Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 14, 2015, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 117, S. 756.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I further ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations en bloc: Calendar Nos. 133, 134, 135, 206, 207, and 208; that the Senate proceed to vote without intervening action or debate; that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order to the nominations; that any statements related to the nominations be printed in the Record; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action, and the Senate then resume legislative session.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 146, S. 1482.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 134, S. Res. 204.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the Democratic leader expressed the hope that we could have a path to the end on amendments, and I can assure him that Senator Murray and I agree with him wholeheartedly. We are working together to try to be able to do that. In the committee, we adopted 29 amendments. Most of those were Democratic amendments. We have adopted 22 on the floor, and the majority of those are Democratic amendments. The Democratic leader has been very helpful to allow us to come to the floor without delay, and I can assure him and the majority leader that Senator Murray and I intend to try to resolve the couple of issues we have right now and be able to recommend to the leadership a path forward. It would be my hope that we don't even have to have a cloture vote--that we didn't have to have one to get on the floor, and I hope we don't have to have one to get off the floor. I am not prepared to say we can do that yet, but we agree with him, and we will do our best to do that.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I understand what the Democratic leader is saying. I think the best thing for Senator Murray and me to do is to continue to work as we have with other Senators. I believe we know almost all of the amendments that are to be adopted. Not only have we adopted the ones in committee and the ones on the floor, but Senator Murray and I have several dozen other amendments that we are prepared to recommend to the full Senate be adopted in the substitute agreement. I would say to Senators that if there is any other amendment, I hope you will let us know about it. The filing deadline is 2:30 this afternoon. I hope we have all of the amendments that we need to have. Occasionally, I am asked: Why do the Senators argue all the time? My answer usually is this: That is what we are here to do. We are presented with the most contentious issues in the country--issues that can't be resolved in other places. So of course, we are going to argue a lot. We debate. We have rules about debate. We debate what to do about the Iran nuclear deal. We debate what to do about health care. We debate what kind of trade agreements we should have. But occasionally, we come to a consensus about what to do. A consensus is the way you govern a complex country. I remember very well when I was a very young staff member here, I watched Senator Dirksen, the Republican leader--this was in 1968--and President Johnson, the Democratic President, work together to pass a civil rights bill. The bill was written in the Republican leader's office, even though it had been proposed by the Democratic President. It took 68 votes to pass it, in order to get cloture at that time. When they finally got 68--it took 67; they got 68--Senator Russell of Georgia, who led the opposition, flew to Atlanta and said: It is the law of the land; we need to support it. That is why we have the Senate. The Senate has been called the one authentic piece of genius in the American political system. It is the only place in our Government that encourages and actually forces consensus on important issues. When you take a complex issue and try to resolve it and have it be the rule for a country as big and diverse as ours, consensus is the only way to do it. I cannot think of an issue about which there needs to be more consensus than one that involves the 100,000 public schools in our country, which have 50 million children and 3\1/2\ million teachers. Having a debate such as this about elementary and secondary education is like attending a football game at the University of Tennessee or Arkansas or Washington. Everybody in the stands is an expert. Everybody in the stands knows they can be the coach or the quarterback. It is not that easy to get a consensus about what to do about elementary and secondary education in America. What is the proper role for the Federal Government? Once you have decided that, then what do you do about it? How much do you spend? What rules do you set? The remarkable thing is that we have come to a consensus in two ways here about our elementary and secondary education legislation which is on floor today. The first is that we need to get something done. We are 7 years overdue. Newsweek magazine said this last week in the headline to its story: ``The Education Law Everyone Wants to Fix.'' We have tried twice in the last two Congresses. It was a well-intentioned bipartisan effort. Each failed. Each failed. We don't have to go into the reasons why, but they did fail. In this Congress, we are off to a different start. We have heard from our teachers, our Governors, our superintendents, and our parents that you have to get this done. We want the bill to be as much like the one each one of us would write as possible. But in the end, let's get it done. Not only do we have a remarkable consensus about the need to fix No Child Left Behind, but we have a remarkable consensus about how to do it. I give a great deal of credit for that to the Senator from Washington, Mrs. Murray, who suggested to me that she and I write a draft bill together, which we did. We presented it to our committee, which includes many of the most liberal Members of the Senate and many of the most conservative Members of the Senate. We worked through that draft. We considered 58 amendments. We adopted 29. A majority of those were Democratic amendments. In the end, every single member of the committee voted to report it to the floor. That did not mean every single member of the committee supported every provision in the bill, but I think what it meant--and I asked the members this before they voted: One, has it been a fair process? Have you had a chance to have your say? Is this bill good enough to present to the full Senate? The answer was yes for 22 Senators on both sides of the aisle. Now, we have come to the Senate floor and we have been here about a week. We have adopted already 22 amendments, 14 of them are Democratic amendments. We have several dozen more amendments that Senator Murray and I have reviewed with our staffs and we agree with them. We are going to recommend to the full Senate that those be adopted by voice vote. They are important amendments, important contributions to the bill. We have about two dozen remaining to go which we need to vote on. We need to do that today and we need to do that tomorrow. There is no need for us to go longer than that. We know what the amendments are. We have time to talk about those amendments on those 2 days. One or two of those are particularly contentious. We are trying to work those out. So today what I would appeal to my colleagues for is cooperation. We have had excellent cooperation in the committee. We have had members of our committee who agreed not to offer amendments in the committee because they were told by me and Senator Murray that they have a chance to offer those amendments on the floor. We intend for them to have that opportunity before we finish this bill. Senators on both sides of the aisle exercised restraint in that way in pursuit of a result. Most of the Members of the Senate on both sides of this aisle so far in this debate for the last week have done the same. I would simply ask all the Members of the Senate on both sides of the aisle in the next couple of days to show that same kind of restraint and help us get a result. There is no need for us to go more than a couple of days. There is no need for us to have a cloture vote. We should be able to agree the amendments we know about can be scheduled and there can be an adequate time for debate on those and we can vote on them. We should be able to do that by unanimous consent. We want Senators to have a right to have their say on amendments that are related--related to elementary and secondary education. So I thank the majority leader for placing this bill on the floor. I thank the Democratic leader for helping to create an environment in which we can succeed. I thank Senator Murray and her staff and our staff for working with the other Senators to get as far as we go. What I would ask our colleagues once again to do is to say: Our filing deadline is 2:30. We hope we already have all of the amendments. If everyone will cooperate with us, hopefully, the Senator from Washington and I can present to the leadership a list of amendments, a time agreement for how much debate there should be, and we should get started. We ought to be able to have one or two amendments voted on before lunch. When that is agreed to, we will let Senators know. Otherwise, I would expect there to be several votes in the afternoon, and a great many votes on Wednesday. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, this is a very important amendment that was thoroughly discussed in the education committee when we considered this legislation. Both Senator Murray and I believe it should be offered on the floor and that Senators should have a chance to vote on it. The trouble is that the Finance Committee objects to the way it is paid for. And in a moment, on behalf of the chairman, Senator Hatch, the Senator from Utah, I will have to object. But my hope would be that the Senator from Pennsylvania, who is a member of that committee, could work with the chairman and the ranking member to come up with a different way of paying for the bill so that Senators would have a chance to vote on this important amendment today or tomorrow. So I object.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I have nothing more.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from New York for his remarks. I know how passionately he feels about the amendment by the Senator from North Carolina. He has made that clear to me on more than one occasion, and my hope is that the Senator from New York and the Senator from North Carolina will have a successful resolution of that difference of opinion in the next day or two. I know Senator Murray and I will be glad to work with them to try to do that, but I hear him loud and clear, and I appreciate him coming to the floor and making those statements.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from New York. He has not been on the floor in the past at the beginning of the day when I thanked both the majority leader and Democratic leader for their attitude toward this bill. While it is probably not noticed by people around the country, it is noticed here. The Democratic leader and the Democratic leadership, which the Senator from New York is a part of, allowed this bill to come to the floor without any delay. We have had a chance to offer and consider a lot of amendments. We have already considered and adopted 22 on the floor. Senator Murray and I have several dozen or more that we will recommend to the full Senate to be adopted, and we have about two dozen other amendments that we would like to begin voting on soon. We seem to be moving along. Senators are cooperating. There have been some developments this morning that are encouraging, and I hope to be able, within the next few minutes, to announce that we will have a few votes--one to four votes-- before lunch and that we will have more votes at 4 p.m., but I am not able to make that agreement yet. For the information of Senators, that is our hope. Then, tomorrow, if we continue on this path, we will have a large number of votes. I thank the Senators for their cooperation.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I wish to say to the Senator of Louisiana two things: First, I understand his passion on this issue. I have heard him speak about it. He talked to us last week about how best to express that on the Senate floor. There are a number of Senators who share his view on that. He is a member of the Judiciary Committee. We will have an opportunity to deal with it when the committee does work next week. Second, I would like to say to him through the Chair that I greatly appreciate the way he has handled this. He not only gave us advance notice of his interest in this amendment last week, he has worked in the Judiciary Committee to find a way to move ahead on his interest without interfering with the progress of our bill to fix No Child Left Behind. I am not surprised by that because he has made a major contribution to the bill to fix No Child Left Behind. Specifically, we have adopted his language or some of his language that would end the common core mandate and stop Washington, DC, from telling Louisiana, Arizona, Tennessee, and Washington State what their academic standards have to be. If a State wants to have an academic standard, it can have it; if it doesn't want it, it doesn't have to have that particular standard. The fact that the Senator has been willing to say that this is a very important issue and that he will work with Senator Grassley in the Judiciary Committee and pursue it there leaves us free to move ahead on fixing No Child Left Behind, which is important to his State as well as to all other States. I greatly appreciate the way he has handled that and thank him for doing that. We are still hoping to consider three or four amendments and perhaps have one rollcall vote before lunch, but we will know more about that in the next few minutes. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I would say to the Senator that we are hoping to be able to lock in some amendments, but we are not quite ready yet. So what I might do is ask him to yield during his speech so that we can do that. I would say to the Senator through the Chair that we look forward to his remarks.

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. For the information of Senators, I am about to ask for unanimous consent--which I expect to receive--to have two rollcall votes and two voice votes before lunch. So I now will do that. I ask unanimous consent that at 12:10 p.m. the Senate vote in relation to the following amendments: Scott No. 2132, Booker No. 2169, Portman No. 2137, Bennet No. 2159; further, that at 4 p.m. today the Senate vote in relation to the following amendments: Isakson No. 2194, Bennet No. 2210, Lee No. 2162, and Franken No. 2093; with no second- degree amendments in order to any of the amendments prior to the votes; that there be 2 minutes equally divided prior to each vote, with 4 minutes prior to the vote on the Franken amendment, and that all after the first vote be 10-minute votes; that the Scott and Franken amendments be subject to a 60-affirmative-vote threshold for adoption and that it be in order to call up any amendments in the list not currently pending.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 2137.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

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

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I yield back time on the first amendment.

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I commend the Senator from New Jersey for his passion for education but suggest that I am going to vote no because this amendment is premature. It is another burden on States. It adds reporting requirements instead of reducing reporting requirements. It adds 2 new subgroups for every school in the country, and there are 100,000 of those. These populations are difficult to track due to the transient nature of the populations. For foster youth, school districts are poorly equipped to do it. Child welfare agencies would probably do better. Now what we should be doing is recognizing that we do not need a national school board. This is a good argument, but it should be made to the local school board or to the State school board. We do not need another Federal mandate on 100,000 local schools. That is exactly the wrong direction for us to go. I urge a ``no'' vote.