Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, today President Obama told the countries of the world thatthe United States is ready to lead on climate change. But while he is reassuring world leaders, he has a lot of work to do with us in the Senate. Only yesterday in The Wall Street Journal, John Bruton, the European Ambassador to the United States, chided the Senate, saying: Is the US. Senate really expecting all the other countries to make a serious effort on climate change at the Copenhagen Conference in the absence of a clear commitment from the United States? Asking an international Conference to sit around looking out the window for months, while one chamber of the legislature of one country deals with its otherbusiness, is simply not a realistic political position. Now I understand the Ambassador's frustration, but I hope he understands that the Senate has work to do other than deal with climate change and energy. Reforming health care involving one-sixth of our Nation's economy is not somethingthe Senate is going to do in a hurry. On the matter of climate change, however, he is asking a legitimate question. An even better question might be this: ``How can the United States lecture other countries about climate change when we won't take advantage of the one technology that shows the most promise of dealing with it?'' I am talking, of course, about nuclear power, which produces 19 percent of all our electricity but 70 percent of our carbon-free electricity. Coal-fired powerplants produce 36 percent of the carbon dioxide; the principal greenhouse gas that most scientists believe contributes to global warming. Of the top five countries that produce carbon, indeed that produce most of the carbon in the world, four, China, Russia, India and Japan, are committed to a bold program of expansion of nuclear power. Only the United States is not. We are the country that invented nuclear power, and we have not started a new nuclear plant in 30 years even though the 104 reactors we built during the 1970s which produce 19 percent of all our electricity, and produce 70 percent of our carbon- free electricity. So, if climate change is the inconvenient problem, as my fellow Tennessean Al Gore says, the other large carbon-emitting nations are posing a legitimate and truly inconvenient question: If we, they may say, are building dozens of carbon-free nuclear powerplants in an effort to deal with climate change, why are you lecturing us when you have not started a new plant in 30 years and yourPresident and everyone in his administration seems to become tongue-tied or get a stomach ache whenever someone mentions the idea of nuclear power. Everyone, that is, except the one member of the administration who knows the most about nuclear power, Dr.Steven Chu, the Nobel Prize winning scientist who heads the Energy Department. We have heard many say that the Bushadministration did a poor job of listening to scientists. Well, then, perhaps it is fair for me to suggest that the Obamaadministration, including the President, might do more listening to their chief scientist, Dr. Chu. In testimony before Congress, Dr. Chu has flatly said that nuclear powerplants are safe. He has said that the used nuclear fuel from those plants,the nuclear waste, can be safely stored on site for 40-60 years while scientists engage in a mini-Manhattan Project like the one we had in World War II to find the best possible way to recycleused nuclear fuel. Most likely that will mean that the waste's massis reduced by 97 percent and it will only be radioactive for 300 years instead of 1 million, or that it will be continuously used over and over again so there is none of the plutonium that might be used to make bombs. In an interview on National Public Radio the other day, Dr.Chu said that he would rather live down the river from a nuclear plant than other forms of producing energy. ``There's less pollution we know about that's very dangerous. The nuclear power plants' record in the United States is really very, very good,'' he said. Our whole fleet of 104 reactors is up and running 90 percent of the time, which shows we know how to operate nuclear powerplants better and more safely than any other country. Even France does not run its reactors as well and they have got plenty of experience, they get 80 percent of their electricity from nuclear power. But if we have learned to run reactors in this country, we stillcannot bring ourselves to build any new ones. We have been stuck at about 100 reactors for 20 years now. We built those 100 reactors from 1970 to 1990 at a time when we had never built any before yet now that we have got all that under our belt we cannot seem to get started on the new generation. But while we have not been able to start a new plant in 30 years, the rest of the world is taking the technology we invented and using it to create cheap, reliable, carbon-free electricity from nuclear plants. There are 44 reactors under construction right this minute, most of them in Asia. Asia? Yes, without most Americans realizing it, the center of gravity of nuclear innovation has moved to the Far East. China has four reactors under construction and has announced plans for 130 more. Russia intends to build two reactors a year in order to replace the 30 percent of their electricity they get from natural gas so they can sell the gas to Europe at six times the price they get at home. Japan already gets 36 percent of its electricity from nuclear, almost twice what we get, and is building two more reactors. South Korea gets nearly 40 percent of its electricity from nuclear and is planning eight more reactors by 2015. They have even got their own design now, a 1400-megawatt next generation reactor that evolved out of something they borrowed from us. India is developing thorium reactors instead of uranium and has a design for a mini-reactor that they are going to market to developed countries. Just look down the list of the ten top carbon-emitting countries as listed in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. I have already mentioned that of the top five, China, the U.S., Russia, India and Japan, we are the only one that does not have an active nuclear construction program. Of the next four, Germany, Canada, the U.K., and South Korea, only Germany claims they do not want nuclear, but they are buying significant amounts of nuclear electricity from France. Then there is the number 10 carbon emitter, Iran. Now that is an interesting case. A few months ago, President Obama said it was OK for Iran to develop a civilian nuclear power program, he did not have any problem with that. But if it is alright for Iran to have a nuclear power program, why cannot we do the same thing over here? Leading on climate change does not require passing a complicated cap- and-trade regime with renewable energy mandates that will impose a huge new tax on energy, stifle economic growth, and leave us with intermittent and unreliable alternative energy sources such as wind and solar. That is the wrong direction. It is time to lead by example and not just words. It is time to embrace the one technology that truly has the possibility of powering a prosperous planet without ruining the environment or covering our treasured landscapes with energy sprawl. It is time to build 100 new nuclear plants in the next 20 years. And the bonus is we will get plenty of so-called green jobs out of it, twice as many as building the 186,000 wind turbines that it would take to create an amount of electricity equal to 100 new nuclear plants. Building 100 new reactors is going to mean rebuilding a forgotten American infrastructure. We are going to have to build steel forges that can turn out these 600-ton reactor vessels, which is something we cannot do in this country right now. The Japanese and the Chinese and the Russians are all working on it, but we are not. We are going to need scientists, we are going to need construction workers, and we are going to need a whole new generation of nuclear engineers and technicians to replace the last generation that is getting ready to retire. I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Please let me know when 1 minute remains.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Unless the Senator from New Hampshire has further comments, I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I am not ready to say there is $47 billion of savings. That assumes the U.S. Department of Education, which makes about a fourth of the current student loans in the country--which is 3 million loans a year, and it spends about $700 million a year on that--can make 18 or 19 million student loans a year from the same amount of administrative costs. That doesn't sound likely to me. If that is true, then even the $47 billion is a wrong number.

Mr. ALEXANDER. They are going to spend the $87 billion. As you have eloquently said: There is no $87 billion. That adds to the debt. Then there is the problem of 19 million students lining up at the Department of Education to get their student loans starting in January. Perhaps we need a piece of truth-in-lending legislation that would go on every student loan application that says: Congratulations. Your government is making you a student loan. We borrowed it at one-quarter of 1 percent, and we are going to loan it to you at 6.8 percent, and we are going to spend twice that much on new programs that we thought of while we take over the entire student loan program.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Well, I thank the Senator. I think what we have seen is getting to be too familiar around here, an action by the administration, another Washington takeover, more debt, to the tune of $500 billion or $600 billion, more debt. You said on the $87 billion or $47 billion spending of money we do not really have.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I appreciate the comments of the Senator. In President Obama's address to us on health care the other day, he said: My guiding principle is and always has been, the consumers do better when there is choice and competition. That is how the market works. I guess he means except when we are talking about student loans. Twenty years ago, we set up a system to give people a choice, and, as you said, they voted with their feet. This past year, 14 million students made a choice to be under the regular student loan program. They are at 4,000 campuses, went to 2,000 lenders, they got a lot of extra services, I assume, or they could have come to the Department of Education, which about 4.5 million students chose to do. The Senator has made it clear that the excuse for doing--but, well, let me say this. I guess the Senator has heard many times the President and people on the other side of the aisle say: Well, we inherited this problem. The reason we own General Motors, or 60 percent of it, is because we inherited it from President Bush. Or: The reason we are dealing with the American International Group Insurance Company is because we inherited that problem. Or: The reason we had to take over the banks is we inherited that problem. Well, this is a completely voluntary Washington takeover, if I am not mistaken.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I don't think we can say it too often-- though some people may tire of hearing Republican Senators saying it-- we have too much debt and too many Washington takeovers. Today, we want to talk about the latest Washington takeover, the latest huge addition to the national debt, which is the voluntary takeover of the Federal Family Education Loan Program. Rather than describe the situation myself, let me go to the New York Times article, on September 14, to paint the picture. Between financial rescue missions and the economic stimulus program, government spending accounts for a bigger share of the nation's economy--26 percent--than at any time since World War II. The government is financing 9 out of 10 new mortgages in the United States. If you buy a car from General Motors, you are buying from a company that is 60 percent owned by the government. If you take out a car loan or run up your credit card, the chances are good that the government is financing both your debt and that of your bank. And if you buy life insurance from the American International Group, you will be buying from a company that is almost 80 percent federally owned. Mr. Obama plans to argue, [the Obama administration says], that these government intrusions will be temporary. If that is true, then why is the Obama administration insisting and the Democrats in the Senate and the House are insisting that we take the Federal student loan program which works very well and turn it wholly into a government-run program; borrow a lot more money, maybe $500 billion or $600 billion over the next 5 or 6 years, and turn the Secretary of Education into a competitor for banker of the year instead of educator of the year? Just the size of this undertaking is enough to stagger the imagination. There are 19 million new student loans every year. They are made through 2,000 lenders at 4,421 schools. At 1,600 schools, one out of four of the student loans, you can get the money directly from the Federal Government. But ever since I was U.S. Secretary of Education in the early 1990s, students have preferred their local institutions. Now the President comes along and says we are going to have a lot of savings, we are going to have $87 billion in savings over the next 10 years, so we should end the student loan program as we know it and turn it all over to the government and have people stand in line at the U.S. Department of Education each year to get 19 million loans. The Senator from New Hampshire is the former chairman of the Budget Committee, the ranking member of the Budget Committee, perhaps the leading Senator in this body on budgetary matters. I would ask him this question: Is there really $87 billion in savings over the next 10 years which the President and the Democratic majorities should be able to spend?

Mr. ALEXANDER. That is a pretty big nightmare. The Senator and I both worked on ways of simplifying the Free Application for Federal Student Aid or FAFSA. There are millions of individuals and families this year in America who have to get this government form, fill it out, and tell all about themselves in order to get a Pell grant or apply for a student loan, one way or the other. That is very complicated. I have been trying to imagine how the U.S. Department of Education, one of the smallest departments in the country, which has in its higher education part of its division simply a mechanism for sending money out--Pell grants, paying bills--how it is going to make 19 million new loans a year. In my State of Tennessee, the nonprofit provider of student loans, one of the 2,000 lenders that exist in the country to serve students in New Hampshire or everywhere--these are some of the things they do. They have five regional outreach counselors to canvass Tennessee to provide college and career planning; they made 443 presentations through college fairs; they worked 12,000 students to improve their understanding of college admissions and financial aid; they provided training to over 1,000 school counselors so they could work with students; they sent out 1.5 million financial aid brochures for Tennessee students. I cannot imagine the Department of Education having the capacity to do that. I think the Senator is right. I think we are going to see long lines of very upset students, starting in January--because that is when they start filling out those forms--saying: What has happened here? I have to line up at the U.S. Department of Education to get my student loan, 19 million of us?

Mr. ALEXANDER. If I may interrupt the Senator for a moment, you mean the Congressional Budget Office, whose Director is appointed by the Democratic majority, has said that instead of $87 billion in savings, it is $47 billion; is that correct?

Mr. ALEXANDER. This $47 billion, just so I follow this, is the actual savings. Let me see if I can understand the figures a little better. The government's basic argument here is it can borrow money cheaper than banks can borrow money and then re-lend it to students, which is true. I think the government can borrow money at one-quarter of 1 percent. But the government is lending the money to students at about 6.8 percent depending on the loan. So even if it is $87 billion or $47 billion over 10 years, doesn't that mean the government is overcharging students who are getting student loans and then using that money for new programs?

Mr. ALEXANDER. These 19 million loans every year, we know who these people are. They are our sons and daughters. They are people in our families. Sometimes they have two jobs while they try to go to school. Maybe they have no job; they have gotten laid off and they are going back to school. They can get a student loan. But the government has borrowed the money at one-quarter of 1 percent and loaned it to them at nearly 7 percent and is taking that profit, whatever the amount is, and spending it on something else.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from New Hampshire and I be permitted to engage in a colloquy.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, we are back on the fiscal year 2010 Interior appropriations bill, which we started on Thursday of last week. Chairman Feinstein will be joining us shortly, but she asked me to say there is no reason why Members cannot come to the floor now and offer their amendments for the purposes of debate. We have a busy schedule ahead of us and want to try to complete action on this bill and the remaining appropriations bills for fiscal year 2010, so I ask my colleagues to please come and offer your amendments and work with our respective staffs so we can get as much done today as possible. Mr. President, I see no other Senator on the floor, so I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I congratulate the Senator from California for thinking of this. The late Alex Haley, the author of ``Roots,'' used to say: When an older person dies, it is like a library burning down. And many who participated in it or many who even saw the major events of the civil rights movement are growing older and their stories need to be told. So this is an important amendment with bipartisan support. I am glad the Senator from California so thoughtfully offered it.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I want to repeat for our colleagues and their staffs that the Interior appropriations bill, one of the most interesting pieces of legislation before the Congress, is before the Senate right now. We know some of our colleagues have amendments to offer. We have already received some of them. If any Senator would like to come to the floor to speak on those amendments this afternoon, there is time for him or her to do that. If they have not offered their amendments, I encourage them to do that because we would like to move the bill along. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. But what I plan to do is, if a Senator comes with an amendment for the appropriations bill, I will yield to that Senator, and then after that I will resume my remarks if I am not finished. Nuclear Power Mr. President, if health care were not our first concern today, energy and climate change would be. It is lurking in the shadows, having had a lot of work done in the House, and it is about to come before the Senate. So as to the remarks I wish to make today, if I had to put a title on them, I would choose this: What the United States should really fear about nuclear power. Communications experts say fear is the best way to get attention when you are trying to win an argument. Groups who oppose nuclear power have certainly mastered that technique by playing to economic, environmental, and safety fears. So I wish to introduce a little element of fear into my argument here. I want to suggest what could happen if we do not adopt nuclear power as a more important part of our energy future, if Russia and China and India and a lot of other countries go with nuclear--as they are now--while we get left behind. Are we going to be able to compete with countries that have cheap, clean, reliable nuclear power while we are stuck with a bunch of windmills and solar farms, producing expensive, unreliable energy or, more likely, not much energy at all? The whole prospect of the United States ignoring this problem-solving technology that we invented is what I fear most about nuclear power. Let me give you an idea of what I am talking about. A few years ago, in January 2006, the Chinese sent a delegation of nuclear scientists and administrators to the United States on a fact-finding mission. They toured the Idaho National Laboratory, the Argonne National Laboratory, and they visited GE and Westinghouse, trying to decide which technology to choose for their nuclear program. Now you might wonder why anyone would be seeking our advice about nuclear power when we haven't issued a construction permit to build a new reactor in the past 30 years. But as Kathryn McCarthy, deputy director of the Idaho National Laboratory, said at the time: The world still looks to us for leadership in this technology. They'd prefer to copy what we've already done. They don't like being on the cutting edge. Well, that may have been true in 2006, but it's not anymore. The Chinese eventually chose Westinghouse technology for their first reactors. At the time, Westinghouse was an American company. In 2007, Toshiba bought Westinghouse, so now it is a Japanese-based company. Then when the Chinese got their Westinghouse reactor, they insisted on having all the specifications so they could see how it was put together. That is what we call ``reverse engineering.'' As you might guess, China's next wave of reactors is going to be built with Chinese technology. By 2008, the Chinese had shovels in the ground. The first four Westinghouse reactors are scheduled for completion by 2011. They also bought a pair of Russian reactors, which should be finished around the same time. They started talking about building 60 reactors over the next 20 years and just recently raised it to 132. They're in the nuclear business. What have we accomplished in the meantime? Well, people in the United States have been talking about a ``nuclear renaissance'' in this country since the turn of the century. In 2007, NRG, a New Jersey company, filed the first application to build a new reactor in 30 years. They're still at the beginning of what promises to be at least a 5-year licensing process before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. No one really knows how long this will take, since as soon as the licenses are issued, opponents will file lawsuits and the whole thing will move to the courts. If they are lucky, they might have a reactor up and running by 2020. Other companies have followed suit, and there are now 34 proposals before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but nobody in the United States has yet broken ground. So it is not likely the Chinese will be coming to us any time soon for more tips on how to build reactors. In fact, we will probably be going to them. That is one aspect of what is going on in the world today. Here is another. As countries began constructing new reactors, it quickly became clear that the bottleneck would be in forging the steel reactor vessels. These are the huge, three-story-high, forged steel units that hold the fuel assembly--the reactor core. That means forging steel parts that may weigh as much as 500 tons. In 2007, the only place you could order a reactor vessel was at the Japan Steel Works, and they were backed up for 4 years. Everyone started saying: This is going to be what holds up the world's nuclear renaissance. They will never be able to produce enough of those pressure vessels. So what happened? Well, first, Japan Steel Works invested $800 million to triple its capacity. They are going to be turning out 12 pressure vessels a year by 2012. Then the Chinese decided to build their own forge. In less than 2 years, they put up a furnace that can handle 320-ton parts. They turned out their first components in June. Now they are building two more forges. So, you see, the Chinese will not be standing in line in Japan any time soon. The Russians are doing the same thing. They are in the midst of a big revival, planning to double the production of electricity from nuclear power by 2020. They are also building a forge and just cast their first 600-ton ingot in June. France, Britain, South Korea, and India are all following suit. Very soon, every major nuclear country in the world is going to be able to forge its own reactor vessels, except one--and that is us, the United States. No steel company in America is capable of forging ingots of more than 270 tons. We are still stuck in the 1960s. That means when it comes to building reactors, we will have to stand in line in Japan or somewhere else. In fact, just about everything in our first new reactors is going to be imported. The nuclear industry tells us that at least 70 percent of the materials and equipment that go into these first few reactors will come from abroad. That is because we have let our nuclear supply industry wither on the vine. In 1990, there were 150 domestic suppliers making parts for nuclear reactors. Today, there are only 40, and most of them do their business overseas. Of the 34 proposals before our Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 20 are designed by Westinghouse, now a Japanese company, and nine are from AREVA, the French giant. General Electric, the only American company left on the field, has partnered with Hitachi. They together sold five reactors to American utilities but fared poorly in the competition for Federal loan guarantees. Two utilities have now canceled those projects, and there are rumors that GE may quit the field entirely. They do not seem very enthusiastic anymore about nuclear anyway. Have you seen those GE ads for windmills? They are all over the place. Have you seen their ad for the smart grid, where a little girl says: ``The sun is still shining in Arizona''? That was pretty good too. Now have you seen any GE ads, in this day of concern about climate change, that say that 70 percent of our carbon- free electricity comes from nuclear power? I certainly haven't. Babcock & Wilcox is the one American company that stirred some interest recently when it announced plans for a new ``mini reactor.'' This is a 125-megawatt unit that can be manufactured at the factory and shipped by rail to the site, where several units can be fit together like Lego blocks. This left the impression that America might be innovating again, forging back into the lead. But the complete prototype for the Babcock & Wilcox reactor is still 2 years away, and then it may take another 5 years to get the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's design approval. Meanwhile, the Russians are already building a mini reactor that will be floated into a Siberian village on a barge to produce power. The Russians have already got orders for mini reactors from 12 countries. So in spite of Babcock & Wilcox's fine effort--and I am certainly proud of them--the Russians are considerably ahead of us. Let's take stock. There are 40 reactors now under construction in 11 countries around the word--not one of them in the United States of America. In fact, only two are in Western Europe: one in Finland and the other in France, both built by AREVA. All the rest are in Asia. Although we have not gotten used to it, Asia may soon be leading the world in nuclear technology. Japan has 55 reactors and gets 35 percent of its electricity from nuclear energy, almost double the 19 percent we get here in the United States. The Japanese have two reactors under construction and plans for 10 more by 2018. The Japanese are finding they can build a reactor, start to finish, in less than 4 years. That is less time than it takes to get one American reactor through licensing at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. South Korea gets nearly 40 percent of its electricity from nuclear-- that is twice as much as we do--and is planning another 8 reactors by 2015. So far, they have bought their reactors from the Japanese, but now they have their own Korean next-generation reactor--a 1,400- megawatt giant evolved from an American design. They plan to bring two of these on line by 2016. Taiwan also gets 18 percent of its electricity from nuclear and is building two new reactors. In September, Bloomberg News reported that Japan Steel Works' stock had risen 8 percent on the Tokyo Stock Exchange because of China's decision to double future construction from 60 to 132 new reactors. They figure they will get some of the action at Japan Steel Works. Much of China's $586 billion stimulus package is going toward developing nuclear power. ``While China had been focusing on building new coal plants,'' said Bloomberg, ``it has now shifted its focus to nuclear because of the environmental issue,'' said Ikuo Sato, president of Japan Steel Works, in Bloomberg. Meanwhile, India is embracing thorium, a technology a lot of people think may eventually replace uranium as nuclear fuel. Thorium is twice as abundant as uranium and doesn't produce the plutonium everybody worries will be used to make a bomb. There is a lot of enthusiasm for thorium among scientists in our country. But it is India that is going ahead, with 6 reactors under construction and 10 more planned. They began with a Russian design, but they are also trying some American technology they acquired in signing their 2005 agreement with the Bush administration. What about Chernobyl. Well, just like everybody else, Russia stopped all construction on new nuclear reactors after that horrible accident. But they learned their lesson and started constructing much safer reactors in the 1990s, completing the first in 2001. Now they have plans to expand along the lines of France, building two reactors every year from now through 2030. They have a very good reason. Russia has huge natural gas supplies, but it is wasting them by using one-third of it to produce electricity. They could get six times the price by selling natural gas to Western Europe. So they are replacing gas generation with nuclear--which is exactly the opposite of what we are doing here. Since 1990, every major power plant built in this country burns natural gas. We now get 20 percent of our electricity from natural gas--more than nuclear's 19 percent, and the natural gas percent is still going up. And be aware, all these countries that are developing nuclear just aren't building them for themselves. They are selling to the rest of the world as well. AREVA is building reactors in Finland, China, Italy, Brazil, and Abu Dhabi. The Russians have signed deals with China, Iran, India, Nigeria, and Venezuela. They are even selling to us. In July, Tenex, Russia's uranium corporation, signed a long-term contract to supply fuel to Constellation Energy, which has reactors in Maryland and upstate New York. It was the sixth contract Tenex signed with an American utility in the past 2 months. How did the Russians end up supplying us with uranium? It is a long, interesting story and the most important players stood and worked on this Senate floor. In 1996, Senator Sam Nunn, Senator Pete Domenici, and Senator Richard Lugar pioneered a remarkable deal with the post- Soviet Government, in which we would buy highly enriched uranium from old Soviet bomb stocks. The uranium would be sent to France, where it would be ``blended down'' from 90 percent fissionable material to 3 percent to be used in American reactors. For the last two decades, old Soviet stockpiles have supplied half our nuclear fuel. One out of every ten light bulbs in America is now powered by a former Soviet weapon-- one of the greatest swords-into-plowshares efforts in history, although few people seem to know about it. Now the Russians have learned to do de-enrichment themselves. They have decided they don't need France. They say: Hey, we don't have to import this stuff anymore; we will produce it here. Of course, producing things is one way countries get rich and its citizens improve their standard of living. Once upon a time we were pioneers in nuclear technology. Forty years ago, we were the only people in the world who knew how to deal with the atom. That is not true anymore. We have shied away from the technology while everyone else has forged ahead. Even Europe is coming back. The British have announced they are going nuclear. They have hired the French national electric company to help. Italy closed all its nuclear reactors right after Chernobyl but ended up importing 80 percent of their electricity at a huge cost. Now they have announced they are going back to nuclear as well. France already gets 80 percent of its power from nuclear and has the cheapest electricity in Europe, not to mention the second lowest carbon emissions, behind Sweden, which is half nuclear. France also sells $80 billion worth of electricity to the rest of Europe each year. Notice how well France did in the last turndown--it barely went into recession at all. That is not because the French spend less on government or work harder than us or take fewer vacations. It is because nuclear power is helping to keep their whole economy afloat. So does that mean we have fallen completely behind? Not at all. In fact, there is a great irony to all this. We still know how to run reactors better than anyone else in the world. Our fleet of 104 plants is up and running 90 percent of the time. No one else even comes close. France, for all its experience, is still at 80 percent. Other countries are even lower. We still understand the technology better than anyone else in the world. But because we have placed so many obstacles in our path, we aren't allowed to build reactors anymore. And that is what scares me. We are gradually losing our economic place in the world. Now a lot of people say: Well, what is the difference? So what if we fall behind on nuclear technology. We will forge ahead with something else. Well, there are several reasons to be concerned: First, there is energy security. America already spends $300 billion a year importing two-thirds of our oil from other countries. If we remain on the current path of no new nuclear power or start depending on other countries to build our reactors and supply us with fuel, we are going to be even more vulnerable than we are today. The best way to reduce imported oil, aside from ramping up domestic production, will be to use electricity to power cars and trucks. At first, we can plug our electric vehicles in at night when there is much unused electricity. After that, we should be using nuclear. We can't have Americans going to bed every night hoping the wind will blow so they can start their cars in the morning. Second, there is the matter of technological leadership. Americans produce, year in and year out, 25 percent of all the wealth in the world. Most of that wealth has been driven by new technologies. We were the birthplace of the telephone, the electric light, the automobile, the assembly line, radio, television, and the computer. But nuclear energy--perhaps the greatest scientific advance of the 20th century--is passing us by. The 21st century is going to run on clean, cheap, greenhouse-gas-free nuclear power. And, how can we criticize India and China for not reducing their carbon emissions when we refuse to adopt the best technology ourselves? Then there is weapons proliferation. In the 1970s, we gave up on nuclear reprocessing in the hope that by not dealing with plutonium, we would prevent nuclear weapons from spreading around the world. That has turned out to be an unwise decision. France, Britain, Russia, Canada, and Japan went right on reprocessing and no one has stolen plutonium from them. Instead, rogue countries, such as North Korea and Pakistan, have found their own ways to develop nuclear weapons. The technology of bomb making is no big secret anymore. The real problem is that by reneging on world leadership, we have left the field to others. For instance, right now the Russians are building a commercial reactor for Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. He is not exactly friendly toward the United States. To make things more interesting, Manhattan District Attorney Morganthau recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal that his office has recently uncovered evidence that Iran may be providing Venezuela with missile technology. But what worries me are these two issues: First, if we do decide to move toward a nuclear-based economy and we have to import 70 percent of the technology and equipment, how are we any better off than when we were importing two-thirds of our oil? We will just be creating jobs for steelworkers in Japan and China instead of the United States. Second, if we don't move toward a nuclear-powered economy but try to do everything with conservation and wind and solar, we are going to be sending American jobs overseas looking for cheap energy. So to ensure we have enough cheap, clean, reliable, no-carbon electricity in this country to create good, high-quality, high-tech jobs, here is what I believe we have to do. The United States should double its production of nuclear power by building 100 nuclear reactors in 20 years. Nuclear today provides 70 percent of our carbon-free electricity. Wind and solar provide 4 percent. Nuclear plants operate 90 percent of the time. Wind and solar operate about one-third of the time. The Obama administration's Nobel Prize-winning Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, says nuclear plants are safe and that used nuclear fuel can be safely stored onsite for 40 to 60 years while we figure out the best way to recycle it. Producing 20 percent of electricity from wind, as the Obama administration proposes, will require building 186,000, 50- story turbines--enough to cover an area the size of West Virginia--plus 19,000 miles of new transmission lines to carry electricity from remote to populated areas. One hundred new nuclear plants could be built mostly on existing sites. To produce 3 percent to 6 percent of our electricity, the taxpayers will be subsidizing wind to the tune of $29 billion over the next 10 years. The 104 nuclear reactors we have today were built basically without taxpayer subsidies. It will cost roughly the same to build 100 new nuclear plants, which will last 60 to 80 years, as it would to build 186,000 wind turbines, lasting 20 to 25 years. And this doesn't count the cost of transmission lines for wind. Finally, there will be twice as many green jobs created building 100 nuclear reactors as there would be created building 186,000 wind turbines. An America stumbling along on expensive, unreliable renewable energy, trying to import most of our energy from overseas, is going to be an America with fewer jobs and a lower standard of living. Nuclear opponents continue to prey on fear of nuclear power. The truth is, if we want safe, cost-effective, reliable, no-carbon electricity, we can no longer ignore the wisdom of the rest of the world. The real fear is that we Americans are going to wake up on one cloudy, windless day, when the light switch doesn't work, and discover we have forfeited our capacity to lead the world in creating jobs because we ignored nuclear power, a problem-solving technology we ourselves invented. Mr. President, I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Thank you very much. Would the Chair please let me know when I have 1 minute remaining. Monday on the Senate floor, I expressed my concern about the number of so-called czars in the White House and in the administration. I said then that the number of czars--I believe the number is now 32--is an affront to the Constitution. It is anti-democratic. It is a poor example of what was promised to be a new era of transparency. It is a poor way to manage the government. And it is the most visible symptom of this administration's 8-month record of too many Washington takeovers. Yesterday, the White House blog and a White House press secretary objected to what I said on Monday, pointing out that I had supported manufacturing czars and AIDS czars 6 years ago. Of course I did; I acknowledged that in my remarks on Monday. As I said Monday, there have always been some czars in the White House and in the government since Franklin D. Roosevelt was President. Some of them were appointed by Presidents, some of them were created by statute, and a few of them were confirmed by the Senate. There's never been anything like we've seen with this administration. Also on Monday, I joined in a letter from Senator Collins, Senator Bond, Senator Crapo, Senator Bennett, and Senator Roberts, making clear that not every czar is a problem. In that letter, we identified at least 18 czar positions created by the Obama administration whose reported responsibilities may be undermining the constitutional oversight responsibilities of Congress or express statutory assignments of responsibility to other executive branch officials. In this letter from Senator Collins, in which the rest of us joined, we said: With regard to each of these positions, we ask that you explain: the specific authorities and responsibilities of the position, including any limitations you have placed on the position to ensure that it does not encroach on the legitimate statutory responsibilities of other executive branch officials. Second, the process by which the administration examines the character and qualifications of the individuals appointed by the President to fill the position. And, third, whether the individual occupying the position will agree to any reasonable request to appear before, or provide information to, Congress. The letter goes on to say: We also urge you to refrain from creating similar additional positions or making appointments to any vacant czar positions until you have fully consulted with the appropriate Congressional committees. Finally, we ask that you reconsider your approach of centralizing authority at the White House. Congress has grappled repeatedly with the question of how to organize the Federal Government. We went into some detail about that, and asked respectfully that the President consult carefully with Congress prior to establishing any additional czars. I ask unanimous consent that this letter from six senators be included in the Record following my remarks.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Senator Collins and the five of us who joined in her letter were not the only Senators to be concerned about this issue. On Wednesday, Senator Feingold, the Democrat from Wisconsin, questioned President Obama's policy of policy czars and sent a letter to the President, just as we did. In that letter, Senator Feingold urged the President to release information about the role and responsibility of these czars, which is what we asked him to do in our letter as well. Senator Hutchison of Texas, in the Washington Post on September 13, wrote an excellent op-ed describing how the system of checks and balances is upset by an excessive number of Washington czars who are unconfirmed and unaccountable to the Congress, and who do not answer questions from those of us who are elected to ask such questions. I ask unanimous consent that Senator Feingold's letter to the President be printed in the Record following my remarks.

Mr. ALEXANDER. On Monday, I pointed out that not only Senator Hutchison and Senator Collins and the other Republican Senators have these concerns. Now Senator Feingold from the other side of the aisle has raised questions about these czars. I mentioned this Monday, but I want to repeat it in case the White House press office missed it: Senator Byrd, our President Pro Tempore, widely considered by all of us in the Senate to be the constitutional conscience of this Senate, was the first to write the president expressing concerns over the increasing appointment of White House czars. In his letter he said: Too often I have seen these lines of authority and responsibility become tangled and blurred, sometimes purposely, to shield information and to obscure the decision- making process. Senator Byrd went on to say that: The rapid and easy accumulation of power by White House staff can threaten the constitutional system of checks and balances. At the worst, White House staff have taken direction and control of problematic areas that are the statutory responsibility of Senate-confirmed officials. Senator Byrd continues: As Presidential assistants and advisers, these White House staffers are not accountable for their actions to Congress, to cabinet officials, and to virtually anyone but the President. They rarely testify before Congressional committees, and often shield the information and decision- making process behind the assertion of executive privilege. In too many instances, White House staff have been allowed to inhibit openness and transparency, and reduce accountability. Finally, I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record following my remarks a list of 18 new czars created by the Obama administration.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I want to make it clear to the White House Press Office that we are focused on those 18 new czars. We recognize there have been czars before, that for the reasons Senator Byrd, Senator Hutchison, Senator Collins, and others have described. We believe this is too many, and we take seriously our responsibilities under Article II of the Constitution to confirm officials who manage the government, to ask them questions, to approve their appropriations, and to withhold their appropriations when it's appropriate. We have these positions in the Executive Office of the President; there are 10 of them: central region czar, Dennis Ross; cyber-security czar, domestic violence czar, economic czar, energy and environment czar, and health czar. Those are some of the biggest issues facing Congress, and here are these czars with authority for policy close to the President but unaccountable to us. We have a senior director for information sharing policy, urban affairs czar, WMD policy czar, a green job czar, who resigned recently. Those are the positions in the Executive Office of the President, 10 new ones. Then there are eight more that are in departments or agencies, including: Afghanistan czar, auto recovery czar, car czar, Great Lakes czar, pay czar, Guantanamo closure czar, international climate czar, and the border czar. I described on Monday, as Senator Byrd has said more eloquently, the problems with too many czars. The first problem is the constitutional checks and balances described by Senator Byrd. The second problem is that this is a poor way to manage the government. When I was a young White House aide, I was taught that the job of the White House staff is to push the merely important issues out of the White House so you can reserve to the President the handful of truly Presidential issues for his attention. His job is to set the country's agenda, to see an urgent need and devise a strategy, meet the need and persuade at least half the people he is right. He can do that more effectively if the government is managed by Secretaries and Cabinet officers. Finally, czars are anti-democratic. Czars are usually Russian, not American. Czars are usually imperialists, not Democrats. The dictionary says czars are autocratic rulers or leaders. That is not consistent with the kind of government we want. It is alien to our way of thinking. Czars are becoming the most visible symbol of this administration's determination to have an increasing number of Washington takeovers: banks, insurance companies, student loans, car companies, even farm ponds. Some want to take over health care. Many Americans believe we have a runaway government with too many Washington takeovers, and the last thing we need are 18 new czars unaccountable to elected officials whose job it is to check and balance that government. I am glad in a way that the White House has noticed my comments and those of Senators Collins, Bennett, Hutchison, and others. I hope they will respond to Senator Collins' letter, to Senator Feingold's request, and to other admonitions. We call on the administration to answer questions posed by these Senators: Who are these czars? What is their role? What is their responsibility? How were they vetted? What limitations are on their positions to make sure they don't encroach on legitimate statutory responsibilities of other executive branch officials, and will they agree to a reasonable request to appear before Congress? I yield the floor. Exhibit 1 U.S. Senate, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Washington, DC, September 14, 2009. Hon. Barack Obama, President of the United States, The White House, Washington,

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I thank the Senator from California. It is a joy for me to work on this legislation because, first, I care so much about it, as she does--this is about the great American outdoors, which is an essential part of our American character--and because of the privilege of working with Senator Feinstein. She has the great advantage of having been a mayor of a big city and she is capable of making a decision and she is results oriented, so we are able to work easily together. It is the way I liked to work when I was Governor. She is broad-gauged and cares about this country and about its environment and its outdoors and about not only protecting and conserving the outdoors but making it possible for Americans--300 million of us--and the people who visit us to enjoy that great American outdoors. It is always a privilege to be in the Senate, but it is a special privilege to work on the outdoors--the great American outdoors--with Senator Feinstein from California. Last week, we celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I am not objective at all about the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I grew up there, went hiking there, and I live 2 miles from its border. One reason I care about the trails so much is because I have hiked them. One reason I care about the quality of the air so much is because I breathe it. One reason I care about having enough rangers and making sure their salaries are paid is because I know them. So that helps in my objective. But there was also a reminder. It was a beautiful day up on Newfound Gap, right on the border of North Carolina and Tennessee. Our mountains in the East are not as big as the mountains in the West. They are older, more mature. But the largest of the mountains in the Eastern United States are along the North Carolina and Tennessee border, 71 miles along the Appalachian Trail, in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. So there we were, at about 5,500 feet, at the place where President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, on the same day in 1940, a few years after the park was formed, dedicated the Great Smokies. But among other things on that beautiful day--and the Secretary of the Interior was there, Ken Salazar. It is good for our Western Secretary to get a good look at the Eastern park. Dolly Parton was there. She grew up in the next county, so she is our special ambassador for the Great Smokies, and there were all the Members of the Congress who were there from the area. But when we look back 75 years, what did we see? It was 1934. So here we were, in the middle of the greatest depression in our country's history, and what were we doing? Well, in Tennessee, we had the State legislature appropriating $2 million to buy land from families and from lumber companies to create a park. In North Carolina, they did the same thing. That only made $4 million. Madam President, $10 million was needed. So they collected another million dollars from the people of the area. Schoolchildren put pennies in jars. It is a wonderful story of how they got up to $5 million. Then one of the early leaders of the group organizing the Great Smoky Mountains National Park convinced John D. Rockefeller, Jr.,--who, I guess, is the grandfather of our Senator Rockefeller--to come; and the Rockefellers gave $5 million in honor of Laura Spelman Rockefeller, to match the $5 million the two States and all the people had contributed. That $10 million bought the park and gave it to the country. This was not like almost every other park. It was not just carved out of land the people already owned. It was given to the country in the midst of the Great Depression. The reason I bring up that today is because it is a reminder that even in difficult times we kept our priorities right. India has its Taj Mahal. Rome has its art. England has its history. But we have the great American outdoors. If, as Ken Burns has said, our national parks are America's best idea, we in Tennessee and North Carolina think that must mean the Great Smoky Mountains are the very best idea because so many more people visit it than visit any other park in America. But what those people did--whether it was the schoolchildren with the pennies, the Governors of the States, the legislators, the people in Asheville, NC, and Knoxville, TN, the civic leaders, whether it was the Rockefeller family--what they did also shows us the foresight of thinking ahead for the benefit of future generations. In 1934, the assistant chief ranger of this big, new park wrote a memo to the superintendent outlining the wildlife he found there. There were 100 black bears in 1934. There are 1,600 today. There were 315 wild turkeys in 1934. The other day I saw 21 outside my window 2 miles from the park. Seventy-five years ago in the Park, there were 12 whitetail deer in Tennessee and only 6 in North Carolina. They are all over the place today. There were no peregrine falcons, no river otters, no elk. They are there today. Twenty-five years ago, when as Governor of Tennessee I spoke at the 50th anniversary of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, there was no Federal law controlling acid rain, there was no organization called Friends of the Smokies, but both are great successes today. Those Federal laws were passed and Friends of the Smokies has contributed $30 million. So that celebration two weeks ago reminded us of the foresight 75 years ago. Those examples are everywhere in our culture today. I am reading Douglas Brinkley's book about Teddy Roosevelt called ``The Wilderness Warrior.'' It is so thick, it will break your back if you carry it around, but it is a wonderful story of how our President, Teddy Roosevelt, during his relatively short term in office, had the foresight to make sure we have many of the wildlife refuges, the national parks, the national forests, and the others we enjoy today. This bill Senator Feinstein so ably described is the responsibility we have as stewards of that great tradition today, to look ahead to the future about preserving and protecting the great American outdoors; looking to the future as Teddy Roosevelt did, as the schoolchildren did in Tennessee, as John Muir did when Yosemite was created, as Lady Bird Johnson did half a century ago. As we look ahead, we should remember that we are custodians of that tradition. What should we hope for as we work on this bill and we plan ahead? My hope of the future is that we finish cleaning up the air, so in the Great Smokies, we can celebrate the gray haze about which the Cherokee sang instead of seeing smog. I hope we do more to use our nearly 400 national park properties to teach about what it means to be an American so our children and our immigrants can know that story. I hope we can become better students of the remarkable environmental diversity of our country. Just within our Great Smoky Mountains National Park, we have 128 species of trees, as many as they have in all of Europe. I hope we do a better job of creating picturesque entrances and conservation easements to protect the wildlife and the stunning viewscapes that are not only in our parks but near our parks. I am going to do my best--and Senator Feinstein and I have talked about our concern about this, and I have shared that concern with Secretary Salazar on many occasions, including last week when he visited Tennessee--I am going to make sure we pay attention to the perils of what some conservationists are calling energy sprawl, so that in our enthusiasm for renewable energy and alternative energy, which we need, we don't place 50-story wind turbines and acres of square miles of solar thermal plants in areas that damage the treasured landscapes we have spent a century trying to protect. It doesn't make sense to destroy the environment in the name of saving the environment. I hope we can build on the legislation, too, that Congress enacted in 2007 when we expanded exploration for natural gas and oil in the Gulf of Mexico and for the first time created what I like to call a conservation royalty that contributes one-eighth of the revenues that are collected from that drilling. One-eighth of those revenues go to the Land and Water Conservation Fund. In this case, it goes to the State side portion, which is used by communities for local parks and local greenways. Suffice it to say, the most popular parks in America are not the Great Smokies and Yosemite; the most popular parks are the city parks and the community parks and the suburban parks, the parks down the street. The Land and Water Conservation Fund is the source of funding for many of those parks and much of that open space. In the 1960s, Congress, as a result of a report by the first Commission on American Outdoors that was chaired by Lawrence Rockefeller, recommended that we take some of the money we receive from offshore drilling and exploration and use it for the Land and Water Conservation Fund. We had never really done that, but it makes good sense. It is good stewardship. Where there is an environmental burden, which we sometimes have to authorize, we should pay for it with an environmental benefit. That is the trade between offshore exploration and money for land and water conservation funding to create city parks. One other thing. I hope we find additional ways, through increased private contributions as well as the kinds of Federal appropriations we talk about today, to support and care for the nearly 400 different national parks properties we have, as well as our other public lands and treasured landscapes and national forests and along our coastlines and our ridgelines in this country. The Senator from California gave a very thorough statement of the various programs in our bill. I won't repeat all of those numbers, but I do have a handful of observations I wish to make. Obviously, we don't agree on every detail. But we are not here to agree on every detail, we are here to see whether we can produce a result. I believe we have done that. In the process, I thank Senator Feinstein for addressing a number of the concerns I and many of our colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle have. She has been terrific to work with in that respect. As she said, this bill is $225 million below the President's budget request, even though it is substantially higher than last year's funding levels. I suppose if I were doing this all by myself, I would have spent less money, but that is not the way our system works. We each make our arguments, fight our spending battles, decide on a budget resolution, and we go from there. So I believe Chairman Inouye and the vice chairman, Thad Cochran, have allocated the funds made available to the Appropriations Committee by the Senate in a fair and responsible way. Similarly, with the funds we have had to work with on the Interior bill, Chairman Feinstein and I have made our best judgment and done our best to meet the many competing priorities for the varied programs here. She mentioned some of the good things in the bill, and I wish to underscore just a few. We have continued the Centennial Initiative started under President Bush by adding over $130 million to increase park operations in preparation for the national park centennial in 2016. This is a good time to think about the condition of our national parks. Many of us visit them, so we are familiar with their maintenance needs and their personnel needs. Some are reading the book I mentioned about Teddy Roosevelt, and millions more, starting September 27, will see Ken Burns' film about the national parks called ``The National Parks: America's Best Idea.'' I am confident the film will remind us of how important those parks are to our national character and how determined we are to make sure that over the next several years, as we approach the centennial, we support them properly. That includes the law enforcement rangers who ensure the safety of the public in our parks, the interpreters who explain its history and America's history, and the biologists and scientists who teach us about the plants and animals that live there. This bill helps to expand and improve that experience. We have also provided necessary increases to pay for the rangers who keep visitors to all of our national forests, wildlife refuges, and other public lands safe; health care professionals who provide medical care; the Indian Health Service teachers who provide education in the Indian community--Senator Feinstein described that. Simply keeping pace with the inflationary pay costs and health benefits for park and forest rangers, Indian health care professionals, and other critical personnel required a $540 million increase in funding over the last year. Senator Feinstein talked about fires. It seems as though when we read about fires or see them on television they are all in California, and our hearts go out to the families who have lost their homes and, a few, their lives as a result of these fires. But the fires are not all in California. The national Forest Service is busy spending too much of its time on fire protection. It has an effective fire protection unit that is part of its job, but what we have been doing is paying for firefighting the way we used to pay for the Iraq war. We did it off budget. We did it a little later. I congratulate the administration and Senator Feinstein for putting into this budget the amount of money we think we will actually need to fight fires this year. We have added over $570 million compared to last year for firefighting and fire prevention programs. I hope that is enough. I hope we have made a budget that allows us to deal with that so we don't find ourselves coming back with supplementary appropriations and so we don't disrupt all of the other important programs in the Forest Service and in the Department of the Interior. As important as the firefighting function is to the U.S. Forest Service, we don't want to turn the U.S. Forest Service into the U.S. fire service. Let me make one comment about our process. One of the major criticisms of the appropriations process in recent years has been the failure of the Senate to take up each bill individually. This denies the Members of this body an opportunity to offer amendments and help shape the final bill. It is important to note that this is the first time in 4 years that the Interior bill has been brought to the floor of the Senate as a stand-alone measure for purposes of examination and amendment by all Senators. This is a tribute to Chairman Inouye and Vice Chairman Cochran, and I thank Senator Reid and Senator McConnell for the fact that we are here today and Senators should now come forward to offer their amendments. This is the sixth appropriations bill to complete Senate floor action. We are nearly halfway through the process. I believe all of my colleagues share my desire that we are able to complete all 12 individual appropriations bills through the normal order and send them to the President for his signature. It is a much fairer way to operate. It gives those of us who are elected a chance to have our say, and it saves the taxpayer a lot of money by permitting the efficient operation of the government on an orderly, budgeted basis. Let me close by saying again how much I have enjoyed working with Senator Feinstein and how much I look forward to that privilege in the future. I thank the President, and I yield the floor.