Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I want to thank the Senator from Maine for her lucid and heartfelt description of what is before us. She has been an exceptional leader, and she continues to be. She looks for ways to get results. She sees people--the plumber I talked about making $60,000, the stylist, a farmer--the person who is working and paying all of his or her insurance with no subsidy help and who sees the real prospect coming that when the rates are announced October 1, they may not be able to afford any insurance, and they can see we have a solution for that. Now, this isn't a Republican solution or a Democratic solution. This is a solution that began to be developed almost the day Republicans failed to repeal and replace ObamaCare. I walked across the aisle to see if we could do what the Democrats were asking. Let's fix what we have temporarily so nobody is hurt. As we have explained this afternoon, we did that. We have a proposal that is the original Alexander-Murray proposal, developed in four hearings, in which more than half the Senate participated, which at one point the Democratic leader said every single Democrat would vote for. It takes an existing part of the Affordable Care Act and makes it work--that is the innovation waiver-- gives States more flexibility to create more choices and lower cost choices without changing the essential health benefits, without changing the guarantee for preexisting conditions. It is really a modest change, but it is a significant change. Then it has 3 years of cost-sharing subsidies--remember, the President said he did not want to pay those, but he supports this--and then 3 years of reinsurance so we can help the sickest people who are in the individual market, take them out, pay their needs, and reduce rates for everybody else. These are the best Republican and Democratic ideas that have been put together in a package and, as Senator Collins has said, virtually everyone who has looked at this--starting with the Oliver Wyman Health consultants who say it reduces rates up to 40 percent, the Congressional Budget Office says 20. That is thousands of dollars. If you are paying $20,000 for your insurance, if we do nothing, you might be paying $24,000. If we do this, you might be paying $16,000. That is a lot of money. If we do this, you might be paying $12,000. That is thousands of dollars less. That is a big tax cut for you, and it is a big tax increase. Why are we not doing this? Let's not kid ourselves. There is a lot of scrambling and embarrassed running around over on the other side of the aisle to come up with an excuse for this, but let's be honest about it. The Democrats are blocking this for one reason. They have convinced themselves they do not want to apply to the health insurance rate reduction in the omnibus bill the same law that applies to more than 100 other programs in this omnibus bill. So every single Democrat over here who says: I can't vote for a 40-percent rate reduction for you, Mr. Plumber or Ms. Hairstylist or Ms. Farmer. I can't do that because I can't put the Hyde amendment on it, but I am going to vote to put the Hyde amendment on the National Institutes of Health, I am going to vote to put the Hyde amendment on community health centers, I am going to vote today to put it on Federal employee health benefits and family planning grants under title X and 100 other programs Democrats are going to vote to put the Hyde language on--yet they say we can't put the same language on a 40-percent health insurance reduction that is composed of three sections of bipartisan legislation that the Democratic leader has said, at least on two-thirds of it, that every single Democrat supported. Now, what is that? What is that? I mean, this should not be a partisan issue. I am not surprised there is scrambling and embarrassment on the other side of the aisle. I don't know how they are going to explain this to the American people. I know a lot of people in Tennessee are desperately hoping we succeed. I hear it every time I go home. Health insurance is the No. 1 concern of the people in my State, and the most frightening prospect is, if they can't pay their bills, then they can't buy insurance. They might get sick and have no way to take care of it. Mr. President, I will ask consent to put into the Record a few items. The first is a list of 20 programs that are included in the omnibus bill we are likely to vote on today that have Hyde protection. Now, remember what the Hyde protection is. It is a compromise that was created in 1976 that said Federal funds may not be used for elective abortions, but basically you may use any other funds, and you may create a contract or arrangement to do that. So that is what we do with Medicare. That is what we do with Medicaid. That is what we are voting today to do at the National Institutes of Health, in the community health centers, voting today for the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, for family planning grants, for the Indian health programs, for the VA women's health medical care, for global health programs, for the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, and school-based health centers. We are voting to put the Hyde protection on area health education centers, on maternal and childcare block grants, on the National Health Service Corps, but we can't put Hyde protection on health insurance--a 40-percent rate reduction on health insurance, a bipartisan proposal that has the support of the President, the majority leader, and the Speaker. They are all willing to put it in this bill, but you say no. You say no, and there is no good reason for that. There is no good reason whatsoever. We are going to vote to put the Hyde amendment on childcare community development block grants. I ask unanimous consent that a list of 20 of those programs be printed in the Record, although, there are more than 100 we will be voting on today.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent also to have printed in the Record a short summary of the three-part, bipartisan proposal that will produce the 40-percent rate decreases in the individual market, according to Oliver Wyman, and up to 20 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office, over the next 3 years.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I want to talk for a moment about something that is on the minds of anybody in this country who is making $60,000, $70,000, $80,000, $90,000 too much to have a subsidy to pay for your healthcare insurance and maybe are paying $15,000, $20,000, $25,000 of that salary for your insurance this year and who has heard from a lot of people that on October 1, the insurance companies are going to announce that your premium is going up. That is whom I would like to talk with today. Specifically, let me use the example of a woman named Marty in Tennessee. She came up to me before Christmas at the Chick-fil-A on Charlotte Road in Nashville, and she stopped me while I was getting my mac and cheese at Chick-fil-A, and she said: My name is Marty. I am a self-employed farmer. A few years ago, my health insurance was $300 a month, today it is $1,300 a month, and I cannot afford that. Well, in Tennessee, prices for health insurance for people who work and don't get any subsidy to help them buy their insurance and don't get insurance on the job, they don't get it from Medicare or Medicaid, people who work, the self-employed farmer, the contractor, the plumber, the songwriter, somebody who might be making $60,000, say--they are like Marty. They are paying $20,000 for their health insurance, and they cannot afford that. I told Marty: I think we have a Christmas present for you. I think Congress, when we pass the omnibus spending bill, is going to include in it a set of policies we have that is going to lower your rates when they are announced on October 1 of next year, which is 2018. Well, unfortunately, we had a continuing resolution at the end of the year, and Marty didn't get her Christmas present. Then I thought she might get a Valentine's present, and we went by Valentine's Day and did another CR, a continuing resolution. Now we have until the end of next week to fund the government for the year we are halfway through. I am on the floor today, and I can say to Marty and to every plumber, songwriter, self-employed person in this country, someone who might be between jobs, that if the Congress will act, we can lower their rates next year for up to as much as 40 percent--40 percent. That is according to Oliver Wyman, one of the leading healthcare consulting firms in this country, which announced on Monday that a set of policies which we call Alexander-Murray-Collins-Nelson, which President Trump supports, which Congressman Walden, who is the chairman of the House committee in this area, supports, which Senator McConnell supports, which I support--we have broad support for this. This policy we have been working on for months, according to Oliver Wyman, over the next 3 years, assuming States take full advantage of all the options we are giving them, could lower rates by 40 percent. What does that mean? That means that if you are paying $20,000 for your health insurance--you are that $60,000-a-year plumber--that is 40 percent of $20,000, which, by my math, is $8,000. So that would cut your insurance to $12,000, and you get down toward something you might be able to afford. Can you imagine anything more frightening than approaching next year knowing that you might not be able to afford health insurance for your family? You are thinking: Well, look, I am doing everything I am supposed to. The government has not gotten me on any kind of subsidy to buy health insurance. I am out here working. I am paying my taxes. Maybe I got a little tax cut that the Republicans put through last year, but the thing that is really a problem for me is my health insurance. If I am making $60,000, $70,000, $80,000 a year, I cannot afford $15,000, $20,000, or $25,000 a year. If you are a farmer in Iowa or a miner in Alaska or a songwriter in Nashville, you can't afford that, and you shouldn't have to, and you won't have to if Congress will act next week to accept the set of policies that I am about to briefly describe. There are three things we propose to do. The most important is 3 years of reinsurance or the invisible risk pool. This is an idea that House Republicans have strongly supported and that Senator Collins and Senator Nelson have strongly supported here. It would allow more States to do what the State of Alaska has done. The Presiding Officer is from Alaska. Alaska took the very sickest people in Alaska and put them in one pool and called that the reinsurance pool and paid for their health insurance. When they did that, it so reduced the cost for everybody else that it lowered the rates for everybody else by 20 percent. What we are talking about is lowering the rate for everybody else by 40 percent if States take full advantage of what we are proposing next week. So reinsurance is the first thing--3 years of reinsurance at $10 billion a year. The second thing is 3 years of cost-sharing subsidies. You have to stop and think about it a minute, but the cost-sharing subsidies pay for the reinsurance. Cost-sharing subsidies are payments that are made to insurance companies to pay for the copays and the deductibles for low-income people, and that allows the companies to reduce the premiums. When you reduce the premiums, you reduce the ObamaCare subsidies. According to conversations we have had with the Congressional Budget Office, if we do 3 years of cost-sharing subsidies and 3 years of reinsurance at $10 billion, the cost-sharing subsidies more than pay for the reinsurance, if you base it on reality, which is, if Congress passes a law that costs $30 billion over 3 years for reinsurance and 3 years of cost-sharing subsidies, the cost-sharing subsidies pay for the reinsurance and leave $2 billion over to reduce the Federal debt. The third part is a set of proposals that would give States more flexibility. This streamlines the section 1332 waiver in the Affordable Care Act. It makes some changes that permit the agency we call CMS to approve waivers from States, like the State of Alaska or Nebraska or Tennessee, which may say: We would like to spend our ObamaCare subsidy money in a different way, and we would like to add some of this reinsurance money to it. By doing that, that is how you achieve the 40- percent savings for the Nebraska self-employed farmer or the Nashville songwriter in their insurance policies. So that is the set of proposals, plus within there is a provision for what we call a catastrophic policy, which is a policy that has somewhat higher deductibles but lower premiums, which people may choose to buy. All of that policy has broad bipartisan support. I think the reinsurance provision--in the Republican discussions we have had in the Senate, almost everybody seems to agree that the only way we can have an individual market, which is the market for people who buy insurance on their own--people who don't get it from Medicare, people who don't get it from Medicaid, people who don't get it on the job--let's say you are between jobs or you are self-employed. You are the songwriter. You are the plumber. Those are the people whom we are focused on here. There are about 11 million in the United States, but there could be a lot more because all of us know what it is like to think, well, I might lose my job, or, I might change jobs, and what do I do for insurance in the interim? I have the so-called COBRA available, but it is very expensive. If I suddenly find I am losing my job or if I am changing jobs and I am worrying about insurance--that is the person we are talking about. Where did these ideas come from? Did we just write them on the back of an envelope and give them to Congress? No. We went through a very serious process here in the Senate. Senator Murray, the ranking Democrat on the Senate HELP Committee--I am the chairman--and I held four hearings last fall after Republicans failed to repeal and replace the ObamaCare law. We invited all Senators to participate. We had more than half the Senate come to our hearings and to our meetings with the witnesses. Out of that came the proposals to streamline the 1332 waiver--that is flexibility for States--and the need to pay for the cost-sharing subsidies temporarily, because people began to understand that they don't cost money, but they save taxpayer money because they reduce the need for Federal taxpayer subsidies. So that is where that came from. The single most important idea that was not a part of the original Alexander-Murray proposal was reinsurance. In the House, they call it the invisible risk pool. Senators Collins and Nelson have championed it here. Representative Costello, Representative Meadows, and other people championed it over there. It was part of the Republican repeal-and- replace legislation in the House of Representatives. So the idea of 3 years of reinsurance really has come from both bodies and from both sides of the aisle. It is the most essential part of any long-term policy to create an individual market where people can buy insurance if they don't get it on the job or from the government. This would give States half a billion dollars in the current year, 2018, to plan for their reinsurance pools. It would then create $10 billion over 3 years that States could use to help pay for their reinsurance pools, and they would use their 1332 streamlined waiver in the second and third year. So they could have a combination of State money, reinsurance Federal money, and ObamaCare subsidy money and hopefully, in that process, create their own way of helping to pay for the needs of the very sickest people in the State and, by taking them out of the insurance pool, lower the rates for everybody else over that 4-year period, according to the Oliver Wyman consulting firm, by as much as 40 percent. The Congressional Budget Office has also reviewed the set of proposals I have just described. My staff has been working closely with them because we want to know what it costs if we are going to put it in the omnibus bill, and the preliminary feedback from the Congressional Budget Office is more conservative than the Oliver Wyman estimate. The Congressional Budget Office says that it would reduce premiums by an average of 10 percent in 2019 and 20 percent in 2020 and 2021 if States take full advantage of the 1332 waiver they have. As you can imagine, State Governors and State insurance commissioners are delighted with this package. First, they like to see us do something in a bipartisan way to stabilize the health insurance market so people aren't scared to death that they may not be able to buy a policy next year, but second, they think it is sound policy. It is sound policy. Much of this started when the President called me last August and said: Between now and the time we make a final decision on what to do about the Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare, I want to make sure that people aren't hurt. So he asked me if I would work with Senator Murray and see if we could come up with a bipartisan set of proposals that would stabilize the individual market. He called me several times about that, and we have worked together since then. That is when we came together with the original Alexander-Murray proposal. Then we had a big disagreement here within the Senate, and we had our tax bill wherein we repealed the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act. Republicans thought that was a good idea. It made people buy insurance they didn't want, and it was a tax on low-income people, so we got rid of it. Democrats didn't like that at all. It is true that taking the individual mandate out, even though States could add it back if they want to, does increase the cost of insurance in the individual market. Despite that, this set of policies that I have described--State flexibility, the 3 years of cost-sharing subsidies, and the 3 years of reinsurance/invisible risk pools--those three policies, according to Oliver Wyman consulting, which is one of the leading health consulting firms in America, could lower rates to 40 percent lower than they otherwise would be. According to the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan agency that looks at things for us, it will lower them 10 percent in 2019 and as much as 20 percent in the next 2 years after that. Even if it is only 20 and not 40, 20 percent of $20,000 is $4,000 for Marty, the self-employed farmer in Nashville who stopped me at Chick-fil-A and said her insurance had gone from $300 to $1,300, $1,400 a month. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the report of the Oliver Wyman consulting company that says that the combination of policies I just described--reinsurance, cost-sharing subsidies, and the section 1332 waiver, which is the State flexibility--that those three policies will reduce rates by up to 40 percent.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Finally, I would ask the question, What if we don't do this? I am generally a very optimistic person. I am results-oriented, and you don't get results if you don't work across party lines and if you don't think you are going to succeed. So I always think we will succeed. This has been more difficult to do than it should have been. I would like to suggest to my colleagues and to the American people that we should focus on October 1 of this year because that is the date when insurance rates for next year, 2019, will be announced all across the country. Insurance companies are working with insurance commissioners in every State to try to figure out what is going to happen, what the rates will be. They will be announcing rates on October 1, which is about a month before the next election. There a lot of people who are going to be looking at that because, in my State of Tennessee, rates were up 58 percent this year, and that is for the plumber who makes $60,000 a year; the songwriter; Marty, the farmer; and the people I have been describing. There was a 58-percent increase. So they are going to be looking on October 1 to see whether they can even afford any insurance in 2019. If we do what we are proposing here in the Alexander-Murray-Collins- Nelson set of policies, which has broad bipartisan support in the House and the Senate and the support of the President, if we do that next week, Marty, the self-employed farmer in Tennessee, will be able to see on October 1 that her rates will go down and that, if Oliver Wyman is correct, instead of her rates going up 58 percent the way they did this year, they will go down 40 percent over the next 2 or 3 years. That means she could afford insurance. If we don't do it, rates will go up, and the individual market will probably collapse. It was near collapse a year ago. By collapsing, I mean there will be counties where people can't buy insurance at all. There will be 11 million people who are between jobs, who are self- employed, or who are working who literally cannot afford insurance, and they are not going to be very happy campers. They are going to blame every one of us, and they should. They are going to blame the President, they are going to blame Republicans, they are going to blame Democrats, and they are going to blame insurance companies because we have an opportunity next week to solve that problem in a bipartisan way, developed through a bipartisan process, incorporating ideas that virtually everyone who looks at them says make very good policy sense. We have a couple of things to work through on ancillary issues, but those shouldn't cloud the fact that we can reduce rates by up to 40 percent for the working Americans who can't afford insurance--the insurance companies will announce that on October 1--or we can do nothing, and we can let the markets falter. There will be some counties where you can't buy insurance at all, some counties where you can't afford insurance at all, and we will have people look at us and say: My goodness, why did we send them up there to do nothing about that? I am optimistic. I think we can do it. I appreciate the hard work on both sides of the aisle. In many respects, it has been a very difficult negotiation. I appreciate the President's consistency over the past couple of months in supporting this and the Vice President's work. Senator McConnell has been very supportive of this, which makes it very helpful in terms of getting it into the bipartisan agreement next week. I look forward to being able to say to my songwriters, self-employed business men and women, plumbers, and Marty, the farmer, that if they are making $60,000 or $70,000 in Tennessee, we put in place something that will lower their rates by 40 percent over the next 3 years. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Thank you, Madam President. (The remarks of Mr. Alexander pertaining to the introduction of S. 2509 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

Mr. ALEXANDER. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, probably every single one of us in the Senate would agree that it is hard to get here, it is hard to stay here, and it is wonderful to be able to accomplish something worthwhile while you are here. That is why I am here today--because I want to call attention to an announcement that was made this morning by a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators and the Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, which could take away the $11.6 billion of national park maintenance backlog in the 417 national parks that we have. The proposal we made this morning could eliminate that backlog over the next 10 years. I want to give Secretary Zinke and the President a lot of credit for this because they have agreed to do something that no other President and no other Secretary of the Interior have ever agreed to do, as far as I know, and that is to allow us to use revenues from energy development on Federal lands as mandatory spending to pay for the maintenance backlog in our National Park System. Ken Burns called our national parks ``America's Best Idea.'' I would say that the best idea to support America's best idea is the proposal that Secretary Zinke has made to take care of the maintenance backlog in our national parks. Half of that maintenance backlog is our roads. Of course, when we pay for the roads this way, that means all the money that is now being taken away from all the other purposes at our national parks--I am talking about the National Mall, where I get up in the morning and walk every day, or the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where I walk when I go home on the weekends--could be used for other purposes there, in all 417 of those parks. If we don't do this, we will never catch up because this backlog-- this $11.6 billion backlog--is four times the annual appropriations for the National Park Service. Everyone who cares about our national parks--and that should be almost every American--should welcome this proposal. As I said, our use of Federal dollars in this way is unprecedented, but the principle is not unprecedented. The principle is a very simple principle, and that is this: If we create an environmental burden, which energy exploration does, whether it is wind turbines or whether it is spreading solar panels all over hundreds and hundreds of acres or whether it is oil and gas exploration. If we create an environmental burden, we should create a corresponding environmental benefit. That principle is well established in our laws and has been supported by almost every major environmental and conservation group I know of. Let's start with the 1962 Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission that Laurance Rockefeller chaired. That Commission, which took a look at America for the next generation to see what we should do to protect the outdoors so we could all enjoy it, recommended, and the Congress adopted, the idea of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. There was a Federal side and a State side. Over all of the years since 1964, $18 billion has been spent in the Land and Water Conservation Fund. That is the environmental benefit. Where did the money come from? It came from drilling on Federal offshore properties. In 1986, I chaired President Reagan's Commission on Americans Outdoors. We reaffirmed our support for the idea that an environmental burden means we should have an environmental benefit. We urged Congress to make permanent the funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund. So we reaffirmed that again for the next generation. Then, in 2006, with the leadership of Senator Domenici, Senator Bingaman, and others--many of us worked on it--Congress decided we would take some of the revenues from new drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and apply those to the State side of the Land and Water Conservation Fund--again, an environmental burden and a corresponding environmental benefit. That is why this proposal is so exciting to me. That is why this proposal has such strong bipartisan support. In the Senate, the supporters include Senator King of Maine, Senator Daines of Montana, and Senator Heinrich of New Mexico. It is a bipartisan group. Supporters also include Senator Capito and Senator Manchin, Senator Gardner and Senator Tillis; all of us support and are cosponsoring this legislation we are introducing today. In the House of Representatives, we also have two cosponsors. Congressman Mike Simpson of Idaho, who is chairman of the House Energy and Water Development Subcommittee, and Congressman Kurt Schrader from Oregon is also a cosponsor in the House of Representatives. So I believe this is an unprecedented day; for all of those who care about and love our national parks and who have struggled to imagine how we can deal with this $11.6 billion maintenance backlog--a backlog that is four times the annual appropriation--we can pay this all off with this proposal, which is supported by the President and his Office of Management and Budget, a bipartisan group of Senators, and a bipartisan group in the House. I look forward to working with Senator Murkowski and Senator Cantwell in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Hopefully, it can be moved promptly through that committee. There are other important things we would like to do, but I can't think of anything much more important than our National Park System. I mentioned a little earlier that we have 417 national parks in the country. I grew up camping and hiking in one of those, and I live within 2 miles of that park. It is the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It has more visitors than any other national park--nearly twice as many as the closest one. Eleven million people a year come to the park. Many of my best memories are from that park. I remember, when I was 15 years old, my dad dropped me and a couple of other boys at the highest point of the park, Clingmans Dome, one day around Christmastime. There was 3 feet of snow. He said: I will pick you up in Gatlinburg. Well, he did, and that was about 8 or 9 hours later. Later that same year in the summertime we were camping on Spence Field. That is at about 5,000 or 6,000 feet as well. We had taken blueberry pancake mix up there. We picked the blueberries. We had all of the materials for a good breakfast, but we made one mistake. We left the breakfast in our packs in the tent, and during the night a bear crawled in there with us, took it out, and we ended up on top of the trail shelter banging the pans together trying to run the bear off. That was the last time we left our breakfast materials nearby the sleeping area when we were camping in the park. The park is a good place for lessons and learning and appreciating beauty. It is a good place for the rich. It is a good place for the poor. Parents bring their children out of a digital diet to feast on a world of natural splendor. We learn our history in a place where history comes alive; not just the history of the world but the history of East Tennessee, the history of Wyoming, the history of Maine, the history of Montana. Let me give my colleagues a sense of just what this $11 billion backlog means. I have already said it is nearly four times what the National Park Service receives in annual appropriations. We can talk about the Smokies alone. Between Tennessee and North Carolina, there is about a $215 million backlog of projects; 75 percent of that is roads. We get nearly twice as many visitors as any other park. These visitors come to see our majestic views. They spend 400,000 nights camping in 9 frontcountry campgrounds and 100 backcountry camp sites. In 2013, the park had to close Look Rock Campground and the picnic area due to funding shortfalls in replacing the water treatment facilities. In order to open this recreation area for visitors, the park needs $3 million to replace the water treatment facility, repair the road infrastructure, and replace aging picnic tables and campground pads. This proposal could do that. The funding provided in the National Park Restoration Act, which is what we call our legislation, could help reopen this campground for the enjoyment of the over 11 million visitors to the Smokies. The Smokies also supports a vast trail system, with almost 850 miles of maintained trails for hikers, backpackers, and visitors. The current deferred maintenance backlog for trails in the Smokies is $18.5 million. This proposal would take care of that. In August 2017, I visited the Smokies with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, and I saw firsthand with him the work that is needed on the trails. We hiked the Rainbow Falls Trail, where a 2-year project is underway to rehabilitate the trail. Crews from Trails Forever, a partnership between the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Friends of the Smokies, and the American Conservation Experience are working to build a rock staircase along the trail to reduce erosion and improve visitor safety and enjoyment. Crews use rigging systems to move large rocks, split them using drills and chisels, and then set them into place to provide long- lasting trail structures for those hoping to see the rainbow formed by mist from the 80-foot waterfall along the Rainbow Falls Trail. Secretary Zinke and I worked to split and place one of those rock steps. It is not very easy to do. Volunteer crews will work to rehabilitate over 6 miles of that trail. In addition to the crews, every Wednesday volunteers head up the trail to help restore it for future visitors. In 2017, volunteers donated 900 hours of work on that trail. The Smokies is full of wonderful volunteers like those working on the Rainbow Falls Trail. Over 2,800 volunteers donated over 115,000 hours last year alone, but we must do more to get the funding to our parks to help address the maintenance needs and support the countless volunteers. In the Smokies, 75 percent of that maintenance work is roads, which isn't surprising, since millions of visitors to the park each year experience it behind the wheel. The park maintains and operates nearly 400 miles of roads, including 6 tunnels and 146 bridges, which allow visitors to traverse the park's mountainous landscape. The Smokies is working hard to address these maintenance needs, and later this year they will open 16 miles of the Foothills Parkway. We are all looking forward to that in East Tennessee. Driving the Foothills Parkway will give you a spectacular view of the highest mountains in the Eastern United States. Tennesseans are excited that these new 16 miles of the parkway will soon be open to the public. It is scheduled for this fall. Due to funding shortfalls, building and repairing the 16-mile stretch of the Foothills Parkway took over 50 years and will be completed nearly 75 years after Congress first authorized the Foothills Parkway. Completing just 1.6 miles of the parkway took nearly 30 years. In 1944, Congress authorized the Foothills Parkway but prohibited Federal funds from being used to purchase and acquire the land, so the State of Tennessee purchased the land and gave it to the Federal Government to create a scenic parkway to provide views of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. For 75 years, Tennesseans and visitors have been waiting to enjoy the majestic views of the Foothills Parkway because there hasn't been sufficient Federal funding to address the maintenance needs of our national parks. Other roadways in the Smokies, including Newfound Gap Road and Clingmans Dome Road, remain on this backlog list. Clingmans Dome Road takes visitors to Clingmans Dome--the highest point in Tennessee and the third highest mountain east of the Mississippi. At 6,643 feet, Clingmans Dome offers panoramic views of the Smoky Mountains. Additional funding is desperately needed for the Smokies and all of our National Parks to help repair and rebuild campgrounds, trails, and roads. Doing that will bring more visitors, more tourists, and more jobs to Tennessee and to national park communities throughout our country. According to the Outdoor Industry Association, the outdoor recreation economy generates 7.6 million direct jobs and $887 billion in consumer spending. In Tennessee, the outdoor recreation economy generates 188,000 direct jobs and over $21 billion in consumer spending. In 2016, the visitors to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park alone spent nearly $950 million in communities surrounding the park. The over 11 million visitors to the park supported nearly 15,000 jobs and $1.3 billion in economic output in these communities. Restoring our parks not only helps to preserve our land for generations but helps to grow our economy. Now, here is what our bill does. I see the Senator from North Carolina is coming to preside, and he is one of the principal cosponsors of the bill. The National Park Restoration Act will use revenues from energy production on Federal lands to help pay for the $11 billion maintenance backlog at our national parks. It will provide mandatory funding on top of annual appropriations for the National Park Service--for the priority-deferred maintenance needs that support critical infrastructure and visitor services at our parks. The National Park Restoration Fund created by the legislation will receive 50 percent of revenues from energy production on Federal lands over the 2018 projections that are not already allocated to other purposes. This legislation includes revenues from all sources of energy production on Federal land: oil, gas, coal, renewables, and alternative energy. The legislation protects all existing obligations for revenues from energy production on Federal land, including payments to States, payments to the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and payments to the Reclamation Fund. Finally, I want to acknowledge the work that Senators Portman and Warner have done. They have introduced similar legislation. They have many of the same objectives. I know there are many other Senators who care deeply about this issue, other than the bipartisan group of us who introduced the legislation today. We can all work together in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee where this bill will be referred. We will put our heads together with Senator Murkowski and Senator Cantwell. We will come out with the best possible bill-- something that President Trump can continue to support and that the full Senate and then the House of Representatives can pass. Then, we can get on with it and begin to deal with the deferred maintenance backlog in our national parks. Theodore Roosevelt once said that nothing short of defending this country in wartime ``compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us.'' We must all work together to restore our national treasures so future generations have the same opportunity to enjoy them, as we have. In conclusion, let me reiterate something personal about this. In 1985, the Secretary of the Interior called and asked me, when I was Governor of Tennessee, to chair the President's Commission on Americans Outdoors. I did that, along with Gil Grosvenor, the chairman of the National Geographic Society, and a variety of people. One of our major recommendations was to pick up the recommendation of the Rockefeller Commission from 1964, which said, if there is an environmental burden, there should be an environmental benefit. They are the ones who recommended, to begin with, that we take land from energy exploration and use it to pay for the Land and Water Conservation Fund. We reaffirmed that in 1986. We reaffirmed that principle in 2006 when we used revenues from drilling for the State side of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. So while this proposal is unprecedented in the sense that it is the first time that I know of that a President and his Office of Management and Budget have approved mandatory funding using revenues from energy production on Federal lands to deal with national park maintenance needs, the principle of matching an environmental burden with an environmental benefit is well established. I am grateful to the President, and I am especially grateful to Secretary Zinke for his initiative. I look forward to working with a bipartisan group of Senators in the Energy Committee to develop a bill, pass it, and get started on the work of America's best idea for restoring America's best idea--our National Park System.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, probably every single one of us in the Senate would agree that it is hard to get here, it is hard to stay here, and it is wonderful to be able to accomplish something worthwhile while you are here. That is why I am here today--because I want to call attention to an announcement that was made this morning by a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators and the Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke, which could take away the $11.6 billion of national park maintenance backlog in the 417 national parks that we have. The proposal we made this morning could eliminate that backlog over the next 10 years. I want to give Secretary Zinke and the President a lot of credit for this because they have agreed to do something that no other President and no other Secretary of the Interior have ever agreed to do, as far as I know, and that is to allow us to use revenues from energy development on Federal lands as mandatory spending to pay for the maintenance backlog in our National Park System. Ken Burns called our national parks ``America's Best Idea.'' I would say that the best idea to support America's best idea is the proposal that Secretary Zinke has made to take care of the maintenance backlog in our national parks. Half of that maintenance backlog is our roads. Of course, when we pay for the roads this way, that means all the money that is now being taken away from all the other purposes at our national parks--I am talking about the National Mall, where I get up in the morning and walk every day, or the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, where I walk when I go home on the weekends--could be used for other purposes there, in all 417 of those parks. If we don't do this, we will never catch up because this backlog-- this $11.6 billion backlog--is four times the annual appropriations for the National Park Service. Everyone who cares about our national parks--and that should be almost every American--should welcome this proposal. As I said, our use of Federal dollars in this way is unprecedented, but the principle is not unprecedented. The principle is a very simple principle, and that is this: If we create an environmental burden, which energy exploration does, whether it is wind turbines or whether it is spreading solar panels all over hundreds and hundreds of acres or whether it is oil and gas exploration. If we create an environmental burden, we should create a corresponding environmental benefit. That principle is well established in our laws and has been supported by almost every major environmental and conservation group I know of. Let's start with the 1962 Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission that Laurance Rockefeller chaired. That Commission, which took a look at America for the next generation to see what we should do to protect the outdoors so we could all enjoy it, recommended, and the Congress adopted, the idea of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. There was a Federal side and a State side. Over all of the years since 1964, $18 billion has been spent in the Land and Water Conservation Fund. That is the environmental benefit. Where did the money come from? It came from drilling on Federal offshore properties. In 1986, I chaired President Reagan's Commission on Americans Outdoors. We reaffirmed our support for the idea that an environmental burden means we should have an environmental benefit. We urged Congress to make permanent the funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund. So we reaffirmed that again for the next generation. Then, in 2006, with the leadership of Senator Domenici, Senator Bingaman, and others--many of us worked on it--Congress decided we would take some of the revenues from new drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and apply those to the State side of the Land and Water Conservation Fund--again, an environmental burden and a corresponding environmental benefit. That is why this proposal is so exciting to me. That is why this proposal has such strong bipartisan support. In the Senate, the supporters include Senator King of Maine, Senator Daines of Montana, and Senator Heinrich of New Mexico. It is a bipartisan group. Supporters also include Senator Capito and Senator Manchin, Senator Gardner and Senator Tillis; all of us support and are cosponsoring this legislation we are introducing today. In the House of Representatives, we also have two cosponsors. Congressman Mike Simpson of Idaho, who is chairman of the House Energy and Water Development Subcommittee, and Congressman Kurt Schrader from Oregon is also a cosponsor in the House of Representatives. So I believe this is an unprecedented day; for all of those who care about and love our national parks and who have struggled to imagine how we can deal with this $11.6 billion maintenance backlog--a backlog that is four times the annual appropriation--we can pay this all off with this proposal, which is supported by the President and his Office of Management and Budget, a bipartisan group of Senators, and a bipartisan group in the House. I look forward to working with Senator Murkowski and Senator Cantwell in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Hopefully, it can be moved promptly through that committee. There are other important things we would like to do, but I can't think of anything much more important than our National Park System. I mentioned a little earlier that we have 417 national parks in the country. I grew up camping and hiking in one of those, and I live within 2 miles of that park. It is the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It has more visitors than any other national park--nearly twice as many as the closest one. Eleven million people a year come to the park. Many of my best memories are from that park. I remember, when I was 15 years old, my dad dropped me and a couple of other boys at the highest point of the park, Clingmans Dome, one day around Christmastime. There was 3 feet of snow. He said: I will pick you up in Gatlinburg. Well, he did, and that was about 8 or 9 hours later. Later that same year in the summertime we were camping on Spence Field. That is at about 5,000 or 6,000 feet as well. We had taken blueberry pancake mix up there. We picked the blueberries. We had all of the materials for a good breakfast, but we made one mistake. We left the breakfast in our packs in the tent, and during the night a bear crawled in there with us, took it out, and we ended up on top of the trail shelter banging the pans together trying to run the bear off. That was the last time we left our breakfast materials nearby the sleeping area when we were camping in the park. The park is a good place for lessons and learning and appreciating beauty. It is a good place for the rich. It is a good place for the poor. Parents bring their children out of a digital diet to feast on a world of natural splendor. We learn our history in a place where history comes alive; not just the history of the world but the history of East Tennessee, the history of Wyoming, the history of Maine, the history of Montana. Let me give my colleagues a sense of just what this $11 billion backlog means. I have already said it is nearly four times what the National Park Service receives in annual appropriations. We can talk about the Smokies alone. Between Tennessee and North Carolina, there is about a $215 million backlog of projects; 75 percent of that is roads. We get nearly twice as many visitors as any other park. These visitors come to see our majestic views. They spend 400,000 nights camping in 9 frontcountry campgrounds and 100 backcountry camp sites. In 2013, the park had to close Look Rock Campground and the picnic area due to funding shortfalls in replacing the water treatment facilities. In order to open this recreation area for visitors, the park needs $3 million to replace the water treatment facility, repair the road infrastructure, and replace aging picnic tables and campground pads. This proposal could do that. The funding provided in the National Park Restoration Act, which is what we call our legislation, could help reopen this campground for the enjoyment of the over 11 million visitors to the Smokies. The Smokies also supports a vast trail system, with almost 850 miles of maintained trails for hikers, backpackers, and visitors. The current deferred maintenance backlog for trails in the Smokies is $18.5 million. This proposal would take care of that. In August 2017, I visited the Smokies with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, and I saw firsthand with him the work that is needed on the trails. We hiked the Rainbow Falls Trail, where a 2-year project is underway to rehabilitate the trail. Crews from Trails Forever, a partnership between the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Friends of the Smokies, and the American Conservation Experience are working to build a rock staircase along the trail to reduce erosion and improve visitor safety and enjoyment. Crews use rigging systems to move large rocks, split them using drills and chisels, and then set them into place to provide long- lasting trail structures for those hoping to see the rainbow formed by mist from the 80-foot waterfall along the Rainbow Falls Trail. Secretary Zinke and I worked to split and place one of those rock steps. It is not very easy to do. Volunteer crews will work to rehabilitate over 6 miles of that trail. In addition to the crews, every Wednesday volunteers head up the trail to help restore it for future visitors. In 2017, volunteers donated 900 hours of work on that trail. The Smokies is full of wonderful volunteers like those working on the Rainbow Falls Trail. Over 2,800 volunteers donated over 115,000 hours last year alone, but we must do more to get the funding to our parks to help address the maintenance needs and support the countless volunteers. In the Smokies, 75 percent of that maintenance work is roads, which isn't surprising, since millions of visitors to the park each year experience it behind the wheel. The park maintains and operates nearly 400 miles of roads, including 6 tunnels and 146 bridges, which allow visitors to traverse the park's mountainous landscape. The Smokies is working hard to address these maintenance needs, and later this year they will open 16 miles of the Foothills Parkway. We are all looking forward to that in East Tennessee. Driving the Foothills Parkway will give you a spectacular view of the highest mountains in the Eastern United States. Tennesseans are excited that these new 16 miles of the parkway will soon be open to the public. It is scheduled for this fall. Due to funding shortfalls, building and repairing the 16-mile stretch of the Foothills Parkway took over 50 years and will be completed nearly 75 years after Congress first authorized the Foothills Parkway. Completing just 1.6 miles of the parkway took nearly 30 years. In 1944, Congress authorized the Foothills Parkway but prohibited Federal funds from being used to purchase and acquire the land, so the State of Tennessee purchased the land and gave it to the Federal Government to create a scenic parkway to provide views of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. For 75 years, Tennesseans and visitors have been waiting to enjoy the majestic views of the Foothills Parkway because there hasn't been sufficient Federal funding to address the maintenance needs of our national parks. Other roadways in the Smokies, including Newfound Gap Road and Clingmans Dome Road, remain on this backlog list. Clingmans Dome Road takes visitors to Clingmans Dome--the highest point in Tennessee and the third highest mountain east of the Mississippi. At 6,643 feet, Clingmans Dome offers panoramic views of the Smoky Mountains. Additional funding is desperately needed for the Smokies and all of our National Parks to help repair and rebuild campgrounds, trails, and roads. Doing that will bring more visitors, more tourists, and more jobs to Tennessee and to national park communities throughout our country. According to the Outdoor Industry Association, the outdoor recreation economy generates 7.6 million direct jobs and $887 billion in consumer spending. In Tennessee, the outdoor recreation economy generates 188,000 direct jobs and over $21 billion in consumer spending. In 2016, the visitors to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park alone spent nearly $950 million in communities surrounding the park. The over 11 million visitors to the park supported nearly 15,000 jobs and $1.3 billion in economic output in these communities. Restoring our parks not only helps to preserve our land for generations but helps to grow our economy. Now, here is what our bill does. I see the Senator from North Carolina is coming to preside, and he is one of the principal cosponsors of the bill. The National Park Restoration Act will use revenues from energy production on Federal lands to help pay for the $11 billion maintenance backlog at our national parks. It will provide mandatory funding on top of annual appropriations for the National Park Service--for the priority-deferred maintenance needs that support critical infrastructure and visitor services at our parks. The National Park Restoration Fund created by the legislation will receive 50 percent of revenues from energy production on Federal lands over the 2018 projections that are not already allocated to other purposes. This legislation includes revenues from all sources of energy production on Federal land: oil, gas, coal, renewables, and alternative energy. The legislation protects all existing obligations for revenues from energy production on Federal land, including payments to States, payments to the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and payments to the Reclamation Fund. Finally, I want to acknowledge the work that Senators Portman and Warner have done. They have introduced similar legislation. They have many of the same objectives. I know there are many other Senators who care deeply about this issue, other than the bipartisan group of us who introduced the legislation today. We can all work together in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee where this bill will be referred. We will put our heads together with Senator Murkowski and Senator Cantwell. We will come out with the best possible bill-- something that President Trump can continue to support and that the full Senate and then the House of Representatives can pass. Then, we can get on with it and begin to deal with the deferred maintenance backlog in our national parks. Theodore Roosevelt once said that nothing short of defending this country in wartime ``compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us.'' We must all work together to restore our national treasures so future generations have the same opportunity to enjoy them, as we have. In conclusion, let me reiterate something personal about this. In 1985, the Secretary of the Interior called and asked me, when I was Governor of Tennessee, to chair the President's Commission on Americans Outdoors. I did that, along with Gil Grosvenor, the chairman of the National Geographic Society, and a variety of people. One of our major recommendations was to pick up the recommendation of the Rockefeller Commission from 1964, which said, if there is an environmental burden, there should be an environmental benefit. They are the ones who recommended, to begin with, that we take land from energy exploration and use it to pay for the Land and Water Conservation Fund. We reaffirmed that in 1986. We reaffirmed that principle in 2006 when we used revenues from drilling for the State side of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. So while this proposal is unprecedented in the sense that it is the first time that I know of that a President and his Office of Management and Budget have approved mandatory funding using revenues from energy production on Federal lands to deal with national park maintenance needs, the principle of matching an environmental burden with an environmental benefit is well established. I am grateful to the President, and I am especially grateful to Secretary Zinke for his initiative. I look forward to working with a bipartisan group of Senators in the Energy Committee to develop a bill, pass it, and get started on the work of America's best idea for restoring America's best idea--our National Park System.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, later this week Senators Blunt, Cassidy, Collins, Roberts, and Young will join me in introducing the School Safety and Mental Health Services Improvement Act. Three weeks ago, 14 high school students, a teacher, a coach, and an athletic director were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL. As the authorities tried to get to the bottom of exactly what happened in the shooting, many of us in local, state, and federal government have been looking at what can be done to help keep students safe at school. We can't stand still and do nothing while our children are being killed. I am the chairman of the Senate Health and Education Committee and sponsor, with Senator Murray, of the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, which reauthorized the law overseeing kindergarten, elementary, and secondary education. I also sponsored with Senator Murray the 21st Century Cures Act of 2016, which made the first major mental health reforms in a decade, focusing the federal government's efforts on early intervention. The bill I am introducing this week with several of my colleagues will help States use every federal dollar available to them to keep their schools safer from violence and have the mental health services they need. This is complementary to a bill Senator Hatch introduced this week that addresses programs in the Judiciary Committee to improve school safety and stop school violence. There are 100,000 public schools in the United States, and most of the responsibility for making them safer for children lies with the State and local governments and families and communities that provide 90 percent of school funding. But the Federal Government can and should help create an environment where communities, school boards, and States can create safer schools. Under this bill, the Federal Government can help in the following four ways: No. 1, allow schools to use title II funding under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to hire more counselors. About a fifth of all children age 9 to 17 have ``a diagnosable mental or addictive disorder that causes at least minimal impairment.'' In the 2014-to-2015 school year, there was a counselor-to-student ratio of 482 to 1, while the American School Counselor Association recommends a counselor-to-student ratio of 250 to 1. This bill would help schools make up that difference. No. 2, make it clear that schools can use federal funding they are already receiving through titles II and IV under the Every Student Succeeds Act to improve the professional development of school counselors and to improve the school safety infrastructure, including installing new alarm systems, improving entrances and exits of schools, installing security cameras, and other infrastructure upgrades. No. 3, our bill renews and updates a law to expand a successful program that helped to train education personnel and ensure children have the services they need after a violent incident. This program was piloted after the shooting in Newtown, CT, and has shown to be effective. No. 4, create an interagency task force led by the Secretary of Education, with the Departments of Health and Human Services, Justice, Homeland Security, Interior, and Defense, to make recommendations--not mandates; recommendations--on best practices, policies, and procedures to improve school safety and school safety infrastructure. This bill would encourage and reinforce for Tennessee and for all other States that Federal dollars may be used to hire more counselors, psychologists, and other mental health professionals at schools; to build safety infrastructure--such as securing doors, automatic locks, and smart entrances--to prevent intruders; and to develop mental health programs to identify children who might be dangerous to other children. While most of the responsibility for improving the safety of our schools and the environment or climate of our schools rests with local and State officials, the federal government has a role to play. In conclusion, in addition to the policies in this bill that I described, I support President Trump's directive to the Department of Justice to craft regulations to ban so-called ``bump stocks,'' which have the effect of making a semiautomatic firearm function more like an automatic firearm. I, along with 49 other Senators, have cosponsored bipartisan legislation to have more effective background checks. This legislation, sponsored by Senator Murphy and Senator Cornyn, would ensure that Federal agencies and States get information about individuals who should be prohibited from buying a gun through the National Instant Background Check System. I hope my colleagues will cosponsor and support our legislation to help States use every Federal resource available to them to keep their schools safer from violence and have the mental health services they need. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, late this afternoon, Senator Thad Cochran, the senior Senator from Mississippi, announced he will be retiring from the Senate on April 1. He said his health had become an ongoing concern. I saw a steady stream of Senators visiting with Senator Cochran today expressing their best wishes to him and for good reason: Senator Cochran is a gentleman, first of all; he is a skilled legislator, second of all. He has earned the respect of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle through his chairmanship of the Senate Appropriations Committee, the one-time chairman of the Senate Republican conference, and back in Mississippi, he was a pioneer in the development of that State's two-party system in the Republican Party. He and Trent Lott were both elected to Congress in 1972, in the Nixon sweep. Then, Thad Cochran became the first statewide-elected Republican in Mississippi since Reconstruction, in 1978, when he was elected to the U.S. Senate. He has been here ever since. He is a close friend. I admire him greatly. We will miss him greatly, but I especially admire his service and wanted to say that before I made other remarks.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, 16 years ago President George W. Bush announced that tariffs would be imposed on steel imports from several countries. The goal was to help protect the domestic steel industry. It was a good goal by a well-intentioned President whom I supported, but it backfired. Last week President Trump announced that he intends to impose new tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum for the same reasons. It is a good goal by a well-intentioned President, but I am afraid it will backfire, just as it did for President Bush 16 years ago. Here is the problem: Tariffs are big taxes, and they are big taxes that raise consumer prices. These new tariffs may temporarily save a few jobs in plants that produce steel and aluminum, but they will destroy many more jobs in auto plants that use steel and aluminum. This is especially bad news for Tennesseans because one-third of our State's manufacturing jobs are auto jobs, with more than 900 plants in 87 of our 95 counties. Anything that threatens to destroy or damage auto jobs is of grave concern to Tennesseans. It will now be cheaper for some Tennessee auto parts suppliers to move outside the United States, buy steel and aluminum there, and then ship finished parts back to this country. These new tariffs will hurt more than U.S. auto manufacturers. The President indicated this morning that a final decision hasn't been made. I hope that before he makes a final decision, he will take into consideration the choices that companies such as Electrolux are making, which demonstrate that broad tariffs are bad for American workers and will cost Americans jobs, not just auto jobs. Here is one example of the damage the proposed steel tariff would do in Tennessee to a home appliance manufacturer that uses 100 percent American steel. Immediately after the tariff was announced last week, Electrolux--Europe's largest home appliance manufacturer--announced that it was putting on hold a $250 million expansion in Springfield, TN, just outside of Nashville. Electrolux has made multiple investments in Tennessee, with plants in Memphis, as well as Springfield. Electrolux employs more than 1,000 Tennesseans. The company said: ``Unfortunately, this decision gives foreign appliance manufacturers a cost advantage that is hard to compete against.'' Note that Electrolux says that it gives foreign manufacturers an advantage. Electrolux buys all of the carbon steel it uses in its Tennessee plants from American steel mills. Let me say that again. Electrolux, which employees 1,000 people in Tennessee making home appliances, buys all of the carbon steel it uses in Tennessee plants from American steel mills. Yet it has put its expansion on hold because it believes the tariff will make it difficult for Tennessee plants to compete with plants overseas. Why? Because the new tariff is expected to cause American steel mills to raise their prices to match the newer, higher price of imported steel. The result of the tariff, therefore, will be higher costs for Electrolux and fewer jobs in Springfield, TN, making home appliances with 100 percent American steel. Instead, there will be more jobs overseas making home appliances with 100 percent foreign steel. The new U.S. tariffs on imported steel will raise the price of all steel sold in our country, so appliance manufacturers with plants in the United States will have a hard time competing with plants outside of our country. We should learn the lesson from 2002 when President Bush imposed similar tariffs--again, a good goal, a well-intentioned President, but it backfired. According to one widely cited independent study, the tariffs raised consumer prices and ``[m]ore American workers lost their jobs in 2002 to higher steel prices than the total number employed by the U.S. steel industry itself.'' President Bush's tariffs also led to retaliation, as other countries threatened to impose new tariffs on American exports, which would have cost even more U.S. jobs. On Friday, the Wall Street Journal editorial board reminded readers: ``Steel using industries in the U.S. employ some 6.5 million Americans, while steel makers employ about 140,000. Transportation industries, including aircraft and autos, account for about 40% of domestic steel consumption, followed by packaging with 20% and building construction with 15%. All will have to pay higher prices, making them less competitive globally and in the U.S.'' That was the Wall Street Journal. The backlash to the 2002 tariffs was so strong that President Bush terminated them early. I want to give President Trump credit for listening. He invited a number of us who disagree with his advisers on trade to the White House. He has listened carefully. So far, we haven't persuaded him. I hope we still can. I thank him for listening. I hope he will continue to listen. It is unusual to have a lesson in American history so much like the action he is proposing to take that was not good for the country no matter how well-intentioned the President was or how good an idea it seemed. Since history can often serve as a guide, I refer my colleagues to two addresses I delivered on the U.S. Senate floor on September 2, 2003, and November 11, 2003, summarizing the disastrous effect President Bush's proposed steel tariffs had on U.S. jobs. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a copy of the Wall Street Journal's March 2 editorial on tariffs.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the Senator from Delaware is somewhere in the neighborhood, and he has a train to catch in a few minutes. So I ask unanimous consent that after I make a few remarks about today's events and the voting today, the Senator from Delaware be recognized, and that following his speaking, I be recognized again.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, today the Senate voted on immigration. Immigration is a passionate issue. It affects the lives of people. It affects the American creed, which involves the rule of law, which involves the fact that we are a nation of immigrants. It goes to the heart of our country, and we have very strong opinions about it. All of us know that. Of course, that is the reason we have a U.S. Senate. This is not an issue that the Shreveport City Council or the Nashville Metro Council can solve. We can't solve the problem of our Nation's borders. We can't solve the problem in our communities about what to do about people who were brought here as children illegally through no fault of their own. That is our job. That is the job of the President of the United States. That is the job of the Senate, and it is the job of the Congress. We tried before. We tried in 2007, and we failed. We tried in 2013, and this body passed a bill with 68 or 69 votes. I voted for it. If we had passed that bill, as for all the issues we debated today, we wouldn't have them anymore because we dealt then with border security in 2013. We would have added 20,000 border agents, 700 miles of fencing, biometric detection at our ports of exit and entry, and E- Verify for all of the employers in the country. We would have dealt with the issue of legal status for people illegally here, people overstaying their visas, temporary workers. We would have done all of that in 2013, but we did not do it. So we are left with this problem of a large number of people living in this country--some for a long period of time--who were brought here as children through no fault of their own, which is one problem. We have another problem on the border, which is that the border isn't secure. People coming across the border is one problem, but in my view, the drugs coming across the border are the biggest problem. We have had a lot of hearings in the HELP Committee about opioid addiction. A lot of the heroin and a lot of the illegal drugs that are devastating our communities are coming across our southern border. It is just a fact, and we need to deal with it. So we are dealing with and we voted today on what to do about the children brought here illegally by their parents through no fault of their own and what to do about border security. The President of the United States did his job on this one. He did what a President is supposed to do. I read a book by George Reedy, who was Lyndon Johnson's Press Secretary. He said that a President's job--the Senator from Delaware is a former Governor, so he knows about this. He and I had an executive job when we were Governors. I did my job this way as Governor. A President's job is to see an urgent need, to develop a strategy to meet the need, and to persuade at least half the people you are right. That is what George Reedy said the President's job was, and I think President Trump in this case has done his job. He saw an urgent need. He saw a need of the Dreamers, the DACA people who are here. He saw an urgent need to deal with the border. He saw an urgent need to deal with some other holes in our system of legal immigration. He saw a need to deal with the fact that we have kind of slipped into a situation where the million people a year who come here legally, unlike most countries in the world, are brought here by cousins just because they are cousins. They are not brought here because they are part of the immediate family or because they add something special to our country, either skilled or unskilled, and he sought to change that. The President recognized the fact that once we give someone legal status in this country, once we say to them: We have decided we want you to be here permanently or nearly permanently. We want you at least one day to dream of becoming a citizen of the United States--I agree with the President on that. I don't want millions of people living in this country permanently who are pledging their allegiance to Afghanistan and Russia and China and Japan and every other country in the world; I want them to stand up in the Federal court or wherever they have the naturalization ceremony--or to be able to dream of standing there--and take the same oath of allegiance to this country that George Washington's soldiers took at Valley Forge, which is the same allegiance today that it was then, where you renounce your allegiance to any other country and you pledge your allegiance to the United States. I want anyone who we have decided deserves legal status on a permanent basis to have that in the back of their mind, not the pledge of allegiance to Korea or Afghanistan or Bangladesh or Chile or any other country in the world. I think the President did his job. He made a reasonable proposal. I think he did something that most Democrats and many Americans--maybe many Republicans--did not expect him to do. He said: Let's take care permanently of these 1.8 million children who were brought here through no fault of their own. As long as they don't get in trouble and follow the law, are law-abiding, let's give them the dream of citizenship after 10 or 12 years. Let's deal with merit-based immigration. Let's make some changes in our legal system. Let's plug some of the holes in the border so these drugs don't come in. The President made a very strong proposal. Now we are doing what we are supposed to do. We are supposed to react to that. Well, we did today. Senator Grassley offered the President's proposal, and it got 39 votes. A bipartisan group offered a narrower version of what the President wanted, and it only included the border security part--$25 billion--and a permanent fix for the DACA or Dreamers, who are here because of that provision in the law. It got 54 votes. But neither got 60. Neither got to 60, which we need. Why do we need 60 votes? Because we are the U.S. Senate. The House of Representatives only needs a majority. We get 60 because we want a consensus. Why do we need a consensus? When we take on a big, difficult, passionate issue like this, we want the people of this country to accept it. We want them to turn around and look--well, if that many Democrats and that many Republicans thought it was a good idea, then maybe I should rethink my own view and think it is a good idea. That is why President Trump has a chance to be Nixon to China on the immigration issue. He won his election to a large extent because he promised a wall and he talked about immigration. Now he is saying: Here is a solution that has to do with border security, citizenship, and the DACA children, and people will pay attention to that. And they will pay attention to us if we get more than a bare majority to vote for some version of what the President has recommended. Well, we are up to 54. I can give you an example of what I just said. In the late 1960s, the debate was civil rights. Everett Dirksen was the minority leader of the Senate; he was the Republican leader. Lyndon Johnson was the President; he was a Democratic President. They worked together to get 68 votes for the civil rights bill of 1968. It was opposed by Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, but when Senator Russell lost, he flew back to Atlanta and said: It is the law, and we should follow it. That is what we did with civil rights. That is what we did with Social Security. That is what we did with Medicare. That is what we did more recently with fixing No Child Left Behind. That is what we did with 21st Century Cures. When we take on a tough, complicated issue and we talk about it long enough and we get enough of us on both sides of the aisle to agree on it, we get a consensus, the country accepts it, and you don't have to worry about the next Congress coming in and passing it, repealing it, and changing it. When we don't do that, it is like ObamaCare. It passes with a partisan vote, and then we have a permanent political battle trying to repeal it or replace it. That has been going on for 8 years. We are still not through it yet. We hope to be, but we are not through it yet. So we need 60 votes for a solution for the DACA children who were brought here and the border security position. Actually, I would suggest our goal should be 70, not 60. We are not going to get there with a situation that has 47 or 48 Democrats and 8 or 9 Republicans-- that doesn't make 60 in the public schools of Tennessee--and we won't get it with almost all the Republicans and just a few Democrats. That is not a majority. That is not a consensus. That is not going to persuade the people of this country that we have come up with something lasting that most people can accept. I have no doubt we can get there. There were 36 Senators of both parties who came to a meeting 3 weeks ago at which we said to our two whips--Senators Durbin and Cornyn, on each side--we would like for the two of you to help us find a consensus on this. There were 36 of us. There have been 20 or 25 meetings--about equal number in both parties--trying to find some solution here. I think we are making some pretty good progress. We just didn't get there today. I am glad the majority leader said that this is not the end of it. It can't be the end of it. We can't just leave this here. I can't go back to Tennessee and tell Memphis or Nashville or Knoxville: Sorry, we can't do it, so the mayor or the city council will now decide what to do about these children who are illegally here and about the drugs coming across the southern border and about legal immigration. I can't do that. I need to say: I am going to go back. The President has done his job. The Senate worked on it for a week. We got up to 54 votes. We need 70. We need 70. So my hope is that the President will continue to advocate; do his job; see an urgent need--he did; recommend a strategy to deal with the need--he did; and try to persuade at least half the people he is right. He is a good persuader. And then we will do our job, and that is not to stand in the corners and throw things at each other. Let's see where we can agree and do what we did on civil rights and fixing No Child Left Behind. This is not any harder than those issues. We ought to be able to do it; otherwise, we shouldn't be here. I tell my colleagues often that it is pretty hard to be a Senator. It is hard to get here. It is hard to stay here. And while you are here, you might as well amount to something, and amounting to something means getting a result. We didn't get a result today, but I am convinced that we can. In conclusion--and then I will go to my friend from Delaware--how do we get to 70? Well, I came up here years ago and worked for a Senator named Howard Baker. He was very successful in this body. He ended up as the majority leader. He stood right over there next to Senator Byrd when he was the Democratic leader. They had great differences of opinion, but they ran this body very well. Howard Baker had a saying. He said that it helped to be an eloquent listener, and he said that you have to remember that sometimes the other fellow might be right. I would like to say to my Democratic friends that in this case the other fellow might be named Trump. They might not like that. They may not like it, but I think we should give the President credit for seeing an urgent need, recommending a strategy, and doing his best to persuade half of the Americans that he is right about that. I think we need some Members on the other side to do what eight of us on the Republican side did this day, which is move the other direction, recognize that the other fellow might be right, come to a conclusion, and do our job. I think we made a start this week, but we are not there yet. I look forward to the opportunity to finish the job, and remembering Howard Baker's advice that the other fellow might be right might be a good way to start. Mr. President, I yield the floor to my distinguished colleague, the Senator from Delaware.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Delaware for his remarks and his comments. I certainly hope that when we come back, we can get a result. That is what the job is about. I cosponsored and voted for the President's legislation. I cosponsored and voted for the bipartisan legislation. My hope is that I have a chance to cosponsor and vote for legislation that gets 65 or 70 votes and solves the problem.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, 1968 was a tumultuous year. Violent protests erupted in cities across the country. Both Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and then-Senator and Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated, and American soldiers were fighting in the Vietnam war. In Memphis, TN, African-American sanitation workers had faced years of hazardous working conditions and discrimination in pay and benefits. Their strike would become a historic event in the civil rights movement. In January 1968, the workers began negotiating with Memphis Mayor Henry Loeb and the Memphis City Council to improve pay and working conditions. On February 1, 1968, two sanitation workers, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, sought shelter from the pouring rain and were crushed to death in their garbage truck when the compactor on the truck malfunctioned. Their deaths galvanized the 1,300 African-American sanitation workers who decided to begin their strike to protest working conditions on February 12, 1968. The workers demanded recognition of their union, increased pay, and safer working conditions. Mayor Loeb and the city council responded by threatening to replace the striking workers unless they returned to work. Throughout February and early March, negotiations continued, and on March 28, 1968, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rev. James Lawson led a march from the Clayborn Temple that ended with rioting, arrests, and the death of 16-year-old Larry Payne. Civil rights leaders vowed to march again, focusing on the principles of nonviolence. On April 3, 1968, Dr. King addressed a rally of 10,000 African- American workers and residents, members of the clergy, and union members at the Mason Temple--the Memphis headquarters of the Church of God in Christ. His speech included these lines: I have been to the mountain top. . . . I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. That was Dr. Martin Luther King. The next day, April 4, 1968, Dr. King was assassinated as he stood on a balcony at the Lorraine Motel. On April 8, 1968, 4 days later, 42,000 people marched in Memphis. The strike was resolved on April 16. The 1,300 sanitation workers in Memphis took a stand for freedom, and they displayed courage in their pursuit of equality. In his speech on April 3, Dr. King said: Now we're going to march again, and we've got to march again, in order to put the issue where it is supposed to be-- and force everybody to see that there are 1,300 of God's children here suffering, sometimes going hungry, going through dark and dreary nights wondering how this thing is going to come out. That's the issue. And we've got to say to the nation: We know how it's coming out. For when people get caught up with that which is right and they are willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory. Now, 50 years later, this resolution that I, Senator Jones, Senator Cardin, and Senator Corker submitted seeks to recognize their sacrifice and contributions to the civil rights movement. It is important that our children grow up learning about how these 1,300 Memphis sanitation workers and many others struggled for racial justice in the midst of all that chaos. That is why, on Tuesday, I submitted the Senate resolution to which I referred. I did it, along with U.S. Senator Bob Corker, my colleague from Tennessee; Senator Doug Jones from Alabama; and Senator Ben Cardin from Maryland, to recognize the 50th anniversary of the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers strike. Representative Steve Cohen has submitted the same resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives. He recruited 76 cosponsors. I would like to thank Representative Cohen for taking the lead in the House. I would like to thank my Tennessee colleagues, Representatives Black, Blackburn, Cooper, DesJarlais, Duncan, Fleischmann, Kustoff, and Roe for their support as well. I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting this resolution. The majority leader has asked me to make some concluding remarks.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I would like to note the presence on the floor of the junior Senator from Alabama, Mr. Jones, who has been waiting patiently. He and I were working together on something that I am about to speak about, a resolution that has to do with an event that happened 50 years ago, the Memphis sanitation workers strike. He has plenty to say about it, but he has not yet made what we call his maiden speech on the Senate floor. We usually reserve that moment for a singular opportunity to speak. So he is waiting until that time to speak. I respect that. I told him the little story of what happened to Senator Baker when he was in Senator Jones' position. Baker's father-in-law, Senator Dirksen, whom I mentioned, was the leader. Everybody assembled to hear Baker's maiden speech. Baker spoke a little too long. Dirksen came over to congratulate him. Baker looked up and said to his father-in-law, Senator Dirksen: How did I do? Dirksen said: Howard, perhaps you should occasionally enjoy the luxury of an unexpressed thought. So I congratulate Senator Jones on his sticking with tradition here. I value the fact that we are working together on civil rights, as well as the fact that we will be in Memphis together on the Civil Rights Pilgrimage, which he is taking a part in leading early next month. I thank him for being on the floor today while I make these remarks.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate resume legislative session for a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive section for the en bloc consideration of the following nominations: Executive Calendar Nos. 588, 589, 642, 677, 678, 679, 680, and 681.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate vote on the nominations en bloc with no intervening action or debate; that if confirmed, the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table en bloc; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action; that no further motions be in order; and that any statements relating to the nominations be printed in the Record.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I further ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 413, submitted earlier today.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 1725 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.