Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, if another Senator wishes to speak, I will be succinct. I will try to do mine in a less period of time. I thank the Chair for its courtesy. I wish to speak on two subjects. First, there has been a good deal of discussion in Washington about making sure we continue to operate the government over the weekend and on into next week while we get about the important business of reducing our debt. Our national debt is an urgent problem. Members on both sides of the aisle understand this, and have said this. We have 64 Senators who have written the President to say we are ready to go to work on reducing the debt on the whole budget. We have a proposal from Congressman Ryan. We have a proposal from the Bowles commission. We are ready to go to work. The House of Representatives has made a proposal to, for the time being, continue the government while we work on that, and that is eminently reasonable. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a Wall Street Journal op-ed from April 4 by Gary Becker, George Shultz, and John Taylor that points out that the numbers in the House of Representatives proposal would have the Federal Government spend for the rest of the year basically what we spent in 2008, plus an allowance for inflation. There is no reason, the authors say, why government agencies, from Treasury and Commerce to the executive office of the President, cannot get by with the same amount of funding they spent in 2008 plus increases for inflation. This would be a reasonable first step as we get to the larger issue of how we reduce the debt over a longer period.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, last month marked the 1-year anniversary of President Obama signing the health care bill into law. I believe it was an historic mistake. We have talked about the health care law in a variety of ways. One thing we have said is that at a time when our country needs to make it easier and cheaper to create private sector jobs, the health care law makes it harder and more expensive to do so. Someone might ask: How could that happen? This morning I wish to mention a few examples of how it actually is happening, how the health care law actually is making it harder and more expensive to create private sector jobs. Last September I met with about 35 chief executive officers of chain restaurant companies. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the retail and hospitality industries are the largest employers in the United States, second only to the U.S. Government. Food services and drinking places provide roughly 10 million jobs. Most of these are first-time job seekers and low-income employees--the young and the poor companies that provide a huge number of jobs to low-income Americans. One of the chief executive officers I met with said his company had been operating with 90 employees on the average, and as a result of the health care law, their goal was to operate with 70 employees. That is fewer jobs. There were many other examples of that around the room. Many of the attendees are on the National Council of Chain Restaurants. They have significant concerns about the law, and they provided me with specific examples. One restaurant chain based in Tennessee with worries about the law is a company called Ruby Tuesday. Ruby Tuesday has 24,000 full-time employees and 16,000 part-time employees. According to Ruby Tuesday, the employer mandate will cost them roughly $47.5 million--$2000 penalty/per employee/minus the first 30 employees--yet their annual net income last year was just over $45 million. In other words, the cost of the health care law to them equals the entire profits of this multibillion dollar company. Ruby Tuesday says as a result, it will have to reduce its workforce by 18 percent in order to hold their profits even. The company will increase the hours for their full-time employees and reduce their overall workforce in order to reduce the number of people for which coverage would be required. The problem we are talking about is that the new law requires employers who don't provide acceptable coverage to pay a ``fair share'' penalty of $2,000 per full-time employee. A full-time employee is defined as someone who works 30 hours a week instead of 40. We can see that a company such as Ruby Tuesday, with that many employees, would have a big cost, $47.5 million, which equaled its entire profits for the year. Another restaurant chain, White Castle, is also concerned. It said that according to their internal estimates, the health care law's provision imposing penalties for employer-sponsored health plans, whose costs to the employee exceeds 9.5 percent of that employee's household income, would be particularly punishing. In its present form this provision alone would lead to an approximate increased cost of over 55 percent of what White Castle currently earns in net income. This devastating impact would cut future expansion and job creation by at least half. The impact would be predominantly felt in low-income areas where jobs are most needed. A representative of the National Retail Federation testified in February about another large chain quick service restaurant--QSR--and its potential job loss. This company preferred to remain anonymous, but the chain estimates that the incremental cost to comply with the new law is $10 to $15,000 annually per affected restaurant which across the entire system could be $50 to $75 million in incremental costs a year. This would wipe out one-third of that system's profits per year, potentially eliminating 10 percent of its stores, which means hundreds of restaurants and the potential elimination of 12,500 jobs. There was another example, a large franchise system with multiple casual dining restaurant concepts and projects. They estimated the average cost per restaurant in their system of the new health care law would be $237,000, which equates to a systemwide cost of providing health insurance benefits to full-time employees of almost $806 million per year. If all of this chain's small business franchisee owners elected to pay the employer penalty instead of providing insurance, the cost would be reduced but to just over still $84,000 per restaurant or a savings of $286 million systemwide. So to cope with the increased costs of the health care law, the employers who are restaurant owners--and these are the largest employers in America, they employ the most people in America except for the U.S. Government-- are seeing their costs go up and, as a result, there are fewer jobs for Americans. Republicans believe it would be better to reduce health care costs step by step so more people can afford to buy insurance instead of expanding a system that costs too much, and we will continue to advocate that position. The important thing to remember about the law--we have heard it said it hurts Medicare, it adds regulations, raises taxes, and individual premiums are going up--is that it makes it harder and more difficult and more expensive to create private sector jobs at a time when our country should be dedicated to making it easier and cheaper to create them. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, on Friday, I spoke at the Ladies Hermitage Association's Annual banquet in Nashville. This extraordinary organization, for 122 years, has preserved the home of President Andrew Jackson. No former President's home has more historical objects from a President's life than does the Hermitage. I ask unanimous consent that my remarks be printed in the Record.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, it is my sad responsibility to announce that former Gov. Ned McWherter of Tennessee has died this afternoon. Ned had many friends here in Washington, but he had a lot more in Tennessee. What symbolized Ned McWherter to me was a story that occurred to me when I was elected Governor in 1978. I was a young Republican, about 37 years old. There hadn't been many Republican Governors in Tennessee at that time. The whole State was one party. It was very Democratic. Ned McWherter was the speaker of the House. For those who knew Ned McWherter, he was a big, burly, Hoss Cartwright sort of fellow. He and the Lieutenant Governor, a Democrat, pretty well ran the capital. Shortly after I came in, the Capitol Hill media came up to speaker Ned McWherter and said: Well, Mr. Speaker, what are you going to do with this new young Republican Governor? Speaker McWherter said: I am going to help him, because if he succeeds, our State succeeds. For 8 years, as he was speaker and I was Governor, he did that. The people of Tennessee apparently didn't mind it because after I left, they elected him Governor. He served for 8 years. That sort of bipartisan cooperation was the way I learned about politics in Tennessee. Ned was a pretty thoroughgoing Democrat. He was one of President Clinton's closest friends and early allies. Democrats all around the country came to him for his homespun advice. He had no problem working hard during election time to put legislators who were Democratic in place of Republicans who were already in their seats. That was not a problem for him. But in between elections, he knew what to do. We would meet in the Governor's office every Tuesday morning, and we would go over the issues, the Republican Governor and the Democratic leaders. Then we would decide what to do. If I came up with a better schools program, the Democrats would come up with an even better ``better schools'' program. So when Tennessee became the first State to pay teachers more for teaching well on a Statewide basis in 1984, I made the proposal, but it was the result of a bipartisan education commission that Speaker McWherter and Lieutenant Governor Wilder, both Democrats, and I jointly agreed on. When the legislature agreed to it, I may have proposed it as Governor, but it was amended by the Weakley County amendment, which was the home county of Speaker McWherter. In other words, it was his willingness to fashion a consensus bill on a revolutionary idea at the time, to reward outstanding teachers by paying them more for teaching well. He did the same thing with highways and roads. Tennessee had one of the worst road systems in the country in the early 1980s. By the time we were finished, we had what the truckers called the best. We had three big road programs. We increased revenues to pay for it so we didn't run up any debt. In every case, Speaker McWherter supported and made sure legislation passed. When we became a State that attracted Japanese industry, he knew the commitments I made as a Republican Governor he would fulfill as a Democratic leader of the House of Representatives and that he would continue as a Democratic Governor. It was a seamless transition. The same was true with the automobile industry when it had begun to come to Tennessee. People began to look around for a central location with a right-to-work law and good working people. Through a succession of Governors--Republican, Democratic, Republican, Democratic--we worked together to do that. Of special interest to Washington, DC, right now, through all those Democratic and Republican Governors, we agreed our State would have almost no debt. Under Governor McWherter and Speaker McWherter, our State had almost no debt. If we needed something, we paid for it. As a result, we have low taxes. Ned McWherter was one of the finest public servants I ever had a chance to work with. He became a close friend. He had an infectious personality and great sense of humor. One of the last visits I had with him included the inauguration of the new Governor, Bill Haslam. Ned McWherter, who was 80 years old, and Jim Haslam, father of the new Governor, were the same age and the best of friends. Their sons competed for the right to be the new Governor of Tennessee. Governor McWherter and Jim Haslam, after the election, were the best of friends. That is the kind of person Ned McWherter was. There are a lot of people in our State who come in and out of politics. Maybe they are appreciated, maybe they are not. Only a few leave a lasting impression. Ned McWherter will be among the very few who leave the most impression. Part of it was his big, burly, infectious, lovable personality. Part of it was his good sense of politics and openness around the State capital. But a lot of it was his willingness to say to people such as a new young Governor of the opposite party: I am going to help you succeed, because if you succeed, our State succeeds. Governor McWherter and I talked many times. I talked with him most recently about 1 week ago. He was going to see his doctor again to find out whether, as he said, he had a short fuse or a long fuse. Apparently, he had a short fuse. He didn't have much life left in him, although he may not have known it. Perhaps he did. He used to joke and say the size of the crowd at your funeral will depend a lot on the weather. I think all of us in Tennessee would say the size of the crowd at Ned McWherter's funeral will have nothing to do with the weather, because I imagine it will be standing room only, with people pouring out of the back doors. We are sad he is gone. But it has been 80 remarkable years. The Governor who never graduated from college is the Governor who had the courage to put into State law the Sanders model for relating student achievement to teacher performance, helping our State win this administration's Race to the Top Award some 15 or 20 years later. He made a real contribution to our State. He has a big place in all our hearts. I am sad to report he is gone. But it is an important time to celebrate the life of a public servant whose lessons of how to achieve consensus and still be a good politician will be a good lesson for everyone in Washington, DC. I yield the floor, suggest the absence of a quorum, and ask unanimous consent that the time be equally divided between the parties.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the Senator from New York and I are on the Senate floor today to introduce legislation that will help make the Senate a more effective place to deal with the big issues facing our country, such as the debt, our national defense, and other issues. This is the result of discussions we have had over the last several months with many Members of the Senate on both sides of the aisle. It began with some reforms in Senate rules, which included eliminating the so-called secret hold and doing other steps. It is the culmination of work by a number of Senators on both sides of the aisle--including Senator Lieberman; Senator Collins; the leaders, Senator Reid and Senator McConnell, when they were whips; Senator Schumer and I; and others. We had bipartisan breakfasts on these reforms a couple years ago, and it came down to the questions: How many confirmations should the Senate have? How many confirmations are enough confirmations? Is it in the public interest to allow a new President, whether Democratic or Republican, to staff the government promptly? And is it in the public interest to get rid of this syndrome that is established in Washington, which I call ``innocent until nominated,'' where we invite a distinguished person to come in and run that person through a gauntlet that makes him or her out to be a criminal for making some mistake in the process of being confirmed? We have worked together, and we have come up with legislation that Senator Schumer is introducing on behalf of both of us--on behalf of the leaders, Senator Reid and Senator McConnell, and on behalf of Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins. This legislation would answer the question, how many confirmations are enough confirmations, by reducing or streamlining the nomination process for about 450 nominees--out of a total of about 1,400 nominations. Over 1,000 Senate confirmed nominations will remain unchanged. Just to put that into perspective, that is still more confirmations than existed when President Clinton was President of the United States. It is almost four times as many confirmations as existed when President Kennedy was President of the United States. In other words, like many things in government, the number of confirmations has grown over time. We have ended up confirming people we have no business confirming-- people who are public relations officers, people who are financial information people--and we have made it difficult for the government to be staffed. Is it in our interest, and the citizens', to staff the government promptly? Yes, I think it is. We have created this phenomenon where Administrations are slow to get staffed up. For example, when President Obama came in, Secretary Geithner, the Treasury Secretary, was sitting over at Treasury almost home alone during the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression. According to news accounts, he did not have much help. The key vacant positions in Treasury were Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax, Trade, and Tariff Policy, and a variety of others. That situation was not helping any of us. Whether we agreed with President Obama or Secretary Geithner or not, after an election a President should be able to promptly staff the government, and we in the Senate should have procedures to give us a chance to review those nominees and offer our advice and consent and confirm or reject those nominees in a reasonable period of time. If we are spending our time dealing with junior officials or PR officers, we are spending less time dealing with the Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy, on whom we should be focusing a lot of time, and to whom we should be asking a lot of questions. Then, there is this business of what I call ``innocent until nominated''--all of us know this exists. It really exists by sloppiness on our part, both in the legislative branch and the executive branch. If you are asked to serve in the Federal Government--and I know this because I was asked by the first President Bush--you fill out forms. Well, there are many forms. There are many forms in the executive branch. They have different definitions; for example, the definition of ``income.'' If you were to carelessly fill out the same definition of ``income'' on one form as another form, you might have been incorrect on one of the forms, and then someone might say you were telling a lie and were not fit to serve. That has been called by others, including me, as being ``innocent until nominated.'' I remember when Ron Kirk, the former mayor of Dallas, was nominated by President Obama to be the Trade Representative. There was some issue about whether he had properly reported a speech fee he gave to charity. What difference did it make in terms of his overall fitness to serve? It held him up. It embarrassed him. It was not relevant to the inquiry. So the legislation we have will do the following: It proposes eliminating the need for Senate confirmation or streamlining over 450 positions. About 200 of these nominations will be eliminated as Senate confirmations. These are the ones the Senate does not need to spend time on. The other half will come directly to the desk. Then, unless an individual Senator says: Send it on to committee to go through the regular order, it will be expedited. That still leaves us with 1,000 Senate confirmations that we can have--1,000 hostages we can take. That is more hostages than we could take under Bill Clinton. That is almost four times as many hostages than the Senate could take under President Kennedy. That ought to be plenty of hostages for any Senator to make his or her point if that is what we seek to do. Second, the legislation would set up a process whereby an executive branch working group would review the various forms that nominees are expected to fill out, and try to have a single smart form in the executive branch. The working group will consult with committees of Congress. It might make sense to see if we can do the same thing with our forms, and make it possible that we can get all the information we want without unnecessarily subjecting nominees to harassment or trickery just because they are not wise enough to fill out different forms with different definitions. I think this is a substantial step forward. It may not sound like much to those watching the Senate, but let me just say that both of our leaders, Reid and McConnell, have said they tried this and could not get it done. Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins have tried, and they could not get it done. I worked with Senator Lieberman 2 years ago and we could not get it done. What has happened this time is a result of the discussion we had earlier in the year about making the Senate a more effective place to work--with the full support of the leaders, Reid and McConnell; with the full support of Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins; and with the good work of Senator Schumer. We have come up with a consensus piece of legislation which has broad bipartisan support from both sides of the aisle, including chairmen and ranking members of the committees you would think might be the first ones to object. This legislation would still leave the Senate with the prerogatives it ought to have in terms of reviewing Presidential nominees and separates out those who take our time away from the more important things we ought to be doing. I thank the Senator from New York for the way he has worked on this issue. He has been constructive and direct and helpful. I thank the leaders for their support. I hope the committees will rapidly consider the legislation Senator Schumer is introducing on our behalf, and I hope it will show we can take another small step in making the Senate a more effective place to work. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a document entitled ``List of Presidential Appointments No Longer Requiring Senate Confirmation''--there are about 200 of those--and a document entitled ``Privileged Nominations.'' Those are the ones that will be expedited, unless a single Senator decides he or she wants to have this nominee sent to committee, and that is about another 240.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Presiding Officer, and I notice that the Senator from New York is also on the Senate floor. I thank him for his work on this issue.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to divide equally the remaining amount of morning business time.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the Senator from New York and I are on the Senate floor today to introduce legislation that will help make the Senate a more effective place to deal with the big issues facing our country, such as the debt, our national defense, and other issues. This is the result of discussions we have had over the last several months with many Members of the Senate on both sides of the aisle. It began with some reforms in Senate rules, which included eliminating the so-called secret hold and doing other steps. It is the culmination of work by a number of Senators on both sides of the aisle--including Senator Lieberman; Senator Collins; the leaders, Senator Reid and Senator McConnell, when they were whips; Senator Schumer and I; and others. We had bipartisan breakfasts on these reforms a couple years ago, and it came down to the questions: How many confirmations should the Senate have? How many confirmations are enough confirmations? Is it in the public interest to allow a new President, whether Democratic or Republican, to staff the government promptly? And is it in the public interest to get rid of this syndrome that is established in Washington, which I call ``innocent until nominated,'' where we invite a distinguished person to come in and run that person through a gauntlet that makes him or her out to be a criminal for making some mistake in the process of being confirmed? We have worked together, and we have come up with legislation that Senator Schumer is introducing on behalf of both of us--on behalf of the leaders, Senator Reid and Senator McConnell, and on behalf of Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins. This legislation would answer the question, how many confirmations are enough confirmations, by reducing or streamlining the nomination process for about 450 nominees--out of a total of about 1,400 nominations. Over 1,000 Senate confirmed nominations will remain unchanged. Just to put that into perspective, that is still more confirmations than existed when President Clinton was President of the United States. It is almost four times as many confirmations as existed when President Kennedy was President of the United States. In other words, like many things in government, the number of confirmations has grown over time. We have ended up confirming people we have no business confirming-- people who are public relations officers, people who are financial information people--and we have made it difficult for the government to be staffed. Is it in our interest, and the citizens', to staff the government promptly? Yes, I think it is. We have created this phenomenon where Administrations are slow to get staffed up. For example, when President Obama came in, Secretary Geithner, the Treasury Secretary, was sitting over at Treasury almost home alone during the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression. According to news accounts, he did not have much help. The key vacant positions in Treasury were Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax, Trade, and Tariff Policy, and a variety of others. That situation was not helping any of us. Whether we agreed with President Obama or Secretary Geithner or not, after an election a President should be able to promptly staff the government, and we in the Senate should have procedures to give us a chance to review those nominees and offer our advice and consent and confirm or reject those nominees in a reasonable period of time. If we are spending our time dealing with junior officials or PR officers, we are spending less time dealing with the Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy, on whom we should be focusing a lot of time, and to whom we should be asking a lot of questions. Then, there is this business of what I call ``innocent until nominated''--all of us know this exists. It really exists by sloppiness on our part, both in the legislative branch and the executive branch. If you are asked to serve in the Federal Government--and I know this because I was asked by the first President Bush--you fill out forms. Well, there are many forms. There are many forms in the executive branch. They have different definitions; for example, the definition of ``income.'' If you were to carelessly fill out the same definition of ``income'' on one form as another form, you might have been incorrect on one of the forms, and then someone might say you were telling a lie and were not fit to serve. That has been called by others, including me, as being ``innocent until nominated.'' I remember when Ron Kirk, the former mayor of Dallas, was nominated by President Obama to be the Trade Representative. There was some issue about whether he had properly reported a speech fee he gave to charity. What difference did it make in terms of his overall fitness to serve? It held him up. It embarrassed him. It was not relevant to the inquiry. So the legislation we have will do the following: It proposes eliminating the need for Senate confirmation or streamlining over 450 positions. About 200 of these nominations will be eliminated as Senate confirmations. These are the ones the Senate does not need to spend time on. The other half will come directly to the desk. Then, unless an individual Senator says: Send it on to committee to go through the regular order, it will be expedited. That still leaves us with 1,000 Senate confirmations that we can have--1,000 hostages we can take. That is more hostages than we could take under Bill Clinton. That is almost four times as many hostages than the Senate could take under President Kennedy. That ought to be plenty of hostages for any Senator to make his or her point if that is what we seek to do. Second, the legislation would set up a process whereby an executive branch working group would review the various forms that nominees are expected to fill out, and try to have a single smart form in the executive branch. The working group will consult with committees of Congress. It might make sense to see if we can do the same thing with our forms, and make it possible that we can get all the information we want without unnecessarily subjecting nominees to harassment or trickery just because they are not wise enough to fill out different forms with different definitions. I think this is a substantial step forward. It may not sound like much to those watching the Senate, but let me just say that both of our leaders, Reid and McConnell, have said they tried this and could not get it done. Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins have tried, and they could not get it done. I worked with Senator Lieberman 2 years ago and we could not get it done. What has happened this time is a result of the discussion we had earlier in the year about making the Senate a more effective place to work--with the full support of the leaders, Reid and McConnell; with the full support of Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins; and with the good work of Senator Schumer. We have come up with a consensus piece of legislation which has broad bipartisan support from both sides of the aisle, including chairmen and ranking members of the committees you would think might be the first ones to object. This legislation would still leave the Senate with the prerogatives it ought to have in terms of reviewing Presidential nominees and separates out those who take our time away from the more important things we ought to be doing. I thank the Senator from New York for the way he has worked on this issue. He has been constructive and direct and helpful. I thank the leaders for their support. I hope the committees will rapidly consider the legislation Senator Schumer is introducing on our behalf, and I hope it will show we can take another small step in making the Senate a more effective place to work. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a document entitled ``List of Presidential Appointments No Longer Requiring Senate Confirmation''--there are about 200 of those--and a document entitled ``Privileged Nominations.'' Those are the ones that will be expedited, unless a single Senator decides he or she wants to have this nominee sent to committee, and that is about another 240.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Presiding Officer, and I notice that the Senator from New York is also on the Senate floor. I thank him for his work on this issue.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, this is St. Patrick's Day, as Reverend Austin mentioned, and we celebrate that. We are coming up on another important anniversary, and that is the anniversary of the enactment of the health care law, which the majority regards as a historic achievement and most Republicans regard as a historic mistake. I want to talk a little bit about that law, but there is another anniversary I remember very well that came a few days before enactment of the health care law--the so-called health care summit that was held at the Blair House. It was a remarkable event. The President of the United States, who is highly intelligent and well-versed on health care, invited a bunch of us down to discuss health care. He stayed and we stayed for 6 or 7 hours. During that discussion, it was a pretty free exchange. I especially remember one of them. I had been asked by Senator McConnell and Representative Boehner to represent Republicans in presenting our side, and the President's invitation gave us a platform we usually don't have. He has a better platform than we do most of the time. We made our argument that we would prefer an approach on health care that instead of expanding the health care delivery system, which we all know costs too much, we should go step by step to reduce the cost of health care so more people can afford to buy insurance. That was the basic discussion we had. We got down to some facts. I had said that, according to the CBO, the President's plan would raise individual premiums and make insurance cost more for individuals who buy insurance by 10 to 13 percent. The President said, after I finished: So, Lamar, when you mentioned earlier that you said premiums go up--that's just not the case, according to the Congressional Budget Office. I said: Mr. President, if you're going to contradict me, I ought to have a chance to respond. The Congressional Budget Office report says that premiums will rise in the individual market as a result of the Senate bill. The President said: No, no, no, no--let me--and this is an example of where we've got to get our facts straight. I said: That's my point. And it went on from there. I had to make a decision at that moment whether I should continue to have a public disagreement with the President. I thought I was right, and he thought he was right, so I decided it would be more appropriate for me not to do that in public, to let other Senators and Congressmen have their say. I exchanged a letter with the President that day, and I came to the floor of the Senate later that week to make my argument on why I believed premiums would go up. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the transcript of my exchange with the President and that of Senator Kyl and a couple of Members of Congress and the letter I sent to the President that day which made my point rather than publicly argue with him. My remarks I made on the floor of the Senate later that day are in the Record.

Mr. ALEXANDER. We talk a lot about the law of unintended consequences in dealing with legislation. In this case I believe the health care law is a situation where we had a lot of predictable consequences. Republicans were saying, for example, premiums are going to rise. In fact, they have. We were saying specifically that individual premiums will rise. It was predictable they would because, in the first place, the health care law requires that individuals buy a better policy than what they buy today. So if they are going to buy a Cadillac instead of a Chevy, it will cost more and they will get more benefits. Second, there are some taxes in the health care law, such as with medical devices, that are passed on to the consumer and premiums will go up. Third, a lot of people who moved into Medicaid are going into a system of government health care where the doctors aren't properly reimbursed. Many of the doctors shift the costs over to the people who buy insurance. That is called cost shifting. For all those reasons, we have seen stories regularly in California, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Connecticut that individual premiums, over the last year, have gone up at least partially due to mandates included in the new law. Let's look at some of the other issues we talked about during that time. We said the bill would raise taxes. In fact, it does--$813 billion. As I mentioned, the tax on medical devices is passed right along to people who buy insurance, and their costs go up. We said it would cut Medicare, and it has. Eleven million Medicare Advantage recipients--about one-fourth of everyone who has Medicare-- are seeing or will see their benefits reduced. We said there would be thousands of pages of new regulations that would hamper small businesses and individuals as they go about their daily lives. We are beginning to see them come. The most notorious is that form 1099 which causes 40 million businesses to file a report every time they buy something that costs more than $600. We hear a lot of talk about repealing that. We have tried to repeal it for some time, but it is still the law. Something that particularly bothered me about the debate were the unfunded mandates on State governments. We hear about college tuition going up in California 30, 40 percent. People would be surprised to think that the reason may be that the Federal Government is imposing more health care costs on California, and the money that ought to go for the University of California or the University of Tennessee isn't there. Where does the university get the money to keep its excellence? It raises tuition. Our former Democratic Governor, who just retired, said the health care law imposes on Tennessee more than $1.1 billion in new costs between 2014 and 2019. That is an unfunded mandate from Washington that will cost the people of Tennessee. Fewer jobs will be created as a result of this law. Someone might say: How can you say that? I will give an example. I met with a group of leaders of the restaurant industry in America. They are CEOs of all the big restaurant companies. They are the second largest employer in America. They hire a lot of low-income people. One of them said they had been operating their stores with 90 employees on the average, and as a result of the health care law, their goal was to operate with 70 employees. That is fewer jobs. And there were many other examples of that around the room. Even the student loan takeover has created a problem because students are actually paying more in interest on their student loans to help pay for the new health care law, which I think a lot of students would not appreciate. The health care law that was passed a year ago, which some believe is a historic achievement, we believe is a historic mistake. We believe it would have been better and will be better to, instead of expanding a health care system that costs too much, go step by step to reduce its costs so more people can afford insurance. We will continue to advocate that position. We voted to repeal the health care law. We lost that vote. But we are continuing to work.

Mr. ALEXANDER. With Senator Johanns' leadership and others, we will work to repeal the 1099 provision. Senator Hatch and others are working to give Governors more flexibility in the Medicaid Program. And we will continue to advocate solutions such as allowing people to buy insurance across State lines. Next Wednesday is an important anniversary. Some believe it is a historic achievement. We believe it is a historic mistake and that there is a better solution to health care costs. I thank the leader for his courtesy in giving me a chance to go ahead. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I join Senator McConnell in welcoming Reverend Austin from Murfreesboro, TN, just down the road from Nashville. He formerly worked here, as Senator McConnell said. We are delighted he has this privilege today to pray at the beginning of the Senate, which is something that has happened since the beginning of the Senate, since the very first days of the Senate. I thank him for taking his time to be here. Welcome. Mr. President, will the Chair let me know when I have consumed 8 minutes?

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Bennet and I have up to 10 minutes for a colloquy.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, Senator Bennet and I have just announced an effort that I think most teachers, most principals, and many parents will want to be a part of. We are going to look at the education system in Tennessee and in Colorado--two of the more progressive States in education--to see if there are too many tests and too many regulations. We want to make sure the tests we have are good tests and the regulations we have are reasonable regulations, and any minute we can save from an unneeded test or an unnecessary regulation is a minute a teacher can spend devoted to teaching. So we have done two things. First, we are introducing today legislation that we hope will be a part of the new Elementary and Secondary Education Act when it is passed that will have the Education Secretary set up a task force that will do something we don't usually do in government, which is subtract instead of add government--in other words, to continuously ask teachers, principals, and others what tests, what regulations are unnecessary so we can get rid of them. Second, we are going to start right away to do this in Colorado and Tennessee. We have talked to our Governors--Governor Hickenlooper and Governor Halsam--and we are going to put together a task force of educators in our State and ask them to say to us: What regulations are unnecessary? What tests are unnecessary? When I was Governor, I used to say to the Education Secretary, who was then Bill Bennett: There are too many Federal regulations. He would say to me: I bet you have more State regulations than Federal regulations. And he was right. When I was Education Secretary, I had many teachers and others say to me: We can't do this, we can't do that because of the Federal regulation, when, in fact, there was no such Federal regulation. What often happens is that the confusion between what the Federal Government requires and what the State government requires creates inordinate confusion in the classroom, and teachers feel all tied up. So we are going to start right away to do this. We are both very excited about this. We think this should give teachers and others in the classroom an opportunity to do their jobs. One day less on an unneeded test might mean one more day teaching a child U.S. history, which would suit me fine. I wish to congratulate Senator Bennet for his contribution to the debate, his ideas. His ideas come from his experience as an extraordinarily successful superintendent of the Denver Public School System. So we are taking his more recent experience and my own background, putting them together with our teachers and principals, and we look forward to reporting to our colleagues what we find, as well as to Secretary Duncan, who will be a full partner with us in this. We hope this is part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act when it is enacted in a bipartisan way.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a memorandum on the Colorado-Tennessee working group on effective regulation and assessment systems for public education, which outlines the roles Senator Bennet, myself, Secretary Duncan, along with Governor Haslam of Tennessee and Governor Hickenlooper of Colorado, will have.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, one more time, the bottom line of this proposal by Senator Bennet and myself is that every minute a teacher spends on an unneeded test or regulation is a minute the teacher cannot devote to teaching a child. What we are asking the teachers of Tennessee and Colorado to do for us is to identify the rules and regulations we need and the rules and regulations we can get rid of.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Chair also. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, as the Senator from Arizona and the Senator from Connecticut have done eloquently in their ways, I wish to express on behalf of the people of Tennessee to the people of Japan our sympathy for the devastation they have experienced. I applaud the administration and the American people for their immediate response to offer assistance, charitable aid, and search and rescue teams to find survivors. There is no more important two-country alliance than that of Japan and the United States. The former Ambassador Mike Mansfield used to teach that to all of us younger Governors during the eighties and nineties. We will stand with the people of Japan until they recover from this disaster. There is a special relationship between the Japanese and Tennesseans because of the location of so many Japanese industries in our State over the last 30 years. As a result, Tennesseans have been reaching out to our friends and their families in Japan. We should also commend the Japanese for their courage they have shown in dealing with the devastation and in particular with their level- headed response to the damage at their nuclear reactors at Fukushima Daiichi. In this age when instant communication can sometimes create misinformation and even panic, the Japanese leadership and nuclear scientists are working with organizations from around the world in responding to the danger and keeping the rest of the world informed. This is the largest earthquake in Japan's recorded history--30 times more forceful than the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and 700 times stronger than the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. While the risk is by no means over and the events in Japan continue to evolve, the reactor safety systems so far appear to have done their job in withstanding the earthquake, tsunami, power loss, and explosions, and no other reactor containment structures seem to have been breached in these worst-case situations. The lessons that America can take away from this tragedy are this: Learn all we can from the Japanese experience to make the operation of American reactors as safe as possible. Since the 1950s, the U.S. Navy has safely traveled more than 136 million miles on nuclear power. Today, 104 civilian reactors produce 20 percent of America's electricity and 70 percent of our clean electricity. That is without sulfur, without nitrogen, without mercury, or without carbon. No one has ever died from a nuclear accident at any of our commercial or Navy reactors. Let me say that again. No one has ever died from a reactor accident at one of our Navy or commercial reactors. Without nuclear power, it is hard to imagine how the United States could produce enough cheap, reliable, clean electricity to keep our economy moving and keep our jobs from going overseas. Here is what we know about what has happened in Japan. We have all seen the video of the explosion of the building at Daiichi unit 1, now unit 3. I am sure many of us have thought those were reactors exploding. Fortunately, that is not what happened. A buildup of hydrogen gas in the secondary containment structures led to explosions which destroyed the buildings themselves but the primary containment structures inside appear not to have been compromised. To reduce the resulting increase in containment pressure, a relatively small amount of radioactive vapor has been dispersed into the atmosphere. The Tokyo Electric Power Company has told us that the highest level of radiation detected onsite to date is 155.7 millirem per hour, and that has since been reduced to 4.4 millirem per hour. But what does that mean in regard to human exposure risk? To help put that in perspective, here are a couple of facts. The average American receives about 300 millirem of radiation exposure each year from naturally occurring sources, such as the Sun, and another 300 millirem of radiation exposure from medical applications, such as CT scans and x rays. What did happen after the earthquake is that the ensuing tsunami crippled the backup electrical generators and batteries needed to keep cooling water circulating in the plants after they had been safely shut down. This ultimately led to use of the last line of defense emergency core cooling system--flooding the entire containment vessel with seawater. While this pretty much assures that the reactors will not ever be used again, as long as the seawater continues to be pumped in, the possibilities of further damage ought to be halted. People have been evacuated and authorities are taking every precaution, and that, of course, is what we wish to see. Despite one of the largest earthquakes in the world's history, with accompanying tsunamis, fires, and aftershocks--multiple disasters compounded one on top of the other--the primary containment at reactors near the epicenter appears not to have been breached and the radioactive venting appears to have been controlled and minimal. This experience has brought back memories of the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. Although we remember Three Mile Island as the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history, it is also important to remember that no one was hurt at Three Mile Island. As I said before, there has never been a death resulting from a commercial nuclear accident in American history. What happened at Three Mile Island was basically an operator failure. A valve failed, and when the automatic safety mechanism kicked in, the operators overrode it because they became confused by the number of alarms. Three Mile Island completely changed the American nuclear industry. The Kemeny Commission, appointed by President Carter, analyzed the problems and made many recommendations, almost all of which have been put into practice. The valve that started the whole thing had failed nine times, but the manufacturer tried to keep it a secret. People in the nuclear industry then did not talk to each other. Now safety is a top priority of the nuclear industry. The Institute of Nuclear Power Operations collectively shares best practices to achieve the highest levels of safety, as well as reliability. Nuclear operators train for 5 years before they can take over in the control room. They spend 1 week out of every 5 to 6 weeks in a simulator honing their skills. The nuclear companies have special emergency teams that can be dispatched anywhere in the country at a moment's notice. A Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspector practically lives onsite. What is more, every reactor in the country is on the hook for $112 million if something goes wrong at another reactor. As one can imagine, they watch each other very carefully. I have talked with any number of Navy veterans who had experience with nuclear commands. One reason I am confident there have not been any nuclear reactor accidents in the nuclear Navy that killed anyone over the last half century is because the responsibility for the safety of that reactor goes right up to the captain of the vessel. It was not the same at Chernobyl, the infamous 1986 Soviet accident. Chernobyl involved 60 immediate deaths and radiation exposures that, according to the World Health Organization, may eventually result in 4,000 cancers. But Chernobyl was a completely different kind of accident and the result of different technology. More than that, the Soviets had not built a containment structure at Chernobyl. The containment structures at these Japanese reactors--40 to 80 inches thick concrete and steel--appear, as we speak this afternoon, to have withstood an 8.9 magnitude earthquake, tsunami, power failure, and explosion. There are gas and oil fires raging in Japan. Water and sewer systems are damaged. The possibility of disease and starvation is imminent. There are a great many things to worry about in addition to the problems with the Japanese reactors. There are tens of thousands of people still unaccounted for. Right now, the effort needs to be helping those who need help, containing further damage and risk, and getting Japan back up and running again. Then we can take the lessons learned from this earthquake and tsunami and apply them to make our nuclear plants as safe as possible and help the world do the same. America's 104 nuclear reactors provide, as I mentioned earlier, 20 percent of our electricity, 70 percent of our clean electricity. Japan has 54 reactors and gets 30 percent of its electricity from nuclear. France gets 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power. The United States invented nuclear power, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not issued a construction license for a new reactor in more than 30 years. There are 65 reactors under construction around the world. However, only one of those 65 is in the United States, and that is the construction of a previously halted project by the Tennessee Valley Authority. The Japanese and the French have surged into the lead in terms of nuclear power and are now being challenged by Korea and Russia on the international market. China, with 27 nuclear reactors currently under construction, will soon join them all. Nuclear power today provides about 15 percent of the world's electricity. While there are always risks with every form of energy, it is important that we be clear about the risks each type of energy poses. But it is also important to remember that we do not abandon highway systems because bridges and overpasses collapse during earthquakes. The 1.6 million of us who fly daily would not stop flying after a tragic airplane crash. We cannot stop drilling after a tragic oilspill unless we want to rely more on foreign oil, run up our prices, turn our oil drilling over to a few big oil companies and all our oil hauling over to more leaky tankers. Mr. President, 34,000 people die in motor vehicle accidents every year, but we do not stop driving because we have to get our children to school and ourselves to work. In all of these cases, when there are accidents, we do our best to examine the tragedies and make our continued operation and our lives as safe as possible. That is what we need to do here. Our reactors in the United States are built to the highest standards in the world. The Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a press briefing today: Right now we believe that the nuclear powerplants in this country operate safely and securely. The Chairman said: Nuclear powerplants in the United States are designed to very high standards for earthquake effects. All our plants are designed to withstand significant natural phenomena, like earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis. We will take whatever steps are necessary to ensure the safety and security of nuclear powerplants in the country. But right now, we believe we have a very strong program in place. ``As we get more information from Japan,'' said the Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, ``as this immediate crisis ultimately comes to an end, we will look at whatever information we can gain from this event and see if there are any changes we need to make in our system.'' The Deputy Secretary of Energy said: Nuclear power has been a critical component of the United States energy portfolio. The White House press secretary, on behalf of President Obama, said: Nuclear power remains a part of the President's overall energy plan. Despite the fact that there has never been a death as a result of the operation of a commercial American reactor or in our nuclear Navy, which has been using reactors in its ships and submarines since the 1950s, our goal should be to continue every effort to try to make certain the operation of our existing and new nuclear powerplants are as safe as possible. For example, some have suggested that so-called passive cooling systems that operate on natural convection could prevent the problems that arose in Japan when the backup power to pump water was lost. Nuclear power is a demanding but manageable technology. As we move forward, let us learn the proper lessons from this Japanese experience to make sure that in the United States and in the world, we are even better prepared for the unexpected events of the future. I thank the Chair, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. ALEXANDER. Will the Chair let me know when 2 minutes remains?