Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I join the Senators from Missouri and Connecticut in introducing the Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act. I do so because I believe that this legislation takes the right approach when dealing with the wrongs of our past. It takes action. It takes positive steps forward to correct injustices. It recommits us to one of our highest ideals as Americans--that justice will not be denied. Specifically, the bill creates a new office within the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division specifically tasked to investigate ``cold case'' murders from the civil rights era. It will commit the resources of the Department of Justice to work in conjunction with State and local law enforcement to aggressively prosecute criminals in those cases. The Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act might well be named in honor of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman--the three civil rights workers who were shot to death by former Ku Klux Klansman Edgar Ray Killen. Forty-one years later, thanks to the efforts of the victims' families, Mississippi State officials, and many others who would not let this crime go unpunished, Killen sits in solitary confinement in a State prison outside Jackson, Mississippi, right where he belongs. Justice will not be denied. And the Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act will see to it that others like Edgar Ray Killen are punished for their crimes. It will pour new resources into the investigations of other unsolved cases--like that of 14-year old Emmett Till, who was kidnapped and murdered in 1955. Recently, the Senate apologized for the failure of earlier Senators to enact federal antilynching legislation in the 1930s and 1940s. In discussing that resolution, I reminded my colleagues of how often we as a Nation have failed to live up to our great ideals. But usually when we have failed, we have recognized that failure and recommitted ourselves to those ideals and reached for them again. We did not simply acknowledge our failure and give up--we took action to correct our shortcomings. We abolished slavery. We granted women the right to vote. We desegregated our schools. Here, with this bill, we take action once more. Actions speak louder than words. If the Edgar Ray Killen conviction is any indication, then the action we would take by passing this bill would speak very loudly indeed. When Killen was convicted, the Nashville City Paper ran an editorial, which I will include in full following my remarks, that summed up just why taking action is so important. The editorial concluded, ``As long as Civil Rights era killers are still alive and free, justice has not yet been fully served. Hunting them down and bringing them to account for their actions is far and away the best apology any of us can make for their crimes.'' Today, we do not merely rest on words of apology--we take action. When it comes to questions of civil rights that has always been what I have tried to do. In 1962 when I was the student newspaper editor, Vanderbilt University's undergraduate school was segregated. I could have apologized for the actions of the board of trust; instead, I helped integrate the school. As Governor and President of the University of Tennessee, instead of apologizing for my predecessors, I appointed the first African American Supreme Court Justice and university vice-presidents. Instead of apologizing for Tennessee legislatures that had refused to enact the Martin Luther King Holiday, I helped make it law. I did not think it was effective merely to apologize for what others had failed to do. America is a work in progress. If we were to apologize for every failure to reach our lofty goals, there would be no end to it. I believe it is better to look forward and take action rather than look backward and apologize for others. I believe this bill does just that. Passing this bill today hopefully means that tomorrow one more unsolved case is opened; one more criminal is brought to justice; one more family can find peace. Justice delayed is justice denied. This bill will help make sure that justice will be delayed no longer. And it is for that reason that I am proud to join my colleagues in cosponsoring the Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act. I ask unanimous consent that the article I referenced earlier be printed in the Record.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, today I am joining with Senator Reid, Senator DeWine, and Senator Clinton to introduce a bill to authorize funding for the Teach for America program. Teach for America, TFA, calls upon our Nation's most promising future leaders, recent college graduates of all backgrounds and academic majors, to spend two years teaching in schools in lower income areas, usually inner cities or rural communities. Our legislation authorizes up to $25 million so that the highly successful program, which began as a privately funded, non- profit effort, can rapidly expand. TFA was founded in 1990 by Wendy Kopp, a young woman who had just graduated from Princeton. It served just six communities in that first year. Today it serves 22, and hopes to keep growing. TFA raises more than 75 percent of its operating budget through non-Federal sources, primarily through philanthropic gifts in the communities it serves. The results of this program have been notable, as reported in a study last year by Mathematica Policy Research, an independent research firm: ``Even though Teach for America teachers generally lack any formal teacher training beyond that provided by Teach for America, they produce higher student test scores than the other teachers in their schools--not just other novice teachers or uncertified teachers, but also veterans and certified teachers.'' Probably more exciting than the success of the program in teaching students is the impact it has had on its ``corps members.'' Teach for America isn't just for education majors, it's primarily there to attract highly successful college graduates who wouldn't otherwise go into education. Of its 9,000 alumni, 60 percent are still involved in education today. The 2005 National Teacher of the Year, Jason Kamras, a teacher here in Washington, DC, who was honored in a Rose Garden ceremony by President Bush, is an alumnus of Teach for America. And my own education policy advisor is also an alumna of the program. So, in addition to providing better education for students in poorer school systems, this program is creating a new cadre of highly talented and highly motivated individuals who now understand what it's like to teach in a classroom and who are dedicated to improving our education system. That's probably the greatest benefit of the program. And that's why I'm glad to join the Senator from Nevada in introducing this legislation to provide Federal funding to help TFA expand to new communities and recruit even more corps members. Teach for America is aiming to grow from 3,000 to 8,000 corps members, from 22 to 35 regional sites, and from 250,000 to 700,000 students by 2010. To reach these growth goals, the program must recruit more than 4,000 new teachers each year by 2010, and it must grow its total annual budget from $40 million today to $100 million by 2010. The legislation that Senator Reid and I offer today will not turn Teach for America into a Federal program, but it will supplement their privately raised funds to help TFA attain their worthy goals. The bill provides up to $25 million to that end. Interest by college graduates in TFA is very high--17,000 applied for the 2,100 teaching slots last year. Additional funding will allow more of those 17,000 to serve poorer children in classrooms across the country. In the upcoming issue of U.S. News and World Report, there is an excellent article about Teach for America by David Gergen. I ask unanimous consent that the article be printed in the Record. I hope other Senators will join with the Senator from Nevada and I in supporting this important legislation. Teach for America has helped more than 1 million students and is creating a highly talented pool of individuals to advance our education system into the next century. Providing Federal support to this non-profit program will help it expand not only to help more students, but also to create an even wider and stronger pool of talented individuals to advocate the best for our schools for decades to come.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I ask unanimous consent to speak for as much time as I may require on energy.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Are we in morning business?

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the bill be read the third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar 126, S. 1181.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, late last night the Senate finished work on what I call the Clean Energy Act of 2005. For Americans who watch the legislative process, this is not likely to have been the front-page news, but it is by far one of most important things we have done in this Senate because it affects millions of Americans. Our final vote is on Tuesday. I anticipate it will be a strong, bipartisan vote in support, just as the work that was done here was strong and bipartisan. The first thing the bill will do, and most important, in my opinion, is to stabilize and lower natural gas prices. We hear a lot of talk about $60 a barrel oil. No one likes to pay high prices for gasoline at the pump. The bigger problem is the price of natural gas. In North Carolina and Tennessee, all across this country, there are millions of blue-collar workers who work in plants where the cost of natural gas is driving their jobs overseas. Natural gas used to be in this country the lowest price in the industrial world at a unit price of $2 or $3. Our economy was geared to it. Today it is at $7, and headed up. If you are working at the Eastman plant in Tennessee, where 10,000 or 11,000 people work, and 40 percent of the cost of your product is natural gas--because they make chemicals there; and you can buy natural gas at $7 here, and you can buy it at $5, $4 overseas--those jobs are going to be headed overseas if that keeps up for very long. If you are a farmer in North Carolina or Tennessee, the cost of fertilizer has gone up $200 to $500 per unit. That is a big pay cut for you if you are a farmer. If you are a homeowner across this country and you rely on natural gas to heat and cool your home--and natural gas heats and cools more homes than any other kind of fuel--you might find your bill going up 50 percent recently. So for blue-collar workers, for farmers, and for homeowners, this legislation we will be voting on Tuesday stabilizes and potentially lowers the price of natural gas. That is one of the single most important things we can do for our country. The second thing, in my view, the bill does that is important is it recognizes that global warming is a problem. There is not a complete consensus about that in the Senate, but the bill has a different kind of consensus that makes more difference, in my opinion, than the mandates that we did not adopt because the bill changes the way we produce electricity toward ways that are low carbon and no carbon. If you produce less carbon, then you have less global warming, if you believe carbon makes a difference in global warming. So there is a big difference in the conversation and debate in the Senate this year over last year, in my judgment. While the McCain- Lieberman amendment was rejected--I voted against it myself--there was adopted the Hagel amendment, which has significant new incentives for producers of carbon across this country to reduce the amount of carbon they emit. We did pass the Bingaman sense-of-the-Senate resolution, which I voted for, which says we expect one day to have mandatory controls that lead us toward a lower carbon production economy. But I, for one, am not yet ready to impose mandatory controls on this big, complicated economy because I do not think we know enough about what it would do to the economy, and I do not think it is wise. Senator Domenici and Senator Bingaman have said they will begin, in July, to hold hearings about this complicated process and to assess how the incentives we may enact--or likely will enact--in this bill operate. Over the next year or two or three or four years, we may learn more. We may learn enough where a majority of us are willing to have some system of mandatory caps, just as we have in other areas of clean air and acid rain, for example. But in my opinion, we are not there yet. But the second most important thing in this legislation, in my view, is a shift in attitude toward global warming, a recognition by a majority of the Senators that it is a real problem and taking significant steps to change the way we make electricity so that we make it in a low-carbon or no-carbon way. The third big change, I believe, is the technologies we use to meet those objectives of lowering natural gas prices and of producing low- carbon or no-carbon electricity. I would call it a new realism about energy in this country. This is a big country. We produce 33 percent of all the money. We use 25 percent of all the energy in the world. We are not some desert island. We use a lot of electricity for our computers and our jobs and our homes. If we have any disruption in that--whether it is a blackout or it is a price that is too high or a lack of supply--it has devastating consequences for us. So there is a new realism, I would say, about exactly what is available to help us get where we want to go. First is aggressive conservation. That is new about this bill. It is twice the amount of conservation that was in the bill that we passed a year ago which never became law. By conservation, I mean new efficiency standards for appliances. The estimate of our committee is that these new efficiency standards for appliances will avoid the building of as many as 45 large gas electricity plants. That is significant conservation. There is a provision in the bill that would give 300,000 Americans a $2,000 deduction to buy a hybrid or an advanced-diesel car. That reduces the use of oil. That is aggressive conservation. There is an amendment in the bill that would have the President mandate a million-barrels-a-day reduction in the use of oil. That is aggressive conservation because that amount of oil equals about the entire production onshore of the State of Texas or the entire projected production from ANWR in Alaska. So we have aggressive conservation. We start there because that is the first thing we can do to save oil, increase supply, and reduce prices. The second thing this bill does is recognize we need new supplies. We have taken steps to make it easier to bring liquefied natural gas into this country. Some may say: Oh, we don't want to go down that road. We are already bringing in too much oil. We all agree with that. But if we do not bring the natural gas in, we are going to be sending the jobs out. And for the foreseeable future, for the short term, if we want to reduce the cost of natural gas, we need to bring a lot of it in from overseas. And having a few more terminals, as provided in the streamlined provisions in this bill-- which still give States and communities input into where it goes--is a very important provision. This legislation basically relaunches the American interest in nuclear power. That is realistic, too. There is a growing interest in global warming. That is caused, many say, by carbon in the air. So we need energy that has less carbon. Seventy percent of the carbon-free electricity we produce in the United States today comes from nuclear power. So if we care about global warming, we better care about nuclear power. There is no other way around it. There are incentives for advanced nuclear power, the kind of reactors that do not cost as much to build. We know how to operate them. Twenty percent of our electricity is already from that. We invented the technology. Dozens of our Navy vessels operate with nuclear reactors. They have, without incident, since the 1950s. France is now 80 percent nuclear power. They are the European country most likely to meet the Kyoto standards because they have adopted the technology that is likely to produce the largest amount of carbon-free electricity--nuclear power. We also have come to a consensus within the last year--I think I am accurate on this--that waiting in the wings behind nuclear power is coal gasification and carbon sequestration. Long words, but it simply means we take this several-hundred-year supply of coal that we have and we find a clean way to burn it. The way we are encouraging that in this legislation is to turn the coal into gas and then burn the gas. That gets rid of the nitrogen and the mercury and the sulfur, but it leaves the carbon. There are also provisions, incentives in this bill, and loan guarantees and authorization, then, to have large demonstrations of carbon sequestration, taking the remaining carbon dioxide--the major residue or pollutant from coal gasification--and putting it in the ground. Now, this is the strategy that is preferred by several important environmental groups. That sounds like a surprise. They would prefer coal? Here is the reason. They have some concerns about nuclear--the proliferation problems, the storage of waste--but if coal can be burned in a clean way and the carbon can be recaptured and put in the ground, that is a solution to global warming without mandates. That is a solution, and not just in the United States but around the world. Because we might clean up our air, but if China and India and the rest of the world build hundreds of coal plants that are dirty, it will not matter what we do because the air just goes around the world, and we will be breathing it, too. So a very important way for us to help the world have clean air and an adequate supply of electricity is coal gasification. So I call that the new realism: conservation; increased natural gas supplies, including from overseas; relaunching nuclear; and coal gasification and carbon sequestration. If we do that over the next 10 years, we will have an adequate supply of American-produced, reliable, low-carbon electricity. And the debate about global warming will be off our desks because we will not be producing enough carbon to affect global warming, and we can argue about something else. Now, there is also generous support in this legislation for renewable energy. I am especially pleased that for the first time, we have support for solar energy in a useful way. Up to this time, we have had a renewable tax credit that solar could not take advantage of. But the Finance Committee changed that. Solar shows some promise, as does biomass, as does some geothermal, as does wind. I think my colleagues know I think wind is heavily oversubsidized and overestimated, but it is supported in here. But there is a realism about that. We are not going to run the American economy on windmills and solar panels. They will provide a few percent of what we need by the year 2025. If we want carbon-free adequate supplies of American-produced energy, we are going to have to conserve, launch nuclear again, do coal gasification, and bring in supplies of natural gas. Renewables are fine, but they are a very small part of the answer. While we do not all agree on that here in the Senate, there is still a consensus. There is also generous support for longer term technologies. I think we are realistic about that as well. There is a great deal of excitement about the hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicle. When I was in Yokohama a year ago, I visited a hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicle filling station. There were seven SUVs parked, all of them from different manufacturers in the world, many of them American. I filled up the Nissan hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicle. Carlos Ghosn is the chief executive of Nissan. He drives that vehicle around Tokyo every weekend. He is spending $700 million of Nissan money every year on hydrogen- fuel-cell research. And Toyota is doing the same. Others--Ford, General Motors--are all interested. But the potential of hydrogen is down the road. It's several years away. We are going to be talking about it, working on it--and hopefully it will come to fruition. But it is several years down the road. When we produce enough hydrogen to run our automobiles, we will have to use nuclear power or natural gas or coal gasification to produce that hydrogen. So I would say of special note--to reemphasize some of the points I made--is the serious interest in conservation. This is a bipartisan bill. You do not hear the word ``conservation'' come out of the mouths of every Senator first. You might not think Republican Senators would start out talking, first, about conservation. But we know if we want to reduce the cost of natural gas, if we want to reduce our reliance on oil, that the quickest and easiest way to do that is aggressive conservation. Nuclear power--Senator Domenici, our chairman, mentioned to me we had something like 167 amendments offered to this bill at one time, and so far as we could tell, not a single amendment was antinuclear, not a single amendment was antinuclear. There is a growing awareness that if we want carbon-free electricity, we are going to have to have some nuclear powerplants to do that. That is a big change even just from last year. Another big change, as I mentioned, is the emergence of coal gasification and carbon sequestration and support and research for that in a very serious way, both in industrial sites and in freestanding plants, and sequestration demonstrations. None of that was being discussed broadly by the Energy Committee last year. A few Senators understood that, but most of us, I think it is fair to say, did not really see the significance of this technology. Now we do, and we have strong support for it. The importance of liquefied natural gas and the streamlining of siting--that may be the most important provision in the bill in terms of an immediate impact because there are large amounts of natural gas that can be brought in. Another important development is the serious discussion of new supplies of natural gas here at home. Now, this is a very controversial subject. But last year we could not even get an inventory of what supplies of natural gas we have offshore. We have plenty of natural gas; we just have rules that say you cannot drill for it. There was no serious discussion of giving States the opportunity--other States, such as Virginia--the option of drilling in Federal waters offshore for natural gas, as Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana now do. We couldn't get a vote on that because of the controversy, but I believe there were 51 votes in the Senate for giving States the option of deciding for themselves whether they wanted to allow natural gas drilling offshore, take a share of the money for the State, put a share of the money in a national fund for wildlife preservation, put the rest in the Federal Treasury, and put the gas into our system so we could lower the cost of natural gas. There is a lot of progress there. Finally, I pay tribute to two parts of the Senate. One is to the Finance Committee for what it did with the tax title. The total amount of money of incentives is $14 to $16 billion. But rather than the amount of money, it is what it is for because it is completely consistent with clean energy objectives for low-carbon and no-carbon, new technologies. There is money for clean energy bonds for certified coal products, consumer incentives for hybrid and diesel vehicles, incentives for energy-efficient appliances and buildings, incentives for coal gasification powerplants, incentives for solar energy development in an important way for the first time in a long time, incentives for the deployment of advanced nuclear power, incentives for cogeneration projects. All of these will change the way we produce electricity. I compliment Chairman Grassley and his staff for this. I hope very much that the Senate version of how we spend our tax dollars in support of research and development for clean energy is dominant in the conference rather than another version. That will be something we will have to work out with our friends in the House of Representatives. I think a great deal of credit needs to go to Chairman Domenici and to Senator Bingaman, ranking Democrat on the committee. This bill came out 21 to 1 in favor from our committee. For those who are not in the Senate, this may sound like inside housekeeping. This body operates only by consensus. Nothing happens here--because of the unique nature of this body, where every Senator is an equal, every single one of us can stop anything at least for a while, unless there is a consensus. The consensus came because of the kind of leadership, beginning with Chairman Domenici, who personally visited all the members of the committee, including the Democratic members, in their offices, took their advice, incorporated their ideas, and we came to a consensus. Senator Bingaman pointed out in our hearing that we had many votes, but he didn't remember a single party-line vote. We had close votes, but we voted our convictions and our regions of the country and our backgrounds and attitudes. We didn't line up and say: This is a Republican view and a Democratic view. I am glad we have waited until next Tuesday morning to vote on the Clean Energy Act of 2005, until Chairman Domenici and Senator Bingaman can be here. They had to be in New Mexico yesterday for a BRAC hearing. They deserve to be here. I want the full Senate and our country to see the result that they have led. I believe their being here and the big vote we have will get us off to a big start. I feel very good about what the Senate has done. I hope there is a big vote on Tuesday. For the American people, the result will be stabilized and lower natural gas prices for homeowners, for blue-collar workers, and for farmers; No. 2, a recognition that global warming is a problem, and the beginning of aggressive conservation and a variety of technologies to deal with that by producing low-carbon and no-carbon electricity; and, finally, a realism about the base load that we need to encourage in this country to produce that kind of electricity, aggressive conservation, new supplies of natural gas, relaunching nuclear power, coal gasification, and carbon sequestration. I thank the Chair.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the Senator from North Dakota was an important part of the work on clean energy that we finished work on last night and will vote on next Tuesday. I will make some remarks about that in a few minutes, but I acknowledge his contribution and that of the ranking Democrat, Jeff Bingaman, who worked with our chairman, Pete Domenici, and the Presiding Officer, who has experience in the House of Representatives on the Energy Committee. These last 2 weeks have been extraordinarily good for the Senate. I think we got a good result.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the committee- reported amendments, as amended, be agreed to, the amendment at the desk be agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read the third time and passed, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table en bloc, and any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, on behalf of the leader, I ask unanimous consent the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar 120, S. 714, the junk fax bill.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, if Chairman Domenici were here tonight, he would urge our colleagues to oppose the Sununu amendment because it is critical to this clean energy bill. If we want lower natural gas prices, we need new technologies for carbon sequestration, for advanced nuclear, for solar, for biomass, and for hybrid vehicles. We need to invest in these options and jump start them. We have done that throughout our history in America. That is our secret weapon, our science and technology, research and development. Chairman Domenici likes the existing provision because this is for new technology. It is not a free ride. Chairman Domenici would urge Members, as I do, to vote no on Sununu- Wyden because his existing provision jumpstarts new technologies for a clean energy bill from coal plants to sequestration to advanced nuclear to solar, new technologies not in general use. It costs the Government nothing, according to the scoring of the Congressional Budget Office. It is like an insurance policy. The user of the guarantee pays the premium.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I urge our colleagues to reject the Sununu-Wyden bill and support the Domenici-Bingaman bill. The provision the Senator seeks to strike is one of the most innovative and one of the crucially important parts of the legislation. As I will explain in a minute, it is not a free ride, and it costs the Government nothing. It scores at 0. It is constructed in conformance with the Federal Credit Reform Act. Let me explain the amendment and, in doing so, I am doing it on behalf of the chairman of the committee, Senator Domenici. This is his idea. It is an idea to help us jump-start legislation which we have probably come to think of as a clean energy bill, as a bill which transforms the way we produce electricity in the United States, puts us on a path toward low-carbon and no-carbon electricity, and involves, in doing so, using a number of new technologies, technologies that are not yet commercially proven. For example, in our legislation, the Domenici-Bingham clean energy legislation, we talk about more efficient coal plants. We talk about carbon sequestration, a technology which has not yet been fully demonstrated. We talk about advanced nuclear plants, plants that are of the next generation of nuclear plants. We talk about new forms of solar. Solar has a very limited use in the United States, but there is some exciting new technology there. We talk about new biomass and hybrid cars, a technology which is just beginning to emerge. One of the largest and most important of these new technologies is what we call IGCC, or clean coal gasification, the idea of using coal, of which we have hundreds of years supply, to turn it into gas. I will say more about that in a minute. We have higher efficiency natural gas turbines, a hydrogen economy. We are quite a bit away from there, and research and development is important for that. We are excited about these incredible potential new technologies, and our goal here is to jump-start these technologies, get them into the marketplace--only new technologies, only technologies that are not commercially viable--and then we step back and get out of the way. That is not just the idea of our Energy Committee, which voted 21 to 1 for a bill that contains this provision and heard a great amount of testimony, it is the idea, for example, of the bipartisan National Commission on Energy Policy, which pointed out that the energy challenges faced by the United States mean many new technologies and, unfortunately, ``both public and private investments in research and development, demonstration and early deployment of advanced energy technologies have been falling short of what is likely to be needed to make these technologies available in the time frames and on the scales required.'' We have since World War II invested in research and development. Half our new jobs since World War II, according to the National Academy of Sciences, have come from research and development. Our R&D, our scientific capacity, is our cutting edge advantage. If we do not, for example, help launch a handful of new clean coal gasification plants, if we do not, for example, invest in the next generation of nuclear plants, they either will not happen or they will happen so slowly that we do not get on the path we intend to be on. In conclusion, let me point out exactly what we are talking about. This title is limited to technologies that are not commercial, that are not in general use. These technologies have to avoid reduced or sequestered air pollutants or manmade greenhouse gases, and the technology has to be new or significantly improved over what is available today in the marketplace. In addition, this is not a free ride. The guarantees can only be for 80 percent of the cost of the project. The developers will share the risk. More important, the program is constructed in accordance with the Federal Credit Reform Act and it costs the Government nothing. In every case, the cost of the guarantee has to be paid in advance. It could be done through appropriations, but that would have to be decided each time. But in most cases it will be done because the project sponsors will simply write a check to the Federal Treasury before the guarantee is issued. These payments are calculated based upon the risk that any one of the guaranteed loans might go into default--that always could happen--so that the amount collected will be sufficient to pay off that portion of the loans that do default. In other words, it is in the form of an insurance premium that takes into account, actuarially, what the defaults might be should there be any. This is not new. The Federal Credit Reform Act has been on the books since 1990. It applies across the Government, and I want to emphasize this key point: The provision scores at zero. Only if Congress later decides to appropriate money for the program will it cost anything.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I applaud the remarks of the Senator from Kansas and his focus on the clean energy aspects of the Domenici- Bingaman bill, which is making significant progress in producing low- carbon and carbon-free energy, transforming the way we produce electricity. I also appreciate his cosponsorship of the environmentally responsible wind power amendment. Kansas, of course, has a lot of wind. There may be many places where people want it to be, but there are some places in the United States where we do not need to put gigantic towers between us and our children and our grandchildren; for example, the Statue of Liberty, and the Great Smoky Mountain Park, and Yosemite Park. This legislation is a very limited amendment that would deny Federal subsidies for that area, give communities 6 months' notice before they are to be built there but otherwise would not interfere with private property rights, prohibit the building of any wind project, affect any project now underway, and would not give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission any new power. I hope it is the kind of amendment all Senators can easily support. Whether they are strong supporters of wind power or have reservations about wind power, at least we do not want to see gigantic towers in the buffer zones between our national treasures, the highly scenic areas, and ourselves and our children and grandchildren. I thank the Senator from Kansas for his support.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from Kansas.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask the Senator from New Mexico if I may reserve my remaining time for just before the vote, and he also has a minute at that time. I ask unanimous consent to do that.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time until just before the vote.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I have no objection, Mr. President.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, this gives me a chance to clear up a couple of points. I say to my friend from New Mexico, the United Nations isn't picking any of these sites. We picked 20 of these sites in the United States that we recommended to the world be designated as heritage sites. Here is what we are talking about. We are taking billions of tax dollars--that is a debate for another amendment--billions of tax dollars, $200,000 per windmill. We should all resign the Senate and get in the windmill business. My friends on the other side say we are subsidizing the building of these windmills between us and the Grand Canyon, between us and Cape Cod, between us and the Smoky Mountains, between us and the Glacier National Park. Ansel Adams and John Muir would be rolling over at the idea of our destroying the American landscape in this wholesale fashion. If we had a level playing field and we had no Federal Government involvement, that would be another thing, but we are putting billions of dollars out there to do this. In the Eastern United States, they only fit in areas where there are scenic ridges. That is the Tennessee Gorge, the Shenandoah Valley, the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, and it is being said we should use taxpayer dollars to encourage that. This says no in the most highly treasured areas we have. It is sponsored by the National Parks Conservation Association. I would think every conservation group in America would be for this. I would think every wind developer would say, of course, we are not going to put wind there. It prohibits nothing. It interferes with no private property right. It just says we are not going to spend taxpayer dollars putting gigantic steel towers between us and our view of the Statue of Liberty and the Grand Canyon. I would think that ought to be a vote of 100 to 0.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Yes, and before the vote we would each have a minute.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, today I am offering an amendment to protect our most scenic areas from unintended impacts by oversized wind turbines or windmills. I offer an amendment that is sponsored also by a number of other Senators, including Senators Warner, Landrieu, McCain, Allen, Voinovich, Brownback, Byrd, and Bunning, and that is also supported by the National Parks Conservation Association. Let me begin by saying exactly what the amendment does and what it does not do. No. 1, what the amendment says is no Federal subsidies for wind projects within 20 miles of most national parks, national military parks, national seashores, national lakeshores, or certain other highly scenic sites. We are talking about the Redwood National Parks in California, the Sequoia National Park, Yosemite National Park. We are talking about Mesa Verde in Colorado, Rocky Mountain National Park, Biscayne National Park in Florida, Yellowstone in Idaho, Acadia in Maine, Cape Cod in Massachusetts, Yellowstone in Montana, and Glacier. These are our national treasures. What we are saying is the taxpayers will not subsidize the building of these giant windmills within the view of those parks. Second, there will be an environmental impact statement for any wind project within 20 miles of those sites. Third, any community will have six months' notice before a wind project can be permitted. Here is what the amendment does not do. It does not prohibit the building of any wind project. It does not affect any wind project already receiving subsidies. It does not give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission any new authority. And it does not interfere with any private property right. Why is this a concern? Here is the reason in a nutshell. The Federal Government, over the next 5 years, will spend $2 billion and, if we follow the recommendations of the Finance Committee, $3.5 billion subsidizing the building of giant windmills. These are not your grandmother's windmills. They are very large. There is one picture of it. Here is another one. This is just off Denmark, stretches over 2 miles. Here is an example. These are people up here on this turbine housing. One way we think of them in Tennessee in describing them is that you can fit just one into the University of Tennessee football stadium. It is the third largest stadium in the country. It would rise more than twice as high as the skyboxes, and its rotor blades would go from the 10-yard line to the 10-yard line. My concern is not that there should not be any of these. It is just that we are, through Federal policy, changing our landscape, and we need to think about it now while we still can. All of the estimates are that the billions of dollars in subsidies we are spending will increase the number of these gigantic wind turbines from 6,700 today to 40-, 50- , or 60,000 over the next 10 or 15 years. Here is what the National Parks Conservation Association has to say: Wind power is an important alternative energy. It deserves to be encouraged and promoted in areas where appropriate. At the same time, the principle that some of America's most special places could be adversely impacted by associated development is important to acknowledge and address. The Environmentally Responsible Wind Power Act of 2005 helps elevate the importance of this principle and ensures the protection of these places. What subsidies are we talking about? I just mentioned the $2 billion, the $1.5 billion more that is coming. We passed a renewable portfolio standard in the Senate. That is an additional subsidy. This is a brand new matter for most local governments to consider. It is causing consternation in cities from Kansas to Wisconsin to Vermont to Virginia where rural areas, many of them without land use planning, many of them without any expectation of this, suddenly find that in the most scenic areas we have in America, up go these massive, gigantic towers, and they are hard to take down. Twenty years ago, when I was Governor of Tennessee, I passed a scenic parkway program. We took 10,000 miles of scenic parkways and we banned new billboards, new junkyards. No one thought much about it then. Everybody is enormously grateful today because these things will never come down unless they blow down, and when they blow down, there are often not people to pick them up. So if we fail to do something now, to put some sort of disincentive to damage the viewscape of our most scenic areas, we will never be able to change that. In the State of Tennessee, we only have 29 of these now put up by the Tennessee Valley Authority, but they are there for 20 years, and you can see the red flashing lights from 20 miles away on a clear night. At other times in our debate on energy, I will be talking about the relative value of wind power. I am a skeptic, I will admit. You could string a swath of these gigantic windmills from Los Angeles to San Francisco, and you would produce about the same amount of power that one or two powerplants would, and you would still need the powerplant because most people like to have their electricity even when the wind is not blowing and you can't store the electricity. And the amount of money that we are spending--$2 billion, $3 billion--is an enormous amount, and I think most colleagues are not aware of what we are doing with it. Once you put these windmills up, you have to build transmission lines through neighborhoods and back yards to carry it to some distant place. That is a debate for another day. The fact of the matter is that we are spending billions of new dollars for gigantic windmills. What I would like for us to do in the Senate is recognize our responsibility to the American landscape and say at least we are not going to subsidize putting these windmills in between us, our grandchildren, and children, and the view of the Grand Canyon, the Statue of Liberty or the Smoky Mountain National Park or Cape Cod. I would think windmill advocates would want to do that. This is a big country, a place where people can find plenty of places to put up gigantic windmills other than between us and our magnificent views. I don't think I need to spend much time. I will take 1 more minute, and I will go to the Senator from Virginia for 3 minutes. Teddy Roosevelt said: There can be nothing in this world more beautiful than the Yosemite National Park's groves of the sequoias and redwoods, the Canyon of the Colorado, the Canyon of the Yellowstone, and the Canyon of the Three Tetons. We don't drive down to the Smokies, out to the Tetons or to see the Grand Canyon to see a view like that. Put them where they belong. Let's not subsidize putting them in between us and the most magnificent views we have. Egypt has its pyramids, Italy has its art, England has its history, and we have the great American outdoors. It is a distinctive part of our national character, and we ought to protect it while we can. That is why we have introduced this legislation, along with several other Senators who care. I hope my colleagues, whether they support wind power or whether they are a skeptic of wind power, will agree that we should not put these gigantic steel towers in between us and our most scenic treasures. I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from Virginia.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Do I understand I have 15 minutes?

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, would you advise me when I have consumed 7 minutes?

Mr. ALEXANDER. Could I ask the Senator from New Mexico, how do I get in the queue?

Mr. ALEXANDER. Reserving the right to object.

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