Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of the following postal naming bills which have been received from the House en bloc: H.R. 5364, H.R. 4968, H.R. 4847, H.R. 4829, H.R. 4807, H.R. 4232, H.R. 480, and H.R. 5370.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I have a few words before we adjourn for the holidays. This isn't the first year that there will be a lot of empty places at our holiday dinner tables. Even if our own table doesn't have a missing spot, we know a neighbor or a friend whose brother, mother, or husband is away fighting to keep us safe at home. These empty places remind us of the generations of men an women who have sacrificed to keep us free so that we can, in freedom, celebrate those holidays that are important to each of us. Today I rise to honor the service of the family of Arles Greene of Hendersonville, TN. Arles's family has a lot of empty places around their dinner table in the Second World War. Arles's father Eugene W. Greene, his uncle William Edwin McDavid and friend Ed Gallbreath, Jr., all served some 60 years ago. Ed Galbreath, Jr., a friend of Arles's family, joined the Air Force in February 1944, during his senior year of high school. He flew 23\1/ 2\ missions as a gunman, operated a VHF radio, and worked the radar jammers. He survived four crashes. In his last crash, out of a B-24 Tiger Shark, he landed in Berlin where he was taken prisoner. He spent months in confinement with some 6,000 other prisoners of war until he was liberated by the Russian Army. For his bravery, Sergeant Galbreath received many awards, including the Air Medal with three Oak Leaf Clusters, the Purple Heart, the P.O.W. Medal, and the Parachute Club Medal. His understanding of those prisons shaped his many future contributions to his community of Goodlettsville, TN. In October of 1943, Arles's uncle, PVT William Edwin McDavid, left Moccasin Gap, Virginia, to serve in the 38th Infantry Division. Private McDavid was just 18 years old when he served in Normandy, the Rhineland, the Ardennes, and northern France. While fighting in the Battle of the Bulge on New Year's Eve of 1944, McDavid suffered frostbitten hands that ended his infantry career. Private McDavid's service and bravery was recognized with the award of a European-African Theatre Ribbon with four Bronze Battle Stars, a Bronze Star Medal, and a Purple Heart. Arles's father, Eugene Greene, began his career with the U.S. Army in July 1944. The oldest of 12 children, he enlisted at 18 years old with the Hancock County Draft Board. He served with the U.S. Army infantry, 2nd Division, 9th Regiment that assisted in the liberation of Nazi concentration camps in the spring of 1945. Greene and his unit liberated the death camps at Dachau. He remembers finding only 25 people alive at the sub-camp where he shot a lock off a prison gate setting them free. Those prisoners rushed to drink the milk of Holstein cattle pastured nearby. Eugene met General Patton shortly before his death. He says of Patton, ``He was over there to get a job done, and that's what he did.'' Eugene Greene returned with may memories of the war. Most of these he buried in the fields of his Tennessee farm, but some lived on--the faith he had in his fellow soldiers, in his family, and in God. I have had a lot to say about the importance of teaching American history and civics to help our children grow up understanding what it means to be an American. The teacher in me thinks of this tribute as an assignment. I hope when we gather around our holiday tables this season we pause to take stock, like Arles did, to answer what our own families have contributed to America's history and to answering the question of what it means to be an American. Thank you for allowing me to honor my friend Arles Greene and his family.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, as in executive session, I ask unanimous consent the injunction of secrecy be removed from the following revision transmitted to the Senate on December 7, 2004, by the President of the United States: 1995 Revision of Radio Regulations (Treaty Document No. 108-28). I further ask that the revision be considered as having been read the first time, that it be referred with accompanying papers to the Committee on Foreign Relations and ordered to be printed, and that the President's message be printed in the Record.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I salute the Senator from Virginia for his leadership on telecommunications policy. Over the last 2 years, I do not know any Senator in the Chamber, other than the Senator from Virginia, who has been more active, who has been better informed, and who has been more vigorous on the principles in which he believes. He was the leading Senator in advancing a compromise. It was his legislation, S. 150, which a number of us cosponsored, which the House has accepted, which has taken the next step in how we deal with the so- called Internet tax moratorium. I was glad to have a chance to hear his remarks today as he talked about that and as he looks to the future, and I would like to add my own thoughts because during this past 2 years we have had pretty vigorous debate as we have made our way toward a compromise. It has been a debate in the best traditions of the Senate. We have had it on the floor. On one occasion the Senator from Virginia and I took our points of view to a forum off campus, so to speak, went over to the Heritage Foundation and had a debate. In that debate, we actually learned some things from each other, which shows that when Senators debate and speak, we find some points of common agreement. I think that debate itself helped lead toward the compromise we have made. I believe the compromise, S. 150, of which Senator Allen is the principle sponsor, is important. No. 1, it is temporary, not permanent. This is a fast-moving technology and field. As Senator Allen pointed out in his remarks, the 1996 Telecommunications Act in some ways is obsolete today because high-speed Internet access, or broadband as we call it, was barely even known in 1996. It is no insult to the Members of the Senate to say I doubt if many Senators ever heard of it in 1996, because most Americans had not heard of high-speed Internet access. Very few people were using it. So the legislation did not contemplate this rapidly growing new technology we have. That is one reason why I felt in the debate that it was good to have a temporary, rather than a permanent, moratorium on what States may do about applying their taxes to Internet access so that the Commerce Committee of the Congress could consider a long-range permanent policy. S. 150, which has passed this year, this compromise, as the Senator from Virginia said, allows States to continue collecting taxes on the Internet and to continue to do so for 2 to 4 years, depending on the type of access. One other important thing it does is it makes clear that State and local governments can continue to collect taxes on telephone services even if telephone calls are made over the Internet. Now, that is a very important development. Most observers believe that certainly most businesses--and maybe most all of us--will soon be making our telephone calls over the Internet. That is a wonderful opportunity and a great advance. I believe there is general consensus among all of us who debated this issue over the last 2 years that in order to make sure that happens, the Government needs as much as possible to get out of the way. That means a different kind of regulation than we now have for what we call traditional telephone services, the plain old telephone. Where I was concerned about the legislation that was going through the Congress was not about whether we should lighten up on regulation-- I believe we should--the question was whether from Washington, DC, we should tell State and local governments that they may not apply the same sales taxes and other use taxes to telephone calls made over the Internet that they apply to other telephone services. We did not change that with the temporary legislation we passed this year, but it is bound to be a big subject of discussion in the new Congress. Now here is why it is so important: I believe gradually we are making it more difficult for State and local governments to do the things we want them to do. The Senator from Virginia and I are both former Governors. We know many of the things Americans want most from their government, they want from their State and local government. They do not want decisions made up here. So one of my goals is to make sure we do no harm to State and local governments while at the same time we are trying to make sure we do no harm to this exciting new technology, broadband, high-speed Internet access. My fear was we might unwittingly in this legislation stop Texas, Tennessee, or Florida, for example, States that have no State income tax, from using their sales tax on telecommunications services. Last year, Texas collected $1 billion on sales tax on telecommunications services. Florida collected about $1 billion. Tennessee, according to the Department of Revenue, collected $361 million on sales taxes on telecommunications services. Now, not all of that is threatened by telephone calls over the Internet that might not be subject to the same taxation, but gradually, and it may come very rapidly--actually, we hope it comes rapidly--and if people move to this new technology, make their telephone calls over the Internet, and suddenly the Texas State budget has a $1 billion hole in it or a $750 million hole or a $500 million hole, what do they do about it? Well, they raise tuitions at the University of Texas or University of Tennessee, they reduce services, or they raise other taxes. So my primary reason for becoming involved in the Internet tax debate, so-called, was to try to make sure we did not do here what I never did like when I was a Governor, which was to look up to Washington and see Members of Congress coming up with a good idea, passing it, taking credit for it, and sending the bill to me when I was Governor. I did not like that. My whole point was if we are going to stop States from collecting a source of revenue they are now collecting, then we should pay the bill from Washington. In other words, that is an unfunded Federal mandate, in my opinion. We did not get to that problem because we reached a compromise for now, but that is the debate coming up in the future. Will we take some action in the name of making it easier for high- speed Internet access that does real, serious harm to State and local governments by depriving them of billions of dollars of revenue, which in turn could cause the sales tax in Blunt County, TN, to go up, or the property tax to go up or, heaven forbid, Florida, Texas, or Tennessee to have to put in a new State income tax because Washington has told us we cannot have a sales tax on telecommunications services and we still like to have universities, parks, roads, and the other services States are supposed to provide. So now how do we go from where we are today, which Senator Allen has helped to craft a compromise we have all supported, and which is a very excellent piece of legislative work by him and by others, and what is the next step? He has offered a few suggestions about telecommunications in general. Let me reiterate a single suggestion I have about this specific issue about whether State and local governments will be permitted to tax telephone calls made over the Internet. I would like once more to encourage the Governors, the mayors, and the county executives to meet with the telecommunications industry and suggest to us in the Congress a way to do this. This is a highly technical subject. It has many moving parts. This is not the best place to come up with a complex reaction to a complex problem. We would like to see some options, or at least I would. The option I would like to see would have basically two parts. One would be lighten up the regulation on high-speed Internet access. There is a broad consensus about that. But do it in a way that does no harm to State and local governments, that does not have Senator Feinstein from California standing up in the back with letters from 130 cities and counties saying this could take away 5 to 15 percent of their local tax base. I do not think we need to go through that again. I think we need to find a way to do no harm to high-speed Internet access. Let it flourish. Let it grow. Let it move. And do no harm to State and local governments. Those are the principles. I understand there may be some discussions already beginning to go on and I want to encourage those, and I pledge I will work with Senator Allen and others in this Chamber and State and local governments and the telecommunications industry to try to get a commonsense exclusion so the technology can grow and so States can continue to have an adequate tax base to support universities, schools, and the other things we expect from State and local governments. The guidelines that I suggest for this discussion that I hope is being held outside the Halls of the Senate are, No. 1, separate the issue of taxation and regulation. Let's go ahead and figure out a way to lighten up regulation of high-speed Internet access. I think there is a broad consensus for that. Separate the issue of what do we do about the fact that States and local governments are depending on these revenues. What do we do about that? Second, I agree with the Senator from Virginia that our goal should be simplicity, simplicity both in regulation and in any rules about taxation. Finally, I believe that a goal should be, in addition to simplicity-- certainty. If you are in business, you want some certainty. If you are a State treasurer, you want some certainty. You have budgets to make up. So we need some certainty. We do not need a situation where thousands and thousands of local jurisdictions tax new telecommunications technology in such a confusing way that it creates uncertainty, litigation, and lots of paperwork and slows down the economy. We fail if we have that. In searching for simplicity, there is no need for us to create an unfunded Federal mandate that tells State and local governments they have to give up part of their tax base without reimbursing them for it. While we can debate it at another day, I do not believe that high- speed Internet access needs a Federal subsidy or State subsidy. It is the fastest growing new technology we have seen. It is growing faster than the cell phone did at this stage of its development. We are talking about an exciting new technology. We are talking about real dollars. We are talking about a bipartisan disagreement and a bipartisan consensus that we have been able to come to this year about what to do, at least temporarily. For those who say the Senate is not capable of working in a bipartisan way, I think they are wrong because we have had bipartisan agreement and we have disagreement, and we have had some bipartisan agreement. I see the Senator from New Hampshire is also in the Chamber, and the Senator from Delaware. I have some other remarks I would like to make, but I imagine they both would like to say something about this same subject. My further remarks have to do with other legislation. What I would like to do at this stage is to yield the floor in just a minute and listen to what they have to say, in the hopes that we may be advancing toward some consensus. Now that we have a consensus about what to do for the next 2 to 4 years, maybe we can take some steps about advancing toward a consensus about the future. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I say a few words about the legislation passed last night that we call IDEA, to help children with disabilities. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) which we have enacted is critical for the approximately 6.5 million children with special needs across the country, 125,000 of which I've in my home state of Tennessee. The bill makes a number of substantial reforms. I would like to highlight two that I think are particularly important: No. 1, the bill clarifies the definition of a highly qualified teacher, and No. 2, the bill also creates a seamless early childhood program for children from birth until school age. Research has shown that students taught by effective teachers greatly outperform those taught by ineffective teachers. That's why it is a priority for me to ensure that students have a highly qualified teacher in their classroom, especially special education students. I am grateful language was included to clarify for schools what the definition of a highly qualified teacher means. This is particularly important for the 6,037 Certified Special Education teachers employed by Tennessee's public schools, especially for middle and high school teachers. After the passage of No Child Left Behind, many middle and high school special ed teachers were concerned that they would have to become highly qualified in every subject--reading, math, history, science. The language in the Conference Report allows states to develop a Highly Objective Uniform State System of Evaluation, HOUSSE, for special ed teachers teaching multiple core subjects. Teachers can also be deemed highly qualified if they meet the educational requirements for each subject under NCLB test or degree. This important flexibility gives states more options to determine what makes a special education highly qualified so that we can keep veteran teachers in these classrooms and enable new teachers to become highly qualified and dedicate their careers to these special children. I am a strong supporter of early intervention to help children with special needs before they reach school age, so that when they enter school they can succeed. I'm pleased by the changes to the Part C early intervention program included in the conference report. This program has enabled millions of infants and toddlers with disabilities to enter school with the skills they need to learn, grow and prosper. The bill before us today makes two needed changes to Part C. First, it allows States to give parents the option of either (a) keeping a child in the Part C program until reaching school age, or (b) having their child transferred to the pre-school program at age three. This provides a comprehensive and fluid system of services for special needs children from birth to school age. Second, it provides incentive grants to States that choose to give parents that option. Under the conference report, 15% of appropriated funds in excess of $460 million for Part C will be dedicated to these incentive grants. In Tennessee, about 5,730 children participate in the Part C program. One of these children is Kaylie, a little girl who was born with Down Syndrome. The hospital referred her family to the Kiwanis Center for Child Development for services as part of the Part C early childhood program. At the Kiwanis Center, Kaylie receives physical, occupational, and speech therapy--there is even a therapeutic pool. She is provided with child care where she interacts with other children her age. All these services are provided through various federal and state programs, but the Part C program was the critical link that coordinated these programs so she can receive them all at one site. Kaylie was only 8 months old when I told this story at our Senate HELP Committee mark-up of this bill; today she's about two years old. Under the current Part C system, when Kaylie turns 3 she will no longer be able to continue to receive this seamless system of services at Kiwanis. She will have to attend the half-day pre-school program at the local elementary school. That date is fast approaching. But the changes included in this Conference Report, that we are about to ratify, will allow the state of Tennessee to give Kaylie's family the option to stay in the Part C program and continue receiving services at the Kiwanis Center until she goes to Kindergarten. Any fees that Kaylie's family currently pays they will continue to pay. If Kaylie's family would like her to attend the local public school for pre-school they still will have the opportunity to send her. We ought to give her parents that choice, and I'm grateful we're acting in time to make that possible. This is one more example of the Senate working in a bipartisan way. This is a complex bill. It affected 6.5 million children with special needs across this country, and 125,000 of them were in Tennessee. Again, I want to focus on two aspects of it, especially how it affects teachers and children and families all across the country. First, it clarifies the definition of a highly qualified teacher. That is important because of the No Child Left Behind Act. Second, it allows children with special needs who are receiving services in the community to continue to do that after age 3 all the way up to the time they enter school. Today, those children may be provided one service here and one service here and one service here. When they get to age 3, they suddenly have to go into a certain preschool program. This gives more parents more choices, more flexibility, and it is a great advantage. One very important aspect of the bill--it is the first thing I mentioned--is the definition of highly qualified teacher. This may not sound very important to people who aren't teachers with special needs children, but this has been a source of a lot of anxiety for teachers. In elementary schools, in early grades, teachers teach a lot of subjects. If you are certified to be an elementary school special needs teacher, then you can be a highly qualified teacher. But when you get to the middle school and high school level, you will be teaching special needs children in math, science, English, history, and geography. The original legislation said a special needs teacher in Shawnee, KS, or Fort Dodge, KS would have to be qualified in special needs in English, in math, in science, history, and geography. That is quite a burden for a special needs teacher in high school in some districts. This legislation creates some flexibility. It creates a way for States to look at this in a practical way, and says in middle schools and high schools across this country when teachers are teaching special needs children, we are going to come up with a commonsense way to make sure they are highly qualified because these children deserve that, too, but to take into account the reality. We are talking about maybe 100,000 teachers in the middle and high schools, maybe 15,000 or 20,000 schools. We have to be careful when we write a sentence about elementary and secondary education in America. We are not the national school board, or at least we shouldn't be. We need to make sure it is practical and realistic and gives as much flexibility as possible to communities and States to come up with what actually works with an individual child in an individual classroom. This is one disappointment I have with the bill. Senator Sessions from Alabama and I tried to change the effective date of the definition of a highly qualified teacher for middle and high school. We said it ought to be a year from now. But the majority felt this new requirement should go into effect in August of next year, which is 6 or 7 months from now. I think that is a mistake. What has to happen is the President has to sign this bill in December. Then the U.S. Department of Education has to interpret its regulations--that is January or February. Then the States have to come up with their new, flexible ways of determining what ``highly qualified teacher'' is. Then the teachers have to read it. They have to perhaps do some professional development. They have to become certified. And all of this has to be done by July or August. This is the kind of thing that does not build support for the No Child Left Behind Act. I think it very important that we remember while we may have a very good idea, we are not a national school board of the small school districts. This is a massive country with many different parts to it. We are dealing in this case with probably 100,000 teachers. Overall, this is a very important bill and I am delighted to be a part of it. I commend especially Senators Gregg and Kennedy for their leadership.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I wish to discuss H.R. 5360, the American History and Civics Act of 2004. I support H.R. 5360, the American History and Civics Education Act of 2004. The bill represents an important step forward in the teaching of these critical subjects. The Senate acted last year on an earlier version of this bill that I sponsored along with the Senator from Nevada, Mr. Reid. I introduced that bill in my Maiden Speech before the Senate, and we later voted 90-0 in support of its passage. The House has now passed its version of the bill, under the leadership of Congressman Roger Wicker from Mississippi. Senate passage of the bill today will be the culmination of nearly two years of work on this important piece of legislation. National exams show that three-quarters of the nation's 4th, 8th and 12th graders are not proficient in civics knowledge and one-third does not even have basic knowledge, making them ``civic illiterates.'' Children are not learning about American history and civics because they are not being taught it. American history has been watered down, and civics is too often dropped from the curriculum entirely. 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 act does precisely that. It establishes Presidential Academies for Teachers of American History and Civics and Congressional Academies for Students of American History and Civics. Their purpose would be to inspire better teaching and more learning of our history and way of government. The Secretary of Education is authorized to provide grants to universities, libraries, museums, or other non-profits that demonstrate expertise in the core subjects of history and civics and government. For example, the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, which operates and maintains the home of our first President, might apply to host an academy at their historical site, focusing on the history of the founding of our nation and the principles upon which it was founded. Additionally, the bill allows the Secretary of Education to provide grants to the National History Day program, a year-long national program that trains teachers and sponsors a national competition among junior high and high school students, who produce dramatic performances, imaginative exhibits, multimedia documentaries and research papers based on research related to an annual theme. I want to extend my gratitude to the Senators who have supported the bill here in the Senate: Senators Frist, Reid, Gregg, Kennedy, Stevens, and Byrd, among many others. And I want to thank our colleagues in the House who worked so hard on the bill, including Congressmen Boehner, Miller, Castle, Woolsey, Blackburn, and especially Congressman Wicker who was the lead sponsor. A strong, bipartisan team of players stood up for the future of our children and this nation by working on this legislation. With Senate passage, today is a great victory for everyone working to improve the teaching of American history and civics so our children can grow up learning what it means to be an American. This bill will be coming, hopefully, before the Senate later today. It passed the Senate unanimously last year. Now it has passed the House and is coming back in an amended and improved version. I believe it has full support. The lead sponsor is the new Democratic leader of the Senate, Harry Reid. It is also sponsored by Senator Kennedy and Senator Byrd, who testified for the bill. Most of the Republican Senators have cosponsored it. This is a bill very simply to put teaching of American history and civics back into its rightful place--in schools where our children can grow up learning what it means to become an American. It takes a modest step to establish Presidential Academies for Teachers of American History and Civics in the summer and the Congressional Academies for Students of American History and Civics. They are modeled after the very successful Governor's Schools that are in many States across the country where students and sometimes teachers go for 2 weeks or 4 weeks to learn particular subjects. The reason for it is that high school seniors in the United States make the lowest scores of any subject on U.S. history. The lowest scores of any subject, according to the National Assessment for Educational Progress of America, for high school seniors are on U.S. history. That is absolutely disgraceful. Here we are a nation at war, our principles are being attacked, and we are not teaching our children those principles. Here we are a nation that celebrates itself for being one for many with more new Americans coming than ever in our history, and we are not teaching what it means to be an American. You don't get to be an American by the color of your skin or where you come from. You get to be an American by understanding what we believe in. The common school itself was created 150 years ago, according to the late president of the American Federation of Teachers, Albert Shanker. He said the public school was created to help immigrant children learn the three Rs, and what it means to be an American, with a hope they would go home and teach their parents. The civic purpose of the public school is being fundamentally ignored in many parts of our country and this is one small step in that direction. I am delighted that a bipartisan group of Senators and House Members--Mr. Boehner, Mr. Miller, Representative Blackburn from Tennessee, and the principal sponsor, Roger Wicker of Mississippi-- played a role. I thank them for that.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I mention one other piece of legislation that may have a chance of passing. At least I can report there are now 68 U.S. Senators who have agreed to sponsor S. 2889 which will celebrate the recovery and restoration of the American bald eagle by making $5- and $10- and 50-cent commemorative coins. Very often these so called coin bills are especially parochial. That is why we are required to have 67 Senators agree before we do one; usually by practice, nearly 300 House Members. Well, 300 House Members have agreed and nearly 70 Senators. That is because in 1782 the Founding Fathers established the bald eagle as the national emblem of the United States. Since then, the bald eagle has come to represent the spirit of American freedom, democracy, and strength. It is my hope before we finish our business today we will honor and protect the symbol of America and cosponsor and enact the American Bald Eagle Commemorative Coin Act. One reason Senators have signed on is that the eagle has been roaming the Halls with its handler, going into different offices. A number of Senators have called me from their office with the eagle perched in front of them. The eagle is a very successful lobbyist for himself. If we cannot get the commemorative coin enacted today before we adjourn, I am sure we will be able to do so early next year. I thank the Senator from Minnesota and the Senator from Ohio for giving me an opportunity to conclude my remarks. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the increasing number of babies born too early. The March of Dimes has designated November as Prematurity Awareness Month to draw attention to the growing, costly and serious public health problem of preterm birth. My colleague, Senator Dodd, and I have introduced a resolution supporting this effort and look forward to swift approval in the Senate. Nationwide, over 480,0000 babies were born prematurely in 2002. In my own State of Tennessee, one of every seven babies born in 2002 was born preterm, and the rate of preterm births in Tennessee has risen more than 9 percent since 1992. Earlier this year, the Subcommittee on Children and Families, which I chair, held a hearing to learn about the devastating effects of preterm birth and what our government agencies and private organizations are doing to combat this crisis. We heard the inspirational story of Kelley Bolton Jordan and her daughter, Whitney, from Memphis, Tennessee. Whitney was born 3\1/2\ months early and weighed just 1 lb. 10 oz. Imagine a leg so small it could fit through a wedding ring. Whitney spent 3 grueling months in intensive care. She is now a healthy, happy 3 year-old and has no repercussions from her early birth--other babies are not as lucky. Preterm birth takes a severe toll on America's families and strains our health care system. Each year, 100,000 children develop health problems because of their early births, including cerebral palsy and vision and hearing loss. And preterm birth is the leading cause of death in the first month of life. With over half the causes of preterm birth unknown, more research is desperately needed. That's why I plan to re-introduce ``the PREEMIE Act'' and hope that the Senate can pass this legislation in the 109th Congress. I commend the March of Dimes for its dedication in working toward a day when babies and their families no longer have to face the devastating consequences of premature birth. If we work together to focus public and private resources on this problem, we can decrease the number of premature births in every state.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I came here primarily to listen this afternoon and show my respect for the Senator from Oklahoma. My remarks will be very brief. I want to begin with a story that I told the Senator from Oklahoma before. My mentor in politics is former majority leader of this body, Howard Baker. I got involved in politics because of him in the 1960s, when we were building a two-party system in Tennessee. I remember the campaign of 1980. Senator Baker was the Republican leader. He changed the name on the door from ``Minority Leader'' to ``Republican Leader'' because he didn't want the Republican Party thinking of itself as a permanent minority. Many people thought he was just whistling, ``Dixie,'' so to speak. At that time, there were 37, 38, or 39 Republican Members, and no one saw much prospect of getting much further ahead of that. Then came a tidal wave in 1980 with the election of President Reagan and 13 or 14 new Republican Senators. It went from fewer than 40 to more than 50. Senator Baker had predicted that. I had learned to pay attention to him. I saw him after the election. I said: Well, you were right about that. You were about the only person who was. He said: I will tell you one thing. I said: What is that? He said: Pay attention to Nickles. I said: Who is Nickles? He said: He is this young, 32- or 33-year-old new Senator from Oklahoma, and he is going to be a real force to deal with. I have paid attention to Senator Nickles ever since then. I have served in the Senate with the Senator from Oklahoma, and during that time I have seen him a lot. We have known each other. I think Senator Baker was correct. A lot of people have paid attention to Don Nickles ever since 1980. I am delighted to have had the privilege of serving 2 years with him in the Senate. In my experience, I have found him highly intelligent. He has been a big help with the complex issues that we have here. He is principled. That is important. And he has been easy to work with from the point of view of a colleague. I heard his remarks to the new Senators that he was meeting with; he and the Senator from Louisiana spoke to them as they were stepping down. He was suggesting that even though he is known as a principled, effective, and conservative Senator, he reminded them that in order to get things done in the Senate there has to be a consensus. And that usually means finding ways of dealing across the aisle with colleagues we respect. I am simply here today to show respect, not to make a speech. I am glad to have that opportunity and finally to say something that may be a little different from what some of your other colleagues have said. I admire your decision, and from my perspective I think it is the right one. Life is big. It is more than politics. It is more than government. This is a big wonderful world in which we live. We live in a magnificent country. There is a lot to savor. For example, when I have been in and out of public life at different times and leaving the Governorship, going into the private sector was liberating. I found that my focus had been narrow and that there were a great many things about my personal life, about my family's life, about my country's life, and about the private sector that I could get involved in and found very interesting. Over time I found I could come back to the public sector with a new energy, a broader experience and a different perspective. I don't know what the future may hold for you. I think it is wise to make such an enormous contribution here, and at the peak of that, to step out and take that to other places. For one, I hope the future will include, in some way, a contribution in the public arena. But you certainly deserve a chance to explore the private arena. It has been my privilege to know you and to serve with you, and to know, once again, that Howard Baker was right in 1981 when he said, ``Pay attention to Nickles.'' I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to speak for up to ten minutes in morning business.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, right after the election, on November 3, 2004, I went to the Miller Center at the University of Virginia. The purpose of the occasion was a discussion of the 1989 Education Summit. It had been 15 years since the President of the United States and the Nation's Governors--all of our chief executives--gathered in Charlottesville, VA, to establish the first ever national education goals for our country. It is astonishing to me that 15 years have gone by since then, and it was to most other governors who were there. It was important to look back on what had happened in 1989, to see how it happened, and to think about what happened since then. The summit at the University of Virginia had gone remarkably well. President George H.W. Bush had convened it. Terry Bransted, the Governor of Iowa, was chairman of the National Governors Association that year. He had appointed the Governor from Arkansas, Bill Clinton, whose library is opening today, and Carroll Campbell of South Carolina as the lead Governors. Working with the President's representatives, they came up with those first national education goals. There had been a long prelude to all of this activity in 1989. I was a part of that prelude, and I saw a lot of it happen. In 1978, when I was elected Governor and Bill Clinton was elected Governor of Arkansas, and Dick Riley of South Carolina, and our colleague, Bob Graham, who was Governor of Florida, we were all faced with the same issues. Our States were behind; the world was changing, and we needed a better education system, particularly at the elementary and secondary level. So that by 1983, when the report of the U.S. Department of Education, called ``A Nation at Risk,'' came out saying we were greatly at risk because of the mediocrity of the education system, it was into that environment that it came. The Governors in 1985 and 1986 all worked for a year on education. I was chairman of the NGA that year, and Bill Clinton was the vice chairman. It was the first time in the history of the governors organization that we all focused for a year on one subject. Then, by 1989, we had a President of the United States, George H.W. Bush, who became the first of three consecutive Presidents to say he wanted to be an education President. The goals that the governors adopted with the President in 1989 were very straightforward. No. 1, all children in America will start school ready to learn. No. 2, high school graduates will increase to 90 percent. No. 3, American students will leave the fourth, eighth, and twelfth grades having demonstrated competency in math, science, English, history, and geography. No. 4, America would be first in the world in math and science. No. 5, adult Americans would be literate. No. 6, every school would be free of drugs and violence. Those were the goals. You might say after a decade of unprecedented school reform and concern, America backed into its goals for reform. That was 15 years ago. A lot has happened since then. When I became Education Secretary in 1991, we created something called America 2000, which was to try to move America community by community toward those national education goals. Governor Clinton became President Clinton, and he changed the name to Goals 2000 and tried his brand of moving us in that direction. Now we have another President, the son of the man for whom I worked, who has, through No Child Left Behind, working in a bipartisan way, tried to set from Washington accountability standards that will help make sure that all children are learning. I rise to talk about this today only for this reason: That the national summit of governors and the President, on its 15th anniversary, should not go by without mentioning it on this floor. There has never been anything like it before. One of the most important parts of it was that members of Congress were not involved. A lot of members of Congress--it was a Democratic legislature at that time--were not very happy about that. But I think that was the correct decision because, in my view, elementary and secondary education is a national concern, central to almost everything important that we do, but it is not necessarily a Federal Government concern. The fact that the governors and the President, the chief executives of our country, met together to establish these goals and begin to move us toward those goals was, I think, the correct way to do that. I would like to salute the University of Virginia's Miller Center for holding this celebration. It included former Education Secretary Dick Riley, Rod Paige, the current Education Secretary, and I was there as well. It also included John Sununu, a former Governor of New Hampshire, who was at the education summit and who was Chief of Staff at the White House at the time it was organized, and Jerry Baliles, the former Governor of Virginia, who was Governor of Virginia at the time the education summit was held. I thought Governor Baliles' remarks were especially interesting and useful. He talked about the political context of the times and how the governors were able to do this without interference from Congressmen and Senators in Washington, DC. He talked about the competitiveness of our country and the world, and how we are driven to realize that better schools meant better jobs and that most of our standard of living depends upon the research, the inventions, and technology that we have at our great system of colleges and universities in the world. And, he talked about where we had come in the last 15 years. I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record, following my remarks, the full remarks of the Honorable Gerald L. Baliles, the former Governor of Virginia, which he made at the Miller Center of Public Affairs and the Curry School of Education in Charlottesville on November 4, 2004.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I think it is worthwhile, in addition to this, to give a little credit to former President George H.W. Bush. I still believe that when the dust settles and history books are written, President Bush's leadership in education will be among his most significant and lasting contributions. His tour of duty was interrupted by the voters in 1992, so he was not able to finish the job. But his America 2000 community effort had a variety of initiatives which set the agenda for American education in the 1990s. They included a new set of national standards in core curriculum subjects, including science, history, English, geography, arts, civics, and foreign languages. It included a national voluntary examination system geared to those new standards. They included new generation, thousands of start-from-scratch, ``break-the-mold schools.'' We call them today charter schools, but then there were only perhaps ten such charter schools. It included giving teachers more autonomy and flexibility in their classrooms by waiving federal rules and regulations, something Congress eventually did more of later. It also included a GI bill for children, to give middle and low-income families $1,000 scholarships to spend at any lawfully operated school of their choice, thereby giving those parents more of the same choices that wealthy parents already had. That was an excellent agenda in the early 1990s. It is still a good agenda today. The summit on education, the national education goals created in 1989, need to be remembered, and so does the leadership of President George W. Bush on education. I yield the floor. Exhibit 1 The Remarks of The Honorable Gerald L. Baliles, Former Governor of Virginia and Partner, Hunton & Williams, before the Miller Center of Public Affairs and The Curry School of Education, The University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, November 4, 2004 the 1989 education summit: a reevaluation At the beginning of the 1992 Vice Presidential debate, Ross Perot's running mate, Admiral Stockdale, opened the debate by looking into the camera and saying, ``Who am I and why am I here?'' Today, I am here because 15 years ago I, along with the rest of the nation's governors, met with the first President Bush and his cabinet for an unprecedented Education Summit here at the University of Virginia. I am a strong believer in the importance of context; in the notion that to truly understand an event or a series of events, one must understand the times in which those events occurred. And that is my role here today. The agenda is filled with Education Secretaries, educators and others who have played a critical role in how the results of the Summit were implemented. They have been on the front lines of education in the fifteen years since the Summit, while I retired from public office just three and-a-half months after the Summit's conclusion. I look forward to their assessments of the progress made and the challenges that confront us. 1 believe that former New Hampshire Governor and White House Chief of Staff John Sununu and I are the only ones here who actually attended the Summit, and all of its meetings, as principal participants. So it is that the Miller Center has asked me to provide some context, to discuss what was going on at the time, why the meeting was held, what battles were going on behind the scenes, and what our expectations were for the Summit. I am delighted to be here today to share the program with Governor Warner, Secretary Paige and so many others who have advanced the cause of education in our country. I just mentioned John Sununu. 1 served as Vice Chair of the National Governors Association under John and then succeeded him as Chairman. Not long after that, John joined President Bush in Washington as his Chief of Staff. One of the best things about that 1989 summit was the opportunity to see and work with John again, and I am delighted he is here today for this retrospective event. It is also a pleasure to be here with my former colleagues Dick Riley and Lamar Alexander. I remember well my first National Governors' Association Meeting, in August, 1986, hosted by Governor Dick Riley at Hilton Head, South Carolina and chaired by a Tennessee Governor named Lamar Alexander. The major theme of the meeting was education; the NGA had done a great deal of work on education reform during Governor Alexander's chairmanship and the results were being released. Lamar Alexander and Dick Riley, through their work as Governors and later as U.S. Secretaries of Education, have done more than any two people I can think of to advance the cause of quality education in the United States over the past quarter century. We all owe them a tremendous debt. Now to the task at hand. You might recall that the 1989 Summit was greeted with equal measures of anticipation and cynicism, hope and skepticism. Many noted at the time that Americans periodically make brave and impressive noises about education, but that we frequently fail to achieve the necessary breakthroughs to give education the priority it merits. No question, some expected the Charlottesville Summit to be little more than a variation on disappointing earlier efforts. But others--and I counted myself among them-- believed that something different and important could happen here, something which might foretell a favorable turning point in our national commitment to education. The day before leaving Richmond to come to Charlottesville for the Summit, I made the following observation at a press conference: ``While it seems unlikely to me that fundamental solutions to the problems of education will emerge out of a meeting that will last little more than 24 hours, the Summit could well be the start of a significant national effort.'' Fifteen years later, I believe the Summit was not only the start of a significant national effort, but in many ways was a seminal event; nationalizing the importance of educational policy, sharpening the focus on results, and making executive political leadership more important. To understand why, and to understand the context in which the Summit was held, I want to focus on three factors in particular: First, I want to focus on the political context of the time. Much of the media and public reaction to the Summit centered around political questions--especially in the days leading up to the Summit. How much of the Summit was designed to cater to the President's political needs? How did Congress view the Summit? What did the Governors expect? What tensions existed between the different levels of government? Those questions were being posed at the time, and it is important to examine them. Second, I want to look at the substantive context of the time. There was consensus across the political spectrum in 1989 that the United States faced a challenge, almost a crisis, of international competitiveness. While people of various political stripes disagreed sharply on specific remedies, it had become conventional wisdom that, by a variety of international measures, including educational achievement, the United States was not as competitive as most of its trading partners and competitors in the global economy, and was falling further behind. This may be difficult to comprehend today, but the fact is that the competitiveness issue permeated most political debates of that time, and much of the educational reform effort in the Nation was fueled by competitiveness concerns. Finally, I want to look at the debate over the Federal role in education. In 1989, the very idea of a Federal role in education was still an open question. Today, we largely argue over what form the Federal role should take and how much it will cost. Very few will question the Federal role. We do not challenge the need for national standards or a national approach to educational policy. Back then, things were quite different, and the Summit played a major role--perhaps THE major role--in settling the basic question of whether there should be a Federal role in education. I want to focus on those three factors of politics, competitiveness and the Federal educational role because they really laid the foundation for much of what has followed, both at the State and Federal levels. And, yes, that includes Virginia's ``Standards of Learning'' and the Federal ``No Child Left Behind'' legislation. politics Let's begin with the political dimension. It is well known that during the 1988 campaign, the then- Vice President Bush had proclaimed that he'd like to be known as the ``Education President.'' There was a belief, I think, that this would not only allow him to compete for voters the Democratic nominee was taking for granted, but that it would also allow the Vice President to set himself apart from President Reagan whose rhetoric and budgets, especially in the early years, demonstrated opposition to Federal involvement in education. If that was President Bush's strategy, it worked. His opponent in 1988, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, took the education issue somewhat for granted and the Vice President was able to use it to his advantage. For those who feared a replay of Reagan-era proposals to eliminate the Department of Education, the new President's words assuaged their worries. When President Bush talked of a ``kinder, gentler'' administration, many believed that he was talking about education. Yet, when President Bush went on to observe, in his inaugural address, that the U.S. Government had ``more will than wallet'' in the face of mounting needs AND mounting deficits, many worried that he would walk away from his commitment to education. Indeed, the first several months of the Bush administration saw little or no action in the education area. This was understandable. A new administration was getting organized, momentous things were beginning to happen in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and pro democracy demonstrators spent the spring of that year camped out in Tianamen Square in Beijing. In addition, hostages were being taken in the Middle East. The budget deficit was increasing rapidly. There were many serious international priorities. That nothing was happening on education should not have been a surprise, though the fact did give rise to some grumbling and increased pressure on the Bush Administration to do something. When President Bush came to Chicago in August, 1989 to address the annual meeting of the National Governors Association, there was much to talk about--in fact, the major story in the news the day he visited concerned the death of a U.S. hostage taken in the Middle East. Indeed, the President broke the news of the hostage's death to the public at the beginning of his speech to the Governors. But during the course of his remarks, he announced that he would meet with the Governors in a ``Summit'' sometime that fall to discuss education. It would be only the third time a President would meet in a specially-called, Summit-type, meeting with Governors, and the first time that the subject would be education. The exact time and place had not then been determined, nor had the University of Virginia been selected as the site of the Summit. Naturally, there were pundits who believed that the meeting would be nothing more than a photo opportunity; a chance for the President to quiet criticism of himself for not spending as much time on education as some people wanted. It was summertime, Congress was out of session, and after the National Governors' Association meeting there was little hard news for the press to focus on, at least in the domestic arena. So, people were free to speculate about the President's motives for holding the Summit, and about the agenda for the meeting. About two weeks after the President had proposed the meeting, the White House announced that the Summit would be held here at the University of Virginia, and that it would be held at the end of September, about a month later. The fact that we now had a specific set of dates, and a location, only raised the intensity of the debate, as well as the political temperature. To begin with, Congress was unhappy about being excluded from the discussion. Up until 1989, Federal education policy was primarily a congressional concern. Presidents might express opinions but otherwise were reduced mostly to signing bills passed by Congress. Here was a President who had proposed to alter that balance, who made it clear that the Summit was limited to himself and the 50 State Governors and the Governors of the territories. Congressional leaders, particularly the chairmen of the education committees, were outraged--and not just at the President. Relations between Congress and the Governors were a little frayed at the time, particularly between Democratic Governors and Democratic members of Congress. At that Chicago NGA meeting that I chaired, 49 of the 50 Governors signed a letter to congressional leaders asking for a moratorium on new Medicaid mandates. Continued expansion of Medicaid was exacting a major toll on State budgets around the country, and the Governors were asking for a brief moratorium on new mandates in order to find ways to fully fund what was already in the pipeline. Congressional leaders were incensed. Congressman Henry Waxman, who chaired the subcommittee in charge of Medicaid, wrote to all Democratic Governors accusing them of a variety of sins for their position in support of a moratorium on new Medicaid mandates. Things were especially tense between the gubernatorial wing of the Democratic party and the congressional wing (in those days, Democrats controlled both houses of Congress). So, there was the fear that congressional prerogatives were being stripped away and anger at Governors, particularly Democratic Governors, for being complicit in upsetting this balance. Congressional leaders found an ally in the then-Governor of New York, Mario Cuomo. Governor Cuomo, who was also the only Governor not to sign the Medicaid mandate letter, began working with Senator Kennedy, Chairman of the Senate Human Resources Committee, and Congressman Hawkins, his House counterpart. They wanted Congressional leaders to participate in the Summit since Congress would have to fund any Federal initiatives, and they were also urging Democratic Governors to go to the Summit with an agenda demanding full Federal funding of a variety of programs, and the creation of several new Federal programs as well. Many of the Democratic Governors believed this approach to be misguided, that if the Governors' conversation with the President on education simply mirrored Washington's fights over formulas and funding, then the public would view the meeting skeptically, and we would lose an important opportunity to articulate a national commitment to education. Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton was the Lead Democratic Governor for Education, and he and I worked together to convince our Democratic gubernatorial colleagues of this point of view. It was a difficult challenge and the outcome was uncertain. Attempts were made by some to convince individual Democratic Governors, and their staffs, that the Summit was a clever trap devised by the administration to ensure that no new resources would go into education. In the end, we convinced most of the Democratic Governors that the best way forward was an approach that focused on a set of challenging goals and standards; stringent enough that the goals could not be reached without a major financial commitment at all levels of government. We believed that if we just asked for more money, we would lose the public debate; that people would not support money divorced from results; that both needed to go hand-in-hand. We believed, in short, that the best way to obtain additional resources for education was to set goals that could not be achieved without those new resources. So, if one is looking for a reason why the major result of the Summit was a commitment to develop national goals, this is a good place to start. In the meantime, the Republicans were having their own discussions. Most of them also revolved around funding, with the administration being wary of calls simply to provide more Federal money. Congressional Republicans largely agreed with the new administration in opposing more money, with some even wanting to make cuts in education spending. Republican Governors wanted to be supportive of their President in holding the line against demands for major new cash infusions, but they also realized that more resources were required. Some of the most conservative Republicans were concerned that the Summit would all but enshrine a Federal role in education that they opposed. In the end, Republican Governors came to a very similar conclusion as their Democratic counterparts--that national goals would be the best way forward. My impression was that they were under much less pressure from their congressional counterparts than the Democratic Governors were from congressional Democrats; the pressure Republican Governors faced came more from an administration not wanting to be pressured into major new infusions of Federal money. But Governors of both parties ultimately came to similar conclusions prior to the Summit. In today's partisan political climate, this bipartisan consensus seems almost impossible to believe. There were many reasons for this bipartisan convergence in thinking. Perhaps it is because Governors have always been--or at least were then--better able to work across Party lines than members of Congress. Perhaps it is because Governor Clinton and South Carolina Governor Carroll Campbell, who was the Lead Republican Governor for Education, got along so well or because Iowa Governor Terry Brandstad and Washington Governor Booth Gardner, the new Chairman and Vice Chairman respectively, of the National Governors Association got along so well, or because we all got along with John Sununu, who as White House Chief of Staff played a major role in Summit preparations. Who knows? The fact is, however, that the political needs and desires of both Democratic and Republican Governors happened to coincide in an important way at that time, and the Governors went in to the Summit pretty much united over the need for fairly aggressive national goals. It was, to resurrect a phrase, a time of harmonic convergence. And what about the White House? As I mentioned earlier, the main political worry from the White House was that the Summit would lead to intense pressure for a major infusion of new Federal dollars. I remember, very specifically, that this was the one non-negotiable demand from the White House--the Summit would not be allowed to focus solely on discussions of new Federal money. Some on the White House staff wanted little more than a statement saying that the President and Governors shared a common commitment to education. Others believed that such a result would be seen as inadequate and would merely confirm the suspicion many had that the entire Summit was pure politics. I want to state, by the way, that my belief has always been that President Bush was sincere in his desire to chart a new way forward in education. This view was confirmed by what I observed at the Summit and by conversations I had with the President in the months and years after the Summit--including a visit to Camp David a couple of years later. In this, he had the effective assistance of John Sununu and, later, Lamar Alexander. But there were some in the administration in September, 1989, who advocated a minimalist approach, to say the least. But others at the White House, echoing the President, believed that we had the opportunity to achieve more than a ``Mom and Apple Pie'' joint statement on the value of education. They were no more interested in committing the administration to major new Federal spending than the minimalists, but they did believe that we had a golden opportunity to focus the country's attention on the need for a shared national goal of education excellence. Thus was the consensus born that the Summit would attempt to articulate a set of national educational goals, or at least begin a process in which such goals could be developed. So, yes, politics was critically important to how the Summit unfolded and concluded. But as my UVA friend Larry Sabato likes to say, ``politics is a good thing.'' And in this case, politics led to a shared approach and a constructive outcome for educational reform. competiveness Let me turn now to my second point, the substantive international policy concerns of late 1989. It is hard to remember now, with most of Europe and Japan stuck in a decade-long economic funk, but in the late 1980's the major issue hanging over the education debate--permeating debates over everything in fact--was competitiveness. At the time, the best way to get attention for one's issue was to link it to the effort to make the American economy more competitive on a global basis. The book shelves were filled with tomes written by academics, journalists, politicians, sports coaches and others about competitiveness. Education was a major issue affected by the competitiveness debate. The changes that so challenged the Nation--the changes that inspired the Education Summit--were as much external as they were internal. And they were viewed as quite real, even threatening. The case for viewing education in this light was first made with the 1983 publication of ``A Nation at Risk.'' That report completely transformed the education reform issue; it began to nationalize the issue, and it placed education firmly in the middle of the competitiveness debate. Listen to the language in the opening paragraphs of that report: ``[America's] once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world. . . . [T]he educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and as a people. . . . We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.'' Tough stuff. Of course, the intent of the words was to jolt the public, the press and our political institutions out of their complacency and remove the inertia of the status quo. The fact that the report came from a panel created by President Reagan's Secretary of Education, Terrell Bell, made the words all the more powerful. Well, if the intent was to jolt, it worked. Within just one year of the report's release, 41 States had toughened high school graduation requirements in line with the report's recommendations. Thirty-five States had raised teacher certification standards, twenty States had increased instructional time and nineteen had improved school discipline policies. In 1986, the National Governors' Association released ``A Time for Results.'' This report proposed a series of actions to be completed by 1991--to strengthen teaching, increase the use of technology and raise the level of local educational standards. This report was to be updated each year in a series called ``Results in Education.'' Also in 1986, the Southern Governors Association Advisory Council on International Education released a report calling for improvements in the teaching of languages, geography and other international subjects. The report stated: ``By every measure, Americans are not prepared to compete and to participate in the international marketplace.'' The report continued: ``We, as a nation, as constantly surprised by world political and economic events. They occur in places we never heard of, for reasons we do not understand.'' The title of the report? Cornerstone of Competition In 1987, the National Governors Association launched a year-long initiative called ``Jobs, Growth and Competition'' which focused on a variety of issues, including education, that were deemed important to improving our international competitiveness. In 1989, the National Governors' Association launched an initiative during my chairmanship called ``America in Transition, the International Frontier.'' The final report was entitled ``A Competitive Nation.'' A series of earlier reports had focused on a variety of issues, including education. But, this competitiveness concern wasn't just for Governors. Congress and the President got in on the act as well. Congress created the Competitiveness Policy Council and charged it with reporting yearly on a series of actions that the nation could take to enhance its competitiveness in transportation, technology, trade, fiscal policy and education. The White House created a Competitiveness Council, chaired by the Vice President. So, this topic was a concern at every level of government. At the 1989 Education Summit's opening press conference, I noted that: ``We increasingly cannot compete with overseas nations. . . . The problem is that successful state and local programs are not enough; we need national educational excellence, and a national commitment to obtain it.'' So, the competitiveness issue permeated the political landscape, it impacted everything else. There was consensus across the land that we had a ``competitiveness problem'' And education was a part of that problem--and solution. What did this mean? It meant that education could no longer be strictly a local or state issue. For if we had a national problem of competitiveness, then we needed national solutions. We could not leave it to chance that every State and locality would properly educate their young people; after all, our competitors had not. We needed a national conversation about education, we needed national results. We needed--voila-- national goals, just like our competitors had. That's why the Joint Statement issued by the President and Governors at the conclusion of the Summit began with these words: ``The President and the nation's Governors agree that a better educated citizenry is the key to the continued growth and prosperity of the United States. . . . Education has always been important, but never this important because the stakes have changed: Our competitors for opportunity are also working to educate their people. As they continue to improve, they make the future a moving target.'' And in the introduction to the National Education Goals agreed to five months later by the President and the Governors, you will find these words: ``America's educational performance must be second to none in the 21st century. Education is central to our quality of life. It is at the heart of our economic strength and security, our creativity in the arts and letters, our invention in the sciences, and the perpetuation of our cultural values. Education is the key to America's international competitiveness.'' The need to fit education into a national competitiveness strategy, combined with the political conclusions arrived at by Governors of both parties and the White House, forced a focus on national goals as the way forward. federal role Finally, let me focus on my third point: the concern in 1989 over Federal involvement in education. If the political mood and economic imperative seemed to be converging on the idea of national education goals, there was still an unease many people felt about Federal involvement in education. This had been the subject of considerable debate a decade earlier when the U.S. Department of Education was created during the Carter Administration. It was the topic of campaign rhetoric on the campaign trail in 1980, and it was certainly argued in the halls of Congress on an annual basis in the early to mid-1980's when President Reagan proposed eliminating the department in his proposed budgets. Among those most uncomfortable with the idea of an Education Summit were those who were ideologically opposed to the very idea of Federal involvement in education. Many writers, including William Safire, warned explicitly that the Bush Administration was setting the stage for a large expansion of the Federal role in education and for nationalizing the issue. They were right. In fact, I would argue that the major achievement of the 1989 Education Summit was to settle, once and for all, the argument over a Federal role in education; whether education would be a national issue. The President and the Governors, by agreeing to the need for national education goals and agreeing on a strategy for developing those goals, had agreed upon a framework. There WOULD be a Federal role; education WOULD be a national issue, addressed with national solutions. It meant that educational decisions would no longer be settled solely at the local level. It meant that legislative deliberations at the State and Federal levels would become relatively less important, and executive decision and vision relatively more important. That's what happens when results are required; when speeches, money and programs are just not enough. This all seems like conventional wisdom today, but we can easily forget it was not always so. The 1989 Summit had a real impact, far beyond the imagining of those of us privileged enough to have participated. It fundamentally changed the balance of political power on education issues, and it nationalized education policy in a way few would have conceived just a few years earlier. Conclusion When the President called for a Summit with the Nation's Governors to discuss education, many observers may not have known what to expect. I don't recall any of the Governors believing beforehand that, while we agreed on the need for national goals, we would settle the argument over Federal involvement in education, or that we would shift the Federal focus on education from one end of Pennsylvania Avenue to the other. I do recall a great deal of skepticism and criticism from outside observers, especially Congress and the press. But I do not recall anything but the most constructive attitude being expressed by any of the principal participants. And, by the way, this was a meeting of principals, very few staff aides were permitted much of a role at all. It is worth noting, by the way, that the participants-- despite all of the good will and convergence of thinking on the value of setting national goals--did not settle on specific goals at the Summit. We agreed on the need for goals, and, in general, what those goals should address. The actual goals themselves, however, were not developed until several months later. But, for the first time, the President and Governors were discussing on a national level a series of important questions. Many of these had long been discussed and debated in the States, and particularly in the Southern Regional Education Board states. These questions included, among others: Intervention: Could we do a better job of preparing children for first grade? Dropout rates: Could we slow the tide? Adult literacy: Could we put a dent in it, even eliminate it? Teacher quality: Could we motivate and inspire it? Decentralized management: Could it produce better results? And, parental choice: Could this be a workable technique or just the latest fad? In the end, it was a focus on such questions that formed the basis of the goals and the national education policy that we know today. I believe the Education Summit was, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, the ``beginning of a new beginning'' in education policy. I believe the way we think, as a Nation, about the goals and objectives of education began to change in September, 1989. Unsurprisingly, we did not find all the answers at the Summit. But we were asking the right questions--and for the first time, we were asking them as a Nation. In one sense, this should not have been all that surprising, because throughout our national history, educational reform has been a vital and characteristic part of the American impulse. We have always believed that we can, by the force of our own imagination and determination, improve tomorrow by improving ourselves and our children. But, never has it been more important that our traditional convictions give rise to deliberate action. If ignorance is the enemy of democracy, in an international economy, ignorance could well be an invitation to national decline. In 1989, it was clear and apparent that the time had arrived for us to put ourselves on the spot, That was the message I heard in Charlottesville, Accountability and the measurement of student performance, we declared, must be an integral part of our educational process. Indeed, Charlottesville portended a significant shift in our approach to education: From here on, we said that we are going to be increasingly measured by more than the resources we invest. Instead, we declared that we are going to be questioned and examined on the progress our students achieve--or fail to achieve. Frankly, I think that is how it should be--for there is too much at stake for it to be otherwise. In 1989, the President and the governors joined efforts to ensure that America becomes a Nation resolved to using education as the best means for shaping the future. The reason we are here today is to assess our national performance since 1989. Where are the benchmarks of progress? Where are the guideposts for confronting the challenges? Our speakers and panelists today are here to help us make those assessments. I share your interest in their opinions of how far we have come, and I am confident that they will focus our attention on the significant challenges at hand. Today, as in 1989, we recognize that we have a lot of work to do, and we should always keep in perspective that all of our educational goals, commitments and resources come down to two fundamental points: First, education's role as a transmitter of civilization's knowledge and values must not be diminished. It is part of the glue that binds together the fabric of our society. Second, education is, also, increasingly, the engine that drives the American economy--our economic future depends upon our ability to compete, but our ability to compete depends upon our ability to educate. It is just that simple. Thank you. I look forward to the rest of the Conference.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. A few years ago, a New York Times story reported that ``Lamar Alexander grew up in a lower, middle class family in the mountains of East Tennessee.'' The article so offended my mother I found her reading Thessalonians to help deal with what she regarded as a ``slur on our family.'' ``We never thought about ourselves that way,'' she told me. ``You had a library card from the day you were three and a music lesson from the day you were four. You had everything you needed that was important.'' I was 4 years old in Maryville, TN, a town of about 10,000 then, when my mother took me to Maryville College to learn how to play the piano. One of the college professors loaned us a battered upright piano which sat in our living room for several years. Every day before school, I would bang away on Czerny, Bach, Beethoven and Mozart--and throw in a little Jerry Lee Lewis when I thought no one was around to correct me. I participated in annual piano contests sponsored by the National Federation of Music Clubs. I played in the Maryville High School band and played piano at revival meetings while my father--who had a beautiful tenor voice--led the singing. After working during the day as a law clerk in New Orleans for Judge John Minor Wisdom I played trombone, tuba and washboard in the band at Your Father's Moustache on Bourbon Street to earn a little extra money. When I walked across the State in a winning campaign for Governor I took four students from the University of Tennessee marching band with me. We performed as Alexander's Washboard Band dozens of times from the back of a flatbed truck. As Governor, I could think of only one way to unify our State that was made up of so many different climates, political beliefs and people, and that was our music. From the Carter family in Bristol, to Music City in Nashville, to the blues and gospel of Beale Street in Memphis. Tennessee can be said to be the home of American music. As Education Secretary in the first Bush administration I was asked to be the Republican speaker at the annual Gridiron Dinner, a press gathering where public careers are made or broken. When I found that Texas Governor Ann Richards was the Democrat speaker I decided that was not a contest I was likely to win. So instead of speaking, I wrote some lyrics to country music songs and sang and played the piano. Music has been throughout my life a source of inspiration and joy. I suspect that is true for most Americans. It is a rare American who does not have some story about how music has made our lives richer and more interesting, how it has changed our moods, brought out the best in our character and even sometimes helped us earn a living. So I am proud to join with the Senator from Illinois and co-sponsor this important resolution declaring American Music Month. Our music is an integral part of the American character, and we should celebrate it.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, are we in morning business?

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I say to the Senator from Virginia, if his amendments are ready to be adopted, he can offer them.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I would like to have about 5 minutes, but it does not need to be now.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I rise to speak to an amendment that was accepted on Friday.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I rise to speak briefly to an amendment that was accepted on Friday. I thank the managers of the bill, the Senator from Maine and the Senator from Connecticut, for doing this and the Senator from Arizona, Mr. McCain, for his work in making it possible. This has to do with the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission that the Federal Government set standards for the security of personal identification documents such as drivers' licenses to prevent them from being counterfeited and used as identification for terrorists. As a former Governor, I have always been skeptical of Federal rules that require States to take action that cost States money. As someone who respects civil liberties, I have been reluctant to unnecessarily identify Americans. In fact, as Governor, I vetoed the bill requiring a picture on a driver's license three times because I thought it was an unnecessary imposition on civil liberties. But times have changed. I believe the Senator from Arizona and others did an excellent job of implementing the 9/11 Commission's recommendation that drivers' licenses and other personal identification documents be upgraded so we can prevent terrorists from using them. My one concern and the concern that the Senator from Arizona recognized was that I do not want to see the Federal Government come up with this good idea, pass it into law, require the States to do it, and then send the bill to the States. We call that an unfunded Federal mandate, and most of us in this body have said we will not do that anymore. Senators McCain, Collins, and Lieberman have worked out an acceptable way, I believe, to deal with that problem. Basically, the amendment that was adopted on Friday will give the Secretary of Transportation 18 months from the passage of the bill to work with State and local officials to come up with a set of minimum standards for driver's licenses. During that negotiation, States will include estimates of the cost of implementing the proposed standards. After this 18-month period, the rules will be made final. At that point, we will have before us the new requirements for States for these upgraded drivers' licenses and other personal identification documents as well as the costs that we are imposing on the States. At that time, it will be up to us, if we are true to our word about no more unfunded Federal mandates, to appropriate the appropriate amount of money that it would take Tennessee, Montana, New York, and all the other States to pay for this new requirement that we have imposed on the States. That will be something we can debate and discuss at that time. The State governments will have 2 years from the issuance of the final regulation to implement these standards, but it is our responsibility then, if it is our good idea, if we impose it on the States, to pay for it. I, and I am sure many others in this body, will be here to argue strenuously that we do, and we should. This is an excellent amendment. I am glad it was accepted on Friday. I appreciate the work of the National Governors Association and the Senators who were involved. This will give the States the time and resources that States need to make the necessary changes to drivers' licenses and other personal identification documents. I call on my colleagues to keep this moment in mind because 18 months to 2 years from now the bill will come due and the bill should be paid by us, those who impose the rule, and not sent to State governments. Sending the States the bill would be an unfunded Federal mandate, which we have said we will not do.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, this morning, I want to take a few minutes to talk about an amendment that was adopted yesterday. It was sponsored by the Senator from Ohio, Mr. Voinovich. The amendment is about the 3,361 Presidential appointees and how they are confirmed. I am glad to see that as I am speaking the President pro tempore is here because he has been a Presidential appointee in an earlier administration. I am glad to see both the chairman and ranking member of the Governmental Affairs Committee here because their committee deals with this issue. This is the kind of issue that never makes the front page and is always on the back burner. But it has a major practical effect on how our Government works. The 9/11 Commission has reminded us, once again, of the problem we have. What the 9/11 Commission recommended, and what Senator Voinovich's amendment would do--an amendment that I was glad to cosponsor--is to, in the words of the 9/11 Commission--``speed up the nomination, financial reporting, security clearances, and confirmation process for national security officials at the start of an administration.'' In other words, in plain English, to make it possible, if President Bush reorganizes his administration in a second term, or if Senator Kerry is the new President, they have 3,361 appointments to make. I think it would come as a great shock to many of the voters who are voting for one of them, and it will come as a shock, no doubt, to some of the people they nominate to know that if, for example, a President Bush or a President Kerry picks a new Secretary of HHS or Secretary of Education or Secretary of Defense, to begin with, that person is not allowed to go to the office of the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of HHS or the Secretary of Education until he or she is confirmed by the Senate. In other words, here we are in a war on terror. The President says he has a new appointment requiring Presidential confirmation, let's say for Secretary of State. That person is not allowed, out of courtesy to this body, to go into the office of the Secretary of State until we confirm them. One might say, well, there is nothing so wrong about that. That should not take more than a few days, with the kind of well- known person the President would probably pick--someone, for example, of the stature of Colin Powell. I will give you an example of why it takes longer than a few days. The Presiding Officer, the Senator from Connecticut, the Senator from Maine, all of us remember and know well Senator Howard Baker, who was the majority leader of this body. Senator Baker, at one time, if memory serves me correctly, was selected as the most admired Senator in a poll participated in by both Democratic Senators and Republican Senators. He is known pretty well. He is today the Ambassador to Japan, nominated by President Bush. The Japanese consider that to be a great compliment to the country, to have someone of such stature. However, Howard Baker reminded me this week when I called him that when he was nominated by the President to be Ambassador to Japan, it took him weeks to fill out the forms to be approved by the FBI, approved by the Government Ethics Office, nominated by the President, and confirmed by the Senate. He told me specifically that he spent more money hiring people to help him fill out his forms accurately so he would not go to jail by making a mistake than he made in his first year as Ambassador to Japan. Let's think of that. Here is a highly respected individual, at the time 75 or 76 years old. He has been filling out forms for 18 years as a Member of this body. He has run for President. He has been White House Chief of Staff. He is the most admired Senator. Yet by our requirements it takes several weeks of his time, and he spends more money hiring people to fill out his forms than he made in his first year in his Government job. That is preposterous. That is a preposterous result. He further told me he had another little issue with the Government Ethics Office. Senator Baker is now married to former Senator Nancy Kassebaum. It is the second marriage for both. When they became married, they wanted to keep their estates separate. They jointly owned 25 head of cattle. This tied up Senator Baker's nomination for some time in the Government Ethics Office because the question was jointly owning 25 head of cattle would require--just that single fact--Senator Kassebaum to have to go through this week-long, very expensive process of disclosing everything once more about herself and filling out all those forms. Finally, in exasperation, Senator Baker simply gave his half interest in the 25 head of cattle to Senator Kassebaum, and that settled that problem. This is not so unusual. Senator Baker and Senator Kassebaum are not the only Presidential nominees to go through the expense and delay of being appointed to a Presidential position. I was nominated by the first President Bush as his Education Secretary. I was nominated in December of 1990. I was confirmed in I believe it was April of 1991. In the meantime, I was not allowed to go to the Office of the Secretary of Education. During that time, 60 percent of American college students were going to colleges and universities followed by a Federal grant or a loan. That is supposed to be supervised by the Secretary of Education of a President who said he wanted to be the education President. Yet his nominee is not allowed to go to the office, out of courtesy to this body. Then, of course, there is the matter of recruiting a team. I asked President Bush at that time: Mr. President, may I come up with a plan? May I then recruit a team, subject to your approval, of course? So I went to recruit David Kearns, the former head of Xerox, and Diane Ravage, one of the most distinguished historians in America, Carolyn Reed Wallace, the vice chancellor of the City University of New York. All of them, of course, were not allowed to go to their office. Once the President nominates and before they are confirmed, they must fill out all these forms, maybe not spend as much money as Senator Baker did, but the same forms. They must go through this elaborate FBI check. They must go through the President's political process, and then they come over here. And if there is a divided body--for example, we have a Republican President and a Democratic Senate--it takes a little longer. What is the point of all this? The point of all this is we cannot get our work done. The voters all tune in to a Presidential debate, such as we saw last night--two distinguished competitors, both doing pretty well, I thought--they take off in January and say: Let's go this way and what happens? There is nobody to work for them. They cannot even go to their offices. They are all down here filling out forms that are going to cost them more than they make in their first year. This is a problem. Who is at fault? A lot of places are at fault. Partisan politics is sometimes at fault. When I was going through confirmation, I went around to see another former Member of this body, Senator Warren Rudman. He told me what happened in 1976. He was nominated by President Ford to the Federal Communications Commission, I believe, and a Senator from New Hampshire put a hold on his nomination. It went along that way until the people of New Hampshire said: What is wrong with Warren Rudman? He must be a crook, he must have stolen something or else the Senate would be acting on his nomination. Out of embarrassment, Warren Rudman, a private citizen, asked President Ford to withdraw his name from consideration in the Senate. Then Senator Rudman ran against the Senator who put a hold on his name, defeated him, and served in this body. I am not sure we can pass any law or change any rule that will prevent that kind of partisan politics, but we should be aware that is part of the problem. Senator Voinovich's amendment does address some areas we can fix. One is there may be too many jobs subject to this kind of intensive review. Mr. President, 3,361 is a lot of Presidential appointments to have to go through that time-consuming, weeks-long process. It is too many jobs to leave vacant at the beginning of a new administration when we all expect a new President to come in and say: Let's go in this direction. It is too many jobs to leave vacant, the 9/11 Commission said, especially when we are dealing with the national security of the United States, and a great many of those men and women are people we are relying upon to protect us. The FBI review takes a long time. Maybe that could be simplified. If they are doing 3,361 FBI reviews at one time and the FBI's major goal is supposed to be counterterrorism, maybe that is something we should be looking at as well. Then we get busy. An example exists today, and this is in no way criticism, but it is an example of how we get busy. The President on May 20 nominated Edwin Williamson to be Director of the Office of Ethics for our Government. This is the very office that contributes to a lot of the questions and reviews that slow down the process. That was May 20. His hearing before the full committee is next week. Everyone in the Senate can understand the Governmental Affairs Committee has been busy the last 8 weeks, but, nevertheless, we have a process that when we get busy, sometimes we contribute to the delay. So the Voinovich amendment does not by itself solve the problem. It sets in motion a series of reviews and studies and discussions that might help solve the problem. The reason for my coming to the floor today is to say to the distinguished Senator from Connecticut and to the distinguished Senator from Maine, and the President pro tempore, I hope we keep this high enough on our agenda that it does not slip to the back page again. Former Senator Fred Thompson prepared legislation on this issue. This is a lot like many of the issues that have come up with national intelligence reform. There have been about 30 or so reviews since World War II on national intelligence reform, and they often slip to the back pages, to the back burner, and we do not get it done. This time we are getting it done. We have also taken steps on another so-called back-burner issue, as the 9/11 Commission put it and that is, speeding up the nomination--financial reporting, security clearances, and confirmation process for officials nominated by the President at the start of an administration. It is my hope that over the next year, the reviews mentioned in the Voinovich amendment will go forward, that we will simplify the process. Of course, for the national security officials, we can all see the urgent need for that. Of course, we do not want them sitting outside their offices next February out of courtesy to us when there is some attack on the United States that they might have helped prevent, but at the same time we do not want students going to college with some Secretary of Education sitting outside his office not allowed to go in. We do not want Head Start dollars being spent with some Secretary of Health and Human Services sitting outside her offices not allowed to go in. We need to have firm deadlines and firm dates, simplified forms, out of respect to the people the President nominates, out of respect to the voters who expect a President to be able to act, and out of respect to ourselves. There will occasionally be a nominee--we are not talking about judicial nominees--there will occasionally be one of the 3,361 executive nominations where this is a problem, that requires an extended debate--and we are fully capable of doing that in the Senate-- but the rest of the nominations ought to speed through on a fairly automatic, simplified review, allowing the executive branch to be in a position to see urgent needs, develop a strategy, and try to persuade half of us that he is right, which is the job of the President. I thank the managers of the bill for this time. I applaud them for their bipartisan action on this bill and their work on the committee. I am glad they adopted the amendment yesterday, and I look forward to working with them over the next several months to see that it does not slide back to the back burner and get lost so that men of the stature of Howard Baker have to spend more than they earn in their first year in Government filling out the forms we require of them even though we have known them and known everything about them for 25 years. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I have enjoyed listening to my friend from Utah. He always speaks eloquently and brings a different insight than most of us can to issues. It is a remarkable saga which he recounts. It also makes me think that here we are, 6 weeks before a Presidential election, which all parties are describing as one of the most important in our history, when we are at war and we have significant issues of health care, immigration--we could make a list a mile long--and jobs, can we keep our jobs in the competitive marketplace, and the dominant issue of the moment is the media covering the media about something that might or probably didn't happen 30 years ago. My hope is that we recognize that Senator Kerry served, President Bush served, and they both supported the war in Iraq. It is now at the forefront of American consciousness. And the question before us in the Presidential race is which one of these men is the best prepared to be Commander in Chief to lead us into the future? My hope is the media coverage would be more on those issues, more on the future. I don't want to hear too much more about what happened 30 years ago. The distinguished occupant of the chair was heroic in his service 30 years ago. We admire that. But he spent most of his time looking toward the future, as I do mine, and I think the American people do. We are not elected to CBS president of the United States. It is my hope that whatever the circumstances, if they made a mistake, admit it--we politicians have learned the hard way that is the best thing to do--and get on with it. Talk about 30 years from now, instead of the media covering the media about what happened 30 years ago or what might not have happened 30 years ago. Earlier, the Senator from Louisiana, Ms. Landrieu, came to the Chamber and talked primarily about the devastating hurricane in New Orleans. Having lived in New Orleans a year, at the time of another great hurricane in 1965, I know how difficult that is going to be for New Orleans, Mobile, and that part of the world. Our hearts and support are with the people of the gulf coast. We are thinking about them and their families and hope they are safe.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. The Senator from Louisiana also mentioned the 40th anniversary of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. She and I intended today to speak together about that. She spoke about it and she will have more to say. She has worked very hard on it for the last several years. I take a few minutes in honor of the 40th anniversary of what we call the Land and Water Conservation Fund, or the LWCF in this country. Forty years ago, in September of 1964, President Johnson signed legislation establishing the fund. It has been an important factor in preserving open spaces in our country ever since. The idea began under a Republican President, President Eisenhower, who signed legislation creating a commission to determine what should be done to preserve outdoor space for recreation. Then a Democratic President, President Kennedy, submitted legislation to Congress creating the Land and Water Conservation Fund. In submitting the draft legislation, President Kennedy wrote: The Nation needs a land acquisition program to preserve both prime Federal and State areas for outdoor recreation purposes. . . . In addition to the enhancement of spiritual, cultural, and physical values resulting from the preservation of those resources, the expenditure for their preservation are a sound financial investment. Shortly thereafter, it passed the House by a vote voice and the Senate with only one vote in opposition. Then President Johnson signed it into law. This is an idea that has had bipartisan support from the very beginning. Since that time, 40 years ago, 37,300 Land and Water Conservation Fund State grants, totalling more than $3 billion, have been instrumental in preserving 2.3 million acres and building 27,000 recreational facilities. For example, one park that was preserved by grants from the LWCF is Fall Creek Falls in Tennessee. Grants from the fund totalling $376,000 helped acquire land and built facilities at this spectacular park, which I have visited many times, boasts the highest waterfall in North America east of the Rocky Mountains. Chances are pretty good many parks we have hiked would not even exist if it were not for the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Yet since the early 1980s, the Land and Water Conservation Fund has been consistently shortchanged of funding. During most of the 1980s and 1990s, funding levels were kept to about one-third of the authorized level--$300 million of $900 million authorized, for example. By the late 1990s, funding for State grants under the Land and Water Conservation Fund was cut to zero. In recent years, we have seen some improvements. Funding for State grants averaged about $100 million since 2001, but it is not hard to do better when you are doing nothing. While funding has declined, demand for conserved areas has dramatically increased. Since the Land and Water Conservation Fund was first established, the population of the United States has grown by more than 40 percent. A growing population puts pressure on open spaces in two ways: First, more people want to enjoy the great outdoors so they need more space for it; second, more land is being used for other purposes--such as new subdivisions, shopping malls, office buildings, and more--which makes open space more scarce, especially in areas where most of us live. The demand for parks and open space is higher than ever before, especially for city parks, the parks down the street in which we walk, run and enjoy the outdoors. How can we fund conservation efforts in the time of tight budgets? The Americans Outdoors Act of 2004, which Senator Mary Landrieu and I introduced in the Senate earlier this year, provides the answer. The act provides a reliable stream of funding by collecting what we call a conservation royalty on revenues from drilling for oil and gas on offshore Federal lands. It uses this conservation royalty to fully fund three existing Federal programs. First, the State side of the Land and Water Conservation Fund is $450 million annually. Second, the Wildlife Conservation Fund is $350 million annually. And third, Urban Parks Initiatives is $125 million annually. It also provides 500 million additional dollars each year for coastal impact assistance including wetlands protection. This new conservation royalty is not such a new idea at all. It is modeled after the existing State royalty for onshore oil and gas drilling created in the Mineral Lands Leasing Act of 1920. The act gives 50 cents of every dollar from drilling onshore--and in the case of Alaska, 90 cents out of every dollar--as a royalty to the State in which the drilling occurs. In a similar way, our Americans Outdoors Act of 2004 would create a conservation royalty of about 25 percent for revenues of the funds collected from offshore drilling on Federal lands. Some of the royalty would go to States such as Texas where the drilling occurs. More would go to all States for parks, game and fish commissions, and projects funded by the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The premise of this legislation is simple. If drilling for oil and gas creates an environmental impact, it makes sense to use some of the proceeds to create an environmental benefit. In 2001, the Federal Government received $7.5 billion in oil and gas revenues from Federal offshore leases. This revenue comes from the Outer Continental Shelf which supplies more oil to the United States than any other country, including Saudi Arabia. I mentioned at the beginning this was a bipartisan idea. I should mention one other President who was involved in this idea. His name was Ronald Reagan. In 1985, President Reagan asked me to chair the President's Commission on Americans Outdoors which looked ahead for a generation to try to see what we could do now to help us--today, as it turns out, nearly 20 years later--to enjoy the great American outdoors. One of the major recommendations from President Reagan's Commission on Americans Outdoors was that we take some of the money from offshore oil drilling and devote it to wildlife preservation, to city parks, and to the State and Federal sides of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Senator Landrieu and I intend to add an amendment that includes the Federal side of the Land and Water Conservation Fund to our proposal. Today, we celebrate 40 years of a good idea with a new suggestion for how to improve it: a conservation royalty on offshore revenues that we treat exactly the same way we have treated onshore revenues for 50 years. We give it to the States and to the Federal side of the Land and Water Conservation Fund for wildlife preservation and city parks. Someone once said Italy has its art, England has its history, and the United States has the great American outdoors. Our magnificent land, as much as our love of liberty, is at the core of our character. It has inspired our pioneer spirit, our resourcefulness, and our generosity. Its greatness has fueled our individualism and our optimism and made us believe anything is possible. It has influenced our music, our literature, our science, and our language. It has served as our training ground for athletes and philosophers, of poets and defenders of American ideas. So let us come together to conserve the great open spaces of our country for generations to come. That is why the generation before us-- Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy and Johnson and Reagan--worked to establish the Land and Water Conservation Fund 40 years ago. That is why we should make sure it is fully funded today. The Americans Outdoors Act will do just that. Mr. President, I yield the floor.