Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Utah. Madam President, the point of our discussion is a very simple idea: This is a year above all years when there are voices in the country that seek to be heard. When through procedural means the majority suppresses those voices by suppressing their elected representatives, it only adds fuel to the fire. Whatever the conditions after the election, I hope we Republicans come back with the notion that we intend to make sure this Senate functions with an unlimited right to amend and with an unlimited right to debate, so we can force consensus on issues and deal with jobs, deal with spending, deal with debt, and deal with the other issues that cause the American people to be turning out in droves this year in elections.

Mr. ALEXANDER. The Senator from Utah has had a distinguished career in the Senate. His father did before him. He has an unusual perspective of this body. I wonder what his reflections might be upon Senator Byrd's thought about the importance of allowing Senators to reflect the voices of people in this country and when those voices are cut off in the Senate, they are cut off at home.

Mr. ALEXANDER. On December 3, 1996, Senator Robert C. Byrd, the late Senator Byrd, who most of us think understood this body better than any Senator in its history, told the newly arriving U.S. Senators the following: Good afternoon and welcome to the United States Senate Chamber. You are presently occupying what I consider to be hallowed ground. Senator Byrd went on to say: . . . as long as the Senate retains the power to amend and the power of unlimited debate, the liberties of the people will remain secure. In his last testimony before the Senate Rules Committee before he died--this was in May of this year--Senator Byrd said: Our Founding Fathers intended the Senate to be a continuing body that allows for open and unlimited debate and the protection of minority rights. If I may add to that the last paragraph of a letter from Senator Coburn, which I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senators from New Hampshire, Arizona, Kansas, and I be permitted to engage in a colloquy for half an hour.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Senator Coburn writes: Too many Americans are upset, even angry, that their voices are not being heard in Washington. The majority's abusive practice of suppressing debate undermines the Senate's debate traditions . . . We could start out by complaining that the majority leader has cut off debate, cut off amendments at a record level. I have submitted evidence of that. But I think that would look to the American people like we are kindergartners in a sandbox. Because it is not the voice of the Senator from New Hampshire, or Tennessee, or Arizona, or Kansas that is so important. The voices of the people whom we are elected to represent are the important voices. When 39 times in the last two Congresses the majority leader, through procedural tactics, says no to amendments, and no to debate, he is causing the Senate to deteriorate to a shadow of its former self, the kind of Senate that Senator Byrd thought was important, and the kind of Senate in which we want to serve. Our goal is to represent the voices of the American people, to let their feelings, their anger, their hopes, all be represented here. That means we have to have a chance to offer amendments and have to have a chance to debate. What that means is if we are successful in this election year, we are going to make sure that in the new Congress we have that opportunity. We will make sure that these voices we hear across America are heard on the floor of the Senate. The Defense authorization bill, which is being debated today, is a perfect example of why I say the Senate is deteriorating to a shadow of its former self by closing off the voices of the American people and by denying their elected Senators an opportunity to have a full debate on the issues facing them.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Of course.

Mr. ALEXANDER. The Senator from Arizona was here when that was not the case, and the Senate functioned the way the Senate was supposed to function.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, the Senator from Kansas is here. He served with distinction not only in the Senate but in the House of Representatives. I wish to go back to the point Senator Byrd made. He said in his address to new Senators in 1996: [A]s long as the Senate retains the power to amend and the power of unlimited debate, the liberties of the people will remain secure. What we are talking about here is not the importance so much of the voice of the Senator from Kansas or the voice of the Senator from New Hampshire but the voices of the American people. And they are being suppressed. The Senator from Kansas has seen Congress for a long time. What do we need to do to take the Senate back to the Senate that it should be?

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Of course.

Mr. ALEXANDER. It is not just me saying it. The Lieutenant Governor of New York, Richard Ravitch, wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal on June 7 where he said he greatly appreciated the stimulus money--and this is the same problem--but because of these requirements that prohibit Governors and legislatures from making changes in the law to save money, he says the net result is the Federal stimulus--and this bill is just the son of stimulus or the daughter of stimulus--has led States to increase overall spending in these core areas, to increase spending. So the point of what we are doing is to cause States to increase spending, said the Lieutenant Governor of New York, which in effect has only raised the height of the cliff from which State spending will fall if stimulus funds evaporate.

Mr. ALEXANDER. The Senator has been talking about education. There is another important part of the bill--$16 billion to Medicaid. This is the Federal program to which, now with the new health care law, more than 70 million people will belong in 2014. But here is what the bill also does. According to a Wall Street Journal article on May 20, because of this bill--and as a result of this bill, if it should pass-- States will be limited in their ability to make changes in the Medicaid Program to save money. So what does that mean?

Mr. ALEXANDER. The Senator is exactly right. The National Association of Manufacturers says there are 22 million Americans who are hired by companies that do business not only in the United States but overseas. I say to the Senator from New Hampshire, I think we want companies that are principally in the United States that do business overseas because what is the alternative? The alternative is they are in Singapore or they are in Great Britain or they are in other countries around the world and they are not in our country. They are not paying taxes here, and they are not hiring people here. I see the distinguished Senator from Kentucky has arrived. The Senator from New Hampshire and I are in the midst of a fascinating discussion, but we think we will step down while he makes his remarks.

Mr. ALEXANDER. If I may say in response to the question and comment from the Senator from Kentucky, this country was created by States, and now has created a central government of limited powers. The central government makes the States the wards of the central government. In the State of Tennessee this year--I believe for the first time-- more than half the dollars in the State budget come from the Federal Government. In addition to the dollars coming from Washington, the rules are coming from Washington. So the Governor of Kentucky or New Hampshire or Tennessee is trying to say: Medicaid spending is out of control. It is ruining our public colleges and universities because we have no money left for them, so we want to change the eligibility. That has been the case during the last 10 years. We have had Medicaid spending going up in the States by 70 or 80 percent over a 7- or 8-year period of time, and funding for public universities at a low level with tuitions, therefore, going way up. So the Governor is saying: Whoa, let's do something about Medicaid. Then we passed a bill and said to the Governors: Don't you change Medicaid. You are not allowed, if you take this money, to save any money in Medicaid. So spending for Medicaid goes up because we require it to go up, and that means tuitions in Kentucky, New Hampshire, Tennessee, California, and all across this country are going to be higher because of legislation like we are considering today.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask my friend from New Hampshire, the senior member of the Budget Committee and a former Governor of his State, what about the idea of sending money to States and then requiring them, in effect, to spend more money at a time when most States are cutting State budgets so they can balance their budgets?

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the distinguished Senator from New Hampshire and I are going to engage in a discussion about the vote we are going to have at 10:40 a.m. But the Republican leader is on his way to the floor in a few minutes. When he comes, we are going to step aside and let him make his remarks, and then we will resume. The vote we are having at 10:40 a.m. has the following problems with it: No. 1, it is $10 billion for the State to pay for teachers. That sounds pretty good except that it ties the hands of the Governors and the legislatures so they cannot change education funding levels if their State budgets are in trouble. No. 2, there is $16 billion for States to pay for Medicaid. That sounds pretty good, too, except that it ties the hands of the States and the Governors so they cannot adjust their State Medicaid Program and continue to face a funding cliff. I heard the distinguished Senator from Washington State talk about college students. The reason California students are facing a 32- percent increase in tuition is largely caused by California's expenses for Medicaid, the State program that is funded also by the Federal Government that has so many Federal rules that it keeps going up in cost. And the money that would be going to the University of California or the University of Tennessee or the University of New Hampshire instead goes for Medicaid. Then there is not money for the university, and then what happens? The tuition goes up. Finally, part of the way this bill is paid for is by almost $10 billion of permanent tax increases on multinational corporations that would have the effect of driving jobs overseas--just one more action by the Democratic majority and this administration in the middle of a recession or a time of near 10-percent unemployment that makes it harder to create new jobs in the United States. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from New Hampshire and I may engage in a colloquy.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Not long ago, the State of Tennessee was one of two winners in the race to the top in education funding. I was very proud of the State. This was not my doing. This was their doing--the teachers, the Governor, and the legislature. Both parties worked hard. I came to the Senate floor last week and praised President Obama and his Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, for their courage and vision on their K-12 education agenda, pushing for the holy grail of education, which is finding ways to award outstanding teaching and tying it to students' effectiveness and charter schools and higher standards, even common standards, and the race to the top itself, in terms of encouraging excellence. These are not easy things to do. President Obama is not the first Democrat, or even the first Democratic President, who has pushed these changes. But he is the first President of either party who may have a chance to actually get them done. It may just be easier for a Democratic President to do this than a Republican President. When he does these things, it is important for Republican Senators to give him credit for it. I genuinely do. Mr. President, it does not help for us now to come along and say, OK, we are going to make it harder to be the Governor of Tennessee and Virginia and Michigan and California and all these States because we are going to give them money, with more strings attached, and say when they take the money and spend it, they have to keep the same level of spending they had before. Just as Governor Ravitch says, it stops States from doing what they already need to do. Mr. President, I wish every State had done what Tennessee has done. We have a Democratic Governor, Phil Bredesen, who is completing his time. This is what he said in his State address in 2009: Please let me make it clear that no proposed version of the stimulus is any panacea or silver bullet; substantial cuts are still needed under any circumstances. He meant in the State budget. Furthermore, it is vital to remember that this stimulus money is one-time funds. The Governor is saying we are going to have to cut the budget. In fact, our State has little debt. It has among the lowest taxes in the country. It has a solid pension fund that has survived this as well as anybody. But when we say to any Governor that here is some money, and here are some rules to keep you from doing what you need to do, I think we are doing no service there. I wanted to say that before we have this vote today, and to say that there are four or five reasons I hope we don't go forward with it. The first reason, both in terms of education and Medicaid, is it ties the Governors' hands to keep them from doing what they should be doing. The next reason is there is $10 billion in permanent taxes on multinational corporations which will make it more likely that American jobs would go overseas. Another reason is there is $3 billion in spending cuts in defense that likely could come out of the operation and maintenance budget of soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The next reason is it adds to the debt $5 billion at a time when we don't have the money any more than the States do. We are spending 41 cents out of every dollar, which is borrowed. Mr. President, I am going to oppose this measure this afternoon. I will support efforts to rein in spending, to give States more freedom to do what they need to do, to try to create a more limited government, to try to create less debt, and to try to create an economy that can focus its attention for the foreseeable future on a progrowth environment that creates jobs in the private sector, which is the real challenge for our country today. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Thank you very much. The Presiding Officer is a distinguished former Governor, and I am a former Governor. I suggested during the health care debate that anyone who voted for the new health care law ought to be sentenced to go home and serve as Governor for 8 years under the new law and try to make it work. People thought I was kidding. I was serious. The vote we are about to have this afternoon is another symptom of the same problem. Here is what the vote today, which is characterized as being about teachers and Medicaid, actually does. It is a $10 billion bailout to help States pay teachers, but it ties the Governors' hands so a Governor can't change education funding levels if their State budgets are in trouble, which almost every State is. Second, there is $16 billion for States to pay for Medicaid--the Federal program that is a combination of Federal money and State money--but, again, this ties the Governors' hands so Governors can't adjust the State Medicaid programs in a way that will make it possible for them to afford to continue to run the program. In other words, if you are the Governor of Tennessee, because of receiving this money or the stimulus money earlier, your ability to change benefits is limited and, in some cases, taken away. Third, what we are about to vote on this afternoon raises taxes by about $10 billion to help pay for these proposals. This $10 billion in permanent tax hikes is on American multinational companies. That sounds like: Well, let's stick it to the company. But these are companies which employ 22 million Americans, according to the National Association of Manufacturers. This makes it harder for those companies to continue to employ people in the United States and it gives them more incentive to send jobs overseas. Then there is the additional offset to this bill of $3 billion in military and veterans funding cuts and, as the Senator from Kentucky has pointed out, these are very broad cuts, and there is nothing to keep these cuts from being made from the operation and maintenance of the fighting men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then the fourth problem with this vote this afternoon is it adds to the debt nearly $5 billion. The fifth problem is we are already spending--41 cents out of every dollar we spend today is borrowed from someone, creating a serious deficit problem. There is sometimes back and forth about who caused the problem, but the solution to a boat with a hole in it is not to shoot another hole in the boat and have two holes or three holes, and that is what we would be doing with this bill. We would be extending the so-called fiscal cliff in the States by tying the Governors' hands so they don't do what they normally would do in down times such as this, which is reduce spending so they can make their way through it. We are raising taxes on companies in a way that could send jobs overseas. We are adding to the debt. Those are all the things we are being asked to vote on this afternoon. One might say that is a partisan comment I am making in describing the situation. I don't think so. I think it is the comment of someone with a background as Governor of a State who has consistently struggled with Washington's irresistible impulse to impose on States rules from Washington that may not fit States. For example, the education money--the $10 billion--has five strings on it. No. 1, we have to keep spending on K-12 education at least as high as last year's money. Again, that sounds good, but if you are a State that is reducing and has less revenue, you have to reduce costs or you will have fiscal cliff after fiscal cliff. The same with Medicaid--$16 billion more for Medicaid but, again, with restrictions on what States can do to change benefits. So, as a result, Governors and legislatures that have less State revenues continue to increase their spending on Medicaid. But guess what. Not on other programs such as public colleges and universities. I am absolutely convinced the health care law and the new costs being tacked onto States to pay for an expansion of Medicaid is going to irreparably damage our public colleges and universities. It is going to hurt their quality because the money that should be going to colleges and universities is going to go to help pay for Medicaid requirements imposed from Washington. Who else is going to be hurt? The students. I am sure the students protesting at the University of California the over 32 percent tuition hikes have no idea the reason they are having the hikes is because Washington keeps imposing new costs on State Medicaid Programs, causing Governor Schwarzenegger and the California Legislature to take money that otherwise most likely would have gone to the University of California and spend it instead on Medicaid. Let me give a bipartisan twist to what I just said. There was a Wall Street editorial, written by Richard Ravitch in January of this year. He is the Democratic Lieutenant Governor of New York State. This is the way he describes this scenario we are being asked to vote on this year: The Federal stimulus has provided significant budget relief to the states-- Mr. President, that was the money that was passed in the beginning of 2009 to try to create new jobs, which apparently hasn't worked so well since unemployment is still very high. He says: But this relief is temporary and makes it harder for states to cut expenditures. Just as this vote this afternoon will do so. In major areas, such as transportation, education, and health care, stimulus funds come with strings attached. These strings prevent states from substituting federal money for state funds, require states to spend minimum amounts of their own funds, and prevent states from tightening eligibility standards for benefits. The Lieutenant Governor of New York continues: Because of these requirements, states, instead of cutting spending in transportation, education, and health care, have been forced to keep most of their expenditures at previous levels and use federal funds only as supplements. The net result is this: The federal stimulus has led states to increase overall spending in these core areas, which in effect has only raised the height of the cliff from which state spending will fall if stimulus funds evaporate. If we do it again this afternoon--the same thing done with the stimulus fund--we will be extending this fiscal cliff for New York, Tennessee, and States all over the country and making it more difficult for them to make the cuts they need to make the innovations they need to make, to try the different things they need to do, so they can afford their education programs, so they can afford their Medicaid Program. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record Lieutenant Governor Richard Ravitch's column in the Wall Street Journal.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, would the Chair let me know when I have consumed 9 minutes.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the President of the United States made an important speech this morning. He spoke to the National Urban League Centennial Conference on Education. Every speech a President makes is important, but this speech is especially important, and I commend the President for his courage, for his vision, and for his willingness to undertake the hard work of helping children across this country learn what they need to know and be able to do, and the competence with which he is doing that. Let me be specific about why I say that. No. 1, the President began with teachers. He extolled teachers. He said he wanted to lift them up as high as he could, he wanted them to be on the front pages of magazines, and for us to dignify them in every way we could. But he didn't back away from tackling the most important and the most difficult challenge that any of us who have dealt with education reform have found; that is, how do we reward outstanding teachers. Especially, how do we tie that reward to student achievement? In other words, what can we do to help reward and encourage those outstanding men and women who help our children learn, particularly our children who are having the hardest time learning? All of us know a great teacher makes a great difference. The President said that himself. Each of us in the Senate knows that. But any of us who have, over the last several years, spent time trying to find ways to reward outstanding teaching knows how hard it is. I worked on it in 1983 when Tennessee became the first State to reward outstanding teaching. Not one State at that time paid one teacher one penny more for being a good teacher. They could make more money for being around a long time. They could make more money for getting a degree. But they didn't make more money at all if the children were succeeding. For a while that worked because we were able to capture women. They had very few options and they became saints in the classroom and they were our teachers. But in the 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s, women had many options, and they took them. In the companies where they went to work, they were paid more for excellence. They made good salaries. As a result, it became more difficult to attract and keep outstanding men and women in our classrooms. Governor Graham, who was later a Senator, tried the same thing in Florida. Governor Clinton--later a President--was trying many of the same ideas in Arkansas. Those were the 1980s. Every education meeting I go to comes down to the same point: After you get past the role of the parent, the teacher is the center of it. Whether a child is a gifted child or whether a child comes from a home where he or she does not have breakfast, or whether a child comes from a home where he or she has never been read a book until they are 7, whether a child needs to be in school 12 hours a day or 8, on Saturdays or not, the teacher at the center of the education of that school is the indispensable product and the best and most important part of a child's ability to achieve and to learn. What the President has done--through the Teacher Incentive Fund that he has continued to encourage, and through his leadership on the subject--deserves credit and support from all Americans. I for one am here to offer him that. Second, he talked about charter schools. He is not the first to do that either. I remember as Education Secretary on my last week in office, in 1993, I wrote a letter to all the superintendents in America to encourage them to try charter schools. At the time they were the invention of a few Democratic liberal reformers in Minnesota. There were maybe a dozen charter schools at that moment. But charter schools were simply ``start over'' schools. It was simply saying to a faculty: Let's start over. What if we took off the rules and regulations and gave you the freedom to do with the children who are presented to you what they need, so if you need to start at 7 in the morning and finish at 7 in the night, do it. If you need 2-hour classes, do it. If you need 200 days a year instead of 180 days at school, do that as well. If you need to learn during Easter holidays, do that. Who are the beneficiaries of the charter schools? When they work, the beneficiaries are most often the children who come from the most difficult circumstances. I can point to a charter school in Memphis I visited 3 years ago where it was an Easter holiday. The children there were ninth or tenth graders. Instead of being on Easter holiday, they were studying for their advanced placement course in biology at the freshman or sophomore level. There was not any other school in Tennessee where children that age were studying advanced placement biology, especially during the Easter week break. President Obama has done what President Bush did, what President Clinton did, what Vice President Gore did, what I have done, what many others have done, which is to say: Let's have independent public charter schools and give teachers the freedom to do what they know how to do. The first thing is rewarding outstanding teaching. As the late Albert Shanker, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, used to say: If we can have master plumbers, we can have master teachers, and we can pay them accordingly, pay them very well, and let's have charter schools and give teachers the freedom to do what they in their own good judgment know to do. The third thing the President talked about was high standards. That is also not a new idea but he has advanced it down the road very well. Higher standards are an indispensable part of a good education in kindergarten through the 12th grade. The way I used to help Tennesseans learn about that was to say look at all these big new auto plants that are coming into our State. To get a job there, you have to know a lot more today than you did when your parents might have worked there, or your grandparents. You have to know algebra and statistics. You have to know English well to be able to communicate. In other words, the standards are high if we are going to compete in the world and keep our high standard of living. While a lot of work has been done by the Governors of the country through ACHIEVE, the President has advanced the idea of common standards very well in the last 18 months, and he has done it in the right way. He has not said: Okay, I am the President; we will write it from Washington. That would have killed it--or at least I hope it would have killed it. He didn't say that. He said let's create an environment in which States can make a difference and make their own choices, and States, in surprisingly large numbers, are beginning to do that, in terms of reading and math. The fourth area the President spoke about, and this is his own initiative, is the Race to The Top. This is infusing one of the hardest things that is possible to infuse in public education and that is excellence. We have a democratic society. We are usually interested in leveling things. If we have five things, one goes to each person. What is hard for us to do in government, and that means public education as well, is to say let's reward excellence. Let's say to those school districts or to those States or those teachers or those others who are making the A-pluses and the A's and doing the best job, we want to incentivize you to do that. He has found a way to do that. It is a fair way. He has kept politics out of it. He has put money into it and he deserves credit for it. Finally, he has picked a very good Secretary of Education. I said when Arne Duncan was appointed that he might be the President's best appointment. I still think that. That is not because I agree with everything Arne Duncan has recommended. In fact, I think he was completely wrong about the student loan takeover. I think his proposal on gainful employment, which is an obscure higher education thing and a different subject, is, with all respect, a little wacky. But what I think is he is an excellent leader for education, and he has a big heart and he has worked in a bipartisan way, and he has gotten results that are as good as anybody could possibly have gotten on some of the toughest subjects facing our country. The President and Arne Duncan deserve our applause and support for their efforts. We will have differences of opinion about how much we can spend and when we can spend it, but if the goal is to reward outstanding teaching, to create more charter schools, to help States raise standards in an environment where they are not told to do so by Washington, but create an environment to do it themselves; if the goal is to infuse excellence into public higher education by challenging States to do better, then we should be for that and we should do it together. I think President Obama has the opportunity in public education to do what President Nixon did in China. It may be easier for a Democratic President to make these changes or to lead the country in these changes than it would be for a Republican President, just as it was easier for a Republican President in the early 1970s to cause us to have an opening to China. That is a large claim to make but I think it is an equally important goal. About the only thing I disagreed with today in the President's speech was this. He said teachers were the most important part of a child's education. I think a parent is and I think he does, too. I think he would agree. I think parents and teachers are 90 percent of it and it starts with the parent. The reason I think he would agree with that is because he had good parents and he is a good parent and a very good example to the rest of the country. Anyone who has read his biography, ``The Audacity of Hope,'' knows the story of his mother getting him up at 4 o'clock in the morning in Indonesia and teaching him math and to read and telling him: Buster, it's not any fun for me so get busy and learn, and he learned very well. His example as a good parent and good student is exactly the kind of example we need for students and parents across our country. This is a time when we have differences of opinion on many issues. I will have some differences of opinion with the President on education, as I mentioned. But I have no lack of enthusiasm for the importance of his leadership on K-12 education, on rewarding outstanding teaching, on giving teachers the freedom to create schools in which they can use their common sense, on creating high standards, on the Race to The Top, on setting a good example as a good parent, and I thought it was important--perhaps especially for a Republican Senator who spent a number of years working on these issues as Education Secretary and president of a university and Governor--to come to the floor and say: Good work, Mr. President. An excellent address. And on those broad issues and themes, you have my full support. The President's remarks can be found at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/ the-pre ss-office/remarks-president-education-reform-national-urban-league- centen nial-conference. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. The 1.6 million of us who fly daily would not stop flying after a tragic airplane crash. We would find out what happened and do our best to make it safe. We cannot simply stop drilling after a tragic oilspill unless we want to rely more on foreign oil, run up our prices, turn our oil drilling over to a few big oil companies, and all our oil hauling over to more leaky tankers. I hope that instead of the proposal we have been hearing about, we can focus on the clean energy, low-cost consensus Republicans have advocated, and that the President has proposed as well, electric cars, nuclear power, energy research and development, and clean air. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute to finish my remarks.

Mr. ALEXANDER. There could be unlimited liability. But the President, in setting those risk-based factors, could take into account that there might be a company with a spotless record operating at drilling 500 feet for oil, but there might be a company with not as good a record operating in 5,000 feet deep water. In addition, the proposal would allow for collective responsibility. Instead of big oil companies just sitting around watching the one that spills clean up, everybody would have a stake in the game. In addition to that, it would not drive out of business the smaller oil companies and only leave big oil as the only ones that could risk unlimited liability and drill in the gulf, such big national oil companies as the Chinese, Venezuelan, or Saudi Arabians. So I would recommend to my colleagues that the Republican proposal is where we should begin because a risk-based liability proposal would allow independent explorers for oil and gas to continue to operate, would not drive them out of business.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I wish to thank the Senator from Texas for his lucid explanation of this DISCLOSE Act, and I like the name he used for it. As the Republican leader has said, this is a piece of legislation that is primarily about saving the jobs of Democratic Members of Congress. I think the American people would rather we spend our time saving their jobs during a time of 10 percent unemployment. I would like to talk about that for a minute because one way to save American jobs is to stop sending jobs overseas looking for cheap energy, which is what the Democratic proposals have been about this year. We hear that maybe this afternoon the majority leader will propose an energy bill. It is being proposed in a way that has become all too familiar here. It is being written in secret, offered at the last minute, and there will be time for little debate. We have 1 or 2 days at most to work on this bill, given the need to consider the President's nomination of Ms. Kagan for the U.S. Supreme Court, and there apparently will be no amendments. So last minute, written in secret, little debate, no amendments, big issue--that sounds a lot like what happened at Christmas with the health care bill. But the question to ask is why have we waited so long on an energy bill? In defense of the majority leader, he has a lot on his plate, and he has a tough job in trying to figure out what comes first, and it takes a while to get anything done in the Senate. The last time we had a great success with energy bills--2005-2007--they were offered in a bipartisan way. I remember working with Senator Domenici and Senator Bingaman on those bills. We did a lot of good and changed the direction of the country on clean energy in 2005 in the Energy bill. But it took a number of weeks on the floor of the Senate to do that, and any serious effort on energy would take that amount of time here as well. So why have we not had an energy bill? We have had a clear consensus on how to have cheap energy. For years, Republicans have said: Why don't we build 100 new nuclear plants? That is 70 percent of our carbon-free electricity. Why don't we set as a goal electrifying half our cars and trucks? That is the single best way to reduce our use of oil, including oil from foreign countries. Why don't we support doubling energy research and development? That is the best way to get a 500-mile battery for electric cars and reduce the price of solar power by a factor of 4, which is what we need to do in order to be able to put solar on our rooftops and supplement the energy we need. But we haven't had bills like that. There are even 16 Senators--6 Republican, 9 Democrats, 1 independent--who are cosponsors of the Carper-Alexander bill on clean air. We know what to do about sulfur, nitrogen, and mercury, so why don't we do it? We have 16 Senators ready to do it. Instead, the other side has been focused on two bad ideas--one has been a national energy tax in the middle of a recession, and the second bad idea has been a so-called national renewable electricity standard, which basically boils down a requirement to build 50-story wind turbines to try to produce electricity in this large country. Let me give one fact on that. Denmark has pushed its wind turbines up to 20 percent of its electrical capacity. We often hear on the floor what a great thing Denmark has done. That is about as many windmills as you can have and still have a viable electricity grid. But Denmark hasn't closed a single coal plant. It is still highly dependent on fossil fuels. It has to give away almost half of its wind-generated electricity to Germany and Sweden at bargain prices because it comes at a time it is not needed. And Denmark has some of the most expensive electricity in Europe. Meanwhile, France has gone 80 percent nuclear. Its per capita carbon emissions are 30 percent lower than Denmark, and it has so much cheap electricity that France is making $3 billion a year exporting it to other countries. So why are we even thinking about passing a law making Tennesseans build 50-story wind turbines on our scenic mountains or buy it from South Dakota, which means running a lot of transmission lines through backyards, when the Tennessee Valley Authority says wind power is available when needed only 12 percent of the time? So these are the two bad ideas that have had our clean energy consensus stuck on the sidelines for the last year. There is another idea we should be focusing on, actually it should be our first priority; that is, the oilspill that has caused such destruction in the gulf coast. The bill we understand the majority leader may be bringing out this afternoon--of course, we do not know what is in it; it was written in secret--bringing it out this afternoon, may be the bill that came out of the Environment and Public Works Committee, which would, in effect, end offshore exploration for natural gas and oil. That sounds pretty good, particularly in light of the fact that it has been 99 days since this terrible oilspill began. But what will happen if we were to, in effect, end offshore exploration of natural gas and oil? It means we would be depending more on oil from overseas. We use 20 million barrels of petroleum product a day. Unless we get busy with electric cars, we are still going to be using 20 million barrels a day. It will probably mean higher prices, since about one-third of our natural gas and oil that we produce in the United States comes from the Gulf of Mexico. It would mean lost jobs in large amounts. The number of lost jobs is estimated, in a study released by IHS Global Insight on July 22--if we have a de facto end of independent oil production of offshore natural gas and oil in the gulf, the job loss would be 300,000 jobs by 2020; $147 billion in tax revenues over that time. So, in addition to depending more on foreign oil, higher prices, lost jobs, it means we would depend on leaky tankers to bring that foreign oil--some from countries that do not like us--over to the United States so we could use it. So that is a bad idea as well--not a very good proposal. There is a better way to approach the problem of dealing with an oilspill that has been offered by Senator McConnell and other Republicans last week. Here is what it would do: Instead of ending offshore exploration for natural gas and oil, which is what unlimited liability requirements, in effect, would do, it would fashion a proposal that is much like the proposal we use for the 104 nuclear powerplants we have operating in this country. They operate under a law called Price-Anderson. Price-Anderson is an industry-funded insurance program that spreads the liability for any nuclear accident among all the operators of nuclear plants. It is important to note, we have never had to use it. Even though we have not built a nuclear plant in 30 years, there has not been a single death in the United States as a result of a nuclear incident at a commercial nuclear plant or as a result of a nuclear accident on one of our Navy ships, which have been operating with reactors since the 1950s. But the Republican proposal, instead of saying unlimited liability, which sounds good but has all the problems I just mentioned, would employ a risk-based approach and allow the President to establish liability limits for offshore facilities by taking into account risk- based factors. There could be unlimited liability.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, will you let me know when 9 minutes has expired?