Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I wanted to take a moment to recognize Mr. Rogers, who is being celebrated with the release of a new movie starring Tom Hanks and a new album recorded largely in Nashville that features new renditions of the songs we loved hearing Mr. Rogers sing. Fred Rogers learned to play piano when he was very young. He studied music composition in college, and he actually wrote the wonderful songs we came to know so well, including ``Won't You Be My Neighbor,'' ``It's Such a Good Feeling,'' and ``Many Ways to Say I Love You.'' Rogers taught us about kindness and love, but his lessons were never trite and they were not in isolation from the world or reality. He talked to our children about assassination with a hand puppet after Robert Kennedy was killed. He talked about racism and about divorce. When teaching children how to deal with scary news on TV, he told the story that as a young boy his ``mother would say to me, `Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.' '' Inevitably with today's media and internet, after any disaster or emergency you will see people comfort one another with that quote from Mr. Rogers and thanking our brave police, firefighters, and first responders. And that belief in the importance of ``helpers'' has inspired countless people to take on the role of being a helper, learning the skills and taking on the important role of saving lives, protecting our community, and rushing in when others are rushing out. Mr. Rogers also shared with all of us a love for learning, the joy of making new friends and trying new experiences. He taught us the power of imagination, the awe of a new book, and the soothing help that a song can provide. I often talk about what happens in Washington as a split-screen television--all the anger and the tweets and the upset on one side of the screen and all the quiet successes and getting along and bills passing and helpful meetings happening on the other side of the screen. As a society, in the media and online, we generally choose to amplify the one side of the screen--the angry and the noisy side. But this month is a good time to amplify the other. My late friend Alex Haley, the author of Roots, used to say ``Find the Good and Praise It.'' That is the best way to celebrate the memory of Fred Rogers--to find the good in one another, just as he did, and to help children find the good in themselves.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I will bet Senator Isakson is a little bit surprised that his farewell address would produce such an eruption of bipartisan speeches, both in the luncheon we just had for nearly 100 Senators--almost everybody was there, Democrats and Republicans--and then the 50 or so Senators who are going to speak on the floor. As I listened carefully to Senator Isakson's own remarks about bipartisanship, it kind of reminded me of the preacher on Sunday talking to the congregation saying: I am not so worried about what you do during this 1 hour during church. It is what you do between now and the next Sunday during the 1 hour in church. I think what Johnny Isakson is saying is that the speeches about bipartisanship are honorable and good, but what he would like to suggest to us is that what we need to do is have a little bit better behavior, follow those speeches a little bit better between now and the next time we have a group of speeches. Johnny learned a long time ago that if all you want to do is take a position or make a speech, you don't need to go to all the trouble to come to the U.S. Senate. You can get a radio program or get a street corner. If you want to come to the U.S. Senate, you are supposed to get something done. I like to say to our constituents in Tennessee that I encourage them to look at Washington, DC, as if it were a split-screen television set. On the one side, you see where most people are watching. You see impeachment, tweets, and Supreme Court controversies. On the other side, where very few probably watch, you see Senators like Johnny Isakson working to pass an opioids bill or Senators working to pay songwriters a fair amount for what they do or Appropriations members working to set a record, as Senator Blunt and Senator Murray have, for example, in terms of funding for biomedical research. All of that is on the side of the television screen where Johnny Isakson has spent most of his 15 years. Senator Murray of Washington, during her remarks, talked very accurately about what happened in 2015 when we were working on fixing No Child Left Behind. That was not easy to do. Working on legislation to try to set rules for elementary and secondary education is like being at a University of Tennessee football game, where you have 100,000 people in the stands, all of whom know what the next play ought to be, and when the coach doesn't call it, they have an opinion about that. Well, everybody has had a little education, and so they had a lot to say about how we would fix No Child Left Behind. Finally, we just ground to a halt over preschool education and what the Federal role ought to be. Senator Murray felt very strongly about it. As she said, she is a former kindergarten teacher. So I stepped back and said: Why don't you and Senator Isakson sit down and see if you can come up with a solution, and if you do, we will take that. They did. They presented it to us. We took it. It went in the bill, and President Obama signed the law called No Child Left Behind and called it a Christmas miracle. The same thing happened on the Workforce Investment Act. Again, Senator Murray and Senator Isakson sat down and worked together to solve a problem that the rest of us couldn't solve. Senator Reed, who just spoke, worked with Johnny on sunscreen; Senator Tester worked with Johnny to make it easier for veterans to get care nearer their home; Senator Casey from Pennsylvania--all these Democrats--working with Senator Isakson on the most important piece of legislation to govern the sale of over-the-counter drugs, which I hope the Senate will adopt either this week or next week. All of that was done not because these Senators gave up their principles or not because they were not good negotiators. I think Johnny would say Senator Murray is as tough a negotiator you will find in the U.S. Senate. But the difference is they also understood that we are here to get results--not just to take a position, not just to make a speech, but to see if we can get a result. That is why Senator Isakson has had so many Senators praise him today, because he understands that it is hard to get here, it is hard to stay here, and while you are here, you might as well try to accomplish something for the country. Johnny Isakson knows it is hard to get here. He started in 1974. He lost his first race. Then he was on the ballot 20 times. He won 18 of those times. He knows it is hard to stay here. A year before he ran for reelection this last time, he announced that he has Parkinson's disease. Johnny Isakson has legislated, as has been mentioned, with his heart. When we worked on skin cancer, he talked about his skin cancer. When we worked on the Opioids Response Act, he talked about his family's loss because of an opioid overdose. And he has not been afraid to stick his neck out. There was a time during the Atlanta Olympics when one of the county commissions passed a bill saying: Gays are not welcome at the Olympics. Senator Isakson said--he was not a Senator then--``The Bill of Rights does not have an asterisk in it. The Bill of Rights is for everyone.'' And as his comments about John Lewis would reflect, Johnny Isakson was willing to speak out for civil rights in the South when not everybody was. I often think that members of the U.S. Senate are generally men and women who once sat in the front row of their first grade class with their hand up, hoping that the teacher would call on them. These are not a reticent bunch of men and women, and I am sure Johnny Isakson sat on the front row of his first grade class. But I am also sure that he raised his hand and he conducted himself and caused all of his classmates to like him and admire him and elect him as their leader, because that has happened all throughout his life. The luncheon we had today was an extraordinary event, a bipartisan occasion. I do not remember anything like it in my time here, just to honor a retiring member of the Senate. And as someone said, listening to the speeches by the handful of Democrats and Republicans who spoke, you would not have known which party Johnny Isakson came from. Our love for Johnny is great, but his greater legacy is something else. What is more important is that he, by his example, has reminded us why we are here, reminded us that if you are a U.S. Senator, it is hard to get here, it is hard to stay here, and while you are here, you might as well try to accomplish something good for the country. That is Johnny Isakson's legacy, and that is something we should be grateful for and remember. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, within a few minutes, we will be voting on the President's nomination for the new U.S. Secretary of Energy, Dan Brouillette. I am here to offer my support for Mr. Brouillette, and I hope my colleagues will vote for him. I am confident that, with his leadership, we will continue to build on the progress we have made under Secretary Rick Perry. Secretary Perry has been a very effective Secretary of Energy during his time here. He has used his executive and political skills, which are considerable in his having been the Governor of Texas longer than anybody and in his having been involved in politics for a while, to take charge of this very important Department and lead it in a very strong way. For example, one of the best kept secrets in Washington, DC, is that over the last 5 years, we have had a record level of funding for supercomputing, which has allowed the United States to be the first in the world in competition with China and Japan and other countries. We have had significant increases in funding for National Laboratories--a 42-percent increase over 5 years. That is record funding. Secretary Perry has also helped to save taxpayers' dollars by having made sure the huge construction projects we have in some of the Department of Energy's facilities have been brought under control. So Mr. Brouillette, should he be confirmed by the Senate tonight, will be following a very distinguished Secretary in Rick Perry. I look forward to working with Mr. Brouillette. I and Senator Feinstein, of California, are the chairman and ranking member of the Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development. We have worked very well together over the last, nearly, 10 years in supporting the Department both under the Obama administration and under the Trump administration. We have worked in a bipartisan way and have had strong support from our colleagues, which has been made possible by excellent Secretaries of Energy. I believe Mr. Brouillette will be yet another one of them. He knows the Department well, as he has been the Deputy Secretary since 2017. In my conversations with laboratory directors and others across the country, they feel like he knows them well. I know that this is true in Tennessee. For example, at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is our largest science and energy laboratory, Mr. Brouillette has been crucial in the building of the world's fastest supercomputer, Frontier, which is housed in Oak Ridge. As Senator Feinstein and I have insisted, he has also been crucial in making sure that we stay on time and on budget in the building of a huge uranium processing facility at Oak Ridge, which has been the largest Federal construction project in our State since World War II, when the Manhattan Project was created there. Mr. Brouillette has visited the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He understands the important work being done there, both at the laboratory and at the Y-12 uranium facility. He understands the importance of the environmental cleanup being done there and at Hanford in Washington State and other places. In short, I think we are very fortunate to have someone of his caliber and his experience nominated to head one of our most important Departments--the Department of Energy. I look forward as chairman of his appropriations subcommittee, should he be confirmed, to working with him during this appropriations process, which we hope is about complete, and during the next one, which will be coming up soon. I am here simply to say that I support Mr. Brouillette. I am glad the President nominated him. I hope he gets a big vote in a few minutes. I look forward to working with him. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to start the vote at this time.

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, reserving the right to object--and I will object--I am disappointed that my colleagues are offering such a short-term, piecemeal approach toward resolving the problems of our historically Black colleges and minority-serving institutions, when I have repeatedly offered a much better idea, and they have blocked it. I will offer it again in just a moment. I know the Senator from North Carolina is here to speak on the same subject. Compared to what I have offered, they are offering a short-term, 2- year, budget gimmick-supported idea that will have a difficult time passing the Senate. What I have offered and they have blocked is permanent funding of historically Black colleges and minority-serving institutions--permanent funding--at the level of $255 million a year, properly funded. That is No. 1. There is assurance from the U.S. Department of Education that every single historically Black institution--there are 97 of them--have enough funding to go until next October. Even the Senate ought to be able to do its job in that period of time. At the same time, I have offered the Alexander-Jones bill offered by the distinguished Senator from Alabama, which would simplify the Federal aid application form called the FAFSA for 8 million minority students, among 20 million families in this country. Why would anybody want to take a short-term, piecemeal approach that is based on a budget gimmick that couldn't pass the Senate compared with permanent funding for historically Black colleges and a bipartisan proposal to change the hated, dreaded FAFSA by reducing the number of questions you have to answer from 108 questions to between 18 and 30? This document is the single biggest impediment to minority students going to college in America today, and the Democrats are blocking the passage of a bipartisan bill. I object.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I see the Senator from Ohio. I intend to offer my alternative to which, I gather, someone plans to object. I will go ahead and do that unless he wants to speak at this point.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. What I will do is make my offer quickly, and then I will make my speech following the objection. Let me summarize, to begin with, that what has just happened is I have objected to a short-term, piecemeal extension of funding for historically Black colleges and minority-serving institutions because it is a bill that, I think, will have great difficulty passing the Senate because of the way it is not properly funded. What I am about to offer, and which I will speak on after the objection is made, is permanent funding for historically Black colleges at the level of $255 million a year--permanent funding--as opposed to short-term, piecemeal funding as part of a package of higher education legislation that has been prepared and cosponsored by 29 Senators--more Democrats than Republicans--with the principal other provision being reducing the questions in the FAFSA, the Federal aid application form, from 108 to between 18 and 30. This is a bill introduced by the Senator from Alabama, Mr. Jones, and I, which our Senate committee has been working on for 5 years. It is the single most important impediment to keeping minority students from going to college in our State--and I think most States, according to our former Governor--and it would help 8 million minority students who fill out this complicated form every year. I will speak more to that in just a minute, but that is what I am about to ask my friends on the other side to permit me to pass. Madam President, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be discharged from further consideration of S. 2557--the bill I just described, the permanent funding of historically Black colleges and the simplification of the FAFSA and other measures--and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I see the Senator from Maryland, but I would like to take a few minutes to describe the proposal to which Senator Brown just objected. I appreciate the Senator from Ohio in his saying that he hopes that Senator Murray and I can do what we usually do, which is to take issues within our Education Committee and work them out and present them to the Senate as a whole, but that is not the way this came up. This came up suddenly, and no one talked to me about it. Here we are when, for 5 years, we have been in the midst of reauthorizing higher education. Permanently funding historically Black colleges has always been an important part of that discussion when suddenly here comes this bill as if there were an emergency. What I heard my friend from Ohio say is that he objects to my proposal as a microproposal, as a small proposal, but he is suggesting an even smaller proposal. He is suggesting a 2-year fix that, in my opinion, can't pass the Senate because of the way it is funded. Plus, why would you want a 2-year fix when you have the chairman of the Education Committee working for the permanent funding of historically Black colleges and minority-serving institutions? This is what I have offered on the floor, and that is what has just now been objected to by the Democrats. At the same time, he mentioned a number of bills that he thought needed some changes. The request I made that was objected to also included simplifying FAFSA, which is the Federal aid application form that 20 million students fill out every year. Let's put a human face on that. The President of Southwest Tennessee Community College in Memphis, which is a largely minority institution in terms of its students--I see my colleague from Tennessee is presiding today, and she knows this institution well--told me they lose 1,500 students every semester because of the complexity of this form. There are 108 questions. A bipartisan working group, including Senator Bennet, of Colorado, a Democrat; Senator Jones, of Alabama, a Democrat; Senator King, of Maine, an Independent; and many others on our side, we have reduced these 108 questions to between 18 and 30. It has the support of the student aid administrators from across the country. It has the support of college presidents who see their students turned away because their parents and their grandparents see this as too complex. Former Governor of Tennessee Bill Haslam led our legislature to create 2 free years of college tuition in Tennessee, but first you have to fill this out. Governor Haslam has told me the single biggest impediment to low-income Tennesseans getting those 2 years of free education is the complexity of that form. Why would the Senator object to doing it when we have been working on it for 5 years and have a bipartisan bill to get it done? Why don't we pass it? Why don't we make it the law? What do we say to those 1,500 students who don't get to go to college because of this? At the same time, at the other end of our State, the president of East Tennessee State University tells me that 70 percent of his student body is subjected to verification. The way this system works is you have to give some information to the IRS and some information to the Department of Education, and if you make one little mistake, they jerk your Pell grant while they figure out what the problem is. Seventy percent of the students were subjected to that verification, and some of them lost their scholarships while that happened. That is totally unnecessary. People in Tennessee ask me: If that is true, why don't you pass it? That is the question I am asking my friends because I just asked the Senate to pass it, and the Senator objected. Why don't we pass it? Why don't we make it the law? It is not as if I just showed up one day with this. We have been all the way through our process of hearings. It has been through working groups of Democratic and Republican Senators. It ought to be done. There is no need for us to come to the floor and say we need to pass a short-term, 2-year fix for historically Black colleges when, at the same time, you could have permanent funding for historically Black colleges and could fix the Federal aid application form that 8 million minority students fill out every year--8 million students. What are the Senators going to say to them about why they are not going to make it easier for them to go to college when we are here, arguing about a short-term, piecemeal fix for historically Black colleges? In a way, I am glad we are having this discussion because I have been trying to bring this to the attention of my colleagues and if you go home and talk to the families, they will tell you that 20 million fill this out every year. In Tennessee, it is 400,000. And college aid administrators will tell you that. I will give another example. I was in West Tennessee a couple of weeks ago at an event that was sponsored by the Ayers family. For 20 years, they have given money to help rural kids succeed in college. What the Ayers have discovered is that instead of spending their money on scholarships, they are spending it on counselors because counselors help students more than the money does. They have found there are lots of scholarships, but it is the counselors who make the difference. Yet what do the counselors spend their time doing? They help students answer these unnecessary questions. So we are blocking and impeding the very students the Senator is claiming he wants to help when he objects to this bill I offered today. I want to make it clear that I will come to the floor every day, if I need to, and offer legislation for the permanent funding of historically Black colleges and minority-serving institutions, which will be fully paid for, and a bipartisan proposal to simplify the FAFSA from 108 questions to 18 to 30 questions, which is estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to allow for 250,000 new American students to receive Pell grants as a result of the simplicity of what we have done. I am disappointed that we haven't come to a bipartisan result on that. My friends who are here today know very well that this is the way I like to work. I believe it is hard to get to the U.S. Senate, that it is hard to stay here, and that while you are here, you might as well try to accomplish something. That is what I want to do. I hope we can do it on higher education. When we accomplish it, I hope we can say we have agreed on the permanent funding for historically Black colleges and that we have elevated the importance of this complicated FAFSA to the attention of Senators on both sides of the aisle so that we say: Let's get this done. I don't want to go home any longer and have people ask me: Why don't you pass that? Why do I have to give the same information to two different parts of the Federal Government? Why are you discouraging the very low-income students who ought to be going to college? I am disappointed in this result today, and I intend to continue to work for the permanent funding of historically Black colleges. My last sentence will be this: I want all of the presidents of the 97 institutions to know that the U.S. Department of Education has said there is full Federal funding for historically Black colleges and minority-serving institutions for another year. Another year ought to be plenty of time for us to reject this short-term fix and to adopt a permanent solution as well as to simplify the FAFSA, have short-term Pell grants, and take up a variety of other proposals that ought to be a part of the Higher Education Act. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I have come to the floor to talk about the wind production tax credit. This is a subject that I've talked about before. The Senator from Pennsylvania, Mr. Toomey, will, I believe, come soon to talk on the same subject. The wind production tax credit is so generous with taxpayers' money that wind developers can actually give away their electricity for free and still make a profit. Let me say that again. I am talking today about the wind production tax credit, which is a tax subsidy--taxpayer dollars--given to wind developers, and it is so generous that the developers can actually, in some cases, give away their electricity for free and still make a profit. That wind production tax credit has been extended 11 times. It has been on the books for more than 25 years. This was a tax credit that was supposed to jump-start a new industry--that's 25 years of jump- starting. Four years ago, Congress agreed to end it. We thought that was it. In doing so, Congress asked taxpayers to provide another $24 billion, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, to extend the wind production tax credit--$24 billion more in subsidies for another 5 years and gradually phase out the credit. That is what we thought we did 4 years ago. We would spend $24 billion more in exchange for phasing out and ending the wind production tax credit. This is on top of the nearly $10 billion taxpayers paid between 2008 and 2015 and the billions more the taxpayers have paid since the wind production tax credit was created in 1992. That was supposed to be the end of the wind production tax credit 4 years ago. Remember, it was supposed to jump-start a new industry. President Obama's Energy Secretary said years ago that wind is already a mature industry. That was during the Obama administration. Now some Members of Congress are trying to break the agreement of 4 years ago to end the wind production tax credit. Earlier this summer, the House Ways and Means Committee reported legislation that extends that credit through the end of 2020. This huge amount of money is not the only thing wrong with that proposal. First, the wind production tax credit undercuts reliable electricity like nuclear power. This is called negative pricing, which is when wind developers have such a big subsidy that they can give away their electricity and still make money. If you are a wind developer, for every kilowatt hour of electricity one of these 40-story-high wind structures produces, the taxpayers will pay you up to 2.3 cents, which in some markets is more than the cost of the wholesale value of each kilowatt hour of electricity. Negative pricing such as this distorts the marketplace. It puts at risk more reliable forms of energy such as nuclear power, which produces 60 percent of all the carbon-free electricity in the United States. In contrast, wind produces about 19 percent of all the carbon-free electricity in the United States. I think it is important to produce carbon-free electricity. I believe climate change is a problem and that humans are a cause of the problem. Why would we undercut the production of nuclear power--which is 60 percent of our carbon-free electricity--by the negative pricing of this big, expensive wind production tax credit? With nuclear power available, expecting a country the size of the United States to operate on windmills is the energy equivalent of going to war in sail boats. Second, in my view, windmills destroy the environment rather than save it. You could run these 40-story structures from Georgia to Maine to produce electricity, scarring the entire eastern landscape or you could produce the same amount of electricity with eight nuclear power plants. If you did run these giant structures from Georgia to Maine, you would still need natural gas or nuclear power to produce electricity when the wind is not blowing, which is most of the time. There is a much better way to spend the dollars that are available for clean energy. Instead of subsidizing wind developers, the United States could use that money to double the nearly $6.6 billion that the Federal Government spends on basic energy research to make truly bold breakthroughs that will help us provide cleaner, cheaper energy and raise family incomes. Earlier this year, I came to the Senate floor and called for a New Manhattan Project for Clean Energy, a 5-year project with 10 grand challenges that will use American research and technology to put our country and the world firmly on a path toward cleaner, cheaper energy. Specifically, I encouraged funding breakthroughs in advanced nuclear reactors, natural gas, carbon capture, better batteries, greener buildings, electric vehicles, cheaper solar, fusion, advanced computing, and doubling energy research funding. All of that is a better use of funding than more funding for wind developers, which is so generous that in some cases they can give away their electricity and still make a profit. Let wind energy go where we said it should go in 2015; let it go unsubsidized into the free market. That is where we thought we sent it 4 years ago, and that is where it should go. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I am reserving the right to object. I have a better idea, which I am going to offer to the Senate once again. It is permanent funding for historically Black colleges at the level of $255 million a year. The distinguished Senator from Pennsylvania has stated he doesn't want a piecemeal bill. He wants a more comprehensive bill. I have offered such a bill and introduced it in the Senate. I will describe it in a few moments when I ask unanimous consent to pass it, and it will include not a 2-year short-term fix based upon a budget gimmick, which will have difficulty passing the Senate, but permanent funding of historically Black colleges and minority-serving institutions. It will include simplification of the FAFSA, the form that 8 million minority students fill out every year, which in our State is the biggest obstacle to minority students having an opportunity for higher education and a variety of other bipartisan proposals. I am ready to pass a comprehensive bill. I offered one before. It was blocked by my Democratic friends. I am going to offer it again in a minute, and we will see if they agree to it, but I don't think we should pass a piecemeal bill. I agree with the Senator from Pennsylvania. I think we should be more comprehensive, and not only that, we should do permanent funding of historically Black colleges. The last point I will make before I object is that the U.S. Department of Education has written all the presidents of the historically Black and minority-serving institutions and said there is sufficient funding in the Federal Government for the rest of the year-- fiscal year--until October 1 of next year. So while we need to finish our work, there is no crisis at the moment, so let's do the job right. I will offer, in just a moment, the way to do that, which is permanent funding of historically Black colleges and minority-serving institutions. I object.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, for the convenience of the Senator from Pennsylvania, I am going to offer my unanimous consent agreement at the beginning of my remarks, and then if he wishes to stay, he can, but if he has another place to go in his schedule, he may do that. Let me just say that the provision I am going to--let me preface it in this way. I know very well the value of historically Black colleges. One of my favorite stories is the story that the late author, Alex Haley, the author of ``Roots'' and ``The Autobiography of Malcolm X''-- I suppose the two best selling books ever on the history of the African American--used to tell about his father, Simon P. Haley, who was wasted as a child. That was the word they used. He was allowed to go to college, and he went to North Carolina A&T where he was ready to drop out. He came back, got a summer job on a Pullman train to Chicago, and a man talked to him at night asking him for a glass of warm milk. He got the glass of warm milk and thought nothing more about it. He went back to North Carolina A&T, a historically Black college. The principal called him in. He thought he was in real trouble, as the president of the college called him in. Simon P. Haley thought he was in real trouble. The President of the college said that the man on the train had sent enough money for Simon P. Haley to graduate--to pay his tuition to graduate from college. So Alex Haley wrote for the Reader's Digest the story of the man on the train who helped his father. That father went to Cornell and became the first Black graduate of Cornell's agricultural college. He came back to Lane College, one of the six historically Black colleges in Tennessee, where he taught and raised a son, who is a lawyer, later Ambassador to Gambia; two daughters, one a teacher; he raised another son, an architect; and then he raised a son he thought wouldn't amount to anything who joined the Coast Guard and ended up writing a Pulitzer Prize-winning book, ``Roots,'' and ``The Autobiography of Malcolm X.'' I know the value of Lane College, Fisk University, Tennessee State University, Lemoyne-Owen College, Meharry Medical College, and America Baptist College, and I want to help them. The request I am going to make is that the Senate pass a small package of bills that are sponsored by Democrats and Republicans, 29 Senators--17 Democrats and 12 Republicans. The first provision would be permanent funding. That is $255 million every year permanently for historically Black colleges and minority-serving institutions. A second provision--I ask consent to use this document on the Senate floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. That is the FAFSA. This is the document that 20 million Americans fill out every year. We know how to reduce it. It is the biggest impediment to minority students going to college today. We are ready to pass it. Eight million minority students fill this out. The president of the Southwest Community College from Memphis tells me he loses 1,500 students a semester because of the complexity of that. There are other provisions in this package, which include the Portman-Kaine provision for short-term Pell grants sponsored by about 20 Senators, many of them Democrats; the provision for Pell grants for prisoners who are eligible for parole; an increase in the number of Pell grants; an increase in the amount of Pell grants. All of that is in this package that I have offered, but it starts with permanent funding for historically black colleges. Since there is time until October 1 of next year, the Department of Education has said that there is plenty of Federal funding for all of those institutions. There is no reason we can't agree to my package today, send it over to the House of Representatives, send it to the President, and let all of these institutions know they don't have to worry about funding permanently instead of just for 2 years. So, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be discharged from further consideration of S. 2557 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I know this Senate is a deliberative body, but we have been working on higher education for 5 years in our committee, and suddenly, out of the blue, comes a bill out of the House which says that we have an emergency in one provision of the Higher Education Act; don't take it through committee. That is the way we usually do things. The distinguished Senator from Louisiana is a member of this committee, and the Senator from Pennsylvania is a valued member of the committee. We have a pretty good reputation for working together, despite our differences, in fixing No Child Left Behind, 21st Century Cures, opioid legislation. Healthcare is a contentious issue, but by a vote of 20 to 3, we brought out a bill to lower healthcare costs. Yet the suggestion is that we take this bill to the Senate floor without any consideration by the committee. That is not the way we usually do things. Let me reemphasize that the U.S. Department of Education has told every one of the historically Black colleges and minority-serving institutions that there is sufficient Federal funding between now and October 1 of next year. There is no reason to cut anybody's pay and no reason to stop planning. That is what the Federal Government has told those institutions. That is plenty of time for us to take a provision-- such as the one I have proposed or such as the one that the distinguished Senator from Pennsylvania has proposed--through our committee and recommend to the full Senate what we ought to do. Let's not minimize what else there is to do. I mean, we literally have been working for 5 years on simplifying this FAFSA. There are 8 million minority students who fill it out every year. I think we should be concerned about the 300,000 students who attend historically Black colleges and universities. Many of them fill this out. I am told by the former Governor of Tennessee that filling out this complicated form is the single biggest impediment for low-income students having an opportunity to go to college because their families think it is too complicated. Well, we know what to do about this. Senator Bennet, the Democratic Senator from Colorado, and I began working on this 5 years ago. Senator Murray, the Democratic Senator from Washington, and I recommended that the Senate pass legislation getting rid of 22 questions that were double reporting. You have to tell the IRS some facts, and you have to tell the Department of Education the same facts, and then they come in the middle of the semester and try to catch you having one answer here and another answer there. So at East Tennessee State University, 70 percent of the student body has their Pell grant verified, and some of them lose their Federal funding while they check to see if the information they had to give to two Federal agencies is different. We passed the Senate with that--Senator Murray and I did that last year. So why should we wait on this? I don't think we should wait on permanent funding for historically Black colleges, but why hold this hostage to that? I am ready to move ahead on permanent funding for historically Black colleges. I am ready to move ahead on simplifying the FAFSA for 8 million students who fill this out every year. I am ready to move ahead on short-term Pell grants. I have been working with the Senator from Washington on this and with other Members of the Senate. I think we are moving to a consensus. We have time to do this right. Let's take it through committee and send back to the House of Representatives a permanent solution. I think it is very important that we make clear to all of the presidents and all of the students at historically Black colleges and minority-serving institutions, No. 1, you have a year of funding ahead of you; No. 2, you have a proposal by the chairman of the Education Committee that will permanently fund what you are doing; and No. 3, our Democratic friends are asking that the Senate pass short-term funding that will create another funding cliff within a matter of months and that is funded by a budget gimmick that will never pass muster in the Senate. That is not going to happen. So we need to work together as we normally do and come to a conclusion on the Higher Education Act, including permanent funding of historically Black colleges and minority institutions. I am ready to keep doing that. But I am also ready to encourage the passage not only of the provisions that I have introduced and that I asked for permission to pass today, which the Senator objected to, but other provisions that might be included. I think 5 years is long enough to work on the Higher Education Act. I am coming to the conclusion we have time to do it, and I look forward to saying to our six historically Black colleges in Tennessee that the result of our hard work and debate and discussion has been permanent funding, so you don't have to worry about Federal funding.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I will yield.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I want to thank the Senator from Pennsylvania for coming to the floor today on an issue I know he cares about. I thank the Senator from North Carolina. We are accustomed to working together. We are accustomed to getting results, and I want to get a result on this. I agree with both Senators in this sense: I think it is time to send a signal to historically Black colleges and minority-serving institutions that they don't have to worry about funding for the future. For the next year, the Department of Education has told them: You have the money for the next year. It shouldn't take us a year to finish our work. So I look forward to sitting down with the Senator from North Carolina and the Senator from Pennsylvania and working out their differences on the provisions that we have. We have the basis for a very good higher education bill--the permanent funding for historically Black colleges, the simplification of the FAFSA, which affects 20 million families every year. We have broad bipartisan consensus on simplifying how you pay back student loans. There are nine different ways now. We could reduce that to two. That affects 43 million families. The short-term Pell grants make a big difference. So we have a number of provisions, and I am working well, as I always do, with the Senator from Washington, Mrs. Murray. I would like to bring this to a conclusion as rapidly as we can. I think this debate has been useful to do that. I look forward to continuing it. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, reserving the right to object. I thank the distinguished Senator from Maryland for giving me this opportunity to present the right way to help historically Black colleges and universities, and I intend to do that when he is finished speaking about this and explain what we can do together. Unfortunately, the bill he proposes is a shortcut the House took, which has no way to pass the Senate. It is based upon a budget gimmick and uses a method of funding that many Senators object to. It creates a new funding cliff within 23 months, and it is unnecessary because the Secretary of Education has written all of the heads of historically Black colleges and universities to say that there are sufficient funds until next September so there is no funding problem. This gives me an opportunity--which I will do in a just a moment--to suggest the right way to do it. The right way to do it is to do permanent funding of historically Black colleges and universities in a package of bills I have introduced. That package includes other legislation--which I will discuss when my time comes--which include simplifying the FAFSA. It is a bill Senator Jones and I have introduced which will help 20 million families, including almost every student at a historically Black college or minority-serving institution. The bill package also includes grants for prisoners and short-term Pell grants, and it simplifies the student aid letters. This package is ready. It includes short-term Pell grants, as I mentioned. This package has been put together by a number of Democratic and Republican Senators. It is ready to pass the Senate and ready for the President to sign it. It permanently funds Black colleges and universities instead of this shortcut. In a moment, I will talk more about that, but in the meantime, I object.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, why would we hold hostage bipartisan legislation that would simplify the FAFSA from 108 questions to 18 to 30--the Federal aid that 20 million families fill out every year in this country--unnecessarily? Why are we holding that hostage? Why are we holding hostage the legislation introduced by Senator Portman and Senator Kaine and cosponsored by Cardin, Gillibrand, Hassan, Klobuchar, Stabenow, Baldwin, Brown--these are all Democrats--here is a Republican, Capito, Coons, Ernst, Jones, Moran, Shaheen, Sinema, Smith, Wicker, and Braun. This is legislation we all agree on--or at least that many agree on-- on short-term Pell grants. Then we have Senators Grassley, Smith, Cassidy, Ernst, Hassan, Jones, Klobuchar, Manchin, and Rubio, who would like to simplify the Federal aid letters so you don't get a letter in the mail, if you are living in Maryland or Tennessee, and think you have a grant you don't have to pay back, when in fact it is a loan you do have to pay back. We also agree on increasing the maximum Pell grant. We also agree on how to pay for it. We also agree on permanent funding for the historically Black colleges and institutions in a way that the Budget Committee can easily approve, and it can pass the Senate. If we can agree on all that and it all helps students at historically Black colleges and minority-serving institutions, then why don't we pass it? Why don't we do that? Why do we come up with a short-term, gimmick-supported, House-passed bill that sets up a new cliff? Why don't we take a permanent funding, with a Budget Committee-approved way of paying for it, and do some other things that we have been working on for 5 years in a bipartisan way? This is not an Alexander proposal. This is a package of proposals by 29 Senators--17 Democrats and 12 Republicans. It is ready to pass the Senate; it is ready to be worked on with the House of Representatives; and it is ready to be signed by the President of the United States. Let me add to this. The Secretary of Education, and people seem to ignore this, has written all the presidents of the historically Black colleges and said there is enough money in the bank to pay for all their funding until next September. So we have nearly a year to do this the right way instead of the wrong way. We are not on vacation. I know everybody is talking about impeachment, but we have lots of students around this country who would like to have a simpler way to go to college. We have lots of historically Black institutions and minority- serving institutions that would like to have a permanent method of funding. We have lots of employers and potential employees who want a short-term Pell grant. Simplifying FAFSA would actually add, according to the Congressional Budget Office, 250,000 Pell grants, and it would increase the number of Americans who are eligible for the maximum Pell grant. All that is ready to go. All that is ready to go so why don't we do that instead? I thank the Senator from Maryland for giving me an opportunity and a reason to bring up my package of bills with permanent funding of the historically Black colleges and universities paid for, not by a gimmick, but by a Budget Committee-approved method that President Trump and President Obama both had in their budgets.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, we have been working for 5 years, for example, on simplifying the Federal aid form that students fill out to go to college--5 years. We have bipartisan support for it in the Senate and in the House. We have families who, in my State, will be discouraged from going to college because of this complex form. Why don't we pass it? It is important to fund historically Black colleges; that is true. They have funding for another year. So why don't we add to that the simplifying of the FAFSA form, which, I would imagine, 95 percent of the students in historically Black colleges have to fill out every year? In addition to that, they have this verification process that they go through during which somebody catches them telling the IRS one thing and the Department of Education another so that they jerk their aid. They think that is important. I have the president of a community college in Memphis who tells me he loses 1,500 students a year because of the burdensome nature of the application. Former Governor Bill Haslam, of Tennessee--our State--has the highest percentage of students who fill out the FAFSA, which is the Federal aid form for grants and loans. He says the single biggest impediment toward there being free tuition for 2 years of college in our State is the complex FAFSA. I don't think it is unreasonable to say, while we help students at historically Black colleges, that we help those same students by simplifying their FAFSAs. Why don't we give them the short-term Pell grant that Senator Kaine and Senator Portman and a dozen other Senators, including the Senator from Maryland, have introduced? Why don't we increase the size of the Pell grant in a way that we agree in a bipartisan way? In other words, we don't have to discuss something until we find something we can't agree on. Why don't we take the things we do agree on, which are considered in the package that the Senator just objected to, and pass them? There are 29 Senators--more Democrats than Republicans--who have formed these bills. If we can add to that other pieces of legislation, let's do it. Yet let's take the permanent funding for historically Black colleges--the simplification of the FAFSA, the short-term Pell grants, and the Pell grants for prisoners--and pass that. As I said, we are not on vacation. We should be able to do this in the next few weeks or in the next few months. I mean, how long does it take just to pass something we already agree on? It shouldn't take us very long. I am disappointed that the Senator has objected. I hope to keep coming to the floor and asking for the Senate to approve it. More importantly, I hope to keep working with the distinguished Senator from Washington State on our Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. We have often been able to work these matters out even when they are contentious and offered to the Senate a bipartisan package. I hope we can do that. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, at 12:15 p.m., the Senate will vote on a Democratic proposal to overturn a Trump administration guidance from the Department of Health and Human Services that would lower insurance rates all across America. Seems like a strange thing to do, but to justify that, the Democrats have come up with a scary fairytale that has no basis in truth, that suggests that somehow this effort to lower insurance rates would jeopardize the protection for preexisting conditions that all Americans have according to the law. Of course, that can't happen because the law doesn't permit it. So I want to talk about that a little bit today. What the Senate Democrats want to overturn is a Trump administration guidance regarding what is called a section 1332 waiver. Now, a 1332 waiver was part of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 that Democrats passed. No Republican voted for it. So you had the Affordable Care Act, which says, among other things, that every American who has a preexisting health condition is protected. That means that if I have a preexisting health condition, and I want to buy insurance, I have a right to buy it. I can't be charged any more for it because of my preexisting health condition, and I am covered if I get sick. That is what we mean by protection for preexisting conditions. That is in the Federal law. No American can be denied that protection. In the very same law, the Affordable Care Act, Democrats wrote another provision to give States more flexibility in how they spend ObamaCare money with the hope that they might be able to lower rates for Americans who have health insurance. That would be a good thing because in Tennessee, and across the country, really, since ObamaCare passed, rates have gone up 163 percent. Those rate increases especially hurt people who make a little bit more than $50,000--say a songwriter in Nashville or a farmer like Marty, whom I ran into in the Chick-fil-A outside Nashville, who said: I can't afford health insurance. I have to pay $15,000 or $20,000 because I don't get any ObamaCare subsidy. States are trying to take advantage of this provision of the Affordable Care Act--ObamaCare--that says States may have some flexibility in how they spend Obamacare money. The law also says states cannot jeopardize preexisting conditions protections for anybody. Now, the best evidence that what we are talking about is a scary fairytale is that 12 States already have used a 1332 waiver. Remember, this is the provision in the Federal law that was designed to give States more flexibility in how they spend Federal dollars. Twelve States have already used that provision in law to lower rates. There are 12 waivers from States that have been approved by the Trump administration, and premiums have gone down in all 12 States as a result of this action. This is what the Democrats want to stop. They want to stop States from using this provision which the Democrats invented in 2010 to lower insurance rates. That is why it is a scary fairytale that only on Halloween anybody could imagine could come up with. Now, 7 of the 12 waivers that were approved by the Trump administration were under an Obama definition of Section 1332, and 5 have been approved since the new guidance that is the subject of the vote today. For any State to get a 1332 waiver, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has to approve it. Seema Verma is the Administrator of that agency. She has made it very clear, No. 1, that none of the 12 waivers that have been approved jeopardize preexisting health condition protections for anybody. In other words, the waivers did lower rates for some people, but they didn't hurt anyone's ability to buy insurance who had a preexisting condition. Just because it helped some people didn't mean it hurt other people. Seema Verma went on to say very clearly: To be very clear, the 2018 guidance-- The one we are talking about today-- does nothing to erode ObamaCare's preexisting condition provisions, which cannot be waived under Section 1332. In other words, the law the Democrats wrote in 2010 does not allow States to waive the preexisting condition. Seema Verma goes on to say: ``Section 1332 does not permit States to waive Public Health Services Act requirements such as guaranteed availability and renewability of health insurance, the prohibition on using health status to vary premiums, and the prohibition on preexisting conditions exclusions. Furthermore, a section 1332 waiver cannot be approved that might otherwise undermine these requirements. This administration stands committed to protecting people with preexisting conditions.'' The bottom line is, 12 States have already used section 1332 waivers to reduce premiums. More States want to come up with other ideas to do the same. In none of the 12 States were preexisting condition protections jeopardized for one single person. Seema Verma says it cannot be, under the law, and if any of the other States have some sort of new proposal--she wouldn't approve it. There is no doubt there is a good reason why so many Governors may want 1332 waivers. In fact, many of the States that have already been granted waivers have Democratic Senators as well as Democratic Governors. Many States are trying to reduce health insurance rates because ObamaCare has driven those rates so high. In the four bipartisan Health Committee hearings I chaired in September of 2017, virtually, every witness told our committee that the process of applying for a 1332 waiver was too cumbersome, too inflexible, and expensive for States to use. In the fall of 2017, provisions to improve that waiver application process were included in bipartisan legislation that was proposed by 12 Republican Senators and 12 Democratic Senators. At one point, the distinguished Senator from New York, the minority leader, Senator Schumer, said it was such good policy that every Democrat ought to vote for it. In 2018, Senate Democrats blocked that bipartisan legislation, which would have, by the way, lowered insurance premiums by 40 percent over 3 years, and it became clear Democrats were refusing to change even a word of ObamaCare. I encouraged Secretary Azar and the administration to take a look at the section 1332 waiver and, within the current law, do whatever they could to give States more flexibility. Fourteen Governors wrote the Secretary seeking help to make 1332 waivers work so they could start lowering premiums in their State. In October of 2018, the Trump administration issued new guidance with much needed flexibility so States can use 1332 waivers. Democrats who vote at 12:15 to overturn this guidance are taking a tool away from their States, a tool that many States want, to lower health insurance rates and, in every single case, without jeopardizing protection for preexisting conditions. That was the whole purpose of the 1332 waiver. That is why Democrats put it in the Affordable Care Act. That is why 13 States have approved those waivers and 12 have been approved just for one type of solution called reinsurance. That is when States take some money and put it in a reinsurance pool. A State can take the sickest people in that State and put them there. When the sickest people are out of the other pool, it lowers rates for the people who are left. States can do reinsurance with Obamacare money. States lower health insurance rates for these people in the pool. You make sure the people who are sickest have insurance, and you don't take away anyone's right to buy insurance who has a preexisting condition. In each of the States, health insurance premiums have gone down as much as 43 percent in some cases. North Dakota has seen the average ObamaCare premium decrease 20 percent; Colorado, 16 percent; Delaware, 13 percent; Montana, 8 percent; Rhode Island, 6 percent. You want to overturn a guidance that attempts to give States more of that same kind of flexibility to lower insurance premiums without affecting the ability of any American to buy insurance with preexisting condition protections? There is no reason States shouldn't be able to have that flexibility. Let me give you an example of what this guidance that we are talking about today would mean. In 2017, Iowa submitted a waiver application that would have restructured the premium subsidies. That is the money Iowa gets from Washington under ObamaCare. According to Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, Iowa's waiver would have given 18,000 to 22,000 Iowans access to more affordable insurance. These were Iowans who made too much to qualify for Federal subsidies and were left behind by ObamaCare's skyrocketing profits. This might be a farmer in Iowa making $55,000 a year and, with no subsidy, paying $15,000 or $20,000 for an insurance policy. The rates would be lower under Iowa's proposal. Under the old guidance, Iowa's innovative waiver couldn't be approved. Now, with the new guidance--the one you seek to overturn today--Iowa can work with Administrator Verma to get the kind of creative waiver so 18,000-22,000 more Iowans can afford health insurance. To be clear--to emphasize--just as with the other 12 examples that have been approved, no new waiver can be approved that would take away the right of any Iowan who has a preexisting health condition to buy insurance at the same price as if that person didn't have a preexisting health condition and to keep insurance coverage when that Iowan gets sick. It is simply a scary Halloween fairytale drummed up by the other side--for reasons I can't imagine since so many of their States are benefiting from 1332 waivers--to take away from States the ability to reduce health insurance costs. As I said earlier, any waiver that is approved--as 12 already have been--to help some people get lower cost health insurance cannot hurt another person in that State by taking away their right to buy insurance at the same price that covers their preexisting condition. States with 1332 waivers include these States with Democratic Senators who will be voting today: Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, Wisconsin. Do they really want to take away from their State the ability to lower health insurance premiums in a way that doesn't jeopardize preexisting conditions? That is pretty strange. Then there is Colorado, Montana, Delaware, Rhode Island, Alaska, North Dakota--the same. I think this just gets back to the point that Democrats have elevated ObamaCare to the 67th book of the Bible, and they can't change a word of it, even though they wrote the 1332 waiver in the Affordable Care Act to give States the flexibility to reduce healthcare premiums, which 12 States now have done. Democrats also wrote, in the Affordable Care Act, that you cannot take away from any American the right to buy insurance at the same price if you have a preexisting health condition. That has been reaffirmed by the Trump administration. It is in the law. To suggest otherwise, as I said earlier, is a scary fairytale dreamed up for Halloween. I hope that all Senators--especially from those States who have seen the 1332 waiver work so well--will vote not to overturn the guidance that gives more Americans a chance to pay lower healthcare premiums. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, in reserving the right to object, the Senator from Wisconsin is exactly correct. Every Senate Democrat has voted to take away a low-cost insurance option from what the Urban Institute says is 1.7 million Americans. These people can't afford other kinds of insurance. That is what they want to take away, and she is attempting to do that once again. I have plenty of constituents who have a right to get their insurance but who can't afford it. This is the only kind of insurance they can buy. This kind of insurance was good enough for the George W. Bush administration. It was good enough for the Clinton administration. It was good enough for the Obama administration right up until the last few days, and it should be good enough under the Trump administration. According to the Urban Institute, all the Trump short term plan rule does is give 1.7 million Americans an opportunity to buy short-term insurance while they move from one job to another or while they look for a different situation. According to the Urban Institute, those 1.7 million Americans would otherwise go uninsured, and that is what the Democrats are for. I object.