Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent, on behalf of Senator Feinstein and myself, that the following amendments be called up and reported by number: 3802, Schatz; and 3803, Ernst; further, that at 4:55 p.m. on Wednesday, April 20--today--the Senate vote in relation to the amendments in the order listed and that no second degree amendments be in order to either of the amendments prior to the votes, and that there be 2 minutes, equally divided, prior to each vote.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Maryland for allowing me to interrupt his comments.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I congratulate Senator Schatz. I support and cosponsored the Schatz amendment. He has identified a priority that Senator Feinstein and I already made a priority. It is one of the two parts of the Department of Energy that got any increase in the nondefense area--the Office of Science and this one. He has worked with us in committee. He has worked with us on the floor. He found an offset so that it is paid for. We are reducing other spending to increase this spending. This is called setting priorities in discretionary spending, which is under control. It is not the part of the budget that creates Federal debt. We should do more of this energy research, but we should do it by reducing other spending. I would suggest that reducing subsidies to wind power, oil, and gas would be a good way to start. I ask for a ``yes'' vote on the Schatz amendment.

Mr. ALEXANDER. We yield back any time.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I wish to make an announcement on behalf of Senator Feinstein and myself. This is important. This is scheduling. Senator Feinstein and I wish to thank all of the Senators on both sides--Senator McConnell, Senator Reid--for creating an environment in which we could get so much done. We have more than 80 Senators who have policy that is already a part of this bill. That has happened over the last few weeks. Several amendments have been adopted and accepted. We are voting on two this afternoon. Tomorrow, we expect to have two votes in the morning and one vote after lunch. We have a request of Senators. This doesn't always work, but we would like to get an agreement to have all of our amendments in by 1 o'clock tomorrow. If we can do that, we can finish the bill early next week. So if Members can ask their staff and legislative counsel to do that, we would like to do that by consensus as much as possible. That is the old-fashioned way of doing a bill. I would like to set a good example for the other 11 bills that are coming. So that is the schedule as we look forward. Senator Ernst has the remaining amendment, and there will be no further votes after her vote. Amendment No. 3803

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, as the manager of the bill, I was going to take that time. I ask unanimous consent for 2 minutes and to allow Senator Ernst 2 more minutes to make her point.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Thank you, Mr. President. The issue is spending. This is discretionary spending. This is an opportunity, as we consider these 12 bills, to consider where the spending problem is. This is discretionary spending. It includes defense, it includes cancer research, it includes roads, it includes locks and dams, and it includes the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Denali Commission, and other commissions that would be defunded by this amendment. This is not our spending problem. That is $1 trillion we are spending through these 12 bills. We are spending $3 trillion more through mandatory spending and interest on top of that. We have not been very brave on the Republican side of the aisle or the Democratic side of the aisle on the real spending problem. We have done pretty well on this. I have said to some of my colleagues that maybe the Senate should turn over to the Appropriations Committee the real spending problem and see if we can make the red spending line like the blue spending line because that is what we have done. So we have set a priority for projects like sewer improvement in Alabama and planning and development in Mississippi, automotive workforce in Georgia, rural dental in Kentucky. These are all priorities within spending that are under control. This is not under control. We can't fix that in these 12 weeks, but I hope we pay attention to this difference and sooner or later have the courage to deal with it. I urge a ``no'' vote on this amendment.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following amendment be called up and reported by number: Hoeven No. 3811; further, that at 11:45 a.m. on Thursday, April 21, the Senate vote on that amendment and that it be subject to a 60-affirmative-vote threshold for adoption; and further, that no second-degree amendments be in order prior to the vote.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank Senators for their cooperation today. As I indicated earlier, Senator Feinstein and I have been in touch with every Senate office over the last few weeks, asking for advice, policy, and amendments. Senators have been terrific in getting that to us. For example, there is Senator Schatz' amendment. He offered and withdrew it in committee. We worked with him and were able to adopt it once it came to the floor. That is typical of what has happened. I would judge that about 83 or 84 Senators have contributed policy to this bill. There are really not many more amendments that will be offered. But we will have this one amendment, at least, tomorrow morning at 11:45. Then, the last vote will be at about 2:00 p.m., tomorrow after lunch. There may be other votes before that. I would ask, as I did earlier, that Senators and their staffs get any other amendments that we do not know about to us by 1 o'clock tomorrow. Then, perhaps we can come to an agreement about how to proceed from there to the end of the bill, maybe even without the necessity of cloture. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Illinois for his advocacy of keeping America No. 1 in the world in supercomputers and exascale computing. He has a special knowledge of that because of his intimate knowledge of Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. I know something about it because of the work at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. The Obama administration has consistently funded exascale and supercomputing, and we have consistently supported that recommendation of funding. We have been able to do that for the last 4 or 5 years, Senator Feinstein and I. There has been no more vigorous advocate to cause our country to be No. 1 in supercomputing than Senator Kirk of Illinois. I thank him for his leadership and his contributions to this bill.

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, recently the Senate marked a significant achievement--the final passage of the bipartisan reauthorization of the Older Americans Act--and now the President has signed it into law. This act provides seniors access to home-delivered meals, like Meals on Wheels; seniors centers; transportation, like rides to the senior center and the grocery store; and meals served at senior centers and churches. Other services include caregiver support, preventive health services, job training and support, elder abuse prevention, and the long-term care ombudsman. In 2012, Tennessee served 2.4 million meals to seniors through Older Americans Act programs. This reauthorization also will make a few important improvements. One, it will provide States, area agencies on aging, and service providers with information and technical assistance in collaboration with relevant Federal agencies, on providing efficient, person-centered transportation services, including across geographic boundaries. That means that when a senior who lives Kentucky and wants to come see her doctor just over the border in Tennessee, it is easier for her to get that ride. Two, this bill addresses the tragic issue of elder abuse with provisions for the prevention of abuse, neglect, and exploitation. It bolsters services that address elder justice and exploitation of older individuals, including financial exploitation, which can be devastating to a senior's ability to stay independent and in his own home. Three, this bill ensures States receive funding based on their senior population. Senator Richard Burr worked hard with me on this, and we have him to thank for this update. This bill is the product of several years of bipartisan collaboration and compromise. This legislation protects and strengthens the underlying law's many vital programs. I look forward to seeing S. 192 signed into law, and now I would like to yield to my colleague, Senator Burr.

Mr. ALEXANDER. In addition to providing grants to States for senior social and nutrition services, this reauthorization also aims to continue protecting vulnerable elders from abuse by ensuring access to abuse screening and prevention through efforts like the Senior Medicare Patrol, SMP, program, which helps train seniors to recognize and protect themselves from Medicare and Medicaid fraud. The most recent inspector general report noted that the program had educated over 3.5 million beneficiaries, reached 27 million people, and saved about $106 million. The programs authorized by this law provide critical services to help Americans live with dignity well into their later years, but these services also provide a significant return on investment for taxpayers. They help decrease the increasing cost pressures on Medicare and Medicaid. These programs that help seniors stay healthy, independent, and living in their own homes also are helping seniors stay where they want to be--and that is less expensive for taxpayers than if these seniors were instead in nursing homes.

Mr. ALEXANDER. For more than 50 years, the Older Americans Act has been effective in large part because these successful programs are funded through flexible grants to States. States know best what services will be most beneficial for their residents to live healthier, more independent lives as they age. I want to thank Senator Murray for working with me on this bill in our committee. I want to thank Senator Collins, whose leadership on the Special Committee on Aging was instrumental. Her determination to help seniors stay home and independent helped us get this bill through the full Senate. I want to thank Senator Burr for his determination to get a result on the funding issue. Finally, I would like to thank Senator Sanders for his tireless work on this issue and on this bill.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of my remarks at the Senate Health Committee's third executive session on its biomedical innovation agenda be printed in the Record.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, it was while a Yale undergraduate that Fred Smith received a C-plus for his paper outlining a plan to buy large airplanes that would carry packages overnight. This plan a few years later became Federal Express, now FedEx, a global courier delivery services company with nearly $50 billion in revenues and more than 340,000 employees. FedEx has become a leading worldwide economic indicator all by itself and one of our country's great success stories. Mr. Smith not only founded the company, but today still is CEO and Chairman. Fred Smith's address should be required reading on all college campuses, as well as for all others who may have forgotten the remarkable contribution trade has made to prosperity not only for our country, but for hundreds of millions worldwide. There is no doubt that globalization and technology have improved living conditions in our country, but they have also bred uncertainty and sometimes fear. For many Americans, the cheaper goods we buy from overseas and the salaries we make from selling goods overseas come with dislocations that make it harder for Americans to find jobs and provide for their families. Added to that are actions by some of our trading partners--Japan in the 1980s and China more recently--that abuse the trade relationship and turn free trade into unfair trade. Nevertheless, before we turn our backs on or significantly change our national policy of encouraging freer trade with other countries, we would be wise to read Mr. Smith's account of the benefits of trade to the average American family during the last 50 years--and also to be reminded of the devastation that restrictions on trade caused during the 1930s when those restrictions helped lead to the Great Depression. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article by Fred Smith from the Wall Street Journal.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, in December of 2014, Judge William Joseph Haynes, Jr., of the Middle District of Tennessee, assumed senior status, creating a vacancy on the Middle District bench. That vacancy has resulted in increased caseloads for the three active Federal district judges--Judge Sharp, Judge Campbell, and Judge Trauger. Fortunately, help is on the way. In June, Senator Corker and I had the pleasure of introducing Waverly Crenshaw to the Senate Judiciary Committee when it met to consider his nomination. I was pleased that the committee agreed with our position, and they reported out his nomination by voice vote the following month. It's easy to see why Tennesseans support Mr. Crenshaw and are excited about his nomination--and the prospect that the Senate will confirm him tonight. He was born in Nashville, and then he stayed--attending Vanderbilt University for both college and law school. After law school, he clerked for Judge John Nixon in the Middle District of Tennessee, the same court where we hope he will soon serve. After his clerkship, he worked for the Tennessee attorney general before entering private practice. In 1987 he became an associate of a small labor and employment law firm in Nashville. In 1990 he joined one of our largest firms--Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis--where he is currently a partner. He is also active in the Nashville community serving as unpaid legal counsel to the Nashville Conventions and Visitors Corporation, the Tennessee Independent Colleges and Universities Association, and the YWCA, among others. The Middle District of Tennessee is fortunate to have such a well- qualified nominee. Waverly Crenshaw is a man of good character and of good temperament, and today I encourage my colleagues to vote for his confirmation.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. I yield back any remaining time.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I join Senator Corker in expressing to the families of Justin and Stephanie our deepest sympathy and our horror at what happened to them in Brussels. I wish to thank Senator Corker as well. Because of his position as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he was able to do some things all of us would have liked to have been able to do. He was able to help the family by being a liaison with the families and the State Department. These are things he wouldn't say about himself, but I would like to say. He and his staff worked to help the family get expedited passports, and they have stayed in touch with the families. I hope the families of Justin and Stephanie will know that when Senator Corker and his staff are in touch with them, that they are in touch with them for all of us in the U.S. Senate and all of us as citizens of the State of Tennessee. There is so much on television today that is horrible and violent and terroristic that we have become immune to it. It is almost an unreality. We don't want to believe any of it is true, until it hits home in Gatlinburg, TN, and happens to a bright young man whom everyone in the community seems to have known, one of those young men whom everybody looks at and says he is going to amount to something, we are going to watch him one day, and to a young woman from Lexington, KY, who met this young man at Vanderbilt's graduate school of management, not just in Sevier County, TN, and not just in Lexington, where so many people knew these two promising young Americans, but also in Nashville and the Vanderbilt community. This is actually the third promising young life taken from the Vanderbilt school family. Taylor Force, a student there, was killed on a class visit to Israel a few weeks ago. At any time that is a horrifying, terrible thought, but this is a generation of young Americans who have grown up with the idea of living in the whole world, of making a contribution to the entire world. That is what Justin and Stephanie were doing when they went to Brussels with their companies, and now their lives are cut short by an evil act. Our hearts go out to their families and to the communities from which they come in Gatlinburg, in Lexington, and in the Nashville Vanderbilt Owen school community. My personal thanks to Senator Corker for doing what all of us want to do as well as we can, which is to be helpful to the families and express to them our appreciation for the lives of their children and our sorrow at what has happened to them. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on April 4, 2016, at 5:30 p.m.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 15 minutes before the vote, to be followed by Senator Murray for as much time as she may require, and then we will have a vote.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the Senator from Utah has given an excellent speech about why it would be a good idea to have a Republican President of the United States, but we don't have one. The reason we are voting today is because we need a U.S. Education Secretary confirmed by and accountable to the U.S. Senate so that the law to fix No Child Left Behind will be implemented the way Congress wrote it. In December, at the ceremony where President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act, the new law to fix No Child Left Behind, I urged the President to send a nominee to the Senate to be the Education Secretary to replace Arne Duncan. Without that, we would have gone a whole year without a leader of that Department confirmed by and accountable to the U.S. Senate. I made that recommendation to the President because this is such an important year for our 100,000 public schools and the 50 million students who are in those schools. We need an Education Secretary who is confirmed and accountable to Congress while we are implementing a law that may govern elementary and secondary education for some time. I want to be sure we are working together to implement the law the way Congress wrote it. That law was passed with broad bipartisan support. It passed the U.S. Senate by a vote of 85 to 12. It passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 359 to 64. We achieved that result because, as Newsweek said, No Child Left Behind was a law everybody wanted fixed and fixing it was long overdue. Governors, teachers, superintendents, parents, Republicans, Democrats, and students all wanted No Child Left Behind fixed. Not only was there a consensus about the need to fix the law, there was a consensus about how to fix it, and the consensus was this: Continue the important measures of academic progress of students, disaggregate the results of those tests, report them so everyone can know how schools, teachers, and children are doing, but then restore to States, school districts, classroom teachers, and parents the responsibility for deciding what to do about those tests and about improving student achievement. This new law is a dramatic change in direction for Federal education policy. In short, it reverses the trend toward what had become a national school board and restores to those closest to children the responsibility for their well-being and academic success. The Wall Street Journal called the new Every Student Succeeds Act ``the largest devolution of federal control of schools from Washington back to the states in a quarter of a century.'' I suppose you could say it didn't go far enough, but that would be like standing in Nashville and waiting 7 years to hitchhike to New York City, and when somebody offers you a ride to Philadelphia, you say: I think I will wait another 7 years. I think I would take the ride and then see if I could get another ride to New York City, and that is what 85 U.S. Senators thought when they voted for this. There is no group more interested in restoring responsibility to States than the Nation's Governors. The Governors gave our new law the first full endorsement of any piece of legislation since their endorsement of welfare reform 20 years ago in the U.S. Congress. I believe the law can inaugurate a new era of innovation and student achievement by putting the responsibility for children back in the hands of those closest to them: the parents, classroom teachers, principals, school superintendents, school boards, and States. The Senate Education Committee, which I chair and on which the Senator from Washington is the senior Democrat, will hold at least six hearings to oversee implementation of the new law. All of those hearings will be bipartisan, as our hearings almost always are. We already held the first hearing on February 23 with representatives of many of the groups who worked together to pass the law, and now they are working together to implement the law. They already formed a coalition made up of the National Governors Association, the School Superintendents Association, the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the National Association of State Boards of Education, the National School Boards Association, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, the National Association of Secondary School Principals, the National Parent Teacher Association, with the support of the Chief State School Officers. They sent Dr. King a letter saying: Although our organizations do not always agree, we are unified in our belief that ESSA is an historic opportunity to make a world-class 21st century education system. And we're dedicated to working together at the national level to facilitate partnership among our members and states and districts to guarantee the success of this new law. They go on to say: That new law replaces a top-down accountability and testing regime with an inclusive system based on collaborative state and local innovation. For this vision to become a reality, we must work together to closely honor congressional intent: ESSA is clear. Education decisionmaking now rests with the states and districts, and the federal role is to support and inform those decisions. You may say something different, but you are disagreeing with the Governors, the school superintendents, the NEA, the AFT, the State legislatures, the State boards of education, the National School Boards Association, the National Association of Elementary School Principals, the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and the National Parent Teacher Association. Our first oversight hearing with Dr. King will be April 12. Some have objected to this nomination on the grounds that Dr. King was supportive of common core when he was education commissioner in New York State. I want those who are worried about that to know that this new law has ended what had become, in effect, a Federal common core mandate. More than that, it explicitly prohibits Washington, DC, from mandating or even incentivizing common core or any other specific academic standards. That is in the law. What standards to adopt entirely up to States, local school boards, and classroom teachers. Here is what Senator Roberts of Kansas, who wrote this part of the law, asked Dr. King at our hearing on February 25: I know that we have differences on Common Core. I don't want to get into that. But it is part of the existing legislation in law. And I want to be absolutely clear, the language says, no officer or an employee of the federal government, including the secretary, shall attempt to influence, condition, incentivize or coerce state adoption of the Common Core state standards or any other academic standards common to a significant number of States or assessments tied to such standards. Senator Roberts continued: I know that we, again, have differences. But nevertheless, will you give us your commitment that you will respect the intent as well as the explicit binding letter of that prohibition? Dr. King said: ``Absolutely.'' That is why we needed a confirmation hearing. That is why we need to have a confirmed Secretary of Education. In my questions to Dr. King, I said this about my exchanges at an earlier hearing with Dr. Tony Evers, the Wisconsin State superintendent of public instruction, who is also the president of all the chief state school officers. I said to Dr. Evers: Do you read the new law to say that if Wisconsin wants to have Common Core, which it does, I believe, that it may? If it does not want to have Common Core, that it may not? That if it wants part of Common Core or more than Common Core, it can do that? It simply has to have challenging academic standards that are aligned to the entrance requirements for the public institutions of higher education in the state. The superintendent said he agreed with that. In other words, to be blunt, it doesn't really make much difference what Dr. King thinks of common core. Under the law, he doesn't have anything to do with it. He doesn't have anything to do with whether a State adopts it or whether a State chooses not to adopt it. The new law also ended the practice of granting conditional waivers, through which the U.S. Department of Education has become, in effect, a national school board for more than 80,000 schools in 42 States. Governors have been forced to come to Washington to play ``Mother, may I?'' in order to put in a plan to evaluate teachers or help a low- performing school, for example. That era is over. It ends the ``highly qualified teacher'' definition. It ends the teacher evaluation mandate. It ends the Federal school turnaround models, Federal test-based accountability, and adequate yearly progress. Those decisions--after all the reports are made about how schools, teachers, and children are doing--will be made by those closest to the children. The new law moves decisions about whether schools, teachers, and students are succeeding or failing from Washington, DC, and back to States and communities, where those decisions belong. In conclusion, please permit me to add a personal note. This day is actually 25 years to the day since I was confirmed as the U.S. Education Secretary. I believe the Senator from Indiana was on the Education Committee at that time. But here is the difference: Under a Democratically controlled Senate, my nomination took 87 days from the day it was announced and 51 days from when the nomination was formally submitted to the Senate. Under a Republican-controlled Senate, Dr. King's nomination has taken 32 days. His nomination was announced and formally submitted on February 11. Let me conclude the way I started. The reason we are voting today is that we need an Education Secretary confirmed by and accountable to the U.S. Senate so that the law that 85 of us voted for to fix No Child Left Behind is implemented the way we wrote it. This vote is not about whether one of us would have chosen Dr. King to be the Education Secretary. Republicans won't have the privilege of picking an Education Secretary until we elect a Republican President of the United States. What we need is an Education Secretary confirmed by and accountable to the U.S. Senate so that the law to fix No Child Left Behind will be implemented the way we wrote it. I urge my colleagues to vote yes. I conclude my remarks, but I want to do so with thanks to the Senator from Washington, Mrs. Murray, who played such a crucial role in passing the law fixing No Child Left Behind.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I yield back all time.