Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of my remarks at the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing last week be printed in the Record.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the Chair for the recognition and the majority leader for his remarks and his leadership. I am also glad to be here with the Senator from Wyoming, who over the years has been the leading Republican Senator on the issue of ambush elections. We are here today, as the majority leader said, to introduce a Congressional Review Act resolution to stop a new National Labor Relations Board rule. I would like to speak about that for a few minutes and then let the Senator from Wyoming continue. Last December the NLRB issued a final rule that shortened the timeline between when pro-union organizers ask an employer for a secret ballot election and when the election actually takes place. I refer to this as an ambush election because it forces a union election before an employer has a chance to figure out what is going on. Even worse, it jeopardizes employees' privacy by requiring employers to turn over personal employee information--including email addresses, phone numbers, shift hours, and locations--to union organizers. The effect of this resolution will be to permit the majority leader to bring this resolution to the floor after the congressional recess. There will be 10 hours of debate. The resolution cannot be amended, and it needs a majority vote to pass. The House of Representatives is following a similar procedure. Both Houses must vote on it. If it passes both Houses, the President can sign or veto the resolution. If the President decides to veto, it would take 67 votes to override. If the NLRB's new ambush election rule is disapproved, the Board cannot issue a substantially similar rule without congressional approval. Today, more than 95 percent of union elections occur within 56 days after a petition is filed, but under this new rule elections could take place in as few as 11 days after a petition is filed. This rule will harm employers and employees alike, and here is how. If you are an employer who gets ambushed--in other words, a union election happens before you really know what is going on--on day 1 you get a faxed copy of an election petition that has been filed at your local NLRB regional office stating that 30 percent of your employees support a union. The union may have already been quietly trying to organize for months without your knowledge. Your employees have been able to hear only the union's pitch. By day 2 or 3 of this process, you must publicly post an election notice in your workplace and post it online as well if you communicate with your employees electronically. By noon on day 7, you must file with the NLRB what is called a statement of position. This is a comprehensive, written legal document in which an employer sets out legal positions and claims. Under this new NLRB rule, you, the employer, waive your rights to use any legal arguments not raised in the document. On day 7, you must also present the union and the NLRB with a list of prospective voters as well as their job classifications, shift hours, and work locations. On day 8, a pre-election hearing is held at the NLRB regional office, and an election date is set. By day 10, the employer must present the union with a list of employee names, personal email addresses, personal cell phone numbers, and home addresses. Day 11 is the earliest day on which the NLRB could conduct the election under the new rule. The union has the power to postpone an election by an additional 10 days at this point, but the employer has no corresponding power. Under this new NLRB rule, before the hearing on day 8 an employer will have less than 1 week to figure out what an election petition is, find legal representation--many employers don't have a labor lawyer as a matter of course--determine legal positions on the relevant issues, learn what statements and actions the law permits and prohibits, gather information required by the NLRB, communicate with employees about the decision they are making, and correct any misstatements and falsehoods employees may be hearing from union organizers. Making even the slightest mistake in the lead-up to an election can result in the NLRB setting aside the results and ordering a rerun election or, worse, the Board could require an employer to automatically bargain with the union. But it is the employees who stand to lose the most under this new rule. First, because of this ambush election, employees may only hear half the story about what unionizing may mean for them and for their workplace. When a workplace is unionized--especially in a State that does not have a right-to-work law--employees have their dues money taken out of every paycheck, whether they like it or not. Employees lose the ability to deal directly with their employer to address concerns, or ask for a promotion or raise, and instead have to work through the union. Important considerations, such as which of their fellow employees will be included in the bargaining unit, will no longer be determined before the election. As the two dissenting members of the NLRB put it: Employees will be asked to ``vote now, understand later.'' Second, employees lose their privacy because the final rule we seek to overturn requires employers to hand over employees' personal email addresses, cell phone numbers, shift locations, and job classifications, even if the employee has made it clear he does not want to be contacted by union organizers. This rule appears to be a solution in search of a problem. Only 4.3 percent of union elections occur more than 56 days after the petition is filed. The current median number of days between when the petition is filed and the election is held is just 38 days. These figures are well within the NLRB's own goals for timely elections. Unions won 64 percent of elections in 2013. In recent years, the union win rate has actually been going up. So what is the problem? The majority leader said it very well when he referred to a 1959 debate over amendments to the National Labor Relations Act. Then- Senator John F. Kennedy warned against rushing employees into a union election. Senator Kennedy said: There should be at least a 30-day interval between the request for an election and the holding of the election...in which both parties can present their viewpoints. The 30-day waiting period is an additional safeguard against rushing employees into an election where they are unfamiliar with the issues. It is clear to see this rule is wrong. That is why Senator Enzi, Senator McConnell, and I are asking the Senate to disapprove the rule and prohibit the National Labor Relations Board from issuing any substantially similar rule. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the Chair for the recognition and the majority leader for his remarks and his leadership. I am also glad to be here with the Senator from Wyoming, who over the years has been the leading Republican Senator on the issue of ambush elections. We are here today, as the majority leader said, to introduce a Congressional Review Act resolution to stop a new National Labor Relations Board rule. I would like to speak about that for a few minutes and then let the Senator from Wyoming continue. Last December the NLRB issued a final rule that shortened the timeline between when pro-union organizers ask an employer for a secret ballot election and when the election actually takes place. I refer to this as an ambush election because it forces a union election before an employer has a chance to figure out what is going on. Even worse, it jeopardizes employees' privacy by requiring employers to turn over personal employee information--including email addresses, phone numbers, shift hours, and locations--to union organizers. The effect of this resolution will be to permit the majority leader to bring this resolution to the floor after the congressional recess. There will be 10 hours of debate. The resolution cannot be amended, and it needs a majority vote to pass. The House of Representatives is following a similar procedure. Both Houses must vote on it. If it passes both Houses, the President can sign or veto the resolution. If the President decides to veto, it would take 67 votes to override. If the NLRB's new ambush election rule is disapproved, the Board cannot issue a substantially similar rule without congressional approval. Today, more than 95 percent of union elections occur within 56 days after a petition is filed, but under this new rule elections could take place in as few as 11 days after a petition is filed. This rule will harm employers and employees alike, and here is how. If you are an employer who gets ambushed--in other words, a union election happens before you really know what is going on--on day 1 you get a faxed copy of an election petition that has been filed at your local NLRB regional office stating that 30 percent of your employees support a union. The union may have already been quietly trying to organize for months without your knowledge. Your employees have been able to hear only the union's pitch. By day 2 or 3 of this process, you must publicly post an election notice in your workplace and post it online as well if you communicate with your employees electronically. By noon on day 7, you must file with the NLRB what is called a statement of position. This is a comprehensive, written legal document in which an employer sets out legal positions and claims. Under this new NLRB rule, you, the employer, waive your rights to use any legal arguments not raised in the document. On day 7, you must also present the union and the NLRB with a list of prospective voters as well as their job classifications, shift hours, and work locations. On day 8, a pre-election hearing is held at the NLRB regional office, and an election date is set. By day 10, the employer must present the union with a list of employee names, personal email addresses, personal cell phone numbers, and home addresses. Day 11 is the earliest day on which the NLRB could conduct the election under the new rule. The union has the power to postpone an election by an additional 10 days at this point, but the employer has no corresponding power. Under this new NLRB rule, before the hearing on day 8 an employer will have less than 1 week to figure out what an election petition is, find legal representation--many employers don't have a labor lawyer as a matter of course--determine legal positions on the relevant issues, learn what statements and actions the law permits and prohibits, gather information required by the NLRB, communicate with employees about the decision they are making, and correct any misstatements and falsehoods employees may be hearing from union organizers. Making even the slightest mistake in the lead-up to an election can result in the NLRB setting aside the results and ordering a rerun election or, worse, the Board could require an employer to automatically bargain with the union. But it is the employees who stand to lose the most under this new rule. First, because of this ambush election, employees may only hear half the story about what unionizing may mean for them and for their workplace. When a workplace is unionized--especially in a State that does not have a right-to-work law--employees have their dues money taken out of every paycheck, whether they like it or not. Employees lose the ability to deal directly with their employer to address concerns, or ask for a promotion or raise, and instead have to work through the union. Important considerations, such as which of their fellow employees will be included in the bargaining unit, will no longer be determined before the election. As the two dissenting members of the NLRB put it: Employees will be asked to ``vote now, understand later.'' Second, employees lose their privacy because the final rule we seek to overturn requires employers to hand over employees' personal email addresses, cell phone numbers, shift locations, and job classifications, even if the employee has made it clear he does not want to be contacted by union organizers. This rule appears to be a solution in search of a problem. Only 4.3 percent of union elections occur more than 56 days after the petition is filed. The current median number of days between when the petition is filed and the election is held is just 38 days. These figures are well within the NLRB's own goals for timely elections. Unions won 64 percent of elections in 2013. In recent years, the union win rate has actually been going up. So what is the problem? The majority leader said it very well when he referred to a 1959 debate over amendments to the National Labor Relations Act. Then- Senator John F. Kennedy warned against rushing employees into a union election. Senator Kennedy said: There should be at least a 30-day interval between the request for an election and the holding of the election...in which both parties can present their viewpoints. The 30-day waiting period is an additional safeguard against rushing employees into an election where they are unfamiliar with the issues. It is clear to see this rule is wrong. That is why Senator Enzi, Senator McConnell, and I are asking the Senate to disapprove the rule and prohibit the National Labor Relations Board from issuing any substantially similar rule. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I am especially pleased to see that the Senator from Utah is presiding this afternoon because I come to the floor today to offer a resolution which is his inspiration, really, and on which I am pleased to be working with him. Simply put, this is a resolution to establish a majority vote on Presidential nominations. This would establish by rule the Senate tradition of approving Presidential nominations by a simple majority vote. The rules change we propose would establish by rule this tradition of approving Presidential nominations of Cabinet Members and judges by a simple majority vote, which existed from the time Thomas Jefferson wrote the rules in 1789 until 2003, when Democrats began filibustering Federal Circuit Court of Appeals nominees. Most importantly, it would change the rules in the right way, through a two-thirds vote, which is what the existing rules of the Senate provide. Unfortunately, on November 21, 2013, Democrats broke the Senate rules without even attempting to get the 67 votes required to change the rules, which caused former Senator Carl Levin, a Democrat from Michigan, to say at the time, quoting former Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, that ``if a majority of the Senate can change its rules at any time, there are no rules.'' We are the Nation's rulemaking body. If we cannot follow our own rules, how can we expect the American people to show respect for and follow the rules we help to create? The proposal Senator Lee and I have made will be considered by the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, according to the Senator from Missouri, Senator Blunt, the chairman of the Rules Committee. It would ultimately require a two-thirds vote of the Senate to change the Senate rules. This all has to do with the so-called nuclear option. If I might say an additional word about the so-called nuclear option, I came to the Senate in 2003, which was when our Democratic friends decided they would use cloture, which requires 60 votes to cut off debate, as a way of denying a Presidential nomination on a Federal circuit judge. It had never in the history of the Senate been used before in that way. Cloture had been used twice, I believe, based on my research, to deny a sub-Cabinet member a position in the 1990s, but that was the first time it had ever been used on any such position with the exception of Abe Fortas. It is important, given all the misinformation that has been spread about the nuclear option, to know what the facts are. The tradition has always been in the Senate that Presidential nominations deserved an up- or-down, 51-majority vote. That has basically been the tradition. Even with the most controversial nominations, such as that of Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court Justice--I believe the vote was 52 to 48-- there never was a suggestion that someone might use cloture to require it to be 60 votes. Cloture didn't apply to nominations until 1949, so it was never used between the time Jefferson wrote the rules at the beginning of the Senate and 1949. It was first used in 1968, but not really. President Johnson was trying to save face for Abe Fortas, his friend who was a Supreme Court Justice. He had nominated him for Chief Justice. A problem came out, and President Johnson engineered a 45-to-43 cloture vote, which Fortas ``won.'' That is really the only exception in the whole history of the Senate until 2003, when the Senate said it is going to take 60 votes to confirm a Presidential nomination for a judge rather than the traditional 51. I have talked to several of my colleagues on the other side about this issue. They are fairly straightforward about why they did it. They thought President George W. Bush's nominees were ``too conservative.'' I knew some of those judges--Judge Pickering of Mississippi, for example. He put his children into a public school in Mississippi in the 1960s, and he was being accused of being a segregationist when he was actually leading the charge in his State of Mississippi to desegregate the public schools. William Pryor of Alabama was a law clerk for Judge John Minor Wisdom. I know the distinguished Senator from Utah, who was a Supreme Court law clerk, knows of Judge Wisdom. He was regarded by everyone as one of the finest Federal circuit judges in the country. He had the greatest respect for William Pryor. He would have been shocked to hear what was said about him at the time. It was a shocking thing to me to arrive in the Senate in 2003 and find my friends on the other side of the aisle for the first time in Senate history saying it would take 60 votes to confirm President Bush's judges. I strongly objected to that. I even suggested that if a few Senators on this side and a few Senators on that side would work together, we could break the stalemate. A Gang of 14 was created. It did break the stalemate, but as a result, five judges nominated by George W. Bush were not confirmed because the other side decided they didn't like their philosophical views. So instead of a 51-vote margin, they required 60, and so they weren't confirmed. This is the tally in the history of the Senate. The number of Supreme Court nominees in the history of our country who have ever had their nomination denied by filibuster, by a cloture vote, is zero, with the exception of the Fortas nomination, if you want to count that. Not a single one. Supreme Court nominations are among the most controversial nominations ever before the Senate. The number of Cabinet members who have ever had their nominations denied by a filibuster, by requiring 60 votes in the history of the Senate--zero. Not one. Not an Obama nominee. Not a Clinton nominee. Not a Bush nominee. Zero. Not one. Let's go to district judges. There has been a lot of talk about district judges and how difficult it was for President Obama to have district judges confirmed. There is no truth to that whatsoever. I was in the Senate; I know that. I will give an example. There was an effort to deny a seat to a judge from the State of Rhode Island by 60 votes, a judge whom I didn't support, but I and a group of other Republicans made sure we did not use cloture to deny a seat to a President's district judge nominee for the first time in history, and so we did not. So the number of Federal district judges in the history of the United States who have ever had their nomination denied by a filibuster, by the 60-vote cloture rule, is zero. So Supreme Court Justices, except for Fortas, Cabinet members, district judges--zero. Filibusters have not been widely used in the history of this Senate to deny a President his nomination. However, there are other problems that nominations have. I was nominated once. I came to be nominated to be the Secretary of the Department of Education. A Senator from Ohio, Senator Metzenbaum, put a so-called secret hold on my nomination and held me up for 3 months, but then when I came to the floor, I was confirmed. We have abolished those kinds of secret holds. We have made changes in the rules to make it easier for the President's nominees to be confirmed. There have been seven sub-Cabinet members, including John Bolton-- three Republicans and four Democrats--who have had their nominations rejected because of a cloture vote, all since 1994. So no Cabinet members, no Supreme Court Justices, no district judges, seven sub- Cabinet members. What is the score on circuit judges? This is what brought up the fuss in 2003 when the Democrats filibustered 10 nominations because they were too conservative. As I mentioned earlier, five were confirmed and five were rejected as part of the compromise. Since that time, Republicans have rejected two Democrats. So the score is the Democrats have rejected five Federal Circuit judges and Republicans rejected two. Republicans actually rejected three others, but that led to the events of November 21, 2013, when the Democrats broke the rules to change the rules. It would be as if in a Super Bowl or in a playoff game, let's say, Seattle gained 9 yards and they needed 10, so they changed the rules because they were the home team and said that is a first down. No one would have any respect for the game if they did that, and no one will have any respect for the Senate if we keep doing that, which is the point Senator Lee and I would like to make because the tradition of the Senate has always been to give to a President the prerogative of allowing his nominations to be confirmed by 51 votes or a simple majority of Senators duly chosen and sworn. We propose to change the rule to reflect the tradition of the Senate. Some say: Well, why don't you do to them what they did to you? I don't think that is a very good way to live your life. I mean, if the Democrats did the wrong thing, if they brought the Senate to its knees, if they made the Senate into a place that doesn't follow its own rules, then we should do that to them? No. I think what we should do is replace bad behavior with good behavior, and good behavior means we adopt changes to the rules in the way the rules require, which is, in effect, 67 votes or two-thirds of the Senators present and voting. So we will be offering our resolution, as we do today. We will be offering it in the Senate Rules Committee. We hope the Senate Rules Committee will approve it and report it to the floor. We hope Senator McConnell will find time on the floor to bring it up. We hope that 67 of our colleagues will agree with it. We will show the country that we know how to follow our own rules and that we know how to take the tradition of the Senate, which has been there since Thomas Jefferson wrote the rules, with very few exceptions, to make sure that Presidential nominees are entitled to an up-or-down vote by a majority of the Senate. That has been the rule, that has been the tradition, and that should be the rule, and the rules should be changed in the way that rules are supposed to be changed. There is one other issue I wish to mention without going into any length about it. What happened in the Senate on November 21, 2013, was the lowest point in the Senate that I have seen. The majority decided that because it didn't have the votes to put three judges--liberal judges--on the DC Court of Appeals, it would break the rules to change the rules, and it just put them there anyway. It pretended that the reason it did that was because President Obama couldn't get his nominees confirmed. Well, on every Senator's desk is an Executive Calendar. Everyone who can be confirmed has been reported by a committee to the floor and is listed on the Executive Calendar. There is only one way to get on this calendar--there was only one way on November 21, 2013, and that was for a Democratic majority in a committee to report a nominee to the floor of the Senate. That was the only way you could get there. Republicans couldn't do it; only the Democrats could. So on November 21, 2013 the calendar was filled only with people the Democratic majority had approved of. There was only one way for anyone to get off the Executive Calendar and onto the floor of the Senate to be confirmed, and that was for the Democratic leader, the majority leader, to move to do that. We can't object to that. We have to vote on it. There is no motion to proceed with a nomination; he can bring it up anytime he wants to. The charge was made that there was a big backlog of people on this calendar. Well, here are the facts, and anyone who doubts it can look at the Executive Calendar for November 21, 2013, and they will see what the backlog was. There were 78 regular order nominations on November 21, 2013. Fifty-four of those nominees had been on the calendar less than 3 weeks. Sixteen had been on the calendar between 3 and 9 weeks. Eight had been on the calendar for more than 9 weeks. There was an informal agreement between the floor staffs that 40 of the uncontroversial nominees on this calendar--40 of the 78--could be confirmed before the Senate left at the end of the week. Let me use a specific example--district judges. We hear a lot about district judges. We had changed the rules at the request of the majority leader to make it easier to confirm district judges. We basically said that there could only be 2 hours of debate on a district judge and the majority could give back 1 of those hours. On the date the Democrats said there was a big backlog, there were 13 district judges on the calendar. Those were the only ones who could have been brought up by the majority leader. One had been waiting for more than 9 weeks. Four had been waiting for between 3 and 9 weeks. Eight had been waiting for less than 3 weeks. But the important point is that we could have confirmed them all over the weekend. All the majority leader had to do was to move the nomination of each of the 13, wait an intervening day, and then if they did that on Thursday, the intervening day would be Friday, and then we would come back on Monday and we would have 1 hour of debate for each of those nominations. So there was no excuse. There was no backlog. The Washington Post and the Congressional Research Service said that President Obama's nominees were moving through the Senate at about the same speed that President Clinton and President George W. Bush's nominees had been at that time in their terms. That is what the Congressional Research Service and the Washington Post said. The calendar speaks the truth about the absence of a backlog. And I was involved three times in working to change the rules to make it easier to do Presidential nominations. It was nothing more than a power grab. So our friends should just admit that and admit that it was the wrong thing to do for the Senate. A lot of Senators weren't here then. The resolution Senator Lee and I have proposed gives the Senate a chance to abandon bad behavior and begin to adopt good behavior, to take a tradition of the Senate that has been followed almost without exception since 1789 and make it the order of the day and to do it the way the Senate rules say it should be done--with 67 votes. In closing, let me simply say that I appreciate the fact that I am able to work on this with Senator Lee. This legislation developed really from a conversation and a suggestion he made to me on the floor of this Senate. I thought about it, and I said: I think you may be right about that. We worked together, and because of his background in the law and his experience in the Supreme Court, his leadership on this issue has been invaluable. I thank the Senator for his suggestions, I thank him for his leadership, and I look forward to working with him when it comes before the Senate Rules Committee. I hope we can persuade our fellow Senators in a bipartisan way that a good way to begin this year would be to begin to change the rules the right way and to reject the bad behavior and bad habits of the last session of Congress. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of my remarks at the Brookings Institution earlier today be printed in the Record.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of my remarks at the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing yesterday be printed in the Record.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of my remarks at the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing yesterday be printed in the Record.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 15 minutes, and that following me, the Senator from North Carolina be recognized for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I am advised by the highly competent floor staff that Senators Nelson and Collins will be worked in to be able to speak shortly after we have because I know they both are hoping to do that. Amendments Nos. 67, 98, 103, 174, 102, and 55 Withdrawn

Mr. ALEXANDER. I ask unanimous consent that the following amendments be withdrawn: Sullivan No. 67, Murkowski No. 98, Flake No. 103, Merkley No. 174, Tillis No. 102, and Peters No. 55.

Mr. ALEXANDER. The Senator from North Carolina, Senator Burr, and I are here to speak about an important and exciting development that is about to occur in our Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. What we are talking about and we will describe in our remarks today is a report entitled ``Innovation for Healthier Americans'' which will launch a bipartisan effort to look at how Congress can help to get cutting-edge treatments, drugs, and devices to America's patients more quickly while still preserving this Nation's gold standard for safety and quality. This report and the actions we hope to take will affect virtually every American. I am especially glad today to be here with the Senator from North Carolina. While there are a number of Senators on this body who worked hard on these issues--which in our government are usually dealt with by the Food and Drug Administration and by the National Institutes of Health--no one has been more effective, no one has worked harder, and no one has had more foresight and vision on these issues than Richard Burr, the Senator from North Carolina. The report today is substantially his work product, and he will be deeply involved in the next year as we work with Senator Murray, our Democratic friends, and with President Obama to try to bring this to a result. In 2013, Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institutes of Health, wrote the following: Drugs exist for only about 250 of the more than 4,400 conditions with defined molecular causes. And it takes far too long and far too much money to get a new drug into our medicine cabinets. This is an old problem that cries out for new and creative solutions. Since Dr. Collins said that, the number of conditions with defined molecular causes has increased now to about 5,390, yet the number of new drugs approved has not kept pace with these discoveries. The President of the United States has recognized this problem. In his State of the Union message a few days ago, President Obama said this: 21st century businesses will rely on American science, technology, research and development. I want the country that eliminated polio and mapped the human genome to lead a new era of medicine--one that delivers the right treatment at the right time. In some patients with cystic fibrosis, this approach has reversed a disease once thought unstoppable. The President said: Tonight, I'm launching a new Precision Medicine Initiative to bring us closer to curing diseases like cancer and diabetes--and to give all of us access to the personalized information we need to keep ourselves and our families healthier. Senator Murray and I had breakfast yesterday with Secretary Burwell and talked with her about the President's statement and about Secretary Burwell's own desire to help implement that initiative. Today Senator Burr and I released a report titled ``Innovation for Healthier Americans.'' Next, Senator Murray--who is ranking member of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions--and I will start examining the issues in this report and other issues raised in comments, through a bipartisan HELP Committee staff working group. I emphasize that we are going to be working together, Democrats and Republicans. We are going to be working with Secretary Burwell, we are going to be working with the President of the United States, and we are going to be on a parallel track with the House of Representatives, where Chairman Upton and his team have been working for several months on what they call 21st century cures. In our committee in the Senate we will begin hearings in March. We are releasing the report today in order to ask for comments. Surely we missed something in the report. If someone who is listening or reading it may have an idea or solution, we would like to know about that. We have opened an email account just to hear from those outside of Washington, DC, that is: innovation@help.senate.gov. Improving medical device and drug development is not a new topic for the HELP Committee. Legislation was passed in 1997 and different legislation was passed in 2012 to try to get at the same goal of speeding delivery of drugs and devices while ensuring they are still safe. Our goal will be to give bipartisan legislation to the President this year. It is encouraging to have the House, the Senate, and the President working on such an important common goal that affects virtually every American during the same Congress. That greatly increases our likelihood of securing a result. We want to improve and modernize how drugs and medical devices are discovered, developed, and approved. We will examine the work of the National Institutes of Health, which funds and enables much of the research that leads to medical breakthroughs and the Food and Drug Administration which regulates all the medical products we come in contact with. As I mentioned, this work will touch the life of almost every single American--from a very ill patient who has run out of treatment options and is counting on the most cutting-edge drug to an active child with asthma who is hoping to run faster and farther with the aid of a new drug. Today our scientists and researchers are making discoveries at a pace that our development process is not equipped to match. Patients wait while treatments languish in laboratories, going through our drawn out, inefficient, and outrageously expensive development process. FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg has acknowledged that ``we are left relying on the 20th century approaches for the review, approval and oversight of the treatments and cures of the 21st century.'' There is no time to waste in solving this problem. The mapping of the human genome opened a whole new world of individualized medicine in which a person's genetic makeup can drive the doctor's plan for disease prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. In the words of Andrew von Eschenbach, the former Commissioner of the FDA and Director of the National Cancer Institute: We stand on the cusp of a revolution in health care. Advances in molecular medicine will allow us to develop powerful new treatments that can cure or even prevent diseases like Alzheimer's and cancer. Tomorrow's high-tech cures can also slash health-care costs and eliminate ineffective treatments. What will it take to realize the potential of the new medicine? Today's report is the first step of our initiative. It seeks to answer the questions: What today is driving innovation? What barriers are standing in the way? What can we improve? The report has five main themes: No. 1, it costs too much to bring medical products to patients; No. 2, as science and technology advance, the discovery and development process takes too long; No. 3, the Food and Drug Administration's responsibilities have grown to include many unrelated to regulating medical products; No. 4, science outside the FDA is moving at a faster pace than ever; No. 5, an effective FDA is essential to maintain the U.S. leadership in biomedical innovation. Some of the report's key findings include that complex medical devices approved in the U.S. were available to patients in Europe on average four years earlier than in the U.S., and increased competition for NIH grants may be discouraging researchers from proposing risky projects. Further, the average cost to develop a drug is disputed-some say $1 billion, some say $2 billion, some more-but all agree it is rising, and unpredictable and inconsistent development requirement standards in the FDA review process drive product developers to design clinical trials that are unnecessarily expansive. Since World War II, the U.S. has dominated the biomedical industry space. Even 20 years ago, studies suggested that the U.S. share of global biomedical research funding was as high as 70-80 percent. However, from 2007 to 2012, the U.S. share of research and development declined from about 51 percent to 45 percent. While the U.S. continued to lead the world in public sector investment during this time, private sector investment shrank by almost $13 billion and largely reallocated to Asia. This is a chance to step back and look at where we are and how all the different reauthorizations have added up. We need to ensure that legislative efforts over the last 30 years are helping and not getting in the way of having the best treatment and technology available for the right patient at the right time. Our goal is simple but ambitious-- to work in a bipartisan way with members of the HELP Committee to make sure policies support medical innovation and patient access to important medicines and medical technologies. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the copy of the executive summary from the report that Senator Burr and I are releasing today.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I look forward to the remarks from the Senator from North Carolina. As I have said, no Senator has done more on either side of the aisle in this area of helping us think about creative new ways to move treatments, medical devices, and drugs through our safety process into the medicine cabinets and into the hands of patients who desperately need them. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of my remarks at the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing yesterday be printed in the Record.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, today I am reintroducing the NLRB Reform Act with Senator McConnell. Our legislation will change the National Labor Relations Board from an advocate to an umpire. The board was created 80 years ago to act as an impartial umpire in labor disputes that threaten the free flow of commerce. The board's decisions affect about 85 million private-sector workers and 5.7 million private-sector employers. But over time, the board has become an advocate for one interest group over the other--changing positions with each new administration. There are three significant problems the board faces today: First, the biggest problem is partisan advocacy. Today, the majority of the 5-member board is made up of appointees who follow the president's political leanings. President Obama has appointed 3 labor union lawyers to the board. Second, the board has a freewheeling advocate for a general counsel. The board's most recent general counsels have been exceeding their statutory authority and bringing questionable cases that threaten American jobs. Third, it is too slow to resolve disputes. Right now, 145 cases, that is 32 percent of the board's caseload, have been pending for more than a year. Our bill provides three fixes. First, it ends partisan advocacy. A 6-member board of 3 Republicans and 3 Democrats and a majority of 4 will require both sides to find a middle ground. Second, it reins in the general counsel. Businesses and unions would be able to challenge complaints filed by the General Counsel in Federal district court, and they will have greater transparency about the basis and legal reasoning of charges brought by the General Counsel. Third, it encourages timely decisions in two ways. First, either party in a case before the board may appeal to a Federal Court of Appeals if the board fails to reach a decision in their case within one year. Second, funding for the entire NLRB would be reduced by 20 percent if the board is not able to decide 90 percent of its cases within one year over the first 2-year period post-reform. Our bill would offer these solutions without taking away rights or remedies for any employee, business, or union. While the increasing partisanship at the board has occurred in Republican administrations as well as Democrat administrations, it has reached a climax in this administration. Three of President Obama's recent nominees came to the board from a major labor union's leadership. One labor law professor at a major university recently said that she can't even use the most recent textbook, instead she has to resort to handing out NLRB decisions. The decisions are coming out so rapidly and this NLRB is venturing into new territory with efforts at rulemaking. This is no way to maintain a national labor law policy.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, in accordance with rule XXVI, paragraph 2, of the Standing Rules of the Senate, I submit for publication the Rules of Procedure for the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, as unanimously adopted by the committee on January 28, 2015. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the Rules of Procedure be printed in the Record.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, today I am reintroducing the NLRB Reform Act with Senator McConnell. Our legislation will change the National Labor Relations Board from an advocate to an umpire. The board was created 80 years ago to act as an impartial umpire in labor disputes that threaten the free flow of commerce. The board's decisions affect about 85 million private-sector workers and 5.7 million private-sector employers. But over time, the board has become an advocate for one interest group over the other--changing positions with each new administration. There are three significant problems the board faces today: First, the biggest problem is partisan advocacy. Today, the majority of the 5-member board is made up of appointees who follow the president's political leanings. President Obama has appointed 3 labor union lawyers to the board. Second, the board has a freewheeling advocate for a general counsel. The board's most recent general counsels have been exceeding their statutory authority and bringing questionable cases that threaten American jobs. Third, it is too slow to resolve disputes. Right now, 145 cases, that is 32 percent of the board's caseload, have been pending for more than a year. Our bill provides three fixes. First, it ends partisan advocacy. A 6-member board of 3 Republicans and 3 Democrats and a majority of 4 will require both sides to find a middle ground. Second, it reins in the general counsel. Businesses and unions would be able to challenge complaints filed by the General Counsel in Federal district court, and they will have greater transparency about the basis and legal reasoning of charges brought by the General Counsel. Third, it encourages timely decisions in two ways. First, either party in a case before the board may appeal to a Federal Court of Appeals if the board fails to reach a decision in their case within one year. Second, funding for the entire NLRB would be reduced by 20 percent if the board is not able to decide 90 percent of its cases within one year over the first 2-year period post-reform. Our bill would offer these solutions without taking away rights or remedies for any employee, business, or union. While the increasing partisanship at the board has occurred in Republican administrations as well as Democrat administrations, it has reached a climax in this administration. Three of President Obama's recent nominees came to the board from a major labor union's leadership. One labor law professor at a major university recently said that she can't even use the most recent textbook, instead she has to resort to handing out NLRB decisions. The decisions are coming out so rapidly and this NLRB is venturing into new territory with efforts at rulemaking. This is no way to maintain a national labor law policy.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of my remarks from last week's Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing be printed in the Record.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of my remarks at yesterday's Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing be printed in the Record.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, this year marks the centennial year of the establishment of the Johnson City Chamber of Commerce. Since its establishment on July 6, 1915, the chamber has served as the leading voice for local business and community development. The chamber has been instrumental in transforming Johnson City from a small rail-shipping town in the early 1900s to a distinguished medical community over the past several decades and continues to lead the way for new business, trade, and growth in upper East Tennessee. As we see around the country, the Federal Government has been throwing a big, wet blanket of burdensome regulations on businesses and the economy, and chambers of commerce around the Nation have been leaders in advocating to get Washington out of the way and unleash our free enterprise system. The best thing we can do for job creation is to remove these regulations so businesses and entrepreneurs will be able to get our economy moving again. We need to be working to help our job creators put people back to work, and we thank the Johnson City chamber for its work to help Tennessee businesses and employees, and for all it has done to help Johnson City succeed and continue to thrive. With a new Republican majority, we will work with the chamber to advance our shared goals to jump-start our economy and liberate our free market so businesses in Tennessee and around the Nation will have the freedom they need to get our economy going in the right direction.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I am here today to talk about the work of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. It is an important committee. Senator Ted Kennedy, who served for many years as the chairman of the HELP Committee, as we call it, once said that the HELP Committee had 30 percent of the legislative jurisdiction of the Senate. If you think about it, health, education, labor, and pensions--the work we do touches the lives of virtually every American. During the last 2 years, I had the privilege of being the ranking Republican on the committee. The Senator from Iowa, Tom Harkin, was the chairman. I think most people would agree we have as ideologically diverse a committee as any committee in the Senate, but we worked very well together. Where we disagreed, which was often, we simply stated our piece and we voted. But we looked for opportunities to agree, and last Congress, we passed 25 bills through the committee that became law. I am not sure any other committee can say that. I look forward to a similar productive working relationship with the Senator from Washington, Mrs. Murray. She is an experienced legislator, cares deeply about education, health, labor, and pensions, and has proven she knows how to successfully negotiate. We are operating today under a budget agreement that she helped negotiate with Congressman Paul Ryan in the House. I am hopeful Senator Murray and I can work together in the same successful manner that I did with Senator Harkin last Congress. I have now visited with almost all of the members of the committee, Democrat and Republican, and I feel confident we can successfully work together. Here are my goals for the next 2 years. I have the privilege of being the chairman of the committee. The job of the chairman is to set the committee's agenda and work with all members of the committee on that agenda. This Congress, all members, before and during hearings, will have a full chance to discuss and amend legislation related to the agenda. When we report a bill to the floor, there will be an opportunity for a robust amendment process, as Senator McConnell has said. Then, I hope we will go to conference with the House of Representatives on our bill, where there will be further discussion. The challenge in passing legislation is there will have to be 60 votes to move a bill out of the Senate, 60 votes to move to conference on the bill, and 60 votes to pass a bill in the end. To accomplish that takes working with all Senators, including those on the other side of the aisle. I also know if we want a bill to become law, President Obama must sign it. On the major issues we plan to address, we hope to work with him to gain his signature. My first priority as chairman will be to fix No Child Left Behind. The law is over 7 years expired, and we have been working to reauthorize it for 6 years. The law has become unworkable. States are struggling. As a result, we need to act. The Secretary of Education gave a fine speech yesterday saying we need to act on No Child Left Behind. I agree with him. I intend to finish this work in the first few months of this year. Second, we need to reauthorize the Higher Education Act and deregulate higher education. We need to simplify and streamline the regulations that are imposed on 6,000 colleges and universities. One of the committee members is Elizabeth Warren, the Senator from Massachusetts. When she was at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, she said she would like a one-page mortgage application. A multipage mortgage application is not consumer friendly, but a two or three page one provides the consumer with information in a more easily understood manner. I think we could do the same with the application for federal aid, and there is substantial room for bipartisan agreement on this in higher education. Just last week, I introduced legislation with Senators Bennet of Colorado, Booker of New Jersey, King of Maine, Isakson of Georgia and Burr of North Carolina, to make it easier for students to go to college by simplifying the complicated, dreaded FASFA. The FASFA is the 108- question application form that 20 million American families fill out every year. The President talked about it on his visit to Tennessee on Friday. He also thinks it is too long and wants to simplify it. I think higher education is an area on which we can work together in the Senate and with the President. The third thing I would like to do is to modernize the Food and Drug Administration. Now, there is a great opportunity, working with the House and with the President, to take a good look at the FDA, to take a good look at the modern world of medical devices and personalized medicines, and to say: What do we need to do to make it easier to get treatments, medical devices, and cures through the FDA process quickly and effectively while ensuring those treatments, medical devices, and cures are safe so they can help people? This sort of work literally would affect every single American. Fixing No Child Left Behind would affect 50 million schoolchildren, millions of teachers, and 100,000 public schools. Reauthorizing the Higher Education Act and making its regulations simpler would affect 6,000 institutions of all kinds and over 20 million students across this country. If we worked together with the House and the President to reform the FDA, we could affect the lives of every American and people all over the world by the kinds of treatments and devices and cures we bring to market. Those are my top 3 priorities. Of course, we also want to deal with the Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare. On this side of the aisle, we would like to repeal it, and I am sure there will be that vote. I also hope, in the words of the Senator from Wisconsin, Ron Johnson, we move as rapidly and as responsibly as we can to repair the damage that ObamaCare has done. One example to improve ObamaCare would be to redefine full-time work from 30 hours to 40 hours. That would give about 2.5 million low-wage employees in America a pretty big pay raise when they go from 27 hours or 28 hours to 37 or 38 hours, which is what they would be able to do if full-time work were defined, as it is for everything else, as 40 hours. We will have our first hearing on that on a bipartisan bill in the HELP Committee on next Thursday--a week from Thursday. It is a bill introduced by Senators Collins, Murkowski, Donnelly, and Manchin. It is a bipartisan bill. Our committee has a great interest in this bill. The technical jurisdiction is with the Finance Committee. But by agreement with the Finance Committee, we will have this hearing, and then we will send to the Finance Committee our opinions, and it will be up to the Finance Committee how to report the bill, whether to report it, or what version of it to report. It helps, at least on the Republican side of the aisle, that six of the members of the Finance Committee are also members of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Mr. President, let me talk about the first item on the HELP Committee agenda; the plan to fix No Child Left Behind. I see the Senator from Washington on the floor today. She will be speaking next, and I look forward to hearing her comments. I said before she came to the floor how much I look forward to working with her. She is an experienced legislator, proven leader, and has a demonstrated record of results. I hope we are able to work together to pass No Child Left Behind. No Child Left Behind was passed in 2001--a year before I became a Senator. It has become unworkable because Congress and the President failed to reauthorize and amend the law when it expired over 7 years ago. Under the terms of the law, the original provisions continue, but that is what has made it unworkable. Those original provisions, if strictly applied, would label as a failing school almost every one of our 100,000 public schools. This is clearly an unintended result of the those who passed No Child Left Behind. To avoid that unintended result, the U.S. Secretary of Education has granted waivers from the law's provisions to 42 States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. This has created a second unintended consequence. In exchange for the waiver, the Secretary has told those States what their academic standards should be, what accountability systems they should use to set performance standards, how many and what tests shall be used to measure the progress of students, how to evaluate teachers, and how to identify and intervene in low-performing schools. The Department has become, in effect, a national school board. We have been working over the last 6 years to fix the problems of No Child Left Behind. Over the last 6 years, the Senate HELP Committee held two dozen hearings on No Child Left Behind and K-12 education. Twice the committee reported legislation to the Senate floor. In the Congress before last, we reported the Democratic majority's bill. I did not particularly like it, but Senator Kirk, Senator Enzi, and I all voted for it so we could move it to the floor, continue to work on it, and then replace the law. But it did not come to the floor. In the last session of Congress, the committee reported a bill again. This Congress, we need to start with a specific proposal. I will put forward a Chairman's staff discussion draft, consult with all the members of the committee on the proposal, and see if we can ultimately get bipartisan agreement on the proposal. I have already distributed to all the committee members, Republican and Democrat, copies of the Chairman's staff discussion draft. This is not a chairman's bill; it is not a Republican bill; it is the Chairman's staff discussion draft put forward as a place to start discussions. We would like for staff of the various members of the committee to meet every day for the rest of this week and next week. They can discuss and provide feedback on each section of the bill. This will help determine areas where we agree and disagree. Former Chairman George Miller gave some good advice on fixing No Child Left Behind. He said: Let's pass a lean bill to fix No Child Left Behind. Discussions have highlighted there are about eight or nine problems with the law. We probably can agree quickly on about four or five of those problems. There are real differences of opinion on the other three or four areas. I hope we can come to agreement on those issues in the committee, and I am going to do my best to lead that process. I am willing to spend all the time we need over the next several weeks to reach agreement. If we cannot reach agreement in committee, then we should vote on a bill, and bring that bill to the floor. We can amend the bill there, and pass it with 60 votes. Then we can go to conference with the House, and ultimately send a bill to the President for him to sign. I look forward to the process. A week from tomorrow, we will hold a hearing on testing and accountability. Every member of the committee is interested in this topic. Here are the questions to be examined in the hearing: are there too many tests? Who should decide how many and what tests should be administered? We need to answer some questions before we make decision to be put into a bill. In the Chairman's staff discussion draft I have circulated, I have included two options for discussion: current law testing requirements and another option that gives more flexibility to the States to decide what to do on testing. On fixing No Child Left Behind, I plan to set realistic goals, keep the best portions of the law, and restore to States and communities the responsibility to decide whether schools and teachers are succeeding or failing. The Chairman's staff discussion draft relies on and respects the 30 years of work by Governors and chief State school officers to develop higher standards, better tests, stronger accountability systems, and fair and effective teacher and principal evaluation programs that will allow parents and communities to know how children in our country's public schools are performing. I have watched the development of goals, standards, tests, and teacher evaluation systems for a long period of time. I was Governor of Tennessee in 1983 when Secretary Terrell Bell in the Reagan administration issued a report called: ``A Nation at Risk.'' The report said that if a foreign country had created schools in the condition of our nation's schools, we would have considered it an act of war. At this time, Governors all over the country were working to fix state education systems, understanding that while the Federal Government has some involvement in elementary and secondary education, it only pays for about 12 percent of state budgets. Most Americans feel as though they should be in charge of their local schools, not Washington. In 1985 and 1986, every Governor spent an entire year focused on improving schools--the first time in the history of the Governors association that it happened. I was chairman of the National Governors Association that year. The Governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton, was the vice chairman. In 1989, the first President Bush held a national meeting of Governors and established national education goals. Then in 1991-1992, President Bush announced Goals 2000 to help move the nation toward those goals. I was the Education Secretary at that time. States worked together to develop challenging education standards that were voluntary. States discussed teacher evaluation systems that were adopted by states such as Tennessee. In 1984, Tennessee became the first State to pay teachers more for teaching well. Washington did not dictate to Tennessee how to pay its teachers based on performance and other States began to model teacher policies in the same way. Governors began to work together on higher standards, on accountability systems, and on teacher evaluation systems. President George W. Bush brought many of his education ideas as Governor of Texas to Washington. A large portion of those ideas were included in No Child Left Behind, such as the requirement for annual testing to determine student achievement in every school and disaggregated reporting. President Obama created Race to the Top to give States incentives to adopt certain standards and certain tests and certain teacher evaluation systems. Since much of No Child Left Behind became unworkable in his term, Secretary Duncan provided waivers to certain aspects of the law in exchange for telling states and districts what their academic standards should be, what their accountability system should be, how to evaluate teachers, and how to intervene in low- performing schools. These actions have created, in essence, a national school board. We need to reverse the trend toward a national school board and put responsibilities for education back with States and local communities. There is a difference of opinion about the proper balance between the federal and state role in education. I hope we can come to agreement on that balance in the committee. We need to start discussions. We have been working on fixing No Child Left Behind for 6 years, have held multiple hearings, and have reported a bill twice to the floor. 20 of the 22 members of the committee were members last year when we had hearings and reported a bill. I think we need to identify the seven or eight issues to fix in the law, discuss each other's points of view, and see if we can fix No Child Left Behind. I look forward to that process. The chairman's staff's discussion draft, already distributed to committee members today, will be on the committee Web site tonight so that people can see it. We will solicit feedback. Staff will work together over the next few weeks, Senators will talk, and we will see we can turn that discussion draft into a bipartisan bill. If we can, we will mark it up in committee, have amendments, and see if we can get a bipartisan result. We will then bring it to the floor for further discussion and debate. If we can't get a bipartisan bill in committee, we will still bring a bill to the floor knowing we will have to get a bipartisan vote to get it off the floor. I am ready to get started on this process. I have talked to almost all my colleagues on the committee, and I believe they are as well. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record following my remarks a list of the nine problems the chairman's staff discussion draft identifies as the problems we should work on in trying to fix No Child Left Behind. These problems generally come from the discussions we have had over the last 6 years with the House of Representatives, and with the Secretary of Education. Identifying and discussing these problems should help us move along more rapidly. I thank the Presiding Officer.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator from Washington for her remarks. In the spirit of her remarks, I am delighted to have the privilege of working with her in Congress because of her leadership position, her background, her caring for children, and her reputation for getting results. I like all of those things. I neglected to mention that our first hearing will be on the 21st--a week from Wednesday--on testing and accountability. I am working with Senator Murray to see if perhaps we can agree on the witnesses. The purpose of the hearing is to ask the questions she asked: Are these the right tests? Are they redundant tests? Are there too many tests? What are we hearing from across the country? I thank the Senator for her comments. I took careful notes. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask consent that the Senator from Colorado, Mr. Bennet, and I, along with the Senator from Maine, Mr. King, the Senator from New Jersey, Mr. Booker, the Senator from Georgia, Mr. Isakson, and the Senator from North Carolina, Mr. Burr, be able to engage in a colloquy on higher education for the next half hour.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I further ask unanimous consent to use a piece of demonstrative evidence in my remarks.