Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I stand to congratulate the Senator from Louisiana and join with her as a cosponsor of her amendment. She and I are members of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. We are very proud of what our chairman and ranking member have done this year in taking a diverse array of opinions and coming up with a very good bill with a very good amount of bipartisan consensus. There is consensus about supporting a diverse array of energy sources. The Energy bill, which the Senators from New Mexico have led us to fashion, encourages hydrogen fuel cell cars in the economy. It encourages renewable energy. It encourages clean coal. It encourages oil and gas. And it encourages nuclear power. What I think it is important we also do is make sure we encourage conservation, and to do that in a way that puts conservation high on the list of priorities. It is a low-cost way to have more energy. It is a no-pollution way to have more energy. In my way of thinking, the Senator from Louisiana has come up with a sensible approach. It also helps to have the President involved. When the President said, let's build a hydrogen fuel cell car, he was not the first to say that, but everybody heard it when he said it and it gave a lot of impetus to the work on hydrogen that had been going on in this body from both sides of the aisle. So the Senator's idea is to reduce our petroleum import dependence by having the President come up with a plan to conserve oil throughout our economy, not just in transportation but throughout the economy; to reduce our total demand by a million barrels per day by 2013. By my computation, that would cause us to reduce that by about 5 percent by 2013. We ought to be able to do that. We ought to be able to go ahead with nuclear powerplants, with all the gas explorations. We ought to be able to go ahead with renewable energies and coal gasification. We ought to conserve at the same time. Just one example. The Senator from Iowa was mentioning weatherizing homes. That is one good way, if we paid more attention to it. Another good way is idling trucks. Truckers who are so frequent on our highways often idle their trucks in order to keep their air-conditioner and all the other services going that they have in the truck. There are companies that permit the truckers now to turn off their truck and to plug in a device and by doing that enabling operation of the appliances they have but they do not pollute the air at the same time. It is such a simple idea that we would hope any one of us could have thought of that but, in fact, having the President develop a plan that will focus on reducing our consumption of oil by 2013 would include such ideas as weatherizing homes, as encouraging truckers not to idle, keeping tires properly inflated. These may seem to be small ideas but they can add up, we suggest, to a million barrels per day by the year 2013. I congratulate the Senator from Louisiana on what I think is a commonsense, reasonable approach to add conservation to our arsenal of activities, to give it a higher profile in this bill, and I am glad to join in cosponsoring her amendment.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, pursuant to the order of last night, I ask unanimous consent that the vote in relation to the Dorgan amendment No. 865 occur at 11:30 today with two minutes equally divided prior to the vote.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Louisiana. We should not pass an Energy bill that does not put conservation up on the platform along with our encouragement of nuclear power, oil exploration, and hydrogen fuel cell; all of that is important. And this amendment by the Senator and various cosponsors makes it clear to the country that commonsense ways to conserve oil are equally important in our arsenal of having an economy that is less dependent on foreign oil and in a better position to produce clean air. I am proud to join as a cosponsor. I congratulate the Senator and congratulate our chairman for being able to move this bill forward with such a bipartisan consensus.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I would like about 5 minutes.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I will listen to the Senator from New Mexico.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, on May 17, Armed Forces Day, I drove down to Madisonville, TN to participate in the raising of the largest American flag in our State. The people of Madisonville and Monroe County had been working on this for months. The community joined together to make the Veterans Flag Memorial something to be proud of. Along with the impressive flag, a brick wall was erected. Businesses donated bricks, mortar, concrete and a variety of services from architectural to brick masonry. Citizens donated approximately $70,000 to the project, including contributions and brick sales. The brick sales were reserved for veterans and active duty military. The memorial has been a labor of love for the community. The dedication ceremony to celebrate this hard work was an important event. As I drove up to Haven Hill Memorial Gardens, where the ceremony was to be held, it started to rain; then it poured. Thunderstorms arrived, and lightning began to dance in the sky. Not many of us wanted to get too close to the 150 foot flagpole. But through it all, the ceremony went forward. There must have been 500 people who sat there in the rain, absolutely drenched. And then, the sun came out as the program began. The most impressive moment came with the raising of the flag. Twenty men marched forward carrying the flag. It was soaking wet and very heavy. This is what the organizer of the event, City Alderman Irad Lee, wrote to me: I was told by the commander of the Tennessee State Guard that had we waited another five minutes, the flag would have been too heavy for their twenty men to carry. I am unsure how much a saturated 1,800 square foot flag weighs, yet one young man named Dwight Taylor of 312 Atkins Road in Madisonville, a city maintenance crew worker, auxiliary policeman and patriot, endured while cranking the flag to the top of flagpole. I watched Dwight Taylor crank that flag to the top of the pole. I was astonished to see one man do that. It was a tribute to his patriotism and strength. It seemed at the time an impossible feat. But so does the history of this country that our flag represents. When Americans want to see the grandest flag in Tennessee, they will travel to Madisonville. And it is appropriate that they do so. Congressman Jimmy Duncan told the crowd that Monroe County sent more volunteers to Desert Storm in the Gulf War for its population size than any other county in America. This is yet another example in our history of Tennessee living up to its nickname, ``The Volunteer State.'' I felt privileged to be a part of the Armed Forces Day event, and I wanted the nation to know about the patriotic citizens of Madisonville and Monroe County, TN.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I have one short reaction to the comment of the Senator from New Hampshire. I will have nothing further to say on the amendment. The Senator from New Hampshire reminds me of an experience I had in 1980, discussing the idea of predicting a new technology. I hope my friend Fred Smith, chairman and chief executive of Federal Express, will not mind my using him as an example. All this is public information. In the early 1980s, although it is hard to recognize this today, no one knew what to do with the fax. They didn't know what would be the future of the fax machine. There were those who were saying it would revolutionize communications as much as the fuel cell might revolutionize the automobile. Mr. Smith, since he was in the business of delivering overnight packages, had to think about what the fax machine might do to Federal Express. He thought about it, and he came to this conclusion: His conclusion was that probably by the end of the 1980s, all Americans would go down to the street corner and find a Fed Ex fax machine and they would use the Fed Ex fax machine on their street corner to send a fax to their friends wherever in the world they might want to do that. That was his vision of what might happen with that new technology. Well, we have seen what has happened since then. People didn't go down to the street corner and send a fax to their friend. Everybody has a fax in his or her office. Many people have them in their homes. They became personal faxes. Mr. Smith was wrong about that. Fed Ex lost a few hundred millions dollars. Fortunately for Tennessee, he had other great ideas, and Fed Ex is our leading employer in Tennessee today because of his entrepreneurial spirit. But what if the Congress had gotten excited and said: Fred Smith has a great idea. The fax is a great invention and has an unlimited future. Let's pass a law saying that the Senate, having heard about the fax, hereby decrees that by the year 1990, there shall be a fax on 100,000 street corners in America and by 1992, there will be 300,000 faxes on street corners. All those faxes would be in the wrong places because the Senate, with respect, would not have known enough about the future to know what it was talking about. It was right about its vision of the fax. It was wrong about how far that might work; Fed Ex was at that time. The analogy is pretty good here as well. We have a broad consensus on our excitement about the hydrogen car fuel cell and what it might do, not just for the automobile but throughout our economy. It is part of a balanced approach to toward energy. It could make the air cleaner and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. We are recommending $3 billion to stimulate precommercial research on that. But let's not put ourselves, in the Congress, in the position of making the same kind of mistake we might have made 20 years ago if we had passed a law suggesting we have 100,000 fax machines on the street corners of America. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator. I thank him for his amendment. I know he is leaving, and I will not take advantage of that by continuing the debate. I have had a chance to say almost all I want to say. The president of Nissan is a good example, actually. He has gone before his board and said he wants to spend $800 million. I do not think he went before the board and said he wanted to have 100,000 Nissan cars and trucks on the road in 2010 whether they worked and no matter how much they cost. That is the difference here. I respectfully suggest there is a blueprint in this legislation, much of it provided by the Senator from North Dakota himself. The President's blueprint includes research on hydrogen-powered engines. That is what the $1.3 billion in research is for--research on the production of hydrogen fuel cells, et cetera, research on the transportation and delivery of hydrogen via pipelines and fueling stations, research on how to store hydrogen better and safer, on additional research on the fuel cell engine. Because of the Senator from North Dakota and others, there is a blueprint for various demonstration programs, which I mentioned earlier--the vehicle demonstration program for Government and nonprofit agencies, the stationary fuel cell demonstration program, hydrogen car and fuel cell demonstration programs in national parks, the Centers of Excellence at the university. Those are very specific proposals. So I respectfully suggest we have a good bill. We have a broad bipartisan consensus that we have a bold vision, and yet with unproven technology it is not wise for us in the Government to try to guess just how many of those cars there might be but to encourage it and let those who make the cars do it as rapidly as possible and use their talents to persuade consumers to buy the cars. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I would be happy to.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I begin by complimenting the Senator from South Dakota on the work he has done on fuel cell hydrogen over the years, and also compliment others on the other side of the aisle--I see the ranking member of the committee, Senator Bingaman from New Mexico. For at least a dozen years, this Congress, and particularly this Senate, has been interested in the hydrogen fuel cell technology. The Senator from North Dakota and the Senator from New Mexico are the ones who have pushed that the hardest. What we have now is some consensus, at least in our committee, and I hope in the Senate at large, on the importance of this bold proposal. I will take a moment to put in perspective what the committee has done.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the Senator from North Dakota and I agree on so much about this subject that I am not going to extend this discussion very much further for fear of dredging up something that we might disagree on because we don't have many differences here. If I may briefly comment, I was listening to the Senator's discussion of that bar in North Dakota. When I was growing up in the mountains of Tennessee, Blount County was a dry county, we didn't have bars, but we had Byrne Drugstore, which is where all that same kind of discussion must have occurred. I was just thinking. Talking about the suggested timetables, the Senator suggested that, for example, we have in here a timetable of 100,000 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in the United States by 2010. I was wondering what they would say in Byrne Drugstore if I went back to it and said I just became a Senator, and I drove a new hydrogen fuel cell car around the block which emits water out the tailpipe and doesn't burn any gasoline. The car costs $2 million a car to make. I got so excited about it I went over to the Senate and I voted to say we ought to have 100,000 of those in the United States by 2010 and 2\1/2\ million of them by 2020. I think they would say to me: Well, Lamar, I think you got carried away a little bit. At 2 million times 100,000, how do you know what the cost of that car is going to be in 2010? I might say: Well, I may not have really meant that. We meet every year, and we can change that next year if we want to. They might say to me: Why did you put it in there in the first place if you didn't know that much about what you were talking about? The idea sounds exciting, but why would you guess how you would take a $2 million car and make sure it made any sense at all to target that we have 100,000 of them in the United States by 2010? What ability does the U.S. Government have to wave a magic wand and make sure that happens? I was then thinking, too, about all the automobile companies both the Senator and I talked about. Now, they are hot on this. I mentioned Mr. Ghosn at Nissan. He wanted to make sure I knew he intended not just to be a player in the fuel cell hydrogen car, he intends to be ``the'' player, and he is going to spend $800 million of his company's dollars on research in this far out idea that probably will not be commercially viable--none of us believe--for 15, 20, or 25 years. That is a big step. But I really doubt Mr. Ghosn went to his board or the chairman of General Motors went to his board or the chairman of Ford went to his board and said: I want you to authorize that we require that our company make a certain number of these cars by a certain year. I think they would say: You are not being entirely realistic. You have gotten a little carried away. So I want to show great respect for the Senator's goals, his hard work, and his energy. We agree on 95 percent of this. But I think to adopt those kinds of targets and timetables--to use a gentler word-- might be misleading at the very least because I don't think that is the way to go about it. Let's encourage it in any way we can--and we tried to do that here-- and then let's have oversight on a regular basis. Then, if the technology is proven enough that it makes sense for us to be a little more specific, well, maybe we can take it up then. But if I went into the Byrne Drugstore in Blount County, and said, ``I have just driven a $2 million car around the block and then went over and voted we ought to have 100,000 of them by a particular year,'' I think they would think I had gotten a little carried away with my good idea.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator. So that narrows the differences considerably. Having acknowledged the good work done on the other side, I will also acknowledge the good work the President did. Only a President of whatever party can put something on the agenda the way a President can, and so it was exciting to all of us who cared about this issue and about the goals, which are to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and to clean the air, which is what this does, to see President Bush, in his State of the Union Address, make a bold proposal to direct the Secretary of Energy to explore the possibility of a hydrogen economy and to develop the next generation of technology that would include hydrogen. What we are really talking about, as the Senator from North Dakota explained, is a completely new way of thinking and living our lives. I noticed the other day in our local newspaper in Tennessee there was a picture of a filling station in Iceland that opened. Iceland has a hydrogen filling station. The buses that operate in Iceland back up to that hydrogen filling station and instead of putting gasoline in their tanks, they put in hydrogen. They drive around on the hydrogen, and instead of emitting some carbon-based pollutant into the air, they emit only water, which is the product of that process. It takes a little while for someone who has not thought about this much, as I was at one time, to get one's mind around this, but we are basically taking the internal combustion engine and putting it to the side and putting in a new process that reduces electricity, runs the car and, as the Senator said, the only emission is water. So there is an enormous advantage on two matters that concern us greatly: One is reduce our dependence on Middle Eastern oil, and we are in the middle of a process right now where we have been reminded about what a challenge that is to our national security. Some estimates are that by the year 2035 or 2040 we would have 11 million barrels per day less of reliance on our need for oil if we had a hydrogen economy. No one can know for certain what those numbers are, but all of us know it is a big change and a big number. Of course, the second aspect is clean air. This week, and for the next few weeks, we will be talking about ways to clean the air. The most interesting, and difficult sometimes, arguments we have that come before our committee and the country are those that intersect with energy and the environment. Here is a nice intersection between energy and the environment because if we are emitting only water, then the parts of our economy, and especially the transportation parts that use hydrogen-based cars instead of the internal combustion engine, will make a remarkable difference in not just our clean air but our standard of living because our lack of clean air and our difficulty with finding ways to clean the air is a limit on our ability to grow our economy. So this is a very important topic and all of us recognize it as such. Now let me start with the President's proposal, to put this in perspective, including the Senator's amendment. The President's proposal authorizes the Department of Energy, including our National Laboratories, to spend about $1.3 billion over the next 5 years in research and development in the following areas: research on hydrogen- powered engines, and research on the production of hydrogen. We have to make the stuff. It can come from many places. It can come from fossil fuels. It can come from renewable resources, a major part of the discussion in the Energy bill last week. It can come from nuclear energy, which is a major part of the discussion in the Energy bill this week. At a nuclear power plant one might be able to produce some of the hydrogen that would clean the air. And it can come from natural gas, which is the easiest way, arguably, to get it today. But with the recent spikes in the price of natural gas, we can see the difficulty relying on one form of energy too greatly. The President's proposal would fund additional research on transportation and delivery of hydrogen via pipelines and fueling stations. Iceland has a hydrogen fueling station. We do not have any in the United States. We have a few hundred miles of hydrogen pipeline. Imagine a different America where, instead of backing your car or truck up every block--sometimes more often than one block--to a station where you get gasoline, you back it up or drive into a place where you fill up with hydrogen. That is a big change in our infrastructure. This research would help figure out how better to do that. Also, we need additional fuel cell research. The Senator mentioned some of the obstacles that exist to this wonderful vision. One of the difficulties is we need to find new ways to produce hydrogen, which I mentioned. Another is we need to find a little cheaper way of building a hydrogen car. The Senator and I drove the same one, I believe a Ford, around the block. I believe that car costs a couple million per unit to make right now. In other words, the early models are extremely expensive. We need to find safe ways to store hydrogen. We need to meet the challenge of this infrastructure. We have great obstacles to overcome. But in this United States of America, if anything defines our national ethic, it is that anything is possible. We are ready to leap ahead and go after this. The President recommended we put $1.3 billion behind it, and that was step 1 in this session. Then the committee sat down and began to recognize the suggestions made by those who had gone before. Instead of the $1.3 billion recommendation the President made, we took those recommendations, reduced some of them to what we thought were a manageable number, and still more than doubled the amount of money we recommend to the full Senate that we authorize--nearly $3 billion total. As the Senator from North Dakota said, nearly triple the amount of money. So in addition to the President's $1.3 billion proposal, we have about $1.6 billion more for other ideas brought into the bill by people other than the President, from the Senate and the other side. We have a hydrogen vehicle demonstration program for the Government and nonprofit agencies; a stationery fuel cell demonstration program for use in residential and commercial buildings; a hydrogen car and fuel cell demonstration program in three national parks. That is a terrific idea. I would like to see one in the Great Smoky Mountains, our most polluted national park today. Many people think of Yellowstone as receiving the most visitors; but only 3 million people visit Yellowstone while 10 million go to the Great Smoky Mountains. The Great Smokies is polluted, particularly because of the cars and coal plants. An idea for which I commend the Senator is providing for the establishment of a university education degree curriculum designed to help our workforce move into a hydrogen economy, with centers of excellence in our great research universities to help realize this shared vision. In the United States, we have the world's only great research universities. They are our secret weapon. We need to fund them and the research and technology better. That is a sure way to move toward this goal. This bill before the Senate today is a combination of ideas from both parties, from the President and from the Legislature. The amounts we included, taking ideas from the other side to the bill, actually cost more than the proposal from the President--nearly $3 billion. That brings us to the point of the amendment. Is it enough money? Do we need targets? I will respond to that in this way. The President mentioned the Apollo. That is vivid in our minds. I remember as Education Secretary I tried to think, using that Apollo objective, which sticks in our minds to say, can we have in 10 or 20 years the best schools in the world? Nothing is quite like that Apollo mission. It is always hard to make an analogy, but the President has the same dream that we have here. The dream is that we have an America less dependent on foreign oil, an America that has cleaner air, something that increases our national security and our health and well-being. However, there are other parts to that dream than just the hydrogen car. There is, if we are talking about energy, the need to revive our nuclear energy. Japan was decimated by an atomic bomb, and they are relying primarily on nuclear energy. And France is relying primarily on nuclear energy. It has been since the 1970s that we started a new nuclear power reactor in this country. So this bill, in addition to hydrogen, is to help stimulate our nuclear energy. We need not just stimulate nuclear and hydrogen; we need to find a way to burn coal in a cleaner way. We make half our electricity from coal, but it pollutes the air more than we can tolerate. So we need coal gasification, as an example. This bill encourages that. The Senator from North Dakota mentioned wind turbines in North Dakota. They are part of the dream as well. Natural gas is part of the dream. Its price went up, so we need to explore more and we need pipelines to get that gas to the places it needs to go. This bill encourages that. We need more new oil that is not dependent on some other country. We have tried--although we do not always agree in this body on where to drill-- to do that. So the dream of clean air and less dependence on foreign oil has many parts, including the hydrogen vision the President outlined in his address, so that a child born today can have a choice in this generation of driving a car fueled by a fuel cell hydrogen engine. The Apollo dream is not exactly the same. We have a dream, but this is only a part of the dream. As far as the amount of money is concerned, I suppose one could always argue about the amount of money. We considered that very carefully in the committee. We nearly tripled the amount of money the President requested. We took into account virtually all of the suggestions by the Senator and others on the other side, which is why this bill came to the floor from the committee, because we had such a consensus. For a new technology which, while bold, is still unproven, we believe this is a generous amount of support in a bill that is balanced across a broad number of sources of new and improved energy. That brings me to the targets and the timetables. I appreciate the Senator moving from mandates to targets and timetables. That is a step forward. However, I prefer we not make, if I may say with respect, wild guesses about how this unproven technology might work, but that we join as we have in this bill to find a variety of ways to stimulate and not fool ourselves into thinking we are going to get to this point or that point in any particular year. President Kennedy said let's go to the Moon, and he said by when he hoped to go, but he didn't say fly this kind of airplane, or use this kind of rocket, or get a third of the way there by 1963. He said, Let us go there. So let us go toward a day when we have cleaner air and when we have less dependence on foreign oil because of a variety of steps, one of the most impressive of which is the vision of a hydrogen fuel cell car. But let us not try to make a wild guess just about when that will come, in what year. I believe one of the greatest underutilized powers of this body is the oversight power. Really, the Senate, the Congress, has two great functions: One is to spend money, and one is to oversee how that money is spent. There is nothing to keep us from that. In fact, as chairman of the Energy Subcommittee, I would want to make it part of my responsibility to regularly ask the Secretary of Energy to come forward with his plan, about what progress he is making, and suggest to him faster progress, and to ask him what timetables seem reasonable. There is another aspect to this, too. The Government is not going to invent the hydrogen car. No one has suggested the Government will. We are just providing some free commercial researching. But we should leave it to the market to make the greatest progress in determining what timetables will work, what targets make sense, what research will finally work, and what the customers will buy. I had an opportunity within the last couple of weeks to talk with the chief executive of Nissan, Mr. Ghosn, who has had a remarkable record. In 1999, Nissan had a $19 billion debt and was headed down. Today, it has no debt. It is headed up. I asked him about the hydrogen car because some of my scientist friends had been throwing a little cold water on the idea, saying some of us in the Senate were coming up with a pipedream that might never work. Here is what the head of Nissan said, and he said this publicly: Nissan is spending $800 million in the next 7 years on research just on fuel cell hydrogen cars. He wants to be, and has publicly stated that Nissan intends to be, not just a leader but the leader in that area. In other words, they are putting money there, real dollars. They are making that kind of investment of prestige and dollars. Toyota and Honda, industry sources tell me, are spending at least that much of their own money. And the General Motors president has said to me he takes this seriously as well. So the President's focus on the hydrogen car has done one good thing. It has taken the work that has been done in this body in the last 10 or 12 years on hydrogen and put it in this bill in the form of $1.6 billion. It has taken the President's own proposals of research--that is another $1.3 billion. But the real value is the President's proposal, and our agreement on this, if we do agree, will put this up front, create a national commitment, the kind of commitment we had when we went to the Moon. That is right. It is that kind of national commitment. But let us realize that when we went to the Moon, we went in reasonable steps and this plan for cleaner air and for less dependence on foreign oil has many parts, including other forms of energies, and the timetables and the targets are best left to the marketplace. So I rise to say this represents great progress by the committee. I commend, again, the Senator for his leadership. I urge that we not support an amendment creating wild guesses and artificial targets and timetables, but move forward and let the marketplace help us make sensible judgments about that, using our oversight role as Senators to make sure the program stays on course.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Yes.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator for his comments, but the bottom line is the process by which this committee worked on the hydrogen fuel cell proposal, which is title 8 of the Energy bill, which was a good process for those who would like to see how two parties in an evenly divided Senate can take an issue and come to some consensus and narrow the differences. It was a pretty good process. What is remaining are the two issues of which the Senator from North Dakota spoke. One is more money and two is more mandates, which he now has suggested are targets, if I understand correctly, rather than mandates. Am I correct in that?

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Tim Valentine, a fellow in my office, enjoy floor privileges during the Senate's consideration of the Energy bill.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I want to join in the praise for the Senator from North Carolina. She reminds us today of what an advantage it is to have someone of such experience serving in our so-called freshman class. She has been a pioneer during her whole career, whether at Harvard Law School, the Nixon White House, or in the Cabinet of two Presidents. I have had the privilege of working with her all during that time on a parallel track. On two occasions, I competed in a Presidential race with another person named Dole. I am not embarrassed to say I did relatively better against her husband than I did against her. They are both here and I have enormous admiration for both her and her husband, and all of us are enriched by her membership in our class in the Senate.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 5 minutes as if in morning business.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, today, the President visited with troops overseas to thank them. I want those troops to know we are paying attention to their families at home. Last week, as chairman of the Subcommittee on Children and Families, I held a hearing at Fort Campbell in Tennessee and Kentucky to look at the issues faced by military parents raising children. Senator Chambliss did the same in Georgia, and Senators Dodd and Ben Nelson will do the same in their respective home States of Connecticut and Nebraska. Later this month, we will have a joint hearing in Washington of the Subcommittee on Children and Families, which I chair, and the Subcommittee on Personnel of the Armed Services Committee, which Senator Chambliss chairs. Senators Dodd and Nelson are the ranking Democrats. That joint hearing is to focus on military families raising children. Our military has dropped from 3 million to 1.4 million, so we have fewer people in the Armed Services, but we have more missions; we have fewer soldiers; we have more women as a part of the military; we have more military spouses working; we have longer deployments; we have more military children. As a result, we need to be thinking about the families at home as we think about the warriors overseas. I wanted the full Senate to know that four Senators and two subcommittees are addressing these issues. I think that makes it even more important that the leadership on the Republican and Democratic sides find a way to fix the problem that occurred with the child tax credit in the recently enacted Tax Bill. President Bush had recommended that we increase from $600 to $1,000 the child tax credit to help parents raising children, including families that make $10,500 to $26,625. Refundability for these lower income families is to be increased from 10 to 15 percent in 2005 under the 2001 Tax Bill. The full Senate voted for that to be accelerated to 2003 and 2004 when it passed its version of the Tax Bill. In the final version of the Tax Bill, those between $10,500 and $26,625 were left out. Some of those families left out of the Tax Bill are serving in our military. It was not the intention of the Senate to do that, I don't believe. I doubt if most Members of the House want that result. That is why on Tuesday I cosponsored Senator Grassley's bill to fix the problem, and I am prepared to vote for any reasonable proposal in the Senate that the leadership can negotiate in the next few days to make it clear that our Senate and our Congress put a priority on parents raising children. I thank the Chair.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, this is an historic moment for us. The United States Senate is going to step up to the plate and declare in a bipartisan manner that we will meet our moral obligation and help those countries most afflicted by HIV/AIDS. The scourge of AIDS knows no borders; it is the greatest plague of our time. Over 40 million people worldwide are infected with HIV/AIDS today. Thirty million of those are in Africa. Nearly half, or twenty million, of those infected are in the fourteen countries highlighted for special attention in the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which is authorized in the bill before us today. Now is the time for the Senate to act. I support the bipartisan global AIDS bill that passed the House, and urge my colleagues to do the same. The Bipartisan Global AIDS bill authorizes the President's 5- year, $15 billion plan to combat HIV/AIDS, mirroring President Bush's emphasis on treatment and care. The bill provides funding to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS--up to $1 billion per year--but it limits contributions to be no more than one-third of those monies contributed by other sources. This limitation provides the President with leverage to encourage other countries to donate to the global fund. The bill supports the approach that Uganda has had so much success with called ``ABC,'' which stands for: abstain, be faithful, and use a condom. When I met with the First Lady of Uganda Tuesday, she told me how this approach of emphasizing abstinence was a return to traditional African values that is working well. From 1991 to 2001, the prevalence of HIV/AIDS among pregnant women in Uganda has declined from 21 percent to 6 percent, thanks largely to ``ABC.'' In Botswana, by contrast, a nurse told me 97 percent of the pregnant patients she saw were HIV- positive, and the national rate was 43 percent among pregnant women in 2000--seven times Uganda's rate. In fact, on Monday, I will be chairing a hearing in the African Affairs Subcommittee to look more closely at the Ugandan model and how it can be applied in other countries. Thirteen million ``AIDS orphans'' around the world have lost their parents to AIDS--the bill authorizes funds to aid those children. Time is of the essence. Every moment we delay, more people are dying and becoming infected. I know many of us see imperfections in the bill, and want to amend it. I'm one of them. In fact, I've introduced an AIDS Corps bill that would make a great amendment to this bill. I'm going to withhold that amendment in the interest of getting a good bill quickly to the President's desk, but I want to take a moment to talk about it in hope that we can adopt this proposal or something similar in the future. The House bill includes language to establish a program where health professionals can volunteer their services to travel abroad to countries most afflicted by HIV/AIDS and provide training and care. This is a needed service. One exacerbating problem for poorer countries afflicted by HIV/AIDS Is the lack of a strong health care infrastructure. In many African countries, traditional healers are more relied upon than medical doctors--these traditional healers may have little or no knowledge about testing for HIV or providing advice on how to prevent or treat it. Health professionals from countries like the United States can take a couple of months away from their practice to travel to other countries in need and provide necessary training to allow in-country care- providers to better respond to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. And American health professionals have shown an interest in answering the call. A number of non-profit groups help doctors volunteer their services, groups like Doctors Without Borders, US Doctors for Africa, and the International Medical Corps. My amendment takes the language from the House bill and improves on it in three important ways: No. 1, it names the volunteers the ``AIDS Corps'' to help increase the profile of the group so as to better attract qualified medical professionals to give of their time and volunteer. No. 2, it provides more flexibility for the length of time health professionals can serve--so that those who can only volunteer for a few months won't be excluded. No. 3, it provides the same liability coverage to volunteering doctors as is provided for federal employees who provide health care services. I hope that at some future date we can consider these changes that will allow any new corps of medical volunteers established by the President under this act to function more effectively. Now is not the time to put such an amendment forward. We need to pass this bill quickly so the administration can begin its implementation and President Bush can use it to encourage other countries to join us in this effort at the upcoming G-8 summit. I urge my colleagues, let us pass this bill without amendment tonight so that the President can sign it as early as tomorrow, and we will be one step closer to reversing the trend of this growing menace and start reducing its impact around the world.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I rise today to pay tribute to an outstanding Tennessean, James L. Clayton, better known as Jim. Jim Clayton is the son of a sharecropper and was raised in West Tennessee. This impressive Tennessean has lived the American dream of Horatio Alger. From his most humble beginnings, he has gone on to become one of the wealthiest men in the United States. Mr. Clayton is the entrepreneur behind Clayton Homes, Inc., a $1.2 billion manufactured-housing company, which is one of Tennessee's great economic treasures. Last week, Warren Buffett, the widely respected head of Berkshire Hathaway, recognized what we in Tennessee have long known about the quality of Clayton Homes by offering $1.7 billion for the purchase of Clayton Homes' manufactured-home empire. Mr. Clayton has served as chairman of the board of Clayton Homes, Inc., since he founded the original Clayton auto sales companies in 1956. In 1966, he expanded and branched out into manufactured housing and sold his automobile dealerships in 1981. The Clayton Homes corporate headquarters is located in the county of my hometown, Blount County, TN. Clayton Homes employs 2,500 Tennesseans who work in its sales centers and factories in excellent jobs. Thousands more Tennesseans are employed in good jobs as a result, direct and indirect, of Clayton Homes. And I am pleased to say that as a result of the negotiations, Berkshire Hathaway has agreed to leave Clayton Homes and its employees in Tennessee. I want to say a few words about Jim Clayton, who is a good and long- time friend. Mr. Clayton received his college degree from the University of Tennessee in 1957 and his law degree from the University Of Tennessee College Of Law in 1964. He has received several honorary doctoral degrees and numerous business awards, including many Wall Street Transcript Gold Awards, Silver Awards, and a Bronze Award as the top chief executive in the manufactured-housing industry. Forbes, the business magazine, has named Clayton Homes, Inc., one of its 200 Best- Managed Companies at least nine times. Clayton Homes has received the Platinum Award for being one of the top companies in the United States. Just this year, Worth magazine recognized Jim Clayton as one of Tennessee's wealthiest residents. Mr. Clayton's amazing story from sharecroppers' son to America's business elite can be found in his fascinating autobiography, First a Dream. Mr. President, not only is Jim Clayton outstanding in the business arena, he is also an outstanding member of the Knoxville, TN community. He has made generous contributions to many charitable causes, including $3.25 million for construction of the Knoxville Museum of Art; $1 million for the University of Tennessee College of Law for its Center for Entrepreneurial Law; $1 million to start the Clayton Birthing Center at Baptist Hospital; and many grants to K-12 educational programs, most of which were given anonymously. Mr. Clayton also generously donates his time to various committees and community organizations that work to improve Knoxville and its surrounding communities. I know Mr. Clayton and count him as a friend. Despite his great wealth and success, I know him to be a warm and humble person. But my colleagues need not take the word of one of Mr. Clayton's friends. Many other Tennesseans have told me over many years of how helpful, kind, and approachable Mr. Clayton is, what a perfect gentleman he is. Mr. President, compliments do not get much better than that. Mr. President, this brief statement cannot capture all the strengths of Jim Clayton and his manifold good works for his employees, his customers, his community, and his State. I did want to bring to my colleagues' attention the accomplishments and legacy of Jim Clayton, and I am honored to recognize his contributions to Tennessee and America as a whole.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, last Saturday I visited Fort Campbell, which is on the line between Kentucky and Tennessee. It is the home of the famous 101st Airborne Division. It is also the home of a couple of Army Special Forces units we don't hear so much about. Almost all of them are in Iraq today. Some have been there for a long time. What was nice about Saturday was the Secretary of the Army was there and held and attended a luncheon in honor of the families. Awards were given to members of the families of the service men and women who were there and those who support our troops at home. I heard a great many stories, as you might imagine, about bravery, dedication, and professionalism. One was a story about a major whose unit was advancing on a mosque when a crowd of Iraqis thought there was about to be some damage done to the cleric. The major had the presence of mind to order all of the men and women in his unit to go down on one knee and point their guns to the ground. It signaled to the Iraqis that they were there to help them, not to hurt them. But one of the most interesting stories that came out of the 101st Airborne Division in Fort Campbell is one I would like to report this morning to the Members of the Senate. It is about a special group of Tennesseans who embody the qualities that make our Nation exceptional. You may have seen the piece on the news about them on CBS News last week. They exemplify why our State is called the Volunteer State. It is our nickname. More importantly, their story reminds us of the meaning of family. These men belong to a Tennessee Army National Guard artillery unit from Chattanooga. The Secretary of the Army reminded me that more than half of our National Guard men and women and reservists have been deployed in one way or another since 9/11. They are a big part of what we are doing today. We have one integrated army, as he says. But these men whom I am talking about are part of an Army National Guard artillery unit from Chattanooga that is training at Fort Campbell. Like many units, they may be deployed any day. While I have endless gratitude for all of the men and women who are serving, this unit is special. There are seven fathers and sons in this unit; that is, two generations of seven families who are willing and ready to fight for the United States. They are SSG Rick Mullins and his son SP Jeff Mullins; 1SG Cody Mosier and his son SP Tim Mosier; SSG Jasper Ellis and his son SSG Mike Ellis; MAJ Paul Ballinger and his son PFC Ryan Ballinger; SGT James Kittle and his son SP Jeb Kittle; SSG Roy Ware and his son, SP Jeff Ware; SFC Jimmer Bolden and his son, SP Corey Bolden. SP Jeb Kittle got out of the Army last summer but signed on recently with the Reserve battalion to serve with his father, James. In an interview, Specialist Kittle said it would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience to go into battle with his father beside him. He said, ``Everyone feels confident that we can complete the mission and bring everybody back alive.'' That is what we pray for every day, that the conflict is swift and the troops will come home safely. SSG Jasper Ellis and his son, Mike, said they hope for the best; that they go in and come back together. And while none of these father-son guardsmen are assigned to fight side by side, SSG Rick Mullins said no matter what, he and his son will take care of each other. He recalled, with tears in his eyes, when he told his wife that he would give his life before anything would happen to their son. To hear the love and respect these men have for each other is inspiring and reminds us that we are all in this together. It reminds us of the respect we have for the men and women of our Armed Forces. That seven fathers and sons from one National Guard unit in Chattanooga would be training together at Fort Campbell to defend our country in case they are deployed is something of which I am very proud. I wanted to call the attention of the Senate to it today for my home State of Tennessee.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Of course.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Texas. The majority leader mentioned the 101st Airborne Division in his remarks. Both he and I feel a special pride in that division because it sits on the border of Tennessee and Kentucky. The majority leader was there 10 days ago with the families over a weekend, and I was there over the past weekend with the Secretary of the Army at a luncheon in honor of the families there. I suppose this must be said of every part of our military today, but no one can go to Fort Campbell without being enormously impressed with every single military person one meets, especially the family members. Among those was Holly Petraeus, who is the wife of the commanding general of the 101st Airborne Division. We talked about a great many things on Saturday. We talked about the bravery of the men and women from the 101st and from the Army Special Forces Divisions who have been in Iraq even longer. We talked about the number of Tennessee reservists, American reservists, and National Guard men and women who have been deployed since 9/11. If I remember correctly, the Secretary of the Army estimated that nearly two-thirds of all of our reservists and National Guard men and women have been activated in one form or another since 9/11. We owe them enormous gratitude. We talked about one other thing at Fort Campbell last Saturday, and that was the debt we owe to our allies because we are not in Iraq alone. We talk about the coalition of the willing. So today, I rise not just to talk about our brave men and women at Fort Campbell, about whom I will have more to say later this week, but I want to express our appreciation for and salute our allies in the military action in Iraq. Many of our colleagues have noted the leadership of Great Britain and Prime Minister Blair, and rightfully so. Great Britain has long been a great ally of this country, and we are deeply grateful for that. But another ally has contributed significantly to military resources in this effort, a country we sometimes might overlook. That country is Australia. Although their military is not as large as Great Britain, their contribution is significant and they deserve our thanks. Australia has long been a friend and ally to the United States. Not only did they send troops to support us in the 1991 war in the Persian Gulf, they also joined us in military action in Korea and in Vietnam. Australians share our values of democracy and a pioneering spirit. Australia also shares our history of being a former British colony with a strong independent streak. The British may be our ancestors, but the Australians are our first cousins. Today, Australia is standing with us again. In fact, they have committed more troops to our current efforts in Iraq than they did 12 years ago in 1991. Australia's commitment includes: 14 F-18 jet fighters, 3 C-130 transport aircraft, three naval vessels, one transport and two frigates, CH-47 troop-lift helicopters and accompanying troops, and a Special Forces task group of 500 troops. In total, Australia has committed about 2,000 army, air force, and naval personnel--their second largest military deployment since Vietnam. And they have been very active. Australia's Special Forces have seen combat in what their commander describes as ``shoot and scoot'' missions. They have destroyed installations behind enemy lines and provided important reconnaissance information. An Australian diving team has been instrumental in clearing underwater mines at the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr, making it possible for the arrival of humanitarian aid. Their ships aided in the capture of an Iraqi vessel that was trying to lay more mines in the Gulf. And their F-18 fighter aircraft have joined ours in air strikes on enemy military targets. Australian Prime Minister John Howard told his Parliament on March 18: We have supported the Americans position on this issue because we share their concerns and we share their worries about the future if Iraq is left unattended to. Alliances are two-way processes and, when we are in agreement, we should not leave it to the United States to do all of the heavy lifting just because they are the world's superpower. Now that is a true friend. Australia may not have the largest military in the world, but that won't stop them from sending what they can to help our brave men and women fighting in Iraq. They do not want to leave us to do all the ``heavy lifting.'' And, as I noted earlier, their help has been real and significant. Australia, led by Prime Minister Howard, has taken a courageous stand by supporting us in this war and committing so many of its troops. They are a true friend and ally of the United States, and I know we are all grateful for their help and support. If I may say, in 1987, after I left the Tennessee Governor's office, my family and I moved to Australia. We lived in Sydney for 6 months. We did that to get to know each other as a family even better, after so many years in politics. It gave us a chance to know our first cousins in Australia and to see our country at home in an even different way. In 1992, when I served in President Bush's Cabinet, the President asked then-Secretary of Defense Cheney and me to go to Australia to help celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Battle of the Coral Sea. I have been reminded many times that our Australian friends remember that the United States of America stood with them during World War II, and they stand with us today. That is why on last Saturday, at Fort Campbell, we were not only talking about the bravery of American men and women and about our own National Guardsmen and reservists, we were talking about how much we respect and appreciate the support our fighting men and women have received from our allies overseas, especially from the brave men and women in Australia. I yield the floor.