Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. This issue is of particular importance to me as well. I strongly object to the language included in the Interior Appropriations bill regarding Boiler MACT. The Boiler MACT is an unworkable regulation that will reduce pollutants like mercury, which is good policy, but forces those reductions in a way that is not realistic for companies to comply. This regulation could result in the loss of 340,000 jobs nationwide and cost Tennessee companies $530 million. My support for the Omnibus bill does not change my position on this issue, and I will continue to push for the passage of strong bipartisan legislation that will overturn the terrible Boiler MACT regulation and find a better way to accomplish the pollution reductions that are needed. I thank Senator Collins for her leadership on this issue and I also appreciate the Senator from Alaska clarifying the intent of this language.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, we hear a lot about tax breaks and tax loopholes around the Senate. I wish to talk about a tax loophole, a big one, that is on its way out. It is a $23 billion tax loophole. It is not a loophole in the tax code of Washington, DC. It is a loophole in virtually every State in the country. It is a loophole that prefers some taxpayers over other taxpayers. It subsidizes some businesses over other businesses. Because of that loophole, it causes tax rates in States to be higher, and it causes States to have less money to fund the universities or the State parks or the schools or the other expenses that are legitimate in the operation of a State. I say it is a tax loophole that is on its way out because after 10 years, Senator Enzi of Wyoming and Senator Durbin of Illinois have produced a piece of legislation that is rare in Washington, DC. It is only 10 pages long. It is very simple. It is a States rights piece of legislation that gives each State the right to decide for itself how to collect its State sales tax from everybody who owes it, whether that person buys a pair of cowboy boots in Nashville or whether that person buys a pair of cowboy boots online. Senator Enzi and Senator Durbin introduced the Marketplace Fairness Act 4 weeks ago. It has five Republican sponsors and five Democratic sponsors. I am one of those sponsors. This is the bill that solves the problem of the online sales tax loophole, the one I described a little earlier. I mentioned cowboy boots. Let me describe what I am talking about in practical terms. I called the owner of the Nashville Boot Company a couple weeks ago. His name is Frank Harwell. He sold boots online, and he sells them to people who walk into his store in west Nashville. When he started the company, almost all of his boots were sold online. Here is what he says is happening to him today: People come into the store in Nashville and they try on cowboy boots. They find a pair they like and then they go home and buy the cowboy boots online in order to save the State sales tax. They owe the sales tax. Many people don't know they owe it. They owe the sales tax as much as if they had bought the boots at the cowboy boot store in Nashville. They don't pay it. Why is that? Under the State law, when Frank Harwell sells a pair of cowboy boots in his store in Nashville, he collects the sales tax and sends it to the State. But under the law, the Supreme Court said 20 years ago, the State of Tennessee or the State of Missouri or the State of Washington could not require an out-of-State seller to collect the same sales tax. They had a reason for doing so, and it was a good reason. They said it was so complicated to do that it put a burden on interstate commerce. But at the same time, the Supreme Court invited the Congress to fix the problem. By fixing the problem, that means the Congress could act in order to create a fair way for States to require retailers that are out-of-State to collect the same sales tax retailers on Main Street collect. Over that 20 years, the online sales tax loophole got to be a big loophole. It subsidizes some businesses at the expense of others and, as I said earlier, prefers some taxpayers at the expense of others. Last week, the Hudson Institute, a generally conservative organization, released a new report that explains how the subsidizing of out-of-State sellers works and how the Federal Government--those of us in Washington--are keeping States from closing this loophole. Hudson concludes that this online sales tax loophole is distorting the marketplace, and I urge my colleagues to take a serious look at the Hudson Institute report. Governors and legislators are up in arms because they are being deprived of the right to enforce their own sales tax law. This is a little different loophole--actually, a little worse one. Usually, loopholes are written into the law. Those are the kind we are trying to change in our tax reform proposals in Washington. This is a tax that is already owed. This is a tax that is already owed that Governors and legislators want to collect. It is used to pay for the things States need to pay for or reduce a tax. In the State of Tennessee, which has a very high sales tax, if the State was allowed to collect sales tax from out-of-State retailers the same way it does from Main Street retailers, then we might postpone the day of a State income tax, which are probably three of the most hated words in the tax vocabulary in Tennessee. I said, when Senator Enzi and Senator Durbin introduced their bill, that I believed they had solved the problem and that if I were an out- of-State retailer or an online retailer, I would begin to make plans to collect sales tax the same way Main Street collectors collect it today, and many have. For example, Amazon--which had opposed for a long time this kind of legislation because, in their view, it was too complicated for them to figure out what the tax might be--changed their mind, and said the Enzi-Durbin bill is a good bill and Amazon now supports it. That is not all. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a strong conservative Republican Governor and former chairman of the Republican Governors Association, wrote a letter on November 29 which I wish to quote: In the early days of the Internet, the complexities of collecting State sales taxes across thousands of State and local sales tax jurisdictions were major obstacles. The technology simply didn't exist to expect startups to comply with the various tax compliance rules in every part of the country. But today, e-commerce has grown, and there is simply no longer a compelling reason for government to continue giving online retailers special treatment over small businesses who reside on the Main Streets across Mississippi and the country. Governor Barbour continues: The time to level the playing field is now, as there are no effective barriers to complying with state sales tax laws. Here is what Governor Barbour is saying: Twenty years ago we didn't have the kind of software and information we do today. If I want to know what the weather is in Maryville, TN, where I live, I put in ``weather'' and my ZIP Code, 37886. Under this new bill and under the technology that exists today, States will be required to give out-of- State retailers or online retailers the software that will permit them to do the same thing. If I order a pair of cowboy boots, they can put in my name, the cost of the boots, and the ZIP Code, and the software will compute the tax and even find a way to send it on to the State. It will be just as easy, or maybe even easier, for the out-of-State retailers to collect the sales tax that is owed as it will be for a cowboy boots store selling it out of the front door in Nashville. The National Governors Association sent a letter last week saying that the Enzi-Durbin bill represents a commonsense approach that will allow States to collect taxes they are owed, help businesses comply with different State tax laws, and provide fair competition between retailers that will benefit consumers. Last week, the Judiciary Committee in the House of Representatives held an oversight hearing to discuss all three bills that have been introduced to address this issue and there was a lot of good discussion. I wish to share a few things that were said and I hope we can have a similar hearing in the Senate soon. Mike Pence of Indiana, one of the leading conservatives in Congress and a fellow who knows a tax when he sees one, said: I don't think Congress should be in the business of picking winners and losers. Inaction by Congress today results in a system that does pick winners and losers. Congressman Pence also talked about something I want to make sure my colleagues understand. The Enzi-Durbin bill is not talking about taxing the Internet. It is not talking about creating a new tax. As far as the Internet access tax goes, the Senate debated that a few years ago. I was in the middle of that debate and I was in the middle of the solution that imposed a moratorium on the Internet access tax. That law is still there. We are not talking about an Internet access tax. Neither are we talking about a new tax. We are talking about the plain old State sales tax that already exists. It is very hard to imagine how anyone can say collecting a tax that is already owed is a new tax. Governor Barbour and Congressman Pence are correct; 20 years ago the technology didn't exist. Today it does. About the only ones complaining are the taxpayers and businesses that enjoy being subsidized by other taxpayers and other businesses, and that, in our opinion, is not correct tax policy. As Republicans, I believe our party should oppose government policies that prefer some taxpayers over others or some businesses over others. As Republicans, I believe we should support States rights, and our bill does that by giving the State the right to make the decision about how to collect its own taxes: Do you want to collect taxes from everybody who owes the tax, or do you not want to? Do you want to prefer some out-of-State businesses over in-State businesses, or do you not want to? Do you want to collect the tax, reduce tax rates, or spend the money on services? That is up to the States. These sentiments are also shared by the late William F. Buckley and Al Cardenas, chairman of the American Conservative Union. Ten years ago William Buckley, who many people see as the father of the modern conservative movement, wrote in the National Review: The mattress maker in Connecticut is willing to compete with the company in Massachusetts, but doesn't like it if out-of-State businesses are, in practical terms, subsidized; that's what the non-tax amounts to. Local concerns are complaining about traffic in mattresses and books and records and computer equipment which, ordered through the Internet come in, so to speak, duty free. That is William F. Buckley. Then Al Cardenas, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, a distinguished man from Florida, and the head of an outfit that is arguably as strong and influential as any conservative organization in Washington, said in his recent essay: There is no more glaring example of misguided government power than when taxes or regulations affect two similar businesses completely differently. As I have said many times before, I believe the Enzi-Durbin legislation solves the problem. I believe it is going to happen. I hope that out-of-State sellers and online sellers will move ahead to work with States to make voluntary agreements as, for example, Amazon has in Tennessee, and begin to allow States to enforce their tax policy properly. Our bill is a remarkable feat in Washington, DC. I have mentioned it before and I wish to emphasize it again. It is only 10 pages long. It is only about allowing States to make a decision about whether they want to close a tax loophole. It is about stopping the subsidization of some taxpayers over others. It is about stopping the subsidization of some businesses over others. I am glad others are starting to share this view, and as more Senators learn about the Marketplace Fairness Act and look at the options it gives each State, I hope and I believe we will have more cosponsors. Ten years ago the bills introduced weren't adequate to solve the problem. Fortunately, today, Senator Enzi and Senator Durbin have solved the problem. I agree, Democratic Senators agree, the chairman of the American Conservative Union agrees, a former chairman of the Republican Governors Association agrees, Congressman Mike Pence agrees: It is a matter of marketplace fairness. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the letter to which I referred from Mississippi Governor Barbour, a letter from the National Governors Association, and the National Journal article published last week regarding the House Judiciary Committee hearing on this subject.

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I wish to speak this afternoon about a lesson that Washington, DC can learn from Maryville, TN, which is my hometown. It is a lesson that most of us learned in kindergarten and I learned in my mother's kindergarten, which was in a converted garage in our backyard, and it was three words: ``Work well together.'' The latest example of that was all over the sports pages of my hometown on Sunday: ``Historic Championship: Maryville Wins the 13th State Title--Most Ever.'' Our football team has learned to work well together. They earned their second consecutive State championship, as the newspaper said. They beat Memphis Whitehaven. I watched the game on statewide television. Their record this year was 15 and 0. It was their ninth State title and ninth perfect season under an extraordinary coach, George Quarles, who has won 179 games and lost 13 in his career in Maryville. This is the most State titles of any school in Tennessee's history. The team scored 35 or more points in 109 of Coach Quarles' first 191 games. Maryville has averaged 30 or more points in 12 of its 13 seasons under coach Quarles and its senior quarterback this year, Patton Robinette, who has scholarships from good schools everywhere, was named the Gatorade Tennessee Football Player of the Year, part of which has to do with his academic credentials. He has a straight A-plus average. This leads me to the second thing they work well together on in Maryville, TN. The Maryville city schools were named the best overall school district in the State, based on their academic performance, by the State Collaborative on Reforming Education. The Maryville city schools recently received all As on their State math, reading, social studies, science, and writing assessments. According to the Tennessean, Maryville city schools have the second highest test scores in the State in reading and math. The high school was selected as one of three finalists in the prized category of high schools ``based primarily on student achievement gains and progress over time.'' More than 80 percent of Maryville High School students were proficient or advanced in math, 88 percent in reading/language arts. More than 90 percent graduated in 2010 from the high school. Four seniors were National Merit semifinalists. 48 percent of Maryville High School students who took the ACT college prep test last year met all four benchmarks for college and career readiness--English, math, reading, and science-- compared to 15 percent Statewide and 25 percent nationally. So the football team and the students have learned to work well together, academically and athletically, at Maryville High School. How did this all happen? I know a little bit about this. I am a proud graduate, as the Presiding Officer may have suspected by now, of Maryville High School. I have wondered about this for a long time: How could it have had such success in so many things? It is not the richest town in the State by a long shot. Most families in Maryville would describe themselves as middle income. One indicator of why they succeed and why they achieve so much excellence in so many ways in their schools is that the town devotes about 70 percent of its budget to its schools. It is in a county where about half the citizens--50 percent of the citizens of 100,000 in Blount County--have a library card. It is a place where--at least it was when I was there--if you get in trouble at school, you get in trouble at home. I can remember being called to the principal's office and administered pretty stern discipline when I was in the eighth grade, and I received the same treatment when I got home, even though my father was chairman of the school board. So there was none of this business about parents blaming the teacher and the principal for what the child had done. But I think the school principal, who is new to the town--Greg Roach--said it best. I saw him being interviewed at half time during the football game last Saturday night. He was asked: How did this happen? How did you have this champion football team more than any other school in the State and then you are named the best school district in the State? How can you do that all at once? He said: Well, it is a town school and when something happens, everybody shows up. Well, they showed up at Tennessee Tech for the football game last Saturday night, but they also show up at the annual academic awards banquets. I have been to those, and over the last several years it is more like a sporting contest, with this student winning the Spanish championship and this one doing well in Latin and getting the same kinds of honors, awards, scholarships and pats on the back that football players do. This emphasis on excellence in education and athletics is not something new to Maryville, TN. My grandfather sold his farm in the county to move into town so that my father could go to school, and my aunt said my father felt as though he had died and gone to heaven when he had that opportunity. My father, who was an elementary school principal after World War II, ran for the city school board with four other men and women and they stayed on the board as a ticket. They were elected every year as a ticket. They stayed there for 25 years, with the whole objective of improving the quality of the education in the Maryville city school system. While all that was going on, my mother taught in the preschool program--really the only one in our county at that time, although I think Mrs. Pesterfield also had a preschool program. But Mrs. Alexander's--I used to call it lower institution of learning--had 25 3- and 4-year-olds and 25 5-year-olds in the afternoon. She was lobbying the whole time to the school board on which my father served to put her out of business and start a public kindergarten, which they eventually did in our State. I used to talk about the Maryville schools and the community of Maryville when I was running for President 20 years ago, and my friend, Bill Bennet, who was also a U.S. Education Secretary, was chairman of my campaign. He would say to me: Lamar, not every community in America is Maryville, TN, and I know that. I know that. But I think a lot more could be. There are a lot of theories about what makes a good school, but I think Principal Roach may have it about right. It is a town school, and when something happens, everybody shows up. I think our new speaker of the house in Tennessee, Beth Harwell, had it right too when she observed that our State legislature finished work early. They had some disagreements but worked well together, got some results, and she said they learned in kindergarten to work well together, and that maybe that would be a good lesson for Washington, DC. Well, I think Speaker Harwell is right. The example of the Maryville football team and the Maryville students is also right. When everybody shows up when something is going on, and when people work well together, good things happen. Working well together--in our case, bipartisanship--is not a goal, just as working well together was not the goal of the football team. They wanted the championship. It was not the goal of the students. They wanted the scholarship. But they knew they had to work well together as a community to get a result. They got a championship football team. They got the best school district in the State. Perhaps that is a lesson for the Senate as we seek to take the very difficult responsibilities we have and earn the respect of the men and women of this country who hired us and sent us here to solve problems. That is why today I would like to celebrate the success of the championship football team of Maryville High School and the championship school district of Maryville, TN, and suggest their lesson of working well together might be a good lesson for us. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. This is a rare piece of legislation, something we agree on across the aisle, that could immediately save 340,000 jobs, that keeps the clean air rule the EPA has proposed, but simply gives them time to write it properly, the authority to write it properly, and businesses the opportunity to comply with it within a reasonable period of time. I hope we will adopt it. I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, last week during the debate on clean air, in which I opposed overturning a rule that allows dirty air from other States to blow into Tennessee, costing us jobs, and hurting our health, I said: Why should we be picking on a good rule when the Environmental Protection Agency is a happy hunting ground of unreasonable regulations. I just wish to take a moment to talk about perhaps the foremost of those unreasonable regulations, which we call the boiler MACT rule. This is a regulation that will force thousands of industrial boilers around America to install the maximum available control technology on their boilers. This is important in order to clean the air of such pollutants as mercury. That is a good idea. What is a bad idea is EPA only gives 3 years for companies to install this technology, a time frame that is completely unrealistic. This is not like a lot of the other clean air laws and rules that have been around for years; this is an unexpected new rule on thousands of industrial boilers which are essential to our manufacturing jobs in America. First, there is not enough time to comply with the rule, and second, EPA used a flawed methodology in determining what fuels could be used. As a result, little businesses and big businesses all over America are going to be forced to spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to comply with this rule instead of spending that money on creating jobs. That is just not one Republican Senator saying this. We have 12 Democratic Senators and a number of Republican Senators who have introduced legislation. Senator Collins is the leader of this effort. I am a part of it. So is Senator Wyden, Senator Pryor, and Senator Landrieu. What we are saying is, let's give the EPA enough time to fix the rule. Fifteen months is what EPA has asked for. Let's give the EPA additional authority to use the correct methodology so they can write a rule that makes some sense and does not act as though it is delivered from Mars or Venus or some other planet, and then let's give the industries enough time to comply with the rules, instead of 3 years, which is what the rule suggests, we will give them 5 years. Let me try to give some sense of the impact of this unworkable rule. Its estimates that this rule will result in a loss of 340,000 jobs nationwide. We just passed, in a bipartisan way, three trade agreements which the President said would create 250,000 jobs. It took us 3 years to do that. It was something Republicans and Democrats agreed on. We thought that was a big step forward. Yet here we are allowing this agency to go forward with an absolutely unworkable rule that will cost 340,000 jobs. In my State of Tennessee, the cost to businesses is $530 million. I have talked to owners of small businesses who are facing a $1 million cost to try to implement this unworkable rule on their boilers. They have told me they will close their plants. They cannot possibly afford it comply with this rule in this short of a time period. I have talked to large industries that are affected. Eastman Chemicals is one, they've been in Tennessee forever. It is as an important part of our State as the Great Smoky Mountains are. Thousands of Tennesseans work there. This is what they say: They are going to spend more than $100 million over and above the work they have already planned in order to bring five Eastman boilers into compliance with the EPA regulations. This is a company with $7 billion in revenue. They are going to survive. But some jobs will not. Instead of creating jobs with that money; they will just be trying to comply with an unworkable government regulation. The majority leader said on the floor: Regulations don't cost jobs. Here is a prime example that shows unworkable regulations do cost jobs. And 12 Democratic Senators and at least as many Republican Senators agree on that. We have a bipartisan way to fix this rule. The House, in an overwhelming bipartisan vote, agreed with us by passing similar legislation. I want to call this Collins-Alexander-Wyden-Pryor-Landrieu legislation to the attention of the public, to the attention of the Senate, and say, there are some regulations that are before us that need to be changed. They are costing jobs. This is not Republican rhetoric or Democratic excuses. It is Republicans and Democrats saying to the EPA: We want to give you the authority to write a good rule. We want you to fix the rule. We want a clean air standard. We do not want to change the end result of the rule, but we want to give you enough time to write the rule. We want you to be able to use the correct method in writing this rule so companies can comply. And we want to give companies enough time to install these technologies so they can make reductions in these harmful pollutants.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Thank you, Madam President.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, is it time to begin the Republican time?

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, will you let me know when I have used 4\1/2\ minutes?

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, we will yield back the Republican time so that we can move ahead and report the bill.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, last week the Senator from Wyoming, Mr. Enzi, and the Senator from Illinois, the Democratic whip, introduced a piece of legislation which is called the Marketplace Fairness Act. In doing so, I think they solved a problem that has persisted in almost every State in the Union and that Congress has had a difficult time dealing with for the last 10 years. The problem is what do we do about State sales taxes which everybody owes every time they make a purchase. If you buy a television set at the local appliance store in Tennessee you owe Tennessee sales tax. If you buy it online you still owe the sales tax. The difference has been that the local retailer is required to collect the sales tax, and does, and sends it to the State, but the online vendor, let's say Amazon, is not required to collect the sales tax and so it does not. So, like most individuals--I bought a television set from Amazon earlier this year. At the end of the year, I would need to file a form with our State government and say I bought it, acknowledge that they didn't collect the sales tax, tell the State I owe the sales tax on my purchase, and pay it. The truth is most Americans do not do that. That is a $23 billion a year tax avoidance, a great big tax loophole. One may ask why has that loophole not been closed. We hear a lot of talk about loopholes around here and we know States want to have dollars right now, either to lower taxes or pay for services, and most of us think we should not prefer one business over another business or one taxpayer over another taxpayer. The problem is 20 years ago the technology did not exist to make it easy for an online or remote vendor to collect the sales tax in the same way the local shoestore or local vendor collects it, so the Supreme Court said it would be an undue burden on interstate commerce. Here is the loophole in practical terms. I called the owner of the Nashville Boot Company last week after we introduced the bill, Frank Harwell. At the beginning he sold cowboy boots online. I think it is the Nashville Cowboy Boot company. But he sold boots online, and he said he sold as much as $400,000 a year of cowboy boots online. That was his major business. When he began, he was about the only one doing that, and I assume if you wanted cowboy boots, Nashville sounded like a good place to buy them, so he was doing all right. Now he said there are about 200 people selling boots online and so he does most of his boot selling out of his store. He has a store in Belle Meade Plaza right next to where I take my granddaughter to breakfast on Saturday mornings. This is what he says happens to him. He says people come into the Nashville Cowboy Boot company store and they try on the cowboy boots and then they go home and buy them online because they don't have to pay the sales tax. They owe the sales tax, but, as I said, the online sellers are not required to collect it and many taxpayers fail to pay it even though they owe it. Now we are not talking about Internet tax here. The Senate had a great big debate on the Internet access tax a few years ago. I was right in the middle of that. By the time we got through with it, we had a compromise and we put a moratorium on new Internet access taxes. So we are not talking about taxing the Internet or a new Internet tax. We are talking about the plain old State sales tax that everybody--except in five States, one of them being New Hampshire, which doesn't have a sales tax--in 45 States owes. I have been very pleased with the reception I have heard to the bill introduced by Senator Enzi and Senator Durbin. It has five Republican cosponsors. I am one of them. It has five Democratic cosponsors. We hope there will be more. Many of the people who saw problems with earlier attempts to fix the bill believe this legislation solves the problem. Some of the early bills were large. This bill is 10 pages. It is very simple. If the problem was it was too complicated for remote sellers to collect the online tax, they fixed that. They have said if Tennessee wants to require remote sellers like Amazon to do the same thing the local boot company does, it has to provide Amazon with software that will make it simple for Amazon to collect the tax. When I want to know the weather in my hometown outside of Maryville, TN, I simply put in weather and the ZIP Code 37886, and back comes the information. That is all a remote vendor will have to do. It will put in Lamar Alexander, cowboy boots, whatever they cost, the ZIP Code, and the computer software will figure out the state and local sales tax and report it to the vendor, and the vendor will send the money electronically to whatever State. So the old problems don't exist. I saw an article in the Wall Street Journal today which I thought was very well balanced. It takes a whole page. States require online retailers to collect sales tax. Yes, it is fair. No, it protects small firms. I am not going to put this in the Record, but I do want to take issue with one argument among those who said: No, it protects small firms. Two arguments, really. One, the Enzi-Durbin legislation has a $500,000 exemption. So my friend in Nashville, who was the only, and I guess for a while, leading seller of cowboy boots online never made more than $400,000 in revenues. He said, I could tell that. So if he doesn't have more than $400,000 or $500,000 in revenue, he is not even affected by this legislation that gives States the option to decide what to do. Second, this says the legislation would overturn the Supreme Court ruling of 20 years ago. That is not accurate. It does not overturn anything. What the Supreme Court said 20 years ago was that with the state of technology that existed with so many different taxing jurisdictions, it was an undue burden on interstate commerce for States to require online sellers to collect the tax that was owed. This is what the Court said: This aspect of our decision is made easier by the fact that the underlying issue is not only one that Congress may be better qualified to resolve, but also one that Congress has the ultimate power to resolve. No matter how we evaluate the burdens that use taxes impose on interstate commerce, Congress remains free to disagree with our conclusions. Then it said: Accordingly, Congress is now free to decide whether, when, and to what extent the States may burden interstate mail- order concerns with a duty to collect use taxes. This is not overturning anything. It is simply responding to the invitation by the Supreme Court 20 years ago that said: As we look at it, this is too big a burden. That was back when there were thousands of taxing districts and no easy way to collect the money. But it did say that Congress had the right to decide what represents a burden. What this bill says is, there are two ways States may do this. There is the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement where about half the States have joined together and said, we will create a single way to allow online vendors to operate, or the State of Kentucky may say, we don't like what they are doing, we will create our own way. As long as it is a simple way, a single return, a single audit, and the State provides the software, then the State has that option. That is why Amazon decided last week that it supported the Enzi-Durbin bill. On the Republican or conservative side, there have been a lot of people who said, wait, this is about taxes. Well, it is about taxes, but it is about taxes in a way that conservatives like to talk about. We like to say we don't like it when the government policy prefers some taxpayers over others, or some businesses over others. We also, on this side of the aisle, believe in States' rights, and this bill doesn't decide anything. It simply empowers States to make their own decisions about taxes. In our State, for example, we have one of the lowest tax burdens, but we have the highest State sales tax. If we are able to collect $300 million, $400 million, $500 million more in Tennessee from this tax that is now avoided because of the loophole, there could be proposals to reduce the sales tax rate or reduce some other tax. Certainly the money will help to avoid the arrival of a State income tax, which is about the most hated word in our tax vocabulary in Tennessee. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record some of the responses that have come since last week. The Memphis Commercial Appeal editorial which urged that Congress close this longstanding loophole in the current tax law. ``It's the right thing to do.'' Greg Johnson, a conservative columnist in the Knoxville News Sentinel said: ``Online sales tax bill would level the playing field.'' His article refers to the fact that 10 years ago William F. Buckley, Jr., whom he calls the father of modern conservatism, opined to the National Review about this problem and that it needed a result. The same sort of argument was made by Al Cardenas, head of the American Conservative Union, who wrote an article last week and said this needs to be fixed and supports a bill such as the one we introduced. There is also an editorial from the Seattle Times, an editorial from the Paris Post-Intelligencer, an editorial from the Denver Post, and one from Belleville in Illinois. All of these make the same points.

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I wonder if I might respond through the Chair to the majority leader. I have been consulting with the chairman of our committee, and on the Republican side, we understand what the majority leader is saying. What I hear him saying is that we have some important work we have to do this week. He wants to move to the Defense authorization bill before the end of the week. We have a conference report that includes a continuing resolution. He wants that acted on before the end of the week. Our hope is that we can deal with the Energy and Water bill today and tomorrow. I am beginning to ask our Republican Senators--and Senator Feinstein can speak for herself, but she is doing the same with Democratic members--I am asking them to get their proposed amendments to the floor this afternoon, if at all possible, so we can give the majority leader some idea of how many amendments there might be so he can evaluate how to proceed. So we appreciate the opportunity to do that. We believe that doing the appropriations bill is the basic work of the Senate. This is important both from a defense and a nondefense point of view. It had broad support in our committee, and so far, I have not found anyone on our side who isn't agreeable to moving quickly on it. I will know more at the end of the afternoon, and I will report to the majority leader about the Republican side. I ask my colleagues who are listening to please bring their amendments to the floor this afternoon as soon as possible.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the chairman. Mr. President, that is exactly right. Just so Senators know, Senator Reid has filled the tree, but what we hope to persuade him is that we know the number of amendments we have and that he doesn't need to do that. He is perfectly able to withdraw that. And I know several of our Republican colleagues are discussing this afternoon how many amendments they want to offer, and it is my hope that we will soon be able to start voting on those amendments, vote on them tomorrow, and finish the bill sometime tomorrow.

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. I ask consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, this is a States rights argument. It is about allowing States to close a loophole--a tax loophole. It is about stopping the subsidization of some taxpayers over other taxpayers, stopping the subsidization of some businesses over others. About the only ones left complaining are the taxpayers and businesses that enjoy being subsidized by other taxpayers and other businesses, and that, in our opinion, is not the correct tax policy. I am very pleased with the work of Senator Enzi and Senator Durbin. I will conclude where I started. I think they have solved the problem. As more Senators look at the fairness of the Marketplace Fairness Act and look at the options it gives each State, I hope we will have more cosponsors. If I were running an online retailer in this country, I would begin to make my plans to collect the sales taxes that are already owed and return them to the States because States will have the right under this legislation to do it. I thank the President and I yield the floor. I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER. As she usually does, the Senator from California said directly what the situation is. We on the Republican side understand that the majority leader has some important business he has to make sure the Senate finishes this week. We, as would many Democrats, want us to get to the Defense authorization bill before we go home. Senator Reid wishes to do that. We respect that and we agree with that. Senator Reid wishes to make sure we have a chance to deal with the conference report that the House is expected to pass on Thursday, which contains a continuing resolution to fund the government to mid- December. We understand that as well. That gives us a little time here, a day or two, to consider the Energy and Water appropriations bill that Senator Feinstein has described. It has broad consensus here in the Senate. It has no mandatory spending in it. It has an important defense component-- nuclear weapons nonproliferation. It has a great many nondefense items that are important to the growth of our country. It seems on the Republican side--I can speak for that--there is broad consensus. At Senator Reid's request I checked with many of our Republican Senators, asked them how many amendments they have and whether they thought they could bring them to the floor today or tomorrow morning so we could deal with them tomorrow, at the latest Thursday morning. So far the news has been encouraging. There have not been that many amendments and all the Senators with whom I have talked have said if they have amendments they believe there is no reason why, as long as they are given a short period of time to talk and a chance to vote on them--and they are germane, of course; they will have to be germane to fit with the rules of the Senate--they will be fine with that. We are going to be checking tonight with all Republican offices. We do not want to encourage any more amendments but we want to know about them if there are any so I can go to Senator Feinstein and Senator Reid and say here are the amendments the Republican Senators want to offer, we are ready to go, we can deal with it tomorrow and Thursday and hopefully we will be able to do our basic work. Our basic work is to do appropriations work in this body. That is our constitutional responsibility. So I thank Senator Feinstein for the way she approaches this. I understand where the majority leader is, and so far, I am encouraged. I will gather information. I will make my report to you and Senator Reid, and then we will see where you want to go.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator from California. She is a delight to work with. Without disparaging any other Member of the Senate, it is nice to work with former mayors or county executives or even Governors because we are accustomed to making decisions and talking directly and coming to a result. That is what we are able to do. Even when we disagree--which we sometimes do--Senator Feinstein and I are able to keep working on these issues and still try to come to a result. So it is a real privilege to work with Senator Feinstein. I thank her for her courtesy and diligence. Last week we spent an hour and a half on a very small part of this budget--actually, not even part of the budget but a related matter-- making sure we understood all sides of the issues. I don't think in the whole hour and a half there was ever a Republican or Democratic comment. We were trying to find out the right thing to do for our country, which I think is the goal of each of us. There is no need to repeat what the chairman said and said very accurately. I will summarize and comment on a few of the points. I will highlight the areas of agreement, which are, for the most part, a couple of areas where we have different points of view which we are still working on. She emphasized--and I thought it was important to emphasize--that except for disaster spending, this Energy and Water bill is slightly below the spending levels of last year. When we add in disaster funding, which I will talk about in a minute, it is above that level. There is no mandatory spending in the bill. Sometimes our bills get complicated by what we call automatic or mandatory spending. If it is included within an appropriations bill. Some of us wonder why, since we cannot do anything to change it in the appropriations process, but it is there. There is not any of that here. As the Senator emphasized, our bill is divided into two major parts--the security part or the defense part, and the nonsecurity part or the nondefense part. The security part is up; we are spending more. The reason for that is, in the first place, we asked the leaders of the committee to reallocate some money toward our subcommittee so we could try to, as much as we could, live up to our commitment to fund nuclear weapons modernization, an important issue that came up when the Senate ratified the new START treaty. In other words, the new START treaty was about limiting the number of nuclear weapons here and in Russia, making sure we could inspect what the Russians are doing and, at the same time, we wanted to make sure what we have left works. This is about making sure what we have works. We made a commitment to try to go to certain levels. We are moving in that direction. We have not gotten there yet, but that is one reason, perhaps the main reason, we spend more on the security part. On the nonsecurity part, as the Senator said, except for disaster spending, it is down. We are spending 3 percent less than we did before. I want to say a word about disaster funding. In the Budget Control Act, in August, a subject of great debate around here--one of the things done was to create a formula over the last 10 years that determines how much money we may be able to spend on disasters. The thought was that disaster spending, like other emergency spending, was getting out of control, and we need to think about it. Obviously, whenever there is a flood, hurricane, or other terrible disaster, we rush to help. But that is real money too, and it has to come from somewhere. This formula that was created says that during this fiscal year--the one about a month and a half old--that we may spend about $11.3 billion based on spending over the last 10 years. After that, we will have to reduce spending somewhere if we are going to spend more on disasters. With respect to disaster relief, our bill is part of that. It is in the Corps of Engineers. We moved quickly in our subcommittee and in the Appropriations Committee to deal with the epic flooding the Senator described on the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers this past year, which, in some cases, exceeded the flood heights of the massive 1927 and 1933 floods. To give an idea of how unusual these floods were, at our meeting of the Environment and Public Works Committee 3 weeks ago, 14 Senators in both parties came to the committee to say to the authorizing committee--the EPW Committee--we needed to do more to deal with the floods--14 Senators. I have never seen that many Senators testify before a committee before on behalf of any subject. That is how much we are concerned about it, and that is how much people in the areas affected are concerned about it. In the Appropriations Committee, we had a discussion about how much of that disaster funding to fund. We recommended $1.04 billion. There was an amendment by the Senator from Missouri that said it needs to be more because we know it will be more than that. We said, in a bipartisan way--I remember the chairman and ranking member said we don't have the estimates definite yet from the Corps of Engineers or from FEMA, so we are only going to fund those areas that are declared to be Presidential disasters, No. 1, and where we have definite estimates, No. 2. When we have more definite estimates of additional damage, we will recommend the funding. We defeated the amendment offered by the Senator from Missouri with the promise that as real damage estimates come in, they will be met. Well, the Senator and I will be offering an amendment to address this increase. I want my colleagues to be aware of this because, particularly on our side of the aisle, we have had a good deal of discussion about funding for disasters. In the amendment we will be offering, part of the money fits within the formula we agreed to in the Budget Control Act. About $550 million will not, and we will have to find some other place in the budget to reduce spending in order to properly fund this disaster spending. I doubt if there is any Senator who would not want to fund that because this is spending to be prepared for the next disaster. This will be money for preparedness, sandbags. I can guarantee, if the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers flood next year, and sandbags are not available because we could not find the money somewhere else, there will be 28 Senators at the next meeting of the EPW Committee, not just 14. So this is an urgent request. We are suggesting a way to reduce spending. So with the disaster funding, the only thing that drives our total recommendations above last year's spending, we are, No. 1, staying within the cap created by the Budget Control Committee; and, No. 2, for the amount of money for the sandbags and other preparedness, we are going to recommend a way to reduce spending somewhere else in order to be prepared for the next flood. With respect to the security allocation, Senator Feinstein mentioned that one part of our budget has to do with national security and another has to do with nonsecurity. Most people, when they think of energy, don't think of the national security parts. It is among the most important national defense requirements we have. As she said, it includes modernizing all of our nuclear weapons to make sure they work. It includes trying to make sure they don't spread around the world. That stands up at the top--those two items--of our national defense posture. There was a letter that came from Members of the House of Representatives that seemed to be critical of the Senate for using ``defense money given to water-related projects.'' I want to clear that up. There must have been some confusion on the other side of the Capitol because under the rules of the Budget Control Committee, we cannot use defense money for water projects, period. That is against the rules. Not only did we not do it, we could not do it if we wanted to. In fact, we came up with $100 million more for nuclear weapons modernization than the House did. So perhaps the House letter was sent to the wrong address. It should have been sent on that side of the Capitol and not sent to the Senate. We understand very well we should not be using defense money for water projects or water project money for defense money. We have not done that. We are not allowed to do that. We cannot cut weapons to fund water projects. Now, as I said earlier, as Senator Feinstein and I and Senators Cochran and Inouye all said, we would support the President's request for appropriate funding for nuclear weapons modernization, which is why Senator Feinstein and I asked our ranking member and chairman to allocate more money to the security side of our budget, and they did that. As a result of that, security spending for weapons activities is up 5 percent--$100 million more than the House was able to provide for Energy and Water appropriations. It is the single largest percentage increase compared to all appropriations subcommittees with security spending in the budget. But it is still $400 million less than the President's full request and $400 million less than I would like to see spent on nuclear weapons modernization. I am concerned about that. I am committed to continue to work with the full committee, the House, and the administration to come as close as we possibly can to the President's number on nuclear weapons modernization. I want to make it clear that we have bent over backward to make it a top priority--or the top priority to begin with--and have had good cooperation from the senior members of our committee. Senator Feinstein has worked hard to put this bill together in a fair and accommodating manner. She mentioned the Office of Science and talked about clean energy. Recently, I was at one of our National Laboratories, Sandia in New Mexico. The Director of Science there reminded me that almost every major physical and biological invention of any importance in the United States since World War II has been funded by government-sponsored research--almost all through our 17 or 18 National Laboratories or our 50 or 60 top research universities. These are our real secret weapons for job growth. It was out of the laboratories and out of this kind of government research that came the Internet, the Human Genome Project, nuclear power itself--whether it is nuclear weapons or the 104 civilian reactors or the 104 reactors that run our Navy ships--and stealth technology came of this. It is hard to think of any major invention or discovery in physical or biological sciences that didn't have some government-sponsored research. So when we talk about spending the same amount of money this year that we did last year for the Office of Science, we are talking about a major effort of any jobs bill that the Senate could possibly pass. If we are talking about jobs growth, this is a very big, important part of it. Low taxes is a part of it, fewer regulations, the right national labor relations policies are a part, but any progrowth plan for the United States has to include government-sponsored research. No other country in the world has anything like our 18 laboratories or our 50 or 60 top research universities. If we want a high standard of living--you know, we still produce about 25 percent of all the money in the world--we would do well to invest every spare dollar we have there, as long as it is wisely spent. So as long as we are cutting over here, I am all for that. I don't want to see a situation where we have runaway entitlement spending and as a result of that we squeeze the inventions that give us the job growth we need. I made a speech at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2008 where I suggested we have a new Manhattan project for clean energy independence, focusing on electric cars and trucks, carbon capture, solar power, nuclear waste, advanced biofuels, green building fusion. I am a big supporter of research as an appropriate role for the Federal Government, and we will talk more, as we have time over the next 2 days, I hope, about the wisdom of the proper priorities in spending. I would say yes to more for research and no to more for subsidies. The New York Times had a big article on Saturday where it talked about rich subsidies powering solar and wind projects, and these are for companies that can pay us back. These are extravagant subsidies, which I think are completely unnecessary, particularly at a budget time such as this. If we have any extra dollars, let's put them into the secret weapons at the research universities and the national laboratories and tackle the big challenges, such as the 500-mile battery for cars or finding a solar panel that is so cheap it is $1 per kilowatt installed. I agree with Senator Feinstein that Dr. Chu is on the right track with his energy remarks. I was suggesting in my remarks that we pick these grand challenges, such as used nuclear fuel, as one--what to do with it, where do we dispose of the waste. Dr. Chu is doing that, with batteries, with solar, with others, and I think it is a good way to concentrate the focus of the Federal Government and the Energy Department to solve the problems of rising gasoline prices, electricity prices, and do it in a way that helps clean the air. During our debate, I hope we have a chance to talk about more for research and less for permanent subsidies in the energy area, and I hope we have a way to talk about restraining entitlement spending so we can have sufficient funds to fund our secret weapons that have produced almost every major biological and physical discovery since World War II. We have broad support for that here. We passed the America COMPETES Act in 2007 which set a path for funding for sciences. We had 35 Democrats and 35 Republicans as cosponsors of that bill. It was introduced by the Democratic leader and the Republican leader, and when we changed parties after an election, it was introduced by the Republican leader and the Democratic leader. So we have bipartisan support for that. We need to make sure it is part of the debate. The Corps of Engineers, the Senator talked about. Those are critical ideas. Those are the areas she and I agree on. I will spend a moment, if I may, on some areas where we have some more work to do before we have an agreement. One is in the area of nuclear power. Here is what I agree with her about nuclear power. One is that it is a remarkable statistic that 20 percent of our electricity is produced by one of our greatest inventions--nuclear power--and that it is 70 percent of our electricity without carbon but also without nitrogen or sulfur or mercury pollution. We had a big debate here in the Senate last week about clean air. Well, if all of our power were nuclear power, as almost all of it is in France, we wouldn't have a clean air debate because our powerplants wouldn't be producing any mercury or producing any nitrogen or sulfur oxides as well as carbon. So nuclear is a remarkable advantage for the United States and one which we should continue to take advantage of. I am disappointed we do not fund in this bill the first steps of a several-year program to jump-start the small nuclear reactor program. This is not just our idea. France, Russia, Brazil, and other countries around the world are working on this. There are 60 countries that want to introduce nuclear energy onto their grid for the first time. We have the phenomenon like South Korea building a nuclear powerplant for the United Arab Emirates. So if we don't do it, that doesn't mean no one will do it; it just means we will be at the back of the line with an invention we invented and that today produces 20 percent of our electricity and 70 percent of our clean electricity. Now, the ``it'' we are talking about are these smaller reactors. We already produce a lot of small reactors for the more than 100 Navy vessels, but they are of a little different kind. But small reactors that might be 100 to 300 megawatts would be cheaper, they would be made in the United States, and they could be put together like LEGO blocks would. They could be hauled back and forth from wherever they were produced to different places. They might be especially useful on a military base or around a national laboratory, where you don't need 1,200 new megawatts of electricity. And they might be better for an investor-owned utility to buy, because they would only have to spend one-fourth or one-fifth or one-sixth as much money. The big reactors we now build are $5 billion, $6 billion, $7 billion, $8 billion or more. Quite a big number. So the President and Dr. Chu have recommended we move ahead with the small reactor program. The House of Representatives agrees, I agree, and we are trying to work a way out here where we can join that parade--in fact, lead the parade. I think the way to do it is to take seriously Senator Feinstein's concern about used nuclear fuel. She is exactly right, we have blindfolds on our eyes if we think it is responsible for us to move ahead producing so much nuclear power--even if it is just a football field 20 feet deep--without a permanent place to put the spent fuel. It is safe to keep it there, in my opinion. And not just mine. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Secretary Chu, the President's Nobel prize- winning Energy Secretary, say it is safe for 100 years. But what that says to me is that it is safe while we figure out the right way to dispose of it. I am convinced our scientists can figure out an even better way of disposing of it than France does, for example, which reprocesses nuclear fuel and then stores it there. I suspect we will be able, in the next 10 or 15 years, to figure out a way to recycle, reuse nuclear fuel, and reduce the waste by 95 percent. But we will still need a permanent place to store it. What I am committed to do, working with Senator Feinstein--and I am delighted she has this intense level of interest--and Senators Bingaman and Murkowski, the ranking members of the Energy Committee, is trying to create an inexorable process toward a result on finding a proper place to store used nuclear fuel. I hope we can do that within a year. That doesn't mean we will have all the decisions made, but it means we could have, I believe, a process established that will produce a result. I am hoping at the same time we can move ahead with small nuclear reactors, because by 2020, the idea is we would only have two or three. And between now and then, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would need this help in creating the proper license and approving the design and working through all the things one has to do. It is going to have to do that anyway, because someone will bring one over from Korea or France or Russia or Brazil and they will apply for a license in the United States and we will be using their reactors instead of ours. Another area of disagreement is there are some provisions in the bill, which I won't go into at great length, but I don't think they belong in an appropriations bill, with all respect. They are based on several recommendations of the 90-day commission created by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Since our bill was reported, the NRC has taken several steps to prioritize their recommendations. Of the five representations that are in language in our bill, the Commission only considered one to be of that urgent a priority. It is going to do the rest of them in the regular order of things. I think we should let our experts do their job. Perhaps this calls attention to the importance of it, but I would rather let the Nuclear Regulatory Commission do its job and us to concentrate our efforts on finding a place to put used nuclear fuel. One other area I suspect within the next few days we will have a discussion about is the subsidy cost for renewable energy projects, but I think I will delay that until we have an opportunity to discuss it on the floor, and to have some discussions about the loan guarantee program, which hasn't worked as intended. The loan guarantee program was supposed to help put a priority on certain forms of energy and loan monies to companies that could pay it back, not to companies that couldn't pay it back. Apparently, that has been an issue. There is also a provision in the bill about requiring grantees of the Department of Energy to change lightbulbs in their factories if they do not meet the standards for the new lightbulbs. This will be costly, it is inconsistent with current law, and I hope we can remove it as the bill moves forward. In a bill this large and this important, I think Chairman Feinstein and other members of the subcommittee and the full committee have come up with a good result, a result about which there is a consensus between us, with very few areas of disagreement, a result that is below last year's spending level, except for disaster spending, and a result that gives a special emphasis to nuclear weapons modernization that we are committed to and that the President asked for and that does better than the House number but still doesn't reach, I will acknowledge, where I had hoped we could go. It has been a great privilege to work with Chairman Feinstein. I like the idea that we have an appropriations bill on the floor. This is the basic work of government. We ought to do this before we do anything else. If we can't have an appropriations bill to fund the basic work of government, people might say, can you do anything at all? So we have done our part, we have the bill here, and I thank the majority leader for bringing it up. I hope our colleagues will give us the chance to move forward the bill this week, to bring their amendments to the floor, debate on them, have a final vote, and pass it into law and do something we can be proud of. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator. I am not going to respond at great length because I want to eventually find us in agreement about this, but I appreciate it. Your points are very important and very good points. On safety and nuclear power, I think it is always important to start off by pointing out that a nuclear reactor is a big, complex operation and obviously there is some risk to it. But nuclear power has the best safety record of any form of energy production in the United States. There has never been a death in connection with any 1 of our 104 civilian reactors. There hasn't been one with the more than 100 Navy reactors where we have sailors actually living on top of reactors. We have all heard about Three Mile Island, which is the most important nuclear accident we have had in the United States, but no one was even hurt in Three Mile Island. I see the Senator from Pennsylvania is presiding today. When I say that to people around the country, they say: What do you mean no one was hurt at Three Mile Island? No one was hurt. There have been tests on families who lived around there, and no one was even hurt either from any kind of explosion or from radioactivity at a later time. So we always have to look for better ways to be safe, but we have that safe record. We do have the Chairman of the NRC saying this used fuel is stored safely for 100 years, and we have our scientists telling us in 10 or 15 years we can find a way to recycle. Within that time, we ought to find a place to put it. We have a place to put it if we could go ahead with Yucca Mountain, but that has been stopped for a variety of reasons, some of them political. Let us say they are all principled. But for whatever reason, it is stuck. The other thing I would say is, there is a certain urgency about this. As the Senator said, 20 percent of our electricity is nuclear power, 70 percent of our clean energy. What if we didn't have that 20 percent? We don't have to look far to see. In Japan they have shut down temporarily enough of their reactors as a result of Fukushima to be without 20 percent of their electricity. What have they been doing? Their car manufacturers have been working on the weekends. That is 5 million workers in Japan. Temperatures are turned to 82 during the summer heat; 22,000 people have been brought into the hospitals from heat stroke. The Emperor and Empress are wandering around the Imperial Palace with candlesticks and flashlights. We don't want the United States of America like that. This is an important part of our ability to create jobs and to have lots of low- cost electricity. We use 25 percent of all the energy in the world in the United States. As far as subsidies go, after we get through finding a place to put used nuclear fuel, maybe this is the second area on which the Senator from California and I can work which would be to do something about energy subsidies. Estimates are the Federal Government probably spends about $20 billion a year on energy subsidies of one kind or another. The Energy Information Administration did a study 3 years ago on where that money goes, and this is where it goes: Subsidies for wind dwarf everything else. It is not Big Oil, it is big wind, $18.82 per megawatt hour subsidy for wind turbines; $3.67 for solar; $1.36 for landfill gas; 67 cents per megawatt hour for hydroelectric; 18 cents for biomass; 12 cents for coal; and almost 0 for nuclear. It is often cited the insurance program the nuclear powerplants have as a subsidy. It is a Federal law that never has cost the taxpayer a penny. It simply requires all the nuclear operators to put in, I believe, $11 billion or $12 billion per reactor in case there is an incident. They all share in the result, which might be a pretty good way to do with oil producers that are drilling in the gulf, make them all worry about each other's plant and not just their own. So I believe nuclear power is safe. As far as subsidies go, I would like to move some of those subsidies into the energy research column and maybe into the reduce the debt column. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a copy of the New York Times article.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I was reading in the New York Times on Saturday: Rich subsidies powering solar and wind projects; big rise in company aid; companies are virtually assured of profits. This is the New York Times. This isn't the conservative Washington, DC, Journal saying this. It is a very thorough article that talks about something I have been concerned about for a long time. It said: Taxpayers and ratepayers are providing subsidies worth almost as much as the entire $1.6 billion cost of a solar plant halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco on a former cattle ranch. It quotes the head of NRG, a very substantial company, saying: I have never seen anything that I have had to do in my 20 years in the power industry that involved less risk than these projects. It is just filling the desert with panels. From 2007 to 2010, Federal subsidies jumped to $14.7 billion from $5.1 billion, according to a recent study. It goes on and on. My own research shows, the Joint Tax Committee said that over the next 10 years taxpayer funding for wind--which our energy secretary testified is a mature technology--will cost the taxpayers $26 billion over the next 10 years. Wouldn't that money be better spent on energy research for clean energy, for finding ways to deal with used nuclear fuel, for getting a 500-mile battery, for getting an installed dollar kilowatt or reducing the debt at a time when we are borrowing 40 cents of every $1 we spend? So I am absolutely committed to working with Senator Feinstein on finding a way to deal with the problem of used nuclear fuel. We urgently need to do that. We are fortunate it is safe where it is while we do that, and I hope we can find a way to agree that over the next few years we can move ahead so we at least get started on small modular reactors. I am also willing to work with the chairman or anyone else, any other Senator who is willing to take a good, hard look at energy substitutes of all kinds and say, OK, let's take look at our own positions on that, especially in light of the budget deficit, and let's take that money and put some of it into energy research so we can get up to where we need to be and use the rest of it to reduce the debt. So this is a good discussion and one I look forward to continuing, and I am delighted to have a chance to continue it with someone I respect as much as the Senator from California.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Sure.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I believe I have 8 minutes. I would ask the Chair to let me know when I have 1 minute remaining.

Mr. ALEXANDER. The Senator from Kentucky wants to overturn a clean air rule which would limit the amount of soot and ozone, the pollution that causes smog, from blowing from Kentucky and other states into Tennessee or that blows from Tennessee into North Carolina. This is no solution to a serious problem. I want to give the four reasons why I am going to vote no, and why I believe Senator Pryor of Arkansas and I have a better solution, which is to put the rule into law and give the utilities enough time to comply with it. Reason No. 1, auto jobs. The first thing Nissan did when it came to Tennessee 30 years ago was to go down to the Air Quality Board and get an air quality permit so it could operate its paint plant. Fortunately, our air was clean enough to allow that to happen. Nissan came, and so did tens of thousands of jobs. If it had not gotten the permit, the jobs would not be there. Volkswagen has come to Tennessee. We want to make sure its suppliers can get an air quality permit so they do not have to go to other States. So the first reason we need to stop air from blowing into Tennessee from other States is auto jobs. Second, the Sevier County Chamber of Commerce, right next to the Great Smoky Mountains--that is where Dolly Parton grew up--I walk in to see them, and they say their No. 1 goal is clean air. That is because 9 million tourists come to see the Great Smoky Mountains, not the Great Smoggy Mountains. This is not a group or a hotbed of liberal regulators. These are the most Republican counties in Tennessee. Where I come from, which is the next county over, we have not elected a Democrat to Congress since Abraham Lincoln was President, but we like to breathe clean air. Our tourists do as well. Tourist jobs are the second reason I am going to vote against the Paul amendment and why I support the Alexander-Pryor amendment. Three, the American Lung Association tells us that dirty air blowing into Tennessee makes us unhealthier. It causes some of us to die, especially children and our older citizens. No. 4, this is no solution. It has no chance of succeeding. It will not pass the Senate. The President will veto it if it does. And what will it do? It will throw it back to bureaucrats and lawyers and bureaucracy and uncertainty and delay. That is not a solution. So the only reason for it is as a political message. What kind of message is it, that we favor dirty air blowing from Kentucky into Tennessee or Tennessee into North Carolina? That we favor not doing our job, but turning it back to bureaucrats, lawyers, uncertainty and delay? That is not a solution. If we want a message amendment, there are many better choices. The Obama administration, particularly the EPA, is a happy hunting ground of unreasonable regulations. There is the boiler MACT rule, which must have been created on another planet. There is the cement MACT rule, which would increase the amount of pollution in the air. There is the ozone rule, which the President himself had to withdraw. There is the power plants coolant rule, which seems to have no benefits. There is even talk of a farm dust rule, which Senator Johanns is talking about. So why aren't we talking about those rules instead of a proposal to make it easier for dirty air to blow into our State, make us unhealthier, drive away tourists, and cost us auto jobs? The Senator from Kentucky says it will cost. His sources say 2 percent. The Tennessee Valley Authority, the largest public utility in the country, says it is $1 to $2 a month--$1 to $2 a month. That is a reasonable cost for what we are getting. TVA has said they are closing 18 coal-fired units, but will continue to operate 38 coal-fired units. They are putting pollution control equipment on all of them. That means we are healthier, that means more jobs, that means more tourists. The Senator from Kentucky says emissions are declining. That is true, except in Kentucky they are not declining. Soot went up by 20,000 tons in Kentucky, according to the EPA, between 2009 and 2010. Some of that might blow into Tennessee, drive away jobs, drive away tourists, and make us unhealthy. The Bush administration had a similar rule to this in 2005. That rule required nearly identical reductions in these two pollutants. Utilities have known since that time--for 6 years--these reduction were coming. Most utilities, like TVA, have complied with it or are beginning to comply with it. If we overturn the rule, it is no solution at all. I am ready for Congress to step up and accept its responsibility and do its job. Someone said to me: Is that part of your new independence? No. I have had bipartisan clean air legislation in this Congress every year since I have been here, because I think it is our job, not the bureaucrats' job. I was elected to work on jobs and health, not pass the buck to the bureaucrats and lawyers. So I invite my colleagues to join Senator Pryor and me. Let's put the rule into law. Let's give utilities enough time to comply. They do not have to comply on January 1, 2012. They have to comply 15 months after that in March 2013. We would extend it that time another year giving them two years to comply. We are going to have a President elected next year. Whoever it is, his or her EPA will write new rules for communities across the country about how clean their air needs to be. If we make it harder for them to do their job, by allowing dirty air to blow into Nashville and Chattanooga and Memphis and Knoxville from other States, then when Volkswagen suppliers come to the State office to get their clean air permit, they will not get it, and those jobs will go somewhere else. There is a lot I admire about our neighbors in Kentucky, including their two distinguished Senators. But I do not want their dirty air blowing into Tennessee. And I know North Carolina does not want our dirty air blowing into North Carolina, because they have been suing us for several years about it. The American people are tired of messaging. I want to see the Great Smoky Mountains, not the Great Smoggy Mountains. I want tourists to come to Tennessee, admire the mountains, and leave their money. I want the Volkswagen suppliers to be able to locate their plants in Tennessee. I want all Tennesseans to be able to grow up healthy and not have to worry about dirty air blowing in from other parts of the country. The Alexander-Pryor amendment would limit that dirty air. It would help our communities. It would make us healthier. It will create jobs. Let's do our job. I ask my colleagues to vote no on the Paul amendment and become a cosponsor of the Alexander-Pryor amendment to clean up the air and do it in a way that helps utilities provide electricity at the lowest possible cost to the ratepayer. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I ask consent to extend the colloquy into Democratic time.