Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, how much time is remaining for morning business on our side?

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Chair.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 15 minutes in morning business, and I request that the Chair let me know when there are 2 minutes remaining.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I wish to talk about songwriters. Italy has its art, and California and Oregon have fine wine, Hollywood has movies, Dalton, GA, has carpets, and Nashville has songwriters. There are a great many beautiful songs that come from Nashville-- poems--but I want to especially commend to my colleagues a new song called ``Letters from Home.'' You may hear John Michael Montgomery sing it. It is a poem that touches the heart of Americans at this time. It is especially meaningful with the men and women of our military in Afghanistan and Iraq and all over the world fighting for freedom. This is a story about their loved ones awaiting their coming home. The last stanza goes like this: I hold it up and show my buddies Like we ain't scared an' our boots ain't muddy But no one laughs 'cause there's Ain't nothin' funny when a' Soldier cries. So I just wipe my eyes Fold it up and put it in my shirt Pick up my gun and get back to work And it keeps drivin' on, waitin' on letters from home. That song was written by Tony Lane and David Lee. I saw them a couple weeks ago at Belmont University in Nashville. Belmont celebrated the introduction of a course on ``Poetics in Country Music,'' to explore literary criticism of song lyrics as we do for other poetry. I salute Belmont University for its leadership. When Johnny Cash died, the New York Times streamed a headline: ``Poet of the Working Poor.'' Bob Dylan once said Hank Williams was America's greatest poet. I said on the Senate floor, if that is true, why don't we have English professors somewhere criticizing their poetry? They are all up in Northeastern schools writing good criticism of mediocre poems while we have poets of the working poor and some of the best poets in Nashville writing poems. ``Letters from Home'' is yet another great poem from Nashville songwriters and one more example of why Belmont University's pioneering work to discuss ``Poetics of the Working Poor'' is a good idea. There might be more in common between Shakespeare's sonnets and Hank Williams stanzas than one at first might imagine.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I wish to discuss with my colleagues something of a mystery. I have yet to be able to find an answer to this mystery. I am hoping by addressing it on the Senate floor and by letters I am sending today to Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, their research might help me figure this out. I asked Chairman Greenspan at our hearing on April 21 of the Joint Economic Committee about the 6 million people, more or less, who are living and working in the United States who our Government is not counting when it makes our monthly projections about who is working and who is unemployed. Here is what I base that question on: There is a consensus there are 8 to 10 million undocumented aliens or illegal immigrants in the United States today. For example, the Urban Institute estimate says 8 million, and the Center for Immigration Studies says 10 million. The Urban Institute estimates perhaps 6 million or more of those undocumented persons have a job in the United States. I do not think there is much debate about the fact there are 6 million people living in the United States, more or less, who are illegally here who are also working. My guess is our Government is not counting most of these 6 million undocumented aliens when we announce each month the number of Americans who have jobs. It was 138 million for March and the number who are unemployed, 5.7 percent of the workforce, or 8.4 million people in March. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which makes these announcements each month, gathers their estimates in two different ways. The first is the so-called payroll survey of 400,000 business establishments. Since it is a violation of Federal criminal laws for a company to employ an undocumented alien, I think it is wrong to assume most or even many of the 6 million illegal immigrants who are working here are reported by the payroll survey. Nor do I believe these 6 million illegal immigrants are likely to be included in the other principal data-gathering mechanism of the survey, which we call the household survey. This is a survey of more than 60,000 persons living in the United States which basically asked in many different ways, do you have a job? Now, this must include a lot of people the payroll service does not, people such as farmers, people working at home, independent contractors, and I suspect a lot of people who are here illegally. I also believe that it paints a much clearer picture of employment in the United States than the payroll survey. Common sense suggests to me that the household survey also does not include many undocumented aliens. If one is an illegal immigrant and they receive a phone call from the Government asking questions, they are not likely to give many answers, I would not think, especially if the phone call is not in their native language. So I see no basis to assume these 6 million workers--my guess is in most cases hard workers but undocumented aliens--are being counted or that they are being equally uncounted by the two surveys, which is what Mr. Greenspan suggested might be the case. Our failure to find some way to consider the implications of having what I would judge to be so many undocumented aliens working has a great many policy implications. Now I am not trying in these remarks to solve the great issues of immigration, whether we should have it, how much we should have, what we should do. That is another debate. I am just trying to understand who is here. If 6 million are here and working, are we counting them? It would be helpful to know the answer to that question, to know whether we are understating the number of people living in America who are employed and stating the rate of people in America who are unemployed. This is one of the principal debates in our presidential campaign: It is the economy, stupid. It is jobs. Well, how do these 6 million uncounted workers affect the information we put out each month upon which we make all of these debates? Also, if we have 8.4 million unemployed, according to our official statistics, and if 6 million illegal immigrants are working, are these 6 million taking jobs that the 8.4 million want? Also, if these 6 million were not here, would we suddenly have virtually full employment? Another point might be, if these 6 million were not here and the 8.4 million still remained unemployed, or many of them did, that certainly would tell us something about whether we need more or less unemployment insurance, more or fewer training programs, or more or fewer lessons in English. Or if the 6 million illegal workers are actually employed, that would tell us something about the effectiveness of our immigration laws and would help us make more accurate estimates of the contributions these workers might make to the Social Security and Medicare systems. So if we are going to rely on these monthly estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, my point is, if one is going to say to us we have 138 million people at work in the United States, what about the 6 million who are here who probably are not counted, who are illegally here? They are real people. They are working in real jobs. What about them? Or if we are talking about the 8.4 million people who are unemployed in the United States, what is the effect of having 6 million illegal people on that rate of unemployment? It is information I think we ought to know. At the end of his answer to my question, Mr. Greenspan said that having better information about the number of undocumented aliens living and working in the United States is a subject that has ``bedeviled statisticians.'' I believe it is also a problem we ought to try harder to figure out the answer to. In fact, I believe it is inexcusable that we would base so much of our public debate about unemployment on surveys that likely exclude several million employed workers in the United States, many of them doing jobs that most Americans consider to be valuable jobs. This failure to report accurate information may be leading us into a number of erroneous, ineffective, and expensive policy decisions. I have asked Mr. Greenspan and his excellent staff and I have asked the Bureau of Labor Statistics if they could examine this question in-depth and give me and perhaps other Members of the Joint Economic Committee, if Chairman Bennett finds the subject interesting, an opportunity to talk with them about their conclusion. It seems odd that we would continue to base so much of our national debate upon information that may be flawed, and if it is not flawed, then we need someone with reasonable authority to say that each month we are counting the 5, 6 or 7 million people who have jobs in the United States and who are illegally here so that this cannot be an issue. If they cannot say that, then we need to work harder to find out the answer. I ask unanimous consent that a copy of my letter to Chairman Alan Greenspan be printed in the Record.

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I have three topics I wish to speak about today. The first is about Marvin Runyon. Marvin Runyon is a man known to almost all Tennesseans. He died last night. He had a remarkable career. Marvin Runyon and his Nissan team brought the automobile industry to Tennessee, creating jobs and better lives for tens of thousands of families. They built from scratch the largest and most efficient car and truck plant in North America. For an encore, Marvin Runyon became chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority and stabilized TVA rates. And for a double encore, he became the Postmaster General of the United States, and in the year he left, if I am not mistaken, the Post Office made a profit. It is rare that our country has produced a better chief executive officer. I am certain Tennessee has never produced a better one. He has three wonderful stories all after 50 years of age. Prior to that, Mr. Runyon was a senior executive at Ford Motor Company. It was in 1980, in my second year as Governor, when Nissan hired that team of Ford executives. They came to Tennessee, a State that was not building any cars or trucks, only had a few thousand, I would say, automobile supplier jobs. Today, Tennessee is the third or fourth largest producer of cars and trucks. One-third of our manufacturing jobs are automotive. There are several reasons for that development, but it would not have happened if Marvin Runyon and his Nissan team had not chosen to come to Tennessee in 1980. My wife and I and our family have lost a dear friend, Tennesseans have lost a friend, and I wanted to pay tribute to a man who literally changed the lives of tens of thousands of families for the better by his work in bringing the automobile industry to Tennessee and stabilizing the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet on Thursday, April 29, 2004, at 10 a.m. to consider the nomination of Dawn Tisdale to be Commissioner, U.S. Postal Rate Commission.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, April 29, 2004, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on ``Counter-Terror Initiatives and Concerns in the Terror Finance Program.'' Concurrent with the hearing, the Committee intends to vote on the nominations of the Hon. Romolo A. (Roy) Bernardi, of New York, to be Deputy Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; Mr. Dennis C. Shea, of Virginia, to be Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research, Department of Housing and Urban Development; and Ms. Cathy M. MacFarlane, of Virginia, to be Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, April 29, 2004, to hold a business meeting.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, April 29, 2004, at 2:30 p.m., to hold a hearing on Middle East Broadcasting.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Indian Affairs be authorized to meet on Thursday, April 29, 2004, at 10 am., in room 485 of the Russell Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing on S. 2301, a discussion draft bill to improve the management of Native American fish and wildlife and gathering, and for other purposes.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Government Affairs be authorized to meet on Thursday, April 29, 2004, immediately following a 10 a.m. nominations hearing, to consider the nominations of David Safavian to be Administrator for Federal Procurement Policy, Office of Management and Budget.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet to conduct a markup on Thursday, April 29, 2004, at 9:30 a.m. in Dirksen Senate Building Room 226. Agenda I. Nominations: Henry W. Saad to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the Sixth Circuit; William Duane Benton to be United States Circuit Judge for the Eighth Circuit; Robert Bryan Harwell to be United States District Judge for the District of South Carolina; George P. Schiavelli to be United States District Judge for the Central District of California; and Curtis V. Gomez to be Judge for the District Court of the Virgin Islands. II. Legislation: S. 1735. Gang Prevention and Effective Deterrence Act of 2003 [Hatch, Chambliss, Cornyn, Feinstein, Graham, Grassley, Schumer]. S. 2107. A bill to authorize an annual appropriations of $10,000,000 for mental health courts through fiscal year 2009 [DeWine, Leahy]. S. 2192. Cooperative Research and Technology Enhancement (CREATE) Act of 2004 [Hatch, Feingold, Kohl, Leahy]. S. 1933. Enhancing Federal Obscenity Reporting and Copyright Enforcement (ENFORCE) Act of 2003 [Hatch, Cornyn, Feinstein]. S. 2237. Protecting Intellectual Rights Against Theft and Expropriation (PIRATE) Act of 2004 [Leahy, Hatch]. S. 1932. Artists' Rights and Theft Prevention (ART) Act of 2003 [Cornyn, DeWine, Durbin, Feinstein, Graham, Hatch, Kennedy]. H.R. 1561. United States Patent and Trademark Fee Modernization Act of 2004. S. 1635. A bill to amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to ensure the integrity of the L-1 visa for intracompany transferees [Chambliss]. S. 1609. Parental Responsibility Obligations Met through Immigration System Enforcement (PROMISE) Act [Hatch, Cornyn]. S. 1129. Unaccompanied Alien Child Protection Act of 2003 [Feinstein, DeWine, Durbin, Edwards, Feingold, Kennedy, Kohl, Leahy, Schumer, Specter]. S. Res. 334. A resolution designating May 2004 as National Electrical Safety Month.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 29, 2004, at 2:30 p.m. to hold a closed mark-up on the fiscal year 2005 Intelligence Authorization Bill.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I am voting against cloture, against cutting off debate. The Senator from Arizona and the Senator from Virginia have worked hard to make this a good amendment. I and my group of colleagues have been working on this issue. We are for a 2-year ban on State and local taxation of Internet access but this does much more than that. A vote against cloture, against cutting off the debate, is a vote to do no harm to State and local governments. It will allow us to continue the debate. I urge my colleagues to vote against cloture.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, since that would put two speakers on that side, I ask unanimous consent that one other speaker on the other side be permitted 1 minute to speak.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Did I not have 1 minute?

Mr. ALEXANDER. I won't take many minutes, but I wanted to do this while the chairman of the committee and Senators Wyden and Allen and Dorgan are all here. I intend to vote for this legislation tonight. This is a good result. Senator Lott made some comments a few minutes ago about how the Senate can sometimes come to a good conclusion. Before I came to the Senate, I spent a year and a half teaching a course in American character at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. What we talked about there was what distinguishes our country is that we agree on a few principles. Professor Samuel Huntington pointed out that our politics is a conflict between those principles. We had a conflict here between laissez-faire free market principles and federalism, and they are both very important. We have been working hard to come to agreement, and we got a good result. Senator Allen and Senator Wyden should feel very good about what they have been able to accomplish, and this has been a fashion of theirs for a long time. I feel good about the fact that Senators Carper, Voinovich, Graham, Feinstein, and others have been able to remind us of the importance of a strong Federal system as we debate our issues, and that we promise as a Congress to do our best to minimize harm to State and local governments as we take important actions here. So what pleases me about the result is what Senator McCain talked about--moving from a permanent ban to 4 years. I think that is good. Far and away, the most important result is the clarification that Senator McCain has been able to achieve on the question of whether we are trying to decide what to do about telephone calls made over the Internet. That is not what we are trying to do with this legislation. We had that in our mind on both sides, but we have not been able to agree on that. That is far and away the biggest issue for State and local governments, because they collect up to $18 billion a year in taxes on telephone services. That may change as time goes on, but we did not want ambiguous language, or a misunderstanding, or to run the risk during the period of this moratorium--which we prefer to call a temporary timeout--that anyone would think we were trying to decide the issue of what to do about telephone calls made over the Internet. Senator McCain's amendment makes that clear and it speaks for itself. Also, he has been able, through his final suggestion, to leave some grandfather extensions in the bill. I would like to see more. We will have a chance to vote on more in a minute. The area where we did not go as far as we would like on our side was in the definition. It expands the tax exempt coverage to what we call the backbone and a number of other Internet activities. But this is a good result. It should be a wake-up call to Members of the Congress that this is the fastest-growing new technology in America. It is going to change the way we live, and it should be a wake-up call to us who care about federalism--all of us, and Governors and mayors everywhere--that we are going to have to do careful, creative, constructive thinking about what the impact of this is on our Federal system. What does it do to Governors, mayors, and county commissioners? We are making a temporary decision here, but the Commerce Committees of this Congress have already said they are going to take the issue up in November. So from where we started in December, to where we are today, I feel very good about it. I especially thank the chairman of the Commerce Committee, who has, from the beginning, in terms of allowing me to testify before the committee--I am not a member of the Commerce Committee; this is not an area in which I am usually involved--he respected my effort, and that of others, to push the issue of federalism forward. I thank him for helping us create a very good result. So while I intend to be a cosponsor of Senator Feinstein's bill, I believe that what we have achieved so far goes a long way in minimizing the effect of this legislation on doing harm to State and local governments. It taught all of us that this is an issue we need to learn more about to make sure we deal with it intelligently. I thank you for the time. I thank the Senator from Arizona for his leadership. Also, Senator Allen and Senator Wyden have been congenial as well as effective in their work. I am grateful for that as well. I have enjoyed working with them.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator from California for her leadership on this issue. From the beginning, because of her background as mayor of San Francisco, she has had a clear understanding of the effect of this debate on the ability of cities and States to do what they are expected to do, and the importance of our Federal system of government. Now, Senators should consider on both sides of the aisle what this means. It means we have largely come to a consensus, at least from my point of view, about what we want to do. We have decided that for the States that were already taxing Internet access in 1998, they should have 4 years more as we have a 4-year moratorium on new taxes. What the Senator from California is saying is, then the States that are taxing Internet access that is delivered in other kinds of ways should also have the same 4 years. I believe she is right. Senator Feinstein's position says no new taxes, no new harm, and treat all States the same. That is a fair result that fits with the consensus that we have developed for the rest of this legislation, and I will support it, vote for it, and cosponsor it. I hope our colleagues will do the same.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Is it appropriate for me to make a few remarks on the McCain amendment?

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I see other Senators waiting to speak, so I will be brief. I acknowledge and congratulate Senator McCain, Senator Allen, Senator Wyden, and others who have worked very hard on this issue. Their point of view on the cloture vote is prevailing. I congratulate them and thank them also for the discussions we have had, trying to assure Members that this legislation, in the end, would do the minimum amount of harm to State and local governments. I would like to continue to do that. There are a number of amendments that have been filed. We need to have a few minutes to talk about exactly in what order we would like to bring up those amendments. I believe in some cases the Senator from Oregon, the Senator from Virginia, and I intend to do the same thing, but that our language does a different thing. To the extent there is a misunderstanding that produces concerns on my part and among the National Governors Association, the mayors, and the county executives of the country, perhaps we could work those things out by consensus. I congratulate them on moving ahead with this step. I appreciate the offer to continue to work together. Within a few minutes, we will have an idea of which amendments and in what order we would like to proceed, and we will move along. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, this proposal violates the Budget Act. It breaks our promise. While it has distinguished support among my colleagues, it is a political trick because it means lower taxes here and higher taxes there. I suggest that my colleagues might go home and ask legislators and mayors whether they plan to fire teachers or raise local property taxes, whether they plan to raise college tuition or raise their State's tax on food, or whether they plan to let prisoners out of jail or put in a new State income tax. This legislation has the wrong name. It at least has an incomplete name. It ought to be called the ``Higher Local Property Tax Act of 2004'' or the ``Higher State Income Tax Law of 2004'' because that is inevitably what would happen. This does not have to happen this way. There is a better way. I support a 2-year ban on State and local taxation of the Internet. I have suggested four ways to fix the McCain substitute. I would take the Texas law that President Bush passed in 1999 and make it permanent, giving everybody up to a $25 credit on their tax. We need to continue this debate. We need a comprehensive review. The industry doesn't need a subsidy. My hope is that Congress will continue to debate and decide if it intends to give an additional subsidy to the high-speed Internet access business that we in Congress pay the bill with Federal dollars rather than sending the bill back to State and local governments. I thank the Chair.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I note that the Washington Post is recommending support for the Alexander- Carper version of the legislation. This is not about taxes. This is not about the Internet. This is about Senators and Congressmen coming to Washington, passing an expensive idea, and sending the bill home to State and local governments. I am voting against cloture on the McCain proposal and against cutting off debate because this legislation breaks our promise to State and local government. In 1994, 300 Republicans stood on the Capitol steps and said: No money, no mandate; break our promise, throw us out. In 1995, the Republican majority passed the Unfunded Mandate Reform Act. There are 62 Senators serving in this body today who voted for that. This legislation breaks our promise in a big way. The Congressional Budget Office tells us it is an unfunded mandate. The National League of Cities says it is a nightmare. The National Governors Association says it can cost States up to $18 billion a year because of language in the proposal. The commissioner of revenue from the State of Tennessee says in a letter dated yesterday, to put it in dollar terms, Tennessee would lose $350 million a year, up to about 5 percent of the States budget. I ask unanimous consent to have those three documents printed in the Record.