Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of my opening remarks during the conference with the House of Representatives on S. 1177, the Every Child Achieves Act, be printed in the Record.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of my closing remarks during the conference with the House of Representatives on S. 1177, the Every Child Achieves Act, be printed in the Record.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a copy of my remarks to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the Senator from Washington and I are here to recommend to Members of the Senate that we vote yes on allowing the majority leader and the minority leader to appoint conferees so our committee can continue its work on a bill to fix No Child Left Behind. The vote we are about to have is not a vote on the merits of the bill. The reason it is not a vote on the merits of the bill is because there is no bill. What we are asking for is the usually routine request to permit us to take our legislation, which passed the Senate 81 to 17, and to meet with Members of the House of Representatives, who passed a similar bill, and see whether we can come up with a bill that the conference would recommend to the House and the Senate to approve. When that occurs--and it could occur this week--then Senators would have at least a week to consider whether to vote for or against the bill. I emphasize to Senators and their staffs who may be watching that this is a routine request. This is the kind of request that the Senate should almost always approve, giving our leaders a chance to allow us to continue our committee work, especially given this bill. Newsweek magazine recently reminded us what everybody knows. Everybody knows this law needs to be fixed. We are 7 years overdue. The Senator from Washington and I spent an entire year working with our committee, which is as diverse as any committee in the Senate, to produce a result. The process allowed numerous amendments. Everybody who wanted an amendment got one in committee. As a result of the process, all 22 voted to report the bill to the Senate. It was a remarkable event considering the diversity of views on our committee. Then we came to the floor of the Senate. We had a full debate. We considered more than 70 amendments. The vote was 81 to 17--a remarkable event. This is a bill which has alligators lurking in every part of the pond, and the Senate is about to get a result on something that affects 100,000 public schools, 3.5 million teachers, and 50 million students. Since the Senate passed its bill and the House passed its bill, the Senator from Washington and I have been meeting with our counterparts, the chairman and ranking member of the House education committee. Our staffs have been talking, and we have been trying to take the two bills, which are very similar, and see if we could suggest to the conference a way that we could get a result. We don't have the result because we haven't had a meeting of the conference. We can't have a meeting of the conference until the leaders are allowed to appoint the Members of the conference. On Monday evening, the Rules Committee of the House of Representatives reported a rule to allow the leader to appoint members of the conference, and they did it yesterday, Tuesday, by voice vote. We should be able to do this by consent. I would think everybody in the Senate would want us to go to work to see if we can produce a result on this bill. We will have a chance, apparently, in a few minutes to vote yes, we want to allow our leaders to appoint conferees so that we can see if we can get a result. This is not a vote on the merits of the bill. Almost everybody voted for the bill in the Senate last time, but even if you didn't, this is not a vote on the merits of the bill. If you want to vote ``no'' later--which I hope you don't; I hope we will come up with something you will support--you will have a chance to do that and you will have a week to do it. We have 22 members of our committee. That is about a quarter of the Senate. We have been talking for years. We have offered amendments. The members of the committee have had the staff draft for the last several days. They have been briefed for the last several days. No amendments can be offered, no bill can be offered until the conference actually meets. So this is a vote to allow leaders to appoint conferees so that we can move ahead on the urgent business of seeing whether we can produce a bill that we will recommend to the House and to the Senate that we will fix No Child Left Behind. I thank the Senator from Washington for her leadership. It was her advice that led us down this path which so far has produced a good result. I thank the majority leader for making time to put this bill on the floor. I also thank the Democratic leader, Senator Reid, who has worked to make this easy for us to do during this process. We have had excellent cooperation from Senators. I think everybody wants a result, and we hope we can go to work to do it. So vote yes to give us a chance to finish our work, and then take a look at our work. You will have a week to read it. We will be pleased to visit with you about it. And then I hope you vote yes again, but that will be the vote on the merit. This is a vote simply on whether you trust the leaders to appoint conferees to allow the committees to finish our work. Mr. President, I reserve the last 5 minutes before the debates ends for any additional comments I might make. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I know there are a number of Senators who have important appointments. I know the Senator from Oklahoma has a military funeral he wants to attend, so I intend to make about 3 or 4 minutes of concluding remarks and then yield back the rest of the Republican time. I would say this to my friend from Utah. Critics of this body say we are not able to get a result. We are often able to get a result, and this vote is about whether we are able to get a result. That is what this vote is about. We have big differences. That is why we are sent here--to resolve our big differences. If all we want to do is announce our differences, we could stay home and speak on a street corner. After we announce our differences, our job is to get a result. We are not the Iraqi Parliament, we are the United States Senate. Under our rules, after we have had a full process, our leaders--the Republican leader and the Democratic leader--appoint Members of the Senate to work with Members of the House and see if we can get a result--see if we can get a result. As I said earlier, this went through committee--22 members on the committee. As diverse a committee as we have, unanimously they recommended a result, with many amendments. This came to the floor, we had more than 70 amendments, and with a vote of 81 to 17 we got a result. We have our instructions. It came from this Senate--81 to 17. We have our instructions. We will work with Members of the House of Representatives, if given permission, and see if we can get a final bill. All 22 members of our committee will be on that conference. There will be more Members than that on the conference. So all of the education committee members will be continuing our work to get a result. Why would we slow this down when the American people have waited 7 years for us to get a result on fixing No Child Left Behind? So, Mr. President, however you voted on the bill earlier--and almost everyone voted for it--I hope you will support Senator McConnell, Senator Reid, Senator Murray and me and our committee and our efforts to continue our work to get a result. This is not a vote on the merits of the bill because there is no bill. We are asking for permission to go write a bill and then we will bring it back here and Senators will have at least a week to consider it and then they can vote yes or no. We need a result. I urge a ``yes'' vote. I yield back our time.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Reserving the right to object, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 1 more minute following his comments.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, as the Senator from Utah knows, that is the case. I said that to him yesterday and I just said it on the floor. We hope to complete our work this week. We may or we may not, but the bill will be out for at least a week for Members of this body to consider it. We considered it in committee with many amendments, on the floor with many amendments, and 22 Members of the Senate are reading the staff recommendations right now. We hope to get a bill. We will get a result. And, yes, all Members--I am glad we are having this discussion. We haven't had conferences in years around here. Senator Mikulski has mentioned that. Maybe this discussion will help us understand how to get a result in the Senate. I yield the floor, and I call for a vote.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. I yield back our remaining time.

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak up to 10 minutes.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I would like to address my remarks to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, my Democratic colleagues. Yesterday I spent almost a whole day working with Democratic colleagues on a variety of proposals to try to get bipartisan results in the Senate. We have had more bipartisan results this year than most people think, whether it is the progress we have made on No Child Left Behind or on the trade bill or on the doc fix or on changing the way we pay doctors or on the USA Freedom Act, or on the Defense authorization bill. It is a long list. I was working to get bipartisan results yesterday because that is what I am supposed to do as a United States Senator. I am not sent here to posture or to make a political point. I am sent here--given this privilege--in order to create an environment where we can solve problems for the benefit of the taxpayers, for the benefit of the American people. So that is how I spent my time yesterday. I do not think any other Republican spent more time than I did working with colleagues on the Democratic side to do that, which is why I am addressing my remarks to my Democratic friends. What they have proposed to do is block our moving to the appropriations bill for the defense of this country for the third time--for the third time. There is no justification whatsoever to do that. What I am saying to my friends is don't go there, because if you continue to block appropriations bills, you are going to set in motion an irreversible trend toward partisanship in this Senate and I am going to lead it. I am going to lead it. Instead of spending my time working with Democrats to get bipartisan results, we are going go in another direction. Now, why would I say that? Because I am not here to be partisan. Let me give you the example of the appropriations bill that Senator Feinstein from California and I have worked on. We worked on that bill in a bipartisan way. I think even she would say she wrote about as much of it as I did. There's a page full of things she thought are important for our country that are part of the bill. There are probably more than 75 Senators who wrote us letters--about half of them Democratic Senators--who wrote us letters saying: These are important provisions in the Energy and Water Appropriations bill. Those provisions are in our bill. They are ready to be considered. Twice, the Democrats have kept us from considering the Defense Appropriations bill. Today, they are going to do it again. What they are saying to us is that we are going to come up with any reason--any excuse--not to have a normal appropriations process. The last time Democrats argued: We did not have enough money. The way you deal with not enough money, if that is your opinion, is you bring a bill to the floor, you vote on it, you pass it if you can, you send it to the President, if the President disagrees with you, he vetoes it. It comes back and we negotiate and we have a compromise. That is the way it works. You don't just jam something through because you have the power to stop something or the power to jam it through. That is the way you pass ObamaCare. That is the way you make sure the country has no respect for what we are trying to do. But that is what the Democrats did with appropriations this year and they got a result. I am not unhappy with the result, and I voted for the budget agreement. But what it does is it creates additional spending for defense and nondefense discretionary funding for the Energy and Water appropriations bill. I am pleased to see that because that money goes for ports, locks, and dams. That money goes to the Office of Science so we can have revolutions in manufacturing that create jobs. Money that can help with our biomedical research that we need to do. There are important things we need to do, and this bill will help us do them. But why would we not begin to debate that? Why would we not let the other Senators debate it? All we are proposing is to begin to do some of what in December we should have done in June and July. The majority leader knows he can't put every one of the 12 appropriations bill on the floor. There is not enough time left this year. Why is there not enough time? Because Democrats blocked it in June. They kept us from going to the bills even though this is the first time in 6 years that all 12 appropriations bills have passed the Appropriations Committee. Why is that important? That is what we do here. Our job is to review the purse, to decide what to spend--more for this lock, less for that project--and keep the budget in balance when we can. That is our job. They blocked it twice and they are getting ready to block it again with a vote today. I'm saying, don't go there because you are going to set in motion an irreversible course in this Senate, and I'm going to lead it. I am going to use whatever skills and powers I have to do that. All of these Democratic provisions don't have to be in the Energy and Water appropriations bill. They don't have to be in any of the bills because we have the majority and you don't. So if they're going to play that kind of game, we can play it too. I am not one who usually does, but I am able to play. I am able to play or I wouldn't have gotten here. So I want to say to my friends on the other side: Don't go there. Vote to put the bill on the floor. Vote to give us a chance to have amendments. Why would the other 70 Senators not want to have a chance to have a say about the appropriations bill? Thirty of us are on the Appropriations Committee. We did our work. We approved the bill--in our case by a vote of 26 to 4. It is a bipartisan bill. Why would we not put bills like that on the floor and let the other 70 Senators have their say? What are they here for if they don't want to have a say about appropriations? They might as well be home watching television. They should be here deciding the issues that face our country. I hope my friends on both sides of the aisle can tell I am not happy this morning with the direction things are taking. I don't like the fact that I spent all day working with Democratic colleagues to get bipartisan results and they come along with a tactic--for the third time--that says: If we don't get everything we want, we are not going to have an appropriations process. Well, we will see how that goes. And it will go not in a way that is good for the country, not in a way that is good for the Senate, but it will allow the people who have a majority in the Senate a chance to assert themselves and write the bills. At least we can do that. There is really no reason we need to have 75 Senators' ideas about priorities in the Energy and Water appropriations bill if the majority doesn't want to. There is no reason to have the ranking members' opinions in any of these appropriations bills if the majority doesn't want to. The way we have worked in our committee is--and I have worked with the Senator from California for several years, and she is a terrific person and a wonderful Senator--we work together. Now why should we stop that process when the bills come to the floor? So through the Chair I respectfully ask my colleagues to think again. Don't do this. Don't send us a signal that we are never going to have another normal appropriations process in the United States Senate. The American people don't want that. We don't want that, and I can assure you my friends on the other side don't want that. So my hope is that one way or another the majority leader and the Democratic leader have a conversation. And that the Senate comes to its rational senses and begins a normal appropriations process, with as much time as we have between now and the end of our time here in December. Which would be a signal to all of us that we are going to work in a bipartisan way on a normal appropriations process for the good of the country. And that we are not just going to try to think up any excuse we can not to move an appropriations bill to the floor. Two years ago the majority leader simply wouldn't bring the bills to the floor. This time the minority leader has blocked the bills from coming to the floor. Let's get back to work. For heaven's sake, that is what we are here for. I am ready to go to work. I much prefer the way I worked yesterday, working with my colleagues. But I am prepared to work in another way if that is what we need to do to get some balance in the Senate. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, it is my sad duty, as was mentioned by our leaders this morning, to report that Fred Dalton Thompson, who served in this body from 1995 to 2003, representing our State of Tennessee, died in Nashville on Sunday. My wife, Honey, and I and the members of our family--every one of whom valued our friendship with Fred--as well as Members of the Senate, express to Fred's family--his wife Jeri, their children, Hayden and Sammy, and his sons by his earlier marriage to Sarah, Tony and Dan, and his brother Ken--our pride in Fred's life and our sympathy for his death. Very few people can light up the room the way Fred Thompson did. The truth is, most public figures have always been a little jealous of Fred Thompson. His personality had a streak of magic that none of the rest of us have. That magic was on display when he was minority counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee in 1973, asking former White House aide Alexander Butterfield the famous question: ``Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the President?'' thereby publicly revealing the existence of tape- recorded conversations within the White House. National Public Radio later called that session and the discovery of the Watergate tapes ``a turning point in the investigation.'' The Thompson magic was evident again in 1985, when Fred was asked to play himself in the movie ``Marie.'' In real life, Fred had been the attorney for Marie Ragghianti, the truth-telling chairman of the Tennessee Pardon and Parole Board during a scandal in our State when pardons were sold for cash. After that, Fred was cast in a number of movie roles as CIA Director, the head of Dulles Airport, an admiral, the President of NASCAR, three Presidents of the United States, and District Attorney Arthur Branch in the television series ``Law and Order''. That same magic served him well when he ran for the United States Senate in 1994 for the last 2 years of Vice President Gore's unexpired term. It was a good Republican year and Fred's red pickup truck attracted attention, but he defeated a strong opponent by more than 20 percentage points, mostly because when he appeared on television, Tennesseans liked him, trusted him, and voted for him. Fred took on some big assignments during his time in the Senate, but sometimes he would become impatient with some of the foolishness around here. A Washington reporter once asked him if he missed making movies: ``Yes,'' he said, ``Sometimes I miss the sincerity of Hollywood.'' People ask me sometimes: How could an actor accomplish so much? In addition to those things I have already mentioned, during the 1980s Fred was invited twice to be special counsel to Senate investigative committees. When he retired from the Senate, he took over Paul Harvey's radio show. In 2008, he was a frontrunner for the Presidency of the United States. For the last several years, it has been hard to turn on the television without seeing Fred Thompson urging you to buy a reverse mortgage. I believe there are three reasons his career was so extraordinary and so diverse. First, he was authentic, genuine, and bona fide. So far as I know, he never had an acting lesson. As he did in ``Marie'' and as he did in most of his movie roles, he played himself. There was no pretense in Fred Thompson on or off the stage. Second, he was purposeful. In 1992, when I was Education Secretary, I invited Fred to lunch in the White House lunchroom. For years I had urged him to be a candidate for public office. I hoped he might run in 1994. What struck me during our entire luncheon conversation was that not once did he raise any political concerns. His only question was: If I were to be elected, what do you suppose I could accomplish? When he was elected, he was serious and principled. He was a strict Federalist, never a fan of Washington telling Americans what to do, even if he thought it was something Americans should be doing. He was not afraid to cast votes that were unpopular with his constituents if he was convinced he was right. The third reason for Fred Thompson's success was he worked hard. Saying that will come as something of a surprise to many. He was notoriously easygoing. He grew up in modest circumstances in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. His father Fletch was a car salesman. He was a double major in philosophy and political science at the University of Memphis. He did well enough to earn scholarships to Tulane and Vanderbilt law schools. To pay for school he worked at a bicycle plant, a post office, and a motel. Before he was Watergate counsel, he was assistant U.S. attorney. The remainder of his busy life was filled with law practice, stage, and radio shows, counsel to Senate investigating committees, more than 20 movies, television commercials, and 8 years as a Senator. I have attended a number of memorial services for prominent figures. As a result, I have added a rule to ``Lamar Alexander's Little Plaid Book.'' It is this: ``When invited to speak at a funeral, be sure to mention the deceased as often as yourself.'' I mentioned this rule last year when I spoke at Howard Baker's funeral because there came a point in my remarks when I could not continue without mentioning my relationship with Senator Baker, and I therefore had to break my own rule. The same is true with Fred Thompson. We were friends for nearly 50 years. In the late 1960s, both of us fresh out of law school were inspired by Senator Howard Baker to help build a two-party political system in Tennessee. Fred's political debut was campaign manager for John Williams for Congress, against Ray Blanton in 1968. My first political foray was Howard Baker's successful Senate campaign in 1966. When Senator Baker ran for reelection in 1972, I recruited Fred to be the Senator's Middle Tennessee campaign manager. In 1973, Senator Baker asked me to be minority counsel to the Watergate Committee. I suggested he ask Fred instead because as a former U.S. attorney Fred was much better equipped for the job. When I lost the Governor's race in 1974, the Thompsons were one of two couples Honey and I invited to go to Florida to lick our wounds. When I was sworn in as Governor in 1979, even without asking him, I announced that Fred Thompson would fly back to Nashville from Washington, DC, to review more than 60 pardons and paroles that had allegedly been issued because someone had paid cash for them. I wanted the celebrated Watergate personality to help restore confidence in Tennessee's system of justice. In the spring of 2002, Fred telephoned to say he would not run for reelection. So I sought and won the Senate seat both he and Howard Baker had held. I have the same phone number today that both of them had when they were here. During my general election campaign in 2002, an opponent said: ``Why, Fred and Lamar are both in Howard Baker's stable.'' Fred replied: ``Stable hell, we are in the same stall.'' Several times I got a dose of Fred Thompson's magic during those humbling experiences when I asked him to campaign with me. Campaigning with Fred Thompson was a little like going to Dollywood with Dolly Parton. You can be sure no one is there to see you. We have a tradition of scratching our names in the drawers of the desks that we occupy on the floor of the Senate. When I arrived in 2003, I searched high and low until I found what I wanted: a desk occupied by two predecessors, my friend Fred Thompson and our mentor Howard Baker. During one of those late-night Senate budget sessions a few years ago, I scratched my name after theirs. I am proud it will remain there as long as this desk does: Baker, Thompson, Alexander. Tennesseans and our country have been fortunate that public service attracted Fred Dalton Thompson. We will miss his common sense, his conservative principles, and his big booming voice. We have lost one of our most able and attractive public servants, and my wife Honey and I have lost a dear friend.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the people of Iowa for sending us Chuck Grassley and want to say he does not just represent Iowa, he personifies it. I know of no Senator who better personifies his State than the Senator from Iowa. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized to say a few words about our departed colleague Fred Thompson and that following my remarks Senator Corker be recognized.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, that was a wise speech. It was a speech that made me think of the comment someone once said--that the Senate was the one authentic piece of genius in the American political system. What Senator Sasse has done is put fresh eyes on a subject, and sometimes fresh eyes are the best eyes. What he has reminded us is to remember what a privilege it is to serve here and that if we are temporarily entrusted with the responsibility and opportunity to give real meaning to the idea that this is the one authentic piece of genius in the American political system, we have some work to do. I am delighted he is here. I am delighted he took the time to wait, study, listen, and make his comments. I listened very carefully. I hope every single Member of the Senate did. I pledge to work with him toward the goal he set out. I look forward to serving with him for a long time.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I listened carefully to the distinguished Senator's comments. Gender discrimination is wrong, and we all know that. We have enacted laws in the United States for sports and for the workplace to make sure that we reflect those values. I support those laws, but we have a budget to pass, a debt crisis to fix, an education system that needs reform, and a humanitarian crisis in Europe that we ought to address. That is what the U.S. Senate ought to be spending its time on rather than offering opinions and resolutions about a private international entity and how they should distribute prizes and awards. So I object.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, over the weekend President Obama announced that all 100,000 public schools across the Nation should limit testing to 2 percent of a student's time in the classroom. It is a recommendation, not a requirement, and it comes in response to a nationwide backlash from teachers, students, and parents who are sick of overtesting. I was glad to see the President's comments. He is right about students taking too many tests. But I hope the President will stop and think before trying to cure overtesting by telling teachers exactly how much time to spend on testing or what the tests should be. Classroom teachers know better than Washington how to assess their students' progress. They also know that the real reason we have too many tests is that there are too many Federal mandates that put high stakes on student test results and that one more Washington decree--even if it is only a recommendation for now--is not the way to solve the problem of too many Federal mandates. Instead, the best way to fix overtesting is to get rid of the Federal mandates that are causing the problem. That is precisely what the Senate did when it passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority, 81 to 17, legislation to fix No Child Left Behind and give more flexibility to States and to classroom teachers to decide which tests will decide what progress students are making in the classroom. No Child Left Behind, a Federal law enacted in 2001, requires students to take 17 standardized tests over the course of their education, kindergarten through the 12th grade. It then uses those tests to decide whether schools and teachers are succeeding or failing. In the Senate's work to fix No Child Left Behind, no issue stirred as much controversy as these high-stakes tests. At first, I was among those who thought the best way to fix overtesting might be to get rid of the 17 Federal tests. But the more we studied the problem, the more the issues seemed not to be the 17 Federal tests but the federally designed system of rewarding and punishing schools and teachers that was attached to the tests. A third grader, for example, is required to take only one test in math and one in reading. Each of those tests probably takes 1 or 2 hours, according to testimony before our committee. But here is the problem: The results of these tests count so much in the federally mandated accountability system that States and school districts are giving students dozens of additional tests to prepare for the Federal tests. A new survey says students in big-city schools will take, on average, 112 mandatory standardized tests between prekindergarten and high school graduation. That is eight tests a year. One Florida study showed that a Fort Myers school district gave more than 160 tests to its students. Only 17 of those are federally required. So after hearing this, the Senate decided to keep the federally required 17 tests. That is two annual tests in reading and math in grades 3 through 8 and once in high school, as well as science tests given three times between grades 3 and 12. We also kept the practice of reporting results publicly so parents and teachers know how their children are performing. These results are disaggregated, so we know how students are doing based upon their gender, their ethnicity or their disability. Then, to discourage overtesting, we restored to States and classroom teachers the responsibility for deciding how to use these Federal test scores to measure achievement. The Senate bill ends the high-stakes, Washington-designed, test-based accountability system that has caused the explosion of tests in our local schools. The Senate bill reverses the trend toward a national school board. I am glad to see President Obama's focus on overtesting, but let's not make the same mistake twice by decreeing from Washington exactly how much time to spend on tests or what the tests should be. States and 3 million teachers in 100,000 public schools are in the best position to know what to do about overtesting our children. Both the Senate and the House of Representatives have now passed similar bills to fix No Child Left Behind and to reduce the Federal mandates that are the real cause of overtesting. The best way to have fewer and better tests in America's classrooms is for Congress to finish its work and the President to sign our legislation before the end of the year. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, this discussion by very good Senators-- and I congratulate the Senator from Pennsylvania and the other Senators who have spoken. The Senators from Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are both on the education committee and we have worked well together and we will continue to discuss this. This shows how difficult it is to do what most Americans have said they would like to see us do, which is to simplify, deregulate, and make it easier and simpler for students to go to college. That is what we are trying to do in the Senate. Almost every witness who came before us said this: It is too complicated to fill out a form for the current form of student aid, so simplify it. The witnesses have said: Have one undergraduate student loan, have one loan for graduate students, and have one loan for parents. Right now undergraduate students might have three different loans with different interest rates and different terms. The application process is so complicated that it turns away millions, we have been told, of students who are frustrated by that. The repayment program, which is very generous--not for the Perkins loan, which I will get to in a minute, but for all other direct loans-- is so complicated that students don't take advantage of it. We are toward the end of our work in the Senate education committee to take our giant student loan program, which loans more than $100 billion taxpayer dollars a year and has more than $1 trillion dollars of outstanding loans, and simplify it to make it easier and cheaper for students to go to college. One way to do that is to replace the Perkins loan with a direct loan that has a lower interest rate and a more generous repayment plan. What we are proposing to do is to replace the Perkins loan with a direct loan that is available to every single student who is enrolled in an eligible accredited college. You show up, you enroll, you get the loan. That is available to you. The interest is 4.29 percent today. That is lower than your Perkins loan, and when you pay back the direct loan, you may pay it back like a mortgage over 10 years or you may pay it back over 20 or 25 years, not paying more than 10 or 15 percent of your disposable income. And if you haven't paid it back after those years, it is forgiven. That is what the taxpayers have said to the students. So that lower interest rate and generous repayment program are not a part of the Perkins loan program. What we, a bipartisan group of Senators, are saying is that we need to replace the Perkins loan with that better opportunity. Let's be clear about who is affected by this. Perkins loans are about 1 percent of all student loans. So, about 99 percent of those students who have student loans are not affected by this discussion. Of those who have Perkins loans, you can keep your Perkins loan. The Department of Education notified all the institutions early in this calendar year and said the Perkins loan expires in the fall. If you grant a new Perkins loan this fall, it will be a 1-year loan. For everybody else who has already got a Perkins loan, you can keep receiving Perkins loans through the end of your program. So, in almost every case, you either got a 1-year loan if you got a new loan for the first time, or if you are already in a program, you keep it through to the end of your program. That is the situation. It is important for students to know that the bipartisan effort here is to simplify the student loan program and give them a lower interest rate and a better repayment program. Why would you not want that instead of this? One might say we may want to have both. Sure, you would like to have both, but the Congressional Budget Office says it will cost $5 billion over 10 years to continue the Perkins loan program. The testimony we heard and our recommendation by this bipartisan group of Senators is we have a better use for that $5 billion. We might have a higher amount of money that you could borrow. We know there are going to be more Pell grants granted if we simplify the application process and the repayment process. We would like to give students the opportunity to use their Pell grants year-round. Some way we have got to pay for that, and one way to pay for that is to simplify the system. If we take $5 billion to continue the Perkins loan program so we can give students a higher interest loan and a worse repayment program, we are also taking money away from the new Pell grants, from the possibility of a year-round Pell grant, and from the other reforms that we would like to make. Why should we be trying to change this now, when the Department has notified all the institutions that this is how things are going to be? We are toward the end of our work in our committee. We work in a very good bipartisan way. We don't agree on everything; we don't expect to. But Senator Murray and I have the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. We expect to be able to do that with the Higher Education Act. The Senators will have a chance to offer amendments in the committee and on the floor. If the full Senate decides that it wants to keep the Perkins loan program and take $5 billion out of the funds available to give year-round Pell grants to students or the extra Pell grants that we would be able to grant by simplifying the application and instead continue a program with a higher interest rate and a worse repayment program, then the full Senate can do that. I won't recommend it and I won't vote for it, but that is the purpose here. It is important for everyone considering this to know that President Bush recommended that the program end. President Obama recommended that the program be changed and folded in, in effect, with the regular direct loan program. The Federal Government hasn't contributed any new money to the Perkins loan program since 2004 because most people know that it is not as good a loan opportunity for almost all students. It is not as fair a use of the money as is the direct loan program. I prefer private loan programs, but the Congress has decided it is a Federal loan program. To reemphasize, if you are enrolled in any accredited institution, and we have 6,000 of them, all you have to do is show up and you are eligible for the loan. We think you are better off. You will be less likely to over borrow and you will be more likely to go to college if it is a simpler program and if you have a single undergraduate loan, a single graduate loan, and a single loan for parents. That is the purpose behind my point of view on this. This Senator would like for our committee to finish our work. Hopefully we can do that and give it to Senator McConnell and let him put it on the floor early in the year, and the Senate can decide which loan programs it wants. If we want to continue the mumbo jumbo of student loan programs we have today, which discourage students from going to college and taking advantage of repayment programs and discourage the kinds of education that most of us want, then the Senate can do that, but I will be arguing against that. That is why I asked the Senator from Arizona to object today to bringing immediately to the floor this continuation of a program that every institution in the country knew was supposed to end when it ended, and that one President has tried to end and another President has tried to change. Almost every witness that came before our committee said that students will be better off. Students are the ones we care about. As long as we are fair to taxpayers, students will be better off if we simplify the system and have a single undergraduate loan, a single graduate loan, and a single loan for parents. In addition to that, there is a Federal grant system. If you are in Colorado or Tennessee or Connecticut or Pennsylvania and you want 2 years of college, for those who are eligible for the Pell grant, which you do not have to pay back, the 2 years of college is basically free. The average tuition for a 2-year community college is about $3,300 a year, and the average Pell grant is about $3,300 a year. So we are offering the students of this country--it is never easy to pay for college, but the taxpayers have been pretty generous. Basically, we are saying that everywhere in the country if you want 2 years of college and you are in the 40 percent of community college students that are lower income, your 2 years are basically free. If you need more money, you are entitled to a loan that you can pay back at an interest rate this year of 4.29 percent. That is a low interest rate for somebody with no credit rating and no collateral. You can't get that anywhere else, but you can get it from the Federal Government so you can go to college. We are saying in addition to that, you can pay it back over 20 years with your disposable income. If that isn't enough, if you are a teacher or fireman or someone who has not made as much to pay it back, it is forgiven by the taxpayers. We would like the Perkins loan students to have the lower interest rate and the more generous repayment program, and that is why I object to circumventing the committee's decisions. Let us finish our work. Let us make a decision that we should be able to make as a whole Senate by early next year, and let the students who already have Perkins loans continue all the way through to the end of their program. Let the students who got it for the first time since July know that they will have that program for this 1 year. This is what every single university in the country was told about earlier this year and reminded of by the Department of Education in September. Let's do this in an orderly way and let's put the students first. All of us are interested in helping students make it easier and simpler to attend college. I think our bipartisan proposal will replace the Perkins loan with a direct loan opportunity with a lower interest rate and a more generous repayment program. It is a better deal for students and avoids spending that $5 billion that I would like to use for the year-round Pell grant and for the additional Pell grants that are going to be created by a simpler student aid program. I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator from Connecticut for his eloquent remarks. Let me offer this different perspective. You don't need a Perkins loan to go to a 2-year college. The average tuition at a community college--and they are a terrific opportunity in my State and most States--is about $3,300. About 40 percent of the students who attend them qualify for a grant of about, on average, $3,300. So those 2 years are free for most students who need the money. Those students are also entitled to a direct loan if they enroll at the community college. Usually it is $4,000, $5,000, to $6,000. They just walk up and they are entitled to it if they think they need it. You probably don't need a Perkins loan to go to most of the State universities. At the University of Tennessee, the tuition and fees is about $12,000. Many of the best colleges and universities are State institutions. You are entitled to your Pell grant. You are entitled to your direct loan. Then many States and universities have their own programs. For example, in Tennessee there is the HOPE Scholarship, and almost all of the students at the University of Tennessee Knoxville have one. Where the Perkins loan has been useful--and I will grant that--has been at the expensive private colleges. If it is $50,000 a year to go to a private college, you can get your Pell Grant, you can get two direct loans, and then you can get a Perkins loan. Then you can end up being in the newspaper for having borrowed so much that people write articles in the Wall Street Journal about how we have created a circumstance where students are overborrowing and cannot pay back their student loans. So I think the question really is, Should taxpayers spend $5 billion more over the next 10 years to make it possible for a the student to go to a $50,000-a-year tuition school or should taxpayers spend that money to create a year-round Pell Grant and hundreds of thousands of additional Pell Grants for low-income students who want another 2 years or 4 years of education? I think that is the question. Government is about setting priorities. If we had an unlimited amount of money, we could do everything. Except, we do have a problem with overborrowing and complexity. When you add a third loan on top of two other loans so that can you go to a $50,000-a-year tuition college, that is a choice an American has to make. I am proud of the fact that we have those choices. But we have lots of 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds, and many graduate students, too, who 5 or 10 years later will find they cannot pay it back. I think we are better off with a single undergraduate loan, a single graduate loan, and a single parent loan that is available to every single student. I think we are better off using whatever savings we have to expand the number of Pell Grants and to offer a year-round Pell Grant. As I said before, every single institution--all 6,000 of our institutions were told by the Department of Education earlier in 2015: If you grant a Perkins loan this fall to someone who never received one before, it will be for 1 year because the program is ending. Also, they were told: If someone already has a Perkins loan, you will be able to keep it all the way through the end of their program. So this is an honest difference of opinion. There are a lot of university presidents--I know a bunch of them. They like the program because it gives them one more tool to use. The question is not just whether they like the program; the question is, What is best for the students? I think taking the available amount of money we have and expanding it for simplifying the student aid system and making the year-round Pell and the other programs available to students who need it the most--I think that is what we should be doing. We will finish our work in the Senate education committee hopefully within a few weeks. We will have it ready to come to the floor. We can debate it, and the Senator from Connecticut and I can continue our discussion. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I join the Senator from New Hampshire, Ms. Ayotte. I thank her for her leadership on the Land and Water Conservation Fund. She has been out front on this, she cares about it, she is effective, and works well with other Members of the Senate. My bet is that she will succeed before very long. In 1985 and 1986, at President Reagan's request, I was chairman of the President's Commission on Americans Outdoors. It was our job to look ahead for a generation and try to see what kind of recreational facilities Americans would need in the next generation. Our principal recommendation was that we fully fund the Land and Water Conservation Fund. It was created in the 1960s and has worked with States, as well as through the Federal Government, to create city parks and opportunities to enjoy one of those aspects of the American character that makes us exceptional; that is, the great American outdoors. Senator Burr of North Carolina and Senator Ayotte of New Hampshire have been among the most vigorous supporters of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. I join with them, and I look forward to their success. Now, on another subject, Madam President, in about 15 minutes, the full Senate will have an opportunity to vote on whether we want to consider the Energy and Water Appropriations bill this year. We are voting on the motion to proceed to the bill. I will try to put that in plain English. That means our Appropriations Committee, which consists of 30 Members of the Senate, has finished its work on the Energy and Water Appropriations bill. In fact, we finished it on May 21. We voted in a bipartisan way, 26 to 4, to send it to the floor of the Senate. Senator Feinstein, who is a wonderful partner to work with from California, is the ranking Democrat on the Energy and Water Subcommittee. She helped write the bill. I helped write the bill. Thirty other members of the Appropriations Committee helped write the bill. This will be an opportunity for the other 70 Members of the Senate to get involved in our first responsibility, which is the Senate appropriations process. So the question is that a ``yes'' vote means yes we want to debate the bill. As a Member of the Senate, I would like to be involved in the Energy and Water appropriations process. I would like to have a say about where we put our nuclear waste. I would like to have a say about our National Laboratories and what they are doing to create new jobs for our country. I would like to have a say about whether we will be first or whether we will be in the middle of the pack on supercomputing. I would like to have a say about whether the harbors along our coasts are dredged and deepened so that the big ships from the Panama Canal, which is being widened, will come to the United States and bring cargo and jobs here instead of other places. I would like to have a say about nuclear weapons. I would like to have a say about whether to move ahead with a new class of submarines. All of that is in this bill. All 30 Senators on the Appropriations Committee have had our say, but the other 70 Senators have not. The way the Senate works is this is the time for Senators to stand up and say yes or no. I want to have my say on behalf of my State about national defense and about growth, about jobs, about our country. Why wouldn't a Senator want to do that? It is hard for me to understand this. The Democrats are saying: No, we don't even want to talk about it. They are saying: No, we don't want to debate it. That is our job. It is our job to debate it. They say: Well, we have a difference of opinion over spending. Do my colleagues know how big our difference of opinion is? Three percent. This bill that we are about to vote on spends 97 percent as much money as the Democrats want to spend. They want to spend 3 percent more. I actually think this is a pretty good way to appropriate. That means we at least been able to squeeze 3 percent out. And if later on, in a few weeks, we have a way of negotiating an agreement that says we will spend 3 percent more, we can add that 3 percent in 24 hours. It would not take long at all. That would be the way to do it. The way we are supposed to do an appropriation is to bring the bill to the floor and let all 100 Senators vote on it--not just the 30 who are on the Appropriations Committee--and have a conference with the House of Representatives. They have had their say. Then we send it to the President and he has his say. Now, the President has said he will veto it because it needs to spend 3 percent more. That is his prerogative under the Constitution. It is the prerogative of the minority Democrats in the Senate to say we will uphold the President's veto because we agree with him on spending. But we don't start the process at the beginning and not even allow the full Senate to do its appropriations job. We go through the whole process and let the President have his say and then we sit down and talk about what to do. This is a very bad precedent that really insults the Senate. What this means is that if the Republicans are in the minority of the Senate in the next Congress and we have a difference of opinion with the Democrats over how much to spend, we won't have an appropriations process, some might say. They will say: We have a difference of opinion, and since we have 41 Senators, we will just stop the appropriations process at the beginning. We won't let the rest of the Senate have its say. That is not the way we are supposed to do our job. We are sent here to have our say on behalf of the people. Let me give an example or two, if I may. Senator Feinstein and I worked very hard on this bill. It provides a total of $35 billion; $1.2 billion more than last year and $668 million below the President's budget request. The bill is consistent with the Federal law that is called the Budget Control Act. We didn't just make up out of thin air how much to spend. The law tells us how much to spend. That is the law of the Senate, which the House and the Senate all voted for, passed, and signed, and which governs what we spend. Our friends on the other side would like to spend more. That is their prerogative and they can vote to spend more. But why would they stop us from having a discussion about spending more? Half the bill is nondefense spending that supports scientific research and laboratories, harbors, locks, and dams. Half the bill is defense spending. It funds nuclear weapons, life extension programs. It maintains our nuclear weapons stockpile. As I said earlier, the Senate Appropriations Committee fully considered it and approved the work that Senator Feinstein and I had done, 26 to 4, on a bipartisan basis. Defense spending is higher this year, primarily because of an agreement we made a few years ago when we enacted the START treaty to modernize our nuclear weapons program. It funds several other important agencies, including the Department of Energy, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the National Nuclear Administration. It reduces wasteful spending because of our oversight. Every year, Senator Feinstein and I cut out of our budget at least one program that we consider low priority. We did that again this year. And if the Senate would allow us to have the bill on the floor and discuss it and vote on it and approve it, we could save $150 million from the U.S. contributions to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor in France. But, no, we are not going to discuss that, say our friends on the other side. The bill helps our economy. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke wrote a good column in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week. He said: Don't count on the Fed alone to make the economy better. We have to do some other things.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thought I had until 12:45 p.m.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I am sorry. If I may have 30 more seconds to wind up-- no one told me that.