Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I appreciate my friend's point. May I make my remarks now?

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I am here to talk about the supplemental appropriations bill. While the Senator from North Dakota is here--he is one of the best speakers in the Senate. He can take a story, tell it, and be clear about what he is saying. He has spoken eloquently about the need for a compromise. I will suggest one to him. I suggested it 2 years ago when I came to the Senate and heard the debate about Judge Estrada. I said at that time that, even if a Democratic President were elected, that I would never vote to filibuster his nomination. In other words, I would always vote to give a President of the United States a fair up-or-down vote on the floor of the Senate on his or her nominee. I have repeated my pledge to do that on this floor several different times, and, I would say to my friend from North Dakota, if he would get 8 or 10 Democrats to make the same pledge, there would not be any filibuster. There would be no need for a rules change. We could talk about gas prices, we could talk about schools, and we could talk about the war in Iraq. So that spirit of compromise is there. I was not here during whatever went on before, and, whatever it was, I wish it had not gone on. What I can remember, going back to 1967, which is when I came to this body as a legislative aide even before the President pro tempore was a Senator, is that all during that time this tactic was not used to deny a President an up-or-down vote on his judicial nominees. The only possible argument during that time was the case of Abe Fortas in 1968, and that was a little different. But put all that to the side, the ``who shot John'' or ``who didn't shoot John.'' If several on that side and several on this side would simply say, as a way of avoiding this train wreck, that we would pledge right now, during our time here, always to vote to give a President an up-or-down vote on his or her judicial nominees, then there would be no need for a rules change, and we could go on to our other business.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I will be happy to.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the supplemental appropriations bill is going to come up. We are going to vote on it. I commend the chairman of the committee for accomplishing what is a difficult job--getting a body that operates by unanimous consent to agree on something and moving it through. The purpose of the bill is to support the men and women who are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. I was there about a month ago. There are so many Tennesseans in Kuwait and Afghanistan and Iraq that it seemed like a Tennessee homecoming. There are literally thousands there--the postmasters of Winfield and Rob Camp. The President of the Rotary Club in Lexington, a physician, just came home. The editor of the newspaper in Dyersburg, two deputy sheriffs from my home county, the superintendent of schools from Athens--these are people in the Reserves or in the National Guard with mortgages and families and jobs, with money and insurance issues at home. They are fighting for us. Some are dying, and they are risking their lives every day. Of course I want to vote to spend every penny we need to spend to support them and to keep them safe. Once we set forward on a mission, on a military mission, we should have the stomach to see it all the way through to the end in a success strategy, not an exit strategy, and to support the American men and women whom we ask to go. That does not stop me from objecting and expressing my disappointment to two provisions in the bill. One is the so-called REAL ID Act. Actually, unlike a lot of legislation we pass here, this is well named. This really is a national identification card for the United States of America for the first time in our history. We have never done this before, and we should not be doing it without a full debate. This REAL ID provision turns 190 million driver's licenses, which are now ineffective ID cards, into more effective national identification cards. To add insult to injury, we have also slapped State governments with the bill for them. I strongly object to this. When I was Governor of Tennessee, I vetoed our State ID card twice because I thought it was an infringement on civil liberties. I thought that driver's licenses are for driving. If we need an ID card, we should have an ID card. The legislature overruled me. I actually had to get one of those cards myself in order to get into the White House, so I lost that battle. So I am very reluctant for this country to have a national ID card. But I reluctantly concluded that, after 9/11, we have to have one and that we ought to be thinking about what would be the best kind of ID card. I believe the right way to consider that is when we are dealing with comprehensive legislation on immigration, which I hope we do this year, and tackle that problem and the best way to do it. Is the best way to do it to turn the driver's licenses examiners in all the States of the country issuing 190 million driver's licenses into CIA agents? I don't know what it is like in Ohio or other States, but in Tennessee the driver's licenses examiners by and large are there for the purpose of figuring out whether you can parallel park and to take your picture. They are not trained to tell whether you are an al-Qaida terrorist. They are not trained in order to review four different documents and then look at 10,000, maybe 20,000 different databases around the country. I wonder whether it is even the right approach, in terms of having a national ID card, to rely on driver's licenses. Maybe we should be relying on passports. That has been an efficient system in this country. Or maybe even better, and I suspect this would be better, we should turn the Social Security card--which is directly related to work, which is the subject of the discussion and most of the concern about immigration--into a more definite kind of identification. But no; instead, without one single hearing in the Senate about a national ID card--which we might not, under our Constitution, even be able to require to be presented to a law enforcement officer--we just pass one, and then we send the bill to the States. Here we are, a Republican Congress who got elected in 1994 promising to end unfunded mandates--and the Senator in the chair was one of the leaders in doing that--and what do we do, we come up with this big idea, pass it, hold a press conference, and send the bill to the Governors. We do that time after time after time, and we should not be doing that. That is not the way our system works. It is possible that some Governor may look at this and say: Wait a minute, who are these people in Washington telling us what to do with our driver's licenses and making us pay for them, too? We will just use our own licenses for certifying drivers, and Congress can create its own ID card for people who want to fly and do other Federal things. And if Congress doesn't do that, then we will give out the home telephone numbers of all the Congressmen and let the people--of California, say-- call everybody up here and say, ``why did you keep me off the airplane when I needed to get somewhere?'' That is what we have done. We have just assumed that every single State will want to ante up, turn its driver's licenses examiners into CIA agents, and pay hundreds of millions of dollars to do an almost impossible task over the next 3 years. We did that without any recognition in this legislation that we are not the State government, we are the Federal Government, and, if we want a national ID card, we should be creating a Federal ID card. If we want the States to create one, we should talk to them about it, and then we should pay for it. So in the end, the States will pay the costs. In the end, the States will listen to the complaints from citizens who are going to be standing in long lines while they search for four kinds of identification; the driver's license examiner tries to connect with thousands of databases, which they have no capacity to do today. The States will take the blame when somebody uses a driver's license inappropriately. The REAL ID Act has been structured in such a way that it is not technically an unfunded mandate, but anybody listening to this debate knows it violates the spirit of our promises in 1994 and 1995 not to do this anymore. So I intend to offer an amendment at the appropriate time that will have two main points, but the overall point is to have the Federal Government pay for the cost of this new requirement that the States have no choice but to accept. It will allow States to submit documentation to the Department of Homeland Security of what the costs are, and it will establish a process to pay the annual increase in those costs. I wish we had done this in a different way. I think we should have honestly faced the fact that we now need some sort of national identification card. I say that reluctantly because, as I said, I vetoed even a State card. But times have changed. But to do this without a hearing and without our tradition of respect for civil liberties and our respect for federalism, I think is wrong. Mr. President, if I may take 2 more minutes, I would like to express my disappointment with one other provision. This conference report says we do not trust President Bush in dealing with the Palestinian Territory. Here we are, a Republican Congress, at least by a majority, with a Republican President who is leading a lot of the world to freedom, who is just returning from a triumphant visit to Georgia--a great beacon--who has taken the courageous step of trying to help solve the Middle East problems, and we are saying: Mr. President, we are going to appropriate money to help with the emerging democracy in the Palestinian Territory, but we do not trust you to spend the money. That is what this provision does. The Senate did not vote that way. The Senate voted another way. The Senate voted to give the President the right to waive the authority, giving the President the right to decide, in effect, who got the money. The reason I think the provision makes so little sense is because we are going to turn around and say in a few weeks, as the Israelis pull out of the Gaza Strip, Who is responsible for security there? We are going to expect the Palestinian Authority to be responsible for security there. Who is responsible for feeding some of the poorest people in the world? We are going to expect the Palestinian Authority to be responsible for that. If we are going to hold the Palestinian Authority responsible, the President might want to give them the money. Arafat is dead. There is a new finance minister there who has impressed all of us on a bipartisan basis. He was born in Palestine, lived here, and got his degree at the University of Texas. He is doing things in a way that is open. He has earned the confidence of people all over the Middle East. He is taking control of the money. And if he stopped doing that, the President could stop giving him the money. But why in the world would the Congress show such a lack of respect to the President of the United States, in the middle of a peace process, by saying: ``No, Mr. President, we do not trust you to make a decision about what to do with the money that we appropriate for the Palestinian Authority or to help the Palestinian Territory emerge as a democracy''? So I am very disappointed by that as well. And there is other money that has been authorized this year that does give the President that authority. I hope in future conferences and in future debates and discussions we recognize that Arafat is dead, there is hopefully a democracy emerging, and there is a finance minister there who is making public accounting of all the money. He is direct depositing money for the troops. He is publicly advertising it through bids. He has impressed his neighbors, and he has impressed all of us who have visited with him on a bipartisan basis. I hope we keep that in mind as we consider this issue. Thank you, Mr. President, for the time.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Is it in order for me to take about 7 or 8 minutes to speak on a subject other than the budget?

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished chairman. I am here to talk about President Bush's nominee to be our next permanent representative to the United Nations, John Bolton. I am privileged to be a member of the Foreign Relations Committee. A few weeks ago at Mr. Bolton's first day of hearing, I heard what I expected to hear. In fact, I was unusually impressed by what I heard. I listened to a man who has been confirmed four times by the Senate, who in the last 4 years has been Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Assistant Secretary for International Organizations under the first President Bush, under whom I served, a person who graduated summa cum laude from Yale, received his JD from Yale, a person who helped repeal resolution 3379 equating Zionism with racism. I listened very carefully. And while we have had a number of distinguished U.N. ambassadors, I rarely have seen anyone who had such a good grasp of diplomacy, of the United Nations, its resolutions, and its history. And during a period of about 7 hours, he handled himself well, and there were tough questions asked. I was impressed with the fact that he had been endorsed by five former Secretaries of State and by more than 50 former ambassadors. I was with one of those former ambassadors over the weekend, the former majority leader of this body, Howard Baker, with whom I and other Members had lunch Sunday. He remarked about how he had dealt with Secretary Bolton over the last 4 years in Tokyo. He liked him. He was impressed with him. He said he spoke frankly, that he would be a good ambassador. The second day of hearings was a little different. I was surprised and disappointed by what I heard. There was a man named Carl Ford, who was well respected by members of the committee, who presented evidence that John Bolton had ``chewed out,'' to use colloquial words, intelligence analysts in the State Department. Mr. Ford, to his credit, didn't like that because those persons were down the line. Mr. Ford was a pretty good witness because he didn't overstate his case. He acknowledged that it wasn't unusual for policy people and intelligence analysts to argue, for policy people to hope for intelligence that supported their positions. He just didn't like the fact that in this case he had heard about--he wasn't there, he had heard about--that Mr. Bolton in effect chewed out one of Mr. Ford's employees and Mr. Ford didn't like it. He told Mr. Bolton so and they exchanged words. That is what he said. There have been some other things said about Mr. Bolton. I have had the privilege of being confirmed by the Senate and going through a hearing. I am surprised the number of things they can find to say about you when you go through a thing like that. I see the Senator from Massachusetts over there. He was chairman of the committee when I went through the nomination process, and the Democrats were in the majority at that time. So it is a good airing of about anything you can do and anything people can say about you. It serves a purpose. There were some other things said. It was suggested that Mr. Bolton was misusing intelligence, compromising intelligence. But Mr. Ford himself said: In this particular case-- The one he was led there to complain about-- there wasn't politicization [of the intelligence]. So that wasn't the case. A little later, someone called up to say that Mr. Bolton had chased a USAID contractor around a Moscow hotel to stop her from damaging his client. This was when he was in the private sector. But then others, including the employer of that complaining person, disputed the complainer's account, and others did as well. So it boils down to the fact that the credible charge of Mr. Ford was that Mr. Bolton was rude to staff members below him in the bureaucracy. I imagine Mr. Bolton is embarrassed by those charges. I didn't like to hear them. And perhaps he deserves to be embarrassed by the charges and perhaps he has learned a lesson. But what I heard doesn't change my vote, even though I hope it might change some of Mr. Bolton's ways of dealing with people with whom he works. How significant is this charge that he was rude to people in the bureaucracy? As has been mentioned by others, if that were the standard for remaining in the Senate, we would have a hard time getting a quorum. There are regularly occasions when busy Senators, eager to make their own point, are rude to their staff and even shout at one another. In fact, the shouting was so loud in the Foreign Relations Committee room by some of the Senators, I could barely hear the charges about Mr. Bolton. That is not attractive, and I don't endorse it. It even caused me to think back about times that I may have become angry or impatient or startled in dealing with a staff member or another person, and made me redouble my efforts to make sure I swallow my pride and think about what I say and not do that anymore. It is not good business. As I heard Senator Voinovich, who has a long reputation of caring for civil servants and caring about those things, my guess is that was on his mind as well. How significant is this? Here is what former Secretary of State Larry Eagleburger had to say about it Sunday in the Washington Post. This deserves special attention. Larry Eagleburger was Secretary of State for the first President Bush, but in a way he was more than that. He had 27 years in the foreign service. We hear about a football player is a football player's player or a man is a man's man or a woman is a woman's woman. Larry Eagleburger is a foreign service officer's Secretary of State. He had and has enormous respect from all those men and women who put their lives on the line around the world and in the United States in support of our diplomacy and foreign policy. Here is what he said: As to the charge that Bolton has been tough on subordinates, I can say only that in more than a decade of association with him in the State Department I never saw or heard anything to support such a charge. Nor do I see anything wrong with challenging intelligence analysts on their findings. They can, as recent history demonstrates, make mistakes. And they must be prepared to defend their findings under intense questioning. If John pushed too hard or dressed down subordinates, he deserves criticism, but it hardly merits a vote against confirmation when balanced against his many accomplishments. That is where I am. I think the benefit of hearing Mr. Ford's testimony might be a little bit of a lesson to Mr. Bolton and a reminder to the rest of us of how unattractive it is to shout at an associate or unnecessarily dress down a staff member. I agree with Secretary Eagleburger. John Bolton has a distinguished background and record. He has dedicated himself to improving our country's foreign policy. His action toward subordinates might have been inappropriate. Perhaps he has learned a lesson, but it doesn't cause me to change my vote. I am glad to support him. This is a critical time for the United Nations. Even the Secretary General acknowledges it is in need of reform. Billions of dollars filtered from the U.N. coffers to Saddam Hussein's pockets in the oil- for-food scandal. Top human rights abusers such as Sudan sit on the Human Rights Commission. United Nations peacekeepers in Africa have been found to rape and pillage. Just today, the United Nations appointed Zimbabwe to the Human Rights Commission. Now the United Nations has many important roles in the world. I am glad we have it. I want it to work, but I believe the President is right in his thinking, that we need to take action to help the U.N. reform itself, and that a frank-talking, experienced diplomat named John Bolton is an excellent candidate for that commission. I intend to vote for him in committee and on the floor. It is my hope that when we come back after the recess, we will have the long hearing as we usually do, and all the Senators will have a chance to say what they have to say--hopefully without shouting at one another--and that we will report it to the floor and the Senate will approve Mr. Bolton's nomination and give him a chance to go to work in reforming the U.N. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I have spoken here previously about the contribution that one of our closest allies, Australia, has made to support our efforts in Iraq and in the ongoing war against terror. At a time when other members of the international coalition in Iraq are beginning to draw down or remove their forces from the region, Australia continues to do its part. In fact, over the following weeks, Australia will expand its commitment to Iraq by about 50 percent. This will increase the total Australian military personnel currently working in or around Iraq to 1,370. These additional Australian troops will provide a secure environment--following the withdrawal of Dutch troops--for Japanese engineers who are involved in the reconstruction efforts in the Al Muthanna Province in southern Iraq. The additional troop commitment will also bolster the existing training of Iraqi forces by Australian troops--training which is essential to the successful transformation of Iraq into a secure democracy. Australia has always been a great friend and ally of ours. It shares a tradition of democracy and a dedication to the values of freedom and respect for life that we hold dear in the United States. Australia is, in fact, the only nation to have sent forces to fight alongside the United States in every major conflict during the 20th century, including Afghanistan, the first gulf war, Vietnam, Korea, and both World Wars. Sixty-eight years ago, when Americans and Australians fought alongside one another at the Battle of the Coral Sea, during the darkest days of the Second World War, only 12 democracies survived on the face of the earth. The United States and Australia were 2 of the 12. Today, when more people vote for their own governments than ever before, and as fledgling democracies emerge in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, it is important to remember how precious democracy is, and to recognize and thank our allies, such as Australia, who have always stood beside us and fought in the defense of liberty. Earlier this month, I traveled with Senator Reid and six other Senators to Iraq, Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Georgia, and Ukraine. During that trip it was clear that the Iraqi elections--the bravery of the Iraqi people in staring down intimidation and violence to go to the ballot box--had been an inspiration to that part of the world. But, in the short term, democracy in Iraq can only take hold with the continued support of coalition troops--including those from Australia. So I thank the Australian troops and the Australian people for the crucial help they continue to provide to this important mission in Iraq. Prime Minister Howard and Foreign Minister Downer have shown leadership and courage in standing with us in this difficult time. Their support is important to building on the success of January's elections so that Iraq may continue on its difficult path toward democracy.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Today I am joining with Senators McCain, Lieberman, Salazar and Feinstein in introducing the National Park Centennial Act-- a bill to make the National Park System fiscally sound by its 100th birthday in 2016. The park system currently suffers from a multi- billion dollar backlog of maintenance projects and an operating deficit that exceeds $600 million each year. The Centennial Act aims to remedy this crisis by giving tax-payers the opportunity to check off a box on their tax returns each year that would send a small contribution to a National Park Centennial Fund. Today, taxpayers can contribute $3 to Presidential elections. This Act gives taxpayers an opportunity to contribute directly to our national parks via their tax returns. Our parks are national treasures, and they deserve to be preserved in all their pristine glory. They are a part of our heritage. It is a national travesty that they suffer from such a terrible lack of funding. The overall backlog, according to the Congressional Research Service, is about $7 billion, though estimates vary by about $2 billion in either direction. My own State, along with our neighbor North Carolina, is home to the country's most visited national park, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I live just a few miles from the park myself. In Tennessee, we have tried to deal with the maintenance backlog in a number of different ways. More than 2,100 volunteers have provided over 110,000 man-hours of service to the park, which is the equivalent of 50 staff and $1.9 million in extra funding. That's the third best volunteer rate in the National Park System. Our local communities in Tennessee and North Carolina have established a non-profit organization to help support the park-- ``Friends of the Smokies''--which has raised more than $8 million since its founding in 1993 through individual, corporate and foundation contributions, merchandise sales, special events, and sales of specialty license plates in Tennessee and North Carolina. Friends now has over 2,000 members. In addition to its fundraising activities, Friends of the Smokies coordinates more than 80 volunteers who provide direct and indirect assistance with projects that benefit Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Yet, despite all this extra support, the backlog in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park remains significant. The Park's current maintenance backlog is estimated at approximately $180 million dollars. It is estimated that the Great Smokies will receive up to $36 million over the next 5 years to address the maintenance backlog. There is over a $140 million shortfall at the Great Smokies alone. Examples of maintenance backlog projects at the Smokies are: Rehabilitation of North Shore Cemetery access routes; rehabilitation of three comfort stations at Balsam Mountain; rehabilitation of three comfort stations at Chimney Tops picnic area; rehabilitation of Newfound Gap Road, phase one; replace obsolete parkwide key system; repave Clingmans Dome Trail. We need to do better. It will be hard to do better in this budget environment. So this is an innovative way to help the parks do better. Sixty percent of this fund will go to maintenance backlogs. Forty percent of this fund will supplement the annual operating deficits at the parks. This program will terminate in 2016. Parallel legislation has already been introduced in the House of Representatives, including Congressman Jimmy Duncan. I hope Congress will move quickly to address this critical need of our national parks. Our national parks are national treasures. They are a part of our heritage, a part of who we are as Americans. We need to take care of these parks so that they are still there, in all their glory, and still accessible for many generations to come.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Today I am joining with Senators McCain, Lieberman, Salazar and Feinstein in introducing the National Park Centennial Act-- a bill to make the National Park System fiscally sound by its 100th birthday in 2016. The park system currently suffers from a multi- billion dollar backlog of maintenance projects and an operating deficit that exceeds $600 million each year. The Centennial Act aims to remedy this crisis by giving tax-payers the opportunity to check off a box on their tax returns each year that would send a small contribution to a National Park Centennial Fund. Today, taxpayers can contribute $3 to Presidential elections. This Act gives taxpayers an opportunity to contribute directly to our national parks via their tax returns. Our parks are national treasures, and they deserve to be preserved in all their pristine glory. They are a part of our heritage. It is a national travesty that they suffer from such a terrible lack of funding. The overall backlog, according to the Congressional Research Service, is about $7 billion, though estimates vary by about $2 billion in either direction. My own State, along with our neighbor North Carolina, is home to the country's most visited national park, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I live just a few miles from the park myself. In Tennessee, we have tried to deal with the maintenance backlog in a number of different ways. More than 2,100 volunteers have provided over 110,000 man-hours of service to the park, which is the equivalent of 50 staff and $1.9 million in extra funding. That's the third best volunteer rate in the National Park System. Our local communities in Tennessee and North Carolina have established a non-profit organization to help support the park-- ``Friends of the Smokies''--which has raised more than $8 million since its founding in 1993 through individual, corporate and foundation contributions, merchandise sales, special events, and sales of specialty license plates in Tennessee and North Carolina. Friends now has over 2,000 members. In addition to its fundraising activities, Friends of the Smokies coordinates more than 80 volunteers who provide direct and indirect assistance with projects that benefit Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Yet, despite all this extra support, the backlog in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park remains significant. The Park's current maintenance backlog is estimated at approximately $180 million dollars. It is estimated that the Great Smokies will receive up to $36 million over the next 5 years to address the maintenance backlog. There is over a $140 million shortfall at the Great Smokies alone. Examples of maintenance backlog projects at the Smokies are: Rehabilitation of North Shore Cemetery access routes; rehabilitation of three comfort stations at Balsam Mountain; rehabilitation of three comfort stations at Chimney Tops picnic area; rehabilitation of Newfound Gap Road, phase one; replace obsolete parkwide key system; repave Clingmans Dome Trail. We need to do better. It will be hard to do better in this budget environment. So this is an innovative way to help the parks do better. Sixty percent of this fund will go to maintenance backlogs. Forty percent of this fund will supplement the annual operating deficits at the parks. This program will terminate in 2016. Parallel legislation has already been introduced in the House of Representatives, including Congressman Jimmy Duncan. I hope Congress will move quickly to address this critical need of our national parks. Our national parks are national treasures. They are a part of our heritage, a part of who we are as Americans. We need to take care of these parks so that they are still there, in all their glory, and still accessible for many generations to come.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, today I am introducing the ``American History Achievement Act'' and am pleased to be joined in this effort by the senior Senator from Massachusetts. This is part of my effort to put the teaching of American history and civics back in its rightful place in our schools so our children can grow up learning what it means to be an American. The ``American History Achievement Act'' gives the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) the authority to administer a ten State pilot study of the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) test in U.S. history in 2006. They already have that authority for reading, math, science, and writing. The bill also includes a new provision that would permit a 10-state pilot study for the Civics NAEP test if funding is available. This modest bill provides for improved testing of American history so that we can determine where history is being taught well--and where it is being taught poorly--so that improvements can be made. We also know that when testing is focused on a specific subject, states and school districts are more likely to step up to the challenge and improve performance. We could certainly use improvement in the teaching of American history. According to the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), commonly referred to as the ``Nation's Report Card,'' fewer students have just a basic understanding of American history than have a basic understanding of any other subject which we test--including math, science, and reading. When you look at the national report card, American history is our children's worst subject. Yet, according to recent poll results, the exact opposite outcome is desired by the American people. Hart-Teeter conducted a poll last year of 1300 adults for the Educational Testing Service (ETS), where they asked what the principal goal of education should be. The top response was ``producing literate, educated citizens who can participate in our democracy.'' Twenty-six percent of respondents felt that should be our principal goal. ``Teach basics: math, reading, writing'' was selected by only 15 percent as the principal goal of education. You can't be an educated participant in our democracy if you don't know our history. Our children don't know American history because they are not being taught it. For example, the state of Florida recently passed a bill permitting high school students to graduate without taking a course in U.S. history. And when our children are being taught our history, they're not learning what's most important. According to Harvard scholar Samuel Huntington, ``A 1987 study of high school students found that more knew who Harriet Tubman was than knew that Washington commanded the American army in the Revolution or that Abraham Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation.'' Now I'm all for teaching about the history of the Underground Railroad--my ancestor, the Reverend John Rankin, like Harriet Tubman, was a conductor on the Underground Railroad--but surely children ought to learn first about the most critical leaders and events in the Revolution and the Civil War. Let me give a few examples of just how bad things have gotten: The 4th grade NAEP test asks students to identify the following passage: ``We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. . . .'' Students were given four choices for the source of that passage: (a) Constitution, (b) Mayflower Compact, (c) Declaration of Independence, and (d) Article of the Confederation. Only 46 percent of students answered correctly that it came from the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration is the fundamental document for the founding of our Nation, but less than half the students could identify that famous passage from it. The 8th grade test asks students to ``Imagine you could use a time machine to visit the past. You have landed in Philadelphia in the summer of 1776. Describe an important event that is happening.'' Nearly half the students--46 percent were not able to answer the question correctly that the Declaration of Independence was being signed. They must wonder why the Fourth of July is Independence Day. We can't allow this to continue. Our children are growing up without even learning the basics of our Nation's history. Something has to be done. This legislation aims to help in that effort. The pilot program authorized in the bill should collect enough data to attain a state-by-state comparison of 8th and 12th grades student's knowledge and understanding of U.S. history. That data will allow us to know which States are doing a better job of teaching American history and allow other States to model their programs on those that are working well. It will also put a spotlight on American history that should encourage States and school districts to improve their efforts at teaching the subject. I suspect that the pilot program will tell us that history programs like those of the House Page School, right here on Capitol Hill, are the model to follow. On January 25, the College Board announced that the House page school ranked first in the Nation among institutions with fewer than 500 pupils for the percentage of the student body who achieved college-level mastery on the advanced placement exam in U.S. history. The page school achieved this result not only by teaching American history, but also because teachers highlight American history in all of their classes--from science to literature--as well as taking students on field trips around the Washington area, from Monticello to the American History Museum here in Washington, to historical sites in Philadelphia. The House Page School's success is evidence that we can succeed in teaching our children the history of this great Nation. I suspect we will uncover more effective models for the teaching of American history with the enactment of this legislation. Our children are growing up ignorant of our Nation's history. Yet a recent poll tells us that Americans believe the principal goal of education is ``producing literate, educated citizens who can participate in our democracy.'' It is time to put the teaching of American history and civics back in its rightful place in our schools so our children can grow up learning what it means to be an American. This bill takes us one step closer to achieving that noble goal. I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, today I am introducing the ``American History Achievement Act'' and am pleased to be joined in this effort by the senior Senator from Massachusetts. This is part of my effort to put the teaching of American history and civics back in its rightful place in our schools so our children can grow up learning what it means to be an American. The ``American History Achievement Act'' gives the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) the authority to administer a ten State pilot study of the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) test in U.S. history in 2006. They already have that authority for reading, math, science, and writing. The bill also includes a new provision that would permit a 10-state pilot study for the Civics NAEP test if funding is available. This modest bill provides for improved testing of American history so that we can determine where history is being taught well--and where it is being taught poorly--so that improvements can be made. We also know that when testing is focused on a specific subject, states and school districts are more likely to step up to the challenge and improve performance. We could certainly use improvement in the teaching of American history. According to the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), commonly referred to as the ``Nation's Report Card,'' fewer students have just a basic understanding of American history than have a basic understanding of any other subject which we test--including math, science, and reading. When you look at the national report card, American history is our children's worst subject. Yet, according to recent poll results, the exact opposite outcome is desired by the American people. Hart-Teeter conducted a poll last year of 1300 adults for the Educational Testing Service (ETS), where they asked what the principal goal of education should be. The top response was ``producing literate, educated citizens who can participate in our democracy.'' Twenty-six percent of respondents felt that should be our principal goal. ``Teach basics: math, reading, writing'' was selected by only 15 percent as the principal goal of education. You can't be an educated participant in our democracy if you don't know our history. Our children don't know American history because they are not being taught it. For example, the state of Florida recently passed a bill permitting high school students to graduate without taking a course in U.S. history. And when our children are being taught our history, they're not learning what's most important. According to Harvard scholar Samuel Huntington, ``A 1987 study of high school students found that more knew who Harriet Tubman was than knew that Washington commanded the American army in the Revolution or that Abraham Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation.'' Now I'm all for teaching about the history of the Underground Railroad--my ancestor, the Reverend John Rankin, like Harriet Tubman, was a conductor on the Underground Railroad--but surely children ought to learn first about the most critical leaders and events in the Revolution and the Civil War. Let me give a few examples of just how bad things have gotten: The 4th grade NAEP test asks students to identify the following passage: ``We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. . . .'' Students were given four choices for the source of that passage: (a) Constitution, (b) Mayflower Compact, (c) Declaration of Independence, and (d) Article of the Confederation. Only 46 percent of students answered correctly that it came from the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration is the fundamental document for the founding of our Nation, but less than half the students could identify that famous passage from it. The 8th grade test asks students to ``Imagine you could use a time machine to visit the past. You have landed in Philadelphia in the summer of 1776. Describe an important event that is happening.'' Nearly half the students--46 percent were not able to answer the question correctly that the Declaration of Independence was being signed. They must wonder why the Fourth of July is Independence Day. We can't allow this to continue. Our children are growing up without even learning the basics of our Nation's history. Something has to be done. This legislation aims to help in that effort. The pilot program authorized in the bill should collect enough data to attain a state-by-state comparison of 8th and 12th grades student's knowledge and understanding of U.S. history. That data will allow us to know which States are doing a better job of teaching American history and allow other States to model their programs on those that are working well. It will also put a spotlight on American history that should encourage States and school districts to improve their efforts at teaching the subject. I suspect that the pilot program will tell us that history programs like those of the House Page School, right here on Capitol Hill, are the model to follow. On January 25, the College Board announced that the House page school ranked first in the Nation among institutions with fewer than 500 pupils for the percentage of the student body who achieved college-level mastery on the advanced placement exam in U.S. history. The page school achieved this result not only by teaching American history, but also because teachers highlight American history in all of their classes--from science to literature--as well as taking students on field trips around the Washington area, from Monticello to the American History Museum here in Washington, to historical sites in Philadelphia. The House Page School's success is evidence that we can succeed in teaching our children the history of this great Nation. I suspect we will uncover more effective models for the teaching of American history with the enactment of this legislation. Our children are growing up ignorant of our Nation's history. Yet a recent poll tells us that Americans believe the principal goal of education is ``producing literate, educated citizens who can participate in our democracy.'' It is time to put the teaching of American history and civics back in its rightful place in our schools so our children can grow up learning what it means to be an American. This bill takes us one step closer to achieving that noble goal. I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Colorado. In fact, I rise to discuss an individual who the Senator from Colorado and I met when we were part of a bipartisan delegation led by the Democratic leader, Harry Reid, a couple of weeks ago. On that trip, we visited a number of countries--Kuwait, Iraq, Israel, France, Georgia, Ukraine, and the Palestinian territory. We saw a number of emerging democracies. It made me think of what our own country might have been like more than 200 years ago. We visited with two men who were named Prime Minister and Speaker of the Iraqi Parliament a week later. In Georgia, we saw the young government. Many of them were educated here in the United States as students. When we went to Ukraine, we met Mr. Yuschenko and some of the students who had been part of this revolution. What we saw was very impressive, as were those people we were introduced to. But from my way of thinking, there was no one more impressive than the Finance Minister of the Palestinian Authority, Salam Fayyad, who instituted a number of reforms to fight corruption and bring transparency to the finances of that Authority. This remarkable individual was born Palestinian, and his family fled the West Bank for Jordan in 1968. He studied at the American University in Beirut. He later received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Texas at Austin. He worked for the Federal Reserve in St. Louis and the International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC. He became the IMF representative to the Palestinian Authority and moved to Jerusalem in 1995. Then, in 2002, he was named Finance Minister of the Palestinian Authority. What is remarkable is that all of us either know or suspect that when Arafat was in power, there was gross corruption with the moneys that came into Palestine. Mr. Fayyad has done the following things: He centralized control of the Palestinian Authority's finances. Previously, agencies had collected the money and kept it. That meant, for example, that education was poorly funded since it collected little money. Mr. Fayyad forced all the incoming funds to be put into the general treasury and disbursed by the Finance Minister. The next thing he did was direct deposits for Palestinian security forces. Previously, money was given in plastic bags to commanders for them to distribute. Obviously, this led to what might generously be called a lot of mismanagement of those funds. Now soldiers are much happier because they get their pay on time, and the government is sure the money is going where it should. The soldiers and the government both know the money is not going to somebody who didn't earn it. Public budgeting: He issued the first publicly detailed budget for the Authority, which totaled about $1.28 billion. The Ministry now issues public monthly reports of the government's financial status. Eliminating graft: Due to his efforts, revenue of the Palestinian Authority is up from $45 million to $75 million, largely because money that was skimmed off the top in the past is going into the treasury where it belongs. I am not just saying this today because I want to give a pat on the back to Mr. Fayyad, who, in taking these steps, has shown a great deal of courage. I am sure there are a good number of people in the Palestinian territory who were skimming money off the top before who are not going to be happy with him now. I am bringing this up today because it has to do with a vote we are about to take here in the Senate. The bill before us, the supplemental appropriations bill, provides $200 million of the President's request for aid to the Palestinian territories. There is another $150 million in the normal budgeting process. Unlike the House version of this supplemental appropriations bill, our version--the Senate version as it is coming to us--preserves the President's waiver authority that would allow him to designate a portion of those funds as he sees fit by the use of the Palestinian Authority. I believe that policy--the Senate policy--is the right policy. In other words, our policy would permit our President, President Bush, to decide that Mr. Fayyad and the government of the Palestinian Authority could properly spend this money. Some people are saying they stole money over there before. Yes they did. Yasser Arafat is dead and buried. It is time to make a new start. The Finance Minister has made great strides to ensure that funds are publicly accountable. We will be able to keep track of where our taxpayer money goes. The Palestinian Authority needs some money. There is no poorer part of the world than the Gaza Strip. Someone has to provide security in the Gaza Strip. We look to the Palestinian Authority to do that if the Israelis pull out. Someone has to provide a social services safety net for these poor people so they are not tempted to join with the terrorists. We look to the Palestinian Authority to do that. Why in the world would we keep our President from making the decision that would give the money to the Palestinian Authority, which is the group we are counting on to provide security and to provide the social safety net? Nongovernment agriculture organizations can provide valuable help in support of what the Palestinian Authority is doing. If we are going to do business with the Palestinian Authority, and are going to expect them to be accountable for keeping things safe and providing a basic level of social services so people are able to eat, we should deal directly with them. At the very least we should give the President of the United States the authority, as the Senate bill does, to deal directly with the Palestinian Authority. I am happy with what our Committee on Appropriations has done. I disagree with what the House of Representatives has done, and I suppose the matter will go to conference. I hope in the conference the Senators will insist on the Senate provision, and I hope our House Members will see the wisdom of giving our President the discretion to give the money to the Government that we are going to hold accountable. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I know the Senator from Maryland has worked hard on this need, as well as the Senator from Idaho, and there are other Senators who feel deeply we ought to deal with immigration. Most of us have been to Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan. We know what this bill is about. This bill is about whether the National Guard men and women from Tennessee have sufficient armor when they go into a combat zone. This bill is about whether we are going to get some money to the new Palestinian Authority in time for them to be a success so we can begin to have the hope of peace in the Middle East. This bill is about whether we are going to fully fund a building in Baghdad for our thousands of Americans who are there so that they do not have to live in trailers and live in a more dangerous situation than most Americans outside of this country live in today in the world. This bill is about whether our combat men and women have rifles that are sufficiently modern to defend themselves. This bill is about whether we have safe trucks. Eight hundred of them convoy from Kuwait City to Baghdad every day, carrying supplies to our men and women. This bill is about whether we have helmets for our combat men and women. We should not be slowing it down. It is amazing to me that we would slow down a bill to support the men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan, 40 percent of whom have left their mortgages, left their homes, left their children, left their jobs. They are dealing with all the issues we have to deal with from half a world away. Plus they are being shot at, and some of them are being killed. We are slowing it down because we have failed to address one of the single most important issues facing our country, and so we come up in the middle of a debate about whether to support our troops and say, okay, let us stop for a few weeks and argue about immigration. For Heaven's sake, we should pass the bill to support our troops immediately. We agree with it. We all support it. We support them. We all agree with it. Then we should get about the business of dealing with the point of the Senator from Maryland, and the proposal of the Senator from Idaho, and the work Senator Kyl and Senator Cornyn are doing. This is a country that is unified by a few principles, our country, the United States of America. We are not unified by our race or by our ethnicity or anything else such as that. Among those principles is the rule of law. We go all around the world meddling in other people's business, preaching about the rule of law, yet we have 10 to 15 million people living here who violate the law by being here. We should not tolerate that, and we should be embarrassed as a Congress that we have failed to deal with it. This is not a problem Tulsa can deal with or Nashville can deal with. This is a flat out responsibility of the Congress to solve, and we should solve it. We are dumping on the backs of local communities the cost for schools to educate people who are illegally here. Ten years ago in the schools of southern California, a third of the children in the largest school district in California were here illegally. Somebody has to pay for that. Emergency rooms in hospitals have many people there who are here illegally. That is straining the budgets of cities and states. So here we are in the middle of a debate about how quickly we can support our military effort, and somebody over in the House of Representatives attaches a bill that might make some sense but--No. 1, it slows down our bill for the troops, and No. 2, it probably imposes upon states a big unfunded Federal mandate which most of the people on this side of the aisle were elected to stop. I mean there are 190 million state driver's licenses. What the House provision would do is say we are going to turn the state driver's license examiners into CIA agents so they can go around and check and see whether we have any terrorists coming in, and then we are going to make them pay for it as well. Here is one more unfunded mandate. Then the third thing we are doing, and we have not even considered through our committees whether this is the best way to do it, is determining if we are going to have in effect a national identification card. In fact, that is what the REAL ID Program is. It is a national identification card. They say it is not, but what else is it? We have taken an ineffective national identification card, the driver's license--I have mine right here. We have taken an ineffective national identification card, and we are trying to turn it into an effective one. We know it is ineffective because we know that the terrorists in 9/11 all had driver's licenses. I know it because mine expired in 2000, and every time I hand it over at the airport they never turn it over to see if it was renewed to the year 2005. We have an ineffective identification card, and the House wants us, without going to a single committee, to pass a big unfunded mandate, slow down help for the troops, and pass an unfunded national identification card. That is what we are being asked to do here, and I don't think we should do it. That is not the right way to go about it. I fully support the idea of allowing the Democratic and Republican leadership to agree on a certain time soon where we address this massive challenge to our credibility as a nation, as a nation of the rule of law, and where we create an immigration system we can be proud of. For me, that means a generous program to allow people to come here and work legally, and then we enforce the law. For me, that means we do not have a double system where we have 500,000 or a million people who stand in line to get in, and then we have another million people who break the line to get in. That is not right. We also need to address questions about whether we are going to continue to require people who apply for student visas to say when they apply that they never intend to live here. Of course, many of them do and we want many of them to. Do we not want the brightest scientists in China or India to come to the University of Alabama or Tennessee and then stay here and create jobs to keep our standard of living up? We are getting more competition from those other countries for these bright people. We need to look at that. Then we need to look at enforcement. But this is not the way to do business here. I strongly support the Cornyn resolution. I do not want to see the REAL ID legislation or any other immigration legislation slow down money for the troops, put an unfunded mandate on state and local governments, and prematurely, without careful, comprehensive consideration, try to deal on this floor with one of the greatest issues we have to face. We should pass the Cornyn resolution. We should pass the bill supporting the troops. Then we should set aside a specific time, face up to it, and do our job of reforming the immigration laws.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I am the Senator from Tennessee, and we know something about country music in our State. There is an old country music song with the line that goes something like this: There is light at the end of the tunnel and I hope it ain't no train. I am beginning to think it is a train and that there is not much way to avoid a train wreck. The train wreck I am talking about is a threat by the minority to ``shut the Senate down in every way'' if the majority adopts rules that will do what the Senate has done for 200 years, which is to vote up or down the President's appellate judicial nominees. Until recently, not to vote at all on a President's judicial nominee was unimaginable. Take the case of Clarence Thomas in 1991: The first President Bush nominated him to the Supreme Court of the United States. I haven't seen any debate in this body with as much passion in it as the Thomas nomination. But he was nominated in July, the Senate voted in October 52 to 48, and it was done. Yet, in the last session of Congress, for some reason that escapes me, the minority felt it had to use the filibuster to deny an up-and-down vote 10 times on 52 of the President's appellate judicial nominees. That has never happened before. There are a lot of ingenious arguments being made on the other side, but that has never happened. Some people mention Abe Fortas in 1968--I was here then; I was working for Howard Baker in the Senate. The votes against Fortas were in the majority. But even if you give that to the other side, neither party has ever used the tactic of denying an up-or-down vote on judicial nominees in 200 years. The argument that the Senate doesn't have the power to change this procedure would get thrown out of court in a summary judgment. From 1789 when the Senate first met and adopted its rules by majority vote, it has adopted its rules by majority vote as the Constitution provides. The nominees who the President put up who were rejected were badly abused. Charles Pickering, from Mississippi, was accused of not being sensitive to civil rights. In 1967, he put his children into desegregated schools in the middle of Mississippi. He testified in court against the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, who was described by Time Magazine as the most evil terrorist in America. Bill Pryor, not sensitive on civil rights? Too conservative? Bill Pryor was law clerk to John Minor Wisdom in New Orleans, as the Presiding Officer knows, perhaps the leading civil rights judge in the South during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, and Bill Pryor has repeatedly demonstrated he can separate his views from his judicial judgments. Most recently he was part of the court--by his recess appointment--that rejected an appeal on the Terri Schiavo case. I don't know how he felt personally about it, but he felt under the law there was no recourse in Federal courts. Chairman Arlen Specter has sent a certain memorandum around to Members asking us to look at Priscilla Owen's real views on Roe v. Wade. She hasn't said she wants to overturn Roe v. Wade. The question is not whether the Senate has the power to adopt the rules by majority vote--it unquestionably does; that is common sense-- but whether we should. I am one of the Republicans who believe such a rules change is not a good idea--not good for the Senate, not for the country, not for Republicans, and not for Democrats. The Senate needs a body that by its procedures gives unusual protection to minority rights. Tocqueville, in the early 19th century, warned of the tyranny of the majority. In South Africa we saw a political miracle when the new Black majority respected the property rights of the White minority. In 1967, when I came here--and I see the Republican whip here; he came about a year or two later--the Republicans were the ones worrying about protecting minority rights. There were 64 Democrats and 36 Republicans then. There were 38 Republicans in 1977 when I came back working with Howard Baker, and in 1979, when Senator Byrd eloquently argued the majority could make Senate rules, there were only 41 Republicans, so the Republicans were worrying about minority rights. But minority rights can also be abused. Remember what the filibuster was used for in the 1930s, the 1940s, the 1950s, and the 1960s. The filibuster was used to deny Black Americans the right to vote. It was used to keep the poll tax. It was used to stop a Federal anti-lynching law. It was used to keep African Americans from sitting down and having lunch in Nashville. So the filibuster can also be an abuse of minority rights. It is not my job to advise the Democrats, and I wouldn't presume to do it, but I believe it is a mistake for the Democrats to provoke a rules change, and I believe it is a bigger mistake, as they have threatened, to ``shut down the Senate,'' when it happens. Last month, three dozen Democrats stood on the steps of the Capitol and basically threatened to do that. On December 13, in the Washington Post, the Senator from New York, Mr. Schumer, said that the use of the nuclear option would ``make the Senate look like a banana republic . . . and cause us to try to shut it down in every way.'' Consider what the Senator from New York is saying. Not only will the minority not allow a vote on judges up or down in a country where the rule of law is of paramount concern, but they will shut the Senate down in every way at a time when natural gas prices are at $7, shut the Senate down in every way at a time when oil prices and prices at the pump are at record levels, shut the Senate down in every way when there is a Federal deficit that needs to be brought under control, shut the Senate down in every way when the immigration laws need fixing, and shut the Senate down in every way while we are at war. I don't believe the American people like the idea of Washington politicians threatening to shut the Senate down in every way. As I remember, the last prominent political leader who said something like that was my friend, Newt Gingrich, 10 years ago. It backfired, and he was out of office in about a year. The people expect us to go do work, to do our jobs. They expect us to vote on judges, to lower natural gas prices, to reduce the deficit, to fix the immigration laws, and to win the war on terror. We cannot do it if part of the Senate wants to shut the Senate down in every way. Our Senate leader, Bill Frist, has been working hard to avoid this train wreck. I still hope we can avoid it. I believe my colleagues in this body know the enormous respect I have for the new Democratic leader, Harry Reid. He and I worked together on American history. I had the privilege of being with him in a delegation for 8 days in Palestine, Israel, Iraq, Kuwait, Georgia, Ukraine, and France, and not once in those 8 days did the Democratic leader undercut the policies of the President of the United States. He conveyed the U.S. position. I am not surprised by that. That is the way it should be. But I am impressed by that. I am impressed by the Democratic leader. I am convinced he and the majority leader can make this Senate do its job if given the chance. We need to avoid this train wreck if there is a way to do it. Twice I have offered in the Senate my suggestion about how I as one Senator could do it. I said 2 years ago that I would give up my right to filibuster a President's nominee for an appellate judgeship even if it were President Kerry or President Clinton or President Reid or any other Democrat. I might vote against that nominee, but I would never filibuster as long as I were a Senator. Now, if six Democrat Senators and six Republican Senators would say the same thing, then there would be no need for a rules change, and there would be no need for a train wreck. All we need are six Democrat Senators and six Republican Senators who believe there ought to be up- or-down votes regardless of the President's party and who believe it would be wrong to shut the Senate down. The right thing to do is to have an up-or-down vote on any of the President's Federal appellate judicial nominees. That has been the way we have done it for 200 years. The wrong thing to do is to shut the Senate down in every way. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 20 minutes.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I see my friend from Oregon here. I ask unanimous consent to speak a little bit longer than 10 minutes if that would not inconvenience him, or would he like to go?

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I have three or four comments I want to make this morning. Most importantly, I want to say a word about the new leadership in Iraq. In a delegation led by the Democratic leader, Senator Reid of Nevada, seven of us were in Iraq, in Baghdad, about 10 days ago. We met with two of the three new leaders who have been chosen. Mr. al-Hasani, the new speaker, a Sunni, spent some time with us. We spent an hour with Dr. al-Jaafari who, just an hour ago, was named the new Prime Minister of Iraq, and who will be the most important leader we will be dealing with. I believe our delegation was one of the first from the Senate to spend that much time with the new leader of Iraq. I want to report that I was most impressed with what we saw there. We met a man in his late fifties, who had been in exile from Iraq for a number of years because of the brutality of Saddam Hussein. He is a physician. It seems as though physicians are ascending in all sorts of different places, including in the U.S. Senate and in Iraq. He is a well-educated man and conducted our discussion in English. He showed in his presence a great deal of calm. He is not a quiet man, but he is a calm man who seems to know exactly what he believes and what he thinks. I was taken with the fact that he began his discussion with us with about a 5-minute monolog about the brutality of Saddam Hussein. He said he was ``worse than Hitler, worse than Stalin.'' Those were his words. He said Hussein had murdered a million people in 35 years. In his words, al-Jaafari said ``he had buried 300,000 people alive.'' He said that quietly, but he obviously feels that very deeply. Second, I was most impressed with his understanding of U.S. history. We talked about the difficulty of creating a democracy and how we are expecting them to create a constitution by August. In our situation, years ago, it took us 12 years from the time of the Declaration of Independence to the time of our Constitution. Our Founders locked the news media out for 6 months while they did that. Today, we are expecting the Iraqis to come together--people of different backgrounds--and have a constitution by August, while we watch and criticize on 24/7 television everything they do. He has a good understanding of U.S. history and, I thought, a great appreciation for democracy and freedom. He showed not only no resentment about the American presence in Iraq, he showed great gratitude for the American presence in Iraq. He wants us to stay there for a while, so that there is enough security for their constitutional government to form. He seemed very comfortable with that. Finally, he is a brave man--brave during exile, brave today. There may be only a few thousand people in Iraq--a country the size of California with 25 million people--who are causing all the trouble, but they are making it a dangerous place to be. Even the Green Zone and the areas around it are not entirely safe. So we have a sophisticated, English-speaking, well-educated, U.S.- history-knowing, brave man, who is the new leader of Iraq, a man who is grateful for the American presence and who is determined to help create a democracy. I congratulate the Iraqi people on the substantial achievement. Also, Mr. al-Hasani, the new speaker, a Sunni--the new Prime Minister is a Shiite--was very impressive to us in the Senate delegation. He, as well as the Prime Minister, wore western clothing in these meetings. I say this as a fact, not as a judgment. Mr. al-Hasani was educated in the U.S. at two major universities. He lived in Los Angeles during his exile. He created a business in Los Angeles. He went back to Iraq to help create a new democracy. He is also a sophisticated person with a strong knowledge of freedom and democracy, a strong appreciation of the United States, and he is also a brave man to be undertaking this. I congratulate the Iraqis for that.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I would like to now praise the pages. I could say good words about the Senate pages and I will. I wanted to especially praise the House page school--and I hope the Senate pages will excuse me for doing that. Madam President, my good friend, Alex Haley, the author of ``Roots,'' used to say, ``Find the good and praise it.'' Those words are engraved on his tombstone. When he wrote the story of Kunta Kinte, he minced no words in describing the terrible injustices his ancestors overcame, but he also acknowledged their courage and perseverance. Since I joined this body, I have made improving the teaching of American history one of my top priorities. I have noted some deeply disturbing statistics about students' knowledge of our past. For example, of all the subjects tested by the National Assessment for Education Progress, also known as our Nation's report card, American history is our children's worst subject. But today I am here to follow Alex Haley's advice to find the good and praise it. When it comes to teaching American history, some of the best news can be found right here on Capitol Hill. On January 25, the College Board announced that the House page school ranked first in the Nation among institutions with fewer than 500 pupils for the percentage of the student body who achieve college-level mastery on the advanced placement exam in U.S. history. Twenty-one students, or about one-third of the school's student body, took the exam, and 18 received the required score of 3 or above to demonstrate mastery of the subject. A number of Senate pages also take the AP U.S. history exam. Madam President, 12 students in the current class of 29 in the Senate page school will take 22 different AP exams this year. Eleven will take the U.S. history exam. But results for the Senate pages are not collectively known in the same way we know them in the House, and that is because the Senate Page School is only half the size of the House school. Senate pages register for the exam under their home high school name, rather than as a student at the page school. But based on what she hears from students, Principal Kathryn Weeden believes Senate pages score very well, but no complete tabulation of scores is available, as is with the House. House pages attend classes in the attic of the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress. They are perched atop one the largest collections of historical documents about our country. But location alone cannot account for their great success. The House Page School puts a strong emphasis on social studies and American history. Students take American history with Sebastian Hobson and Ron Weitzel, a House Page School teacher of 21 years who will retire this year. Surely, much of the credit belongs to Mr. Hobson and Mr. Weitzel. But students also find a focus on American history in their work with other teachers. On Saturdays, students participate in the Washington Seminar, a program that explores American Government and history here in the District of Columbia. Math teacher Barbara Bowen, who is something of an expert on Presidents Jefferson and Washington, takes students to Monticello and Mount Vernon. Computer and technology teacher Darryl Gonzalez takes students to Fort McHenry and the American History Museum. Science teacher Walt Cuirle includes the history of U.S. energy policy when he teaches his class on energy. Mr. Cuirle also takes students to Philadelphia for the Benjamin Franklin portion of the school's Washington seminar. Most students take English teacher Lona Klein's course on American literature, which has to include history as they read literature from the Puritans, the Enlightenment, and the slave rebellions. She also leads a field trip to Annapolis to see the State house and the Naval Academy. Principal Linda Miranda has made the teaching of American history a priority at the House Page School, and it shows. It is no wonder the school has received this recognition from the College Board, which administers the advanced placement exams across the country. Ms. Miranda credits the outstanding quality of the students who are selected as House pages and her faculty, whom she calls ``Renaissance men and women.'' There is no question this has been a team effort at the House Page School, but I know good leadership starts at the top. So I salute Linda Miranda, her faculty, and the students at the House Page School. I hope their success may be an example to schools across the country as to how we can restore the teaching of American history to its rightful place in our schools so our children grow up learning what it means to be an American. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I will ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article I wrote, which appeared in the Legal Times for the week of April 4, entitled ``Free the People's Choice.'' This involves a piece of legislation that Senators Pryor and Nelson on the other side of the aisle and Senators Cornyn and Kyl on this side of the aisle and I have introduced, which would make it possible for newly elected Governors and mayors and legislatures to do what they were elected to do and be free from outdated consent decrees their predecessors may have agreed to, and which exist with the approval of the Federal courts. We have hundreds of outdated Federal court-approved consent decrees across America, which are running our education systems, foster care systems, Medicaid systems, and they make it impossible for democracy to flourish in the U.S., at a time when people are fighting and dying to give other people democracy in another part of the world. We have strong Democratic and Republican support in the Senate for this. In the House, I finished a meeting with the Republican whip, Roy Blunt, who with Congressman Cooper from Nashville, and all of the Democratic Congressmen from Tennessee, have introduced the same bill in the House. This piece of legislation would put term limits on Federal court consent decrees and cause them to be more narrowly drawn and do as the Supreme Court said they should do--get these issues back into the hands of the elected officials as soon as possible. This legislation has strong support, and I hope it will be moving through the Judiciary Committee in proper fashion. It is the No. 1 priority of the National Governors Association and National Association of Counties, and many others. We cannot expect States to control the growth of Medicaid spending if we do not allow them to make their own decisions. We need to get flexibility from our laws, and we need to get the courts to step aside and let elected officials make policy decisions. I ask unanimous consent that this article be printed in the Record.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum and ask that the time be equally charged.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I join my colleague, the majority leader, in saying a word about Pat Summitt. I am delighted the majority leader scheduled time for this discussion of Pat Summitt and submitted the resolution, which I am proud to cosponsor. There are a great many superlatives one could offer about Coach Summitt. Perhaps the most obvious is sustained excellence over such a long period of time--as the majority leader said, 16 Final Four appearances, three back-to-back national titles, 107 NCAA tournament games, virtually undefeated on the floor of the Thompson-Boling Arena, which is now renamed The Summitt in her honor, always playing the toughest schedule, always high expectations. I was president of the University of Tennessee for nearly 3 years. I remember going to a year-end Lady Vols basketball banquet because I remember the team had won the Southeastern Conference Championship and did not make the Final Four. Pat Summitt congratulated the players, but I remember the atmosphere was more like a funeral than a celebration because, obviously, the team did not meet the expectations Coach Summitt had for her players. We live in a society of televised images in which we meet a steady stream of people who are at the top of their game for 15 minutes or for a few months or for a few years. But for Pat Summitt, it has been 31 years at the top of her game, and there is no end in sight. There are a couple of other less obvious superlatives about Coach Summitt. One of these is unselfishness. The coaches whom she regularly defeats will tell you, to a woman or a man, that no one has done more to build the game of women's basketball than Pat Summitt. When she started, there were three girls at each end of the court playing in an empty gym. Today it is my favorite game to watch on television because of the skill of the players, because of the team play, because of the good coaching, and now because of the parity of the sport. There are a lot of good teams, a lot of good coaches, and many of them are former assistants to Pat Summitt. It seems she always has a good word to say about this program or that program, this opponent or that opponent. Her objective is to build the game up as much as it is to win the game. The final superlative is Pat Summitt's emphasis on academic achievement. Every young woman who has ever played for her over 31 years has either graduated or is working today on the requirements for graduation. That is almost as difficult as winning back-to-back NCAA championships. It certainly sets the right tone for college sports. I know how proud I was as a university president to have that most visible symbol of our university have such high values. It is mentioned at all the games, people see it all the time. It is a superlative achievement. This past year, Nicky Anosike, one of eight children of a mother from Nigeria now living in the United States, became a sudden star at the University of Tennessee as a freshman. There were six great recruits said to be the best recruiting class ever in the history of this country. Four of them were hurt. Nicky Anosike was not hurt, and she suddenly became a starter on the team and one of its best starters. Some people say she is a female Scottie Pippen at the top of his game. As I suspect happens with many of Pat's freshman students, Nicky Anosike called home the next few weeks discussing with her mother how difficult it was to play for Pat Summitt because she demanded so much. Her mother said: What does she expect of you that I did not expect of you? That is the reason why I believe parents and young women want those young women to go to the University of Tennessee to play for Pat Summitt when they might be admitted to any school in the country. It is that for 31 years, Pat Summitt has brought out the best in those young women.