Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I am glad I had a chance to hear my distinguished friend from Illinois speak about student loans and college costs. All of us would like to make it easier for Americans to be able to afford college. At another time, I will speak about some of the other options available. The average tuition at 4-year public colleges in America is $8,200. The average tuition for a community college is $3,000. I know at the University of Tennessee, where tuition is about $7,400, at a very good campus in Knoxville, virtually all the freshmen show up with a $4,000 Hope Scholarship, which is a State scholarship. Of course, if they are lower income students, they are also eligible for Pell grants and other federal aid. So we will continue to work, on a bipartisan basis, to make college an opportunity available to students. If there are abuses in the for- profit sector or other sectors of higher education, we should work on those together.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Of course.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I would like to talk a little bit more specifically this morning about the issue of interest rates on student loans. President Obama is busy this week traveling to campuses across America to talk about student loans. It is a noble goal to talk about making it easier for students to afford college. It is a goal we all share. But I am afraid the President is not telling the whole story. Because if he were to tell the whole story, what he would have to tell the students is that the principal reason for the rise in tuition at public colleges and universities and community colleges across America and the principal reason for the increase in student loans is President Obama himself and his own health care policies. To be fair, he did not start many of these policies. They have been going on for a good while. But he has made them worse over the last several years. When the new health care law goes into effect in 2014, with its new mandates on States, we will find an exaggeration of what has already been happening, which is that Federal health care mandates on States are soaking up the money States otherwise would spend on the University of Oklahoma, and Tennessee, and the State University of New York. When States do not support their public colleges and universities, which is where approximately three-quarters of our college students attend, then their only choice is either to become more efficient, to decrease their quality or to raise tuition. Most of them are trying to do all three. So Federal health care policies are the main reason tuition is up, and the reason tuition is up is the main reason debt is up. Specifically, what we are talking about, and what the President has been talking about, is a 3.4-percent interest rate for some student loans. Here are some facts about that. The President has proposed that for 1 year, for new Stafford subsidized loans, rates would remain at 3.4 percent. Governor Romney agrees with him. I agree with him. So there is substantial support from both the President and his probable Republican opponent in the Presidential race for this next year. New loans, after July 1, which are now at 3.4 percent, would stay at 3.4 percent. The benefit to students who get the advantage of that lower rate--most other loans are at 6.8 percent by law--is about $7 a month, according to the Congressional Research Service. All this talk is about offering students the benefit of about $7 a month for new loans. It is important to notice that no student who has a 3.4-percent loan today will see his or her interest rate go up. I will say that again. If you have a loan and you are going to the University of North Carolina and are paying 3.4 percent today, your rate will not go up on July 1. The law only affects new loans, and it doesn't affect 60 percent of loans. For 60 percent of those getting new loans after July 1, they will continue to pay the 6.8 percent set by Congress a long time ago. I am glad the President is bringing this issue up, because the real driver of higher tuition and higher interest rates is the President's own policies--in two ways: The government and congressional Democrats who passed the health care law are actually overcharging students--all students--on student loans and using some of the money to pay for the health care law. These aren't just my figures. The CBO said when the new health care law passed, Congress took $61 billion of so-called savings--I call them profits on student loans--and it spent $10 billion to reduce the debt, $8.7 billion on the health care law, and the rest on Pell grants. How does that work? How could Congress be overcharging students? Well, under the health care law, the government borrows money at 2.8 percent. The government then loans to students at 6.8 percent. That produces a profit. The Congressional Budget Office has said that the Congress could have lowered the interest rate from 6.8 to 5.3 percent and save all students $2,200 over the life of their average 10-year loan. I am introducing legislation today on my behalf and on behalf of others called the Student Interest Rate Reduction Act. This law proposes to keep the interest rate at 3.4 percent for subsidized Stafford loans beginning July 1 of this year, just as the President and Governor Romney proposed. We will pay for that by taking back the money that the Congress overcharged students on their student loans under the health care law. This 1-year solution, as I said, will save students about $7 a month on interest payments on their new loans, or about $83 a year. It will cost the taxpayers about $6 billion, which will be paid for by reductions in savings from the new health care law. Let's talk a moment about the real cost of tuition and student debt going up--that is, Federal health care policies. When I was Governor of Tennessee in the 1980s, the same thing would happen every year as I made up my State budget, and it is happening today in every State capital in America. I would work through all the things we had to fund with State tax dollars--the roads, the schools, the prisons, and the various State agencies. Then I would get down to the end of the budgeting process and have some money left. The choice would always be between Medicaid and higher education--our public colleges and universities. I spent my whole 8 years as Governor trying to keep the amount we gave to Medicaid down so that I could increase the amount for colleges and universities, because I thought that was the future of our State. In fact, we had a formula then that said if you went to a public college or university, the taxpayer would pay for 70 percent of it and the student would pay for 30 percent. If we raised your tuition, we would raise the State's share. We kept that 70/30. That is now turned completely around in Tennessee, where it is closer to 30/70 now; the student pays 30 percent and the taxpayers pay nearly 70 percent. This shift is because Medicaid mandates from Washington on every State have forced Governors and legislatures to take the money they would otherwise spend for public colleges and universities and spend it instead for Medicaid. As a result, State colleges and universities have less money, and to get more money, they must raise tuition. When tuition goes up at the University of California, and you see students protesting, the reason is because of Washington. As I said, President Obama didn't invent this problem--this is a 30-year old problem--but he has made it worse. He made it worse with laws that say when States have less money, they have to spend more on Medicaid. If they are told from Washington to spend more on Medicaid, even though they have less revenues, they are going to spend less on something else. So they spend less on the University of California, or the State University of New York, or the University of Tennessee. Last year in Tennessee, State funding for Medicaid went up 16 percent in actual dollars; as a result, State funding for community colleges and the University of Tennessee went down 15 percent in real cuts. That was not a cut in growth. That was a real cut. What did the state colleges and universities do? They raised tuition 8 percent. What did students do? They borrowed more money. I have been trying to get this point across ever since I became a Senator. I said during the health care debate that everybody who voted for it ought to be sentenced to serve as Governor for 8 years in his or her State so they would understand this problem. We cannot continue to order the States to spend more for Medicaid and expect our great colleges and universities to be affordable and continue to be the best in the world. That is the real reason why tuition is going up and loans are going up. Here are the facts. There are still good options for students. I mentioned earlier that the average cost of tuition at a 4-year public university in America is about $8,200. For a community college, it is around $3,000. There are many scholarships to help them go there. It is true that loans are going up to very high levels. It is true that there are some abuses here and there--within the for-profit and other parts of the higher education system. But it is also true that in the United States we not only have some of the best colleges and universities in the world, we have almost all of them. Many of them are public colleges and universities. They are at risk today. Why? Because of Federal health care policies that are hamstringing States and soaking up the money that States should be using to fund the universities of this country and the community colleges of this country. Mr. President, again, I am introducing today the Student Loan Interest Rate Reduction Act. It addresses exactly the subject President Obama is talking about on the campaign trail these days. How do we keep the interest rate on subsidized Stafford loans, the new loans that began July 1--how do we keep that at 3.4 percent for 1 year? Governor Romney supports that. President Obama supports that. I support that. The only difference is how we pay for it. It will cost $6 billion. Our friends on the Democratic side have come up with their usual methods of paying for it: They are going to raise taxes on small business and people who create jobs. We have a little better idea on this side, which is, let's take the $8.7 billion back that the Federal Government overcharges students on student loans today to help pay for the health care law and give it back to the students, and let's extend this for 1 year. That will leave nearly $3 billion extra, which we can use to shore up the Pell grant funding gap that is expected over the next couple of years. Respectfully, I say to President Obama, when you visit the next college campus, tell the whole story. It is hard to attend and pay for college. There are many good options. Debt is up. But in fairness, the principal reason tuition is rising, and therefore debt is rising, is because of President Obama's own health care policy. He didn't start it, but he made it worse. What he has done is put into place a set of policies that are soaking up the money States would use to fund public colleges and universities and community colleges across this country, forcing them to use that money for Medicaid. As a result, the universities and community colleges have less money, they raise tuition, and that is the principal reason why we have higher tuition and higher interest rates. The way to stop that would be to either repeal the health care law or repeal the Medicaid mandates. That would improve the quality of American public higher education, and it would improve access to higher education. It would slow down the rising of tuition and slow down the rising of student debt.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I would like to talk a little bit more specifically this morning about the issue of interest rates on student loans. President Obama is busy this week traveling to campuses across America to talk about student loans. It is a noble goal to talk about making it easier for students to afford college. It is a goal we all share. But I am afraid the President is not telling the whole story. Because if he were to tell the whole story, what he would have to tell the students is that the principal reason for the rise in tuition at public colleges and universities and community colleges across America and the principal reason for the increase in student loans is President Obama himself and his own health care policies. To be fair, he did not start many of these policies. They have been going on for a good while. But he has made them worse over the last several years. When the new health care law goes into effect in 2014, with its new mandates on States, we will find an exaggeration of what has already been happening, which is that Federal health care mandates on States are soaking up the money States otherwise would spend on the University of Oklahoma, and Tennessee, and the State University of New York. When States do not support their public colleges and universities, which is where approximately three-quarters of our college students attend, then their only choice is either to become more efficient, to decrease their quality or to raise tuition. Most of them are trying to do all three. So Federal health care policies are the main reason tuition is up, and the reason tuition is up is the main reason debt is up. Specifically, what we are talking about, and what the President has been talking about, is a 3.4-percent interest rate for some student loans. Here are some facts about that. The President has proposed that for 1 year, for new Stafford subsidized loans, rates would remain at 3.4 percent. Governor Romney agrees with him. I agree with him. So there is substantial support from both the President and his probable Republican opponent in the Presidential race for this next year. New loans, after July 1, which are now at 3.4 percent, would stay at 3.4 percent. The benefit to students who get the advantage of that lower rate--most other loans are at 6.8 percent by law--is about $7 a month, according to the Congressional Research Service. All this talk is about offering students the benefit of about $7 a month for new loans. It is important to notice that no student who has a 3.4-percent loan today will see his or her interest rate go up. I will say that again. If you have a loan and you are going to the University of North Carolina and are paying 3.4 percent today, your rate will not go up on July 1. The law only affects new loans, and it doesn't affect 60 percent of loans. For 60 percent of those getting new loans after July 1, they will continue to pay the 6.8 percent set by Congress a long time ago. I am glad the President is bringing this issue up, because the real driver of higher tuition and higher interest rates is the President's own policies--in two ways: The government and congressional Democrats who passed the health care law are actually overcharging students--all students--on student loans and using some of the money to pay for the health care law. These aren't just my figures. The CBO said when the new health care law passed, Congress took $61 billion of so-called savings--I call them profits on student loans--and it spent $10 billion to reduce the debt, $8.7 billion on the health care law, and the rest on Pell grants. How does that work? How could Congress be overcharging students? Well, under the health care law, the government borrows money at 2.8 percent. The government then loans to students at 6.8 percent. That produces a profit. The Congressional Budget Office has said that the Congress could have lowered the interest rate from 6.8 to 5.3 percent and save all students $2,200 over the life of their average 10-year loan. I am introducing legislation today on my behalf and on behalf of others called the Student Interest Rate Reduction Act. This law proposes to keep the interest rate at 3.4 percent for subsidized Stafford loans beginning July 1 of this year, just as the President and Governor Romney proposed. We will pay for that by taking back the money that the Congress overcharged students on their student loans under the health care law. This 1-year solution, as I said, will save students about $7 a month on interest payments on their new loans, or about $83 a year. It will cost the taxpayers about $6 billion, which will be paid for by reductions in savings from the new health care law. Let's talk a moment about the real cost of tuition and student debt going up--that is, Federal health care policies. When I was Governor of Tennessee in the 1980s, the same thing would happen every year as I made up my State budget, and it is happening today in every State capital in America. I would work through all the things we had to fund with State tax dollars--the roads, the schools, the prisons, and the various State agencies. Then I would get down to the end of the budgeting process and have some money left. The choice would always be between Medicaid and higher education--our public colleges and universities. I spent my whole 8 years as Governor trying to keep the amount we gave to Medicaid down so that I could increase the amount for colleges and universities, because I thought that was the future of our State. In fact, we had a formula then that said if you went to a public college or university, the taxpayer would pay for 70 percent of it and the student would pay for 30 percent. If we raised your tuition, we would raise the State's share. We kept that 70/30. That is now turned completely around in Tennessee, where it is closer to 30/70 now; the student pays 30 percent and the taxpayers pay nearly 70 percent. This shift is because Medicaid mandates from Washington on every State have forced Governors and legislatures to take the money they would otherwise spend for public colleges and universities and spend it instead for Medicaid. As a result, State colleges and universities have less money, and to get more money, they must raise tuition. When tuition goes up at the University of California, and you see students protesting, the reason is because of Washington. As I said, President Obama didn't invent this problem--this is a 30-year old problem--but he has made it worse. He made it worse with laws that say when States have less money, they have to spend more on Medicaid. If they are told from Washington to spend more on Medicaid, even though they have less revenues, they are going to spend less on something else. So they spend less on the University of California, or the State University of New York, or the University of Tennessee. Last year in Tennessee, State funding for Medicaid went up 16 percent in actual dollars; as a result, State funding for community colleges and the University of Tennessee went down 15 percent in real cuts. That was not a cut in growth. That was a real cut. What did the state colleges and universities do? They raised tuition 8 percent. What did students do? They borrowed more money. I have been trying to get this point across ever since I became a Senator. I said during the health care debate that everybody who voted for it ought to be sentenced to serve as Governor for 8 years in his or her State so they would understand this problem. We cannot continue to order the States to spend more for Medicaid and expect our great colleges and universities to be affordable and continue to be the best in the world. That is the real reason why tuition is going up and loans are going up. Here are the facts. There are still good options for students. I mentioned earlier that the average cost of tuition at a 4-year public university in America is about $8,200. For a community college, it is around $3,000. There are many scholarships to help them go there. It is true that loans are going up to very high levels. It is true that there are some abuses here and there--within the for-profit and other parts of the higher education system. But it is also true that in the United States we not only have some of the best colleges and universities in the world, we have almost all of them. Many of them are public colleges and universities. They are at risk today. Why? Because of Federal health care policies that are hamstringing States and soaking up the money that States should be using to fund the universities of this country and the community colleges of this country. Mr. President, again, I am introducing today the Student Loan Interest Rate Reduction Act. It addresses exactly the subject President Obama is talking about on the campaign trail these days. How do we keep the interest rate on subsidized Stafford loans, the new loans that began July 1--how do we keep that at 3.4 percent for 1 year? Governor Romney supports that. President Obama supports that. I support that. The only difference is how we pay for it. It will cost $6 billion. Our friends on the Democratic side have come up with their usual methods of paying for it: They are going to raise taxes on small business and people who create jobs. We have a little better idea on this side, which is, let's take the $8.7 billion back that the Federal Government overcharges students on student loans today to help pay for the health care law and give it back to the students, and let's extend this for 1 year. That will leave nearly $3 billion extra, which we can use to shore up the Pell grant funding gap that is expected over the next couple of years. Respectfully, I say to President Obama, when you visit the next college campus, tell the whole story. It is hard to attend and pay for college. There are many good options. Debt is up. But in fairness, the principal reason tuition is rising, and therefore debt is rising, is because of President Obama's own health care policy. He didn't start it, but he made it worse. What he has done is put into place a set of policies that are soaking up the money States would use to fund public colleges and universities and community colleges across this country, forcing them to use that money for Medicaid. As a result, the universities and community colleges have less money, they raise tuition, and that is the principal reason why we have higher tuition and higher interest rates. The way to stop that would be to either repeal the health care law or repeal the Medicaid mandates. That would improve the quality of American public higher education, and it would improve access to higher education. It would slow down the rising of tuition and slow down the rising of student debt.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Yes.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, first, I thank the Senator from Maine and the Senator from Connecticut for letting me take a few minutes, and I congratulate them on their hard work on this bill. This is a bipartisan bill that has some bipartisan amendments and suggestions about a big problem. It is the kind of thing we ought to be working on. I hope that--while we ran into a little obstacle yesterday, in terms of our ability to move forward with relevant amendments to the Postal Service bill, I hope we can move back in that direction so we can have a good debate. I thank the Senator from Maine for her full explanation of the refund, which is an essential part of the bill. Tribute to Franklin Namon Watson and Lowell Russell

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, my late friend Alex Haley, the author of ``Roots,'' lived his life by these six words: ``Find the good and praise it.'' Occasionally, I come to the floor and cite an example of a Tennessean or some circumstances in my State that fit those six words. A few weeks ago, I came here to talk about 91-year-old Tennessean Bill Hoffman, a resident of Memphis, who turned down a Purple Heart in 1944 when he was wounded in Germany because there were so many other people who were hurt worse than he was. His son thought, since his father is now 91, that maybe it is time that he does get it, and he contacted our office, and we got in touch with the Army. Lo and behold, he not only deserves the Purple Heart, he turns out to be one of the last three surviving rangers who scaled the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc on D-day, which was one of the most daring and courageous acts of World War II. President Reagan talked about it in his 40th anniversary speech, ``The Boys of Pointe du Hoc.'' Last week in Memphis, the Army presented Bill Hoffman not only with his Purple Heart but with the Bronze Star and a ``V'' for valor, and they gave him a special ranger cap to go along with it. That was a good day. I am here today to talk about another story, two extraordinary Tennesseans who are united by both their friendship and their courage-- LCpl Franklin Namon Watson, who sacrificed his life for our freedom, and his devoted friend and mentor, Tennessee Highway Patrol Sergeant Lowell Russell, who is recovering from critical injuries he sustained while on duty. LCpl Franklin Namon Watson, or ``Frankie'' to everyone who knew him in East Tennessee, enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve in 2010. Last year, in September, at the age of 21, Frankie was killed while serving our country in Afghanistan, sweeping for improvised explosive devices in the Helmand Province. Frankie, the son of Stacy Couch and Troy Watson, didn't shy away from difficult or dangerous work when he was back in Tennessee. He was a law enforcement officer in the police department of Madisonville in East Tennessee, just a few miles down the road from my hometown. The chief deputy of the Monroe County Sheriff's Department, Brian Graves, described Frankie as ``very upbeat and focused on what he wanted to do.'' What he wanted to do was be a peacekeeper and a law enforcer. Family members say his dream was to join the Secret Service and protect the President. Madam President, I will read from a letter to the editor of the Knoxville News Sentinel written by a prominent Knoxville attorney, Billy Stokes. He wrote about the escort of Frankie's body, delivered by a small airplane to the National Guard base and transported by a six-person military detail to a hearse, which then traveled from the airport to Madisonville in East Tennessee. Billy was one of the several hundred motorcyclists who road behind the police cars. This is what he said: All along the route were thousands of well-wishers, many holding American flags. Lots of them were veterans, proudly holding crisp salutes as the processional passed. A significant number of those folks were crying. As we got closer to Madisonville, many young men and women were obviously grief stricken. I suppose they were school friends of Watson's. I saw thousands of East Tennesseans trying to honor and respect a young man who has given his all for this country. Watson was a wonderful young man by all accounts from those who knew him best. I am an Army veteran but did not experience the horrors of combat. I do know that we have an all-volunteer force protecting our liberty and freedoms every day. I am so glad that we don't seem to take them for granted. I've never been prouder to be an American and an East Tennessean than I was that day. Another law enforcement officer, Tennessee Highway Patrol Sergeant Lowell Russell, helped raise Frankie and was a devoted friend and mentor. Not long ago, Lowell talked with a member of my staff in Knoxville, Jane Chedester, and told her about Frankie. He said that Frankie's love of serving the Madisonville Police Department was great. He told her about Frankie's dedication to honoring his State and his country. Then, in March, Sergeant Russell was critically injured in a collision on Interstate 40 in West Knoxville when a tractor trailer hit his squad car as he sat on the shoulder finishing up some paperwork after a traffic stop. Earlier this month Lowell was discharged from the University of Tennessee Medical Center to continue his recovery in a rehabilitation facility. Lowell is beloved by his community. A Facebook page dedicated to ``Prayers for Sergeant Lowell Russell'' is filled with loving prayers for Lowell. They call him ``a wonderful man.'' They talk about his ``huge heart.'' One says that ``Lowell has done so much for everyone else.'' Numerous efforts are being made to raise money to help Russell and his family with expenses. Tennessee's General Assembly passed a resolution to honor Lowell, noting his ``immeasurable contributions to his community as a Tennessee Highway Patrolman . . . who exhibits superior standards of professional conduct and ethics.'' It also says that ``Sergeant Russell is wholly committed to noble precepts of public service that have earned Tennessee recognition as the 'Volunteer State,' and he should be specially recognized for his courage and gallantry as an esteemed member of the local law enforcement.'' I add my great appreciation for Lowell to that expressed by our Governor and our general assembly. Honey and I pray for his strength in recovery and for strength for his family and friends during this very difficult time. So Frankie Watson and Lowell Russell, we are proud of you. Find the good and praise it. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, today, the University of Tennessee, where I was once President, announced that our basketball coach, Pat Summitt, is resigning after 38 years in that position. Women's college basketball will never be the same without Pat Summitt and women's college basketball would not be the same were it not for Pat Summitt's 38 years of leadership. There will be much said about her winning record, and it is an astonishing accomplishment: 1,098 wins in basketball, more than any other coach, man or woman, in the sport; 8 national championships; in the Southeastern Conference, 32 Southeastern Conference titles, 31 straight trips to the NCAA tournament. But the statistic I always valued most, especially when I was president of the university, was every single one of Pat Summitt's athletes who have completed their eligibility with her have graduated from the University of Tennessee. That is over 38 years. So she has a remarkable record, for which we all are very grateful. It is hard for people outside Tennessee to understand how much Pat Summitt has become a part of the lives of so many citizens in our State. She actually was asked by the university to take over the basketball program when she was in her early twenties. This was in 1974. Back then, many women's basketball games were played with three women on one end and three women on the other end, offense and the defense. She changed all that in a big-time way. When I say women's college basketball would not be the same without her, I mean that because almost every women's coach in America would attest to the fact that Pat Summitt has played a role, either an important model or personal role in their development. Even before big games, she would have over to her house in Knoxville the opposing team and the opposing coach. She always had time for community events in Knoxville, despite her busy schedule as such a winning coach. She is a terrific person individually and a great model. She taught many of us in Tennessee the game of women's college basketball. She was so upfront and personal about it, with her famous stare, which could stare anybody down, and her discussion of these extraordinary athletes she had and what their pluses were and what the things were that they had to work on, that we all felt we not only knew her, but we knew the athletes as well. I have enjoyed watching Pat Summitt's team for many years. I made a point to watch three of her games in person this year in Knoxville. I arranged my Senate schedule around it because I feared this might be her last season. She announced last year that she has Alzheimer's disease and she is now devoting herself to fighting that disease. So I am sure she will be as accomplished in some appropriate way in the next stage of her life as she has been in the last 38 years. I wanted to come to the Senate floor and say, on behalf of all the people of our State, that women's college basketball will never be the same without Pat Summitt, and women's college basketball would never be what it is today if it weren't for Pat Summitt. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank Senator Lieberman. I think it is appropriate, and most fans of women's college basketball would agree, that the first two Senators on the floor to commend Pat Summitt would be the Senator from Tennessee and the Senator from Connecticut.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator for his generous remarks. I know Pat would as well.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator from Vermont. This is a body that operates by unanimous consent, which is a hard thing to get accustomed to until you have ever been a part of it. That means any one of us can stop the Senate from opening or having a prayer or saying the Pledge of Allegiance or going to a bill. What I am about to say, I do not want in any way to diminish the rights of any Senator, such as the Senator from Kentucky, to have an opportunity to object to a unanimous consent request. But when everyone has a lot of rights, unless we have some agreement, it is hard to get much done. I have been sometimes critical of the majority leader, but I have also tried to support and praise him for things he has done when I can because I know that either being the Democratic or the Republican leader is not an easy job. So I want to commend the majority leader for offering to accept all relevant amendments, which is a broad category, and this bill seems particularly appropriate for that because we have competing visions for what to do about the post office. It has gone through committee, the regular order, and the bill is bipartisan. There are not a lot of partisan differences. There are a lot of differences, and they need to be worked out. We have probably 2 weeks to do it. So this is a ripe situation for that if we can get consent to do it. I am disappointed the majority leader felt he had to go on and offer cloture to move on because he already had control of the situation with the right to fill the tree. So I would hope we could respect the right of the Senator from Kentucky and that of other Senators to offer unanimous consent--to object to unanimous consent agreements but see if we cannot find some way to move ahead with an agreement on relevant amendments. That means the majority leader does not pick the amendments; we all get to offer them if they are relevant. The majority leader has a difficult job. So I hope as he reflects on this matter he will consider that it is much easier to get an agreement for relevant amendments in our caucus--I do not know what it is like in the Democratic caucus--if we are able to talk it through a little bit and secure consent for that before it is offered. That would be the job of Senator McConnell, the Republican leader. So here we are. We were on the postal bill for 5 full minutes, and now we are off on a wrong track. We can move back very easily. The majority leader has the ability to control any amendment through his filling the tree and does not need the cloture amendment. Hopefully, the Senators on this side will carefully consider the offer of all relevant amendments. That would give us a chance to offer many amendments. It is the right of any Senator to object. But as one Senator, I appreciate the gesture, and I hope the majority leader will give Senator McConnell an opportunity, if he wants it--I am just speaking for myself--if he wants it, to work through our caucus and see if we can get a relevant amendment agreement.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, my late friend Alex Haley, the author of ``Roots,'' lived his life by the motto ``Find the Good and Praise It.'' That is an easy thing to do when talking about Barbara Mikulski, a friend and colleague with whom I have worked closely since I joined the Senate. I would like to add my congratulations to those of my colleagues on Senator Mikulski reaching the milestone of becoming the longest serving woman in Congress. This is a remarkable achievement for a remarkable woman. For over 35 years, that is almost 13,000 days, Barbara Mikulski has dedicated herself to serving the people of Maryland and representing them here in Congress. Although Senator Mikulski is a proud partisan, she is one of the best advocates of bipartisanship. She understands the need to work together, to learn from one another's point of view, and to strike a deal so that each side can get something of value and move forward. I have found that when you have Barbara Mikulski by your side in a debate you always seem to win. She brings passion and dedication and tenacity to every issue she works on. Her love of the Senate, Congress in general, and the American people is infectious. When Senator Mikulski and I have worked together it has always been a delightful experience. Whether authorizing the Teach for America program to allow college graduates to become teachers in our Nation's worst schools; passing America COMPETES, where we improved our energy research programs and STEM education initiatives; or working on higher education where we share a passion for eliminating costly and unnecessary Federal regulations, Barbara Mikulski is a tireless friend and ally. Congratulations, Senator Mikulski. The Senate is proud of you, Maryland is proud of you, and the country is proud of you.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I would like to make a few remarks on the subject we are debating here, which is energy. Last week the majority leader said he was disappointed that we were not moving to the Ex-Im Bank and to postal reform and to cybersecurity, all of which he said are urgent national issues the citizens of the United States expect our Senate to deal with. The Republican leader said that, on our side, we are ready to deal with all three, and the Republican leader offered to join the majority leader in dealing with the Ex-Im Bank, with a few relevant amendments. That might be a pretty good way to begin our process of getting the Senate back to doing what the Senate is supposed to do, which is to bring up important pieces of legislation, allow Senators on both sides to offer their amendments, speak on them, and then vote on them. It is easier to do if the amendments are relevant to the legislation that is being offered. So we were looking forward this week to dealing with a postal reform bill, which needs to be dealt with. We have a several-billion-dollar debt for the post office, which has been a part of our lives ever since our country was founded, and we have competing pieces of legislation on the issue, with very good Senators on both sides of the aisle ready to discuss it. Yet, suddenly the majority leader changed his mind, which he has a right to do, and instead, he brought up legislation repealing six tax provisions for five oil companies--provisions that, for the most part, are tax provisions that are similar to those available to most other companies in America. Why would the majority leader do that? Well, in the Senate it is not considered to be good form to inquire into the motivation of other Senators, and I won't do that, but I will read a paragraph or two from The National Journal this week that speculated on what might have happened this past Monday evening. I quote: The Senate holds a procedural vote this evening on legislation sponsored by Senator Menendez of New Jersey that would repeal tax incentives for the country's biggest oil companies. It won't pass, but it will create a platform for Democrats to try to reclaim the debate on gas prices. Indeed, a memo circulated over the weekend by John Podesta, president of the liberal Center for American Progress, and Democratic pollster Geoff Garin, notes that the vote ``offers a huge opportunity for progressives to frame energy policy through the gas price debate.'' Democrats will use familiar tactics of linking high gas prices to Big Oil, and Big Oil to Republicans, with the aim of attacking GOP presidential candidates and of putting three vulnerable Republican Senators up for reelection--Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Richard Lugar of Indiana and Dean Heller of Nevada--in tough spots. That is the end of the speculation from the National Journal. Now, maybe that was the reason the majority leader decided to bring this up, but clearly we are spending a whole week on a political exercise. If this is true--that it is being brought up to frame an issue to put Republican Senators who may be running for reelection in a difficult spot--well, then the Republicans must not think so because we all voted to bring it up. So instead of doing cybersecurity or postal reform, we are spending a whole week on something we all know is not going to pass and is a misuse of the time of the Senate. It would be much better if we were using the time on those other issues. But as long as we are discussing lowering gasoline and fuel prices, I have a suggestion to make. Here is a plan to lower fuel prices: Double energy research. And here is a way to pay for it without adding to the Federal debt: Stop wasteful, long-term subsidies that are exclusively or mostly for both Big Oil and Big Wind. Look at shale gas. The Senator from Oklahoma was talking about shale gas, which is being produced thanks to new technology found through energy research. This is a remarkable development in our country. But, as Daniel Yergin, the leading expert on energy, reports in his new book ``The Quest,'' the innovation on this began over 20 years ago, some of it from the private sector, some from government funding. Basically we found a way to find natural gas and oil through a process called hydraulic fracking. It is possible all around the world. I was in Australia in January, and they are doing it and selling it to China. The remarkable difference for the United States is not just that we suddenly have a lot more natural gas but that it is cheap gasoline. Instead of being $15 a unit, which it was when we passed the last Energy bill in 2005, it is $2 a unit or $3 a unit. More than that, while Australians are selling their gas to China and paying the world price at home for their own natural gas, in the United States it appears likely we will be able to buy our gas at a U.S. price rather than a world price. What does that mean? That means that natural gas in Europe and in Asia is going to be worth four to five times what natural gas is here. So chemical companies that were thinking about moving overseas 5 years ago in order to be able to buy cheap natural gas for their feedstock, their raw materials, are staying here, expanding here, thinking about moving back. Older people who need to heat and cool their homes can use natural gas at a cheaper price. Manufacturing companies that are adding up the costs to make a decision on whether to put a plant in Mexico or some other place in the United States can put cheap energy in there with the natural gas. For the foreseeable future, it appears that natural gas in Europe and Asia is going to be four or five times what it is in the United States, giving us a tremendous advantage. So energy research, both in the government and in the private sector, has given the United States the advantage that, if truth be told, has been our advantage ever since World War II. The principal reason we have produced 25 percent of all the money in the world is because of the innovation, technology, and research that have come since World War II, and it is hard to think of an important advance in biological or physical sciences without support from government research. So shale gas is one example of that. So shale gas is one example of that. Here is another example: I drive an all-electric Nissan LEAF and pay about $3 for the electricity to travel 100 miles--better than spending an equivalent $20 on gasoline. Researchers at battery maker Envia have invented a way to double the density of lithium ion batteries, hastening the arrival of the $20,000 electric cars that travel 300 miles per charge. That research is permitting us, in the case of shale gas, to find more American energy and in the case of electric batteries, to use less of it. That is why I argue that the United States should launch a series of mini Manhattan Projects with the same focus and determination of the original World War II Manhattan Project, this time with the goal of finding more energy and finding ways to use less of it. The United States has a resource no other country has--dozens of major research universities and 17 national laboratories that can advance research on cheaper solar, better batteries, recapturing carbon from coal plants, biofuels from crops we don't eat, better ways to dispose of nuclear fuel, offshore winds, green buildings, and even fusion. To pay for doubling the $5 billion the United States now spends on energy research, Congress should end current tax breaks that are exclusively or mostly for both Big Oil and Big Wind and of every $3 saved, use $1 for more research and $2 to reduce the Federal debt. For all we hear about Big Oil--and we hear a lot about it--you may be surprised to learn that special tax breaks for Big Wind are even greater. During the 5 years between 2009 and 2013, Federal taxpayer subsidies for wind power developers equaled $14 billion, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation and the U.S. Department of Treasury. Here, I am only counting the production tax credit and the cash grants that the 2009 stimulus law offered to wind developers in lieu of the tax credit. An analysis of that stimulus cash grant program, which this legislation offered here would extend, found that 64 percent of the 50 highest dollar grants awarded--or about $2.7 billion in subsidies--went to projects that had begun construction before the stimulus measures started. Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, told Greenwire: It's essentially funding economic activity that would have occurred. So it's just a pure subsidy. It sounds like, in the President's budget, Big Oil receives multiple tax subsidies that are exclusively for Big Oil. Doing away with them, they say, would save about $4.7 billion next year or about $22 billion to $24 billion over 5 years. So far, it sounds as though Big Oil with $22 billion is bigger with its subsidies than Big Wind with only $14 billion. But here is the catch: Many of these subsidies the President is attacking oil companies for receiving are regular tax provisions that are the same or similar to tax provisions that are available to hundreds, even thousands of companies in America. For example, Xerox, Microsoft, and Caterpillar all benefit from tax provisions such as the manufacturing tax credit, amortization or depreciation of used equipment that the President is counting as Big Oil subsidies. And of course wind energy companies also benefit from many of these same provisions, but the production tax credit that benefits mostly wind is in addition to the regular Tax Code provisions that benefit many companies. So the only way to make a fair comparison is to look at subsidies that mostly benefit only oil or mostly benefit only wind, and by that measure, Big Wind gets more tax breaks than Big Oil. So the bill proposed by the Senator from New Jersey that is limited to just five big oil companies is limited to them even though many of the tax breaks they receive are the same or similar to tax breaks many other companies receive. This bill also extends many tax breaks, including the wind production tax credit and the 1603 grant program for renewable energy, which mostly benefits wind. Two weeks ago, during the debate on the Transportation bill, the Senate wisely refused to extend the 20-year-old temporary production tax credit which mostly benefits wind. That was the correct decision. We should allow this tax provision to expire. Congress made a much more difficult decision last year to allow the ethanol tax credit to expire, and we should hold our ground and do the same thing for the wind production tax credit. There are three reasons Big Wind subsidies should go the way of the $5 billion annual ethanol subsidy. First, we can't afford it. The Federal Government borrows 40 cents of every dollar we spend. It can't justify such a subsidy, especially for what the U.S. Energy Secretary calls a mature technology. According to a 2008 Energy Information Agency report, Big Wind received in subsidies 25 times as much per megawatt hour as all other forms of electricity production combined. Second, wind turbines produce a relatively puny amount of unreliable, expensive energy. Wind produces about 2.3 percent of all of our electricity. A better alternative is clean natural gas. An even better alternative is cleaner nuclear power. Nuclear power reactors power our Navy and produce 70 percent of our pollution-free electricity. Using windmills to power a country that uses one-fourth of the world's electricity would be the energy equivalent of going to war in sailboats. The Tennessee Valley Authority has erected 18 massive wind turbines on 3,300-foot Buffalo Mountain outside Knoxville. Other than deface the landscape and waste ratepayer dollars, the turbines have done little. The wind there blows 19 percent of the time, usually at night when we don't need it, and its unused electricity production cannot be stored. Finally, there is the question of whether, in the name of saving the environment, wind turbines are destroying the environment. These are not your grandma's windmills. They are taller than the Statue of Liberty. Their blades are as long as a football field, and their blinking lights can be seen for 20 miles. In Nashville, Vanderbilt and the Metro water system is about to erect a small wind turbine as tall as the Parthenon replica we have in Nashville. It would take 1.1 million of these eyesores to equal the production of TVA's new Watts Bar 2 nuclear reactor. Building that many turbines would cost 15 times the cost of the nuclear reactor, and you would still need the nuclear plant for when the wind doesn't blow. When wind advocate T. Boone Pickens was asked whether he would put turbines on his Texas ranch, he answered, ``No. They're ugly.'' Birds must think of turbines as Cuisinarts in the sky. Eagle killing has become so commonplace that the U.S. Department of the Interior has set up a process to grant licenses for eagle takings, sort of a hunting license. A new documentary, ``Windfall,'' chronicles the despair of upstate New York residents debating whether to build giant turbines in their town. So I ask the question: If wind has all these drawbacks, is a mature technology, and receives subsidies greater than any other form of energy per unit of actual energy produced, why are we subsidizing it with billions of dollars and why are we not including it in this debate? Why are we talking about Big Oil subsidies and not Big Wind subsidies? Our energy policies should be, first, to double the $5 billion Federal energy research budget we now have and focus it on new forms of cheap, clean, reliable energy. I am talking about the 500-mile battery for electric cars; commercial uses of carbon captured from coal plants; solar power installed at less than $1 per watt; or offshore wind turbines. That would be research. Second, we should strictly limit a handful of jumpstart research and development projects to take new technologies from the R&D phase to the commercial phase. I am thinking here of projects such as ARPA E, modeled after the defense department's DARPA agency that led to the Internet, to the stealth, and to other remarkable technologies; or the 5-year program for small modular nuclear reactors; or incentives for the first 200,000 electric vehicles purchased in America. These are a strictly limited number of jumpstart R&D projects. Third, we should end wasteful, long-term, special tax breaks, such as those for Big Oil and those for Big Wind. I am talking about the tax breaks that are exclusively mostly for Big Oil and Big Wind and not similar to what other industries receive. These savings from those subsidies should be used to double clean energy research and to reduce our Federal debt. But that is not what this bill does. This bill ends subsidies for five companies that many other companies receive, and it extends subsidies for a few companies that other industries don't get. This debate isn't even about an energy plan, which is what we should be debating when gas is around $4 a gallon right now. Here is a very specific plan: Increase energy research--double it--to find more American oil and more American natural gas and more American alternative forms of energy, and increase energy research to find ways to use less of that energy. I have highlighted the best ways to use less, and I have highlighted a way to pay for it. I thank the President and I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, last Wednesday, I had the privilege, as did many in this body, of attending a tribute to two former majority leaders of the Senate, Howard Baker and Bob Dole. It was a great evening. President Clinton sent a video and the Vice President attended, as did the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and all former majority leaders of the Senate, except one. It was a long evening but a good one. Along with Senator Baker was his wife former Senator Nancy Kassebaum Baker, and along with Senator Dole was his wife former Senator Elizabeth Dole. It was sponsored by the Bipartisan Policy Center. It was a reminder that while in this body we have differences, in fact, this body was created to resolve differences. People sometimes say to me: You Senators argue. That is what we are supposed to do. When they kick over to us issues that cannot be resolved other places, with respect for each other's points of view, we try to resolve them, and we often do. Well, Bob Dole and Howard Baker were among the best at working across party lines and getting results, and it was for that skill as much as for any other skill that they were honored. I was asked to introduce a short film about Senator Baker, and I did. Senator Roberts of Kansas was asked to introduce a short film about Senator Dole, and he did. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record my remarks about Howard Baker as I introduced the film.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, Senator Baker, recalling the story of his maiden speech, asked that his remarks be put into the Congressional Record. The story was this, which I told that night: Senator Baker was here in 1967 and made his maiden speech at a time when his father-in-law, Everett Dirksen, was the Republican leader. I was here then, as Senator Baker's young legislative assistant, right out of law school. Senator Dirksen walked over to Senator Baker and sat down next to him after what had been a fairly long speech--maybe 45 minutes. Senator Baker looked at his father-in-law and said: Senator Dirksen, how did I do? And Senator Dirksen said to his son-in-law Howard: Maybe occasionally you should enjoy the luxury of an unexpressed thought. So Senator Baker, recalling that advice, I assume, asked that his remarks to be delivered that night at the end of a long ceremony be placed in the Congressional Record, and so I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record Senator Baker's remarks.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator. He has a unique perspective himself as a former Cabinet member, Governor, and now Senator. But all three of us here today, including the former Governor of North Dakota, have wrestled with this business of the rising costs of Medicaid, paid for partly by the States, according to rules set in Washington, and how do we deal with public education, especially higher education. I remember during the debate two years ago, I suggested to our colleagues on the other side of the aisle who were supporting the health care law, which I thought was an historic mistake because it expanded a health care delivery system we already knew was too expensive, instead of taking steps to reduce it. I suggested to them that they go home and run for Governor. They ought to be sentenced to go home and run for Governor if they vote for it and see whether they can implement it over an 8-year-period of time. Here is what the Senator from Nebraska is suggesting. Let me try to be very specific on the effect of the health care law on higher education in the States. This is not all President Obama's fault. Some 30 years ago, when I was a young Governor, I was still struggling with saying: We get down to the end of the budget process and we have money either to put in higher education or into Medicaid, and the rules from Washington say it has to go to Medicaid. I remember going to see President Reagan and saying: Why do we not just swap it, Mr. President? You take all of Medicaid. Let the States take elementary and secondary education. I wish we had done that. But we did not do it. Gradually, the increasing Washington-directed costs have distorted State budgets until, as the Senator from Nebraska said, 24 percent of the State budgets go to the Medicaid program. Now we are in a process where because of the health care law, we are going to add 25.9 million more Americans onto Medicaid, according to the Medicaid Chief Actuary. Employers are going to decide: I would rather pay my $2,000 penalty and allow my employees to go into the exchange or, if they are lower income, into Medicaid. Then the costs to States are going to go up. The Senator from Nebraska talked about what the current Governor of Nebraska said. Our former Governor, Governor Bredesen, a Democratic Governor, estimated that between 2014 and 2019 it would be $1.1 billion in new costs for the State of Tennessee from the Medicaid expansion. What most people do not realize is the effect this has on higher education and student tuition. I hear a lot of talk about let's see if we can lower student tuition. One way we can lower it is not take money from student loans and spend it to pay for the health care bill. Most people are not aware we spent $8.7 billion of so-called profits the government makes when it borrows money at 2.8 percent and loans it to students at 6.8 percent. The government took some of that money and spent it to pay for the health care bill. If it did not do that, it could lower the interest rates on student loans, according to the Congressional Budget Office, to 5.3 percent and save $2,200 per student over 10 years on the basis. So the health care law is costing students who borrow money more on their loans. In addition, and I will close with this example, it is raising college tuition. You say: How could the health care law cause tuition to go up in California or Tennessee? If in Tennessee, as last year, the increase for Medicaid went up 15.8 percent. That is how much more State tax dollars it had to go up. Spending for the University of Tennessee and community colleges went down 15 percent. Then the result of that was tuition went up in our State by about 8 percent. That was true all across our country. So the effect--and I will come back to this later if we have more time--is that the health care law mandates that the States spend more money on Medicaid, and, as a result, the State cuts the money it is spending for the University of Tennessee or Nebraska or North Dakota. In order to keep the quality of education up, tuition goes up. So students are paying more for tuition and they are paying more for interest rates on their student loans directly because of the health care law. President Obama should not be blamed for the last 30 years of rising costs of Medicaid. But he should be held responsible and this health care law should be held responsible for making it worse.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator. I listened with interest to the former Governor of North Dakota and the former Governor of Nebraska. Let me give a specific example. In response to the question, after the passage of the health care law, I met with a number of representatives from chain restaurants. Chain restaurants are the kind at which we go out to dinner for a modest cost. They are among the largest employers in America. They employ largely low-income and young people--people who are the waiters and waitresses we see when we go into Ruby Tuesday or O'Charley's or one of these other places, and usually it is someone with a part-time job or somebody who is working his or her way up. Many of those companies offer some health insurance to their employees. At one of the companies, Ruby Tuesday, headquartered in Tennessee, the chief executive officer told me the cost of the health care law to his company would equal the profit of the company that year. This is a company with several billion dollars in revenue. One of the companies that is even more successful than Ruby Tuesday in terms of profit, and is larger, told me their goal was to have 90 employees per store. But after the health care law, they said they would have 70 employees per store in order to comply with the cost of the health care law. This not only raises the cost of business, but it reduces employment in the United States. Unfortunately, I am afraid what we may find is these restaurant companies, after 2014--we are about 1 year away from a ticking time bomb for State budgets and businesses and also for people with employer health insurance. I am afraid these companies will look at the penalty and say they would rather pay $2,000 per employee and let them find their way into one of these State exchanges or into the Medicaid Program. Millions of Americans, because of the health care law, are going to lose their employer-sponsored insurance, and millions of Americans will not have as many jobs because of the costs imposed on businesses such as these restaurants.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I listened with great interest to the Senator from California. I thank her for her hard work on the Transportation bill and her work with Senator Inhofe. I listened especially to her comments that it would be good for us to work well together. It reminds me of our new Speaker of the House of Representatives in Tennessee, Beth Harwell. She does a pretty good job, and she often reminds her colleagues in the Tennessee Legislature that the first lesson they all learned in kindergarten is to work well together. That is a good lesson for us as well. I will take 4 or 5 minutes to simply talk about a development I think interferes with that. I came to the Senate floor with a group of Republicans and Democrats not long ago. We praised the majority leader, Senator Reid, and the Republican leader, Senator McConnell, for their working together to try to bring the appropriations bills to the floor. We said we are going to work together to help them do that because a majority leader cannot lead if we don't follow. We complimented them for the work on the Transportation bill, which hasn't been easy, but we are having a lot of votes today. We will offer our ideas and make votes. It was disappointing to me yesterday to see the majority leader announce that he had filed 17 cloture motions on district judges. I am here simply as one Senator to say respectfully to the majority leader that I hope he will reconsider and not do that. That is an unprecedented action. It has never happened like that before. In the history of the Senate, before 2011, a majority leader had filed cloture motions on district judges only three times. What has happened with district judges in the history of the Senate? They come up, get a vote, and there has never been a successful filibuster of a district judge because of a cloture vote. Let me emphasize that. There has never been a successful attempt to deny an up-or-down vote to a district judge by opposing cloture in the history of the Senate. That was proven again last year with a judge from Rhode Island, Judge McConnell, who many believed should not be a judge. There were enough Republicans did not take the opportunity to deny an up-or-down vote that he was confirmed even though many on this side didn't think he ought to be a judge. So we don't have a problem with filibustering district judges, and we have never had one with filibusters of district judges, at least given the present composition of the Senate. What is the issue? Senator Reid, the majority leader, said quite properly in his remarks yesterday that we have important work to do. We have a jobs bill coming from the House, a Postal Service that is in debt, and we have cybersecurity--we are having long briefings on that because of the threat. The leaders are working to bring the appropriations bills to the floor. We have only done that twice since 2000--all 12 of them. So this is a little disagreement we have between the majority leader and the Republican leader on the scheduling of votes on district judges. It is not a high constitutional matter. It is not even a high principle. It is not even a big disagreement. It is a little one. What has always happened is in the back and forth of scheduling, and they work it out. They have been working it out. In the first 2 years of the Obama administration, he nominated 78 district judges, and 76 of those were confirmed--76 of 78 nominated in the first 2 years. He withdrew two. Last year, 61 more district judges were confirmed. What about 2012? The President has made a few nominations, but they haven't been considered yet by the Judiciary Committee. We do have 17 district court judgeships reported by the Judiciary Committee. They could be brought up by the majority leader. He has the right to do that. But of those 17, 6 of them have been reported by the Judiciary Committee for less than 30 days. They just got here. That leaves 11. How long have they been there? They came in October, November, and December of last year. Normally, they would have been included in the year-end clearing. Everybody knows what happened. The year-end clearing was thrown off track because the President threatened to make controversial recess appointments. Ultimately, the President decided to violate the Reid rule, which used pro-forma sessions every three days to break the Senate's recesses and block recess appointments. That was invented by the majority leader, Senator Reid. President Bush didn't like it, but he respected it. President Obama violated it, and it blew up the year- end clearing of a number of nominees, including district judges. We have some district judges waiting to be confirmed, but we don't have many. We have a history of confirming 76 out of 78 nominated during the first 2 years of this President, and last year, confirming 61. This year, of the 17 the majority leader filed the cloture motions on, 6 of them just got here. So that leaves 11. What do we do about that? The right thing to do is that the majority leader and the Republican leader should listen to what the Senator from California just said, listen to the Speaker of the House from Tennessee; that is, work well together rather than escalating this into a highly principled, big disagreement, and retire to one of their offices and sit down quietly, take a timeout and work this out. That is the way it has always been done. We are only talking about 11 judges. They have not been around that long-- less than 5 months. We all know why they were delayed a little bit. The President can take just as much responsibility as anybody. In testimony this week, the Attorney General acknowledged the issue of the recess appointments made on January 4 is a serious constitutional issue that needs to be decided by the courts. While that is being done, we have not tried to stop the action of the Senate, even though we regard it as a great offense to the checks and balances and the separation of powers. I respectfully suggest it is not a good time for the majority leader to take a small disagreement and escalate it into a big one, jeopardizing our ability to deal with big issues on jobs, cybersecurity, the Postal Service, and others. It would not reflect well on the 23 candidates running for the Democratic Senate seats this year or on the 11 Republicans running for Senate seats this year, and it would not reflect well on the President. The American people want to see us get results. Why should we give them one more reason to suspect that just because we can't agree on little issues, we are unable to agree on the big issues? I know the job of the majority leader is a tough job, and there is a good deal of back and forth every day. The majority leader has been on both sides of this issue. I suspect if he and the Republican leader were to sit down and look over the actual numbers and realize it is just 11 judges--we confirmed 2 last week--they could schedule the others and we could spend our time, starting tomorrow, not picking a fight with one another on the small disagreements, but on jobs, debt, the Postal Service, cybersecurity, and the big issues the American people would like us to deal with. I ask unanimous consent that some documentation about the progress of district judge nominations of the 111th and 112th Congress be printed in the Record.

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, is it appropriate for me to speak as in morning business for a few minutes?

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, today in the Wall Street Journal there coincidentally was an editorial on the subject about which I speak, and this was entitled ``Republicans Blow With the Wind. Another industry wants to keep its tax subsidies.'' It is about the possibility that the Senate will be asked--maybe as early as the next few days during the debate on the Transportation bill--to extend yet 1 more year the Federal taxpayers' subsidy for large wind turbines. I would like to take a few minutes to say why I don't believe we should do that, and I ask unanimous consent that following my remarks the Wall Street Journal editorial be printed in the Record.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I believe it is time for Congress to stop the Big Wind gravy train. Subsidies for developers of huge wind turbines will cost taxpayers $14 billion over 5 years, between 2009 and 2013, according to the Joint Tax Committee and the Treasury Department. This is more than the special tax breaks for Big Oil, which Congress should also end. $6 billion of these Big Wind subsidies will come from the production tax credit for renewable energy, which Congress temporarily enacted in 1992. The prospect for the expiration of this tax break at the end of this year has filled the Capitol with lobbyists hired by investors wealthy enough to profit from the tax breaks. President Obama even wants to make these tax credits permanent. According to the Wall Street Journal, this is a ``make or break moment'' for wind power companies. There are three reasons the Big Wind subsidies should go the way of the $5 billion annual ethanol subsidy, which Congress allowed to expire last year. First, we cannot afford it. The Federal Government borrows 40 cents of every dollar it spends. It cannot justify such a subsidy, especially for what the Nobel Prize-winning U.S. Energy Secretary calls a ``mature technology.'' Second, wind turbines produce a relatively puny amount of expensive, unreliable electricity. Wind produces 2.3 percent of our electricity, less than 8 percent of our pollution-free electricity. One alternative is natural gas, which is abundant, cheap, and very clean. Another alternative is nuclear. Reactors power our Navy and produce 70 percent of our pollution-free electricity. Using windmills to power a country that uses one-fourth of all of the world's electricity world would be the energy equivalent of going to war in sailboats. Finally, these massive turbines too often destroy the environment in the name of saving the environment. When wind advocate T. Boone Pickens was asked whether he would put turbines on his Texas ranch, Mr. Pickens answered: No, they're ugly. A new documentary movie, ``Windfall,'' chronicles upstate New York residents debating whether to build giant turbines in their town. A New York Times review of this film reported this: Turbines are huge: Some are 40 stories tall, with 130-foot blades weighing seven tons and spinning at 150 miles per hour. They can fall over or send parts flying; struck by lightning, say, they can catch fire. Their 24/7 rotation emits nerve-racking low frequencies (like a pulsing disco) amplified by rain and moisture, and can generate a disorienting strobe effect in sunlight. Giant flickering shadows can tarnish a sunset's glow on a landscape. Let's consider the three arguments one by one. First, the money. For all we hear about Big Oil, you may be surprised to learn that special tax breaks for Big Wind are greater. During the 5 years from 2009 to 2013, Federal subsidies for Big Wind equal $14 billion. I am only counting the production tax credit and the cash grants that the 2009 stimulus law offered to wind developers in lieu of the tax credit. An analysis of that stimulus cash grant program by Greenwire found that 64 percent of the 50 highest dollar grants awarded--or about $2.7 billion--went to projects that had begun construction before the stimulus measures started. Steve Ellis, the vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, told Greenwire: It's essentially funding economic activity that already would have occurred. So it's just a pure subsidy. According to President Obama's new budget, Big Oil receives multiple tax subsidies. Doing away with them would save about $4.7 billion a year in fiscal year 2013 or about $22 billion over 5 years it says. So far it sounds like Big Oil with $22 billion, is bigger in subsidies than Big Wind with $14 billion. But here is the catch: Many of the subsidies that the President is attacking oil companies for receiving are regular tax provisions that are the same or similar to those other industries receive. For example, Xerox, Microsoft, and Caterpillar all benefit from tax provisions like the manufacturing tax credit, amortization or depreciation of used equipment that the President is counting as Big Oil subsidies. Of course, wind energy companies also benefit from many similar tax provisions. But the production tax credit that benefits wind is in addition to the regular Tax Code provisions that benefit many companies. So the only way to make a fair comparison is to look only at subsidies that mostly benefit only oil or only wind, and by that measure wind gets more breaks than oil. The Heritage Foundation has done an analysis showing that if Big Oil received the same type of production tax credit as Big Wind, then the taxpayer would be paying Big Oil about $50 per barrel of oil when adjusted for today's prices. According to a 2008 Energy Information Administration report, Big Wind received an $18.82 federal subsidy per megawatt hour, 25 times as much as per megawatt hour as subsidies for all other forms of electricity production combined. The production tax credit became law in 1992. Its goal was to jump- start renewable energy production. While it is advertised as a tax credit for renewable energy, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, 75 percent of the credit goes to wind developers. Here is how it works: For every kilowatt hour of electricity produced from wind, turbine owners receive 2.2 cents in a tax credit. For example, if a Texas utility buys electricity from a wind developer at 6 cents a kilowatt hour, the Federal taxpayer will pay the developer another 2.2 cents per kilowatt hour. This 2.2-cent subsidy continues for the first 10 years that the turbine is in service. This 2.2-cent credit is worth 3.4 cents per kilowatt hour in cash savings on the tax return of a wealthy investor. Wind developers often sell their tax credits to Wall Street banks or big corporations or other investors who have large incomes. They create what is called a tax equity deal in order to lower or even eliminate taxes. This is the scheme our President, who is championing economic fairness, would like to make permanent. Energy expert Daniel Yergin, the Pulitzer prize winner, says the price of oil during 2011, when adjusted for inflation, is higher than at any time since 1860. It therefore makes no sense whatsoever to give special tax breaks to Big Oil. Neither does it make sense to extend special tax breaks to Big Wind, a mature technology. For every $3 saved by eliminating these wasteful subsidies, I would spend $2 to reduce the Federal debt and $1 to double research for new forms of cheap, clean energy for our country. The second problem with electricity produced from wind is there is not much of it, and since the wind blows when it wants to, and for the most part, it cannot be stored, it is not reliable. For this reason the claims in newspapers about how much electricity wind produces are misleading because of the difference between the capacity of an energy plant and its actual production. Daniel Yergin says the U.S. installed capacity for wind power grew at an average annual rate of 40 percent between 2005 and 2009. In terms of absolute capacity, Yergin writes in his book The Quest, that growth in capacity was the equivalent to adding 25 new nuclear plants. But Yergin writes: In terms of actual generation of electricity, it was more like adding nine reactors. This is because nuclear plants operate 90 percent of the time while wind turbines operate about one-third of the time. As an example, the Tennessee Valley Authority constructed a 29- megawatt wind farm at Buffalo Mountain at a cost of $60 million. It is the only wind farm in the Southeast. We read in the papers about a 29-megawatt wind farm, but that is not its real output. In practice, Buffalo Mountain has only generated electricity 19 percent of the time, since the wind doesn't blow very much in the Southeast. So this wind farm, sounding like a 29-megawatt power plant, only generates 6 megawatts. TVA considers Buffalo Mountain to be a failed experiment. In fact, looking for wind power in the Southeast is a little like looking for hydropower in the desert. So one problem with this Big Wind subsidy is that it has encouraged developers to build wind projects in places where the wind doesn't blow or the wind doesn't blow. Finally, there is the question of whether in the name of saving the environment wind turbines are destroying the environment. These are not your grandma's windmills. They are taller than the Statue of Liberty, their blades are as long as a football field, and their blinking lights can be seen for 20 miles. Not everyone agrees with T. Boone Pickens that they are ugly but, when these towers move from television advertisements into your neighborhood, you might agree with Mr. Pickens. Energy sprawl is the term conservation groups use to describe the march of 45-story wind turbines onto the landscape of ``America the Beautiful.'' If the United States generated 20 percent of our electricity from wind, as some have suggested, that would cover an area the size of West Virginia with 186,000 wind turbines. It would also be necessary to build 12,000 new miles of transmission lines. The late Ted Kennedy and his successor Senator Scott Brown have both complained about how a wind farm the size of Manhattan Island will clutter the ocean landscape around Nantucket Island. Robert Bryce told the Wall Street Journal that the noise of turbines, the ``infra sound'' issue, is the most problematic for the wind industry. ``They want to dismiss it out of hand, but the low frequency noise is very disturbing,'' he explains. ``I interviewed people all over, and they all complained with identical words and descriptions about the problems they were feeling from the noise.'' Theodore Roosevelt was our greatest conservation President, and his greatest passion was for birds. Birds must think wind turbines are Cuisinarts in the sky. Last month, two golden eagles were found dead at California's Pine Tree wind farm, bringing the total count of dead golden eagles at that wind farm to eight carcasses. And the Los Angeles Times reports that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ``has determined that the six golden eagles found dead earlier at the 2-year-old wind farm in Kern County were struck by blades from some of the 90 turbines spread across the 8,000 acres at the site.'' That puts the death rate per turbine at the Pine Tree wind farm at three times higher than at California's Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area, which has 5,000 turbines that kill 67 golden eagles each year. Apparently eagle killing has gotten so commonplace that the U.S. Department of the Interior will grant wind developers hunting licenses for eagles. In Goodhue County, MN, a company wants to build 48 turbines on 50 square miles of land, and to do that it has applied for an ``eagle take'' permit which will allow it to kill a certain number of eagles before facing penalties. I have figured out how such a hunting license squares with federal laws that will put you in prison or fine you if you kill migratory birds or eagles. Nor have I figured out how it squares with the Fish and Wildlife Service fining Exxon $600,000 in 2009 when oil development harmed protected birds. Do not the same laws protecting birds apply to both Big Wind and Big Oil? Surely, there are appropriate places for wind power in a country that needs clean electricity and that has learned the value of a diverse set of energy sources. But if reliable, cheap, and clean electricity without energy sprawl is our goal, then four nuclear reactors--each occupying 1 square mile--would equal the production of a row of 50- story wind turbines strung along the entire 2,178-mile length of the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. According to Benjamin Zycher at the American Enterprise Institute, a 1,000-megawatt natural gas powerplant would take up about 15 acres while a comparable wind farm would take up 48,000 to 60,000 acres. And, of course, even if someone built all of those turbines, you would still need the nuclear or gas plants for when the wind doesn't blow. Our energy policy should to be, first, double the $5 billion Federal energy budget for research on new forms of cheap, clean, reliable energy. I am talking about such research for the 500-mile battery for electric cars, for commercial uses of carbon captured from coal plants, solar power installed at less than $1 a watt, or even offshore wind turbines. Second, we should strictly limit and support a handful of jumpstart research and development projects to take new technologies from their research and development phase to the commercial phase. I am thinking here of projects like ARPA-E, modeled after the Defense Department's DARPA, that led to the internet, stealth, and other remarkable technologies. Or the 5-year program for small modular nuclear reactors. Third, we should end wasteful, long-term, special tax breaks such as those for Big Oil and Big Wind. The savings from ending those subsidies should be used to double clean energy research and to reduce our Federal debt. For a strong country, we need large amounts of cheap, reliable, clean energy, and we need a balanced budget. This is an energy policy that could help us do both. Exhibit 1 Republicans Blow With the Wind Another Industry wants to keep its taxpayer subsidies Congress finally ended decades of tax credits for ethanol in December, a small triumph for taxpayers. Now comes another test as the wind-power industry lobbies for a $7 billion renewal of its production tax credit. The renewable energy tax credit--mostly for wind and solar power--started in 1992 as a ``temporary'' benefit for an infant industry. Twenty years later, the industry wants another four years on the dole, and Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico has introduced a national renewable-energy mandate so consumers will be required to buy wind and solar power no matter how high the cost. The truth is that those giant wind turbines from Maine to California won't turn without burning through billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars. In 2010 the industry received some $5 billon in subsidies for nearly every stage of wind production. The ``1603 grant program'' pays up to 30% of the construction costs for renewable energy plants (a subsidy that ended last year but which President Obama calls for reviving in his budget). Billions in Department of Energy grants and loan guarantees also finance the operating costs of these facilities. Wind producers then get the 2.2% tax credit for every kilowatt of electricity generated. Because wind-powered electricity is so expensive, more than half of the 50 states have passed renewable energy mandates that require utilities to purchase wind and solar power--a de facto tax on utility bills. And don't forget subsidies to build transmission lines to deliver wind power to the electric grid. What have taxpayers received for this multibillion-dollar ``investment''? The latest Department of Energy figures indicate that wind and solar power accounted for a mere 1.5% of U.S. energy production in 2010. DOE estimates that by 2035 wind will provide a still trivial 3.9% of U.S. electricity. Even that may be too optimistic because of the natural gas boom that has produced a happy supply shock and cut prices by more than half. Most economic models forecasting that renewable energy will become price competitive are based on predictions of natural gas prices at well above $6 per million cubic feet, more than twice the current cost. The most dishonest claim is that wind and solar deserve to be wards of the state because the oil and gas industry has also received federal support. That's the $4 billion a year in tax breaks for oil and gas (which all manufacturers receive), but the oil and gas industry still pays tens of billions in federal taxes every year. Wind and solar companies are net tax beneficiaries. Taxpayers would save billions of dollars if wind and solar produced no energy at all. A July 2011 Energy Department study found that oil, natural gas and coal received an average of 64 cents of subsidy per megawatt hour in 2010. Wind power received nearly 100 times more, or $56.29 per megawatt hour. Most Congressional Democrats will back anything with the green label. But Republican support for big wind is a pure corporate welfare play that violates free-market principles. Last week six Republican Senators--John Boozman of Arkansas, Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Charles Grassley of Iowa, John Hoeven of North Dakota, Jerry Moran of Kansas and John Thune of South Dakota--signed a letter urging their colleagues to extend the production tax credit. ``It is clear that the wind industry currently requires tax incentives'' and that continuing that federal aid can help the industry ``move towards a market-based system,'' said the letter. What's the ``market-based'' timetable--100 years? In the House 18 Republicans have joined the 70 Member wind pork caucus. Someone should remind them that in 2008 and 2010 the wind lobby gave 71% of its PAC money to Democrats. Here's a better idea. Kill all energy subsidies--renewable and nonrenewable, starting with the wind tax credit, and use the savings to shave two or three percentage points off America's corporate income tax. Kansas Congressman Mike Pompeo has a bill to do so. This would do more to create jobs than attempting to pick energy winners and losers. Mandating that American families and businesses use expensive electricity doesn't create jobs. It destroys them.