Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I have come across an embarrassing situation. The U.S. Department of Education has apparently earned an F from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service in its first attempt to write a regulation under the new law fixing No Child Left Behind that passed this body with 85 votes last year, passed the House overwhelmingly, and that President Obama signed into law in December calling it ``the Christmas miracle.'' Most of us will remember this law. I know the Senator from Pennsylvania had a major role in some provisions in it. This was a law to fix a law that everybody wanted fixed. It was 8 years overdue. The law that needed to be fixed was called No Child Left Behind. Over the last several years, what had happened was that the U.S. Department of Education had become, in effect, a national school board. Everybody was upset with how much those who worked in the Department of Education were telling teachers, school boards, states, and students in 100,000 public schools what to do. They were telling them what to do about how to evaluate teachers, what to do about what their academic standards should be--adopt common core--telling them what to do about how to use test scores, and saying how to fix a school that might be in trouble. There are seven defined ways to fix a troubled school. People grew so upset with it that we had a massive bipartisan uprising in the Congress. It is not easy to get 85 Senators on behalf of a big complex piece of legislation, but we did. The Wall Street Journal said that it was the largest transfer of power from Washington, DC, to the States in 25 years. Almost everybody liked it except some people in the U.S. Department of Education, who set about almost immediately to try to rewrite the law as if they had actually been elected to something. We anticipated that. In this law we took the extraordinary step--we in Congress who under article I of the Constitution are elected to write laws--to write prohibitions into the law. For example, in the law there is a specific provision that said the U.S. Department of Education may not tell Tennessee or Pennsylvania or any other State what its academic standard must be specifically. It may not tell it that it must adopt common core. That is in the law. That is a specific prohibition. What I want to talk about today is a report by the Congressional Research Service that Congressman Kline, chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, and I released today that says in the very first attempt by the Department to write a regulation implementing the new law, they flunked the test. Those are my words, not those of the Congressional Research Service, but their words are nearly as plain as mine. A new report by CRS says that their proposed ``supplement not supplant'' regulation goes beyond ``a plain language reading of the statute'' and is likely against the law. Congressman Kline said: The administration spent years dictating national education policy and failed to deliver the quality education every child deserves. Now, the department seems determined to repeat its past mistakes. There is no question this regulation would violate both the letter and intent of the law, and it must be abandoned. Congress and the administration promised to reduce the federal role and restore local control, and we will use every available tool to ensure that promise is kept. Mr. President, I know, Congressman Kline knows, and the Members of this body know that a law is not worth the paper it is printed on unless it is implemented properly. I am determined, as the chairman overseeing the Committee on Education, to make sure that this law is implemented properly. We will have this year six hearings on implementation of this law. There is a coalition of organizations that includes the Nation's Governors, the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and others. These are people who don't always agree on education policy. They helped pass this law, and they are equally determined to make sure it is implemented correctly. They are not just working at a national level. The Governors in Tennessee and in other States are working with coalitions of those same organizations to make sure the law is implemented properly. On April 12, we had a hearing in the Education Committee, and I talked with the newly confirmed Education Secretary about this. I urged the President to appoint an Education Secretary because I wanted someone there who was accountable to the Senate, and he was confirmed. His responsibility is to discharge his duties faithfully according to the law, but based upon this first regulation, no one seems to be taking that seriously. Let me be specific about it. There is a provision in the law that goes back to about 1970 that says that if you are going to get money from the Federal Government--we call that title I money--that you have to provide at least comparable services with state and local funding in schools that get the money and schools that don't, except that teacher salaries may not be included in that computation. That is in the law. That has been there for decades now. Now we had a debate in our committee and on the floor about whether we should change that law. The Senator from Colorado, Mr. Bennet, feels very strongly about it. He said that we ought to change the law to say that teachers' salaries should be included in comparing spending in title I schools and non-title I schools. I had a different proposal. I said: Well, I agree with your point, Senator Bennet, but my proposal I would call Scholarship for Kids. Let's just take the Federal dollars in Tennessee, Pennsylvania, or Maryland and let the States decide to create $2,100 scholarships--the amount it could be--and follow each low-income child to the school that the child attends. Neither Senator Bennet's proposal nor my proposal could be adopted by the Senate. So we did not change the law. We then put specifically into the law a provision that said to the Department of Education that it may not write a regulation in such a way that requires parity or equal spending among school districts. That is in the law as well. Yet what happens? In the first regulation that the Department of Education sought to do in what we call a negotiated rulemaking process, they came up with a scheme, because as the departing Secretary said, his lawyers are smarter than the people in the Senate or the people who work here. They came up with a scheme and requirements that would violate the law, and the method they chose to require is prohibited by another provision in the law. I don't call that being clever. I call that just ignoring the law, and I am not going to put up with it. I am not going to allow the Department of Education to sit here and watch us in both bodies of Congress--by big bipartisan majorities and supported by Governors, as well as teachers unions--decide that we don't want Washington dictating every little thing that happens in the schools, and as soon as the President himself signs the law, they start rewriting it over in his own Department. If this one provision, this rule that the Department came up with, were adopted, these are some of the consequences. It would, No. 1, require a complete costly overhaul of almost all of the State and local finance systems in the country. Maybe they need to be overhauled, but we did not decide that they needed to be, and no one is elected in the Department of Education to require that. No. 2, it would require the forcing of thousands and thousands of teachers to transfer from one school to another school. Perhaps they should transfer, but there are 100,000 public schools and there are 3.5 million teachers, and we did not decide in our law that they had to transfer, and the Department can't decide that either. It would require States and local school districts to move back to the burdensome practice of detailing every individual cost on which they spend money to provide a basic educational program to all students, which is exactly what we were trying to free States and districts from under the law. We heard from superintendents and from school boards that this nit-picking, ``mother may I'' approach of the Department bureaucrats was wasting the time of superintendents, school boards, and teachers. So we wrote more flexibility into the law. The Department now wants to take it back. According to the Council of the Great City Schools, this new proposed rule would cost $3.9 billion just for the 69 urban school systems to eliminate the differences in spending between the schools. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record following my remarks a copy of a statement that Congressman Kline of Minnesota, the chairman of the House Education Committee, and I made concerning the report of the Congressional Research Service that says likely that the Department has ``exceeded its statutory authority and appears to go beyond what would be required under a plain language reading of the statute.'' I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record following my remarks a statement I made in connection with the April 12 hearing with our Education Committee in the Senate, when Secretary King testified. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record following my remarks an editorial from the Wall Street Journal entitled ``Obama's Ed-Run'' that was published on April 18 of this year. The Wall Street Journal said, among other things, that ``the administration is now rewriting the parts of the law it doesn't like.'' A law passed with big bipartisan majorities. This is an intolerable situation. This is a complete flouting of the specific bipartisan intent of large majorities of the Senate and the House by a small group of people in a single department who know better than to do this. They know better than to do this. They are ignoring what we have written into law. They are not elected to anything. If they would like to be in the Congress or the Senate, they can resign their positions and the elections come up this year. They can run, and they can try to change the law. It took us 8 years to debate. We debated these provisions with very good people. The Senator from Colorado, who weighed in on this whole question of parity of spending between school districts, is a former distinguished superintendent of the Denver school district. He feels very passionate about it. I used to be the U.S. Secretary of Education myself. I have a different proposal about how to fix it, and I feel pretty passionate about it. But I feel even more passionate that if we are going to decide the answer to the question, we are going to decide it here, and it is not going to be decided down the street by regulations that are not authorized by law and in a method that is specifically prohibited by the provisions of a law that was signed by the President in December. So this is the first such regulation, but there will be more. I would hope that the Secretary of Education and the men and women who work for him would stop and take a deep breath and realize that we were serious when we passed this law, that we have the broad support of the entire education community across the board, and that I am not going to rest until I make sure that this law is implemented in the way it was written. That means that we are going to continue to hold the remainder of our six hearings this year. I am going to work with the coalition of Governors, teachers organizations, chief State school officers, and others to put a spotlight on the Department. I am going to urge the State departments of education to begin to write their own state education plans, which they then later submit to the Department in order to obtain their Federal dollars under the law. Then, if the regulations are not consistent with the law, I don't believe they should follow them. That means the State should ask for a hearing. And if the Department persists, then the State should go to court to sue the Department. If the Department persists, we have our own remedies in the Senate and the House of Representatives. We have something called the Congressional Review Act. It only takes 51 of us to overturn a final rule that we believe is not consistent with the law. We can do that. I will be at the head of the line in trying to do it. We have an appropriations process. The U.S. Department of Education has to come before us and be accountable to us for all of the money they receive. I expect from here on out for those who write the rules to follow the law. It is not just me saying this, it is not just Congressman Kline saying this, we have the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service that has examined this regulation. I hope my colleagues will look at this report. They have concluded that the regulation the Department proposed does not follow the plain language reading of the statute that was enacted and signed into law only last December, and is likely against the law. This is the first shot across the bow, as far as I am concerned. I am going to be watching every single one of these regulations. I hope this does not happen a second or third time or there will be a large number of us seeking to do anything we can do to make sure the law is implemented the way it should be. This was the most important law passed by the U.S. Congress last year. It affected 50 million children, 3.5 million teachers, and 100,000 public schools. It restored to the people closest to the children the authority for dealing with those children. Everybody wanted that. Virtually everybody wanted that except a few people in the U.S. Department of Education who cannot keep their hands off America's 100,000 public schools. They need to do that. They need to learn to do that. They are supposed to create an environment in which teachers, students, and school boards can succeed; they are not supposed to serve as a national school board. Congressman Kline, the chairman of the House committee, and I released this report today. I call it to the attention of my colleagues. I call it to the attention of the Governors, teachers, organizations, and all who care about our schools. I can guarantee you that we are going to keep our eye on the ball and make sure that future regulations are within the authority of the law we passed and that this law--the most important law passed last year by this Congress and signed by the President--is implemented the way Congress wrote it. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I want to congratulate the Senator from North Carolina. He was the leader in 2013, along with Senator Manchin and Senator Coburn, who was here at the time--I was a little bit involved at the time--and Senator Angus King from Maine. We worked with the President and with the House. The Senator is exactly right. The decision that Senator Burr and others made, persuading this Congress and working with the President in 2013 to take the student loan interest rate out of politics and tie it to a certain rate, today reduces the rate by 0.5 percent for nearly 6.4 million students and saves millions and millions of dollars on student loans. There is a lot of talk about student loans and the cost of them. Some people don't look at all aspects of them. In Tennessee, the independent colleges and universities have pointed out to me that the new overtime rule proposed by the Department of Labor would add as much as $850 per student to the cost of tuition at all of the independent colleges in Tennessee, which is an outrageous thing to be doing. Here is an example of real leadership, real action, and real results by the Senator from North Carolina, the Senator from Maine, and the Senator from West Virginia, who by their action in 2013, working with the President, have reduced the cost of going to college for 6.4 million American students. A lot of people can talk; some people can get a result. The Senator from North Carolina, the Senator from Maine, and the Senator from West Virginia got a result. I thank them for it. Let's give credit where the credit is due. President Obama was instrumental in that decision. He worked with Senator Harkin and with others in helping us come to an agreement. For those who think that things can't get done, things do get done here, and sometimes they help people who would like to have the help. Congratulations to Senator Burr for saving millions of dollars for students who are taking out student loans. Mr. President, in just a moment, we will have two votes on the Energy and Water appropriations act. The first is on the amendment by the Senator from Maryland, Mr. Cardin. The second vote is on the amendment by the Senator from Nebraska, Mrs. Fischer. Other than a voice vote on Senator Flake's amendment, those are the last votes on amendments that we have for the Energy and Water appropriations bill. As soon as the majority leader and the Democratic leader agree that we can schedule the vote on final passage--either later today or tomorrow-- for the first time since 2009, we will have completed an Energy and Water bill in regular order across the floor of the Senate, which every single Member of this body has a chance to participate in, rather than just having the 30 members of the Appropriations Committee and then everybody else being presented with a great big omnibus bill at the end of the year, which they really don't have a chance to change. Everybody had a chance to weigh in on this. About 80 Senators did before it came to the floor. We will have considered about 21 more amendments. It has been a very good process. There were a couple of bumps, but this is the Senate. We deal with the bumps. I thank Senator Cardin for his contributions and Senator Fischer for hers. When we are through with that, we hope to finish the bill. Vote on Amendment No. 3871

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I am pleased to report to the Senate, on behalf of Senator Feinstein and myself, that basically we are finished with our work on the Energy and Water appropriations bill. The final vote--all that remains to be done--will be set whenever the majority leader and the Democratic leader agree it can be. I will have more to say about the bill tomorrow, but I thank Senators for their cooperation on this. If we are able to pass it tomorrow, this will be the first time we have taken this bill--the Energy and Water appropriations bill--across the floor in the regular order since 2009. What that means is that every single Senator has had a chance to weigh in on it--first in the committee, where we received recommendations for policy from 80 or so Senators on both sides of the aisle, and then we processed another 21 amendments here on the floor. I hope it is a good model for the other 11 appropriations bills that we have. When we voted for the fourth time on whether to end debate on the bill, I was pleased to see that the vote was 97 to 2. I hope that is an indication of what the final vote will be when the leaders set it. I am confident that Senators will vote for it in big numbers because we have had an open and fair process. We have had a full amendment process. Almost every Senator is represented in the bill, and many Senators have already been home taking credit for what is in the bill. So I hope they will now vote for what they have been taking credit for when they have an opportunity--hopefully tomorrow. So we will wait to see when the majority leader and the Democratic leader decide to set the vote, but other than the final passage of the bill, we have completed our work on the Energy and Water appropriations bill, and I thank the Senate for the opportunity to do that.

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

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Indian Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on May 11, 2016, in room SD-628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, at 2:15 p.m.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on May 11, 2016, at 9:30 a.m.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on May 11, 2016, at 10 a.m., in room SR-253 of the Russell Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing entitled ``Leveraging the U.S. Science and Technology Enterprise.''

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on May 11, 2016, at 10 a.m., in room SD-215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Oversight of the United States Customs and Border Protection Agency.''

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on May 11, 2016, at 3 p.m., in room SD-215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate be in 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 when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 9:30 a.m., Thursday, May 12; that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; further, that following leader remarks, the Senate be in a period of morning business for 1 hour, equally divided, with Senators permitted to speak therein; further, that following morning business, the Senate resume consideration of H.R. 2028; finally, that all time during the adjournment and morning business count postcloture on the Alexander substitute amendment No. 3801.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I withdraw my amendment No. 3804.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that all time during quorum calls until 5:30 p.m. today be charged equally between both sides.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, the answer to that question is yes, and I wish to continue my answer to the question. While I defend Senator Cotton's right to have a vote, I see it a little differently than Senator Feinstein. Senator Feinstein supports the Iran agreement; I oppose it. In my opinion, this is not a vote about the Iran agreement; this is a question about what we should do with Iran's heavy water. I will oppose the Cotton amendment, No. 1, because if it were adopted, it would create the possibility that Iran's heavy water might be purchased not by the United States for peaceful purposes but will be purchased by countries like North Korea that might use it to make nuclear weapons; and No. 2, I think it would be more appropriate to have the Foreign Relations Committee, the Armed Services Committee, or the Intelligence Committee consider it. For those reasons, I intend to vote against the Cotton amendment.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I thank the Senator from California. She and I will talk some more. I think we have stated the similarity in our positions, which is our opposition to the Cotton amendment, and the difference in our positions. She sees it as intricately related to the Iran nuclear agreement, which she passionately supports, and I see it as a separate issue because I oppose the Iran agreement. I don't think we will work that out in public here over the next hour and a half, so I suggest we continue our conversations between us, the majority, and the Democratic leader, and see where we get by 5:30 p.m. My hope is that we can dispose of the Cotton amendment, finish the bill, and get on with the other important business of the Senate sooner rather than later. I thank the Senator.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I wish to make a few comments about Senator Bennett; and then I will yield the floor to Senator Nelson, who has another schedule; and then, for the information of Senators and staff, I will make some comments on how we are going to proceed on the Energy and Water bill, which I hope we can wrap up pretty quickly, but I will wait until Senator Nelson finishes. Mr. President, I am glad I had a chance to hear the majority leader, Senator McConnell, as well as Senator Reid and Senator Hatch, all of whom were great friends of Bob Bennett, as was I. Bob Bennett came to Washington with his father Wallace Bennett, who was a U.S. Senator. He was in the Senate when I first came here as a Senate aide. I first met Bob nearly 50 years ago, when we, in effect, both worked for Bryce Harlow, who was President Nixon's Chief of Congressional Relations. Mr. Harlow, who is revered in Washington still, would have Saturday morning meetings with all of those of us who had the job of being congressional liaisons with Members of Congress. Bob Bennett was in the Transportation Department, and I was Mr. Harlow's assistant and telephone answerer in the White House at the time. We got to know each other then. We have known each other ever since. He and his wife Joyce visited with us in our home in Tennessee and we traveled with them and worked together on a variety of issues. They became very special friends. He was chairman of the Energy and Water Subcommittee, to which Senator Hatch referred, which had so much to do with his home State of Utah. He handled that with great diligence and great effectiveness for a number of years. That is the bill we are working on today in the Senate. I will be at his service tomorrow, as will other Senators. I simply wanted to add my voice to those of the majority leader, the Democratic leader, and his colleague Senator Hatch in saying we all greatly admired Bob. He served our Nation brilliantly and well and eloquently. I heard his farewell address. It was one of the best I have ever heard. I remember one of the things he said: The great value as a Senator is that you not only have a say, you have a vote. Bob Bennett had a lot to say, he cast a lot of votes, and a lot of us listened very carefully to what he had to say and greatly respected his votes. We have lost a great friend, and Utah and our country lost a great public servant. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, for the information of Senators and staff members, I would like to make a few comments about the Energy and Water appropriations bill that we will be moving to at 4 this afternoon. Senator Feinstein is in an intelligence briefing and will be here about 4 as we will. We will have more to say at that time, but here is my view of where we are: At 5:30 today, the Senate, for the third time, will vote on whether it is time to cut off debate and finish the bill. The first two votes failed, and they failed for one reason. They failed because of differences of opinion about the amendment by the Senator from Arkansas, Mr. Cotton, which said that in the year 2017, the United States could not use tax dollars to buy heavy water from Iran as we are doing in 2016. So we will vote for the third time today on whether to cut off debate and finish the bill. Here is what I would suggest our goal should be. This is just my opinion, but I have talked with the majority leader, the Democratic, and I have talked with Senator Feinstein and a number of other Senators. No. 1, we should dispose of the Cotton amendment the way we normally dispose of issues about which we disagree. We should vote on them. That is what we do in the Senate--we vote. If you are in the Grand Ole Opry, you sing. So we have a difference of opinion about the Cotton amendment. Let's vote on it. It is relevant to the bill. It is properly filed. It is germane. Senator Cotton has been very flexible. He has offered to decide it in many different ways. He has offered to modify his amendment. He has offered to allow it to be considered separately. He has offered for us to vote at a 60-vote level, and then he would withdraw it if he should lose. He has offered to vote it at 60 votes on cloture on his amendment. So he has offered us an opportunity to vote on his amendment in many different ways. He just wants a vote. In my view, a Senator who has a relevant and germane amendment is entitled to a vote, and I am supporting his right to a vote. Then, once we vote on the amendment and dispose of it, we should finish the bill. So I am optimistic. I see no reason why today or tomorrow--certainly no later than Wednesday--we cannot vote on and dispose of the Cotton amendment and vote on and finish the Energy and Water appropriations bill. So I say to Senators and staff members, if I were planning my week, I would plan on there being a vote on the Cotton amendment. Now, they may ask how I know that. Well, I know this: that any majority leader has the right to file cloture on an amendment like the Cotton amendment, and by Wednesday we will vote on it at 60 votes. My own view is, since we are basically finished with the bill, except for the Cotton amendment, why would we not agree to wrap up things and do it tomorrow or even today? We could finish the bill today, with a vote on the Cotton amendment at 60 votes, with a vote on cloture, and a vote on final passage. As much as I defend the right of the Senator from Arkansas to have a vote, I am going to oppose his amendment on the merits, which I will describe in just a minute, but it is time to bring this bill to a conclusion. I think most Senators agree with that, and that is what we need to do. Let me discuss for a moment, remind Senators and those listening, why this bill is so important. As the majority leader says, it covers a lot of essential services in this country. For example, every time there is a flood in the Midwest, 15 or 20 Senators show up wanting more money for flood control. Our inland waterways are in need of reconstruction. The harbors on the west coast and in Charleston, Mobile, and many other places need deepening. We need to stay No. 1 in supercomputing in the world. About half of this legislation has to do with our nuclear weapons program--modernizing it and keeping us safe. All 17 of our National Laboratories are in the Office of Science under this legislation. Despite staying within strict budget limits, we have agreed to the highest level of appropriations for our Office of Science, out of which comes so much of our economic growth, of any appropriations bill in history. In addition to that, we have gone through a very careful process. About 80 different Members of the Senate have come to Senator Feinstein and me with policy changes that they would like to see in the bill that are in the bill. Eighty means about half Republicans and half Democrats. I know that it is important to them because I have already heard reports of many Senators being home last weekend taking credit for all of these provisions they have gotten in the bill, which we haven't passed yet. I don't blame them for that. There are a lot of provisions in this bill that are important to the country and important to my State of Tennessee. I am reminding Senators that this is an important bill in which they have had a lot of say. In addition, on the floor, we have already processed 17 different amendments--about as many Democratic amendments as Republican amendments. We did all of that in a matter of 3 or 4 days before we reached an impasse on the Cotton amendment. We are basically done with step one of our most basic constitutional work, which is oversight and appropriations of about $1 trillion in spending. This is the first of 12 bills. This Energy and Water appropriations bill has not gone across the floor in regular order since 2009. It is time we do that. We are very close to doing that. Let me say a word about the amendment by the Senator from Arkansas. As I said, I have, for the last week, defended his right to have a vote, and he will have a vote. Make no mistake about it, he will have a vote, but I intend to oppose it on the merits for three reasons. The first is this, and let me say this very carefully: If the United States is not allowed to buy heavy water from Iran next year as it is this year, it creates the possibility that Iran will be able to sell that heavy water to other countries, including North Korea, which might use it to make nuclear weapons. Let me say that again. If we are not allowed to buy it by this amendment, someone else will buy it. Heavy water is a distilled form of water. By itself, it is not hazardous. It is not radioactive. It can be used for many peaceful purposes. The United States uses about 70 tons of it every year. For example, this year the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is buying 32 tons from Iran--6 tons of which we will be used for its big neutron microscope. The rest will be sold over time to universities, to hospitals, to manufacturers for medical research, for fiber optics--all for peaceful purposes. This heavy water--this distilled form of water--can also be used to make plutonium to make nuclear weapons, which is why we do not want Iran to have it. We want it out of Iran. We want it somewhere else. If we don't want them to have it, and if we need it and we in the United States don't produce it and we don't buy it, what does Iran do with its heavy water? It sells it to somebody else, perhaps. We don't know who, but it could be any one of a number of countries, including North Korea. In a big meeting over there now--the biggest they have had in three decades--they are talking about nuclear weapons. Respectfully, in my view, this is bad policy. I oppose it. I support the Senator's right to have a vote, and he will have a vote, but when we have that vote, I will vote no. The second reason I oppose the amendment is it doesn't belong on the appropriations bill. The Senator has a right to have it on there, but I hear a lot of lectures of us appropriators in our Republican lunches from distinguished members of our so-called authorizing committees-- committees such as Foreign Relations, Armed Services, Intelligence-- saying: You Senators on the Appropriations Committee are making a lot of decisions you shouldn't be making. We should be making the policy decisions. What is more of a policy decision than what to do with Iran's heavy water? This isn't a debate about whether you support the Iran nuclear agreement. I voted against that. I am opposed to that. This is a question about what do you do about the 200 tons of heavy water that can be used either for peaceful purposes or to make nuclear weapons over the next few years. I would think there would be no issue that would be more suitable for discussion by the Foreign Relations Committee or the Armed Services Committee or the Intelligence Committee, nor can I think of many issues less suitable just to pop up as an amendment on an appropriations bill. If we can't decide issues like this that are filled with national security implications, why do we have a Foreign Relations Committee? Why do we have an Armed Services Committee? Why do we have an Intelligence Committee? It is not just the possibility that it might go to Iran, the issue cuts the other way as well. Senator Cotton or someone else who favors the amendment might say: Well, if we buy more heavy water from Iran, perhaps that creates a market for Iran. Maybe that incentivizes them to make more heavy water and keeps them in production for a long period of time. Then, later on, they misuse it. Maybe that is possible. Then there is the question of what effect a decision by the United States to not allow our tax dollars to buy heavy water for our peaceful purposes have on other countries that produce heavy waters, such as India, such as Argentina or Canada, which doesn't now produce it but uses it. What are the implications? At this time, when there has never been a more dangerous recent time in the world, what are the national security implications of what to do about Iran's disposal of heavy water--water we don't want it to have, water we don't produce but which we need, and water we do not want to get into the hands of other countries, such as perhaps North Korea, which could use it to make nuclear weapons. I cannot think of a more appropriate issue to be considered by the Foreign Relations Committee. There is a third reason we should take into account when voting on this. The President says he will veto it. I will say more about Presidential vetoes in a minute. I don't think we should pull the cord and stop the train just because the President says he will veto something. The White House has said they will veto something 85 times in the last year and a half. If we stopped our work every time they did that, we would only be meeting on Monday afternoons or Tuesday mornings. But we ought to take into account the fact that the President might veto it, and placing this amendment on this bill would be a sincere but in my opinion a futile gesture because we would end up with no amendment after the Presidential veto. We might end up with no Energy and Water appropriations bill for yet another year. I have some differences with some of my friends on the other side. Some of them think that whenever the President says veto, we should stop. I don't agree with that. I think we should go ahead. If he wants to veto, he vetoes, but I think we should take that into account. Some of them say that whenever a controversial amendment comes up, we should not move forward with the bill. Here is what we agreed to this year. After last year, I agreed, anyway, to make sure we did not in the Energy and Water Development Subcommittee--and I see the Senator from California is here, which we worked on together. We kept controversial amendments off the bill in our subcommittee. There were a number that tried to come on. We said, if they are controversial, bring them to the floor. Last year on that bill went the waters of the United States amendment, and it killed the bill. The Democrats wouldn't move forward with it. I thought they should have, but they did not. It was not on the bill this year. Senator Hoeven held it until we got to the floor. He offered the amendment at 60 votes and it didn't pass. We honored our word. We kept the controversial amendments off the bill in committee, but amendments that are relevant and germane when they come to the floor are entitled to be heard. We should dispose of the Cotton amendment the way we dispose of our other differences. We should just vote on it. Especially since the Senator from California is here, let me talk about another aspect of our work on the bill that is important in the Senate; that is, the word ``restraint.'' For example, Senator Feinstein is very concerned about the cruise missile. She could have offered an amendment in the subcommittee or she could have today that would have made a major change in our policy toward the cruise missile, but she chose not to do that. She chose instead to have a hearing. We will do that, and then we will take the next step, whatever that turns out to be. She knows, if she had moved ahead with that, that would have been a very provocative thing to do, made it harder to pass the bill. She chose not to do it. The Senators from South Carolina, Mr. Graham and Mr. Scott, are very concerned about the plutonium MOX facility in South Carolina. The administration has recommended that we close it and move to a different way of disposing of that plutonium. Senator Feinstein and I agree with that. We could have tried to make that policy decision in this bill or the South Carolina Senators could have tried that, too, but we thought it was a policy decision that should first be considered by the authorizing committee--in this case, the Armed Services Committee. We met with the representatives of Senator McCain and Senator Reed, and they have agreed to have a hearing. This is how we are dealing with that. Senator Shelby, from Alabama, is highly stirred up about what we call the Georgia-Florida-Alabama water wars. He would like to have his amendment to resolve that problem on this bill, but he has stepped back from that on this bill and allowed us to move ahead with it. None of those Senators had to do that, but they did that knowing that it is the basic constitutional duty of this body to do its appropriations work, and they made it possible. I would have preferred Senator Cotton not offer this amendment on this bill, but he did. Since it is relevant and since it is germane and since we did not deal with it in committee, I think the right way to approach it is to say: Let's dispose of it the way we dispose of other differences of opinion. Let's vote on it and let's move on. If I may say through the Chair, before Senator Feinstein came, I said, in my view, I wanted the Senators and staff to know we would be voting today for the third time on whether to cut off debate, and my hope was that we could dispose of the Cotton amendment at 60 votes and we could then finish the bill. I also said that while I defended Senator Cotton's right to offer the amendment and that he will get a vote--because the majority leader has the parliamentary tools to file cloture and make sure there is a vote on the Cotton amendment by Wednesday--I intend to vote against the Cotton amendment because I think it risks the possibility that Iran's heavy water might be sold to a country, such as North Korea, that could use it to make nuclear weapons. I think first it should be considered by the Foreign Relations Committee or the Armed Services Committee or the Intelligence Committee. For those reasons, I intend to vote against it. I am hopeful that when we get to 5:30, maybe conversations would continue, and the possibility could even exist that we could agree today to vote on the Cotton amendment at 60 votes, dispose of it, vote on cloture to move ahead with the bill, and have final passage of the bill. If we can't do that, I see no reason we can't do it over the next couple of days. I thank the Senator from California for the way she has worked with me on this issue. We have gotten almost to the finish line. She and I would like to set a good example for the other 11 appropriations bills that are coming up. There are other bills beyond that which we need to deal with, such as the 21st-century cures legislation on biomedical research, and there is the Zika legislation that many Senators are interested in. My hope is that we will find a way to resolve the only major issue that remains so we can pass a bill that virtually every Senator in this body has some interest in and will probably vote for. I am optimistic and hopeful that we can move quickly on disposing of the Cotton amendment so we can finish the bill. Ideally we would do it today, but we can certainly get it done by tomorrow or Wednesday. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I would like to make brief comments concerning the status of the Energy and Water appropriations bill, following the actions of the majority leader. I said most of what I had to say earlier. Here is my view of it. Tonight, and for the third time, the Senate voted not to end debate on the Energy and Water appropriations bill, even though we have virtually finished all of our work on it. We have one difference of opinion, and it is a big one. It is provocative. It is the Cotton amendment that would prohibit U.S. tax dollars being used next year to purchase heavy water from Iran. The majority leader has filed cloture on the Cotton amendment, which means that after tomorrow--the intervening day--we will have a vote on the Cotton amendment on Wednesday. We will dispense with it the way we usually dispense with issues about which we have large differences of opinion: We vote on them. Sometimes we can work them out, sometimes we can withdraw them, and sometimes we can't. So we are going to vote on it. Senator Cotton has said that if he should not win the amendment, he will withdraw it. That will dispose of the Cotton amendment, and then we can move on and finish the Energy and Water appropriations bill. I said earlier today, and I will reiterate, that while I have defended Senator Cotton's right to offer his amendment--it is germane and it is relevant--I will vote no on his amendment for two reasons. One reason is I believe it raises the possibility that if the United States is not allowed to buy heavy water from Iran, then it puts it on the international market and it could be purchased by other countries, such as North Korea, for use in making nuclear weapons. This is not a vote for or against the Iran nuclear agreement. I am opposed to that agreement. This is a question about what to do about the heavy water that Iran has, which it has to get rid of, which can be used either for peaceful purposes, which we use it for in the United States when we have it--we use it for the neutron microscope at the Oak Ridge Laboratory, we use it for fiber optics, we use it for MRI imaging, we use it in a variety of ways--or it can be used to make plutonium and nuclear weapons. Now is not the time to be increasing the possibility that heavy water from Iran could be put on the international market and sold to a country such as North Korea, which might use it to make nuclear weapons. That is No. 1. No. 2, while the amendment is relevant and germane, this is an amendment that ought to be considered first in the Foreign Relations Committee or the Armed Services Committee. I get a lot of lectures sometimes in our Republican lunches about appropriators making decisions that ought to be in the authorizing committee. Well, this is one of them. If there were an issue that raises more such complex national security issues, it would be hard to think of one. Might this heavy water be used by a country to make nuclear weapons or, on the other hand, if we purchase it, does it create a market or an incentive for Iran to produce more heavy water? What happens to India, which produces heavy water? What happens to Argentina? What happens to the need of the United States for heavy water, since we don't produce it at all, yet we need it? Iran produces it. We don't want them to have it. We don't produce it. We need it. We don't want North Korea to have it. These are complex national security issues that ought not to be decided on an amendment to this bill. I will be voting no on the Cotton amendment because of the fear that it might create the possibility that putting it on the international market would put this distilled water, which could be used peacefully, in the hands of those who might make a bomb with it, and because I think an appropriate way to handle it is to first allow the Foreign Relations Committee or the Armed Services Committee to deal with it. This is a sincere amendment. I have defended the right of the Senator from Arkansas to offer his amendment. My friends on the other side don't like the amendment. They see it as provocative. They see it as a poison pill. That is a difference we will just have to work out over time. This is the U.S. Senate. The right way to work out differences we can't otherwise work out is simply to vote. The majority leader has made sure we will have a vote on the Cotton amendment by Wednesday. My hope is that as important as this Energy and Water appropriations bill is, that Senator Feinstein and I could work with the Democratic leader and the Republican leader and others to see if we might not agree tomorrow on a way to vote on the Cotton amendment and finish the bill. As I have said earlier, 80 different Senators have important provisions in the bill. I know that. I know they are important because many of my colleagues went home over the last week and took credit for passing them, even though we have a little more work to do. So while we have one difference of opinion left--and it is a big one--I think the majority leader has put us on a path to come to resolution by Wednesday, and I hope by tomorrow. Let me conclude by thanking Senator Feinstein. She feels as passionately about this as Senator Cotton does. Maybe she feels more passionately about it. I respect and understand that, but I also respect the fact that she and I are bringing the first appropriations bill to the floor, and it is our basic constitutional duty to do so. We haven't had an Energy and Water appropriations bill make it all the way across the floor under regular order since 2009. That is not the way the railroad is supposed to run around here. We need to show the American people that we can resolve our differences and come to a result, so we will do that. We will have a vote, and then we will finish the bill. I hope we can do it tomorrow. I look forward to continuing my discussions with the Senator from California and other interested Senators to get it resolved. I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, within a few minutes we will be voting on whether to cut off debate on the Energy and Water appropriations bill and move to finish the bill. I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will vote yes. This is a bill the Senator from California and I have worked on carefully with Members on both sides of the aisle. More than 80 Senators have made contributions to the bill. We considered 18 amendments on the floor. This is a bill which is about half national defense and about half essential services. These include dredging harbors and building locks and dams. These include our 17 National Laboratories and keeping us first in the world in supercomputing. It is within the Budget Control Act, and it is the part of the budget that is flat. In other words, it is a part of the budget that is reasonably under control, not the part that is not. It is also the first time since 2009 that this Energy and Water appropriations bill has had the opportunity to go across the floor in the regular order. It is the earliest appropriations bill that has been considered by the Senate since 1974. Senator McConnell and Senator Reid picked this bill because they thought Senator Feinstein and I could work with Members of the Senate to establish a model for how to deal with the remainder of the appropriations process, and we hope that proves to be true. We have run into one issue, and that is an amendment by the Senator from Arkansas regarding Iran. That is a provocative amendment--I understand that--on both sides of the aisle, and the President cares about it as well. But I have worked hard to get Senators a right to offer germane amendments. Some Senators have chosen to withdraw their amendments in order to keep the bill moving along, but Senator Cotton has a right to offer his amendment on the bill, and I support him in doing that. He has been eminently reasonable. He has offered to modify it. He has offered to do it at another time. He has offered to vote it at 60 votes or to vote it by voice vote. So far, we have not had any agreement. If we do not succeed, I am going to keep working with Senator Feinstein, the Democratic and Republican leaders, and with Senator Cotton in the hopes that when we come back next Monday, we will have a suitable solution and we will vote still again on finishing the Energy and Water appropriations bill. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 2 more minutes.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Over the last year and 5 months the White House has threatened 87 vetoes. That is about one every week and a half. If we shut down the Senate and stopped our work every time the President threatened a veto, we would be here about 3 or 4 hours every Monday afternoon. When we say to the President: Your budget is dead on arrival, he sends us his budget anyway. The way to handle a veto threat is the way we did it with the national defense act, which is to say: All right, Mr. President, if you want to veto it, you may. We sent it to him, and he did. It came back, and the offending provision was taken out. A better way to do it might be that the President says: I will veto the education bill. We worked with him, and we sent him a version that he could sign. My plea with my friends on the Democratic side, as well as on the Republican side, is let's not let the White House lead us around by the nose and tell us we can't consider a bill just because there is a veto threat. We should consider the bill. We are a coequal branch of government. We should do what we think we ought to do--defeat it or pass it. Then, if the President chooses to veto it, that is his constitutional prerogative, and most of the time, if we know that is going to happen, the offending provision comes out. I ask for a ``yes'' vote. I hope that it succeeds. If it doesn't, we will be having the same exact vote a week from next Monday when we come back, and I will do my best to help that succeed.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, in a few minutes we will be voting on whether to end debate on the Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill. Most of what we have to say about it at this point is very good news. This is the first appropriations bill of the year. It is the earliest date an appropriations bill has been acted on in the Senate since 1974. If it goes through in the regular order, it will be the first Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill that has done so since 2009. More than 80 Senators have contributed policy suggestions and amendments to the bill on both sides of the aisle. In addition to that, we have dealt with 17 amendments on the floor. Now we are ready to end debate and move in our process toward a final solution on the bill. I believe this bill was put on the floor because Senator Feinstein and I have a good history of working together, and the expectation was that we would find a way to do that. Let me say the problem--and I will leave time for Senator Feinstein or the Democratic leader or perhaps Senator Cotton or others who may want to say something. An issue has arisen over an amendment offered by Senator Cotton. He did that after the administration made an announcement over the weekend that it would be purchasing heavy water from Iran. Heavy water by itself is not much. It is just water. It is in drums. It doesn't hurt anybody. It is not dangerous. It is distilled water, and it is used primarily for two reasons: one, for scientific instruments--we use it for fiber optics and other scientific reasons--and it can be used to make plutonium. So it was a part of the agreement between the United States and Iran. Senator Cotton--and I will characterize his amendment with his permission--sought to do two things. One was to say you couldn't use any appropriated funds for the fiscal year 2017--the one we are working on now--to buy more heavy water from Iran. The second thing he sought was to do something about Iran's business of selling heavy water. What would the implications be about that for our own national security? Remember, this is a decision by the U.S. Department of Energy that was announced over the weekend without any notification to the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee or to the Intelligence Committee or to the Armed Services Committee. So you have a U.S. Senator who is on the ball, and he says: OK, this is an issue I would like to do something about. Our friends on the other side have raised an objection, especially Senator Feinstein, for whom I have the greatest respect. So today, in talking with the Democratic leaders, I asked: May I talk with Senator Cotton and see if he will modify his amendment in a way that might be acceptable so that we can go on with the appropriations process and not blow it up? It was blown up last year because we put controversial water language in the bill, and instead of bringing it to the floor and voting on it and letting the President veto it and then bringing it back, the Democrat majority decided we just wouldn't bring the bill to the floor. This year I talked to the Democratic leaders. They wrote Senator McConnell a letter, and we all agreed to try to have an appropriations process. What they said to me was, no controversial riders in committee. So I went through my whole committee with Senator Feinstein, and we persuaded many Senators to leave their controversial amendments off the bill in committee, and we said to them: You can bring them up on the floor when they have 60 votes. If you can get 60 votes, you can put it in the bill, and if the President of the United States doesn't like it, he can veto it. Then it takes 67 votes to override it. Here we are, early in the process in April, moving ahead, and all of a sudden I understand that the Democratic minority is going to block us from going forward because they don't like the Cotton amendment. Let me say this, Mr. President, and I will stop my remarks. I think Senator Cotton has acted responsibly. He acted as soon as he knew about the Department of Energy's decision. He has listened to the objections that were raised by the other side. He has amended his own bill. He has offered for it to be adopted by voice vote. He has offered for it to be voted on at 60 votes. As I said, he has modified it. He has completely taken out the part that could limit American businesses from getting licenses to buy heavy water from Iran. That is to be discussed at a later time. He has left in only the part that says you can't use fiscal year 2017 money to buy heavy water from Iran. But the Department can use prior year appropriated money, and it can use revolving fund money. It can buy all the heavy water Iran has if this President or the next President wants to. I think that is a very reasonable step, and I would ask the Democratic leader and the whip and Senator Feinstein, all of whom I work with very well and for whom I have great respect, if they are determined to block the bill at noon. But let's keep talking about this because I think it is the basic constitutional framework of our U.S. Senate to do our job on appropriations, and Senators should be allowed to offer germane amendments. When confronted with an objection on the other side, if they say ``well, 60 votes'' or ``voice vote'' or ``I will modify my amendment,'' that ought to be respected, and we should go ahead. Then if the President at the end still feels he wants to veto the bill, that is the way our process works. He vetoes it. If we don't do this, we are going to end up with an omnibus bill. Senators won't have a chance to participate in it, and then the President will have to veto it in an omnibus bill at the end of the year. That is not the kind of process that earns the respect of the American people.

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