They did not want to see a 400-foot tower they could see from the whole area up there. So they finally put it on Buffalo Mountain, which is also a beautiful place. Here is what it looks like. They had hoped the wind would blow so that it would produce 35 to 38 percent of the turbines rated capacity. It operates 19 to 24 percent of the time; 7 percent in August. What most people miss with wind power is you use it or lose it. So if the wind is not blowing, your air conditioner is off. Even though you have these large wind towers all up and down every ridge top in Tennessee, even if you had them, you would still need a dependable powerplant. Wind turbines do not replace your base load. Here is what it looks like in West Virginia, which is north of us. It is a different point, but this makes strip mining look like a decorative art. I mean this ruins, in my view, the tops of mountains. Why would we insist on that with Federal requirements to have a State that is already on the honor roll for clean power? There are other ways to do this rather than raise our rates, raise our taxes, drive jobs away, or ruin our landscape. I appreciate the chance to talk about this. Wind already is highly subsidized too. The best facts I have suggest we will be spending $11.5 billion between 2007 and 2016, already obligated in taxpayers' money, to build these big wind turbines in Tennessee, which in Tennessee operate 7 percent of the time in August. They do not produce much power either. There are proposals on the Senate floor to extend the federal subsidies for wind power. So back to this wind project, TVA pays 6.5 cents for every kilowatt- hour produced by this wind project. The taxpayers pay them another 2.9 cents, in effect, for the production tax credit; that is 9.4 cents for each one here, and this would have the whole Southeast running around looking for wind developers to buy further credits from. We should all retire from the Senate and go in the business, it looks like, if that is what we want to do. But here is my main point, let's respect Federalism, let's honor those States that are on the honor roll. Let's honor Senator Bingaman for wanting to encourage renewable energy. But Senator Domenici, I would respectfully say, has a better idea. He would allow new nuclear power, for example, to be a part of the mix. My final comment would be this: As climate change has become more of a concern, and people say we are going to have to deal with it in this generation, we have looked for ways to create large amounts of clean energy. There are only two or three ways to do that. The first is conservation and efficiency. We have barely scratched the surface. But the second is nuclear power. Seventy percent of our carbon-free electricity in America today is nuclear power. So why would we exclude that from any standard that allegedly wants us to have carbon-free energy? It does not make much sense to me. I respectfully oppose the suggestion of the Senator from New Mexico, Mr. Bingaman. I honor his service here. I honor his motives here. But I think he has a solution looking for a problem. The problem is, we do not have any wind in our part of the State, and a wind portfolio standard simply does not work. It puts a big tax on us we do not need to pay, do not want to pay, does not do us any good. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, with the cost of health care continually increasing for employers, individuals, and the Government combined with the growing number of uninsured Americans it is clear that our health care system is in dire need of change. My goal is to help every American have access to affordable health insurance and to continue the State Children's Health Insurance Program, SCHIP. In an op-ed in The Hill on June 6, 2007, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Mike Leavitt, suggested a very good proposal for increasing access to health insurance. His proposal calls for reauthorization of SCHIP and keeping the program's focus on kids, providing the same tax advantage to all Americans through a standard deduction for health insurance, and encouraging State innovation through grants to help low income individuals afford private health insurance. I support Secretary Leavitt's ideas. However, health care reform is too big of an issue for one party to tackle on its own. Our only chance of achieving true, meaningful reform is if both parties work together. This involves reaching across the aisle and getting Democrats to say two words ``private markets'' and Republicans to say to two words ``universal access.'' Two of my colleagues have put forward two different but thoughtful pieces of legislation addressing the uninsured Senator Wyden's Healthy Americans Act, S. 334, and Senator Coburn's Universal Health Care Choice and Access Act, S. 1019. But I am doing something that I rarely do cosponsoring both of them to encourage my goal of affordable health insurance for every American while continuing the SCHIP program helping children. I have cosponsored these bills in the spirit of reform, but that does not mean I support every provision in both pieces of legislation. In fact, there are some provisions that I oppose. Though not perfect, these bills are an important first step toward achieving access to health services for all Americans.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Finally, I would like to reiterate what we could better do with the money. I see the Senator from North Dakota here. I mentioned a little earlier that he has said North Dakota is the Saudi Arabia of wind, and I admire North Dakota for that, I admire him for his outspoken advocacy of that, and I hope all the giant wind machines go to North Dakota. That is where I would like them to be, just not in Tennessee--not just because of how they look but because in our neck of the woods they do not work. They raise our taxes, or they raise our rates, or they destroy our mountains, or they run away jobs from industries and tourists who do not want to be part of that. I would rather see us look for better ways to spend those dollars. As I suggested earlier, we could take the same amount of money we would be taxed, if we choose not to build these, by providing 205 million $2 light bulbs, which would be the equivalent energy savings of almost 2 nuclear reactors, or it would be the equivalent of 3,700 of these wind turbines, which would run along the ridge tops from Bristo to Chattanooga, or it would pay the monthly electric bill for Tennessee's 2.5 million TVA residential customers, every Tennessee residential customer, for a month and a half, or it would put a new scrubber on TVA's coal-fired powerplants every 9 month period. I am afraid this is an idea looking for a problem to solve. It may solve it in North Dakota, it might solve it in New Mexico and perhaps it does in Colorado, but it does not in Tennessee. It raises our taxes, raises our rates, ruins our mountains, and it sends jobs away, runs them away. I hope, in a spirit of bipartisanship, perhaps the Senator from New Mexico, one of our most thoughtful Senators, the leader of this debate, will decide there are other things we can focus on rather than a one- size-fits-all mandate which may work in some States but does not in my State. I yield the floor. Exhibit 1 Southeastern Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, Little Rock, AR, May 31, 2007. Dear Senators Bingaman and Domenici, and Congressmen Dingell and Barton: The undersigned state utility commissioners are writing to express our concerns about the nationwide, mandatory federal renewable portfolio standard (RPS) being discussed/introduced by Senator Bingaman. As state regulators, we are responsible for ensuring that retail electricity consumers receive affordable, reliable electric service. We are concerned that a uniform, federal RPS mandate fails to recognize adequately that there are significant differences among the states in terms of available and cost- effective renewable energy resources and that having such a standard in energy legislation will ultimately increase consumers' electricity bills. The reality is that not all states are fortunate enough to have abundant traditional renewable energy resources, such as wind, or have them located close enough to the load to render them cost-effective. This is especially true in the Southeast and large parts of the Midwest. Even in regions of the country that do have access to wind energy, there is frequently stiff local opposition to building huge wind turbines, significant costs for the additional transmission needed, and reliability concerns. As a result, some wind renewable energy projects do not get built, while others take years to build. The availability of other renewable energy resources, such as geothermal, is even more limited. Because of the limited availability and cost-effectiveness of traditional renewable energy resources, we are deeply concerned that our utilities will be forced to buy renewable energy credits from the federal government or from renewable energy generators in other regions of the country. Correspondingly, our retail electricity consumers will end up paying higher electricity prices, with nothing to show for it. Renewable energy resources may be able to make a significant contribution to energy production in those regions of the country that have abundant renewable resources. In fact, over 20 states and the District of Columbia have already seen fit to approve their own RPS programs based on the resources available to them. Moreover, those states have included a wider array of energy resources in their definitions of eligible renewable resources than the proposed federal RPS mandate, Some states consider power produced from municipal solid waste, small hydroelectric facilities or coal waste to be renewable energy. Other states count expenditures on demand-side management or alternative compliance payments toward meeting the state RPS requirements. None of these alternative renewable energy resources, however, would receive credit under the Senate version of a federal RPS program. While state public service commissions and energy service providers should certainly consider available and cost- effective renewable energy resource options as they make long-term decisions for incremental energy needs, the imposition of a strict federal RPS mandate, as contrasted with a state-driven cost-effectiveness determination, will only result in higher electricity prices for our consumers. Because the availability and cost-effectiveness of traditional renewable energy resources varies so widely among states and regions, we believe that decisions regarding renewable energy portfolios should be left to the states. If, however, the Congress desires to address renewable energy objectives in the upcoming Energy Bill, we urge you to expressly allow each individual state to determine the extent to which renewable energy can be reliably and cost effectively utilized within that state. Sincerely, (Signed by Members of the Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee commissioners.)

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Colorado for his courtesy in arranging for me to speak next. The Senator from Colorado and I and the Senator from New Mexico, Mr. Bingaman, who is here, the chairman of the Energy Committee, Senator Domenici, the ranking member, and Senator Lieberman, who has already spoken, were at breakfast this morning at our usual Tuesday morning bipartisan breakfast. And Senator Bingaman expressed the hope, as I am sure he will on the Senate floor when he speaks, that we can make the kind of progress this year that we made 2 years ago on the Energy bill. And I hope so too. He talked about how difficult it was and how impressive it was for four committees, plus the Finance Committee, all to make a contribution and how we might be able to make progress with alternative fuels, with energy efficiency. The more we learn about energy efficiency, such as with appliances and lighting, and the more we can do in accelerating research on how to recapture carbon, the better off we will be. Earlier this morning, Senator Lieberman of Connecticut said in that spirit of bipartisanship that he hoped one amendment would not be added to this bill, and that would be an amendment calling for the drilling for oil in the Alaska wildlife area. That is a controversial piece of legislation. I want to make a similar suggestion in the spirit of bipartisanship. I note my friend from New Mexico is on the Senate floor, and I hope the Senate would not agree to and maybe we would not even have to debate, the amendment that Senator Bingaman offered before in the last Congress and which he plans to offer again which would require a 15-percent so- called renewable portfolio standard in every State. I wish to spend a few minutes this morning talking about why I believe it is important that we not adopt that amendment. I am reminded of a story about a Tennessee mountaineer who was convicted of murder, and the judge sentenced him and told him his choice was to be hanged or be shot. The defendant thought a minute and said: May I ask a question, judge? The judge said: Of course. My question is, Do I have another choice? Mr. President, we Tennesseans feel the same way about Senator Bingaman's proposed renewable portfolio standard which would require us to make 15 percent of our electricity from renewable fuels, mostly wind power. That would raise our taxes, it would raise our electric rates, it would run away jobs, and it would ruin our mountaintops. That is not the kind of choice we like to have. Forcing Tennesseans to build 40-story wind turbines on our pristine mountaintops or pay billions of dollars in penalty taxes to the Federal Government amounts to a judge giving a defendant the choice of being hanged or shot. In Tennessee, the wind simply doesn't blow enough to produce much electric power. Residential homeowners cannot afford these new taxes, industries will take their jobs to States with cheaper power, and tourists will spend their dollars where they can see the mountaintops instead of giant wind turbines. There is, in this case, a better choice, fortunately, and that choice is for clean, reasonably priced energy in the Tennessee Valley from conservation and efficiency, from nuclear reactors--a new one of which just opened within the last few weeks in our region by TVA--and by clean coal. Because of its nuclear and hydro plants, Tennessee is already on the honor roll, ranking 16th among States in production of carbon-free electricity. But we are one of 27 States that would not meet the standards under Senator Bingaman's amendment, which he expects to offer during this debate. This is real money. The Tennessee Valley Authority suggests that by the last year that this new standard is in effect, it would cost Tennesseans at least 410 million new dollars a year. What could we do with that kind of money? If the goal were clean air, we could give away 205 million in $2 fluorescent lightbulbs per year, producing energy savings equal to the combined output of almost two of the three units of TVA's Browns Ferry nuclear plant. In other words, the $410 million could buy enough fluorescent lightbulbs to equal two nuclear reactors. Or the $410 million would be the equivalent of 3,700 megawatt wind turbines that would span a 550-mile ridge line, more than twice the distance from Bristol in the northeast part of Tennessee to Chattanooga, which is about the only place in Tennessee that wind power could actually go, along those ridgetops. Or with $410 million, we could pay the $100 per month electric bill for Tennessee's 2.5 million residential TVA customers for 1\1/2\ months each year. Or if the goal is simply clean air, it would be better, I respectfully submit, to spend the $410 million purchasing one new scrubber each 9 months to clean emissions from TVA's coal-fired powerplants. I strongly back renewable power wherever it makes sense. In our State, I have worked hard to expand solar energy. The solar energy industry gave me an award last year for that work. I was the principal sponsor of the tax credit for homeowners to put solar panels on their homes. I have worked with the Tennessee Farm Bureau to encourage the use of biomass as a renewable energy. But this--and I will try to be a little bit more specific in the next 10 or 12 minutes--this proposal amounts to a wind portfolio standard which simply does not fit the Tennessee Valley nor, I submit, any other part of our region. It simply does not work in the Southeast. Why is there a wind portfolio standard? There are other forms of renewable energy, of course, but they don't all fit in the definition, nor do all types of clean, carbon-free energy fit within the definition. Seventy percent of our carbon-free electricity in America comes from nuclear power. About 33 percent of TVA's power is carbon- free nuclear power. That doesn't count within the Bingaman definition. Neither does the existing 7 percent of clean, completely clean power that comes from hydro, from dams. That makes about 40 percent of TVA's electricity carbon, sulfur, mercury, and nitrogen free, ranking it 16th among all the States in terms of producing carbon-free energy. As I said, Tennessee is on the honor roll. Yet we Tennesseans would still be subjected either to these taxes or putting these wind turbines along our scenic mountains, which I will discuss. According to the Energy Information Agency assessment of the Bingaman proposal, 4 years ago, wind and, to a lesser extent, biomass are projected to be the most important renewable resources stimulated by the renewable portfolio standard. There is some other evidence that biomass will be stimulated, but I think it is a fair comment to say that this is mostly a wind portfolio standard. And my argument is, that may be fine in North Dakota--which the Senator from North Dakota says is the Saudi Arabia of wind--maybe it works there, and maybe North Dakotans want to see the wind turbines there, but it doesn't work in Tennessee and in most of the Southeast because the wind simply doesn't blow enough to produce much electricity. The National Academy of Sciences says 93 percent of potential wind energy capacity occurs west of the Mississippi River. We can see on this chart that in this white area, that is where there is the least amount of wind. There may be plenty of it somewhere else but not in Tennessee and not in the South. There is only one wind farm in this entire southeastern part of the United States. That is a TVA wind farm on Buffalo Mountain, which I will show in just a moment. TVA had hoped that the wind on Buffalo Mountain would blow to produce electricity about 35 to 38 percent of the time. They have been disappointed that it only blows about 19 to 24 percent of the time. And in August, when we are sitting on the porches sweating, perspiring, and wanting our fans on and air-conditioning on, the winds on the only wind farm in the southeast--Buffalo Mountain--blew just 7 percent of the time. That is not an estimate. That is an actual count from TVA and the wind farm. So the only places in the southeast region, if we can go to the next chart, that have wind resources are the ridges and the crests. Maybe unlike Iowa and North Dakota where they can have large wind farms, maybe even in Colorado they can have large wind farms, but in Tennessee, the only places that wind possibly works are on the ridges and the crests. In addition to being the places with the most wind, the ridges and the crests are also in the most visited national park in the United States, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Those are the highest mountains in the Eastern United States. They run up through Pennsylvania as well. They are the Great Smoky Mountains and the mountains around them. They are the reason most of us live in those areas. It is quite a sight to see when you put wind turbines on top of those mountains. It is a sight that I would rather not see. Here is West Virginia, which is north of the southeastern part of the United States. Basically it cuts off the whole tops of those mountains. In my opinion, it makes strip mining look like a decorative art. These are 400- or 300-feet turbines. These are not your grandmother's windmills. They are white and large and have flashing red lights on top of them. You can see them for 10, 12, 14 miles away. Then, since they are on remote ridgetops, they have to dig large power lines down through whomever's backyard to get there. It is quite a dislocation in the scenery. So one would think there would have to be a big payoff before we would take some of the most beautiful parts of the United States and basically ruin the mountaintops. Here is what it looks like in Tennessee. You can get a little sense of how big these turbines are. In Tennessee, we like football and we can put things in perspective, sometimes putting things in football terms. Each of these wind turbines is twice as tall as the skyboxes at Neyland Stadium, which is the second largest football stadium in the United States. Penn State has one, I guess, about the same size. These rotor blades, which go round and round, stretch from the 10-yard line to the 10-yard line. I can see these turbines from the Pellissippi Parkway in Tennessee from about 14 miles away. This is at about 3,500 feet. These are some of our most beautiful vistas in Tennessee. The problem is, even here, which ought to be a prime spot--this is the reason TVA put the turbines here--it didn't work very well. It was a disappointment. As I mentioned, in August, the wind turbines only operated 7 percent of the time. Wind tends to be strongest during the winter months and at dawn and dusk, but demand for electricity is highest during the summer and during the day. Basically, when we need the wind, it doesn't blow. And a point that many people often miss is that you can't store it. Unlike more conventional forms of power, you use it or you lose it. So it is of minimal help. Also, it is more expensive. I have a chart showing the expense. Let's take nuclear power which produces 70 percent of the carbon-free electricity in the United States today, and wind, which is also carbon free. Actually, both are completely free of carbon, sulfur, mercury, and nitrogen, which are the problems for clean air in the Tennessee region. Let's compare a 1,000-watt nuclear plant reactor and a 1,000- megawatt capacity wind farm. The 1,000-megawatts is about the size of a new nuclear reactor. The new Browns Ferry plant in Tennessee that opened the other day is 1,280 megawatts. This column is the number of hours per year for both nuclear and wind. And this second column is the capacity factor. In plain English, this is how much they operate. For TVA, its nuclear powerplants, which produce about one-third of our electricity and most of our carbon-free electricity, the nuclear powerplants operate 92 percent of the time. The wind turbines operate, at best, 24 percent of the time in the Southeast, in the area we know about. Remember, there is only one wind farm in the Southeast. We have it, and that is what it does. The cost of electricity is up to twice as much for wind over nuclear. That is what people in the utility industry call the all-in cost--that is, including the cost of building the facility and the cost of operating the facility. So the brief analysis is that wind is more expensive, on a per unit energy generated basis, and produces much less energy than nuclear power, for example. In addition to that, if we build the wind turbines, we still have to build and operate the nuclear powerplant because, as we pointed out, the wind turbines only operate about 22 percent of the time. My hope would be that we would not have a one-size-fits-all national mandate on States that are seeking to create clean energy. Tennessee wants to do its part. As I said, nuclear power creates 70 percent of the carbon-free energy in the United States. It produces 33 percent of the carbon-free energy in the Tennessee Valley through TVA, and TVA just opened a new reactor and they are planning more. Why would we impose on a State which is already leading the country in terms of helping to produce clean energy, carbon-free energy--why would we impose a mandate on that State that would raise its rates or impose new taxes and drive away jobs from industries that cannot afford to pay the higher rates and at the same time put on our mountain tops, from Bristol to Chattanooga, these huge wind machines that destroy the view? We have 10 million people every year who come to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, nearly three times as many as come to Yellowstone. They come to see the mountains; they don't come to see the wind turbines. I guarantee, if we continue to provide incentives and mandates to put up these 300-, 400-, 500-foot-tall wind turbines with red flashing lights, that is all the visitors will see when they come to Tennessee. They will not be able to see anything else. I am eager to work with Senators Bingaman and Domenici on the Energy bill. I had the pleasure, the last 4 years, of serving with them on that committee. I admire the way they work together. They made a point 2 years ago of saying that when we go too far in either direction, we will pull back a little bit so we can make sure we have a good, strong bill. I believe the bill in 2005 was underestimated. I believe the bill produced in 2005, produced by Senators Domenici and Bingaman and the Senate working with the House, literally set America on a different course in terms of producing large amounts of reliable, affordable, clean energy. It helped us do that in a way that would keep the costs of natural gas down, which was very important to us at that time and still is today. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter from the Southeastern Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners expressing the same views I have just expressed, that such a mandate would cause us to end up paying higher electric prices with nothing to show for it. I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record following my remarks.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I appreciate the tremendous effort that has been made on both sides of the aisle to try to address the immigration dilemma facing our country. In my view, other than the war in Iraq, the war on terror, there is nothing more important before us, and we should leave the bill on this floor for as long as it takes to get it right because as difficult as it is to get it right, it seems to me that failure is not an option. If we fail, then what we have done is admitted that we have just simply allowed a situation to continue where perhaps a million new illegal persons will come into our country each year. That contravenes the rule of law upon which this country is founded, it works against our ability to be a country that lives by the motto that is engraved up there on the wall, ``one from many,'' to assimilate into our country the number of people who are coming, and it is a poor example for the rest of the world when we suggest to them that they create governments that rely upon the rule of law. It also absolutely enrages the American citizens, who look at Washington and say that the Government has done a horrible job for the last 10, 15, 20 years in enforcing our immigration laws. Americans have, in many cases, lost faith that we even have the ability to fix the mess. I used to feel that way myself before I came here. I haven't been here that long--just 4 years. Twelve years ago, I was a candidate for President of the United States. I was in those debates which we watched on television last night, or those kinds of debates. One of my proposals was that we should create a new branch of the military in order to secure the border. In 1994, 1995, and 1996, Americans were upset about our inability to distinguish between legal immigration, which is the lifeblood of our country, and illegal immigration, which is an affront to the rule of law and the principles of what it means to be an American. So this has been going on year after year after year. When I was home last week in Tennessee, I spent a lot of time listening and talking to Tennesseans. In fact, I just left a group of homebuilders from Tennessee in my office who were talking to me about the immigration bill and about some concerns they have. But of all the concerns that came through to me last week in my conversations with Tennesseans, it boils down to this: We don't really trust you guys in Washington, DC, to fix this problem. You don't seem to be willing to do it. So I have a suggestion today that I will make, an amendment that I intend to offer. I won't call it up at this moment, but I want my colleagues to know about it and the country to know about it because I think if this bill were to become law, it would increase the level of trust the American people would have in the ability of this Government to enforce whatever law we pass. I am not suggesting it would solve everything or that we would regain trust overnight, but I am suggesting it would be a step forward. I will describe the legislation in just a moment, but it boils down to this: We would involve the Governors of the border States between the United States and Mexico in determining whether the new border control system we put in place is actually operational. Right now, particularly amendment offered by my distinguished colleague from New Hampshire (Senator Gregg) the other day, the proposed bill has been strengthened in the following way: He said that his amendment would require the Department of Homeland Security to certify that it has established and demonstrated operational control over the entire U.S.-Mexico land border before other parts of the bill involving legal status could go into effect. We call this the trigger. Senator Isakson from Georgia suggested this last year. It is a wise idea. It says, first we secure the border, and then, when it is secure, we do the other things about legalization of people already here, to the extent we decide to do that. But the question still remains: Who is going to say when the border is secure? The people out across the country--at least those in Tennessee--don't trust us, don't trust the Government in Washington, because of this poor record of 20 years. It doesn't matter that I just got here 4 years ago. They look up here and see the Government and they say: You didn't do it last year, you didn't do it 3 years ago, you didn't do it 10 years ago or 15 years ago, so how do we know you are ever going to do it, even if you pass the law? Well, the three things I can think of that would make a difference are, No. 1, to pass a bill with teeth in it. For example, the Gregg amendment says there will be 20,000 Border Patrol agents. That is more than we currently have. Today, there are 13,000. There will be four unmanned aerial vehicles. There will be 300 miles of vehicle barriers. Currently, there are about 78. There will have to be at least 370 miles of fencing already built. Now, there are 700 already authorized by the Secure Fence Act of 2006, and that hasn't changed, but 370 miles would have to be built. There would have to be 70 ground-based radar and camera towers on the southwest border. There would have to be a permanent end to catch and release. There would have to be an employment verification system that requires employers to electronically verify new hires within 18 months and all existing employees within 3 years. All of those things would have to be in place. The words are they would have to be ``established and demonstrated, that the Federal Government had operational control over the entire U.S.-Mexico land border.'' The amendment that is already part of the bill, the Gregg amendment, said the Director of Homeland Security would certify that. What I add with my amendment is it has to be concurred in, agreed with, signed off on by three of the four Governors on the United States-Mexico border. In other words, we pass the law with teeth--the teeth of the Gregg amendment and maybe more. I have suggested, and others seem to have agreed, what we ought to do is then fund the law. Either the President challenges us to pass an appropriations bill within 30 days after we pass the law, we do it ourselves, or we set up a trust fund--the way we do for highways and the way we do for Social Security, the way we do for anything else--and we say that money goes to secure the border, to fund these things. We pass a law with teeth. Then we provide the money. Then the Director of Homeland Security says the border is secure. That is the trigger. My amendment would say: The Governors of the border States, three out of four, have to agree. The Governors of the border States are not in Washington, DC. They have not been infected with whatever is up here. They have not even been vaccinated. I have been up here long enough to be vaccinated with whatever disease is up here, and for that reason more Tennesseans trust the Governors than they do the Washington officials to solve this problem. If the Governors of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas say yes, the border is secure, we agree with the certification of the Department of Homeland Security, I think that would be good enough for most Americans. That is the point of my amendment. We need to put together a good bill that secures the border first. After border security, the other biggest problem is what to do about those already here illegally. I think that issue is less of an issue if most Americans believe we would pass a law that permitted the Border Patrol agents and the verification system to be done, that we would fund it and we would actually do it as certified by the Director of Homeland Security and the Governors on the border. Then I think they would be willing to accept different solutions for those already here. But the week before last I voted for the amendment offered by Senator Vitter that would have sent the bill's drafters back to the drawing board on the question of what to do about the 12 million illegal persons, more or less, who are already here. Senator Hutchison and Senator Corker have done some very important work on this issue, which I intend to support and to cosponsor. That amendment would require illegal immigrants, who want to work here, to return to their home countries and reenter through legal channels in addition to paying a fine and passing the criminal background check. In addition to that, this bill should be about another subject about which we hear almost nothing, and that is the number of people who come here legally every year. A little more than a million people come into the United States each year legally. Today, if I remember the figures right, most are family members. Some come here as students. Some come here as researchers, to create jobs for us. Some come here as refugees. For those Americans who come here legally and who are prospective citizens, especially given the large number of people coming from overseas, we need to do everything we can to help those persons become Americans. I have filed several amendments. They seek to promote learning English, our common language, and what it means to become an American through an understanding of history and civics. For example, one of these amendments will help these legal immigrants learn English and what it means to be an American, to codify the oath of allegiance, and to make English our national language. Another amendment would ask the Government Accountability Office to provide a comprehensive report on the costs imposed on the public and private sector by having millions of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents who are not proficient in English. So far in this debate the Senate has already passed my amendment to establish a Presidential award to recognize companies who have taken extraordinary efforts to help their employees learn English and American history and civics. Some may say that is not so important, we all agree with that. It is awfully important. If you take a look at Europe today and you see the difficulty France has helping immigrants become French, and that Germany has helping immigrant workers become German, and that Japan has--because no one has an idea of what it might mean to become Japanese if you are not born Japanese--you can see how fortunate we are in this country to have literally invented the concept of becoming American. We say it does not matter what your race is, it doesn't matter who your grandfather is, you come here, you take the oath George Washington gave his officers at Valley Forge and you say: I am not whatever I was. I pledge allegiance to America. I learned the language, I learned the history, and we have a few principles we agree on, and I am an American. I am proud of where I came from, but I am prouder to be an American. Race doesn't matter. Religion doesn't matter. We pride ourselves on that. It is a tremendous advantage we have, so we ought not lose sight of the importance of helping legal citizens learn English and what it means to be an American. I have heard some talk that encouraging people to learn English is somehow divisive. I can't imagine that. In fact, it is the reverse. It is our unifier. It unifies us, to have a common language. It unifies us to know that the rule of law and equal opportunity are common principles. We debate what that means, and often they collide and conflict and we have to work that out as legislators, but we all agree on the same common principles and we enjoy the fact we have a common language, so I can speak to the President, and I can argue with the Senator from Colorado or I can agree with him as we are doing on an Iraq piece of legislation right now. We have a common language. So, common language, what it means to be an American, finding many different ways to honor these new citizens who come here legally--that ought to be as important a part of this bill as securing the border and creating a verification system in dealing with the people who already got here illegally. Primarily I came to the floor this afternoon to let my colleagues know I have a suggestion for how to begin to regain the trust of the American people on this issue, and that is this bill should pass with strong new provisions for border security, with funding to pay for it, and with a trigger that says the legalization parts of the bill don't take effect for 2, 3, 4, maybe even 5 years, until the border is secure. Then the question is how are we going to know if the border is secure? The bill says trust the Director of Homeland Security. I say ask him, pay attention to him or her, but also trust the Governors of the border States. Let three out of the four Governors, of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas concur with the Director of Homeland Security that the border is secure before we begin the legalization process, and I think the American people might buy it, they might believe that, and we might begin to regain their trust, after 20 years of mismanagement, that we are willing to take seriously securing the border and establishing respect again so we can have a rule of law. I yield the floor.