Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I have come to the floor in support of Senator Enzi of Wyoming, Senator Durbin of Illinois, and a group of other Senators and House Members who are working on legislation called the Marketplace Fairness Act. I am going to let them do their own speaking. I am their chief self- appointed cheerleader. Senator Enzi has been working on this ever since he has been in the Senate. He has a special passion for it as a former owner of a shoe store in Wyoming. Let me see if I can phrase it this way. If I were to ask the question, What do Governor Chris Christie, Governor Mitch Daniels, Governor Jeb Bush, Governor Haley Barbour, Al Cardenas, chairman of the American Conservative Union, Governor Bob McDonnell of Virginia, and Governor Paul LePage of Maine all have in common, one might say they are all Republicans, and that is true. One might say they are all conservatives, and that is true. The other thing one could say about those Governors and Republicans and conservatives is that they all support the Enzi-Durbin Marketplace Fairness Act. What is the Marketplace Fairness Act and why do they support it? The Marketplace Fairness Act is an 11-page bill about a two-word issue, and the issue is States rights. The reason I am such a strong supporter and a cosponsor of what they are doing is because when I, in my former life, used to be Governor of Tennessee, nothing would make me angrier than Washington politicians who would try to tell me what to do about my own business. We have a legislature in Tennessee and in Wyoming and we have a Governor and we know what services we want and we have a range of options of taxes to pay for that. It was always my position we could make our own decisions about how to do that. What Senators Enzi and Durbin and others of us are saying is that States have a right to decide what taxes they impose and from whom to collect them. If the States of Tennessee or Wyoming say: We are going to have a sales tax and we are only collecting it from half the people, it has the right to be wrong. That is what I mean by States rights. If I were in Tennessee, I would say: Surely, you will not have a State sales tax and only collect it from some of the people. You would collect it from all the people who owe it. Surely, you will treat all your businesses that are in a similarly situated situation the same way. That would be my position if I were Governor or in the legislature, but I will let them decide that. What we have advanced in the Senate, which has 13 cosponsors, is a piece of legislation that makes it clear States can decide for themselves whether to collect State sales taxes from some of the people who owe it or from all the people who owe it. I will give an example and then I will sit down and listen to Senator Enzi and let him talk. This past week I had a birthday, and my wife gave me an ice cream maker from Williams-Sonoma, which I am sure is going to add a few pounds as the months go on. So there we were over the Fourth of July holiday, and I wanted to get some of the stuff one needs to make ice cream. You can buy ice cream starter from Williams-Sonoma and it comes in a can and it makes the project a lot easier and you can buy chocolate syrup and they will mail it right to your house. You can do all these things online, of course, or I could have driven back to Nashville and gone to the store in Nashville and bought it all there. If I had bought all that stuff in Nashville, I would have paid Nashville's 9.25 percent sales tax. If I buy it online, I wouldn't have to pay the tax when I bought it, except that Williams-Sonoma collects it. So I went on the Internet, put it on my credit card, and there was the amount of money it cost to buy the stuff for my ice cream maker. Right at the end of it, it added the tax on, the same sales tax I owed and would have paid if I had been at Williams-Sonoma in Nashville. So I pushed the button, off it went, they collected the tax from my credit card, sent it to the State of Tennessee, and it was done. Twenty years ago, that wouldn't have happened with an out-of-State seller. It was too cumbersome. The technology wasn't advanced, the Internet wasn't as fast, and the States had not gotten their acts together. It was all very confusing, and the Supreme Court said you can't impose that on States--requiring an out-of-State seller to collect the sales tax that is owed--even though it may be owed. Today, it is different. It is as easy to figure out the tax as it is to Google the weather in your hometown. In fact, it is easier. It is easier to have the tax collected online than it is to go into the store and do it. In any event, in the State of Tennessee, Governor Haslam and the Lieutenant Governor--and I can guarantee we are a conservative State-- want the right to decide that for themselves. I know what they are going to do, if they have the right to collect the sales tax from everybody who owes it instead of just some of the people who owe it. They are going to lower the tax rate for everybody. They might get rid of the only vestige of an income tax we have, or the food tax might go down. They might spend some more money for teachers' salaries. That is their business. But I am here to say that Senators Enzi and Durbin and others have solved a big problem for this country, and the reason why this bill is inevitable and why I hope it will pass this week or next week or the next week--and why I believe the House of Representatives is going to pass it as well--is because it is a simple 11-page bill about a 2-word issue: States rights. That is why Governor Christie and Governor Daniels and Governor Bush and Congressman Pence and many Republicans and many conservatives are saying let's pass it. Let's get out of the way and let States make their own decisions, and then the States can decide from whom they want to collect their sales taxes. I congratulate Senator Enzi--and Senator Durbin--on his work and I look forward to working with Senator Enzi and I hope this year we can continue to turn this bill the Senator has worked on for more than a dozen years into a law. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Chairman of the Judiciary Committee for his courtesy in allowing Senator Corker and me a chance to speak about Judge Fowlkes from Tennessee. I do not intend to get into a lengthy dispute with the Senator from Vermont about the relative merits of the two political parties approving judges. But I do have to admire his persistence and creativity in always coming up with a way in how Democrats approve more Republican judges than Republicans approved Democratic judges. I notice that our ranking member, Senator Grassley, will put a statement in the Record today making a clear statement about what the record is. But if I may borrow from that: Today's vote will be the 152nd nominee of President Obama confirmed to district and circuit judges. We have also confirmed two Supreme Court nominees during President Obama's term. The last time the Senate confirmed two Supreme Court nominees was during President Bush's second term. During President Bush's entire second term, the Senate confirmed a total of only 119 district and circuit court nominees. With Judge Fowlkes' confirmation today, we will have confirmed 33 more district and circuit nominees for President Obama than we did for President Bush in similar circumstances. That is according to Senator Grassley's comments, which will be printed in the Record. I would have to say to my friend from Vermont, my memory is good enough that about this time 4 years ago, when we had a Republican President, I think I remember the majority leader of the Senate, Senator Reid, and Senator Leahy both suggesting it was time that we slowed things down and not confirm any more circuit judges until we saw how the election came out in November. So we are basically, in our opinion, applying, in the fairest possible way in the Senate, the Thurmond-Leahy rule that has been developed over time. If there are excellent nominees by the President to the circuit courts, well, the election is only 4 months away. If he is reelected, they can be confirmed in November and December. If he is not, then his successor will have a chance to make those nominations. Let me speak today about a matter that I believe we have great agreement on in the Senate, with the President, and that is the nomination of the President of Judge John Fowlkes to fill a vacancy on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee. As the Governor of Tennessee, I had the responsibility of appointing about 50 judges over 8 years. I looked for good intelligence, good temperament, good understanding of the law, and respect for those who came before the court. I did not feel it was my responsibility ever to inquire how a judge might decide on a particular case before he took the position. So I took some time to look into Judge Fowlkes' background when President Obama nominated him. I was delighted with what I found. I am pleased to recommend him to our colleagues. His performance has been praised throughout his career in the community of Memphis and Shelby County where he is best known. His leadership, his citizenship, his high professionalism, his courtesy to others are the words I often hear. I have letters from bar association members who say he has a creative and independent mind; from others in Memphis who say he is passionate about the community in which he lives, appearing at civic events repeatedly, committing over 50 hours of service annually to the Memphis Area Legal Services, and actively supporting the Boy Scouts. So it is with great pleasure that I recommend to our colleagues today President Obama's nominee, Judge John Fowlkes, to fill a vacancy on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I am disappointed in the final version of this bill. If I had been present, I would have voted against it for a number of reasons, including the fact that it violates the Budget Control Act, it does not use the money produced from the pension reforms to shore up the financial strength of pension systems, and it fails to prevent the EPA from regulating coal ash as a hazardous material. Vote Explanation

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I congratulate Senators Harkin and Enzi, their staffs, and all who worked for 15 months on this important piece of legislation. I have watched the Senate for a long time--first as a staff member and then as a Senator--and it has always been a little messy and complicated. There are always disagreements. That is the purpose of the Senate, to work out arguments. But over the last few months, this Senate has done a much better job of operating in the way the American people expect us to operate. We are all here to try to get results after we state our positions. This bill especially affects the health and safety of millions of Americans. Almost every American family buys the prescription drugs and medical devices we are talking about in this legislation. I am glad to see this happen for two reasons--one, because of the result, and two, because of the way the Senate has worked. It is a fine example of what I hope to see happen more often. I also thank the majority leader, Senator Reid, and the minority leader, Senator McConnell, for creating an environment in which we could have a large number of amendments, debate, and discussion. I think we all appreciate that very much and want to create an environment in which they can provide that kind of leadership. I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, on Monday, at the Library of Congress, was the 150th anniversary celebration of the creation of land-grant universities and the National Academy of Sciences. The assemblage also took a moment to throw a bouquet to Andrew Carnegie for founding so many free public libraries. I am on the floor to ask this question: What was in the water in Washington, DC, 150 years ago, in 1862 and 1863? During the 2 years after the telegraph dispatched the Pony Express in 1861, Congress and President Lincoln enacted the Morrill Act creating land-grant colleges, authorized the Transcontinental Railroad--reducing the time for getting from New York to San Francisco from 6 months to 6 days--as well as the National Academy of Sciences, and enacted the Homestead Act. They also agreed on a conscription law with teeth, a National Banking Act, establishing a national currency, a new internal revenue law, and created the Department of Agriculture. To top it off, on December 2, 1863 the last section of the Statute of Freedom was put in place on top of the Capitol dome, with a great celebration. Mr. President, if I were the Republican national chairman, I might suggest that this transforming burst of governing was simply a matter of turning the government completely over to Republicans and sending home half of the Democrats. By the end of the 37th Congress in 1863, southern Democratic U.S. Senators could not obstruct any of these laws because their States had seceded from the Union and they could not to vote. According to the Senate Historian, that left 48 Senators voting at the end of that session--27 Republicans, 12 Democrats, and 9 Unionists, oppositionists, or Senators who called themselves the ``know nothings.'' Perhaps this burst of governing came from the energy of a new political party or the brilliance of the new President, Abraham Lincoln, or maybe a Congress that was simply more efficient in those days. The Morrill Act that created land-grant colleges passed both the Senate and House in the same week, in June 1862. The President signed the bill into law 2 weeks later. The National Academy of Sciences was introduced on February 20, 1863. It passed the Senate and the House and was signed by the President all on the same day, March 3. Back in those days, the President would obligingly travel down Pennsylvania Avenue and sit in an office in the Capitol waiting for bills to be brought to him for signature. Maybe it was a result of the state of the American condition at the time--the absence of a 24-hour media, special interest groups, and instant communication on the Internet. Or maybe it was that Members of Congress had more time to think great thoughts while traveling to the sessions. It would take Senator Sam Houston 6 weeks to travel from his home in Texas to occupy his Senate desk in Washington, DC. There is no doubt it helped that there was a crisis, the Civil War. Americans have always risen to our best in the midst of a crisis. Making the crisis worse, many thought the new President was incompetent. In January 1863, former Supreme Court Justice Benjamin R. Curtis ``reported general agreement on the utter incompetence of the President. He is shattered, dazed and utterly foolish.'' This is from David Herbert Donald's book ``Lincoln.'' The editor of the Cincinnati Commercial was more explicit when he wrote that President Lincoln was ``an awful, woeful ass. If Lincoln was not a damn fool, we could get along yet.'' The President, in turn, considered many of his generals incompetent. And he and Mrs. Lincoln were suffering a personal crisis at the time, grieving the death of their son, Willie. The war crisis clearly helped to enact transforming legislation in 1862 and 1863. One impetus for passage of the law creating land-grant colleges was to provide military training. Among the first assignments of the National Academy of Sciences was to find some way to protect the iron hulls of the Union Navy warships from corrosion. GEN Grenville Dodge told President Lincoln that the Transcontinental Railroad was a ``military necessity,'' even though Representative Justin Morrill, a visionary in other matters, said he saw no need for the railroad to go further than the silver mines in Nevada because it would only be traveling through uninhabited territories. The war caused the bickering Republicans, who remained in Congress, to pull together. The editor of the Chicago Tribune explained: [If we fail], then all is lost. Union, party cause, freedom and abolition of slavery . . . let us first get the ship out of the breakers, then court martial the officers if they deserve it. Mr. President, it helped to have a crisis. Unfortunately, the formula for the passage of transforming legislation 150 years ago is not neatly explained as a crisis, plus a brilliant President, plus a high-minded Congress efficiently enacting big ideas developed in Washington, DC. The real story is much more American than that. As has usually been the case, these big American ideas came from outside Washington, they took a long time in coming, and enacting them into law was a long and messy process. Jonathan Baldwin Turner's address before the Illinois Teachers Institute in 1850 proposed the creation of an ``industrial university'' 12 years before enactment of the Morrill Act. Representative Morrill first introduced the idea in 1857. After much struggle, it passed in 1959, but President Buchanan vetoed it. Two years later, Morrill succeeded. And even though the obstructionist Southerners were gone, eastern and western Republicans argued vigorously over land grants, as well as where the new Transcontinental Railroad should go. The roots of the National Academy of Sciences can be traced to a group of Cambridge scientists meeting in the 1850s or to earlier philosophical organizations before that or even all the way back to Benjamin Franklin. California entrepreneurs and speculators and politicians--some of them were all three--were the ones who persisted in the 1850s until, in 1862, the Pacific Railroad Act became law. So the formula for success for these transforming laws 150 years ago was typically American: big ideas bubbling up from around the country, plus entrepreneurial persistence, plus a crisis equals transforming results. How does that formula apply today to improving the American condition? Well, to begin with, we have a handy crisis. Washington is borrowing 40 cents of every dollar it spends. By this rate, by 2025, every penny of tax revenue will go for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and interest on the national debt, leaving nothing left-- unless we borrow more--for national defense, national laboratories, national parks, research, or education. A second crisis, many fear, is that our country will be unable to compete in the future with the emerging Asian economies. So what transforming steps should the United States take to meet these new challenges? My own view is that rather than creating new institutions, as America did in the 1850s and 1860s, it would be wiser for us to spend our time making the institutions we already have work. Let me discuss just two examples--first, our basic governmental institutions. The new Foreign Minister of Australia, Bob Carr, a great friend of the United States, expressed recently in Washington, DC, that the United States is one budget deal away from reasserting its preeminence in the world. He means, of course, that the world is watching, actually hoping, that at the end of the year the United States will demonstrate that we actually can govern ourselves by resolving the fiscal mess we have in a way that reforms taxes, controls spending, and reduces debt. We do not need a new government to do this. We need for our newly elected President, whether his name be Romney or Obama, to lead. President Lyndon B. Johnson's Press Secretary, George Reedy, once defined Presidential leadership as seeing an urgent need, developing a strategy to meet that need, and persuading at least half the people that you are right. We don't need to change the rules of the United States Senate; we simply need a change in behavior--one that focuses less on playing games and more on getting results. The new Congress, next year's Congress, whether it be Republican or Democratic, must make its goal to dispute, amend, debate, vote upon the President's proposed agenda, and then help the President succeed, because if he succeeds our country succeeds. We might well remember the words of that Chicago Tribune editorial writer in 1862 who said: Let us first get the ship out of the breakers . . . then court martial the officers if they deserve it. The second institutions we should refurbish and make work are our colleges and universities--all 6,000 of them, not just the land-grant universities that we celebrate this week. Again, we do not need new institutions; we need to reassert the greatness of the ones we have. Our universities, along with our national labs, are our secret weapons for innovation, and innovation is our secret weapon for producing 25 percent of all the money in the world for just 5 percent of the world's population. The list of what it would take to strengthen our colleges and universities is short and mostly agreed upon. First, stop sending home every year 17,000 of the 50,000 international students who graduate from U.S. universities with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Give them a green card and let them stay here to create jobs in the United States. Next, double funding for advanced research, as the America COMPETES Act, which passed with huge bipartisan support in the Senate, has already authorized. Third, repeal the Federal Medicaid mandates that force States to spend money on Medicaid that otherwise would go to higher education. This has resulted in dramatic decreases in State support and increases in tuition to try to maintain quality. Next, while Congress is repealing the Medicaid mandates, it should literally cut in half the stack of regulations that hampers institutional autonomy and wastes dollars that should be spent on students and research. Finally, the institutions themselves should look for ways to save money, such as full utilization of facilities during the summer, 3-year degrees for some students, and reforms to teacher tenure. In the 1960s, Mitt Romney's father, George Romney, offered this advice to the big three Detroit automobile manufacturers: Nothing is more vulnerable than entrenched success. The big three did not pay attention to that advice, and we see what happened. It is good advice for universities today. In conclusion, I wish to say a word about the Carnegie libraries. My experience is that most ideas fail for lack of the idea; or to put it positively, that a great idea eventually carries itself into reality. Andrew Carnegie's great idea was building public libraries. All of us know of their importance. I remember when the New York Times wrote an article about me. They said, Mr. Alexander grew up in a lower middle-class family at the edge of the Tennessee mountains. When I called home later that week to talk with my mother, she was reading Thessalonians to gather strength for what she considered to be a slur on the family. She said to me: Son, we never thought of ourselves that way. You had a library card from the day you were 3 and a music lesson from the day you were 4. You had everything you needed that was important. Andrew Carnegie's gift and the Federal laws 150 years ago creating land grant universities and the National Academy of Sciences and the transcontinental railroad and the Homestead Act all have this in common. They were not command-and-control Federal Government actions from Washington, DC. They were big ideas that, when implemented, empowered Americans to do things for themselves--to travel, to own a home, to educate themselves, and to learn by using a library. For example, my empowered mother took me to the A. K. Harper Memorial Library in Maryville, TN, when I was 3 years old in order to get my library card. ``Mrs. Alexander,'' the librarian said to her, ``we don't give library cards to 3-year-olds.'' ``Well, you should,'' she said to them. And they did. So on this anniversary for the congressional enactment of transforming and empowering ideas, there should be more hope than despair. We still have most of the world's great universities. They still attract most of the brightest students from everywhere, insourcing brainpower and creating wealth. According to a recent Harvard School of Business survey of 10,000 of its alumni on U.S. competitiveness, if you are in business in this country, it is still hard to beat America's entrepreneurial environment, proximity to customers, low levels of corruption, access to skilled labor, safety for people and property, and protection of intellectual property. We have a remarkable system of government created by geniuses that many countries struggle to emulate. So why not celebrate this anniversary by taking steps to ensure that 25 or 50 or 100 years from now we have even more of the greatest universities in the world? Let me read exactly what Australia's Foreign Minister, Bob Carr, a friend of the United States, said in his speech in April: America could be one budget deal away, in the context of economic recovery, one budget deal away from banishing the notion of American declinism. Think about that, one budget deal, an exercise of statesmanship up the road, in the context of an economic bounce-back and all of a sudden, with energy independence crystallizing, with technological innovation, resurgence of American manufacturing, people who spoke about American decline could be revising their thesis. So as we celebrate the transforming legislation of 150 years ago, why not take the advice of our friend from Australia? Why not take advantage of our opportunity at the end of this year to enact a budget that will reassert Americans' preeminence in the world? Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. In the article Dr. Lawson says: Pollution from these power plants means my patients suffer more. Pollution increases their chances of being hospitalized. Some of these toxic emissions even cause cancer and can interfere with our children's neurological development. Secondly, upholding this rule means that visitors will soon not even think of calling the Great Smoky Mountains the Great Smoggy Mountains because it is one of the most polluted national parks in America. We want those 9 million visitors to keep coming every year with their dollars and their jobs. Instead of seeing 24 miles on a bad air day from Clingman's Dome, our highest peak, this rule should mean we will gradually move toward seeing 100 miles from Clingman's Dome as the air cleans up and we look through the natural blue haze. Third, this rule should mean fewer health advisory warnings for our streams that say ``don't eat the fish because of mercury contamination.'' Half of the manmade mercury in the United States comes from coal plants, and as much as 70 percent of the mercury pollution in our local environment, such as streams and rivers, can come from nearby coal plants. Fourth, we have seen that had Nissan been unable to get an air quality permit in Nashville in 1980, it would have gone to Georgia. And if Senator Corker had not, as mayor of Chattanooga, improved the air quality in that city in the mid 2000s, the Volkswagen site there would be a vacant lot today. We know every Tennessee metropolitan area is struggling to stay within legal clean air standards and we don't want the Memphis megasite to stay a vacant lot because dirty air blowing in from Mississippi and Arkansas makes the Memphis air too dirty for new industry to locate there. We know these rules will add a few dollars to our electric bills, but in our case, most of that is going to happen anyway because the Tennessee Valley Authority has already agreed to put this pollution control equipment on its coal-fired powerplants. We know we can reduce the effect of these expenses on monthly electric bills because States may give utilities a fourth year to comply with the rule, and the President may, under the law, give them a fifth and sixth year. And Senator Pryor and I intend to ask the President to give that fifth and sixth year to reduce costs on electric bills. We know long term this rule will secure a place in America's clean energy future for clean coal. For example, the largest public utility, TVA, the largest private utility, Southern Company, both plan to put pollution control equipment on their coal plants and to make at least one-third of their electricity from coal over the long term. In 1990--22 years ago--Congress told the EPA to make this rule when it passed the Clean Air Act amendments. In 2008, the Court told the EPA to make this rule. Over the years, I have learned that cleaner air not only means better health, but also means better jobs for Tennesseans, and I am proud to stand up on behalf of the people of Tennessee to uphold this clean air rule. Exhibit 1 [From the Tennessean, June 18, 2012] Air Rule Will Literally Save Us (By William Lawson, M.D.) Power plant pollution makes people sick and can cut lives short. That is why cleaning up coal-fired power plants is a long overdue, lifesaving necessity that thankfully Sen. Lamar Alexander has embraced to secure both a healthy and sound economic future for our state. I treat patients with asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and other lung diseases in those whose lungs are especially vulnerable to the power-plant emissions. But they are not the only ones at risk. My children and yours also are highly susceptible to the long-term repercussions of having to breathe dirty air growing up, which science tells us can prevent lungs from maturing properly. We desperately need Sen. Alexander and Sen. Bob Corker to ensure they receive protection from these toxic pollutants now, not years from now. Protecting them is the recently adopted Power Plant Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, as required under the Clean Air Act. Astonishingly, a campaign is under way to block these public-health protections. Until these standards take effect, coal-fired power plants have no national limits on the amount of mercury or acid gases they may pump out of their smokestacks and into the air we breathe. These standards will prevent 370 premature deaths every year just in Tennessee and will provide $3 billion in annual health benefits by 2016. TVA is already well on its way to meeting these air standards, but some in the Senate are working to make it easier for corporate polluters to block the rule from ever taking effect. Allowing the new emissions standard to move forward will prevent 130,000 asthma attacks and 11,000 premature deaths nationally every year. This reduction in harmful plant emissions will also eliminate 540,000 missed work days on an annual basis, thereby reducing health-care costs and enhancing our overall quality of life. Pollution from these power plants means my patients suffer more. Pollution increases their chances of being hospitalized. Some of these toxic emissions even cause cancer and can interfere with our children's neurological development. The public health benefits are just too significant to ignore. Healthy air and good health have a crystal-clear relationship. Every day, I see in my patients how avoiding even just one asthma attack, acute respiratory infection or even the briefest hospital stay would dramatically enhance their quality of life. A healthier future is ours to have if we stand behind our leaders who are committed to make that tomorrow a reality.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I thank the Senator from California, and the Senator from Maryland especially for his courtesy. I would agree the EPA has become a happy hunting ground for goofy regulations. But as the late William F. Buckley once said, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. And on this rule--this clean air rule and the earlier interstate rule--I believe EPA is right. The effect of upholding this rule will be to finally require that most coal plants everywhere in America will have to install two kinds of pollution control equipment: scrubbers and SCRs. This will basically finish the job of capturing sulfur and nitrogen oxides, fine particles, and the 187 toxic pollutants that were specifically identified by Congress in the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments. The Tennessee Valley Authority has already committed to install this equipment by 2018. But TVA alone can't clean up Tennessee's air, because dirty air blows in from other States. So let me say what upholding this rule will do for the people of Tennessee. First, it will hasten the day when Memphis, Chattanooga, and Knoxville are not three of the top five worst asthma cities--which they are today--and Nashville is not competing to be in the top 10. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks an article which appeared in the Tennessean this week by Dr. William Lawson of Vanderbilt University, who treats patients with respiratory diseases in Nashville.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I would like to congratulate Dr. Robert Bell on his outstanding record of service to Tennessee. Dr. Bell will be retiring as president of Tennessee Technological University at the end of this month and has served the university for 36 years. He has served as president of Tennessee Tech since 2000, and before becoming the university's president, he served as both a professor and dean of the College of Business. During his time at Tennessee Tech, Dr. Bell has fostered both an increase in student enrollment and university recognition, while ensuring that student education remained affordable. His contributions to Tennessee extend beyond the university level. He has served as a member of the board of directors for the Tennessee Center for Performance Excellence since 1993 and chairs the Cookeville Industrial Development Board. He is also a proud member of the executive committee of the Middle Tennessee Boy Scouts of America, an organization dedicated to helping young men achieve their potential. I want to add my appreciation for his years of service to Tennessee Tech and wish him well in his retirement. I ask to have the following resolution printed in the Record. The resolution follows. A Resolution of Appreciation for the Service of Dr. Robert R. Bell to the Tennessee Board of Regents Whereas, Dr. Robert R. Bell has thirty-six years of service with the Tennessee Board of Regents system and Tennessee Tech University, serving as a professor in TTU's College of Business, then as dean, then as President of the University since 2000, Whereas, as President of TTU, he oversaw 12 straight years of enrollment growth, with TTU's enrollment approaching 12,000, Whereas, he chaired a TBR Vision of Teaching Excellence committee in 2004 to establish future teaching standards and led his University to develop and expand extended education, distance learning and virtual classrooms, Whereas, he supported the Regents Online Degree Program and championed degree innovations at TTU to increase access to education and to respond to industry needs in order to improve the education and economic progress in the state, Whereas, as President he set his sights on a program to prepare the state's teachers, from Pre-K to college levels, to teach science, technology, engineering and mathematics by establishing The Millard Oakley STEM Center and providing it a state-of-the-art home in the new 26,000-square-foot Ray Morris Hall in 2010, Whereas, he recognized the need for a nursing school in rural Tennessee and garnered support from the state legislature, U.S. Congress and private and corporate donors to fund the construction of a multi-million dollar Nursing and Health Services Building, Whereas, he kept his promise as President to upgrade facilities to increase recruitment and retention and oversaw the construction and completion of two residence halls--New Hall South and New Hall North, Whereas, under his guidance TTU established Learning Villages, which aim to bring students and faculty together around a common interest and bridge the gap between the living and learning segments of campus and to encourage college completion, Whereas, the University's endowment has doubled during Bell's presidency to nearly $60 million, Whereas, under his leadership in a difficult economic environment, TTU has remained affordable. Students graduate with the lightest debt load in the region, according to U.S. News & World Report, and sixty percent of 2010 TTU graduates left school debt free, Whereas, the Tennessee Board of Regents grants President Emeritus status to Dr. Robert R. Bell for his continued support of the system, now, therefore, be it Resolved That the Tennessee Board of Regents expresses its sincere appreciation to Dr. Robert R. Bell for his outstanding contributions and leadership to the system and wishes him the very best in his retirement.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 2191.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, if my colleagues think it is a good idea to give rich developers of wind turbines a double dip into the Federal Treasury at a time when we are borrowing 40 cents of every $1, then this provision in the farm bill is for you. If you think a single dip into the Treasury is justified, then this amendment is for you. The farm bill gives new loans, new loan guarantees for wind turbines. That is on top of the 14 billion Federal tax dollars we are spending over 5 years for wind turbines--$6 billion through the production tax credit and the other $8 billion through the section 603 grants. This simply says: No double-dipping. Only one dip. If you do the tax credit, you can't do the farm bill. Vote yes if you don't like double-dipping into the Federal Treasury.

Mr. ALEXANDER. How much time do we have?

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I wonder if the majority leader would permit me to make a brief statement.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, over the last several years, first as Governor of Tennessee and later as a U.S. Senator, I have learned that healthier air also means better jobs for Tennesseans. That is why I intend to vote to uphold a clean air rule that requires utilities in other States to install the same pollution control equipment the Tennessee Valley Authority is already installing on coal-fired power plants in the TVA region. TVA alone can't clean up our air. Tennessee is bordered by more States than any other State. We are literally surrounded by our neighbors' smokestacks. If we in Tennessee want more Nissan and Volkswagen plants, we will have to stop dirty air from blowing into Tennessee, and here is why. Back in 1980, I was Governor and Nissan came to Tennessee. The first thing the Nissan executives did was to go down to the State air quality board and apply for an air quality permit for their paint emissions plant. If the air in the Nashville area had been so dirty that Nissan couldn't have gotten an air quality permit for additional emissions, Nissan would have gone to Georgia and we would not be able to say today that one-third of our manufacturing jobs in Tennessee are auto jobs. Every one of Tennessee's major metropolitan areas is struggling today to meet the standards that govern whether industries can acquire the air quality permits they need to locate in our State. I once asked the Sevierville Chamber of Commerce leaders to name their top priority. They said to me: Clean air. Now, Sevierville is not necessarily a hotbed of leftwing radicals. Sevier County is the most Republican county in the State. It is nestled right up against the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It is where Dolly Parton was born. I live in the next county, right up next to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. East Tennesseans know that 9 million visitors come each year to see the Great Smoky Mountains, not to see the Great Smoggy Mountains, and we want those tourist dollars and the jobs they bring to keep coming. Despite a lot of progress, the Great Smokies is still one of the most polluted national parks in America. Standing on Clingman's Dome--our highest peak, about 6,643 feet--you should be able to see about 100 miles through the natural blue haze about which the Cherokees used to sing. Yet today, on a smoggy day you can see only 24 miles. There are 546 Tennesseans who work today in coal mining in our State, according to the Energy Information Administration. Every single one of those jobs is important. This has been an important tradition in a few counties in East Tennessee. At the same time, there are 1,200 Tennesseans who work at the Alstom plants in Knoxville and Chattanooga that will supply the country with most of the pollution-control equipment required by this rule. Every one of those Tennesseans' jobs is important too. Of the top five worst cities for asthma in the United States, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, three are in Tennessee. They are Memphis, Chattanooga, and Knoxville. Only last year Nashville dropped out of the top 10 worst U.S. cities for asthma. Because of the high levels of mercury, health advisories warn against eating fish caught in many of Tennessee's streams. According to the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, nationally mercury causes brain damage in more than 315,000 children each year. It also contributes to mental retardation. Half of the manmade mercury in the United States comes from coal-fired power plants. This new rule requires removing 90 percent of this mercury. The rule also controls 186 other hazardous pollutants, including arsenic, acid gases, and toxic metals. Utilities have known this was coming since 1990 because these 187 pollutants, including mercury, are specifically identified in the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act as air pollutants that need to be controlled by utilities. Now the Federal courts have added their weight and ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to control these pollutants. An added benefit of the rule is that the equipment installed to control these hazardous pollutants will also capture fine particles, a major source of respiratory disease that is primarily regulated under another part of the Clean Air Act. This new equipment will add a few dollars a month to residential electric bills. The EPA estimates a 3- percent increase nationwide. But because the Tennessee Valley Authority has already made a commitment to install these pollution controls, the customers of TVA will pay this rate increase anyway--with the rule or without the rule. To reduce the costs, the Senator from Arkansas, Senator Pryor, and I will introduce legislation to allow utilities 6 years to comply with the rule, which is a timeline many utilities have requested. Earlier today the Senator from Oklahoma, who is sponsoring a resolution to overturn the rule, referred to the legislation Senator Pryor and I offered as a cover amendment and suggested in some way that it wasn't a sincere effort. I greatly respect the Senator from Oklahoma. Sometimes we have different points of view, but I have different points of view with the Senator from Minnesota, the Senator from Arkansas, not to mention Senators from almost everyplace in the country. But I respect those different points of view just as I respect Senator Inhofe's different point of view, and I hope he will respect mine. Here is my point of view: Ever since I have been in the Senate, I have introduced legislation to clean up the air in Tennessee. Why have I done that? Because we don't want the Great Smoggy Mountains, we want the Great Smoky Mountains. We don't want to perpetually have three of the top five asthma cities in the country. We don't like health advisory warnings on our streams so we can't eat our fish. We especially don't want the Memphis Chamber of Commerce to recruit another big auto plant to the big Memphis megasite and then learn that they can't come here because the Memphis area has dirty air and the auto manufacturer can't get a necessary air permit. It would be even worse if that dirty air is blowing in from another State. So what this rule is about is requiring our neighbors, and the rest of the country, to do the same thing we are already doing. If they don't do it, we have no chance in the world to ever have clean air in Tennessee. Also, if we don't, we will have worse health and fewer jobs. Now as far as the 6 years goes, the law gives States the right to add a fourth year to the 3 years the utilities have to comply with the law. Today Federal law gives the President of the United States the right to add 2 more years to that, so that is 6 years. In the law today the President and the States could make sure utilities have 6 years to comply with this rule. I believe that makes sense. If I were the king and could wave a magic wand, that is what I would do. Why would I do that? Because we will be getting environmental benefits over the 6 years. So what will happen is utilities will assess their coal plants, decide which ones are too old or too expensive to operate, decide within 3 years to close those they will not continue to operate, and then they will have 6 years to spread the costs of implementing the expensive pollution-control equipment--most of it is called SCRs and scrubbers--on their coal-fired powerplants. Most of the utilities have suggested this 6-year timeline as the single best way to clean the air and to do it in a way that has the least impact on electric bills. So we will introduce our legislation to give utility executives 6 years to implement the rule, but we will also write President Obama a letter and urge him to grant the 6 years so utility executives can have that certainty. Some are saying this rule is anticoal. I say it is pro- coal in this sense because it guarantees coal a future in our clean energy mix. As I have said, the Tennessee Valley Authority has decided to put the pollution control equipment it needs to make coal clean on all of the coal plants it continues to operate. That doesn't count carbon; that counts all of the hazardous pollution. It counts sulfur, nitrogen, sulfur, mercury, and those sorts of things. That means, long term, the TVA will be able to produce more than one- third of its electricity from clean coal. That guarantees its future for the foreseeable future in our region, and this is the largest public utility in the world. The rest of our electricity in the Tennessee Valley will come from even cleaner natural gas and from pollution-free nuclear power and hydropower. Ever since Tennesseans elected me to the Senate, which was about 10 years ago, I have worked hard to clean up our air. Tennesseans know that. Most of them agree with me. They thank me for it when I go home on weekends. They do that because they know if I do not help clean up our air in Tennessee, and if I don't stop dirty air from blowing into our State from other States who don't have pollution controls on their coal plants, that it jeopardizes our health and it jeopardizes our opportunity to continue to be one of the Nation's leading States in attracting auto jobs and in attracting tourists. I notice on the Senate floor the Senator from Arkansas, Mr. Pryor, and I thank him for his leadership on the issue and for his practical attitude. I believe we have the same goals, which are, No. 1, clean the air but keep the electric bills down at the lowest possible cost, and we believe we have the most constructive proposal to do that. We hope President Obama will agree with us. First, we hope the Senate will agree with us and uphold the rule; second, that the President will agree with us and grant 6 years; and, third, if he does not, that the Congress will agree with us and pass a law giving utilities 6 years to spread out the costs. I thank the President. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I wish to congratulate the Senator from Arkansas for his very clear explanation of what we are about here. The United States produces 25 percent of all the wealth in the world every year. In order to do that, we use about 20 to 25 percent of all of the electricity in the world. We need low-cost, reliable, large amounts of clean electricity and we need for coal to have a secure part of the future of our clean energy mix. I have said for years, we know what to do about sulfur, nitrogen, mercury, and the hazardous pollutants. We have the pollution control equipment to capture all of those. We can make the coal clean, except for carbon, so let's put that over here on the side for a minute. We can make the coal clean and we should do it. We should have done it in a law over the last few years. We have had 15 Senators equally divided on both sides of the aisle trying to pass a law. We couldn't get it done so we defaulted to the EPA, so now they have had to do the rule. But the Congress amended the Clean Air Act in 1990 we told EPA to write this rule. In the law, it listed the pollutants that have to be controlled. In 2005, President Bush tried to write this rule but a Federal Court threw it out and in 2008 said to the EPA, you have to do it, the way the law says to do it. So Congress has told them to do it, the courts have told them to do it, and now they have done it according to the law. If we don't like the rule, we have to change the law, which we are not doing with the resolution of disapproval. The constructive thing we can do is let the rule go forward. Let's have clean coal be a part of our clean energy mix, and then let's allow utilities what they many of them have asked for, 6 years to implement the rule. Hopefully, our legislation will pass. Hopefully, just the mere introduction of it, particularly by those of us who support the rule, will persuade President Obama that it would be a reasonable Executive Order for him to make, to assure people across the country that we will have no interruption in the reliability of our electricity and that we will have no great increase in costs in most parts of the country. I agree with the Senator from Arkansas when he said that coal needs to be a very important part of our future. This regulation will make coal in our region an important part of our electricity production. If the TVA is the biggest public utility in the country, and it is going to produce a third of its electricity from coal with pollution-control equipment on the plants. That is clean coal. But the real holy grail of energy for me is the scientist who discovers the way to turn carbon from existing coal plants into something commercially useful. It will probably be in energy. In the Department of Energy right now they have an interesting experiment where they are applying a biologic process--really, bugs--to electrodes, turning it into oil. Imagine what would happen if all the coal plants in our country could turn the carbon they produce into other kinds of energy. Then, suddenly, we would have this 400-year supply of coal, and the carbon, as well as all the other parts, would be clean and we could use even more coal than the one-third it is likely to represent. I appreciate very much the leadership of the Senator from Arkansas, his advocacy, and his clear statement of opinion. I wish to say to both our Republican and Democratic colleagues, if you are looking for a way to have clean coal, clean air, and do it at the lowest possible cost to the taxpayer, let's do what most of the utilities have asked for and give them a timeline of 6 years to implement the rule. The easiest way to do it would be for the President to introduce the Executive Order, and each State to give the utility one more year, because that authority is already a part of the Federal law.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the majority leader. I simply wanted to say I did not object to a voice vote on Mr. Hurwitz's confirmation, but I wished to make this statement. Last night, I voted for cloture because when I became a Senator, Democrats were blocking an up-or-down vote on President Bush's judicial nominees. I said then that I would not do that and did not like doing that. I have held to that in almost every case since then. I believe nominees for circuit judges, in all but extraordinary cases, and district judges in every case ought to have an up-or-down vote by the Senate. So while I voted for cloture last night, if we had a vote today, I would have voted no against confirmation because of my concerns about Mr. Hurwitz's record on right-to-life issues. I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, it was a pleasure to hear the Senator from Minnesota speak on the farm bill. I congratulate Senator Roberts and Senator Stabenow for their hard work, as well as the Senator from Minnesota. I would like to take 10 minutes to speak on a related matter. American agriculture is an area where we lead the world with innovation. I want to talk about innovation of a different type, and I want to refer specifically to a May 20 column in the New York Times by Thomas Friedman that caught my attention. I ask unanimous consent that following my remarks, Mr. Friedman's column be printed in the Record.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. Friedman said he had just returned from Seattle, where he saw a stunning amount of innovation. He said it filled him both with exhilaration and with dread. The question is, Is the United States prepared to deal with the innovation we may be seeing around the world over the next decade? Yesterday I heard Robert Zoellick, the retiring President of the World Bank, brief a number of us about the problems we are going to have at the end of the year and whether the U.S. Congress and President can rise to the challenge of governing so we can show the rest of the world we are capable of that. Mr. Zoellick says he travels a lot--that is an understatement given his reputation and the jobs he's held over the last 20 years--and he said that two-thirds of global growth over the last 10 years has come from developing countries and that advanced countries, such as Japan, and Europe and, to some extent, the United States have been stagnant or drifting. Mr. Friedman's column says that we should try to remember the things that made us great and preserve as many of those as we can. He said we need a plan, and then he suggested what he called a magic combination: No. 1, immigration of high-IQ risk- takers, as he called them; No. 2, government-funded research; and No. 3, cutting-edge higher education. That was the plan. That was the magic combination. He said: This is not a call to ignore hard budget choices we have to make. It's a call to make sure that we give education, immigration and research their proper place in the discussion. My purpose as a Senator, as a Republican Senator, is to say that I believe he is exactly right. No. 1, I believe that is the right plan-- or at least the beginning of it; No. 2, I believe there is more going on in the direction that he recommended than most people know; and No. 3, I believe that finishing the work on what needs to be done to implement the plan he outlined is perfectly obvious and well within our grasp. Let's take the ideas one by one. First, the idea, as he called it, of immigration of high-IQ risk- takers--we call this ``pin the green card on the STEM graduate.'' This idea is supported, I would judge, by most Members of the Senate. Each year 50,000 of the brightest students in the world are attracted to our great universities' graduate programs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and then each year we send 17,000 of those graduates in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics back home. We make them go home so they can create jobs in the countries they came from rather than in the United States. A number of us have introduced legislation to change that. It came from a recommendation from legislation called America COMPETES, which passed first in 2007 and was reauthorized in 2010. This was legislation sponsored by the Democratic and Republican leaders that had 35 Republican sponsors and 35 Democratic sponsors, and it included the 20 things a distinguished group told us we should do as a Congress to help America compete in the next generation. We have done two-thirds of them. One of the priorities was to double the federal funding for general scientific research over 10 years, and we've made some good progress in that direction. Part of the unfinished agenda is the idea in America COMPETES of pinning a green card on the science, technology, engineering, and management graduate. There are at least six proposals before the Senate today--one sponsored by Senator Coons and myself, one by Senator Cornyn, one by Senator Coons and Senator Rubio, another by Senators Warner and Moran. Senators Coons, Rubio, Warner, and Moran have another one. Senator Bennet has yet another one. Many of us say: Let's go ahead and pin the green card on the high-IQ risk-taker and let those men and women create jobs here in the United States when they graduate. What should we do about it? Stop insisting that we need to pass every single aspect of the immigration law at one time and go ahead and pass this one bill; realize that we can do some things better in the Senate step by step. The second idea, advanced research--it is hard to think of a major innovation in the biology or sciences that doesn't have some aspect-- has not had some support from government-sponsored research since World War II. Nobel laureate economist Robert Solow tells us that half our economic growth since World War II has come from these technological advances. Maybe one of the best examples is unconventional gas--we call it shale gas. It has been around for a century. A lot of people have been trying to do it, but even Mitchell Energy, the people who stuck it out in advanced shale gas, said it couldn't have happened without the Department of Energy and it could not have happened without the invention of 3 D drilling from Sandia National Laboratory. Yesterday I visited with the head of what we call ARPA-E. Most of us know about a little organization called DARPA, which has been around for 50 years in the Department of Defense. Out of it has come such things as the Internet, stealth technology--a whole series of major innovations that affect the lives of people every day. So the idea was, let's try that in the Department of Energy. That came out of America COMPETES as well. ARPA-E takes promising ideas, brings them into the government, funds them for 3 years, and then spits them out again into the marketplace to see if they can survive. In other words, it is the kind of government-applied research that most of us can support. It had the support of 35 Democrats and 35 Republicans. Yesterday I was briefed on just three of their innovations. One company has doubled the density of a battery, a lithium battery. That means an electric car, for example, could go twice as far with a battery or it could go the same distance with a battery that costs half as much and weighs half as much. A second idea was a laser drill for geothermal. The laser drilling precedes the normal drill and can do remarkable things, which will probably make a massive difference in exploration for oil and gas over time. Then a third, which I would describe as the holy grail of energy advanced research, is the idea of taking carbon, such as that which comes from coal plants, and turning it into something that can be used commercially. Think of the difference that could make for our country if we were able to find a way to do that. There is a promising way to do that in ARPA-E, which is to take what they call ``bugs,'' a biologic solution, apply it to electrodes, and turn it into oil. So this may work or it may not work in a commercial sense, but this is the kind of amazing research they are doing. What do we do about that? I would suggest that all we have to do is double clean energy research, a sort of Manhattan Project for these kinds of ideas, and pay for it by reducing the permanent subsidies for other energy programs, whether they are Big Oil or Big Wind. Finally, the third idea of Mr. Friedman is one I have talked about for years, and that has to do with the effect of Medicaid mandates on public higher education. He puts it this way, that the State governments ``medicate, educate, and incarcerate.'' The courts tell the States they have to spend this much on prisons, and we in the Federal Government tell the States they have to spend this much on Medicaid. There is nothing left for education, and the various orders to States today are ruining public higher education by driving up tuition, driving up loans, and hurting what I believe is America's secret weapon in our technological future. What to do about that? End the Medicaid mandates. Let the Governors and legislators decide how to spend money. I guarantee if they do, they will come closer than when I was Governor of Tennessee and we paid 70 percent of the cost of a student's education and the student paid 30 percent. Today it is the reverse. The State pays 30 percent and the student pays 70 percent. The students are protesting at the University of California because the State has cut $1 billion from what is probably the greatest public university in the world over the last 3 or 4 years. They probably have no idea the reason for that is Medicaid mandates from Washington that soak up the money that otherwise would go to keep tuition low and the quality high at the University of California. My purpose in coming to the Senate floor is simply to say, first, that I think Mr. Friedman is right. He is right on the money. Second, I think more is going on than meets eye; and, third, finishing the job is well within our grasp. We can pass the green card bill and pin the green card on the STEM graduate. There are six different versions before us in the Senate. We can double energy research and pay for it by reducing wasteful subsidies, and we can end Medicaid mandates and give our colleges and universities and community colleges a chance to prosper again and create the kind of future we want. That is the plan for the kind of innovation we need in America. I salute Mr. Friedman for suggesting it, but I hope the rest of the country will recognize that in all three cases the Senate is headed in exactly that direction with legislation that we have already passed or introduced. I hope that on both sides of the aisle we will work together to finish the job. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following Mr. Friedman's article, an article I wrote in the Wall Street Journal, which was published on Wednesday, May 16, 2012, and talks about the damaging effects of Washington mandates for Medicaid on State governments and how it is damaging public higher education, be printed in the Record.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, on July 1, 7 million students getting new loans to go to college, the rate for interest will go from 3.4 to 6.8. This is an amendment to get a result. This is the House-passed bill. President Obama says he wants to freeze the rate for a year. Governor Romney says he wants to freeze the rate for a year. The House of Representatives has voted to freeze the rate for a year. A vote yes on the House-passed bill will permit us to send it to them and quickly send it to the President, he will sign it, and we solve the problem.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, we have 2 minutes left. I will use one of them. Our friends on the other side have their usual solution to almost any problem: Let's put some more taxes on small business men and women in America during a time of the greatest recession we have had. We have a better idea for how to pay for this bill. We will take some of the savings the Congressional Budget Office said they found when they took over the student health program in the health care bill-- instead of giving the students the benefit of those savings, they spent it on government. They spent $8.3 billion on the health care bill. We will give back to the students enough money to pay for this freezing of the rate. We will not tax the small businesspeople. We will have a little left over, and we will reduce the debt. Then we can send our bill to the House, they will pass it like that, send it to the President, and the problem is solved.

Mr. ALEXANDER. How much time is remaining?

Mr. ALEXANDER. It is reassuring to me my friend on the other side of the aisle is reading the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. I am sure that will have some constructive benefit over the next several months. But here is the bottom line, a result. This is the same as the House-passed bill which freezes interest at 3.4 percent for a year. We send it to the House, down to the President, he signs it, the problem is solved. Instead of raising taxes on small businesspeople, we give back to students the money they should have had the benefit of when the other side took over the whole student loan program before. If you want a result, please vote yes. If you want more debate and delay, vote no.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Our case is so compelling, Mr. President. We yield back the rest of our time.