Lamar Alexander

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. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I want to congratulate the Senator from New Mexico. He has been persistent and diligent and enormously well intentioned in this effort throughout the Rules Committee hearings and throughout the floor debate in seeking a way to help make the Senate function better, at the same time preserving the Senate as a forum for deliberation and protection of minority rights. We have a difference of opinion about whether that is best done by allowing changes of rules by 51 votes or by 67, which is the way the Senate rules currently prescribe. His proposal to change the rules certainly can be considered on the Senate floor in the regular order, and we would be happy to work with him to do that as long as it was by 67 votes. So because of that difference of opinion, I object.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, the Senator from Oregon is a former speaker of the house in Oregon, and he has been a long observer of the Senate, having come here first working for Senator Hatfield, and he has been effective and passionate in his views. Today, I was reviewing some remarks made by largely Democratic Senators, from 4 or 5 years ago, when some Republicans got the idea that it might be a good idea to make this a more majoritarian body, and Senator Schumer, Senator Reid, Senator Clinton, and Senator Obama all said it would be a mistake. So although I greatly respect the Senator from Oregon, we have a difference of opinion about whether it is in the best interest of the Senate and of the country to change the rules in this way, so I object.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, the Senator from Iowa has, for at least since the early 1990s, been forcefully arguing for his position. We have the same difference of opinion fundamentally that I mentioned in connection with Senator Udall's amendment. We are glad for these rules changes and amendments to come to the floor, but only if they are approved or rejected with the requirement of 67 votes. So for that reason, I object.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I had a good discussion with the Senator from Iowa. This is a longstanding proposal of his. He has thoughtfully considered it. Even though I admire him, I do not admire the proposal. What we would like to do is let the Senator from Iowa make his proposal. I will listen, and when he has made the proposal, I will ask him to yield me a few minutes and we may have a little discussion back and forth on the merits of the proposal. With that in mind, I object.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Reserving the right to object.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator from Iowa for his consistency over the years with his proposal. I wonder if I can make a few remarks on his proposal, and if he has time, if he is still here, maybe I will pose a question to him. I see the Senator from Kansas is also here. He spent a lot of time on the Rules Committee on this subject. He is one of our most forceful speakers on the matter, and I would defer to him, and then I know there are other Senators--the Senator from Oregon, the Senator from New Mexico--who have some proposals to offer. There may be other Senators on the Republican side who come to the floor. First, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an address I made yesterday at the Heritage Foundation entitled ``The Filibuster: Democracy's finest show . . . the right to talk your head off.''

Mr. ALEXANDER. I borrowed those words from H.V. Kaltenborn and ``Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.'' I am a little amused by the suggestion the Senator from Iowa made and others made that somehow the Senate has been paralyzed for the last couple of years. Most of the people I know are concerned about what the Senate did do, not what it did not do. It is hard to say you are paralyzed when you pass a $1 trillion stimulus bill, health care law, financial regulation law, et cetera, et cetera. As far as the claim that Republicans are holding things up goes, I have a few comments. We did not have a budget last year. Most households have to have budgets. The Senate ought to have one. Why didn't we have a budget? It wasn't the Republicans holding it up. As the Senator from Iowa said, under our rules, it only takes 51 votes to pass a budget. During the last couple of years, the Democrats had 59 or 60 votes. So the reason we did not have a budget is because the Democrats did not want to pass a budget, or at least that they did not pass a budget. It had nothing to do with the Senate being ``broken.'' The Senator from Iowa made this Rules proposal in 1995. He has made some modifications in his proposal but basically this is the same as he offered in 1995. I remember those days pretty well. It was right after the so-called Gingrich revolution, in 1994. Republicans took control of the Senate and of the House of Representatives. The Senator from Iowa made his proposal to diminish the effectiveness of a filibuster. What did the Republicans do? The Republicans, had the most to gain--at least temporarily--from being able to get their agenda through the Senate. But every single one opposed the proposal. Every single Republican Senator in 1995 said: No, we may love our agenda, but we do not want to change the Senate. We don't want to jeopardize the Senate as a forum for forcing consensus and protecting minority rights and letting the voices of all of the people be heard on the Senate floor. Not only the Republican Senators in 1995 had that opinion. Here are some things that were said mostly in 2005 by Democratic leaders. There were some Republicans who had the same idea the Senator from Iowa has about diminishing the effectiveness of the filibuster. In this case, they wanted to diminish the use of filibusters on judicial nominations. There was great consternation because Democrats decided to filibuster President Bush's judges. I didn't like that either. This is what has been said by Democrats. Senator Robert Byrd in his last testimony before the Rules Committee: We must never, ever, ever, ever tear down the only wall, the necessary fence, that this Nation has against the excesses of the Executive Branch. What is that necessary fence? That necessary fence is anchored in the filibuster. Senator Schumer of New York in 2005: The checks and balances which have been at the core of this Republic are about to be evaporated. This was in response to the Republicans who were trying to diminish the effectiveness of the filibuster in 2005. ``The checks and balances'' Senator Schumer said, ``which say that if you get 51 percent of the vote, you don't get your way 100 percent of the time.'' Former Senator Hillary Clinton: You've got majority rule. Then you've got the Senate over here where people can slow things down, where they can debate, where they have something called the filibuster. You know, it seems like it's a little less than efficient. Well, that's right, it is. And deliberately designed to be so. Senator Dodd more recently: I'm totally opposed to the idea of changing the filibuster rules. I think that's foolish, in my view. Senator Byrd: That's why we have a Senate, to amend and debate freely. Senator Dodd: I can understand the temptation to change the rules that make the Senate so unique and simultaneously so terribly frustrating. But whether such temptation is motivated by a noble desire to speed up the legislative process or by pure political expediency, I believe such changes would be unwise . . . Therefore, to my fellow Senators who never served a day in the minority, I urge you to pause in your enthusiasm to change Senate rules. Just two more. Senator Reid, who was then the Democratic leader but the minority leader, said in 2005: The filibuster is far from a ``procedural gimmick.'' It's 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 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're wiser than our Founding Fathers. I doubt that's true. Then there was one other Senator who spoke and who said this, the Senator from Illinois, Senator Obama: Then if the majority chooses to end the filibuster, if they choose to change the rules and put an end to the Democratic debate, then the fighting and the bitterness and the gridlock will only get worse. I think the last 2 years in the Senate have been an aberration. We have had no incentive for the majority to take the ideas of the minority because the majority had these huge majorities, nearly 60 votes here, and a Democratic President. So when Senator Corker, my colleague from Tennessee, began to work on the financial regulation bill, there came a time in the process where the Democrats said: Well, you know, we like Corker, and he has got some good ideas, but we do not need his vote to pass this bill. We have got the votes. We won the election. We will write the bill. So the Senate has had no consensus. Instead, we had a Democratic financial regulation bill. We had a Democratic health care bill. We had a mostly Democratic stimulus bill. We might have had one or two Republicans vote for it. For the last 2 years, we have not had any experience in working across party lines. What the filibuster does is say, you are not going to pass anything in the Senate unless at least some Republicans and some Democrats agree. You will not pass anything unless you get a consensus. Then that will change behavior, and people say, okay, let's bring a No Child Left Behind bill to the floor. But it has got to have the support of Senator Enzi and Senator Harkin or it is not going anywhere, because it has got to have 60 votes to move forward. What is the advantage of that? The advantage of that is the comparison of the Civil Rights bill in 1964, and the health care law of 2009. In 1964, after a bitter fight led by Senator Russell of Georgia, the Civil Rights bill passed the Senate, overcoming a filibuster. The bill was written in the Republican leader's office. It was not just sent over there in the middle of the night during Christmas, it was written in his office. You had President Johnson, a Democrat, and Senator Dirksen saying, this is good for the country. A lot of people hated the bill. And some people thought it did not go far enough. What did Senator Russell do, who had fought that bill for his whole term here? He went home to Georgia and said, I did everything I could to stop it, but it is the law, and we must obey it. So not only does the Senate need a consensus to get a better bill, we need a bill that the country will accept. Compare that to the health care law in 2009. A lot of good intentions went into the health care law. I know that. Senator Harkin was in the middle of that, but the fact of the matter was that it was a Democratic bill. It was rammed through Christmas Eve in the middle of the night. We barely had a chance to look at the bill, and it passed with a solely partisan vote. And what happened? Instead of everybody going home and saying, it is the law of the land, we support it, an instant movement was created to repeal it and replace it. I hope we will not do what Senator Harkin suggests. I think his proposal will create a situation where the majority says: well, we are going to hang you, but we will hang you in 3 days instead of tonight. They will narrow it down until they can pass a measure with 51 votes. So if the Republican House of Representatives passes a bill to repeal the health care law, then you know Senate Republicans would pass it, too, if we have got 51 votes. Or if the Democratic House, as they did last year, passes a bill to repeal the ballot in secret elections then the Democrats over here will pass it, too, if they have 51 votes. But when a consensus is required, if bills such as that come from the House to the Senate, we in the Senate say, whoa, let's think this over. We do not pass it. We do not pass it unless we have some kind of consensus. That does not mean all the Republicans and all of the Democrats must always agree. We had almost all of the Republicans and some of the Democrats on the tax agreement that was passed in December. On the New START treaty, we had almost all of the Democrats and some of the Republicans support it. But in each case, at least you had substantial consensus from both parties, and I think the country respects and appreciates that. I think the Framers knew what they were doing when they created a majoritarian House, in other words, the freight train that can run through whatever the result of election is. And when they created a different kind of Senate. A different kind of Senate that Senator Byrd eloquently has said has been one where we can say, you are not going to pass anything unless we do it together. That is called consensus. That is called cooperation. I think the American people would be greatly relieved. My question I wish to pose through the Chair to Senator Harkin is, what is a filibuster? Senator Sanders was on the floor for several hours on the tax debate last month. He spoke for 8 or 9 hours. I guess that is a filibuster in the traditional sense. But I think the kind of filibuster the Senator from Iowa is counting is this: let's say Senator Reid brings a health care bill to the floor, and I rush over to offer an amendment to the health care bill, and Senator Reid says: Sorry, I am going to cut off your amendment. Then I object. Senator Reid calls what I tried to do a filibuster. If we are just talking and amending and debating, that is not a filibuster. It is not a filibuster until the majority leader cuts off debate and amendments. So what the Democrats are counting as filibusters is the number of times they have cut us off from doing what we are supposed to do, which is, amend and debate. It is like being invited to sing on the Grand Ole Opry, and getting there and you are not allowed to sing. The people of Tennessee do not expect me to come up here and sit on a log just because the distinguished majority leader says he does not want my amendments. What was traditional in the Senate is that Senators could offer amendments and debate, at almost any time, on almost any bill. In the days of Senator Byrd and Senator Baker, they would have 300 amendments filed. They would start voting. So some Senators would say, well, it is Thursday, don't we go home? The Leaders would say no, we are going to vote, unless you want to give up your amendment. Instead of doing that, we did not vote on one Friday in the Senate this past year, and a lot of Senators on both sides of the aisle do not want to vote on controversial issues. If we look for consensus, if we were willing to vote on controversial issues, and if we ended the 3-day work week, if the majority thinks the minority is abusing the filibuster, they can confront it. They can sit over there and they can say to us, okay, Senator Alexander, 60 of us are ready to cut this off. We are ready to get on to a vote. So you have got 7 hours that you can speak, then you have got to get 23 other Senators to take the other hours. If you stop talking, we are going to put the question to a vote, and we have got some motions we can make about your being dilatory. In other words, we can make life miserable for you, because we are going to do this all night long. Senator Byrd said in his last testimony: The rules exist today to confront a filibuster. So my question to the Senator from Iowa which I would pose through the Chair is: What is a filibuster? Is a filibuster when I come down to the floor to amend the health care bill, and the majority leader says, sorry, I am going to use my powers to cut it off? You cannot amend the bill. And then he files cloture. That is what he calls a filibuster, I think. What I call it is cutting off my right to amend, right to debate, right to do my job. Exhibit 1 The Filibuster: ``Democracy's Finest Show . . . The Right To Talk Your Head Off'' (Address by Senator Lamar Alexander, Heritage Foundation, Jan. 4, 2011) Voters who turned out in November are going to be pretty disappointed when they learn the first thing some Democrats want to do is cut off the right of the people they elected to make their voices heard on the floor of the U.S. Senate. In the November elections, voters showed that they remember the passage of the health care law on Christmas Eve, 2009: midnight sessions, voting in the midst of a snow storm, back room deals, little time to read, amend or debate the bill, passage by a straight party line vote. It was how it was done as much as what was done that angered the American people. Minority voices were silenced. Those who didn't like it were told, ``You can read it after you pass it.'' The majority's attitude was, ``We won the election. We'll write the bill. We don't need your votes.'' And of course the result was a law that a majority of voters consider to be an historic mistake and the beginning of an immediate effort to repeal and replace it. Voters remembered all this in November, but only 6 weeks later Democratic senators seemed to have forgotten it. I say this because on December 18, every returning Democratic senator sent Senator Reid a letter asking him to ``take steps to bring [Republican] abuses of our rules to an end.'' When the United States Senate convenes tomorrow, some have threatened to try to change the rules so it would be easier to do with every piece of legislation what they did with the health care bill: ram it through on a partisan vote, with little debate, amendment, or committee consideration, and without listening to minority voices. The brazenness of this proposed action is that Democrats are proposing to use the very tactics that in the past almost every Democratic leader has denounced, including President Obama and Vice President Biden, who has said that it is ``a naked power grab'' and destructive of the Senate as a protector of minority rights. The Democratic proposal would allow the Senate to change its rules with only 51 votes, ending the historical practice of allowing any senator at any time to offer any amendment until sixty senators decide it is time to end debate. As Investor's Business Daily wrote, ``The Senate Majority Leader has a plan to deal with Republican electoral success. When you lose the game, you simply change the rules. When you only have 53 votes, you lower the bar to 51.'' This is called election nullification. Now there is no doubt the Senate has been reduced to a shadow of itself as the world's greatest deliberative body, a place which, as Sen. Arlen Specter said in his farewell address, has been distinctive because of ``the ability of any Senator to offer virtually any amendment at any time.'' But the demise of the Senate is not because Republicans seek to filibuster. The real obstructionists have been the Democratic majority which, for an unprecedented number of times, used their majority advantage to limit debate, not to allow amendments and to bypass the normal committee consideration of legislation. To be specific, according to the Congressional Research Service: 1. the majority leader has used his power to cut off all amendments and debate 44 times--more than the last six majority leaders combined; 2. the majority leader has moved to shut down debate the same day measures are considered (same-day cloture) nearly three times more, on average, than the last six majority leaders; 3. the majority leader has set the record for bypassing the committee process bringing a measure directly to the floor 43 times during the 110th and 111th Congresses. Let's be clear what we mean when we say the word ``filibuster.'' Let's say the majority leader brings up the health care bill. I go down to the floor to offer an amendment and speak on it. The majority leader says ``no'' and cuts off my amendment. I object. He calls what I tried to do a filibuster. I call what he did cutting off my right to speak and amend which is what I was elected to do. So the problem is not a record number of filibusters; the problem is a record number of attempts to cut off amendments and debate so that minority voices across America cannot be heard on the floor of the Senate. So the real ``party of no'' is the majority party that has been saying ``no'' to debate, and ``no'' to voting on amendments that minority members believe improve legislation and express the voices of the people they represent. In fact, the reason the majority leader can claim there have been so many filibusters is because he actually is counting as filibusters the number of times he filed cloture--or moved to cut off debate. Instead of this power grab, as the new Congress begins, the goal should be to restore the Senate to its historic role where the voices of the people can be heard, rather than silenced, where their ideas can be offered as amendments, rather than suppressed, and where those amendments can be debated and voted upon rather than cut off. To accomplish this, the Senate needs to change its behavior, not to change its rules. The majority and minority leaders have been in discussion on steps that might help accomplish this. I would like to discuss this afternoon why it is essential to our country that cooler heads prevail tomorrow when the Senate convenes. One good example Democrats might follow is the one established by Republicans who gained control of both the Senate and House of Representatives in 1995. On the first day of the new Republican majority, Sen. Harkin proposed a rule change diluting the filibuster. Every single Republican senator voted against the change even though supporting it clearly would have provided at least a temporary advantage to the Republican agenda. Here is why Republicans who were in the majority then, and Democrats who are in the majority today, should reject a similar rules change: First, the proposal diminishes the rights of the minority. In his classic Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that one of his two greatest fears for our young democracy was the ``tyranny of the majority,'' the possibility that a runaway majority might trample minority voices. Second, diluting the right to debate and vote on amendments deprives the nation of a valuable forum for achieving consensus on difficult issues. The founders knew what they were doing when they created two very different houses in Congress. Senators have six-year terms, one-third elected every two years. The Senate operates largely by unanimous consent. There is the opportunity, unparalleled in any other legislative body in the world, to debate and amend until a consensus finally is reached. This procedure takes longer, but it usually produces a better result--and a result the country is more likely to accept. For example, after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted, by a bipartisan majority over a filibuster led by Sen. Russell of Georgia, Sen. Russell went home to Georgia and said that, though he had fought the legislation with everything he had, ``As long as it is there, it must be obeyed.'' Compare that to the instant repeal effort that was the result of jamming the health care law through in a partisan vote. Third, such a brazen power grab by Democrats this year will surely guarantee a similar action by Republicans in two years if Republicans gain control of the Senate as many believe is likely to happen. We have seen this happen with Senate consideration of judges. Democrats began the practice of filibustering President Bush's judges even though they were well-qualified; now Democrats are unhappy because many Republicans regard that as a precedent and have threatened to do the same to President Obama's nominees. Those who want to create a freight train running through the Senate today, as it does in the House, might think about whether they will want that freight train in two years if it is the Tea Party Express. Finally, it is hard to see what partisan advantage Democrats gain from destroying the Senate as a forum for consensus and protection of minority rights since any legislation they jam through without bipartisan support will undoubtedly die in the Republican-controlled House during the next two years. * * * The reform the Senate needs is a change in its behavior, not a change in its rules. I have talked with many senators, on both sides of the aisle, and I believe most of us want the same thing: a Senate where most bills are considered by committee, come to the floor as a result of bipartisan cooperation, are debated and amended and then voted upon. It was not so long ago that this was the standard operating procedure. I have seen the Senate off and on for more than forty years, from the days in 1967 when I came to the Senate as Sen. Howard Baker's legislative assistant. That was when each senator had only one legislative assistant. I came back to help Sen. Baker set up his leadership office in 1977 and watched the way that Sen. Baker and Sen. Byrd led the Senate from 1977 to 1985, when Democrats were in the majority for the first four years and Republicans were the second four years. Then, most pieces of legislation that came to the floor had started in committee. Then that legislation was open for amendment. There might be 300 amendments filed and, after a while, the majority would ask for unanimous consent to cut off amendments. Then voting would begin. And voting would continue. The leaders would work to persuade senators to limit their amendments but that didn't always work. So the leaders kept the Senate in session during the evening, during Fridays, and even into the weekend. Senators got their amendments considered and the legislation was fully vetted, debated and finally passed or voted down. Sen. Byrd knew the rules. I recall that when Republicans won the majority in 1981, Sen. Baker went to see Sen. Byrd and said, ``Bob I know you know the rules better than I ever will. I'll make a deal with you. You don't surprise me and I won't surprise you.'' Sen. Byrd said, ``Let me think about it.'' And the next day Sen. Byrd said yes and the two leaders managed the Senate effectively together for eight years. What would it take to restore today's Senate to the Senate of the Baker-Byrd era? Well, we have the answer from the master of the Senate rules himself, Sen. Byrd, who in his last appearance before the Rules Committee on May 19, 2010 said: ``Forceful confrontation to a threat to filibuster is undoubtedly the antidote to the malady [abuse of the filibuster]. Most recently, 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 filibuster was withdrawn. . . . I also know that current Senate Rules provide the means to break a filibuster.'' Sen. Byrd also went on to argue strenuously in that last speech that ``our Founding Fathers intended the Senate to be a continuing body that allows for open and unlimited debate and the protection of minority rights. Senators,'' he said, ``have understood this since the Senate first convened.'' Sen. Byrd then went on: ``In his notes of the Constitutional Convention on June 26, 1787, James Madison recorded that the ends to be served by the Senate were `first, to protect the people against their rulers, secondly, to protect the people against the transient impressions into which they themselves might be led. . . They themselves, as well as a numerous body of Representatives, were liable to err also, from fickleness and passion. A necessary fence against this danger would be to select a portion of enlightened citizens, whose limited number, and firmness might seasonably interpose against impetuous councils.' That fence,'' Sen. Byrd said in that last appearance, ``was the United States Senate. The right to filibuster anchors this necessary fence. But it is not a right intended to be abused.'' ``There are many suggestions as to what we should do. I know what we must not do. We must never, ever, ever, ever tear down the only wall--the necessary fence--this nation has against the excess of the Executive Branch and the resultant haste and tyranny of the majority.'' What would it take to restore the years of Sens. Baker and Byrd, when most bills that came to the floor were first considered in committee, when more amendments were considered, debated and voted upon? 1. Recognize that there has to be bipartisan cooperation and consensus on important issues. The day of ``we won the election, we jam the bill through'' will have to be over. Sen. Baker would not bring a bill to the floor when Republicans were in the majority unless it had the support of the ranking Democratic committee member. 2. Recognize that senators are going to have to vote. This may sound ridiculous to say to an outsider, but every Senate insider knows that a major reason why the majority cuts off amendments and debate is because Democratic members don't want to vote on controversial issues. That's like volunteering to be on the Grand Ole Opry but then claiming you don't want to sing. We should say, if you don't want to vote, then don't run for the Senate. 3. Finally, according to Sen. Byrd, it will be the end of the three-day work week. The Senate convenes on most Mondays for a so-called bed-check vote at 5:30. The Senate during 2010 did not vote on one single Friday. It is not possible either for the minority to have the opportunity to offer, debate and vote on amendments or for the majority to forcefully confront a filibuster if every senator knows there will never be a vote on Friday. There are some other steps that can be taken to help the Senate function better without impairing minority rights. One bipartisan suggestion has been to end the practice of secret holds. It seems reasonable to expect a senator who intends to hold up a bill or a nomination to allow his colleagues and the world know who he or she is so that the merits of the hold can be evaluated and debated. Second, there is a crying need to make it easier for any President to staff his government with key officials within a reasonable period of time. One reason for the current delay is the President's own fault, taking an inordinately long time to vet his nominees. Another is a shared responsibility: the maze of conflicting forms, FBI investigations, IRS audits, ethics requirements and financial disclosures required both by the Senate and the President of nominees. I spoke on the Senate floor on this, titling my speech ``Innocent until Nominated.'' The third obstacle is the excessive number of executive branch appointments requiring Senate confirmation. There have been bipartisan efforts to reduce these obstacles. With the support the majority and minority leaders, we might achieve some success. Of course, even if all of these efforts succeed there still will be delayed nominations, bills that are killed before they come to the floor and amendments that never see the light of day. But this is nothing new. I can well remember when Sen. Metzenbaum of Ohio put a secret hold on my nomination when President George H.W. Bush appointed me education secretary. He held up my nomination for three months, never really saying why. I asked Sen. Rudman of New Hampshire what I could do about Sen. Metzenbaum, and he said, ``Nothing.'' And then he told me how President Ford had appointed him to the Federal Communications Commission when he, Rudman, was Attorney General of New Hampshire. The Democratic senator from New Hampshire filibustered Rudman's appointment until Rudman finally asked the president to withdraw his name. ``Is that the end of the story?'' I asked Rudman. ``No,'' he said. ``I ran against the [so-and-so] and won, and that's how I got into the Senate.'' During his time here Sen. Metzenbaum would sit at a desk at the front of the Senate and hold up almost every bill going through until its sponsor obtained his approval. Sen. Allen of Alabama did the same before Metzenbaum. And Sen. John Williams of Delaware during the 1960's was on the floor regularly objecting to federal spending when I first came here forty years ago. * * * I have done my best to make the argument that the Senate and the country will be served best if cooler heads prevail and Democrats don't make their power grab tomorrow to make the Senate like the House, to permit them to do with any legislation what they did with the health care law. I have said that to do so will destroy minority rights, destroy the essential forum for consensus that the Senate now provides for difficult issues, and surely guarantee that Republicans will try to do the same to Democrats in two years. More than that, it is hard to see how Democrats can gain any partisan advantage from this destruction of the Senate and invitation for retribution since any bill they force through the Senate in a purely partisan way during the next two years will surely be stopped by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. But I am not the most persuasive voice against the wisdom of tomorrow's proposed action. Other voices are. And I have collected some of them, mostly Democratic leaders who wisely argued against changing the institution of the Senate in a way that would deprive minority voices in America of their right to be heard: From Mr. Smith Goes to Washington Jimmy Stewart: Wild horses aren't going to drag me off this floor until those people have heard everything I've got to say, even if it takes all winter. Reporter: H.V. Kaltenborn speaking, half of official Washington is here to see democracy's finest show. The filibuster--the right to talk your head off. Sen. Robert Byrd's final appearance in the Senate Rules Committee SENATOR ROBERT BYRD: We must never, ever, ever, ever, tear down the only wall, the necessary fence, that this nation has against the excesses of the Executive Branch. SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER: The checks and balances which have been at the core of this Republic are about to be evaporated. The checks and balances which say that if you get 51% of the vote, you don't get your way 100% of the time. FORMER SEN. CLINTON: You've got majority rule. Then you've got the Senate over here where people can slow things down where they can debate where they have something called the filibuster. You know it seems like it's a little less than efficient, well that's right, it is. And deliberately designed to be so. SEN. DODD: I'm totally opposed to the idea of changing the filibuster rules. I think that's foolish in my view. SEN. BYRD: That's why we have a Senate, is to amend and debate freely. SEN. ALEXANDER: The whole idea of the Senate is not to have majority rule. It's to force consensus. It's to force there to be a group of Senators on either side who have to respect one another's views so they work together and produce 60 votes on important issues. SEN. DODD: I can understand the temptation to change the rules that make the Senate so unique and simultaneously so terribly frustrating. But whether such temptation is motivated by a noble desire to speed up the legislative process or by pure political expediency, I believe such changes would be unwise. SEN. ROBERTS: The Senate is the only place in government where the rights of a numerical minority are so protected. A minority can be right, and minority views can certainly improve legislation SEN. ALEXANDER: The American people know that it's not just the voices of the Senator from Kansas or the Senator from Iowa that are suppressed when the Majority Leader cuts off the right to debate, and the right to amend. It's the voices that we hear across this country, who want to be heard on the Senate floor. SEN. GREGG: You just can't have good governance if you don't have discussion and different ideas brought forward. SEN. DODD: Therefore to my fellow Senators, who have never served a day in the minority, I urge you to pause in your enthusiasm to change Senate rules. SEN. REID: The Filibuster is far from A `Procedural Gimmick.' It's 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 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're wiser than our Founding Fathers, I doubt that's true. FORMER SEN. OBAMA: 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.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I have enjoyed this extensive opportunity to hear my colleagues on a very important subject about what the nature of the Senate will be. I am going to have about 10 minutes of remarks on the comments of Senators Merkley and Udall, and then I will yield to Senator Wyden, for his comments. If I could say anything from deep down within me to my colleagues who are so exercised about this, it would be this: Before we change the rules, use the rules. We talk about Senator Byrd a lot because he understood the rules so well. I have often told the story of when Senator Baker became the Republican majority leader in 1981. He went to see Senator Byrd, the Democratic leader, and said: Senator Byrd, I am suddenly the majority leader. I will never know the rules as well as you do, so I will make a deal with you. If you will not surprise me, I will not surprise you. Senator Byrd said: Let me think about it. The next morning he told Senator Baker he would do that. The reason I mention those two Senators is because, before we get too mired down in our differences, let us think for a moment about what our goal ought to be. The goal for the Senate, to me, is to return the Senate to the way it operated during those 8 years when Senator Byrd and Senator Baker were the leaders of their parties. Four years Senator Byrd was the majority leader and 4 years Senator Baker was the majority leader. I have talked to staff members, some of whom are still around. Senator Merkley's history goes back to Senator Hatfield in 1976, but I first came in 1967 as Senator Baker's legislative assistant, when there was only one legislative assistant per Senator. In 1977, I came back and spent 3 months with Senator Baker when he became the Republican leader, and I followed him pretty closely during the next 8 years. Here is the way it worked back then. The majority leader--whether it was Senator Byrd or Senator Baker-- would bring a bill to the floor. He would get the bill to the floor because Senators knew they were going to get to debate and amend the bill. The Senator from Oregon is talking about no debates occurring today. Well, of course there are no debates, because when Republicans come down here with amendments, the majority leader doesn't let us offer them. All those cloture motions he is talking about means the majority leader is cutting off my right to represent my people and offer an amendment in a debate. They are calling a filibuster a cutoff. It wouldn't be a filibuster if the majority leader weren't cutting off my right, which he has done more than the last six majority leaders combined. But let's go back to what our goal should be. Senators Byrd or Baker would say: OK. The Energy bill or the education bill is up, everybody get their amendments in. They might get 300 amendments filed. At some point, the majority leader would say: I ask unanimous consent that the amendments be cut off. Of course, they would get that after a while because everybody had all the amendments in that they could think of. You didn't go to the majority leader down on your knees and say: Mr. Majority Leader, may I please offer this amendment or that amendment. You just put your amendment out there, and then they started voting. Then Senators Byrd and Baker did something else we don't do today, which is why I am talking about using the rules before we change the rules. They debated, they voted; they debated, they voted; they debated; they voted. Of course, 300 amendments are a lot of amendments to get through. So the leaders and the staff would say to the Senator from North Carolina or the Senator from Oregon: Are you sure you want 25 amendments? It is Wednesday night. No, 10 will be enough. On Thursday night they might say: Are you sure you want these five amendments? It is Thursday night. We are going to be here Friday, and we are going to finish this bill. We will be here Saturday if we have to be, and we will be here Sunday. You are going to get your amendments, and we are going to vote on it, but we are going to finish the bill. That is what the leaders did. Sometimes there would be a piece of legislation that would come up where one side or the other wanted to kill it and so they would try to kill it. That's just like we would do today, if Democrats were to bring up a bill to abolish the secret ballot in union elections. We would do everything we could to kill it. If the House passes a bill and brings it over here to repeal the health care law, the Democrats are going to do everything they can to kill it. That is separate. But most of the time under the leadership of Senators Byrd and Baker, the bill came to the floor, there was bipartisan cooperation, and there were amendments. Why was there bipartisan cooperation? Because the leaders knew that unless they had it, they wouldn't move an inch. Being good Senators, they wanted to do their jobs. In fact, Senator Baker would often tell his Republican chairmen: Don't even bring the bill to the floor unless the ranking member, the Democrat, is with you. So most of the time, you would have the Democrat and the Republican there together and they would allow amendments, would fight other amendments off, and they would get to a conclusion. There weren't so many filibusters because the majority leader wasn't cutting off the right to debate and calling it a filibuster. This is a word trick is what this is. I have talked to a lot of my friends on the Democratic side and a lot of Republicans and I think we basically want the same thing. I think we want a Senate that works better. I think it is now a mere shadow of itself. I agree with Senator Merkley about that but not because of filibusters. It is because the majority leader is cutting off debate and calling it a filibuster. The majority leader and the Republican leader I commend today because they have been talking about how we can do better. We all know that changing our behavior will be more lasting than changing the rules. I am glad Senators Reid and McConnell are working on this. They have asked Senator Schumer and me to work on it some more, and we are going to do that. We have had several meetings and we have another this afternoon and we will keep working. We will consider carefully these proposals or any others that come, and we will see if we can come to some agreement about how to move ahead. My heartfelt plea is before we change the rules, let's use the rules. Going down through the list of reform suggestions: The motion to proceed--that is a difficult one for many of us because if you are in the minority the motion to proceed is your weapon to require the majority to give you amendments. Secret holds--Senator Wyden tells me he and Senator Grassley have been working on that for 15 years. They have Republican support and Democratic support for it. Maybe this is the time to deal with secret holds. I make my holds public. When I was nominated for the U.S. Education Secretary by President Bush, the Senator from Ohio held me up for 3 months and never said why. I went around to see the Senator Rudman from New Hampshire and asked him what to do. He said when he was nominated by President Ford to the Federal Communications Commission, the Senator from New Hampshire held him up. Finally Rudman withdrew his name and ran for the Senate against the Senator and beat him. That is how Senator Rudman got in the Senate. Secret holds is an area that has had a lot of work and bipartisan support. The right to offer amendments--the problem I have with altering the current rules is that offering amendments is what we do. I went to see Johnny Cash one time in the 1980s, and I asked him a dumb question, I said: Johnny, how many nights are you on the road? He said: Oh, 200. I said: Why do you do that? He said: That is what I do. If you are on the Grand Ole Opry, you sing. If you are in the Senate, you offer amendments and you debate. That is what we do, that is what we are supposed to do. Yet we have not been allowed to do it. Talking filibusters--if we are talking about the postcloture period, the problem with that is the majority has not used the rules. If I object to going forward with a bill, the majority, if they think I am abusing the rules, can say OK, Senator Alexander, get down there on the floor because we are going to be here all night. And you can only get 7 hours and then you have to line up 23 other Senators to take 1 hour each, and if you stop talking we are going to put the question to a vote. If you do a number of certain other things we are going to make a dilatory motion. In other words, the majority can make it really hard for a Senator who objects. Someone said one, two, three, or four Senators can hold this place up. They cannot hold it up. Because if you have 60 votes you can pass anything. If you have 60 votes you can pass anything and Senator Byrd said in his last testimony before the Rules Committee that you can confront a filibuster by using the rules. The last two things we could do are, No. 1, we could stop complaining about voting. It happens on the Republican side and the Democratic side. If somebody offers an amendment that is controversial and everybody runs up to the leader and says we don't want to vote on that, then too bad. We are here to vote. That is why we are here so we should do that. The third thing we can do, and Senator Byrd suggested this in his last testimony, is let's get rid of the 3-day work week. There is not enough time for all the Senators to offer their amendments and there is not enough time for the majority to confront the minority if they think the filibuster is being abused if we have a 3-day work week, and we never vote on Friday. We did not vote on Friday one time last year. Let's use the rules. If you think we are holding something up improperly, confront that Senator. Run over him. You can do it. You have the power to do it if you have 60 votes. In this new Congress there will be plenty of opportunities there. Finally I am going to take these five suggestions and work with Senator Schumer and work with my friends on the other side. They are very thoughtful. Senator Udall spent a lot of time on this, Senator Wyden and Senator Grassley spent 15 years. Senator Merkley used to be a speaker. We have talked a number of times. I greatly respect his work in his State and the fact that he has seen the Senate for a long period of time. I am taking very seriously everything that is said here. I am just worried about turning the Senate into the House. We have a majoritarian organization over there. They can repeal the health care law or they can get rid of the secret ballot in union elections with a majority vote. If you turn this place into that, you just go bam, bam and it is done. The Senate is the place for us to say: Whoa, whoa, let's see if we can get a consensus before we do anything. When we get a consensus we not only get a better bill, but usually, the country accepts it better. The American people like to see us cooperating. They like to see us coming up with a tax bill or treaty or civil rights bill or a health care bill or a financial regulation bill, where we all have something in it. They feel better about that product. It is the check and the balance that is the genius of our system. Obviously we can do some things better around here. I am committed to trying. I thank my friends for the amount of time and effort they have given. I am going to take everything they have said very seriously and in the spirit they have offered it. But I hope a part of our solution is that we use the rules before we change the rules because this is the forum to protect minority rights, this is the forum to force a consensus, and we dare not lose that. We dare not lose that. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, reserving the right to object, as I said earlier, Senator Wyden and Senator Grassley and Senator McCaskill and others have worked on this, some of them for as long as 15 years. They have made significant progress in gaining bipartisan support. I am going to object but only for the reason that this is one of the items we will be discussing and working on over the next few weeks with the hope that perhaps we can get agreement over here and agreement over there. It has been mentioned by all of the speakers today. It is a very serious proposal. But because we do not want to resolve it today, I object.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, reserving the right to object, I have had a number of discussions with the Senator from New Mexico and the Senator from Oregon. I respect their proposals and will have more to say about them, but I think since they have waited such a long time to make their presentations I will merely state my objection now and have more to say later. So I object.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I listened to Senator Kerry's remarks just now. This is an excellent discussion. Not only do I applaud Senator Kyl for resurrecting the whole focus on nuclear modernization, I applaud the President for the updated report that was received on November 17. A lot of work was done. This is a lot of money to say we want to make sure these nuclear weapons work and we are going to spend $85 billion over 10 years. The intent of Senator Kyl's amendment, though, is not to tie the President's hands, it is to give him more options. I think it is to encourage this big, slow-moving government not to waste the money but to save money. The language says: The President shall certify to the Senate the President intends to accelerate, to the extent possible, the design and engineering phase. At the Oak Ridge facilities, which Senator Kyl visited, he was told that the savings annually to taxpayers of having the new facility versus the old facility are in excess of $200 million. So every year we do it, every year this is completed, the taxpayers save $200 million. So if the President and the Appropriations Committee should decide that a 2-year or 3-year advanced funding will save $200 million a year at a time when we are all dedicated to trying to save money, we should do that. You might say, well, why do we need to say this in the Senate? The answer is, we have never done it before. And the U.S. Government, if you have never done it before, takes a little nudge to pay attention to it. So Senator Kyl has made an amendment, and if I understand it correctly, Senator Kerry amended the amendment a little bit to make it softer, to say, the President intends to accelerate, to the extent possible. So this is suggesting to the Department of Energy, which has never done it this way before, that we think it is a good idea, if it is practical, and if it saves money. There is also the matter of getting it done on time. Senator Kyl talked about that, the dates we talked about in the executive session. So I would argue to my colleagues that the Kyl amendment is respectful of the President's prerogatives, which he ought to have. He is the manager of the government. He is the Commander in Chief. But it says: If we can think of a way to do this in a way that saves $200 million a year, year after year after year, why should we not do it? I will bet during the next session of Congress, if we do our job properly in this body, we are going to be competing with each other to find ways to save $10 million a year, $20 million a year, $100 million a year, because of the incredible deficit. We have got bipartisan concern about that deficit. We had two Democratic Senators and three Republican Senators support the debt commission. I would suggest to my friend from Massachusetts it is not possible that you have modified the Kyl amendment to the extent it ought to be accepted, so that the President can get a signal from the Senate that if he thinks he can do this, to the extent possible, that accelerating the building of these big facilities by 2 or 3 years, if it would save $400, $500, $600 million, that we want to encourage him to do that. That is my only thought. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I ask unanimous consent to have 4 or 5 minutes.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I came to the floor to express my admiration for the Senator from Arizona. I was listening to his address and I heard my colleague from Tennessee. Senator Kyl's work on nuclear modernization is no surprise to any of us who know him very well because his approach to issues is a principled one, and once he determines the principle, he is dogged. He is a determined person. He basically took this issue of nuclear modernization, which is not on the lips of very many people in the United States--the question of whether our nuclear weapons are safe and reliable, whether they will work--he pulled it out of a trash bin and put it on the front page of a national debate. He did it in connection with the START treaty, but as he said in his own remarks, this should be done whether you are for the START treaty or against the START treaty. It is completely independent, in that sense. In my view, under no circumstances should the START treaty be ratified without doing this. That would be like reducing our weapons and leaving us with a collection of wet matches. We need to make sure what we have left works. But this is sort of the showhorse/workhorse Senator distinction. This is an issue on the back burner. It is an unpleasant issue. No one likes to talk about making nuclear weapons, each one of which could be 30 times as powerful as the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima and ended the war, but it is a part of the reality in the United States and in the world today. As Senator Corker was saying and as Senator Kyl said when each of us visited in different times, different places--Senator Kyl came to Tennessee. I was with him there. He has talked to many more people than I have on this subject--these weapons are being modernized in facilities that are completely outdated. It would be as if we were making Corvettes in a Model T factory. Worse than that, it is not just an inconvenience to the workers there, it is a threat to their safety, and it is a waste of taxpayers' money. As the Senator from Arizona said, after a certain number of years--I am not sure of the exact number anymore, maybe 15 years, some number of years--this pays for itself. The modernization of these facilities, the bringing them up to date, means the taxpayers will pay just as much to operate these old facilities as they would to spend $5 billion or $6 billion or whatever it is to improve these two big new facilities and the other infrastructure and the other things we need to do. It ought to be said as well that not one of these facilities is in Arizona. This is not home cooking by Jon Kyl. This is a man who, for a couple decades, has made our nuclear posture his business and has made sure he knows as much about it as anyone and has made sure the rest of us paid attention to it when we might be more interested in the issue of the moment. So it is an example of a Senator doing his job very well. I am deeply grateful for that and I am proud to serve in the Senate with such a person. I would like to mention the letters I had printed in the Record yesterday. They are such an integral part of the remarks of Senator Kyl and Senator Corker--the letter to the President of December 16, from Senators Inouye and Cochran, the ranking members of the Appropriations Committee on both sides of the aisle, and Senator Feinstein and I, who are both members of the appropriate subcommittee for dealing with this, as well as the President's response of December 20. In concluding my remarks, I would like to also congratulate Senator Kyl for his comments about advanced funding. We want to do things in an orderly way in government, but it makes no sense for us to build buildings in the most expensive way, particularly when there is an urgent deadline that is in the national interest. So if indeed by building these buildings more rapidly and saving the annual maintenance costs we could save the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars at a time when we are borrowing 42 cents out of every $1 and every one of us is going to be looking for ways to save money, Senator Kyl's suggestion about advanced funding, which may not be the way the Department of Energy has done it before, ought to be the way we do it now. We didn't used to have a big dip like we do now. Let's look for ways to save hundreds of millions of dollars. We know we are going to have to modernize these weapons, START treaty or no START treaty, as the Senator said. We know we are going to have to save money. Let's accept the Senator's suggestion about advanced funding of these large facilities. As one member of the appropriations committee, I am going to do my best to follow his suggestion. I am here to congratulate him for a superior, statesmanlike piece of work, both on the treaty which he has worked to improve but also on the nuclear modernization issue which he single-handedly has put upfront before those of us in the Senate and the American people and it makes our country safer and more secure.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator. No one is doubting the President's commitment. He has made an extraordinary commitment. I congratulate him for that. It is just the suggestion of doing it a little differently, if the President thinks it is practical, because it might save $200 million a year, year after year after year. A suggestion from us like that could make the difference in those savings. I thank the Senator for working in that spirit.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, ratifying this treaty would extend the policies of President Nixon, President Reagan, President George H.W. Bush, President George W. Bush, as well as Democratic Presidents. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the statements of the last six Republican Secretaries of State, all of whom support ratification of the treaty.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I will offer an amendment at the appropriate time to the resolution of ratification to require an annual update of the 1251 report, which the President's letter says he will do. Under the terms of the treaty, the United States may have 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear weapons, each one up to 30 times more powerful than the one used at Hiroshima to end World War II. The United States will also gain valuable data, including through inspection operations that should provide a treasure trove of intelligence about Russian activities that we would not have without the treaty, and that we have not had since the START treaty expired on December 9, 2009. Over the weekend, the President sent a letter to the Senate reaffirming ``the continued development and deployment of U.S. missile defense systems.'' There is nothing within the treaty itself--I emphasize ``nothing in the treaty''--that would hamper the development of missile defense or its deployment. Our military and intelligence leaders all have said that. Obviously, something could happen down the road involving differences over missile defense systems that could require either country--Russia or the United States--to withdraw from the treaty. That is any sovereign country's right with any treaty. In 2002, President Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty because of our desire to pursue missile defenses to protect us from an attack by a rogue state. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the President's letter on missile defense.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, why are these two so necessarily linked--the treaty and the plan for nuclear weapons modernization? The answer is, if we are going to reduce our number of warheads, we want to make sure we are not left with what amounts to a collection of wet matches. Defense Secretary Gates said: There is absolutely no way we can maintain a credible deterrent and reduce the number of weapons in our stockpile without either resorting to testing our stockpile or pursuing a modernization program. In a November 24 statement, Senators Kyl and Corker said they ``could not support reductions in U.S. nuclear forces unless there is adequate attention to modernizing those forces and the infrastructure that supports them.'' Senators Kyl and Corker deserve credit for untiring efforts to fund properly nuclear modernization. President Obama deserves credit for updating the nuclear modernization plan in such a significant way. I have reviewed that so-called ``1251 plan'' completed November 17 of this year, which calls for spending $85 billion over the next 10 years. I have visited our outdated nuclear weapons facilities. I am convinced the plan's implementation will make giant steps toward modernization of those facilities so that we--and our allies and adversaries--can be assured that the weapons will work if needed. The President's statement that he will ask for these funds and the support of senior members of the Appropriations Committee means that the plan is more likely to become a reality. The President agrees that in tight budgets these funds should be considered as defense spending. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a summary of the appropriations recommended by the plan mandated by section 1251 of the 2010 Defense authorization bill.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I will vote to ratify the New START treaty between the United States and Russia because it leaves our country with enough nuclear warheads to blow any attacker to kingdom come and because the President has committed to an $85 billion 10-year plan to make sure those weapons work. I will vote for the treaty because it allows for inspection of Russian warheads and because our military leaders say it does nothing to interfere with the development of a missile defense system. I will vote for the treaty because the last six Republican Secretaries of State support its ratification. In short, I am convinced that Americans are safer and more secure with the New START treaty than without it. Last week, I joined Senators Inouye, Cochran, and Feinstein in a letter to the President stating that we will vote to ratify the treaty and to appropriate funds to modernize our outdated nuclear weapons facilities and that he, the President, requests those funds in his budget. Last night, I received a response to the President saying he would do so. I ask unanimous consent to have printed both letters in the Record.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I will vote to ratify this treaty. The vote we are about to have today is about whether to end debate. The majority's decision to jam through other matters during this lameduck session has poisoned the well, driven away Republican votes, and jeopardized ratification of this important treaty. Nevertheless, this treaty was presented in the Senate on May 13, after 12 hearings in two committees and many briefings. The Foreign Relations Committee reported the treaty to the Senate on September 16 in a bipartisan vote of 14 to 4. For several months, there have been intense negotiations to develop a realistic plan and the funding for nuclear modernization. That updated plan was reported on November 17. The Senate voted to proceed to the treaty last Wednesday. I voted no because I thought there should still be more time allowed for amendment and debate. Despite the flawed process, I believe the treaty and the nuclear modernization plan make our country safer and more secure. It will allow us to resume inspection and verification of disarmament of nuclear weapons in Russia. The head of our missile defense system says the treaty will not hamper our missile development program--and if it does, we can withdraw from the treaty. All six former Republican Secretaries of State support ratification of this treaty. Therefore, I will vote to ratify the New START treaty and during the next several years vote to fund the nuclear modernization plan. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I congratulate my colleague from Tennessee, Senator Corker, for his usual common sense, as well as the assistant Democratic leader, Senator Durbin, for his courage on the debt commission. I believe that the decision made tonight about the omnibus bill is best for the country, but there could have been a better result. It would have been along the lines of what the Senator from Illinois described. If we had been able earlier in the year to agree on a budget in the Senate, which is how much are we going to spend, and if we could have gone committee by committee--and there are 13 subcommittees, and we both serve on the Appropriations Committee--and we could have brought those to the floor by August, voted on them, and got on with it so the government could run, that would by far be a better result. There is no need to say why that didn't happen, whether it was a Democratic or Republican fault. It didn't happen. So that falls on all of us to look ahead and see if it can't happen in the future. I believe it can. In fact, I believe that it must. We have a time coming up next year when we will be asked to raise the debt ceiling. We will have before us a recommendation from the debt commission that five of the six Senators who served on it voted for. They stuck their necks way out to do that. The Senator from Illinois, the Senator from North Dakota, and three Republican Senators, as well. So I think it is incumbent upon all of us--we can find points of division fairly easily. That is not hard to do. Finding points of consensus is harder. Cutting taxes is easier. Reducing the debt is going to be harder. So in the next 3 or 4 months, when we come back, I hope we will build on the conversation that I heard earlier this week with Senators Warner and Chambliss, and a group of nearly 20 Senators on both sides, who committed themselves to work on the debt commission. I hope we can, in the Appropriations Committee, start out the year with some way of agreeing on a ceiling, and then work together to work within that ceiling so we can run the government. A continuing resolution for a year is a lousy way to run a government. It wastes money, because you end up funding things that should be cut and not funding things that need increases. I think this was the right result for the American people of the choices we had tonight. But there could be a better choice. It is our responsibility to see next year if we can offer ourselves, and therefore the American people, that choice. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, during the 1980s, somehow the Senate took a survey among themselves about who was the most admired Member of the Senate, and according to press reports, Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee was the most admired Senator by both Republicans and by Democrats. If such a survey were to be taken today, Judd Gregg would certainly be at the top of that list for most of us. There is not a better Member of the Senate. Much has been said about him, so I will say three things quickly because there are other Senators who wish to speak. First, Judd Gregg is of New Hampshire, not from New Hampshire. Sometimes we say, Senator so-and-so is from Tennessee or from New York or from South Dakota or from Maine, but the Senator whose roots are where roots are supposed to be is ``of'' his State. Judd Gregg sounds as though he is from New Hampshire. He acts as though he is from New Hampshire. He is from New Hampshire. He votes as though he is from New Hampshire. The Old Man of the Mountain, which was a rock up in New Hampshire, could be seen by those who drove by it. The rock fell down a few years ago and I thought: Well, maybe the best way to replace it is to put Judd Gregg back up there because he is of New Hampshire. Second, Judd Gregg is a very good politician. I know that from direct experience. There is such a thing as the ``Gregg machine'' in New Hampshire. Those who have the temerity to run for President find that out. It was on the other side of my efforts when I was there, and to give an example, one day a reporter asked me: Well, Mr. Alexander, what is the price of a gallon of milk? Of course, I knew what a gallon of milk costs, but I made the mistake of turning around to someone and asking, just to make sure what it was. A press person overheard it, and the next thing I knew, the ``Gregg machine'' had spread that story all over the state that this fellow in a red and black shirt didn't know what the price of milk was. So they are a very intimidating, effective crowd in New Hampshire. The third thing, the final thing I will say about Judd is one reason I admire and like him so much is that I so often agree with him. I agree with him on conservation issues, on education issues, on fiscal issues but especially on his view of this body, which he expressed so eloquently many times but especially in his remarks today. Judd Gregg knows and understands that this body is the Citadel of the protection of liberty in our government. He said that today. It is the place where we avoid the tyranny of the majority. It is a place where the voices of the American people are heard, where we have open amendment and open debate. He has been an effective advocate for that. He understands we are not just a debating society, but that in the end, we are a governing body; that the purpose of our 60-vote majority is to force consensus and a compromise so we can act, so we can do our job. Judd leaves a wonderful legacy. He has many friends here. He will continue to have many friends here, this Senator who is of New Hampshire, who is a pretty good politician and with whom I so often agree. My special best wishes to his wife Kathy, with whom I also agree. Thank you.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I am here tonight in the spirit of my late friend, the author of Roots, Alex Haley, who lived and died by these words: ``Find the good and praise it.'' I am here to praise Senator Warner, Senator Chambliss, and the bipartisan group of Senators who have focused their attention on this urgent crisis that our country faces, the national debt. This is the way the Senate is supposed to work: to see an urgent need, develop a bipartisan consensus to get to work on it, come up with a strategy to deal with it, and get a result--not just make speeches but get a result. We have heard the evidence. We have had the good example set by five Members of our body--two Democrats, three Republicans--who took a courageous step in their action on the fiscal commission earlier this month. The Senate should follow that example. I am encouraged by what I hear from the bipartisan group of Senators addressing our debt issue. This is the way the Senate is supposed to work. Let me conclude with just one example from history. I picked up a book the other night called ``The British Overseas.'' It is a British historian's view of the American Revolution. He pointed this out: At the time of the American Revolution, the interest on the national debt of the British empire amounted to one- half of the national revenue of the British empire. In other words, at the time we fought for and won our independence, Great Britain had an unconscionable debt. The debt forced the British into some imprudent decisions. One was the Stamp Act and one was a little tax on tea, which occurred at about that time. So big debts force big countries into bad decisions. The leadership we have seen across the aisle is a good start for the serious effort toward dealing with our debt crisis. I am here today to commend those Senators, both Democrats and Republicans, who are part of it. I yield the floor for the distinguished Senator from Colorado.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I have one other comment I would like to make while I am here. It involves the Baha'i faith and the abuse of its leaders in Iran. I rise today to discuss an issue that some constituents of mine brought to my attention when I was in Nashville this summer. We met to discuss the plight of the Baha'i in Iran. The Baha'i faith was founded in Persia in 1844 and is one of the fastest growing religions in the world, with more than five million followers in more than 200 countries and territories. It is the largest non-Muslim religious community in Iran today. Baha'i followers have been persecuted for their faith by the Iranian Government since their religion was established, but the frequency and severity of the persecutions has increased under the Presidency of Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad. More than two years ago, a group of seven Baha'i leaders, often referred to as the ``Yaran'' or ``friends,'' were arrested. They were charged with pursuing propaganda activities against Islam and for spying on behalf of Israel. After more than two years of ``temporary'' confinement, the seven were tried in a closed court proceeding that did not meet even the minimum international standards for proper criminal procedure and protection of civil rights. The six men and one woman were each sentenced to 20 years in prison on August 8. This is yet another example of the Iranian Government striking out against its own people. We saw violent examples of this in June of last year, when Iranian citizens began protesting the unfair Presidential election. Those who dare differ with the government face baseless charges, closed court proceedings, extremely harsh sentences, and possibly even death. The international community has expressed its outrage about the sentencing of this group, and Secretary of State Clinton issued a statement on August 12 that reaffirms our country's commitment to protecting religious freedom around the world, including that of the Baha'i in Iran. This is more than a story from the other side of the world. There are more than 168,000 Baha'i in the United States. There are more than 2,000 in my home State of Tennessee. The men and women with whom I met in August have family members--fathers, mothers, sons, brothers, and in-laws--who have been arrested and imprisoned in Iran simply because of their faith. Their only request was that we, as Members of the United States Senate, continue to do all that we can to keep the spotlight on Iran and its persecution of peaceful citizens. That is why I wanted to bring this matter to the attention of the Senate today. The United States has already imposed sanctions on Iran by enacting the Iran Sanctions Act. I hope by shining a spotlight on this extreme and continued abuse of peaceful adherence of the Baha'i faith by the Iranian Government, we can, No. 1, reaffirm our commitment to religious freedom around the world; and No. 2, make a little more uncomfortable the regime in Iran which perpetrates these crimes against its own people. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.