Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Chair. So I would say to my friends on the other side, if you want to have a say about nuclear waste, about nuclear defense, about National Laboratories, about flood control, about waterways, and about locks and dams, then vote yes, because that will give you a say and you will be doing your job. Voting no sets a dangerous precedent for the Senate that says we are not interested in doing our job on appropriations. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, we yield back any remaining time on our side.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a copy of my remarks to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions at the hearing titled, ``Stealing the Dream of Business Ownership: The NLRB's Joint Employer decision.''

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the Democratic Senators for their courtesy. We are running a little behind, and they have allowed me to go on and make my remarks. I ask the Chair to let me know when 12 minutes have expired of my 15 minutes.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, tomorrow we will be voting on the Energy and Water Development appropriations bill. I come to the floor to make two points about that very important legislation. No. 1: if our Democratic friends would allow us to vote on it, allow us to debate it, amend it, pass it, send it to the President, and do the same with the other 11 appropriations bills that our Appropriations Committee has reported, we could easily say that this year in the Senate is one of the most productive years in a long, long time. No. 2: the other point I wish to make is the importance of this bill. Ben Bernanke, the retired Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal this week in which he said that you cannot rely on the Federal Reserve Board to create jobs in a growth economy in the United States, and that what you need to do is have better educational opportunities, more research, and you need supercomputing. I would add to this that you need to have infrastructure. This bill, the Energy and Water bill, has all of those things. It is a pro-growth bill for the United States of America. Let me take the first point first. This is the first time in 6 years that the Appropriations Committee has reported all 12 appropriations bills. You might find that unusual because that is the Appropriations Committee's basic job. As much as it is for the Grand Ole Opry to sing, our job is to pass appropriations bills. That is article I of the Constitution. It is the first time in 6 years. The bills are all sitting there waiting. Most of them passed in a bipartisan way. The one that we are bringing to the floor tomorrow passed 26 to 4 on May 2. Senator Feinstein and I worked on it with most of the Members of this body. It is a very good bill, passed in a bipartisan way. What would usually happen in a properly functioning Senate is that we would spend the two months of June and July dealing with those 12 appropriations bills. That would mean that not just the members of the Appropriations Committee would have a chance to vote on them. It would mean that the Senator from Utah, who is not on the Appropriations Committee, would have a chance to make his points about the appropriations bills, which is part of his job here, yet he is shut out of that. Why? Because Democrats say: We won't even let you bring them to the floor. It is an extraordinary thing to do. But despite that, I want you to know what this body has accomplished. In the last 7 months or 8 months we passed the Keystone Pipeline. The President vetoed it. We overruled the ambush elections rule from the NLRB, and the President vetoed it. But listen to all the things we accomplished with the cooperation of Democrats on the other side of the aisle. Then, as I said, if we could add the appropriations bills, we would have the most productive Senate in many, many years. There is the trade authority law. It passed, and it is law. We fixed No Child Left Behind, and we ended the common core mandate. We reversed the trend of the national school board, and we did it with 81 votes in the Senate. It was a bipartisan bill. We passed a long-term highway bill after we had 34 short-term highway bills. There was a permanent fix of what we call the doc fix--the way we pay doctors for Medicare payments. A long-term permanent solution passed this body. It is now the law after 17 short-term fixes. This law changed the way we pay for doctors so that we pay them more for quality rather than fee-for-service. We have dealt with what happens when a terrorist calls from Afghanistan to Nashville on the phone. That is the USA FREEDOM Act. It is now the law. We passed the Defense authorization bill, terrorism risk insurance, and the Iran review act. Waiting in the wings is the chemical safety bill, which has bipartisan support, and--believe this--it is 39 years since it has last been touched. And there is a cybersecurity bill right after that. That is an impressive list of accomplishments for this Senate. Think of what we could say if we had spent June and July, as we should have, debating the appropriations bills. Now let's move to the Energy and Water appropriations bill. On May 21, it was approved by the Appropriations Committee. The Senator from California, Mrs. Feinstein, and I recommended it, and 26 Senators voted for it and 4 voted against it. It stays within the law. The law that we passed and the President signed tells us what we have to spend. Yet Democrats said: Well, we are not going to let you bring it to the floor because we think you should spend more than that. Well, maybe we should, but the law says we should spend what we spent. So we followed the law. When you block our bill and don't allow it to be brought to the floor, what do you do? You cut 70 Senators out of having a say on the Energy and Water appropriations bill. And what does that mean? They don't have a say over it. They don't have a say over nuclear weapons. Half of our bill is about national defense. Are we properly funding nuclear weapons? They don't have a say over National Laboratories, the laboratories where we are inventing new ways to manufacture that will help grow jobs. They don't have a say over how much money we are going to spend on the Missouri River floods. They don't have a say over how much money we are going to spend on the locks and the dams that we have. The Panama Canal is widening, and if we don't deepen our harbors, the ships are going to go to Cuba. So we want them to go to Savannah, Mobile, and to other places like that. They don't have a say over nuclear waste. Where do we put nuclear waste? So the Democrats, by blocking the bill from coming to the floor, have cut their own Members out of having a say about this. Half of the Energy and Water bill funds national defense activities, and the other half of it funds other essential non-defense items. And all the Democrats asked for was 3 percent more funding than what we're already spending in the bill. What I said in the Appropriations Committee was this: You know, this is really a pretty good way to budget. Let's appropriate it as if we had 97 percent of what you want, and if we get 3 percent more in the discussion at the end of the year, then we will add it. That shouldn't be hard to do. We could do it in 24 hours. The way the Senate is supposed to work is the Energy and Water bill is supposed to come to the floor. We are supposed to debate it, we are supposed to amend it, and we are supposed to send it to the President. If he doesn't like it, he can veto it and send it back. That is what should happen. If Senators don't like the bill now, they can block it. They can vote against it after we amend it. They can vote against it after we conference with the House. That takes 60 votes too. If the President vetoes it, it takes 67 votes to override the President's veto. My friends on the other side said: Well, that takes too much time. What do you mean it takes too much time? That is what we are here to do. We are elected to have a say on these issues. This is $1 trillion in funding for the national defense of the United States of America and for its essential services--locks, dams, national laboratories, and where we put the nuclear waste--and the Democrats are saying: We don't even want to vote on the appropriations bills. We don't even want to have a say about them. We don't even want to send them to the President for him to consider. Let's take an example. The bill includes funding for inland waterways. Those are the avenues that carry the commerce that creates the jobs in America. They need to be in good shape. We have agreed on that in a bipartisan way. We have even asked the barge owners to pay more to go through the locks, to which they have agreed, and our bill matches what the barge owners are paying and increases the funding for inland waterways in Kentucky--Olmsted Locks and Dams, and Kentucky Lock--and Chickamauga Lock in Tennessee. It also provides $1.254 billion from the harbor maintenance trust fund. That means we will be spending more to deepen harbors in Savannah, Charleston, Texas, Memphis, Jacksonville, Mobile, and Louisiana, in Pascagoula, Big Sandy Harbor, Cleveland Harbor, Anchorage Harbor, and Wilmington Harbor. Do Senators not want to have a say about that? Do you not want to support that or oppose that if you think it is too much? What about the National Laboratories? The National Laboratories are the source of the research that produces the jobs that gives us our family incomes. One of them is in Tennessee, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. I was there the other day. They have a new thing called additive manufacturing, where they are 3-D printing automobiles. Let me say that again: 3-D printing automobiles or parts of automobiles. It may revolutionize manufacturing in America and the world as much as unconventional gas and oil has revolutionized our national energy policy. Do other Senators--the other 70 who are not on the Appropriations Committee--not want to have a say about how much we spend on our National Laboratories? What about how much we spend for nuclear weapons? We had a big debate in this body over the proper level of spending for nuclear weapons. We had a big debate over something called the START treaty, which regulated the weapons that we were getting rid of. We agreed at the time that we would spend a certain amount of money to make sure we could defend the country. Do Senators not want to have a say about that? So why do we not pass appropriations bills that were ready in May, debate them in a day or two, and send them to the President? If the President doesn't like them, under the Constitution he can veto them and send them back. If we are spending 97 percent of what he thinks he should spend and he wants to veto it for that reason and then send it back to us and if we decide after negotiations to spend 3 percent more, we can add 3 percent in 24 hours, send it back to him, and that is the end of the result. This is not the way the Senate is supposed to operate. I hope that my friends on the Democratic side will recognize that they would like to have a say in our nuclear weapons policy, and that they would like to have a say in how much we spend on our National Laboratories. This bill has a record level of funding for the Office of Science--as written, the highest ever in this bill. You don't want to vote on that? You don't want to support that? You want to cut that? You want to stop that? I don't want to stop it. I want us to support research. I want to support our national laboratories. I want to support national defense. I want deeper harbors all around our coast. I want inland waterways that aren't broken down. I want us to move ahead in this country. This bill is a pro-growth national defense bill. It came out of the Committee on Appropriations with 26 votes for it, 4 votes against it. Senator Feinstein and I worked with almost every Senator in this body for it. Why should we not consider an appropriations bill that has that kind of support? Now, if we get on that path every time we change majorities here-- let's say the Democrats win the next election and Republicans say: Well, look at what you did to us in the last election. We are going to block all your appropriations bills because we would like to spend less. We won't ever do any appropriations bills again in the Senate because one body or the other blocks the amount of money. We are supposed to vote on that. In the last Congress the Democrats were in control, and they wouldn't bring the appropriations bills to the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Chair. I will conclude within the next 3 minutes, and I thank my Democratic friends for their courtesy. In the last Congress, when Democrats had the majority and Republicans had the minority, the Committee on Appropriations completed its work in a bipartisan way on most bills, but the majority wouldn't bring the bills to the floor last year. Or when it did, it wouldn't let the Republicans offer amendments to it. They were afraid Senators might have their say. This year we are in the majority for the first time in 6 years. In a bipartisan way we produced 12 appropriations bills out of 12. We would like to bring them to the floor, but they are saying no. We are not even going to vote on them. We are not even going to amend them. We are not even going to debate, even though if they do not like the bill at the end of that process, they can kill it with 60 votes. They can kill it after it comes out of conference with 60 votes. And if the President vetoes it, it can take 60 votes to override. We don't have time to do appropriations bills here? Traditionally, we have always consumed June and July for the 12 appropriations bills. Previous Congresses have had time to do it. We should have time to do it. Let me conclude where I started. This has been a very productive Senate. Most of that work has been because of bipartisan cooperation, whether it was the trade bill, the bill to fix No Child Left Behind, the highway bill, the doc fix--paying doctors for quality instead of fees--the USA Freedom Act, the Defense Authorization Act, the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act, or the Iran review act. And we have chemical safety and cybersecurity waiting. That is all the result of cooperation between Democrats and Republicans. Why can we not do that on appropriations bills, which is our most basic responsibility? We did it in committee. I couldn't have a better person to work with than Senator Feinstein. That vote was 26 to 4. It involves our national defense, it involves our growth, and it involves our security. I would hope every Senator would want to have a say on those issues tomorrow when we vote. So I hope they will vote yes on the Energy and Water bill tomorrow--yes to considering it; and then after we have considered it and debated it, we can send it over to the House, come up with a conference, and we can see what they think. That is the way the Senate ought to work. I am eager to see the Senate get back to that, and I think the American people are as well. I thank the Chair and my colleagues for their courtesy, and I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I wish to join the majority leader in complimenting Senator Scott, a new Member of the Senate, on a significant accomplishment. It is not that easy to pass a bill in the House and in the Senate. It takes a lot of work, and there is good reason for that. We want to make sure that whatever passes in the Senate has a thorough amount of consideration. Senator Scott has come to the Senate as a member of the HELP Committee. He is one of its most diligent members. I am chairman of that committee. He took this initiative on his own, working with Members of the House, where he formerly served, and he has brought the bill to the Senate, and within a few days he has gotten its unanimous approval. To me, that suggests the kind of U.S. Senator that we need more of--someone who is quiet, effective, scholarly, and gets results. So Tim Scott today, on behalf of the people of South Carolina and this country, has helped workers, has improved benefits, and has lowered premiums. He deserves our thanks. He has certainly earned my respect and the respect of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle by this significant accomplishment.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I salute Senator Daines. Since his arrival in the Senate, he has been a strong fighter for the great American outdoors, which he enjoys so much in the beautiful State of Montana. He and I were talking not long ago about his next hunting trip. One thing that unites us on both sides of the aisle and unites Americans is the great American outdoors. I often say that Egypt has its pyramids and Italy has its art; England has its history and we have the great American outdoors. One of the best ideas we have had in the government to support, protect, and conserve the great American outdoors for the benefit of all Americans is the Land and Water Conservation Fund. It was first proposed in the 1960s by the Commission headed by Laurance Rockefeller. The Commission recommended a number of conservation issues. The idea was very simple. It was to say that when we have an environmental burden, we should have an environmental benefit. If we are going to drill for oil offshore, for example, that is an environmental burden. Let's take some of those revenues and use it for an environmental benefit. So we have, since that time in the 1960s, money for the Federal Government and for State and local governments to conserve important parts of America. I know in our State of Tennessee we celebrated just in the last few weeks the final acquisition of the Rocky Fork tract, about 10,000 acres in Unicoi and Greene Counties, which was a national priority of the Forest Service. It provides great opportunities for Tennesseans to go hiking, to go hunting, and to go fishing. Those are the kinds of things we like to do in our State. We don't have a lot of protected land like they do in the Western States, and this was something the Land and Water Conservation Fund helped us to do. In the 1980s President Reagan asked me to chair the President's Commission on Americans Outdoors. I worked with Gil Grosvenor, Chairman of the National Geographic Society; Patrick Noonan, the founder of The Conservation Fund; and others. Our recommendation included full funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and continuing to tie it to some of the proceeds from offshore oil drilling. In the Energy bill 9 years ago, when Senator Domenici was chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, we actually made mandatory a little bit of funding from the offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico into the State side of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. But, we need to recognize the broad support for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, pass Senator Burr's bill, the Senator from North Carolina who has fought tirelessly to permanently reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and then we need to appropriate $900 million for the Land and Water Conservation Fund and gradually set aside those special areas of our country that deserve to be protected. I am here to say that even though it expires today, I am very hopeful we can take some action very quickly to extend it at least temporarily and that soon we will have a chance to do what Senator Burr and Senator Daines proposed and something I proposed--and have supported during my entire adult life. I see the Senator from Maine. I know of her interest in conservation and the outdoors. We need to get this done. The American people expect us to do it, and I fully support it. I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Reserving the right to object, rather than making a statement, I hope it will be suitable to the Senator from Wisconsin for me to make my explanation of why I am objecting after I object. And I will object.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the goal here is to help students. The goal here is to find ways to help college students find easier ways to apply to a college and to avoid overborrowing. The goal would be to give them a year-round Pell grant. The goal would be to simplify the application form they have to complete. The goal would be to keep the interest rates as low as we can. The goal would be to make it easier to repay student loans. That is our goal. Our education committee, in which the Senator from Wisconsin and the Senator from Pennsylvania are very valuable members, is completing work on the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act with just those goals. We have had eight hearings. We are considering a number of bipartisan proposals to, as I said, simplify the grants and loans for college, to provide for year-round Pell Grants, to make it easier to repay student loans and to discourage overborrowing, which is weighing down these students. One of the most important of those proposals, which was recommended to us by witnesses, is that we should simplify the process so there is one grant and one loan. That would be a Pell grant and a loan. In the last reauthorization of the Higher Education Act in 2008, Congress agreed to sunset the Perkins Loan Program, and that is what is happening now. I support sunsetting this program, although students who currently receive a Perkins loan would continue to do so. As I said, our committee is hopefully finishing by the end of the year our work on reviewing our student loan programs, including Perkins loans. The Perkins loan has a higher interest rate than other undergraduate loans. It does not give students the advantage of participating in income-based repayment programs--this is available in the law for all students receiving Direct Loans which are not affected by this discussion--which allow students to pay back their student loans at no more than 10 to 15 percent of their disposable income every year, and if after 20 to 25 years it is not repaid, it is forgiven. You can't get that with a Perkins loan. According to the Congressional Budget Office, reauthorizing the Perkins loan will cost nearly $5 billion over 10 years. Many witnesses before our committee have said that $5 billion would be better spent paying for more Pell grants, which will be necessary for simplifying the student aid application, from authorizing a year-round Pell grant and from simplifying the repayment process. So the question is, Do you spend the $5 billion for that or do you spend it for a program with a higher interest rate and without an income based repayment program, and which many of our witnesses said it is time for this program to expire? I am one of a bipartisan group of Senators who propose we replace the Perkins Loan program with student loans that are simpler, have a lower interest rate and more generous repayment opportunities. We will finish our review of higher education by the end of the year. It will be ready for the full Senate. We can look at all the various loan programs. We loan more than $100 billion a year. The Perkins Loan program is a very small part of that. All those other loan programs are still available at a lower rate with a better income based repayment program. In the meantime, as I said, students who currently have Perkins loans will continue to have them while we continue our work. So our goal is to simplify the system, make it easier for students to apply for grants and loans, allow them to have year-round Pell grants, allow them to not overborrow so much, and to allow them to repay their loans back easier. The Perkins loan is not as effective a loan in meeting those goals as the other loans that we have. So I object at least until we have a chance to further continue our review in the Senate education committee. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the Senator from New Hampshire is always eloquent as she is fighting for students in New Hampshire. I want to assure her and any of those 5,000 New Hampshire students who already have a Perkins loan are not affected by this. In fact, almost no students across the country who have a student loan are affected by this. There are about $8 billion worth of outstanding Perkins loans out of $1.3 trillion in student loans. We are talking about less than 1 percent of all student loans. We are talking about students that might be awarded loans a year from now. No one who currently has a Perkins loan is affected by this. What is our goal here? Our goal is to help students afford college. How do you help students afford college, No. 1, by continuing a program that has a higher interest rate than the loan they could get in a regular student loan? No, the Perkins loan rate is higher than the interest rate on a Direct Loan that every single undergraduate student who applies for federal aid is entitled to. No. 2, by continuing the Perkins loan which does not have the income-based repayment program offered in the Direct Loan program? What is that income-based repayment plan? It says that you can pay your loan back over 20 to 25 years, not paying more than 10 percent to 15 percent of your disposable income each year. If you are a teacher or a firefighter or if you have a lower-income position, you are not treated the same as someone with a higher income. You pay back less because you earn less. If you get to the end of the 20 years and you haven't paid it back, your loan is forgiven. That is the law today. That is a loan that is available to every single student going to college. A low-income student can take advantage of that. What we are seeking to do in our discussions--and they are indeed bipartisan as are the proposals to change the structure of the loan programs--is to say that instead of a combination of student loans, which is where you have a whole stack of confusing student loans and you pay one to this part of the Federal Government and another to this part, you will have one student loan at the lowest possible rate. Under our proposal, you will make only one payment to the Federal Government, and you will have the advantage of a 20-year repayment. If you haven't paid it off, it is forgiven. We will simplify your application for that loan from a 108-question form, which I can't hold up according to the Senate rules, to 2 questions, and we will simplify the process for paying it back. That is how we are proposing to replace the Perkins Loan program, but we haven't made a decision about that. We have had eight hearings. I am working with Senator Murray, the senior Democrat on the education committee, and other members of the committee to make sure that we come to a conclusion. I am not sure what conclusion we will come to. But the argument I am making is the same argument that so many witnesses before our committee said: Simplify the student aid process. You are discouraging low-income kids whose parents may never have gone to college. Those parents may say: Ok, you can go to college and we will help you, but in your senior year of high school you need to fill out this 108-question form requiring information about your taxes before you file your tax return. And sorry, you can't use your Pell grant year-round. After completing college, there is a complex repayment form. The program is generous, but it is so complex that you will never use it. We are losing millions of students, most of them lower income, most of them are the first in their families to go to college, because of the complexity of our student aid system. We have bipartisan proposals to simplify it, and this is part of that. Instead of getting three Federal loans, you get one. You will be able to potentially borrow more, but you will get a loan with the lowest rate and a generous income based repayment program. Why wouldn't that be a better deal for the students we are trying to help? Why would we extend something with a higher rate and no generous repayment program? That is the argument here. I see no need to rush through the House and the Senate a subject that we are considering in our committee--and debating it fully in a bipartisan way. We plan to mark up and have ready for the full Senate our proposal by the end of the year. I see no need to rush that through so fast. Every student with a Perkins loan today still has one tomorrow. Those who might apply for one next year will have time to do that if for some reason the program is reinstated. They will also be able to apply for a Federal loan that now exists with a lower interest rate and a better repayment plan. That is my reason for standing here today because we are trying to help students afford college by simplifying the process of applications and the process of paying their loan back. You don't make it easier with a loan with a high interest rate, no income based repayment program and a confusing bunch of loans. You could come back and say: But this is an additional loan, and that would be true. We haven't decided yet exactly how much a full-time student may borrow from the Federal Government in our new reauthorization. This is a third loan on top of the other two federal loans. How many Senators have stood up on this floor and complained about the overborrowing of students, about how we have $1 trillion-plus of loans outstanding, and about how students can't pay back their loans? What we are saying to students is that we don't want to encourage you to overborrow. We don't want you borrowing more than you can afford. What we want to offer you is a plain, clear, simple opportunity to borrow an amount of money at a low interest rate with a generous repayment plan, and we want to give the university you are attending more latitude in explaining to you whether you can pay that back or not. Now they are handcuffed. Who is putting them in handcuffs? The federal government is. We have Federal laws that make it hard for universities to counsel students about how much to borrow. I don't think we are doing students any favor by extending this loan. We are not cutting anybody out of a loan who already has one. In fact, we are offering all students a low-interest-rate loan. The last point I want to make is that it is a revolving fund. It is true that the Federal Government has contributed about two-thirds of the revolving fund and the universities themselves contribute the rest. I heard from university presidents that they find this loan useful as they put together their financial aid package. I have heard all of that. But for the last number of years, the Federal Government hasn't been contributing to the Perkins fund. For the last number of years, Congress has said that it is time to sunset the Perkins Loan program. Both President Bush and President Obama at one time or another have recommended that we sunset the Perkins Loan program. Many of the witnesses before our committee said the same thing. They said: You are overwhelming these students and their families. Give them something simple. Give them something direct. Give them one grant. Give them one loan. That is our proposal--one grant, one loan, and the loan will be at the lowest possible rate--which is currently lower than a Perkins loan--with the most generous repayment terms that are responsible. The Perkins loan doesn't have those repayment plans. Make it available to every single student at an amount that we would agree upon and then allow the universities, colleges, and technical schools to be able to counsel these students. Don't borrow too much, because a loan is not a grant. You can keep a grant. You are going to have to pay back a loan. There has even been some talk--and I support the concept--of saying to the universities and schools that you are going to have to have some skin in the game. If you are one of those schools or universities with too great a default rate on your student loans, you will have to pay some of the amount borrowed because we want you to take some responsibility for it. I, actually, am not one of those Americans who is so concerned about the amount of student loans outstanding today. I think it is a pretty healthy indication in many ways. We have $1.2 trillion or $1.3 trillion in outstanding student loans. We have about $900 billion in outstanding car loans. The average student loan for a 4-year graduate is about $29,000. The average car loan is about $27,000. Your car will depreciate. Your degree will appreciate. Some say it will earn you a million dollars more in your lifetime than you would otherwise. The unemployment rate in America today for Americans with a 4-year degree is 3 percent. The average income for those Americans is in the mid-40s. I think it is a pretty good investment if we can say to Americans: Go on to the community colleges where the average tuition is $3,300--and the average Pell grant is about $3,300--if you are low- income. For all intents and purposes, it is free today for most low- income students. Go on and earn that degree and improve your skills. That is the way you make it up the ladder in this country. In order to help, we will loan you some money at a lower rate with a generous repayment term on top of that if you need it. But we are going to take steps to make sure we don't loan you more than you can pay back. I think that is a pretty good picture of the American dream--the unemployment rate of 3 percent, the average income that is almost twice what the average total student loan debt of an individual, a chance for 2 years of community college or any 2-year school if you are low- income, with the taxpayer paying the average tuition of $3,300. That is a pretty good system. We are trying to make it better. But the right way to do this is to take all of this discussion that we have had in a bipartisan way--all of these things I have talked about have been proposed by Democratic Senators and Republican Senators--and finish our work in the committee, which is the way our Senate is supposed to work, and then recommend to the full Senate what the student loan program ought to be. If some Senators want to say that we want to take $5 billion and for the next 10 years authorize extending the Perkins Loan Program--that is what it costs, according to the Congressional Budget Office--I am probably going to stand up and say: Let's take that $5 billion and instead give a year-round Pell grant for students. Let's pay for the Pell grants for all those students who are persuaded to go to college because we have simplified their application form and their repayment form. We are going to have a lot more Pell grants, a lot more students getting degrees. If we do, we will have a lot more Americans joining the middle class. We are all for helping students. We want you to succeed. But my argument is that so far I am not persuaded that you succeed more with a Perkins loan that has a higher rate and no repayment program than you do with a student loan that I have described that is already available to you with a lower rate and a generous repayment program. This is a healthy debate. It is one we are having in our committee. Actually, I am glad it has gotten the attention of enough Senators. We are hearing from college presidents all over the country. Soon we will have this debate in our full committee and then on the Senate floor. I look forward to it, and I think the students of America will benefit from the work we are doing in a bipartisan way. I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet during the session of the Senate on October 1, 2015, at 10 a.m., in room SD- 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Achieving the Promise of Health Information Technology.'' For further information regarding this meeting, please contact Jamie Garden of the committee staff on (202) 224-7675.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet during the session of the Senate on October 6, 2015, at 10 a.m., in room SD- 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Stealing the American Dream of Business Ownership: The NLRB's Joint Employer Decision.'' For further information regarding this meeting, please contact Carolyn Gorman of the committee staff on (202) 224-6770.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, during the last several days several Republicans have suggested that the Senate should abandon a tradition that has existed in this body since Thomas Jefferson wrote the rules of the Senate in 1789. It is the tradition of extended debate--a tradition that when an issue comes up, under the rules of this body, we continue to talk, we continue to debate until every Senator has had his or her say, at least enough of a say that 60 Senators then say it is time to stop talking and start voting. Republicans who want to abolish the filibuster in the Senate are, I would suggest, Republicans with very short memories. The Senate's 226- year tradition of extended debate was created for the purpose of protecting the minority from the tyranny of the majority. For the last 70 years, most of the time Republicans have been the minority needing that protection. Since World War II, Democrats have controlled the Presidency and both Houses of Congress for 22 years; Republicans have had such complete control for 6 years. Let me say that again. Since World War II, Democrats have controlled the Presidency and both Houses of Congress for 22 years; Republicans have had such complete control for only 6 years. During those 22 years when the Democrats had complete control, without a Senate filibuster to protect the minority, Democrats could have enacted any law they wanted. To see what can happen when Democrats have complete control and Republican Senators can't filibuster, one has to look back only to 2009 and 2010. Then, because there were 60 Democratic Senators making a Republican filibuster futile, the country got ObamaCare. This is because the so-called filibuster rule says that the Senate cannot vote on legislation until 60 of the 100 Senators decide it is time to end the debate. When more than 40 Senators want to continue debating and object to moving to a vote, that is called a filibuster. Let's look at the future, to the possibility of a President Hillary Clinton, a Democratic majority in both Houses, and no Senate filibuster rule. My prediction is that at the top of the Democratic agenda would be a Federal law abolishing right-to-work laws in the 25 States that have them. This is precisely what President Lyndon B. Johnson tried to do in 1965 and 1966. President Johnson was not successful. What stopped the President? A threatened filibuster by the Senate Republican leader Everett McKinley Dirksen. You can make your own list of what else would be on the agenda if Democrats had complete control and there were no Senate filibuster. I would predict higher taxes, more gun control, fewer abortion restrictions, making every city a sanctuary city, card check instead of the secret ballot for union elections, and numerous other liberal laws. The most important reason to keep the filibuster rule is that the country needs one legislative body that takes its time to think through an issue and try to develop a consensus. The House of Representatives is, quite properly, the Nation's sounding board. If the country is boiling, the House of Representatives is boiling. On the other hand--as George Washington told Thomas Jefferson--the Senate is the saucer into which hot tea is poured to cool. The Senate's tradition of extended debate requires continuing debate until 60 Senators decide it is time to stop discussing and time to start voting. That allows every Senator to have a say. It encourages bipartisan consensus, which is the best way to govern a large, complex country such as the United States of America. When both parties agree on a solution to a controversial issue--such as the civil rights laws of the 1960s--the country accepts the laws more easily. When the laws are jammed through by a partisan vote--as happened with ObamaCare--the losers start the next day trying to repeal the law and the country is plunged into confusion. There is one more serious problem with the current proposals to use the so-called nuclear option to change the Senate rules. Senate rules require 67 votes to change the rules. If Republicans use the nuclear option, we would be operating in the same lawless fashion that the Democrats did in 2013, when they used a mere majority vote to eliminate the filibuster for most Presidential nominations. The Democrats' action in 2013 made little difference in how the Senate actually operates by custom. By custom, nominations have almost always been decided by a majority vote, but the 2013 use of the nuclear option set a damaging precedent. As one dissenting Democratic Senator said, a Senate that can change its rules any time it wants by majority vote is a Senate without any rules. How then could the country's chief rulemaking body earn respect for the rules it makes for 320 million Americans if we don't follow our own rules? Unlike nominations, the opportunity for extended debate on legislation has existed since Thomas Jefferson wrote the Senate rules in 1789. Of course, the current proposals to abolish the filibuster wouldn't change a thing in the Congress. President Obama could simply veto whatever he wanted to. According to the U.S. Constitution, it takes 67 votes in the Senate to overturn a Presidential veto. Now, it is true that Democrats and Republicans have used the filibuster too often. There absolutely should be an up-or-down vote in this body on the President's Iran agreement and on the 12 appropriations bills that our committee has completed work on and are ready to come to the floor. All of them are being blocked by Democratic filibusters. To solve this problem, some suggest eliminating the filibuster only in ``some cases,'' but who will decide which cases are ``some cases''? If the minority decides, nothing will be changed. If the majority decides, the minority is crushed. The only way to reduce the number of filibusters is by consent and by restraint on the part of both political parties. In 1995, Republicans were elected majorities in both Houses of Congress. A Democratic Senator proposed abolishing the filibuster. Even though this temporarily would have seemed to benefit Republicans, every single Republican voted no. House Republicans are often frustrated because legislation that runs through the House like a freight train slows down or even grinds to a halt in the Senate. But that was the system of checks and balances that our Founders created, and sometimes the shoe is on the other foot. This year, the Senate has passed important legislation on a 6-year highway bill which is still stalled in the House. Republicans and conservatives who are thinking about abolishing the filibuster should think some more about how ObamaCare became law. They should think about what it would be like to live in the 25 States that now have right-to- work laws if Democrats gained the Presidency and majorities in Congress and abolished those right-to-work laws because there was no Senate filibuster. Think about what might happen if Democrats again have complete control and Congress dances to the tune of the White House and the Republican minority might have no filibuster to protect itself and this country from the tyranny of that Democrat majority. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have an editorial from this morning's Wall Street Journal printed in the Record.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet during the session of the Senate on September 17, 2015, at 10 a.m., in room SD-430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Biosimilar Implementation: A Progress Report from FDA.'' For further information regarding this meeting, please contact Jamie Garden of the committee staff on (202) 224-7675.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I would like to announce that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet during the session of the Senate on September 16, 2015, at 10 a.m., in room SD-430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Achieving the Promise of Health Information Technology: Improving Care Through Patient Access to Their Records.'' For further information regarding this meeting, please contact Jamie Garden of the committee staff on (202) 224-7675.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, as a fellow Commodore, I would like to congratulate the Vanderbilt University women's tennis team on winning the NCAA championship, the first national championship for the women's tennis program, and the third in Commodore history. Geoff Macdonald, the head coach of this program for 21 years, has done a phenomenal job of training and guiding these exceptional student-athletes. He has worked hard to transform the Vanderbilt's women's tennis program into the best in the country. Vanderbilt is a very special university, one that produces student- athletes of exceptional character and integrity, who have pride in themselves and their school. This may be the first national championship for Vanderbilt's women's tennis team, but their commitment to these ideals ensures that this success will not be the last. This achievement would not have been possible without the hard work, talent, and teamwork of the following outstanding student-athletes: Payton Robinette, Margaret Leavell, Ellie Yates, Georgina Sellyn, Ashleigh Antal, Marie Casares, Courtney Colton, Frances Altick, Astra Sharma, and Sydney Campbell. Of course, these student-athletes were trained and mentored by a dedicated team of coaches and staff led by Coach Macdonald. They are: Emil Iankov, Christy Hogan, Kerry Wilbar, Lori Alexander, Aleke Tsoubanos, and Catherine Hilley. Go 'Dores!

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet during the session of the Senate on August 5, 2015, at 10 a.m., in room SD-430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Reauthorizing the Higher Education Act: Opportunities to Improve Student Success.'' For further information regarding this meeting, please contact Jake Baker of the committee staff on (202) 224-8484. committee on health, education, labor, and pensions

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I wish to announce that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions will meet in executive session on Thursday, August 6, 2015, at 10 a.m., in room SD-430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to mark up S. 799 Protecting Our Infants Act of 2015, S. 1893 Mental Health Awareness and Improvement Act of 2015, S. 481 Improving Regulatory Transparency for New Medical Therapies Act, the Nomination of Dr. Karen DeSalvo to be Assistant Secretary for Health, Department of Health and Human Services, the Dr. Kathryn Matthew to be Director, Institute of Museum and Library Services, the nomination of W. Thomas Reeder, Jr. to be Director, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, and the nomination of Walter Barrows to be Member, Railroad Retirement Board; as well as any additional nominations cleared for action. For further information regarding this meeting, please contact the Committee at (202) 224-5375.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of my remarks at the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing on Reauthorizing the Higher Education Act: Exploring Barriers and Opportunities within Innovation be printed in the Record.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, will the Chair please inform me when 10 minutes has expired.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, today there will be at least three votes. The first, as we have heard, is to end debate on Senator McConnell's amendment to repeal ObamaCare. The second will be to end debate on the Export-Import Bank. Then there may be a third vote on an appeal by the Senator from Texas, Mr. Cruz, to overturn a ruling of the Chair that an amendment of his is not in order. This is how that came about. On Friday Senator Cruz offered an amendment regarding Iran. The Chair ruled that the amendment was not in order because--and this is what the Chair said, in fact--``it is inconsistent with the Senate's precedents with respect to the offering of amendments.'' The Senator from Texas then appealed the ruling of the Chair. His intention today will be to try to obtain a majority vote to overturn the Chair's ruling. I respect the Senator's strong desire to offer his amendment, but I believe he ought to do it within the Senate rules or I believe we should change Senate rules in the way our rules prescribe. If, instead, a majority of Senators agree with the Senator from Texas, the Senate will be saying that a majority can routinely change Senate rules and procedures anytime it wants on any subject it wants in order to get the result it wants. The problem with that, as former Senator Carl Levin of Michigan once said, is that a Senate that changes its rules anytime a majority wants is a Senate without any rules. Think of it this way. Football season is coming up. Let's say the Tennessee Titans are playing football against the Indianapolis Colts in Nashville and the home team sets the rules of the game. So when the Titans gain 9 yards, they change the rules to say 9 yards is a first down or when the Colts gain 100 yards, the Titans say: Sorry, you need 110 yards to score a touchdown. No one would want to play such a game. No one would want to watch such a game. No one would respect such a game. That is why every Monday in New York City a team of former National Football League officials reviews every referee's call and noncall from the previous Sunday's games played in the NFL. The league wants to make absolutely sure its rules are followed. And the NFL has a rules committee that meets between seasons to consider changes in the rules. It has rules about how to change its rules. The NFL, of course, wouldn't even consider allowing the Titans to change the rules in the middle of a game in Nashville in order to defeat the Colts. The U.S. Senate has a rules committee, too, and we have rules on how to change our rules. We should follow those rules. The U.S. Senate is the chief rulemaking body for the United States of America. If we cannot follow our own rules, how can we expect 320 million Americans to follow the rules we write for them? If we render ourselves lawless, how can we expect our fellow Americans to respect and follow the rule of law? There is a practical problem with what the Senator from Texas seeks to do. If he succeeds, it will destroy a crucial part of what we call the rule of regular order in the U.S. Senate. He will create a precedent that destroys the orderly consideration of amendments. There will be unlimited amendments. There will be chaos. And ironically, while destroying regular order, he wouldn't get the vote on the Iran amendment he seeks. That is because if he overrules the Chair and creates another branch of the amendment tree, the Senate leaders have a right to offer an amendment to fill that new branch of the tree before he does. The U.S. Senate is unique in the world. It has been called the one authentic piece of genius of the American political system. Its uniqueness is based upon a variety of rules, precedents, procedures, and agreements that encourage extended debate. This process encourages consensus, and consensus is the way we govern a complex country, whether it is a civil rights bill or a trade agreement or an education bill. But a body of 100 of us that operates by unanimous consent requires restraint and good will on the part of Senators to function. We saw a good example of that a couple of weeks ago when the Senate passed 81 to 17 in 1 week a complex elementary and secondary education bill. Any Senator could have made that process much more difficult, but not one did, and the country is impressed with that result. There are different ways--several different ways--to establish Senate rules and procedures, but they all fall under the same umbrella. There are standing rules adopted by the first Senate in 1789 with the advice of Thomas Jefferson. There are standing orders. Sometimes we set rules by passing a law, such as the Budget Act. Sometimes we establish a rule by unanimous consent or by agreeing to a new precedent. Taken together, all of these represent the full body of the Senate's Rules of Procedure. These Rules of Procedure have several things in common, no matter how they were established. The authority for establishing and changing each of them comes from the same place: article I, section 5 of the United States Constitution. Every one of them can be changed by 67 votes, following rule XXII of the Senate, except that a standing order may be changed with 60 votes. One other thing these different forms of rules and precedents have in common is that the latest change supersedes whatever rule or precedent was established earlier. So if the Senator from Texas persuades the majority of us to overrule the Chair today, that decision governs the Senate forever until it is changed or unless it is changed. So there is no real difference between changing a rule or changing a precedent. What is important is not how the precedent was established or the rule was established but what is being overturned. It is true that occasionally the Senate majority uses its power to overturn the ruling of the Chair to refine the interpretation of rules or precedents. This means that in some limited circumstances, the Senate changes its rules by majority vote. The question today is not whether we can overturn the ruling of the Chair but whether we should overturn the ruling of the Chair. I believe we should not do so. To do so would destroy regular order in the Senate. It would create chaos in the Senate. Most importantly, a Senate in which a majority routinely changes the rules by overruling the Chair is a Senate without any rules. There is a right way and a wrong way to change our rules and procedures. This would be the wrong way. I urge my colleagues to not agree with the Senator from Texas in his effort to overturn the ruling of the Chair.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum be waived.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I ask through the Chair if the Democratic leader has a request.