Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I would say to the Senator through the Chair, she is correct. The idea of this is instead of Congress playing political ``fix it'' during every election, we have turned this into a sort of doc fix where we are treating students the same way we treat doctors who serve Medicare patients. We run in here and have a big political fight about what we should be paying. Instead of doing that, we have a permanent solution that is based on what the market rate actually is. We say whatever it costs the government, whatever it costs the taxpayer, we loan it to the students at that level. The Senator is correct; if it costs the government more to borrow the money because the rates are higher that year, the rate will be higher that year. But there is the 8.25-percent cap. Throughout the history of the student loan program, there have been caps in the past. There was a 10-percent cap for about 15 years. There was a 9-percent cap for about 20 years. If the Senator is suggesting there be a cap on the loan at a lower level than that, then the Senator will have to raise a lot of money. For example, if we had a 6.8-percent cap on all loans going forward, my guess would be that it would cost $50 billion or $60 billion over a 10-year period of time. I do not know where we will get that money. So the President made the proposal that we have a permanent solution. He suggested that we take the amount of money--ask the Congressional Budget Office. This is not some Republican or Democratic figure. Ask the Congressional Budget Office: What does it cost to borrow the money and to make the loans? Let's then loan it to the students. Let's not overcharge them for any purpose. That is the proposal. So my question would be, why would we do a short-term fix for 1 year that benefits a small percent of students, and leave 7 million middle-income students twisting in the wind, paying an interest rate that is nearly twice as much as they would pay under the bipartisan permanent solution that is based on the very same idea the President proposed, that the House of Representatives has passed, and that a bipartisan group here has proposed? I think the more Senators look into this and understand the cost of it, they will agree the goal is to say, we do not want to add any cost to the taxpayers, and we certainly do not want to overcharge the students on a loan, that they will come out with something about like what the bipartisan proposal is and what the House passed and what the President proposed. If I could make one other comment, the Senator from Michigan was talking about large loans for students. I agree that is a problem. I am a former university president. I am a former Education Secretary. I have watched this for a long time. I think a lot of students are borrowing too much money. We need to think about ways to change that. Right now, they are entitled to borrow certain amounts, even if the college thinks it is unwise for them to do that. Maybe we need to change that. Maybe colleges need to have some skin in the game when they make a loan, whether they are a public, or nonprofit or a for- profit college. That is something we ought to look into. But what we are debating this week is a simple question of what is a fair rate? What is a fair rate? The bipartisan proposal is an 8-page bill that says: Let's take what it costs the government to borrow the money, that is whatever the Congressional Budget Office says it is, let's loan it to the students without any profit, and let's have two caps on it going forward. One would be 8.25 percent. Any student could consolidate any loans at that level if it goes higher. The other would be a cap on how much you have to pay each year as you pay your loan back. I hope my friends on the other side recognize that unless I am mistaken, their proposal does help, for 1 year, 2 million low-income students who already have their interest paid by subsidy by the taxpayers, who also are eligible, for the most part, for Pell grants. But it does nothing for 7 million middle-income undergraduates whose rates on new loans will stay at 6.8 percent. The bipartisan proposal would lower those rates to nearly half that level. Why would we leave those middle-income students--those 7 million middle-income students--twisting in the wind, paying twice as much in interest rates as they need to pay? That is the question. I hope after the vote tomorrow that we can sit down, talk this through, and come to a result. We should not be having political gamesmanship about this. We are talking about 11 million families here, 18 million loans, over $100 billion. We are talking about people who are making their plans to go to college. It is not easy to go. Many Senators have talked about that. People might have $100,000 in loans, but they cannot get it through the subsidized loan program. You can only receive up to $23,000 that way. We can look at all of that at some point. But we need to pass this 8-page bill, set a fair rate, spare the taxpayers, spare the students. There is no need to deal with ``some of the loans,'' when we can lower rates for ``all of the loans'' and put it on a permanent fair basis, very much in the way the President recommended in his budget, very much in the way the House of Representatives passed it, and very much in the way the bipartisan group has suggested. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator from New York. I understand he has a previous meeting. I don't want to make him late because maybe it will produce some result. I hope it will produce a result--I don't see an issue that benefits either political party or any Senator. The questions we who have been working on this have asked the Congressional Budget Office are very simple. We have said our goal is to create a permanent solution along the lines the President recommended, that the House of Representatives has now passed, that neither costs the taxpayers additional money or overcharges the student. Please give us what the interest rates would be and what the type of loan should be. The Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, goes through all of this and they suggest a variety of options that we have. What they have told us is that the proposal of the bipartisan group comes as close to being equal as one can get. It is about nearly $1 billion over 10 years which, when you are loaning $100 billion a year, is sort of a rounding error. The intention is to loan it to the students for what it costs the government to borrow the money, but we are not going to overcharge the students and we are not going to ask the taxpayers to pay an additional subsidy. Within that, if you accepted that idea, then you could say there are a variety of ways to do that. You could do it as the bipartisan group has suggested or you could try to put a cap on it. Whenever you put a cap on, it costs a lot more to students. A cap at 10 doesn't cost very much because the interest rates aren't estimated to be that high for undergraduates especially. But as you go down to 9, 8, 7 or 6.8, it balloons very rapidly. We could meet that principle, fair to taxpayers and fair to students, but we are going to have to raise a lot of money to do it. I haven't heard anybody suggest where $50 or $60 million more is going to come from. I think it is better to go ahead and amend the House bill, get a better bill, put the Senate's imprint on it, and send it to the President. Let's let all of today's students take advantage of today's low rates and pass a permanent solution that would reflect what the actual cost is. It may go up; it may go down. That is the reality. As we know, with low-income students, those eligible for subsidized loans, the taxpayer already pays the interest on those loans while the student is in college. That is about $50 billion over 10 years. Those students are also eligible for Pell grants, most of them are, and that is about $350 billion over 10 years. This is a substantial subsidy. The Senator mentioned the Federal Credit Reform Act. The Federal Credit Reform Act is the way the Congress has said the CBO should count when it is making these computations, so it does that. It also does it according to a fair value method of accounting. Maybe the simplest way to explain it is to say the Federal Credit Reform Act actually favors students pretty heavily in this computation. The fair market value accounting is more realistic, and favors the taxpayers' point of view. We are using the accounting system--or the CBO is--for this bill that is more generous to students. I still, after listening respectfully to all I have heard, don't see why in the world we are going to insist that for the next year several million middle-income students are going to have to pay 6.8 percent when they could be paying 3.66. This is what I can't understand. I hope we continue this debate and tomorrow we will have at least one vote on it. I hope after that we have more discussion and that we come to a result because there are a lot of families waiting for us to make a decision. The President has weighed in. The House of Representatives has passed a bill. We have a bipartisan bill on the floor. We need to come to a result, send it to the President so families can make their decisions about how they are going to pay the college bills. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I join my colleagues in complimenting the Senator from South Carolina, No. 1, because of his work ethic. I have the privilege of being the ranking Republican member of the committee that has maybe the broadest jurisdiction, the most diversity of any of our committees--Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions--and I have observed how hard Senator Scott has worked and how well prepared he has been in his first several months as a Senator. He has spoken out on labor issues, he has made a major contribution to the debate we had on whether we need a national school board or local control on elementary and secondary education. When other Senators are doing other things, he is right there at the committee hearings. So he has made a quiet, effective, principled, studious contribution to the Senate, in my experience, these first few months, and I am delighted to have him here. He has done so well I have invited him to come to Tennessee on Friday to speak to one of the largest gatherings we have annually in the State, and he has agreed to come, and we are grateful for that. Finally, I would compliment him on one other thing. Sometimes I like to tell stories about the person for whom I came to the Senate to work--Senator Howard Baker. When Senator Baker first came in 1967, I would say to the Senator from South Carolina, the Republican leader was his father-in-law Everett Dirksen. Senator Baker made his maiden speech, probably from a back row about like Senator Scott is making his, and his father-in-law was sitting right where Senator McConnell sits, listening to the whole thing. It went on, and it went on, and it went on for nearly an hour. After it was over, Senator Dirksen came over to Senator Baker, and Senator Baker said to his father-in-law: Well, how did I do? Senator Dirksen, the Republican leader, said to the new Senator: Maybe, Howard, you should occasionally try to enjoy the luxury of an unexpressed thought. So I congratulate Senator Scott for his succinct maiden address. He is not only effective, studious, and diligent, he knows how to speak his words clearly and succinctly, and it is wonderful to see him.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, for the last few weeks, I have been listening to the Republican leader ask the majority leader not to turn the Senate into a place where a majority of 51 can do anything it wants. I am on the Senate floor today to suggest three reasons why I believe the majority leader will not do that: No. 1, he said he would not. Senators keep their word. No. 2, in 2007, the majority leader said to do so would be the end of the Senate. There have not been many majority leaders in the history of the Senate. I know none of them want to have written on their tombstone: He presided over ``the end of the Senate.'' No. 3, the majority leader is an able and experienced legislator. He knows if Democrats find a way to use 51 votes to do anything they want to do, it will not be very long until Republicans find a way, if we are in the majority, to use 51 votes to do whatever we want to do. So let me take these three reasons one by one. First, the majority leader has given his word. The Republican leader mentioned that. At the beginning of the last two Congresses, at the request of the Republican leader, I worked with several Democrats and Republicans to change the rules of the Senate to make it work better. We succeeded in that. We talked about it, negotiated, and we voted those changes through. We eliminated the secret hold. We abolished 169 Senate-confirmed positions. We expedited 273 more. We reduced the time to confirm district judges. We made it easier to go to conference. In exchange for all of that, the majority leader said he would not support changes in the rules in this 2-year session of Congress except through the regular order. He said: The minority leader and I have discussed this on numerous occasions. This is the Democratic leader. The proper way to change the Senate rules is through the procedures established in the rules. I will oppose any effort in this Congress or the next to change the Senate rules other than through the regular order. I ask unanimous consent to have printed, following my remarks, the majority leader's comments. Second, I was a new Senator 10 years ago in 2003. I was absolutely infuriated by what the Democrats did in the first few months. For the first time in history, they used the filibuster to deny a President's judicial nominations for the circuit courts of appeal. It had never ever been done before. So Republicans threatened the so-called ``nuclear option.'' We threatened we would change the rules of the Senate so we could work our will with 51 votes. Senator Reid said at the time ``that would be the end of the Senate.'' He wrote that in his book called ``The Good Fight'' in 2007. It is the most eloquent statement I have heard about why changing the rules of the Senate to give a majority the right to do anything it wants with 51 votes is a bad idea. I wish to read a few sentences from Senator Reid's book ``The Good Fight,'' written in 2007. Senator Frist of Tennessee, who was the majority leader, had decided to pursue a rules change that would kill the filibuster for judicial nominations. Sounds familiar. And once you open the Pandora's box, it was just a matter of time before a Senate leader who couldn't get his way on something moved to eliminate the filibuster for regular business as well. That, simply put, would be the end of the United States Senate. It is the genius of the Founders that they conceived the Senate as a solution to the small state / big state problem. And central to that solution was the protection of the rights of the minority. A filibuster is the minority's way of not allowing the majority to shut off debate. And without robust debate, the Senate is crippled. Such a move would transform the body into an institution that looked like the House of Representatives where everything passes with a simple majority. And it would tamper dangerously with the Senate's advise-and-consent function as enshrined in the Constitution. If even the most controversial nominee could simply be rubber stamped by a simply majority, advise and consent would be gutted. Trent Lott of Mississippi knew what he was talking about when he coined the name for what they were doing the nuclear weapon. One more paragraph. But that was their point. They knew--Lott knew--if they trifled with the basic framework of the Senate like that, it would be nuclear. They knew that it would be a very radical thing to do. They knew that it would shut the Senate down . . . there will come a time when we will be gone. This is Senator Reid talking. There will come a time when we will all be gone, and the institutions that we now serve will be run by men and women not yet living. And those institutions will either function well because we have taken care of them or they will be in disarray and someone else's problem to solve. Well, because the Republicans could not get their way getting some radical judges confirmed to the Federal bench, they were threatening to change the Senate so fundamentally that it would never be the same again. In a fit of partisan fury, they were trying to blow up the Senate. Senate rules can only be changed by a two-thirds vote of the Senate, or 67 Senators. The Republicans were going to do it illegally with a simple majority, or 51. Vice President Cheney was prepared to override the Senate Parliamentarian. Future generations be damned. Those are the words of the distinguished Senator from Nevada in 2007 eloquently explaining why this body is so different from the House of Representatives. I ask unanimous consent not only to have those remarks printed in the Record but several more pages from Senator Reid's excellent seventh chapter entitled ``The Nuclear Option'' in his book from 2007. Third and finally, if the Democrats can turn the Senate into a place where a majority of 51 can do anything they want, soon a majority of 51 Republicans is going to figure out the same thing to do. After 2014, some observers have said we might even be in the majority. Senator McConnell might be the Republican leader and the majority leader. After 2016, we may even have a Republican President. Preparing for that opportunity, I wish to suggest the 10 items, briefly, I wish to see on an agenda if we Republicans are able to pass anything we want with 51 votes, as the majority leader has suggested. No. 1, repeal ObamaCare. No. 2, S. 2, that would be the second bill if I were the leader. I would put up Pell grants for kids. Like the GI bill for veterans, Pell grants follow students to the colleges of their choice--creating opportunity at the best colleges in the world. Why don't we do the same thing for students in kindergarten through the 12th grade, take the $60 billion we spend, create a voucher for 25 million middle- and low- income children. It would be $2,200 for each one of them, just the money we now spend. Let it follow them to any school they choose to attend, an accredited school, public or private. No. 3 on my list, complete Yucca Mountain. I have spoken often of the importance of nuclear energy to our country. It provides 20 percent of all of our electricity, 60 percent of our clean electricity for those concerned about climate change and clean air. Since 2010, the majority leader has stalled the nuclear waste repository in Nevada. That jeopardizes our 100 reactors. That jeopardizes our source of 60 percent of our clean electricity. If we had 51 votes in the Senate, we could direct the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to issue a license. We could direct the Department of Energy to build Yucca Mountain and we could fund the money to do it. The junior Senator from Nevada, who shares Senator Reid's opposition to that, said something about this recently. The day is going to come that either he is here or not-- That is the majority leader. --or the Republicans take control and it's a 50-vote threshold. Those kinds of issues are the ones that concern me the most. When you are from a small State, you need as many arrows in your quiver as possible to fight back on some of these issues that you can be overtaken by. Frankly, the 60- vote threshold is what has protected and saved Nevada in the past. I ask unanimous consent to have Senator Heller's comments printed in the Record. If all the Democrats who voted once upon a time for completing Yucca Mountain were to do so again, we could get a bipartisan majority of 51 votes today in the Senate to complete Yucca Mountain. So make no mistake, a vote to end the filibuster is a vote to complete Yucca Mountain. Here is the rest of my list--I will do it quickly--that I would suggest to the Republican leader, if he were majority leader, as his priorities for a Senate where we could pass anything we wanted with 51 votes. Make the Consumer Protection Bureau accountable to Congress. That would be No. 4. No. 5, drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and build the Keystone Pipeline. No. 6, fix the debt. It ought to be No. 1. Senator Corker and I have a $1 trillion reform of entitlement programs that would put us on the road toward fixing the debt. No. 7, right to work for every State. We would reverse the presumption--create a presumption of freedom, giving workers in every State the right to work. States would have the right to opt out, to insist on forced unionism, the reverse of what we have today. No. 8, No EPA regulation of greenhouse gases. No. 9, Repeal the Death Tax. Finally, No. 10, repeal Davis-Bacon, save taxpayers billions by ending the Federal mandate on contractors. The Republican leader and I have plenty of creative colleagues. They will have their own top 10 lists. When word gets around on our side of the aisle that the Senate will be like the House of Representatives and a train can run through it without anyone slowing it down, there will be a lot of my colleagues with their own ideas about adding a lot of cars to that freight train. Jon Meacham's book about Thomas Jefferson is one I have been reading. He reports a conversation between John Adams and Jefferson in 1798. Adams said: No Republic could ever last which had not a senate . . . strong enough to bear up against all popular storms and passions . . . And that-- Trusting the popular assembly for the preservation of our liberties . . . was the mearest chimera imaginable. Alexis de Tocqueville, while traveling our country in the 1830s, saw only two great threats for our young democracy. One was Russia, one was the tyranny of the majority. Finally, as the Republican leader so well stated, there is no excuse here for all of this talk. The Democrats are manufacturing a crisis. To suggest Republicans are holding things up unnecessarily is absolute nonsense. In fact, over the last two Congresses, we have made it easier for any President to have his or her nominations secured. The Washington Post on March 18, the Congressional Research Service on May 23, said President Obama's nominations for the Cabinet are moving through the Senate at least as rapidly as his two predecessors. The Secretary of Energy was recently confirmed 97 to 0. There may be another three votes on Cabinet-level nominees this week. Then as the Republican leader said, look at the Executive Calendar. Only three district and two circuit judge nominees are waiting for floor action. As for filibusters, according to the Senate Historian, the number of Supreme Court Justices who have been denied their seats by filibuster is zero. The only possible exception is Abe Fortas, and Lyndon Johnson engineered a 45-to-43 vote so he could hold his head up while he continued to serve on the Court. The number of Cabinet members who have been denied their seats by a filibuster in the history of the Senate is zero. The number of district judges who have been denied their seats by a filibuster in the history of the Senate is zero. This is according to the Senate Historian and the Congressional Research Service. So what are they talking about? I know what they are talking about. They are talking about circuit judges. That is the only exception. Why is it an exception? Because when I came to the Senate 10 years ago, the Democrats broke historical precedent and blocked five distinguished judges of President Bush by a filibuster. Republicans have returned the favor and blocked two of President Obama's by a filibuster, which should be a lesson for the future to those who want to change the rules. About half the Senate are serving in their first term. They may not know about the majority leader's statements in 2007. They may not know about the history of the Senate. They may have heard all of these conflicting facts and not have the right facts. What I have given you is what the Senate Historian and the Congressional Research Service say are the facts. Of course, there have been delays. My own nomination was delayed 87 days by a Democratic Senator. I did not try to change the rules of the Senate. President Reagan's nomination of Ed Meese was delayed a year by a Democratic Senate. No one has ever disputed our right in the Senate, regardless of who was in charge, to use our constitutional duty of advise and consent to delay and examine, sometimes cause nominations to be withdrawn or even to defeat nominees by a majority vote. Yes, some sub-Cabinet members have been denied their seats by a filibuster. The Democrats denied John Bolton his post at the United Nations. Senator Warren Rudman told me the story of how the Democratic Senator from New Hampshire blocked his nomination by a secret hold. Nobody knew what was happening. I asked Senator Rudman what he did about it. He said: I ran against the so-and-so in the next election, and I beat him. This is how Senator Rudman got to the Senate. In summary, the idea that we have a crisis of nominations is absolute, complete nonsense, totally unsupported by the facts. It should be embarrassing to my friends on the other side to even bring it up. They should be congratulating us for helping to make it easier for any President to move nominations through. The advise and consent is a constitutional prerogative that both parties have always defended. There are three reasons why the majority leader will not turn the Senate into a place where a majority of 51 can do anything it wants, in my judgment: one, he said he wouldn't, and Senators keep their word; two, he said the nuclear option would be the end of the Senate. No majority leader wants written on his tombstone he presided over the end of the Senate; three, if Democrats turn the Senate into a place where 51 Senators can do anything they want, it will not be long before Republicans do the same. To be very specific, if Senator Reid and Democrats vote to allow a majority to do anything they want in the Senate and set that precedent, voting to end the filibuster will be a vote to complete Yucca Mountain. I come with respect to the Republican and the Democratic leaders, and especially to this institution, to say let's end the threats, let's stop the nonsense, let's get back to work on immigration and the other important issues facing our country.

Mr. ALEXANDER. That was de Tocqueville.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I agree with the Republican leader. Of course, the distinguished majority leader agrees with the Senator as well. He said in his book in 2007--I read it, but I will read it again--when talking about the Republican efforts several years ago, Republicans were so upset with actual obstructionism, as opposed to made up obstructionism, which is what we see here. They were so upset that this is what Senator Reid said: If the majority leader pursues a rules change that would kill the filibuster for judicial nominations. And once you open that Pandora's box, it was just a matter of time before a Senate leader who couldn't get his way on something moved to eliminate the filibuster from regular business as well, and that, simply put, would be the end of the Senate. What that means is the Senate would be similar to the House. A freight train could run through it. Many Senators have not visited the House Rules Committee. I have. It is an interesting place. The Republicans can run the House by a single vote. But if one goes up to the Rules Committee--and I am sure the distinguished Republican leader has been there--there are thirteen chairs, thirteen members. How many Democrats do you suppose have those chairs? Four. How many Republicans have those chairs? Nine. It is 2 to 1 plus 1 majority in the House Rules Committee. In the House of Representatives, whatever the majority wants to do it can do. If we have a body with 51 votes to make all the decisions, and if I and others are deeply concerned about the nuclear waste sitting around in some of these 100 reactors--we have several of us on both sides of the aisle who were working on legislation like that--and we want it put in a repository, legally, where it is supposed to be, we have 51 votes, if they all vote the way they voted before, to order the government to open Yucca Mountain and put the nuclear waste there. This is what we can do with 51 votes. The way our government is designed, the House can order that, which they have. The Senate hasn't because the majority leader has been able to make this body stop and think about whether it wanted to do this. I may not like that result, but I prefer that process for the good of the country to give us the time to work things out. I would ask the Republican leader, hasn't it always been the responsibility, maybe the chief responsibility, of the Republican leader and the Democratic leader to preserve this institution? Newer Senators may not know as much about it, may not have as long a view as they have. Over the time the minority leader has been here, hasn't that been--I would ask through the Chair to the Republican leader, hasn't that been the responsibility of the leaders of the Senate?

Mr. ALEXANDER. I wish to congratulate the Republican leader on his remarks. It is important for those watching to know there are plenty of us here who know how the Senate is supposed to work, and we are doing that. We passed the farm bill, and we passed the water resources bill, involving locks, dams, and ports in this country. We did that the way the Senate is supposed to work. We worked across party lines. We got a consensus, got more than the majority, and did it. We have eight Senators who have come forward with an immigration bill, a tough issue, but we are working together to see if we can resolve that. I am part of a group of six or seven Senators who are trying to lower interest rates for 100 percent of students, not just 40 percent. We are not trying to ram it through with 51 votes, but we are trying to get a consensus and then pass it and send it to the House. Hopefully, they will do it. When the great civil rights bills passed, they were a consensus, and the country accepted them because they were important pieces of legislation. When the Republican leader and I were young--I was here and he was almost here--we saw Senator Dirksen and President Johnson work together to get a supermajority to say to the country it is time to move ahead on civil rights. That is the way the Senate is supposed to work. Let's stop the threats, stop the intimidation and recognize the progress we have made and get back to work on immigration.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I come to the floor to talk about Doug Bailey. Doug Bailey died last week at age 79. The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Doug Bailey helped define the role of political consultant in the 1960s and 1970s and that he founded the Hotline. He was much more than that to me and to countless others for whom he was an example of how to live a public life. I am aware that when offering a eulogy it is good form to speak more of the deceased than of oneself, but that is hard to do with Doug because he cared so much about everyone he met and everyone he worked with. I first met Doug Bailey in Washington, DC, in the spring of 1977. I was here for a few months working with Howard Baker, the former Senator from Tennessee, who had just been elected to be the Republican leader of this body. He asked me to come work for him. I think part of that was to console me, to let me lick my wounds for having lost the Governor's race a couple years earlier in Tennessee. There wasn't much prospect for a political future for me then because the Nashville Tennessean had written that there wouldn't be a Republican Governor in Tennessee for another 50 years. So I was here in Washington, and while I was here I became energized by the Republican Senators. It looked to me as though Jimmy Carter was already in trouble, and my friend Wyatt Stewart introduced me to Doug Bailey. The reason I thought it was an important meeting was because at that time he and his partner John Deardourff represented 7 of the 12 Republican Governors in the country who were still in office after the Watergate debacle of 1974. Doug came to Nashville. He sat down with my wife Honey, Tom Ingram, and me, and we talked about the idea of another Governor's race--this time in 1978. Doug's view was that I had lost, among other things, because I wasn't a very interesting candidate, that I campaigned in a blue suit and talked to Republicans and to rotary clubs. So the talk was about what would be authentic, what did I really like to do. To make a long story short, I ended up walking 1,000 miles across Tennessee over 6 months in a red-and-black plaid shirt, followed by a group of four University of Tennessee band members in a flatbed truck. And several times a day we would get up on the truck and play in Alexander's washboard band. Doug put all that on television, and I won the election. Now, to some, that would seem like an ultimate political gimmick, but if you think about it, the idea of the walk across Tennessee was a good deal more authentic than the photo-ops and the press releases and the 5-second sound bites that are often what we end up with in politics today. But let me just say it this way: I would have never been elected Governor if it hadn't been for Doug Bailey. He also did something else I had never seen anybody else do--no other political consultant. He actually wrote a plan and we actually followed it during the campaign. The important thing for me to say today is that political consulting was not the end of Doug Bailey's help. He came to Nashville once a week during my first term as Governor not so much to talk about politics, but to talk about how to be a better Governor, which was his idea of how to be a political success. Our conversations were usually not about how to follow, but how to lead, and how to deal with the political implications, for example, of wanting to have three big road programs and do it on a pay-as-you-go basis so we could attract the auto industry to our State without running up debt and persuade all the Republican Members to vote for three gas tax increases, which every single one of them did. Doug's advice was that a good tactic was to do the right thing because it would confuse your opponents; they wouldn't understand what you were up to. His advice about recruiting people to work in the cabinet, for example, was not to just invite someone who might take the job, but to make a list of the four or five best persons to do the job and then ask the best one. He said: You might be surprised--that person might be waiting for an opportunity to serve the public. That was some of the best advice I ever got because some of the best persons were waiting for the right opportunity for public service. All this sounds hopelessly naive, especially today, in a time when there is so much cynicism about politics. But that is the way it was then, and that is the way I was trained, and that is the way I tried to do my job. I would wake up every day literally thinking about almost nothing else other than how I could help our State move ahead. I called Doug Bailey throughout the last 30 or 35 years whenever I needed good advice. I called him when the Democrats swore me in early to remove a corrupt Governor who was selling pardons for cash in Tennessee, and he gave me a few words I used to speak to the public on that day. One of the best pieces of advice he gave me was when the first President Bush called me while I was the University of Tennessee president. I knew President Bush was going to ask me to be the new Education Secretary, and I had about 2 hours to think about it. Doug said: Ask these two questions. One, Mr. President, may I come up with a plan, subject to your approval? Two, may I go and recruit a team, subject to your approval? Well, that may not seem like much, but after I was announced by the President, I walked into the White House personnel office, and they tried to tell me whom to hire. I said: I don't have to do that. I already have the President's assurance that I can recruit a team subject to his approval. So I was able to recruit David Kearns, former head of Xerox, and Diane Ravitch and others who never would have ended up in President Bush's administration, and he was delighted with them. Doug always had a project. Some were zany. Some were downright brilliant. One of the most recent was to try to persuade someone to run for President on an Independent ticket online. He didn't succeed at that. He was starting another project when I saw him last at a dinner at the end of January in Washington this year. Ironically, Doug Bailey was an expert in the technology, TV ads, and the Hotline, which have contributed to today's polarization in politics. But he withdrew from politics after a while and from political consulting because he didn't like what politics had become. He thought more elected officials needed to understand that there is a difference between campaigning and governing and that differences should be resolved in the middle rather than entrenched in the fringes or on the extremes. In a tribute, Judy Woodruff wrote about perhaps Doug's greatest passion and his greatest legacy: inspiring youngsters such as Chuck Todd and Norah O'Donnell--whom he paid almost nothing to work at the Hotline--to care about and be involved in America's political system. I am sure Chuck and Norah would tell you that Doug considered it even more important and an even nobler calling to actually serve in government, and that he spent most of his life teaching and helping those who were willing to do it. I would never have been elected Governor without Doug Bailey's help. More important, I will give Doug most of the credit for whatever success I had as Governor and in politics. It has been a long time since I regularly checked with him before I made a political move, but when I did, I always felt as though the next step was a surer step and a step more likely to be in a direction that served a larger purpose other than my own political existence. I have never known a person who cared more about each person he met in every issue he tackled. So I wanted to come to the floor today and express this tribute to a public life well lived, and to offer my condolences to his wife Pat, his children Kate and Edward, his brothers and his grandson. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record following my remarks the New York Times story about Doug Bailey's death and Judy Woodruff's blog about his passing. It has lots of comments from other people, and I have not seen a blog in a long time where all the comments are positive. Usually that is not the case.

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I would like to congratulate the Senator from North Carolina for his proposal. The two votes we are having today are like the opening act at the circus, and hopefully the main event will attract some Senators who are willing to conduct this in a grownup way. We do not really have a disagreement here; we have a serious issue. We have students graduating all over the country from high school at about this time, and about 70 percent of them will go to college next year. The taxpayers want to encourage that. We spend about $35 billion in Pell grants to help pay for that. Then three out of four of those students who go to college will go to public colleges and universities--like the Universities of Michigan or Mississippi or North Carolina or Tennessee--the taxpayer helps foot the bill for that. Then the taxpayer is going to loan $133 billion this year in student loans to students of all kinds. What the Senator from North Carolina and the Senator from Oklahoma have suggested--and I have joined them--is that we take advantage of today's low rates and that we lower rates on all the new loans to something below 5 percent, fix that rate for those students who get their loans this year, and allow them to participate in the income repayment program so when they take a job they will not have to spend too much of their money repaying back the loan. In some cases, it can ultimately be forgiven. There is also a cap on a consolidated loan, if they choose to do that, which many do. If we had a real disagreement about that, it would be one thing, but we do not have a real disagreement. The House of Representatives, which is Republican, has passed a bill based on the same idea. The President of the United States, President Obama, presented a budget to the Senate two months ago based on the same idea. The idea is very simple. If we are going to loan $133 billion this year, let's loan the money to students at exactly what it costs the government, which today is at about 1.75 percent, and let's add 3 percent to that--all of which goes back to the Department of Education for the cost of collections, defaults, administration, so there is no profit on the students. Then, let's fix that loan rate. We say that if it is 4.75 today, it is 4.75 next year and 4.75 the next year for that loan. If the rates go up, the rates on new loans next year will reflect that increase. So it is fair to the students, and it is fair to the taxpayers. It is a permanent solution. It is the same idea the House has already passed. It is the same idea the President has recommended. Yet our friends on the other side are so intent on playing political games that they want to have two votes today. If I may say so, they should hire somebody to come up with a better idea than they came up with. This is one of their weakest attempts at a political game I have seen in 10 years. We have a permanent solution supported by the President, supported by the House Republicans--all the same idea. Senate Democrats have come up with a short-term fix for 40 percent of the loans. They leave 60 percent hanging high and dry. They raise taxes to do it. It is unconstitutional for them to do it because it originates a revenue bill in the Senate instead of the House. That is their weak idea. Why are they not following the example of the Senator from Michigan and the Senator from Mississippi and working in a bipartisan way to get a result? Why are they not following the same idea of the Senator from California and the Senator from Louisiana on the water resources bill and working in a bipartisan way to get a result? Why are they not following the same idea the four Republicans and four Democrats did on the immigration bill and working to get a result? Instead, they hold a political stunt at the White House. They now hold another political stunt on the Senate floor at a time when students are graduating from high school, looking forward to college, and would like to have a permanent solution on interest rates by July 1, which we can easily do. I guess it is inevitable that the opening acts of the circus are sometimes going to be like this, but I regret it. I really did not come to the Senate to engage in this kind of thing. I would much rather sit down with my Democratic colleagues, which I believe we can do, and I would much rather sit down with the White House officials, which I believe we can do, and with the House of Representatives and spend the next 3 weeks saying: Look, we all have the same idea. We have a serious issue. It affects millions of students. So let's work together and show the country we can do this. It would be a nice prelude to the immigration debate to show that we can not only pass a water resources development bill and a farm bill but that we can also solve the student loan problem on a bipartisan basis. Then, we can take up this more difficult immigration question where we have some real differences of opinion and really need to have a debate. I am here to congratulate the Senator from North Carolina and the Senator from Oklahoma for their suggestion and to fully support it. I will conclude by saying that there are two aspects to their bill that I believe are preferable to the version of this idea that passed the House and the version of this idea that was proposed by the President. Remember, it is the same idea in all three places--the President's budget, the House of Representatives bill, and the Burr and Coburn proposal. The first thing that Burr and Coburn propose is to have a single interest rate for all student loans. There are three types of student loans. It is very confusing even for those of us who have been around this issue for a long time. Let's assume there is a single student rate and you are graduating from Maryville High School. What is the cost of money? Right now, if you get a loan of any kind, it is going to be 4.75 percent. It is whatever it costs the government to borrow the money plus 3 percent to cover the Department of Education's costs. I like that proposal. Then the second thing they propose that I would suggest is preferable to the House of Representatives bill is that if you get a loan at 4.75 percent in 2013, it is still set at 4.75 percent in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017. It does not change over the life of the loan. The House bill would have the interest rate on a loan going up each year. I do not like that idea. I do not think many students would. But I wish all of our serious issues opened with proposals from the President and the House of Representatives and Senate Republicans that were as close together as we are on this issue. If we cannot come to an agreement on this issue before July 1, based on these three major centers of influence all making the same proposals, then we ought to go back to seventh grade civics class. I do not think we all need to do that. I think we know how to do our jobs. This is the opening act of the circus. It will not take too long. It will be a little embarrassing that we have to go through it, but after we go through it, maybe we can sit down and a Senate full of grownups will say: Let's take the President's idea and the House idea and the idea suggested by Senators Burr and Coburn, let's put it together, let's congratulate all of those students who are going to colleges, and let's encourage them and hope it is a ticket to the middle class. Let's show that our country supports those students as they seek to advance their higher education. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an op-ed from the New York Times yesterday written by Senator Coburn and Senator Burr and me.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, how much time remains prior to the vote?

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I urge a ``yes'' vote because this is a permanent solution for 100 percent of the student loans. It reduces rates for every single student's new loan. It has no profit on the student. It fixes the rate for the time of the loan, and it is the same idea as already passed by the House. It is the same idea as supported by the President's budget. There are only minor differences between the President, the House, and this proposal. If we can't agree on this, we can't agree on anything. This is a manufactured crisis. Their proposal is a short-term political fix for 40 percent of the loans. This proposal is a permanent solution for 100 percent of the loans that would lower rates to below 5 percent; the same idea as in the President's budget, the same idea as passed by the House. I urge a ``yes'' vote. Cloture Motion

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I would like to say on behalf of several Republican Senators, including Senators Burr, Isakson, Kirk, Roberts, Hatch, and Enzi that I am introducing today the Every Child Ready for College or Career Act. This bill would let States decide whether schools and teachers are succeeding or failing. It would end the accumulation of Federal mandates that have piled up on States and local school districts and has created, in effect, a national school board. It would help 50 million children in 100,000 public schools learn what they need to know and be able to do by restoring responsibility to States and communities and giving teachers and parents more freedom, flexibility, and choices. I will have more to say about this on Monday in a floor speech, but I wanted to call it to the attention of our colleagues. While it is being offered by Republican Senators, we do not see it as a Republican bill. We see it as a piece of legislation that will attract the support of classroom teachers, principals, Governors, legislators, and others who have been working for 30 years to set high standards, create better tests, create accountability systems, and pioneering in developing teacher evaluation systems. We believe it is the proper role of the Federal Government to create an environment for better schools, but not to issue orders from Washington. The combination of No Child Left Behind mandates, Race to the Top mandates, and mandates as a result of the Secretary of Education's waivers have created such congestion in the U.S. Department of Education that it has become, in effect, a national school board. We want to head in the other direction. We want to give back to States and local governments the responsibility for deciding whether schools and teachers are succeeding or failing. I hope all of our colleagues will read the Every Child Ready for College or Career Act. Senator Harkin and I look forward to the markup next Tuesday in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. We will offer competing versions. His is more than 1,100 pages, and ours is 220 pages. This is a symbol of the differences in our approaches. We will begin a debate which I hope goes through the committee, moves to the Senate floor, combines with the House in conference, and produces a result that reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act this year.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I would like to say on behalf of several Republican Senators, including Senators Burr, Isakson, Kirk, Roberts, Hatch, and Enzi that I am introducing today the Every Child Ready for College or Career Act. This bill would let States decide whether schools and teachers are succeeding or failing. It would end the accumulation of Federal mandates that have piled up on States and local school districts and has created, in effect, a national school board. It would help 50 million children in 100,000 public schools learn what they need to know and be able to do by restoring responsibility to States and communities and giving teachers and parents more freedom, flexibility, and choices. I will have more to say about this on Monday in a floor speech, but I wanted to call it to the attention of our colleagues. While it is being offered by Republican Senators, we do not see it as a Republican bill. We see it as a piece of legislation that will attract the support of classroom teachers, principals, Governors, legislators, and others who have been working for 30 years to set high standards, create better tests, create accountability systems, and pioneering in developing teacher evaluation systems. We believe it is the proper role of the Federal Government to create an environment for better schools, but not to issue orders from Washington. The combination of No Child Left Behind mandates, Race to the Top mandates, and mandates as a result of the Secretary of Education's waivers have created such congestion in the U.S. Department of Education that it has become, in effect, a national school board. We want to head in the other direction. We want to give back to States and local governments the responsibility for deciding whether schools and teachers are succeeding or failing. I hope all of our colleagues will read the Every Child Ready for College or Career Act. Senator Harkin and I look forward to the markup next Tuesday in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. We will offer competing versions. His is more than 1,100 pages, and ours is 220 pages. This is a symbol of the differences in our approaches. We will begin a debate which I hope goes through the committee, moves to the Senate floor, combines with the House in conference, and produces a result that reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act this year.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Thank you, Mr. President. If the Acting President pro tempore will let me know when I have used 10 minutes, I would appreciate it.

Mr. ALEXANDER. If no other Senator is on the floor, I will continue.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I am here today to speak on clean energy independence, but before I do that I want to note the passing of Senator Frank Lautenberg. When I came to the Senate 10 years ago, there were a number of Members here who were veterans of World War II. Now there are none. Senator Lautenberg was the last. He was a member of the generation often described as the greatest. He was the son of immigrants. He made a lot of money in business as an entrepreneur in the American dream. Then he did another entrepreneurial thing: He ran for the U.S. Senate and served twice here. He was an advocate for the things he believed in, and he was a productive Senator. Just in the last couple of weeks he helped to fashion an agreement on amending the Toxic Substances Control Act, of which I am a cosponsor. It has been a long time coming, and he had a major role in that. We will miss him. To his wife Bonnie and to his family, they have my respect and condolences and admiration for his long service to our country.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, 5 years ago I spoke at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. I began with a story from our past about our future. It is a familiar story to those of us in Tennessee. President Franklin Roosevelt called the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee into his office in 1942 and said: Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask you to hide a couple billion dollars in the budget for a secret project to win the war. Senator McKellar replied: Mr. President. I just have one question: Where in Tennessee would you like me to hide it? That place turned out to be Oak Ridge. That was how Tennessee became one of the sites where scientists worked to build the atomic bomb before the Germans. I suggested 5 years ago that we have a new Manhattan Project--really mini-Manhattan Projects for clean energy independence. Last week at Oak Ridge, 5 years after that first speech, I suggested four grand principles to help us chart a competitive energy future for the next 5 years to end our obsession with taxpayer subsidies and strategies for expensive energy and instead focus on doubling government-sponsored research and allowing marketplace solutions to create an abundance of cheap, clean, reliable energy. I would like to renew those comments today on the floor of the Senate. The four grand principles I mentioned were, No. 1, cheaper, not more expensive, energy; No. 2, clean, not just renewable, energy; No. 3, research and development, not government mandates; and No. 4, the free market, not the government, picking winners and losers. The seven grand challenges I suggested 5 years ago were grounded in challenges from the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. My challenges included making plug-in electric vehicles more commonplace, finding ways to capture and use carbon, helping solar become cost-competitive, safely managing nuclear waste, encouraging cellulosic biofuels, making new buildings green buildings, and creating energy from fusion. My goal in laying out those seven challenges was clean energy independence. At the time, some took issue with the idea of a grand goal underlying these challenges, but I thought independence was a good goal then, and it is a good goal now because the United States should not be held hostage by any other country because of our energy needs. Since I spoke 5 years ago, the Department of Energy has established the energy innovation hubs that are producing fuels from sunlight and advancing nuclear reactor and battery technologies. That, paired with the work of the new energy research agency--which we call ARPA-E--and others, has moved us forward on my seven grand challenges in a number of ways. Let me summarize that briefly. Electric vehicles sales are approaching 100,000 in the United States, and ARPA-E has helped a company that has doubled the energy density of lithium-ion batteries. Carbon capture. We are developing commercial uses for carbon dioxide, such as liquid fuels produced from microbes. Solar power. Though the goal is around $1 per watt installed by 2020, the cost has fallen from $8 to $4 per watt in the past five years. It still has a long way to go, but it is promising. Nuclear waste. Four of us in the Senate have drafted comprehensive nuclear waste legislation. For the first time in 30 years, we are building new large reactors, and we are moving forward on small modular nuclear reactors. Advanced biofuels. There are three new bioenergy research centers that are developing next-generation bioenergy crops for industrial- scale production. Green buildings. Research and development has meant 20 new commercial products in energy efficiency. Fusion. We have already demonstrated human-engineered fusion on a small scale, and now we are trying to scale it up for commercial energy production. The United States has made gains, but we still have challenges. Even as other parts of the world grow rapidly, the U.S. still uses about 20 percent of the world's energy, and the Energy Information Administration estimates that our country's energy demand will increase more than 10 percent by 2040. Second, we have record oil and gas production at home, but we need to be as independent as possible from those who might want to use our demand for oil to hold us hostage. Former Secretary Condoleezza Rice once said she had ``never seen anything warp diplomacy like high oil prices.'' And affording a tank of gasoline remains a struggle for many families. Another challenge is failing to keep up with energy research and development, which is one of the major points I want to make today-- failing to keep up with energy R&D. That energy research has given us abundant, reliable, clean, cheap energy from unconventional gas to nuclear power. The amount we spend on energy research and development-- nearly $5 billion a year at the Department of Energy in nondefense and noncleanup research; or nearly $9 billion if you count other agencies and their energy-related research, such as the National Science Foundation, the Department of the Interior, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology--still, those dollars are lower as a percentage of our gross product than major competitors such as France or Japan or Korea or China. Another challenge is that while the United States has made more gains in reducing the use of carbon than any other industrial country, the National Academies of the United States and 12 other countries have warned that human activity has contributed significantly to climate change and global warming. So thinking about the progress we have made from 5 years ago and taking into account the challenges we still have, let me suggest four grand principles that could guide our energy future. First, cheaper, not more expensive energy. Five years ago all the talk was about a cap- and-trade program for the United States and deliberately raising the price of energy as a way of achieving clean energy independence. Last year I was in Germany, a country that adopted exactly that policy. In addition, Germany is closing its nuclear powerplants and becoming more dependent on natural gas but buying both forms of energy from other countries rather than producing it on its own. The Germans are subsidizing wind and solar but are building new coal plants in order to have enough reliable electricity. In short, what I found in Germany was an energy policy mess that discourages job growth. The end result is that Germany has the second highest household electricity prices in the European Union. When I asked an Economic Minister what he would say to a manufacturer about energy costs in Germany, he said: I would suggest he go somewhere else. Well, that somewhere else is turning out to be the United States: Virginia, Tennessee, other States. In the United States, we pursued a different track, the most conspicuous example of which is finding unconventional gas and oil. This has created for our country a remarkable phenomenon, a large amount of cheap, clean energy with our own domestic price for natural gas. This has been the result of a peculiar combination of factors that, in my opinion, amount to a better energy policy than most people give us credit for. The first element is the entrepreneurial spirit of America and the large amount of private property ownership and our huge private market. Another is access to capital. A third and indispensable element is government-sponsored research. Take our Nation's natural gas boom as an example. In the past it was uneconomical to develop so-called unconventional gas. Government- sponsored research enabled it and demonstrated how it could be done. A temporary Federal tax credit that expired for new shale projects at the end of 1992 encouraged new sources of private capital. Natural gas will be a big part of where we get our clean energy, which leads me to my second principle: clean, not just renewable, energy. Too often we define our energy goals in terms of renewable energy when we should mean clean energy. There are a number of States that have renewable energy mandates defined mainly to include wind and solar power. The Congress is regularly asked to pass a narrowly defined renewable energy mandate for the same purpose. It is true these energy sources emit no air pollution. These mandates say a certain amount of electricity generated within a State must come from these specific sources. But focusing on this narrow definition for clean energy misses the point, and at a high cost to our electric bills. Such narrow definitions also discount hydropower and nuclear power, some of our country's cheapest and most available sources of air pollution-free electricity. In the Tennessee Valley Authority region where I live, for example, more than 95 percent of our pollution-free electricity comes from TVA's dams and three nuclear plants, which include six reactors. Second, mandating renewable energy runs the risk of creating too much reliance on sources that generate power only intermittently. There is certainly a place for these renewable technologies, and solar power especially seems to me to have great promise. But renewable energy consumes great amounts of space, whether it is solar or wind or biomass. For example, it would take a row of giant wind turbines all the way from Georgia to Maine on the Appalachian Trail to generate the same amount of electricity that we would get from four nuclear power plants. You would still need the nuclear plants because the wind only blows when it wants to. Fortunately, we have plenty of rooftops on which to put solar panels. When they become cheap enough and aesthetically pleasing enough, they will probably become an increasingly important supplement to our country's huge appetite for electricity, especially because the Sun shines during the peak-use hours. Battery technology will help make all forms of renewable energy more useful, which brings me to my next principle: research and development, not government mandates. It is hard to think of an important technological advance in our country that has not involved at least some government-sponsored research, especially in the area of energy. The most recent example is the development of unconventional gas that was enabled by 3D mapping invented at Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico and the Department of Energy's large-scale demonstration project. There is an argument that by imposing government mandates, just as by imposing higher prices, government could force some innovation that could move us toward clean energy independence. But I believe the surer path would be to double the federal funding we spend annually on non- defense and non-cleanup energy research and development and trust the marketplace to produce better results. In 2005 the ``Rising Above the Gathering Storm'' report, written by a commission led by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine, recommended doubling energy research and development. In 2007 Congress responded by passing the America COMPETES Act with overwhelming bipartisan support. Senator Coons and I are working together to reintroduce the America COMPETES Act for a second reauthorization after its original passage. One small agency that is the result of the America COMPETES Act is what we call ARPA-E. It is already showing signs of the wisdom of this approach. ARPA-E has helped improve battery technology and worked to produce liquid fuel from microbes, among other accomplishments. Seeing how our free enterprise can capitalize on this brings me to my fourth and last principle: free market, not government picking winners and losers. We are more likely to have abundant supplies of cheap, clean, reliable energy in the United States if we trust the marketplace. The most appropriate role for government is in research. I believe a second role is limited jump-starting of new technologies; for example, unconventional gas, about which I just spoke, involves government research and a limited tax credit. The full tax credit for electric cars is capped at 200,000 vehicles per manufacturer. To encourage innovation in nuclear energy, the government provided research and licensing support for small modular reactors, but that is limited to 5 years. Even for nuclear power plants there is a production tax credit, but it is limited to 6,000 megawatts. On the other hand, President Reagan used to say the nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this Earth is a government program. That is too often the case with energy subsidies. The most glaring example of that is the more than 20-year- old subsidy for wind power, a technology that former Energy Secretary Chu said was a technology that had ``matured.'' This was supposed to help jump-start wind. But we have already lost $16 billion in Federal revenue from 2009 through the end of 2012 alone. Congress just added a 1-year extension of the wind production tax credit, costing $12 billion. Remember, the Department of Energy spends just $5 billion on energy research. We are spending $12 billion in a 1-year extension of the wind tax credit. The wind industry's idea of a phaseout would cost tens of billions more. People talk about Big Oil, but the big, unnecessary subsidy is big wind, and a much better place to spend our money would be energy research. I have been fascinated with the progress we have made on the seven grand challenges I suggested 5 years ago. Perhaps by focusing on these four grand principles, the ones I have suggested in this speech, we can capitalize on the last 5 years of progress and move toward cheap, clean, reliable energy. Oak Ridge's evolution since the Manhattan Project days provides a good model. About 70 years ago the astonishing collection of physicists that produced the two atomic bombs also enabled nuclear power, nuclear medicine, and other technological advances. What can we expect 5 years from now? To get a glimpse of the future we might look at what fits within the guiding principles I have suggested today. For example, small modular reactors and virtual reactors that scientists are developing will revolutionize the safety and effectiveness of our nuclear technology. Game-changing manufacturing is also on the horizon with 3D printing. ARPA-E, a small agency of the Department of Energy that came from America COMPETES, and other groups are increasing the reliability of our electricity supply. This United States of America is a remarkable place. With the potential I have described and the principles I have suggested, a competitive energy future is well within our grasp. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, being a majority leader is not an easy job whether you are a Republican or a Democrat. Some good things have been happening in the Senate recently, and I think we should credit both the majority leader and the Republican leader with helping to make that happen. Over the last few weeks we have seen the water resources bill come to the floor. The majority leader allowed Senator Boxer and Senator Vitter to manage the amendment process, to handle the necessary arguments that always occur about what they will be. They came to a conclusion and passed a bill. The bill went through committee, went through the floor. It is a very important bill because it deals with locks, dams, and ports in the United States. We want to make sure that as the Panama Canal is widened and deepened, that ports in the United States are deep enough to receive the bigger ships and that the locks and the dams are in good enough shape so that commerce can move through the company and the jobs can be created. That is an important piece of legislation. And now we are on the farm bill and we see the Senator from Mississippi and the Senator from Michigan managing a bill. There is plenty of opportunity for amendments, as far as I have been able to tell, and that has been very helpful. At the same time, we have coming out of the Judiciary Committee, after several days of intense work, a bill on immigration. Probably the four most important words that can be said about the immigration debate is that we are all Americans, and Americans know we must have a legal immigration system if we want to be able to say we are all Americans. And we want one. We don't have an enforceable legal system today. All of us know that. None of us like the status quo, I don't think, and all of us know the President and the Congress are the only ones who can fix it. This is not something we can dump on the mayors or the State legislatures. Many of us haven't formed a final opinion about this legislation that is coming forward, but I, for one, respect the fact that it has moved; that it has four principal Republican sponsors and four principal Democratic sponsors. It has moved through the committee, voices have been heard, it is coming to the floor, and, again, the majority leader has indicated, and the Republican leader has agreed, there will be a full and open debate so the American people can see it and watch us come to a result. All those are good things. In addition, so that we might do that, there are a number of nominations about which we are likely to disagree. They will come after that so as not to interfere with the immigration debate. That brings me to my final point. I would note the fact that with occasional interruptions for debate over whether we are going to go to a budget, which I hope gets resolved, we are on a pretty good path right now. I hope the majority and the minority leaders can see that. We are moving this afternoon to a vote on a Federal appellate judge for the D.C. Circuit. A major objective of the Democratic side has been to get another judge on that circuit, and the President has nominated a person, Mr. Srinivasan, who, by every account, is an exceptional attorney. He came out of the committee with an 18-to-0 vote and has widespread respect and support. The only glitch in the process is the majority leader believed it was necessary to file a cloture motion this week, even though the Republican leader had agreed we would have an up-or-down vote on the Tuesday we get back, and every indication is that almost everyone would vote for that judge. That has now been resolved, and we are going to vote this afternoon at 2 p.m. I know better than to predict how the Senate will vote, but I will vote for Mr. Srinivasan, and I suspect he will be easily confirmed. In all of this the majority leader has believed it was necessary to suggest that somehow there is a problem with the President's nominations being considered by the Senate, so I think it is important that someone other than the Republican leader--because it is his job, really, to defend our side--lay out the facts, and I hope I can do that with some credibility because I worked with my Democratic colleagues at the beginning of the last Congress and at the beginning of this Congress to make it easier for this President and future Presidents to have their nominations considered. We have changed the rules to make it easier. Just a few months ago, in a long discussion that involved Senators on both sides in a debate on the floor, we made a number of changes to make it easier for a President to have his nominations considered. And 2 years ago we adopted the expedited nominations, where nominations simply come to the desk. If no single Senator wants it sent to committee, it just sits there until all the paper is in, then the majority leader will just move it on. Within the next few days there will be a number of those that come out of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. So that speeds things up. We removed from the list of nominations about 160 low-level executive nominations. They are not subject anymore to Senate advise and consent. The President may just go ahead and appoint those persons. We have gotten rid of the secret hold, which was used for a long time to hold up nominees, and even to block them, because no one knew who was doing that. Earlier this year we changed the rules so that when a district judge comes up, there can't be a long debate after the district judge comes to the floor. As a result, things are moving along very well. So I would like to say there is not a problem with the President's nominations being considered in a timely fashion by the Senate. There is no problem. There is, however, the responsibility for advice and consent. Most of our Founders did not want a king. They created a Congress and they said: Here is an advice and consent. So we now have about 1,000 people the President will nominate whom we are supposed to consider, and we should do that well. That is our job to do, and it is our check on a runaway Executive. When I first came here, Senator Byrd made wonderful speeches about that. I remember the speeches Senator Kennedy gave from the back row, with that big booming voice of his, about President George W. Bush's recess appointments and how offended he was by those because they offended the Constitution. Senator Byrd, as I mentioned, was very eloquent, going all the way back to President Reagan's days. So we have always jealously defended the people's right to have an elected group of representatives to check the Executive, and we need to use that in a responsible way. Therefore, it is important to have an accurate report on just how well President Obama is being treated by the Senate in terms of his nominations. I have just noted that we have changed the rules to make it easier. I did not even say we have even made it easier for the nominees; we set up a working process to make it easier. I like to call it a response to the ``innocent until nominated'' syndrome. The President picks some well-respecting person from the Midwest and sends his or her nomination to the Senate, and all of a sudden it is as if they were a criminal of some kind. That is because there were so many conflicting forms to fill out it was easy to make a mistake and look as though you were misleading the Senate. We have tried to simplify that, and this President is the first beneficiary of that change. So this President is the first beneficiary of consecutive Congresses that have changed the rules to reduce the number of potential nominees subjected to advice and consent. We have expedited a number of others, and we have made it easier--easier and quicker--for the President to have his nominations considered. This President is the first to benefit from that. So what are the results? The majority leader suggested there was delay and obstruction. Those words just come out automatically sometimes when people wake up in the morning on that side of the aisle. But let's look at the facts. I asked the Congressional Research Service to take a look at the Washington Post article written earlier this year--now, these are not Republican people I am asking, this is the Congressional Research Service--about how President Obama is being treated in terms of his Senate nominees. According to the Congressional Research Service, as of May 16, 2013-- that is last week--President Obama's Cabinet nominees were still, on average, moving from announcement to confirmation faster than those of President George W. Bush or President Clinton. President Obama's nominees were moving from announcement to confirmation, at that time last week, in 50.5 days, George W. Bush averaged 52 days, and President Clinton averaged 55 days. So let me say that again: President Obama's Cabinet nominees are moving ahead in the Senate more rapidly than those of his two predecessors: one of them President George W. Bush and one of them President Clinton. So there is no delay there that is unusual. It is not unprecedented, Madam President, for some second-term nominations to take much longer to move from announcement to confirmation than the average. President Clinton's nominee for Secretary of Labor, Alexis Herman, took 135 days; President George W. Bush's nominee for Attorney General, Alberto Gonzalez, took 85 days. I remember the case of one especially distinguished nominee for Secretary of Education by President George H.W. Bush, a former Governor of Tennessee whose name was Alexander. His nomination took 88 days from announcement to confirmation, and President Reagan's nominee for Attorney General, Ed Meese, took nearly 1 year. Now that is an unusual case, but it is not so unusual for second-term nominees to take a little while--for the Senate to perform advice and consent. And as the Congressional Research Service and the Washington Post have reported in their own analysis, President Obama's Cabinet nominees are being better treated than either President Bush's or President Clinton's in terms of the time it takes to confirm them from announcement to confirmation. Now, one last thing. What about judges? Sometimes I have heard Senators on that side and Senators on this side get up and give conflicting information about whether judges are being considered rapidly. Here is what the data says about the judicial nomination process. If Mr. Srinivasan is confirmed today, as I expect he will be, President Obama will have had 20 judges confirmed at this point in his second term, including 6 circuit judges and 14 district court judges. At this point in his second term, President George W. Bush had 4. So that is 20 for President Obama, 4 for President George W. Bush. No unusual delay there. Apparently, President Obama's nominations are being considered more rapidly than those of President Bush. To be specific, let's go to the district court nominations. We know, with all the talk of a filibuster, in the history of the Senate there has never been a nominee for a Federal district court judge who has ever been denied his seat by a filibuster after that nomination came to the floor. So that needs to be said, too. But right now there are five pending district judge nominations that have been reported from committee that haven't been confirmed. There have been 33 nominations this year. Fourteen are already confirmed, five are reported from committee, as I said, and await floor action. They were reported in May and April and three of them in March. So there is no big backlog. There are five. They were reported in the last few weeks. So no excessive delay there. Finally, on circuit court nominations. I mentioned we are likely to confirm one of the three that are today pending, Mr. Srinivasan. Twelve nominations of Federal circuit court judges have been received this year. Six will have been confirmed after this afternoon. That leaves two--two--circuit court judges who have been nominated by the President and await floor action. They were reported by the committee in April and February. So I can't find any evidence of any delay on Cabinet nominations. In fact, President Obama is being treated better than his predecessors. I don't see any evidence of any delay on judicial nominations. After the vote on Mr. Srinivasan, President Obama will have 20 confirmed in his second term, President Bush had 4. And there are only five pending district court nominations, all reported within the last few weeks. There are only three circuit nominations, one of which is likely to be confirmed this afternoon. On that one, the majority leader indicated Mr. Srinivasan, who has such widespread support on both sides of the aisle, had been waiting forever. Well, he has been waiting a while. President Obama nominated him on June 11, 2012. But why did he wait? Madam President, he had no hearing. Who is in charge of setting hearings? The Democratic majority is in charge of setting hearings. The Republicans can't call a hearing in the Judiciary Committee. So their nominee, Mr. Srinivasan, sat there all of last year, after June 11, without a hearing. There may have been delay, but that was a self-inflicted delay. What about this year for Mr. Srinivasan? Here is the timeline. He was nominated again on January 4 by the President. His hearing was April 10. I don't know why they had to go from January to April to have a hearing, but, again, that is solely within the control of the Democratic majority. He returned his questions--which we all have to do if we are nominated for an executive position--on May 6. That is this month. The committee considered his nomination May 16, which is just last week. They approved it 18 to 0. That is all Democrats and all Republicans voting yes. He came to the calendar of the Senate on May 20. That was on Monday.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I will conclude for those who are expecting to do that, but these are timely remarks. So, Mr. Srinivasan, nominated on June 11, 2012--no hearing by the Democratic majority and the executive committee, I wonder why; nominated January 4 by President Obama this year again, no hearing until April 10. If there is any delay there, it has no fault anywhere on the Republican side. May 6, questions returned; no nominee is considered by the committee until his questions come back; marked up May 16 last week, 18 to 0, unanimous; came to the floor on Monday and the Republican leader moved yesterday to ask unanimous consent that we consider an up-or-down vote for Mr. Srinivasan when we return after a week, which means he would have been fully considered then, to which the majority leader put down a cloture motion. Now he has removed the cloture motion but there was no need for the cloture motion. The only suggestion may be he did it, he made it so it would look as though there was some delay over here, but there is no delay. Mr. Srinivasan has broad support. We are ready to vote for him up or down. I think it is time we got away from this idea of manufacturing a crisis about nominations when in fact we have made it easier for any President to offer his nominations, and the majority leader and Republican leader agreed at the beginning of this year when we did that, that that was the end of the rule changes for the Congress in this Congress. 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. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, Friday's Washington Post reported that Secretary Sebelius of the Department of Health and Human Services ``has gone, hat in hand, to health industry [executives], asking them to make large financial donations to help with the effort to implement President Obama's landmark health care law. . . . '' I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the Washington Post article following my remarks. The article further said that the ``unusual fundraising push'' comes after Congress has repeatedly rejected the administration's requests for additional funds to set up the Affordable Health Care Act. The article said many of the Secretary's calls have recruited support for Enroll America, described as the most prominent nonprofit working on the health care law's implementation. Its president, Anne Filipic--the article goes on to say--joined the group in January after serving as White House deputy director for public engagement. Today, the New York Times included an article by Robert Pear: ``Cabinet Secretary Solicits Large Donations to Publicize Health Care Law.'' I ask unanimous consent to have that article printed in the Record following my remarks.

Mr. ALEXANDER. In the article, it said: . . . Ms. Sebelius had made calls soliciting support from the health care industry, including insurance and pharmaceutical executives. . . . . a spokesman for Ms. Sebelius, said she had suggested that health care executives and others support the work of Enroll America, a private nonprofit group that shares the president's goal of securing coverage for people without insurance. An insurance executive said that some insurers had been asked for $1 million [in] donations, and that ``bigger companies have been asked for a lot more.'' Administration officials said private donations were needed because Congress had provided much less money than Mr. Obama requested to publicize the new law and get people enrolled in health plans subsidized by the government. The article further talks about Ms. Filipic. She worked on Mr. Obama's 2008 campaign. She was deputy executive director of the Democratic National Committee. She worked in the Obama White House as deputy director of the Office of Public Engagement. She said her time is not political in her work for enroll America. She says: We are thrilled to be working with Secretary Sebelius and to have her support. Several executives who received these calls for money said ``they were uncomfortable with the discussions because the federal government has the power to approve or reject the health plans they want to sell in insurance markets that will be run by federal officials in more than 30 states.'' Secretary Sebelius's fundraising for and coordinating with private entities helping to implement the new health care law may be illegal, should cease immediately, and should be fully investigated by Congress. Later this week, I will be sending a letter, with several of my colleagues, to the Government Accountability Office asking them to examine the issue. We will be asking the GAO to examine the amount of coordination between the Department of Health and Human Services and Enroll America and whether Secretary Sebelius is trying to do through a private entity activities that Congress has refused to allow the Department to do. Such private fundraising, as these articles describe, circumvents the constitutional requirement that only Congress may appropriate funds. If the Secretary and others in her Department are closely coordinating with the activities of Enroll America, which is headed by the former White House aide, then those actions may be in violation of the Anti- Deficiency Act. The limits of the Anti-Deficiency Act were fully explored by Congress during the Iran-Contra incident, when Reagan administration official Oliver North raised funds and directed their spending through private entities in support of Nicaraguan rebels even though Congress had refused to appropriate such funds. This produced a select joint committee of the Congress, including many of its most distinguished Members--the Iran-Contra joint select committee. The Senate ranking members were Senator Inouye and Senator Warren Rudman of New Hampshire. The House leaders were Lee Hamilton and Dick Cheney, who was the ranking Republican. The report of the Iran-Contra Joint Select Committee--Senate Report No. 100-216--at page 413 said: The constitutional plan-- Referring to the U.S. Constitution-- did not prohibit the President from urging other countries to give money directly to the Contras. The rebel group in Nicaragua. But the Constitution does prohibit receipt and expenditure of such funds by this government absent an appropriation. This prohibition may not lawfully be evaded by use of a nominally private entity, if the entity is in reality an arm of the government and the government is able to direct how the money is spent. The report also said: Congress's exclusive control over the expenditure of funds cannot legally be evaded through the use of gifts or donations to the executive branch. Were it otherwise, a president whose appropriation requests were rejected by Congress could raise money through private sources or third countries for armies, military actions, arms systems or even domestic programs. Let me read this again. This is the joint committee: Were it otherwise, a president whose appropriation requests were rejected by Congress could raise money through private sources or from third countries for armies, military actions, arms systems or even domestic programs. That is page 412, page 413 of the Iran-Contra joint select committee report. Friday's Washington Post reported that the Secretary's spokesman said Sebelius is working with private entities on ``our mission'' of implementing health care law activities, although Congress has refused to appropriate more funds. If the Department of Health and Human Services closely coordinates with Enroll America and with other such entities, then the analogy with Iran-Contra is strong. It is hard for me to see the difference. There is a difference in where Oliver North got his money in 1985, 1986, and 1987 with Iran- Contra. Some of it came from the hostages-for-arms sale. But the question is not as much where the money comes from--although in this case the Secretary may be raising it from people she regulates, which could also be illegal--the question is where the money is going. In the case of Iran-Contra, the money was going to a private entity, supporting a rebel army in Nicaragua, in contravention of the Boland amendment passed by Congress. In other words, Congress had said no, and the administration did it anyway. That is precisely, it seems to me, what is happening here. Congress has said: No, we are not going to appropriate any more money--or as much as you want--to implement the health care law. And the Secretary appears to be raising money from people she regulates, to give it to private entities with whom she coordinates, to do what Congress has refused to do. The problem with that, first, is the Constitution of the United States gives the power of the purse to the U.S. Congress, in Article I. No. 2, there is a Federal law that says you cannot do through private entities what Congress has refused to do. That is called the Anti- Deficiency law. And, No. 3, there are some Federal laws about raising money from people you regulate for whatever purpose. The Secretary's activities may violate those Federal laws prohibiting raising private funds from those she regulates. Federal law permits a narrow band of private fundraising activities, but this has always been interpreted very narrowly. This would not be the first violation of the Anti-Deficiency Act by the Secretary's HHS. The General Accountability Office found HHS in violation of the Anti-Deficiency Act three times last year. I am most concerned that the Secretary's actions reflect a deep disregard, running throughout the administration, for the constitutional role of the elected representatives in the legislative branch. We saw it in the President's decision in January of 2012 to bypass the Senate's role of advice and consent and make appointments--recess appointments, which are authorized by the Constitution--at a time when the Senate said it was not in recess. A Federal court quickly ruled these appointments were unconstitutional, because the Senate was not in recess, but the individuals continue to show up at the National Labor Relations Board and pretend they have the authority to issue decisions. We see this in a number of executive orders the President has used to circumvent Congress on issues as important as immigration enforcement and in the number of czars whose responsibilities are intended for roles that need the Senate's advice and consent. We see it at the Department of Education, where the Secretary is turning a simple waiver authority in No Child Left Behind into a conditional waiver with the Secretary using his authority to make decisions that should be made by Congress or should be made locally by State and local governments. The HHS Secretary's actions may follow an administration pattern, but in this case it is in a pattern that appears it may be illegal and it demands investigation. So I will be, as I said, with other Members of Congress, later this week, sending a letter to the Government Accountability Office, asking them to look at these facts. Mr. President, I wish to read a few paragraphs from the Iran-Contra report that was issued by the Joint Select Committee in the late 1980s: The Constitution contemplates that the Government will conduct its affairs only with funds appropriated by Congress. By resorting to funds not appropriated by Congress--indeed funds denied the executive branch by Congress--Administration officials committed a transgression far more basic than a violation of the Boland Amendment. That was the amendment that said you cannot use Federal dollars to support rebels in Nicaragua. The power of the purse-- Continued the joint select committee. This was written at a time when we had a Democratic Congress. The power of the purse, which the Framers vested in Congress, has long been recognized as ``the most important simple curb in the Constitution on Presidential Power.'' The Framers were determined not to combine the power of the purse and the power of the sword in the same branch of government. . . . The constitutional process that lodges control of government expenditures exclusively in Congress is the Anti-Deficiency Act, which prohibits an officer of the United States from authorizing an expenditure that has not been the subject of a Congressional appropriation or that exceeds the amount of any applicable appropriation. Thus, the Anti-Deficiency Act provides: An officer or employee of the United States Government may not make or authorize an expenditure or authorization exceeding an amount available in an appropriation or fund for the expenditure or obligation; or involve [the] government in a contract or obligation for the payment of money before an appropriation is made unless authorized by law. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record following my remarks these excerpts from the joint committee's report; and I refer the Record to Article I, Section 8 and Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution, which says: No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law. . . . Then two other things. One is the purported authority that the Secretary's spokesman is citing for her actions in raising money. I have not seen the authority for raising money from people she regulates. But 42 U.S.C. section 300u-1(a) talks about grants and contracts for research programs, and says: The Secretary is authorized to conduct and support by grant or contract (and encourage others to support) research in health information and health promotion, preventive health services, and education in the appropriate use of health care. Applications for grants and contracts under this section shall be subject to appropriate peer review. This small section relates to support for contracts for research and information programs in the form of grants or contracts. The parenthetical, ``encourage others to support'' has to be read as encouraging others to support such programs. It is far-fetched to say it gives the Secretary authority to encourage third parties to give money to nonprofits providing ObamaCare information that the Department of Health and Human Services cannot fund directly because Congress has refused to appropriate. This small section and the words in parenthesis cannot amend the Constitution of the United States and invalidate Article I. This section cannot supersede the Anti-Deficiency Act, according to the language of the Joint Committee. There is obviously a way to have appropriate public-private contracts. We have them all throughout government, public-private associations to try to improve our country. We do that with HIV/AIDS, we do it with a whole variety of things. When I was Education Secretary, I worked with the first President Bush to set up the New American Schools Development Corporation, which encouraged a private corporation headed by former New Jersey Governor Tom Kean, which would raise money to create models for private schools. Then later on President Bush 1 asked Congress to do some things in support of those schools. All of us encouraged that, but that was quite different. That was an effort that would be typical of many public- private partnerships in which the Federal Government is involved, where in this case we said we want to encourage the support of model schools. Here is a private corporation that is doing that. We encourage that. Congress was not objecting to that. Congress has not said: You cannot do that. Congress has not been asked to vote on an appropriation for the New American Schools Development Corporation. Congress had not said: You cannot do that. So that would be true with dozens, may be hundreds of public-private partnerships between the Federal Government and private organizations for the same goal. But what we are talking about, and why the analogy between what Secretary Sebelius is doing and what Oliver North was doing in the Reagan administration in the late 1980s is so strong, is because in each case the money seems to be raised privately and spent through private entities for a function for which Congress has refused to appropriate money. It is not so much where the money came from, it is more where the money is going. The Constitution itself, in Article I, makes it absolutely clear no one can appropriate dollars for a Federal program other than the Congress of the United States. A subterfuge that goes around that, seeks to go around that by raising private money, putting it in private entities for the same purpose that Congress has either refused to appropriate money for or said that you cannot do, that is outside the Constitution. It is not allowed by the Constitution of the United States, and it is against the Anti-Deficiency Act. Then there is the separate question of whether it is appropriate to raise money from people the Secretary regulates. I am deeply concerned about this. I hope the Secretary will stop this action. I hope the public-private partnerships we have throughout government will continue where they are appropriate, but we need for the executive branch of government to show proper respect to the people of this country who elect their Members of Congress. We are Article I. They are Article II. The purpose of the power of appropriations is to put a curb on the executive branch. If the Congress says no, then the executive cannot spend money, nor can the executive go through a subterfuge of private organizations and private fundraising in support of the very same objective that Congress has refused to approve. In this case, the Secretary seems to say the reason they are doing that is because Congress has refused to appropriate more money to implement the health care law. That seems to me to be just admitting a violation of the Anti-Deficiency Act, admitting a violation of the proper division of responsibilities in the Constitution. Yes, Congress has refused to do that, but that is the Congress's privilege to do that. When the Congress does that, the administration may not proceed to spend the money the Congress has not authorized, whether directly through the government or indirectly through private entities. Later this week we will be asking the Government Accountability Office to look into these facts. I am sure we will be hearing more about it. I would hope in the meantime the Secretary will stop making the phone calls, stop coordinating with private entities to do things that Congress has specifically refused to do. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at the end of my remarks an article published July 8, 1991, ``Bush Sets Up Foundation to Start Model Schools'' as an example of an appropriate way to have a public-private partnership or a private enterprise that is encouraged by the government but not in a way that seeks to do something Congress has refused to do. I suggest the absence of a quorum.