Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from South Dakota for his eloquent remarks. He phrased exactly the question before this body on which we are going to be casting two votes within a few minutes, and that is this: Will we or will we not stop spending money we don't have? I repeat, the question is: Will we or will we not stop spending money we don't have? Do we have the courage and the common sense and the sense of responsibility to make difficult decisions for the future of our country when it comes to spending and debt? Let's look at the facts. The Federal Government this year is collecting $2.2 trillion--that is what is coming in--and spending $3.7 trillion. We are collecting $2.2 trillion in revenue, and we are spending $3.7 trillion in revenue. That is a fact. Here is another fact: Forty cents of every dollar the Federal Government spends is borrowed, much of it from China. Here is another fact: We are piling up new debt at the rate of $4 billion a day--$4 billion a day of new debt. Here is another fact: Last month was the shortest month of the year--February. The deficit--that is this year's deficit in just that month--was the largest in history: $223 billion. And our friends on the other side are suggesting we solve a problem of this dimension by reducing spending by $4.7 billion. As Senator Thune said, by tomorrow, at about this time, we will have piled up as much more debt as they propose to save. That is not urgent; that is not responsible; that is not dealing with difficult decisions in the way people expect us to do. The Republicans in the House of Representatives have stepped up and have made difficult decisions. We might not agree with every single detail of the decision, and the Senate will have its own priorities when we pass a bill, but I, for one--and I think many others on this side of the aisle--are going to vote for H.R. 1, the House-passed $57 billion cut, because it is a sure step toward reducing spending and stopping our country from spending money we don't have. Senate Democrats say, Sorry, we can only find $4.7 billion to save. The purpose of the vote I will cast today is to say we have an urgent need that needs to be addressed. We have a sense of responsibility toward that decision. We can't solve much of it today, but we can solve some of it today, and the time to start addressing this urgent need is now. When I became Governor of Tennessee about 30 years ago, a friend gave me a book written by George Reedy, Lyndon Johnson's press secretary. It was called ``The Twilight of the Presidency.'' In that book, I found a definition I used as Governor because it was such a good definition of what an executive in public life is to do. George Reedy said that the job of the President is, No. 1, to see an urgent need; No. 2, to develop a strategy to meet the need; and No. 3, to persuade at least half the people that he is right. See an urgent need, develop a strategy to meet the need, and persuade at least half the people he is right. This is an urgent need facing our country. Forty cents out of every dollar we spend is borrowed; $2.2 trillion coming in; $3.7 trillion going out; 47 top economists over 2 weekends ago saying it was the most urgent need facing our country. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is saying it is our biggest national security threat--the debt. As Senator Thune said, debt costs jobs. Economists tell us that debt at this level costs us about 1 million jobs a year. Let me read what the President's own debt commission had to say about this. This debt commission had six Members of the U.S. Senate as members--three Republicans, three Democrats. Five of the six voted for this report of the debt commission. They said, as members of this commission: We spent the past 8 months studying the same hard, cold facts-- Not opinions, facts. Together we have reached these unavoidable conclusions. The problem is real. The solution will be painful. There is no easy way out. Everything must be on the table, and Washington must lead. That is President Obama's debt commission. After all the talk about debt and deficits, they go on to say: It is long past time for America's leaders to put up or shut up. That is the President's debt commission talking. The era of debt denial is over. There can be no turning back. We sign our names to this plan because we love our children, our grandchildren, and our country too much not to act while we still have the chance to secure a better future for all of our citizens. That report included five Members of this body, two Democrats, three Republicans. That was what the debt commission had to say. Here is what the President had to say. In 2009 he said: What we have done is kicked this can down the road. We are now at the end of the road. We are not in a position to kick it any further. We can only find $4 billion to save? President Obama said last year: I hope some of the folks who are hollering about deficits and debt step up, because I am calling their bluff. We can only save $4 billion? My administration is going to seek to work with Congress to execute serious entitlement reform. And then as Senator the President said: Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically, weakens us internationally. Leadership means the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today on to the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. I ask, where is the President of the United States in this debate? Where is the President of the United States? His debt commission came out months ago and recommended $4 trillion in savings. No support from the President. The President made an eloquent State of the Union Address. I sat on the front row and applauded many times. No sense of urgency about the Federal debt. The President offered his budget a few weeks ago. No plan for reducing the Federal debt. Now we are taking step No. 1, which is to work on the discretionary part of the budget--only about 12 percent of the budget. The House is willing to take difficult steps; the Senate Democratic majority says we can only find an amount that equals the debt we are piling up in one 24-hour period; and the President is missing in action. I respectfully say that is not leadership. We need the President of the United States to join us in an effort to stop our country from spending money we don't have, in making difficult decisions about spending, so we can assure the strength and future of our country. The question before us is will we or will we not stop spending money we don't have? Will we or will we not make the difficult decisions it takes to reduce spending so that our country will be strong for the future? The other side says they can find $4.7 billion to save. We say we can start with $57 billion. I will vote for the $57 billion and against the $4.7 billion because that is a sure step toward a bright path for America's future. I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of our time.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, in Rochester, NY, today and tomorrow, family and friends are celebrating the life of David Kearns, who died a few days ago at age 80. David Kearns was the former chief executive officer of the Xerox Corporation who, during the 1980s, led that corporation to win back the copying market from the Japanese. Along the way, he found time to become America's most effective business leader who was a champion of education reform, especially for pushing new technology into schools. He served as Deputy Education Secretary under the first President Bush while I was the Secretary of Education in 1991, 1992 and 1993. I remember first meeting David Kearns in 1990, when I was president of the University of Tennessee and had my office in Knoxville. He came into my office, and on the way he said hello to every single person in the outer office, and every single other person he met while I was there. And he remembered every single one of their names. I didn't forget that, and they didn't forget him. When David Kearns left the University of Tennessee from that visit I bought his book about education reform and read it. Later that year, President Bush called me and asked me to become his Education Secretary. I asked the President if I could put together my own team, subject to his approval, and then if we could put together our own plan, subject to his approval. Those were two of the smartest questions I ever asked, because that meant I didn't have to go through the White House staff to get the team cleared or the policy cleared. I could go directly to the President. And as soon as I had that permission, I called David Kearns and asked him if he would be willing to be the Deputy Secretary of Education in the U.S. Department of Education. I knew it would be hard to persuade him to do so. He was at the peak of his career. He had just retired as one of America's best known business leaders. His friends said: Why in the world would you go into the government and subject yourself to all that abuse and take a secondary position in a minor department? I asked President Bush to call David Kearns and recruit him, and he did, appealing to his patriotism. They both served in World War II. David had such a passion for education, he came on board, and it was terrific that he did. It was a privilege to work with such an accomplished executive. Employees in the Department of Education loved having him around. Having him there helped recruit a distinguished team of leaders for the Department and we put together what we thought, over 2 years, was a pretty impressive program working with President Bush. Some of the ideas sound very familiar today, especially to former Governors. One idea was break-the-mold schools. Today we call them charter schools, or start-from-scratch schools. The thought was to have one in each congressional district--535 of them--funded by $1 million of seed money from the Federal Government. To support those schools, we created a new American Schools Development Corporation, and with David's leadership raised $70 million in private capital for that. That attracted hundreds of design teams from around the country with ideas for how to create better schools. President Bush hosted a number of America's business leaders at Camp David to help make that happen. We worked with Diane Ravitch to create an effort to implement standards for the national education goals that President Bush had helped to set in 1987 with the Nation's Governors. These were the goals for math, science, history, English, and geography, and we took important steps toward that. Today, the common standards States are adopting owe some of their beginnings to those efforts. We established commissions to look at extending the school day. We pushed for technology in the schools. The President proposed in 1992 a GI bill for kids, which would give scholarships to poor kids so they could choose any school, public or private or religious, so they could have more of the same choices of good schools that kids with money had. By the time we left in 1993, every State in America had their own version of America 2000--it was Tennessee 2000 or New Hampshire 2000 or Kansas 2000--moving toward the educational goals community by community. None of that would have happened without David Kearns' enthusiasm, skill, and leadership. In 1992, during a riot over Rodney King in Los Angeles, President Bush sent David to represent him. David had a strong background in civil rights. While he was there, he telephoned me and said: This is the hardest phone call I have ever had to make. I have cancer. He had just discovered he had cancer of the sinus. When he came back, he had an operation and the operation gradually destroyed his eyesight. That was 20 years ago, but it didn't stop David Kearns. During that time, he created the Kearns Center for Leadership at the University of Rochester, where he graduated and served as trustee for many years. Then to help him get around, because he couldn't see, or could barely see, he invited a young man each year to go with him and help him see and do what he needed to do. For those young men--nearly 20 over the last 20 years--that has been a remarkable opportunity to be in the presence of one of America's great mentors at an early stage in their lives. Everyone who knew David Kearns admired him and loved him. A few days ago, I spoke with Shirley Kearns, David's wife of 56 years, and reminded her of what she already knows: how much David's friendship meant to me. Honey and I will be thinking of them today and tomorrow in Rochester. We will be thinking about Shirley, their 4 daughters, 2 sons, and 18 grandchildren. For me, one story sums up David Kearns' life better than others. I think back to 1995, when I was in Utah. I was trying to persuade Republicans that I was their natural nominee for President of the United States. I wasn't successful in that, but I was enthusiastic about it. I had made to a Republican group what I thought was an especially good speech. During the speech, I talked about my work in the U.S. Department of Education and I talked about David Kearns--about his leadership and about how he helped do all the things I have just mentioned. After the speech, an enthusiastic Republican lady came up to me and said: That was a wonderful speech. Thank you very much, I said. Now I know who should be President, she said. Well, thank you, I said. She smiled and said: David Kearns. That was the opinion that she and I and almost everyone who met him had of David Kearns, whose 80 years in this country have been very special. I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, in Jerusalem last week during a private meeting with U.S. Senators, the Prime Minister of Israel suggested creating a new Marshall Plan to help the people of Middle Eastern countries who are struggling to gain more freedom. I was one of the Senators in that meeting. In one important way, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's proposal is different from the plan that helped rebuild Western Europe after World War II. Its funding would not come from the U.S. Government but from private gifts and foundations worldwide. Instead of the money going for rebuilding bombed out industrial plants and roads as it did after World War II, it would more likely be spent in the Middle East now on schools, on health clinics, and on clean water. Fundamentally, though, the plans are very similar. Both GEN George C. Marshall in 1947 and Prime Minister Netanyahu today proposed helping adversaries as well as allies. Both aim to relieve hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos. Both proposals are based squarely on self- interest, as antidotes to the spread of philosophies unfriendly to democracy: communism in the case of postwar Europe and militant Islam in the Middle East today. In both cases, applicants for the money would write their own plans. In 1948, 16 nations met in Paris to develop the Marshall plan. President Truman then submitted it for approval to the Congress. Most of the money was distributed by grants that did not have to be repaid. The first Marshall plan was short term, from 1948 to 1952, and so should be this new Marshall plan. The goal is not to create dependencies but to help people stand on their own. There are some important differences between the idea of the Marshall plan after World War II and Prime Minister Netanyahu's proposal for the Middle East. The new Middle East Marshall plan would cost much less. The original Marshall plan spent between $115 billion and $130 billion in today's dollars over those 4 years. If a Middle Eastern plan carefully distributed a few billion dollars over 5 years it could have an enormous impact. The Marshall plan started out after World War II buying food and fuel and ended up rebuilding bombed-out industrial plants, roads, and other infrastructure. In addition to schools and clinics, a Middle Eastern Marshall plan is more likely to spend money on, for example, a corps of young people who are paid a subsistence wage to strengthen their own country. Marshall plan money went to 16 European governments. Money for a Middle Eastern plan should probably be distributed through non- governmental organizations. After World War II, there was a clear effort to impose on Europe and Japan the American model. We should have learned by now that the path to democracy in the Middle East is more likely to be uniquely Middle Eastern. The original Marshall plan was paid for mostly by United States taxpayers. Money for this new plan should come from around the world, mostly from private gifts. The first Marshall plan was used mostly for purchase of goods from the United States. Today, those goods would be purchased from around the world. What are the next steps? First, a coalition of foundations should step forward and announce its willingness to consider proposals from Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries that would assist a transition to a more democratic form of government. Second, the first grants should be quickly approved, probably to non- governmental organizations already in place. The original Marshall plan moved slowly. In this age of instant communication, freedom fighters expect immediate results. Some evidence of improvement in their lives could help sustain a movement toward democracy against the lure of militant Islam. An early State Department memorandum compared General Marshall's proposal to a flying saucer: ``Nobody knows what it looks like, how big it is, or whether it really exists.'' Prime Minister Netanyahu's proposal also is usefully vague, with details to be filled in later by applicants for grants. But shouldn't it be enough simply to propose helping people struggling for freedom based upon the hard-eyed belief that their success will benefit other Democratic countries, including the United States and Israel?

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I appreciate the comments of my friend, the Senator from California. We have to be serious about the country's debt. Admiral Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says the debt is our biggest national security threat. Anyone in my State who looks at what we are spending in Washington is astonished. We are spending, this year, $3.7 trillion. We are collecting $2.2 trillion. The House of Representatives has said: Let's take a step--a serious step--toward dealing with that debt. I applaud them for that. That number is a number that we on the Republican side try to support in the Senate. We might have our own priorities within that reduced number, but we need to get serious about the entire problem of America's debt. It also goes directly to the problem of jobs we have in our country today. The last Democratic Congress and the President's policies have thrown a big wet blanket on private sector job creation in America. One of the biggest parts of the wet blanket is the big debt. According to economists, it costs us 1 million jobs a year. The big debt creates the potential for higher interest rates. That makes it harder to create jobs. It soaks up capital. It could be used to create jobs. It creates uncertainty. It creates a lack of confidence. There is a lot of spirit in this Senate to find a consensus on how to deal with the debt. I want to be one who does that. I look forward to a serious discussion of those efforts.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record as well remarks I made in Orange County, CA, on October 28, 1994, on the 30th anniversary of the speech ``A Time for Choosing.''

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record remarks I made in tribute to President Reagan in June of 2004.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I appreciate the remarks of the Senator from Connecticut. I am glad I had the opportunity to hear them. I, too, am here to celebrate Ronald Reagan's life, born 100 years ago, but also his nearly 50 years of influence on American public policy. I begin in this way. A few years ago when he was President, President Reagan attended one of the many Washington press dinners held here. I think it was the Gridiron dinner. It was well known to 90 percent of the people in the audience that members of the press had a different point of view on politics than he did, but they liked him anyway, and they respected him, just as he respected them. I remember that evening that he strode into the Gridiron dinner smiling and looking like a million bucks. The press rose and smiled back and applauded him. President Reagan stood in front of the media until the applause subsided and then he said: Thank you very much. I know how hard it is to clap with your fingers crossed. The media laughed. They had a wonderful time with President Reagan. The first thing we think about, those of us who had a chance to know him--and that was a great many of us--is that Ronald Reagan was a very friendly, congenial man, an easy person to know, the kind of person one would enjoy spending time with. He was very comfortable, as we say, in his own skin. What we saw in private was what everybody else saw in public. Ronald Reagan was about more than being friendly and congenial. Each of us has a personal story of his or her connection to President Reagan. I have mine, and I wish this as an example. Sixteen years ago this month I stood, as a great many Members of this body have, on the front porch of my hometown courthouse. In my case, it was in Maryville, TN. There I announced my candidacy for President of the United States. It was an offer the people of the United States did not accept. My preacher brother-in-law said I should consider that defeat as a reverse calling. I have, and I have gone on to other things. As an example of the influence President Reagan had on my generation and others, let me read an example of what I said in 1995, 16 years ago: Thirty years ago Ronald Reagan, before he was elected to any public office, made an address called ``A Time For Choosing.'' He said that in America freedom is our greatest value, and that then there were two great threats: communism abroad and big government at home. Looking back over those last 30 years, I suppose we could say, one down and one to go. Communism, the evil empire, has virtually disappeared. But big government at home has become an arrogant empire, obnoxious and increasingly irrelevant in a telecommunications age. In every neighborhood in America, the government in Washington is stepping on the promise of American Life. The New American Revolution is about lifting that yoke from the backs of American teachers, farmers, business men and women, college presidents, and homeless shelter directors and giving us the freedom to make decisions for ourselves. Ronald Reagan put it this way in 1964: ``This is the issue of the election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan ourselves.'' That was also the issue of the election in 1994. It will be the issue of 1996, and for years to come. It took 30 years of unfashionable principled leadership by the last Republican Washington outsider who became President to help collapse the evil empire. Now is a good time to give another Republican Washington outsider the opportunity to help put some humility into the arrogant empire in Washington, D.C. So we see that the issues of 1964, the issues of 1994, the issues of 2010, and most likely the issues of 2012 and 2016 and beyond have a lot of similarities. Over that half century, Ronald Reagan was the finest spokesman for that point of view, the finest and the most persuasive. We Americans say anything is possible. Nothing symbolizes that more than the American Presidency. We see it in President Obama today, we saw it in President Lincoln, we saw it in President Truman, we saw it in President Eisenhower, and we saw it in Ronald Reagan. No President symbolized that more in the last half century than President Reagan did, though. He reminded us of what it means to be an American. He lifted our spirits, he made us proud, he strengthened our character, and he taught us a great many lessons. We celebrate the centennial of his birth and the half century of his influence in public life. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record Ronald Reagan's speech ``A Time for Choosing,'' given on October 27, 1964, which launched him into public debate in the United States.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I will say that I join the Senator from New York in welcoming another West Virginia Governor to the Senate. Governor Manchin succeeds a man who is irreplaceable in the Senate's history--Senator Byrd--but he brings to our Senate the skills of a Governor. Governor Rockefeller and I are very partial to those skills. We think the Senate needs more Governors. Governors are accustomed to looking for consensus, to making things work, to making things happen. We have a different sort of job here in the legislature, but those qualities are important, and especially important now when we have such large challenges to face, such as the fact that we are spending $3.7 trillion and collecting $2.1 trillion. All of us are shocked by that, and we have to deal with it one way or the other. I welcome him and I welcome his wife, a distinguished educator, to the Senate family. I know she is here today, so we welcome her and look forward to learning from her as well. I join Governor Rockefeller in saying it was a great speech. Your maiden speech is always your best speech. I remember walking with the University of Tennessee basketball coach in Knoxville in the dogwood parade--or in some parade before the season started. He was very popular before the season began. And Senators who make maiden speeches always have their best speeches then, as basketball coaches always are most popular at the beginning of the year. But I look forward to working with Senator Manchin. He will make a tremendous contribution to the Senate. I am glad I was here to hear his outstanding address, and I thank the Senator from New York for his courtesy in letting me make my remarks.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I congratulate the Senator from Kentucky. He is on the mark. Our priorities are two: One, to make it easier and cheaper to create private sector jobs; two, to reduce the Federal debt. The Paul amendment makes it easier and cheaper to create private sector jobs. Why? Because it permits more contractors to hire more people to do more work at the lowest possible cost to the taxpayer. Also, according to the General Accounting Office, it will help lower the Federal debt. In fact, the GAO has recommended changes to the Davis-Bacon Act as a means for trimming the Federal deficit. Leaving the law the way it is, applying the Davis-Bacon law to construction projects all over the country, will mean fewer jobs, less construction, higher taxes, and a higher Federal debt. Passing the Rand Paul amendment will mean that we will make it easier and cheaper to create private sector jobs. Day after day in this Senate, we should be acting on legislation that remembers that in Tennessee, for example, we have had 24 straight months of unemployment above 9 percent. I am glad to be a cosponsor of the Paul amendment because, in my State and across the country, it will make it easier and cheaper to create private sector jobs instead of adding to the debt, creating fewer jobs, less construction, slower airport contracts, and higher taxes. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, this amendment puts into effect what the Republicans called in the health care debate the Bunning rule, which is, if it is not on the Internet and not available for 72 hours, it shouldn't be brought up. We think this is a sensible--I think this is a sensible amendment, and I urge a ``yes'' vote.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, in his last appearance before the Rules Committee, Senator Byrd said: Forceful confrontation to a threat to filibuster is undoubtedly the antidote to the malady. He also said: I also know that current Senate rules provide the means to break a filibuster. If Senator Byrd, who knew the rules better than any of us, thought that, we don't need to change the rules. I urge a ``no'' vote.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, Senator Grassley and Senator Wyden and more recently Senator McCaskill, have pointed out the obvious fact that so-called holds that Members of the Senate place on nominations or legislation should be public. I think that is a good idea. That has bipartisan support. I believe today we will change the rules to make that clear, and I congratulate Senators Wyden, Grassley, and McCaskill for their perseverance and persistence in pushing this ahead. I have always been glad to be public with my holds. I remember when Senator Reid filibustered my TVA nominee by putting a hold on him, so I filibustered one of his Nevada citizens by putting a hold on him. Then we were able to work it out. But Senator Reid and I made our objections public. I knew what he was doing and he knew what I was doing. That is important to build confidence in the Senate. Senator Grassley is on his way over and he has been the partner with Senator Wyden on reforming holds for some time. I would like to say to Senators Wyden and McCaskill and others--as I have already said to Senators Udall and Merkley--that the efforts they have made to change the rules of the Senate have created a window of opportunity which I believe those of us on both sides of the aisle believe will make the Senate a better functioning forum. These Senators will not succeed in all the changes they are seeking to make but this window of opportunity will allow the Senate to better function as a place to discuss serious issues. The majority leader and the Republican leader earlier today said they were going to do their best to see that most bills come to the floor after first going to committee. Then once bills get here we will have amendments. I think that is what most of us want. We want a chance to represent the views we have and those we are elected to represent. Sometimes our views are in the minority. Sometimes we are very solitary with our views. Maybe we are the only one who has a particular view. But we want a chance to be heard and a chance to offer amendments to express our views. I think we are preserving the Senate as a forum in which that can be done, but at the same time we are making it a more effective place in which to do that. I congratulate Senator Wyden and his colleague, Senator Grassley, and others for their efforts.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the Senator from Oregon has talked about the number of nominations that couldn't be considered. I am sure the Senator from Oregon remembers that there cannot be a filibuster on a motion to proceed to a nomination. All the majority leader has to do is bring it up. You can't debate that. If he should bring up the motion to proceed to a nomination, and if a Senator over here or over there objected, then the motion can be put to a simple majority vote. When I was nominated by President George H.W. Bush to be Education Secretary, a secret hold was placed on my nomination. Senator Metzenbaum, as it turned out, had a hold on my nomination for 3 months when all it would have taken for me to be confirmed was for the majority leader to bring my name to the floor. Then if we had gotten 60 votes for it, we could have debated for 30 hours and had a final vote on my nomination. What would happen during the 30 hours? We don't have Senators going out to dinner except on the other side of the aisle. Because under the current rules, in those 30 hours, one Senator gets 7 hours to speak. We know a Senator can do that because a distinguished Senator from Vermont demonstrated very capably that he was capable of doing that not long ago. He did a great job. People all over the country saw it, wrote him, and he became a little bit of a celebrity for that day. Senators are still capable of that. But if a Senator had wanted to take the whole 30 hours in a postcloture period, he then has to get 23 more Senators to join him in taking an hour of that 30 hours. Without getting into the complications of it, if Senators fail to talk, then the majority leader can say those are dilatory tactics and force any Senator who wants to extend the debate to be very uncomfortable. That Senator would have to get up to 23 Senators to come join him at some time during the speech and take 7 hours himself. The reason why that hasn't been done is because the majority didn't want to do it. Now I am not just saying that. The master of the Senate rules, Senator Byrd, said it in his last testimony before our Rules Committee last May. He said this: Forceful confrontation to a threat to filibuster is undoubtedly the antidote to the malady. Senator Byrd was talking about what some considered the abuse of a filibuster. Most recently, before he died, Senator Byrd said: Senate Majority Leader Reid announced that the Senate would stay in session around the clock and take all procedural steps necessary to bring financial reform legislation before the Senate. As preparations were made and cots rolled out, a deal was struck within hours and the threat of a filibuster was withdrawn. I heartily commend the majority leader for this progress, and I strongly caution my colleagues as some propose to alter the rules to severely limit the ability of a minority to conduct a filibuster. I know what it is to be majority leader, and wake up on a Wednesday morning in November, and find yourself a minority leader. Senator Byrd said the Senate rules provide the means to break a filibuster. He went on to describe that. Mr. President, I don't want to suggest to the distinguished whip, who knows the rules of the Senate much better than I, or to Harry Reid, the majority leader, how to break a filibuster that he thinks is an abuse. But they know how to do it. That takes a little trouble. You cannot go out to dinner and have a glass of wine, as the Senator from Oregon was talking about. You have to sit on that side of the floor and have 50 Senators ready. You can sit there and say: I would like for the Senator from Tennessee to assert himself. And you can stay all night. I imagine if you do that once or twice, or if we voted on more than zero Fridays, which was the number of Fridays we voted on last year, you could confront filibusters.

Mr. ALEXANDER. After I finish my sentence, I will yield the floor to the Senator from Illinois. I say to my friends, what we are trying to do today is to move past this time where we point out that the majority leader has cut off our right to amend and debate six times more than recent majority leaders. That is what gets everybody stirred up over here. It is like telling us we can join the Grand Ole Opry, but we can't sing. We are here to let people know what the people in Tennessee and other States think. We might be in the minority, but we are in the Senate where the minority is supposed to have a voice. When, time after time, you bring a bill to the floor and cut it off, and you call that a filibuster--that is why we are upset. You are upset because as a result of that you didn't get to bring as many bills to the floor as you would like. We are trying to put that all behind us today. This window of opportunity has produced what I think is important. These rules changes we are going to adopt are good and will move us in the right direction. The real value of this whole effort has been to cause us to think about how the Senate operates and realize the best way to do it is for most bills to go to committee, come to the floor, and for most Senators to get to offer most of the amendments they want to offer and get them voted on. We might have to vote on a Friday--maybe even a Thursday night or maybe even a Saturday. It might be that the majority has to confront a filibuster by saying: Senator so-and-so, if you are going to slow us down, we are going to make you use that 30 hours. You are going to have to talk your 7 hours and get 23 other Senators, and we are going to be here to see that you do it. My guess would be that you do that about once, maybe twice, and that would end that particular problem. My real guess is if this general attitude that the majority and minority leaders talked about earlier today occurs, then you will see very few uses of the filibusters you think are inappropriate. The Leaders described an attitude which is that we are going to do our best to see that most bills come to the floor, that most Senators get to offer the amendments they want, and that Senators get the votes on those amendments they want. If you think inappropriate filibusters are occurring, according to Senator Byrd, you have the means to confront them. My hope is that this whole exercise not only is producing some rules changes that are valuable but a change in behavior on both sides of the aisle which will be valuable. We will wait and see. I am happy to yield to my friend from Illinois.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, since the distinguished whip has apparently renamed this amendment the ``which side of the aisle goes out to dinner'' amendment, let me ask him this: Isn't it true that if your side didn't go out to dinner--since you asked to be elected to the Senate, you raised a lot of money, and you worked hard and defeated some Republican to get here--if you really think somebody over here is abusing their minority rights by filibustering, then why would you go out to dinner, and why would you not want to be here and hear that person talk and respond to him? Why would you not do that? Isn't it true that Senator Byrd said that forceful confrontation to the threat of a filibuster is undoubtedly the antidote to the malady? He did not want us tampering with this 60-vote procedure we have that forces consensus. My question to the majority whip is this: Why did you go out to dinner so often--through the Chair--when instead, you could have been here, under the rules as Senator Byrd suggested, dealing with abuses to the filibuster or what you consider they were?

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I have already congratulated Senator Udall, Senator Wyden, Senator Merkley, and Senator Harkin for stimulating a good, full discussion about two objectives. No. 1 is, how do we make the Senate the best possible place to deal with serious issues that come before our country, because we have plenty of them right now, starting with our national debt and the high unemployment rates. They have done a good job on that. They have led us today to adopt what I believe are two important steps, one having to do with secret holds and another having to do with taking time away, that might otherwise be better used, by having the clerk read an amendment. This debate has also produced a couple of other things. One is to create broader support than we have had over a number of years on dealing with the persistent problem of the difficulty a President has in staffing the government. Senator Reid and Senator McConnell, when they were whips, tried to deal with this issue. We had three bipartisan breakfasts on this, working with the White House, 2 years ago. Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins, who are the committee chairs, have tried to deal with this issue. And we have all failed so far. But Senator Schumer and I will be introducing a bill which we will be discussing with committee chairmen and ranking members especially, and it will have the support of the leaders, Senators McConnell and Reid. It will have the active involvement of Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins. What we hope to do is two things. One is to reduce the number on Senate confirmed positions--Senator Harkin spoke about this a little earlier. He has been a ranking member and a chairman. He basically said that we don't need to spend our time here having Senate confirmation of hundreds of part-time boards and commission members or the public relations official for some department. We should focus our attention on issues that affect the American people such as jobs, debt and terror. The second thing we should do is to end this practice of making it so that the citizens who are invited by the President of the United States to serve in our government are innocent until nominated. We drag them through a maze of conflicting forms, many of them created by the executive branch and many of them created by the Senate. These nominees fill out forms that trap them and trick them and embarrass them. It is surprising that anybody will accept the opportunity to serve. I remember majority leader Howard Baker was nominated by President Bush to go to Japan as Ambassador. Everybody in the Senate knew him very well. He was voted ``Most Admired Senator'' by Senators on both sides of the aisle in the 1980s. It cost him $250,000 to fill out the forms so that he could be the Ambassador to Japan. I could give many examples of similar difficulties. Washington, DC, has become the only place where you hire a lawyer, an accountant, and an ethics officer before you find your house and put your kid in school if you come to work here. We need good people in the government. We need to be able to attract them here. We should fix the current system. I greatly appreciate the work Senators Schumer, Reid, McConnell, Lieberman, Collins and others have done. I hope our colleagues will join us in bringing this forward in an expedited way. I ask unanimous consent to include at the end of my remarks, remarks I made on March 9, 2009, on the Senate floor entitled ``Innocent Until Nominated.''

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, only two other things. I wish to congratulate Senator McConnell and Senator Reid for leading us in this way. Changing rules is an important step forward. I do not in any way want to diminish what I believe we are about to do, but we need a change in behavior more than we need a change in rules. This debate has caused us to talk across party lines about what we want, and I think what we want is what Senator Udall said as a whole. We would like most bills to come through committee and then come to the floor. We want to have a chance for most Senators to be able to offer most of their amendments and then to get votes. That is what we should try to do most of the time. Sometimes the Republicans will want to repeal the health care law, and the Democrats will use all of their resources to defeat our efforts. Sometimes the Democrats in the House will send over a bill to repeal the secret ballot in union elections, and Republicans will try to defeat that. We will use all of our resources in those instances. But that won't be most of the time. Most of the time, we will be able to do our jobs better to represent the people who sent us here. I hope those who have provoked this discussion feel a sense of satisfaction about what they have done, even though I know that in every case they didn't get exactly what they want. Finally, I ask unanimous consent that a long response to Senator Harkin's excellent comments on his amendment which he has been fighting for for 16 years, be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Senator Harkin is very straightforward about his difference of opinion. He believes we ought to bring every debate eventually to 51 votes. So I would respectfully term his amendment as sort of a ``hang me now or hang me later.'' We know that eventually it is not 60 votes we are going to require, it is 51, and he says that is the way it ought to be. I disagree. So do many others. I will just cite two distinguished Senators who spoke on the floor of the Senate about 5 years ago when a number of Republicans got it in their minds that they would like to change the filibuster rule as it affects judges. This is what Senator Harry Reid said then: The filibuster is far from a procedural gimmick. It is part of the fabric of this institution that we call the Senate. For 200 years we've had the right to extend the debate. It's not a procedural gimmick. Some in this Chamber want to throw out 214 years of Senate history in the quest for absolute power. They want to do away with Mr. Smith as depicted in that great movie being able to come to Washington. They want to do away with the filibuster. They think they are wiser than our Founding Fathers. I doubt that's true. The then-Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, referring then to the Republican majority: Then if the majority chooses to end the filibuster, if they choose to change the rules and put an end to Democratic debate, then the fighting and the bitterness and the gridlock will only get worse. I would suggest that, as a result of this discussion, we preserve the Senate as an institution, a forum for deliberation where minority rights are protected. But we have also taken some important steps forward--or are about to--with rules changes to make them function better. We have reached a consensus among ourselves--informally, anyway--that is represented by the colloquy that will be placed in the Record by Senator Reid and Senator McConnell. They said what we want is an opportunity to represent the American people the way they sent us here to do it, which is to take legislation, bring it through committee, bring it to the floor, and for us to have a chance to amend, debate, and vote. That would be most of the time. Some of the time we will exercise our minority and majority rights to defeat a bill, because that is also what we are sent here to do. I thank the Senators for this spirited debate. As far as I know, there are no more speakers on the Republican side. Exhibit 1 Floor Remarks of U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), ``Innocent Until Nominated'' (March 9, 2009) Mr. President, in the midst of much talk about bipartisanship and not much to show for it, I have a nomination for an issue upon which we can work together, and that is this: review the maze of conflicting forms, FBI investigations, IRS audits, ethics requirements, and financial disclosures to make it possible for President Obama and future Presidents to put together promptly a team to help them solve big problems. This is an urgent problem today because during the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression, the man in charge of fixing the crisis, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, apparently is sitting in his office without much help, at least from any Obama Presidential appointees. According to news accounts, among the key vacant positions at the Treasury Department are the Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy; the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy; the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis; the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax, Trade, and Tariff Policy; and the Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Tax Affairs. The first choice for Deputy Secretary of the Treasury appears to have withdrawn her name from consideration. Four months after the President's election, according to TheBigMoney.com, the list of vacancies on the Treasury Department Web site shows that ``Main Treasury Building is a lonely place, conjuring up visions of Geithner signing dollar bills one by one . . ., watering the plants, and answering the phones when he's not crafting a bank rescue plan.'' Of course, there are the career employees available and at least one holdover Assistant Secretary and various czars in the White House--but even one of the czars has expressed concern about the slow pace of filling Treasury Department jobs at a critical time. Part of the problem may be attributed to the Treasury Secretary's boss, our impressive new President, who is nevertheless subject to the criticism that he is living over the store but not minding it. Presidents have many problems to solve, but no one ever suggested that the wisest course is to try to solve them all at once. There is a tradition that Washington, DC, can only do one thing well at a time. And Presidents are supposed to exclude from the White House the merely important issues so they may deal with the truly Presidential problems, which surely must not include being distracted by debates with radio talk show hosts. President Eisenhower, who knew something about leading complex organizations, said in 1952: ``I will go to Korea.'' The country relaxed and elected him, confident that the general would end the Korean war. We need for President Obama to say in Eisenhower fashion ``I will fix the banks''--and then stay home long enough to do it. Then the country might relax a little and gain some confidence that this might actually happen, which is the first step and perhaps the main step in economic recovery. But the President needs a team at Treasury to help persuade the American people that he can and will get the job done. The President has brought on himself some of the difficulty of putting together a team. In addition to having too many balls in the air at once, in my opinion, his standards for hiring sometimes seem to have the effect of disqualifying people who know something about the problem from being hired to solve the problem. But another part of the President's difficulty in filling jobs--one that has afflicted every President since Watergate--is the maze of investigations and forms that prospective senior officials must complete and the risk they run that they will be trapped and humiliated and disqualified by an unintentional and relatively harmless mistake. I voted against the nomination of Secretary Geithner because I thought it was a bad example for the man in charge of collecting the taxes not to have paid them. And I thought his excuse for not paying was not plausible. But that does not mean that we should disqualify every Presidential nominee for minor tax discrepancies that result from the complexity of our Byzantine Tax Code, a Tax Code which has reached 3.7 million words, according to a January report by the National Taxpayer Advocate, and which is badly in need of reform. I suspect very few Americans with complex tax returns can go through a multiple-year audit without finding something with which the IRS might disagree. Take the case of former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk, President Obama's nominee to be U.S. Trade Representative, who headlines report paid back taxes primarily because he failed to list as income--and then take a charitable deduction on-- speaking fees that he gave away to charity. Common sense suggests, and his tax preparer thought, what Mr. Kirk did was appropriate. After all, he did not keep the money. The IRS apparently has a more convoluted rule for dealing with such things. In any event, the matter is so trivial as to be irrelevant to his suitability to be the trade nominee. Tax audits are only the beginning. There is the FBI full field investigation during which friends of the nominee are asked such questions as: Does he live be and his means? When I was nominated for Education Secretary a few years ago, one of my friends replied to the FBI agent: Don't we all? There are Federal financial disclosures. Then there is the White House questionnaire, and, of course, the questions from the confirming Senate committee. The definition of what constitutes ``income'' on some forms is different than the definition of ``income'' on others. It is easy to make a mistake. This is not as bad as it could be. We have a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress with big majorities in both Chambers. So the nominees have gone through fairly quickly. But when the Congress is of a different party than the President, the congressional questionnaires expand and sometimes delay the nomination for more weeks. Washington, DC, has become the only place where you hire a lawyer, an accountant, and an ethics officer before you find a house and put your kid in school. The motto around here has become: ``Innocent until nominated.'' Every legal counsel to every President since Nixon would, I suspect, agree that in the name of effective government, this process needs to be changed. Most have tried to change it, but in Washington style, new regulations pile up on top of old ones, creating a more bewildering maze. So I have this suggestion--and one of the Senators to whom I want to make the suggestion is here today, the Senator from Connecticut. I suggest Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins, who are the chairman and ranking member of the committee with jurisdiction over this mess and who have a tradition of working well together, should set as a goal to clean it up by the end of the year. Invite all the former White House counsels of both parties to give their opinions. Consolidate and simplify the forms so we learn only what we need to know. To help with this, I suggest that Senators Lieberman and Collins form one of those ``gangs'' that we occasionally form in the Senate, maybe a dozen or more Senators equally divided among both parties--some from the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and some not--in order to limit the possibility that everyone will run away from the final recommendations because they fear someone might think Senators are not interested in ethical and good government. Good government right now means fixing the banks and having the best possible team to do it. As a Washington Post editorial writer said yesterday of the President: As he convened his ``health care summit'' at the White House . . . the stock market was hitting another 12-year low, General Motors was again teetering on the brink of insolvency and the country was still waiting to hear the details of the Treasury's proposal to bail out banks. Maybe we can make this grand bargain with our new President: If you will keep your eye on the ball--in this case, fixing the banks so the economy will get moving again--we will work in a bipartisan way to make it easier for you and for future Presidents to promptly assemble a team and govern us properly. I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, this amendment might be called the ``if you are going to hang me later, hang me now'' amendment. This would eliminate the filibuster by making certain that it only took 51 votes, eventually, to pass a bill. This filibuster, according to the current majority leader in 2005, ``is a part of the fabric of this institution we call the Senate.'' Former Senator Obama said in the same year, ``If the majority,'' he then referred to the Republicans, ``chooses to end the filibuster, if they choose to change the rules and put an end to democratic debate, then the fighting and the bitterness and the gridlock will only get worse.'' We have agreements today that will begin to end fighting and gridlock, bring bills to the floor, having more amendments. I urge a ``no'' vote on the proposal.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I wish to thank the Senator from New York, the Senators from New Mexico and Oregon, and Senator Harkin of Iowa for their efforts--some over many years--to achieve two goals: to help make the Senate a place that is better able to deal with the serious business that comes before us, and second, to preserve the Senate as a unique forum--unique in the world, really--as a legislative body that protects minority rights. This is an important step forward--the reform of the Senate--but the reform the Senate needs is a change in behavior, not in its rules. These rules move us in the right direction, but the behavior that the Senator from New York spoke about and that the majority leader and the minority leader spoke about is what, in the end, will make the most difference. I have talked with many Senators on both sides of the aisle. We have done a lot of talking both on the floor here and off the floor about where the Senate is today, and a great many of us feel the Senate is a shadow of its former self in terms of its ability to function as a truly deliberative body. It is hard to see how the majority can complain after a legislative session where they passed health care legislation, financial reform legislation, and other legislation that may have even resulted in the diminishing of their numbers. They had a productive session, from their point of view. But the truth is, on both sides of the aisle--on both sides of the aisle--we wish to see the Senate function in a different way. The majority leader and the Republican leader have put out in a colloquy what that way is, and that will govern what we do. But basically, I believe it is this: We want the same thing--a Senate where most bills are considered by committee, where most bills come to the floor as a result of bipartisan cooperation, where most bills are then debated and amended and then voted upon. To someone who may have just tuned into the Senate, they may say: Well, that is a very simple solution. I thought that is what the Senate was supposed to be. It is what the Senate is supposed to be. It wasn't so long ago that it was the standard operating procedure. Senator McConnell said it was just a few years ago. He and Senator Reid have both been here a number of years. I remember watching the Senate--and I have mentioned this before in this debate--between 1977 and 1985, when Howard Baker of Tennessee and Robert Byrd of West Virginia were the Republican and Democratic leaders. I had worked for Senator Baker before that as a legislative assistant. I knew Senator Byrd. Here is what went on then, and here is what could go on today: Most pieces of legislation that came to the floor started in committee. That gave us a chance to see what they did and to improve them and to hear from voices from all over the country. That legislation then came to the floor. During Senator Baker's day, when he was the majority leader, he would rarely bring a bill to the floor unless both the Republican chairman and the Democratic ranking member supported it because he didn't want to waste the Senate's time. He knew that the Senate's 60-vote requirement forces consensus. People talk about the filibuster. But what we have is a requirement that most important bills get 60 votes. If you are sitting with 53 Democrats and 47 Republicans, you don't have to have an advanced degree in mathematics to figure out if you don't have some Democrats and some Republicans, you don't get to 60. So Senator Baker was saying back in the 1980s, bring the bill to the floor if it has the Republican chairman and the Democratic ranking member's support. Then the call would go out for amendments, and sometimes there would be 300 amendments filed. The Senator from North Carolina or Tennessee might file 40. And no one said: Whoa, stop. You cannot do that. Instead, they said: Bring them on in. Sometimes there would be 300 amendments. Then Senator Baker or Senator Byrd would ask for unanimous consent to close off amendments. Well, I guess because the Senators by that time were exhausted from writing amendments, they all agreed to it, and then they started voting. Now, it got to be Wednesday or Thursday, and the party secretaries would go to the Senators and they would say: I notice you still have 30 amendments waiting. Maybe you would only like to offer 15. It might get to Friday, and they would say: I notice you have five left. Maybe you would only like to have one. But if they had one they wanted to get, they almost always got the amendment. That is what the real importance of this agreement is today. The difference of opinion we have had that has caused us to degenerate, in some cases, to a body that has not functioned as well as it should has been because on that side of the aisle--the majority-- people did not want to vote. It is like joining the Grand Ole Opry and saying: I do not want to sing. Some Republican Senator might offer an amendment that side does not want to vote on, and they say, well, we do not want to vote or they say, well, we do not want to work on Friday. So they go home. And they put pressure on the majority leader to use a procedure called filling the tree which cuts off votes and the right to amend. The majority leader used that power to cut off all amendments and debate 44 times. That's more than the last 6 majority leaders combined. Then what happens over here? Well, then Republican Senators, now in the minority, say: Well, we are not going to get amendments; we are going to start objecting. So we have what is called a lot of filibusters. We say: You are counting filibusters when you cut off our right to offer amendments. They say: You guys over there are keeping us from doing our business. On both sides, there is some truth to what has been said. So I think most Senators are happy with this result. I think they will be. I hope it works. I mean, the idea would be that the leaders will do their best to see that most bills go to committee, come to the floor, and that when they do, if the Senator from North Carolina has an amendment the Senator from Tennessee would rather not vote on, she offers it anyway if she wants to, or if I have one she would rather not vote on, I may offer it anyway because it is important to the people of my State, even though we might be in a political minority at the moment. I believe that in most cases, if most Senators in the minority have that opportunity, that will help us get back to the kind of Senate we want to see. I wish to compliment Senator Udall, Senator Merkley, and Senator Harkin. I learned a long time ago in life that if you start out in one direction, you do not always get exactly where you want to go, but you do not get anywhere if you do not start out. I think what they have done with their intelligence and diligence and persistence in this has created a period of time here where the Senate is taking some steps today that will help the people of this country know that serious issues--and we have plenty of them--the debt, for example, where 42 cents out of every dollar we spend is borrowed; jobs, for example, and in my State we have had 24 months of 9-percent unemployment or higher-- these changes will help us deal better with those issues. I will have more opportunity to talk about those after lunch later this afternoon. I want my friends on the other side to have a chance to make their points before we adjourn or take a recess for an hour. Fundamentally, the steps we are taking make a difference. The one I am especially glad to see is the effort to make it easier for a President--any President--to staff his or her government. One of the problems--and Senator Reid talked about it--is we confirm too many people. It is not necessary for us to confirm the PR officer for a minor department. There is no need for that. The Secretary needs to go ahead and be able to appoint that person. We need to be able to work on more important issues. Secondly, we have created a phenomenon in this town that I refer to as ``innocent until nominated.'' We have created a situation where any citizen who is invited by the President to serve in his government has to run such a gauntlet that it is almost impossible to get to the end of the gauntlet without being branded as a criminal. The reason is, we have a maze of conflicting forms in the executive branch, plus an IRS audit, and a maze of conflicting forms in the Senate. It not only delays, but it traps people and it tricks people into filling out one definition of ``income'' here and another one there. We all know this is true. We all know it needs to be fixed. We have tried to fix it before--not just some of us; the majority leader and the Republican leader tried to fix it, and they didn't get it done. Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins tried to fix it, and they could not get it done. And 2 years ago, at a bipartisan breakfast which Senator Lieberman and I hosted, we had a whole group of us who said: Let's try to get this done. We talked to President Obama's administration about it. They said: Sure, go ahead. We would like to see that happen, either for us or for the next President. But we could not get it done because of resistance in this body to giving up any sort of power. Right now, we have a unique confluence of support for the idea of making it easier for any President to staff his or her government. The majority leader and the Republican leader are solidly behind the effort. Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins are solidly behind the effort. Senator Schumer and I are working on a bill to do that, and we hope we can succeed. This opportunity, this window would not have happened if it had not been for the work of the Senators who have been arguing for reforms. The other step we are likely to take is abolishing the secret hold. I think that is a good idea. I speak from experience. When I was nominated by the first President Bush to be Education Secretary, a Senator put a hold on my name, and it took 3 months to get it off. I finally found out who it was. I never knew exactly why he did it or why he took it off, but it might have helped if I had known it a little earlier. So I think it is a good idea. The majority leader put a hold on one of my TVA nominees, but he did it publicly. So I put a hold on one of his nominees, and I did it publicly. And we worked it out. So there is nothing wrong with asserting our rights, but we might as well do it in public. I congratulate the Senators for making that effort. Senator Wyden and Senator Grassley have been working for more than a decade on that, as well as other Senators. The step that says that if an amendment has been filed and on the Internet for 72 hours, we cannot require the clerks to read it all night long--that is a very commonsense proposal. I know it will be greatly appreciated by the employees of the Senate who have the job of reading the amendment. If they had a chance to vote, this would probably be the resolution on which they would like to have a chance to vote yes. So these are important steps in the right direction which we will have a chance to talk about more today as the debate goes on. But I would like to end where I began. What we need most in the Senate is a change in behavior in addition to this change in rules. We need to preserve the Senate as a forum for minority rights. We need to preserve the 60-vote requirement for major votes. That will force consensus. That will cause us to work together. That will build support out in the country for the result of what we do because they can see that both Republicans and Democrats think, for example, that the way we have gone about trying to make Social Security solvent is a good way, rather than one side or the other just jamming through their partisan way. There is a reason it is a good idea for this not to be a body that operates by a simply majority as the House does. I mean, the House can repeal the health care bill overnight. Bring it over to the Senate, and that side says: Let's stop and think about it. The House, if it is Democratic, can repeal the secret ballot in union elections overnight, and it did with its vote in the last Congress. But when it came over here, the Republican side said: Let's stop and think about it. The American people are better served by having these two different kinds of bodies, and the Senate and the American people will be better served both by the rules changes we are likely to adopt this afternoon and especially by the agreement by the majority leader and the Republican leader, which I feel confident has the backing of almost all of us, that we would like to work in a Senate where most bills are considered by committee, where most bills come to the floor, and where Senators, most of the time, have an opportunity to offer their amendments and debate. To be sure, there will be times when, if it is repeal of health care, that side does everything it can to exercise its rights to stop it, or if it is repeal of the secret ballot in union elections, this side will do everything we can to exercise our rights to stop it. But that will not be the ordinary course of events if this works the way we hope it does. So I hope my friends on the other side feel good about what they have done. They have not achieved everything they sought to achieve, but we rarely ever do, particularly in a body of 100 that operates by consent of 100. What they have done, I believe, in addition to the rules changes we are likely to adopt, is create a window in which we have had a good, open discussion about the kind of place we want to work, the kind of Senate we hope would serve the American people the best, and we have come to a consensus about a change in behavior, which I believe in the end will be more important than the change in the rules. I yield the floor.