Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar recently announced plans to cover 1,000 square miles of land in Nevada, Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah with solar collectors to generate electricity. He is also talking about generating 20 percent of our electricity from wind. This would require building about 186,000 50-story wind turbines that would cover an area the size of West Virginia, not to mention 19,000 new miles of high-voltage transmission lines. Is the Federal Government showing any concern about this massive intrusion into the natural landscape? Not at all. I fear we are going to destroy the environment in the name of saving the environment. The House of Representatives has passed climate legislation that started out as an attempt to reduce carbon emissions. It has morphed into an engine for raising revenues by selling carbon dioxide emission allowances and promoting renewable energy. The bill requires electric utilities to get 20 percent of their power mostly from wind and solar by 2020. These renewable energy sources are receiving huge subsidies all to supposedly create jobs and hurry us down the road to an America running on wind and sunshine, as described in President Obama's inaugural address. Yet all this assumes renewable energy is a free lunch, a benign so- called sustainable way of running the country with minimal impact on the environment. That assumption experienced a rude awakening on August 26 when the Nature Conservancy published a paper entitled ``Energy Sprawl or Energy Efficiency: Climate Policy Impacts on Natural Habitat for the United States of America.'' The report by this venerable environmental organization posed a simple question: How much land is required for the different energy sources that power the country? The answers deserve far greater public attention. By far, nuclear energy is the least land intensive. It requires only 1 square mile for one reactor, that is to produce 1 million megawatt hours per year, enough electricity for about 90,000 homes. Geothermal energy, which taps the natural heat of the Earth, requires 3 square miles. The most landscape consuming are the biofuels ethanol and biodiesel, which require up to 500 square miles to produce the same amount of energy. Coal, on the other hand, requires 4 square miles, mainly for mining and extraction. Solar thermal heating, a fluid with large arrays of mirrors and using it to power a turbine takes 6 square miles. Natural gas needs 8 and petroleum needs 18. Wind farms require over 30 square miles. This sprawl has been missing from our energy discussions. In my home State of Tennessee, we just celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, America's most visited national park. Yet there are serious proposals by energy developers to cover mountains all along the Appalachian chain from Georgia through the foothills of the Smoky Mountains through the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, all the way up to the White Mountains of New Hampshire with 50-story wind turbines because the wind blows strongest across mountaintops. I can tell from the Presiding Officer's smile that she is thinking of the strong winds on the White Mountains which are among the strongest in the entire United States of America. Let's put this into perspective. We could line 300 miles of mountaintops from Chattanooga, TN, to Bristol, VA, with wind turbines and still only produce one-quarter of the electricity we get from one reactor on 1 square mile at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Watts Bar nuclear plant. The 1,000-square mile solar project proposed by Mr. Salazar would generate on a continuous basis 35,000 megawatts of electricity. You could get the same output from 30 new nuclear reactors that would fit comfortably on existing nuclear sites. And this does not count the thousands of miles of transmission lines that will be needed to carry the newly generated solar power through and to population centers. There is one more consideration. Solar collectors must be washed down once a month or they collect too much dirt to be effective. They also need to be cooled by water. Where amid the desert and the scrubland will we find all that water? No wonder the Wildlife Conservancy and other environmentalists are already opposing solar projects on some western lands. Renewable energy is not a free lunch. It is an unprecedented assault on the American landscape. Before we find ourselves engulfed in energy sprawl, it is imperative we take a closer look at the advantages of nuclear power. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a summary of the Nature Conservancy paper entitled ``Energy Sprawl or Energy Efficiency,'' which was published on August 26.

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, how much time is remaining in morning business?

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I congratulate the Republican leader, the Senator from Kentucky, on his remarks. He made it very clear that we on the Republican side of the aisle want health care reform, but our definition of that is a little different from that on the other side of the aisle. We want health care reform that reduces costs--costs to the American people when they buy health insurance and the costs of the government of the American people. We do not want more debt and another Washington takeover, which we are seeing so much of these days. President Obama said in his address to us that he ``will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits--either now or in the future. Period.'' That is good. As David Brooks wrote in the New York Times this past Friday: This sound bite [of the President] kills the House health care bill. It kills the House health care bill, because it would add $220 billion to the deficit over the first 10 years of its operation and another $1 trillion over the next 10 years after that. The President's sound bite about the deficit would effectively knock out the bill passed by the Senate HELP Committee as well. According to a recent letter from the Congressional Budget Office to the ranking member of the Senate HELP Committee, Senator Enzi of Wyoming: The 10-year cost of the coverage expansion [of that bill] to the Federal Government, including such a change in Medicaid eligibility, would probably exceed $1 trillion. So that is off the table. There appears to be growing bipartisan concern about a health care bill that might add to the debt. Senator Warner of Virginia said on Monday: My feeling is, [health care reform] can't just be paid for in a 10-year window. It has to be paid for in the out years as well. That is Washington-speak for over the long term. He says: This is so much bigger than health care. It goes to the deficit. It goes right to the heart of our competitiveness. That is Senator Warner of Virginia. I couldn't agree more. All of the health care reform bills produced so far by the Democratic Congress-- either in the Senate or in the House--flunk the first test, which is reducing cost--cost to the American people and cost to the American government. In July, the Congressional Budget Office Director, Douglas Elmendorf, said that the House bill and the Senate HELP bill did not propose ``the fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of Federal health spending by a significant amount.'' Additionally, the Congressional Budget Office has indicated that the House bill would result in a ``net increase in the Federal budget deficit of $239 billion'' over 10 years. This is likely a low-ball estimate, because it assumes that Congress will increase taxes by $583 billion over the next 10 years. So if we are going to implement health care reform without increasing our debt, how are we going to pay for it? Who is going to pay for it is the more precise question. Here are some of the answers that have been proposed so far by the Democratic side of the aisle. No. 1, grandma's Medicare is going to pay for it. The bills--and the President's own plan, which we have yet to see the details of--propose ``Medicare savings.'' Nice words for Medicare cuts. If there is $500 billion in savings to be found in Medicare, we should use it to keep Medicare solvent, because the trustees of Medicare say that we are now spending at such a rapid rate that we will run out of money for Medicare by 2017. We should not use Medicare cuts to pay for a new government program. We should use any Medicare savings to make Medicare stronger. No. 2, the way to pay for these bills we have been seeing in the House and the Senate is to shift the costs to the States. This is done by expanding Medicaid, which is the largest government-run program we have today. Almost 60 million low-income Americans have their health care from Medicaid, which the Federal Government pays about 60 percent of and the States 40 percent. The plans we have been hearing about have the Federal Government expanding Medicaid coverage--this is the State plan I was talking about--from 60 million to 80 million or 90 million people and, after a few years, asking the States to pick up their additional share of the cost of that expansion. According to the National Governors Association, expanding Medicaid to 133 percent of the Federal poverty level would cost the States an additional $31 billion per year. Although details are still lacking-- and we may find out more today about the proposals from the Senate Finance Committee--the Democratic Governor of Tennessee, Governor Bredesen, said on Friday that he is concerned about the plan being proposed by Senator Baucus and that his guess was it might cost our State as much as $600 million to $700 million per year. In Washington that doesn't sound like a lot of money, but to Tennessee that is a lot of money. We had a big fight a few years ago over whether to have a new State income tax. We don't now have one, and our former Governor didn't succeed on that. People got very upset about that. That would only have raised $400 million. But this is an increase of $600 million or $700 million that would, after a few years, be shifted to the States. That is not all. Since States only reimburse doctors and hospitals for about 60 percent of their cost of serving the 60 million patients on Medicaid, these expansion proposals of Medicaid usually also require States to increase reimbursements to doctors and hospitals. Increasing reimbursements to doctors and hospitals would basically double the increased cost to States. So you can see why earlier in the debate many of the Governors--including many of the Democratic Governors of this country--objected to this proposal. Governor Bredesen called those proposals ``the mother of all unfunded mandates.'' We know where unfunded mandates lead in our State, and that is higher State taxes. No. 3, in addition to cutting Medicare and increasing State taxes by expanding Medicaid, the bills we have seen ask small businesses to help pay for the bills through employer mandates and fines. Under the Senate HELP Committee bill, for example, firms with more than 25 workers would have to pay the new tax, with penalties equal to $750 per year per full-time employee and $375 for part-time employees. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that this would raise $52 billion over 10 years. The House bill would impose over $200 billion in fines on businesses who cannot afford to finance their workers' health coverage. There is another consequence to that. We have often heard the President say: Well, if you like your health care plan, you can keep it. But, what he doesn't go on to say is that if we create this government plan and if we require employers to pay $750 per full-time employee and $375 for a part-time employee, many employers are going to look at that and decide it is much cheaper to pay the $750 or the $375 for an employee. So they will just pay the government a fine and let the government plan offer health care to their employees. It is estimated by most groups that have looked at the plans we have seen that the combination of a government plan and an employer tax will result in millions of Americans losing their employer-provided health insurance. Then there is one other way of paying for the bill: to tax people who have health care insurance. That is why the Democratic Senator from West Virginia, Mr. Rockefeller, is quoted as saying today that the bill coming out of the Finance Committee--which we haven't seen yet--has a big tax on coal miners, on the middle class. That is according to Senator Rockefeller. So we are barking up the wrong tree. This debate about health care should be about reducing costs. That should be the first goal of what we mean when we say the words ``health care reform''--reducing the cost to individuals and families and small businesses that are buying health care plans and paying for insurance--that is 250 million individuals in the country today--reducing the cost to the government in higher health care spending. That is why Republicans have suggested we should start over. A lot of good work has been done. A great many of us understand much better this complex subject we are dealing with. There is no embarrassment in saying we have gotten to this point; we are headed in the wrong direction. The Mayo Clinic, the Democratic Governors, the Congressional Budget Office, millions of Americans in town meetings are saying: You are heading in the wrong direction. You say: Ok, fine. We hear you. Let's start over. How should we start over? Instead of passing 1,000-page bills that add to the debt and increase costs, we should work step by step to re- earn the trust of the American people. The era of 1,000-page bills is over. Smaller steps in the right direction are still a very good way to get where we want to go. There are some steps we can take, some things we can do today to move step by step in the right direction and to lower costs. No. 1, allowing small businesses to pool and reduce health care costs by putting their resources together would increase accessibility for small business owners, unions, associations and their workers, members and families to health care. This legislation has already been considered in the Senate and in the House. It is nearly ready to pass. Estimates are that passing a small business health insurance plan would permit small businesses to offer coverage to one million more Americans. No. 2, reform medical malpractice laws so runaway junk lawsuits don't continue to drive up the cost of health care. The President mentioned that the other night in his remarks. I congratulate him for that. But, we should do even more than he suggested. We have 95 counties in Tennessee, and in 60 of them we don't have an OB/GYN doctor because they will not practice there anymore. Their medical malpractice insurances premiums are too high--over $100,000. So pregnant women have to drive a long way--to Memphis or to Nashville or to other large cities--for their prenatal health care or to have their babies. That is a way to lower costs--reduce junk lawsuits. There is some disagreement about how much that would save, but there is no disagreement that junk lawsuits contribute to higher medical costs. No. 3, allow individual Americans the ability to purchase health insurance across State lines. As a former Governor, I jealously protect States rights. I like States to have responsibilities. But, I think, in terms of health care, we should allow more purchasing of policies across State lines, as people do with their car insurance today. That is a third way to take a step toward health care reform that actually begins to lower costs. No. 4, we don't have to pass a new bill in order to insure more Americans. About 20 percent of the uninsured Americans--maybe 10 million or 11 million--are already eligible for existing programs, such as Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program. They are not enrolled. We should sign them up. No. 5, we could create health insurance exchanges. I hear that from the Democratic side; I hear it from the Republican side. These are marketplaces in each State so individuals and businesses can shop around and find a cheaper and a better source of health insurance. No. 6, all of us have talked about encouraging health information technology, which the Government Accountability Office has said ``can improve the efficiency and quality of medical care and result in costs savings.'' I have suggested six areas we could work on together to reduce cost. We have forgotten, in this health care debate, what we set out to do. The first goal of health care reform is to reduce cost--the cost of health care to Americans, to American businesses, and the cost to Americans of their government, which is spiraling out of control in debt because of the cost of health care. We are spending 17 percent of everything we produce in this country--and we produce 25 percent of all the wealth in the world year in and year out--on health care; twice as much on health care as a percentage as most industrialized countries. If we don't reduce costs, we will bankrupt the government and make health care unaffordable for most Americans. The President of the United States was right to say he will not sign a bill that increases the deficit. Since that eliminates all the legislation the Democratic Congress has produced so far, I hope we will now take Republican advice and start over and get it right. A good way to begin would be for the President to send us a health care reform bill that not only doesn't add to the debt but that begins step by step to reduce costs to the American people and to the American Government. And by taking those steps, we can re-earn the trust of the American people. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask to speak as in morning business.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, today I want to challenge two popular misconceptions in the Waxman-Markey climate change and energy bill that is now before the Senate after passing the House of Representatives. The first is the idea that deliberately raising energy prices will somehow be good for job growth and the economy. The second is that, whatever the problems created by Waxman-Markey, they can mostly be resolved by building more windmills. Waxman-Markey started out as a bill to reduce carbon emissions in order to deal with climate change. It has ended up as a $100-billion-a- year energy tax nailed to a renewable energy mandate that will saddle consumers with expensive energy for years to come. Instead of a broad- based, national clean energy policy, Waxman-Markey has given us a narrow, expensive national windmill policy. I believe cheap energy means good jobs. My perspective, of course, comes from Tennessee, where Alcoa has shut down its smelter where my Dad worked. They are waiting for a cheaper electricity contract from the Tennessee Valley Authority. Goodman, a company in Fayetteville that makes a large percentage of all the air conditioners in the United States, tells me that if their electricity prices go up too much then those jobs will go overseas. Eastman Chemical employs 7,000 Tennesseans and uses coal as a feedstock. The company says if Waxman-Markey goes through they too might be headed overseas. The Valero refinery in Memphis employs 600 people refining fuels, including jet fuel for Federal Express at its Memphis hub. Waxman-Markey would cost Valero $400 million or more per year. Today its profits are $40 million per year at that refinery. We have two big supercomputers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in part because of our abundance of low-cost electricity. Just one of these machines consumes 7 megawatts. Nationwide, computers use 5 percent of our electricity and it is still growing. Our Governor has attracted two manufacturing plants to make polysilicon for solar cells--these are the ``green jobs'' everyone loves to talk about. Each of those plants uses 120 megawatts. If they are going to make affordable solar cells, they can't pay high electricity costs. A third of Tennessee's manufacturing jobs are in auto manufacturing. Auto parts suppliers watch their costs, including electricity costs, and if they go up too much they will be making auto parts in Mexico and Japan instead of Tennessee and Michigan. Last December 10 percent of Nashvillians, even with TVA's relatively low residential electric rates, said they couldn't afford to pay their electric bills. So let's step back for a moment and ask; What kind of America are we trying to create with this climate-change and energy bill? I suggest we want an America in which we have enough clean, cheap, and reliable energy to create good jobs and run a prosperous industrial and high- tech society. In order to support the American economy that creates about 25 percent of the world's wealth, we need to produce about 25 percent of the world's energy. We want an America in which we are not creating excessive carbon emissions and running the risk of encouraging global warming. We want an America with cleaner air--where smog in Los Angeles and in the Great Smoky Mountains is a thing of the past--and where our children are less likely to suffer asthma attacks brought on by breathing pollutants. We want an America in which we are not creating ``energy sprawl'' by occupying vast tracts of farmlands, deserts, and mountaintops with energy installations that ruin scenic landscapes. The great American outdoors is a revered part of the American character. We have spent a century preserving it. We do not want to destroy the environment in the name of saving the environment. We want an America in which we create hundreds of thousands of ``green jobs'' but not at the expense of destroying millions of red, white, and blue jobs. It doesn't make any sense to employ people in the renewable energy sector if we are throwing them out of work in manufacturing and the high tech sector. That is what will happen if these new technologies raise the price of electricity and send manufacturing and other energy-intensive industries overseas searching for clean energy. We want new, clean, energy-efficient cars, but we want them built in Michigan and Ohio and Tennessee, not Japan and Mexico. We want an America where we are the unquestioned champion in cutting-edge scientific research and lead the world in creating the new technologies of the future. We want an America capable of producing enough of our own energy so we cannot be held hostage by some other energy-producing country. None of those goals are met by Waxman-Markey. This bill produces a huge new tax on the economy. In addition, it requires 15 percent of our electricity to come from a narrowly defined group of renewable sources defined as wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass. While promising and intriguing, we cannot expect renewable energy to do anything more in the foreseeable future than to supplement our current base load electricity production. It cannot replace it. What the Waxman-Markey bill proves, once again, is that one of government's biggest mistakes is taking a good idea, renewable energy, and expanding it until it does not work anymore. Republican Senators have a better idea: Produce more American energy and use less. First, we should build 100 new nuclear reactors over the next 20 years, just as we did from 1970 to 1990. That would double our level of nuclear generation to 40 percent of our electricity. Add 10 percent for Sun and wind and other renewables, another 10 percent for hydroelectric, maybe 5 percent more for natural gas. By 2030, we begin to have a low-cost, low-carbon, clean energy policy that also puts us within sight of meeting the goals of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. Step two is to electrify half of our cars and trucks. I think we can do it within 20 years. This should reduce our dependence on foreign oil by one-third, clean the air, and keep fuel prices low. According to estimates by the Brookings Institution scholars, we could do this with the unused nighttime electricity we have today without building one new powerplant. Step three is to explore offshore for natural gas, which is low carbon, and oil. We should use less but more of our own. The final step is to double funding for energy research and development and launch mini-Manhattan Projects like the one we had in World War II to meet seven energy challenges: improving batteries for plug-in vehicles, making solar power cost competitive, making carbon capture a reality, safely recycling used nuclear fuel, perfecting advanced biofuels, designing green buildings, and providing energy from nuclear fusion. Basically, our policy should be to conserve and use our nuclear gas and oil resources until we figure out how to make renewable and alternative energies more reliable and cost competitive. Instead of following this simple, fourfold, low-cost clean energy strategy, the Obama administration wants to spend tens of billions of dollars covering an area the size of West Virginia with 50-story wind turbines while it squirms uncomfortably at every mention of nuclear power. According to the San Francisco Chronicle last week: The Department of Energy is starting a new partnership with the nation's six largest wind turbine manufacturers in an effort to provide 20 percent of the nation's energy from wind by 2030. In his inaugural address, the President spoke eloquently of powering the country with the wind, the Sun, and the Earth. In June, the Wall Street Journal asked Boone Pickens, Amory Lovins, Al Gore, and President Obama how to reduce dependence on foreign oil and contribute less to climate change. These 4 came up with 24 suggestions, from placing veterans in green jobs to generating 20 to 30 percent of electricity by wind, but made not one mention of nuclear power. Over the next 10 years, the wind industry will receive direct Federal taxpayer subsidies of about $28 billion, according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. Most of this cost is due to the renewable production tax credit that is worth about 3 cents per kilowatt hour to wind developers and costs taxpayers $26 billion. Fully 75 percent of the renewable tax credit goes to wind. Solar, geothermal, biomass, and hydropower combined make up the remaining 25 percent. There will be $1 billion for construction subsidies through clean renewable energy bonds. There will be an investment tax credit for residential and small industrial wind turbines. There will be accelerated depreciation of small wind turbines. Plus, there will be $11 billion provided by the stimulus for building the ``smart grid'' and new transmission lines. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation tells us the entire U.S. grid needs upgrading, but the transmission projects announced so far will all go to bringing wind and solar electricity from remote places to population centers. All this does not even mention the Waxman-Markey renewable energy mandate, which will have the practical effect of forcing utilities in many States to buy government-subsidized wind energy they do not necessarily need from far-away States with better wind resources. Let me give you an example. Between 2000 and 2004, the TVA constructed a 30-megawatt wind farm on Buffalo Mountain in Tennessee at a cost of $60 million. It is the only wind farm in the Southeast. You will read in the papers that having a 30-megawatt wind farm means generating 30 megawatts of electricity. That is only what they call its ``nameplate capacity.'' That is not real output. In practice, Buffalo Mountain has only generated electricity 19 percent of the time since the wind does not blow very much in the Southeast. That means TVA is paying $60 million over 20 years to generate 6 megawatts of electricity. Multiply this out, and you will see it means spending $10 billion to generate 1,000 megawatts, which makes Tennessee's wind mills more expensive than the costliest nuclear reactor. TVA considers the Buffalo Mountain wind farm to be a failed experiment. In fact, looking for wind power in the Southeast is a little like looking for hydropower in the desert. Nevertheless, Waxman- Markey will now force TVA and every other utility in the country to get at least 12 percent of their electricity from a narrowly defined group of renewable sources. Hydroelectric dams, for example, probably the best source of renewable energy, do not count because--well, I am not sure exactly why. But environmental groups have been opposing them since the 1950s. Nuclear does not count as renewable, either, even though we have plenty of uranium and reprocessing the fuel could stretch it out for hundreds of years. Instead, the TVA is now requesting bids for 1,250 megawatts of renewable power that it does not really need and may not be able to use. Wind now produces 1.3 percent of America's total electricity and 4.5 percent of our carbon-free clean electricity. Yet, according to the Energy Information Administration, wind turbines are being subsidized at 30 times the rate of all other renewables and 19 times the rate of nuclear power, which, by the way, provides 70 percent of our carbon- free, clean electricity. So instead of a clean, broad-based energy policy or even a clean, renewable energy policy, what we have in practice is a national windmill policy. But wait a minute. They tell us all this is not really about producing clean, cheap energy; it is about creating green jobs. There are two problems with this argument. First, there must be at least as many welders, mechanics, construction workers, and engineers who would be employed in building 100 new nuclear plants during the next 20 years as in all the so-called renewable energies together. Second, while there may be hundreds of thousands of green jobs, there are tens of millions of red, white, and blue jobs in America that will be quickly lost because of rising energy prices. Let's look at California. The Golden State has been imposing renewable energy mandates for years. It has not built a base load coal or nuclear plant in 20 years. Meanwhile, it has built renewables, renewables, and renewables, with plenty of expensive natural gas to back them up. All of this contributed mightily to the California electricity shortage of the year 2000. Now the State has the highest electricity prices in the continental United States west of Washington, DC. Manufacturers are leaving in droves. Even Google and Yahoo are building their server farms elsewhere. With all of this job loss, the State had an 11.9-percent unemployment rate in July and, until recently, a $28 billion budget gap. Its bond rating is now the lowest of the 50 States. I cannot believe the high cost of electricity in California has not contributed to all of this. Has this tempered the State's enthusiasm for expensive renewable energy? Apparently not. California lawmakers are developing legislation to increase the current 20 percent renewable standard to 33 percent by 2020. State energy agencies have concluded it could cost $114 billion or more to meet the 33 percent mandate, more than double what the original 20 percent requirement cost. That comes to $3,000 per Californian. Yet, according to the Wall Street Journal's news page on July 3 of this year: The state auditor warned this week that the electricity sector poses a ``high risk'' to the state economy. A staff report from the state energy commission also warns that California can find itself uncomfortably tight on power by 2011 if problems continue to pile up. Utilities complain that the ambitious renewable-energy mandates, combined with tougher environmental regulations on conventional plants, are compromising their ability to deliver adequate power. ``Conflicting state policies are a problem,'' said Stewart Hemphill, senior vice president of procurement at Southern California Edison. Renewable energy is intriguing and it is useful. But today it is 4 percent of our electricity. It has many challenges. What many people forget is that wind and solar energy is only available, on average, about one-third of the time. And electricity today cannot be stored in commercial quantities with current technologies; you either use it or you lose it. When you see 1,000 megawatts of wind and solar power reported in the newspaper, remember it is only about 300 megawatts because these sources only produce electricity about one-third of the time, compared to American nuclear plants producing electricity 90 percent of the time. Denmark, with the world's biggest percentage of wind power, claims to get 20 percent of its electricity from wind. Yet it still produces 47 percent of its power with coal and imports more than 25 percent of its electricity from Sweden and Germany. Moreover, it is not clear that its carbon emissions have decreased at all over the last 10 years. Worse yet, because of wind variability, Denmark must export almost half of its wind power to Germany and then import nuclear and hydropower back from Germany, Sweden, and Norway. Then there is what conservation groups are calling energy sprawl and which we are only beginning to come to grips with. One nuclear plant generates 1,000 megawatts and occupies 1 square mile. One big solar thermal plant with giant mirrors generating the same 1,000 megawatts in the western desert will occupy 30 square miles. That is more than 5 miles on a side. To generate the same 1,000 megawatts with wind, you would need 270 square miles of 50-story wind turbines. That is an area more than four times the size of Washington, DC, or that is an unbroken line of turbines along our ridgetops from Johnson City, TN, to Harrisburg, PA. If wind farms move offshore, you would need to line the entire 127-mile New Jersey coast with windmills 2 miles deep just to replace one nuclear reactor that sits on a square mile. We have not even talked about when these wind farms outlive their useful life cycle of 20 years or so. Who is responsible for their removal? We have already seen this problem in Hawaii and Altamonte Pass in California. The developers should be required to put up bonds to ensure these turbines are taken down in case the developers walk away. For those of us in the Southeast where the wind blows less than 20 percent of the time, they say use biomass, which means burning wood products in sort of a controlled bonfire. That is a good idea as far as it goes. It might conserve resources and reduce forest fires, but we would need a forest 1\1/2\ times the size of the 550,000-acre Great Smoky Mountain National Park to feed a 1,000-megawatt biomass plant on a sustained basis. It would take hundreds of trucks each day to deliver the wood to the biomass plant. It is hard for me to see how this reduces carbon emissions. Already we are beginning to see the problems. Boone Pickens, who said wind turbines are too ugly to put on his own ranch, recently postponed what was to be America's largest wind farm because of the difficulty of building transmission lines from west Texas to population centers. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District pulled out of another huge project to bring wind energy from Sierra Nevada for the same reasons. The transmission lines were meeting too much opposition, particularly from environmentalists. We hope renewable energy can be reliable and low cost enough to supplement, but when we are talking about using wind energy as a substitute for base load energy, we haven't thought about what it is going to look like in practice. In conclusion, let's take a look at the true source of base load electricity, nuclear power. Nuclear power already produces 20 percent of our electricity and 70 percent of our carbon-free electricity. It is so profitable, there is enough to pay back construction loans and still have low rates. For example, TVA's Brown's Ferry will be repaid in 3 years not 10 as had been expected. Nuclear power receives very little in the way of Federal subsidies. All 100 plants built between 1970 and 1990 were built with private funds. The Price-Anderson insurance program for nuclear plants has never paid a penny of taxpayer money in insurance claims. There are other myths surrounding nuclear power besides subsidies. We need to dispel those. Nuclear opponents claim we don't know what to do with the fuel. That is not true. Scientists, including the administration's Nobel Prize winning Secretary of Energy, Dr. Chu, tells us we can store used fuel safely onsite for 40 to 60 years while we work out the best way to recycle the used fuel. We can't wait any longer to start building our future with clean, reliable, and affordable energy. The time has come for action. We can revive America's industrial and high-tech economy with the technology we already have at hand. The only requirement is that we open our minds to the possibilities and potential of nuclear power. As we do, our policy of cheap and clean energy based on nuclear power, electric cars, offshore exploration, and doubling the energy research and development will help family budgets and create jobs. It will also prove to be the fastest way to increase American energy independence, to clean the air, and to reduce global warming. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in morning business.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I believe it is time for us in Congress to admit that we do not do ``comprehensive'' well, and that the era of the 1,000-page bill is over. Look at immigration in 2007. Some of the best Senators here worked day and night trying to deal with that issue--Senator Kennedy, Senator Kyl, Senator McCain, Senator Martinez, and many others. They worked and they got 34 votes at first, not the 60 they hoped. Then finally they got 46 votes, 14 votes shy of the votes needed to pass a comprehensive immigration bill. Or look at the economy-wide cap and trade as a way of dealing with climate change and clean energy. Senator McCain and Senator Lieberman worked on a bill 2 or 3 years ago. Last year the Warner-Lieberman version of the bill got 48 votes and it needed 60 votes. Earlier this year we had 66 or 67 Senators, including two dozen Democrats, who voted to say don't put the economy-wide cap and trade through the so-called reconciliation process, the budget process which would take only 50 votes to pass. Then, add to that, health care is in the ditch. The President has said there can't be any deficit added by the health care bill, so that kills deader than a doornail the House health care bill which has been worked on by several committees over there. It kills deader than a doornail the Senate health care bill because both add to the debt in the next 10 years and, according to the Congressional Budget Office and others who have reviewed it, add to the debt in the 10 years after that. So the President said he won't sign a bill with any deficit, the House bill is deader than a doornail, the Senate bill is deader than a doornail, and we still have unresolved problems even if you fix the debt problem. We have the President saying he is going to take the savings out of Medicare to pay for the bill. Many of us believe that any Medicare savings ought to be spent on Medicare. We ought not take money from Grandma's Medicare and spend it on anybody other than Grandma, because the program is about to go broke in 2017. The Democratic as well as the Republican Governors are worried about what the Governor of Tennessee called ``the mother of unfunded mandates,'' when these bills say we are going to expand Medicaid and we might pay for it a few years in Washington but after that we are going to shift it to the States with hundreds of millions of dollars of new State taxes. Employers are worrying about raising taxes in a recession. Older Americans, seniors, are worried about whether some government official is going to say you can't have your hip replaced because you are 70 years old. If debt hasn't killed the Senate and the House bills, all these other issues are still out there. I propose we take a page from a famous little book which was widely passed out in Iowa and New Hampshire in 1995 and 1996. It is called Lamar Alexander's ``Little Plaid Book.'' I used it when I ran for President of the United States. Obviously not enough people read it for me to be successful. It has lots of good instructions about rules, lessons, and reminders about running for office and making a difference, whether you are President of the United States or president of your senior class. Here is rule 259: Keep in mind that enough small steps in the right direction will still get you where you want to go. Mr. President: Keep in mind that enough small steps in the right direction will still get you where you want to go. I think we should take that advice. I think it is plainly obvious that we in Congress have been biting off more than we can chew--on immigration, on health care, and on other issues. We have been producing 1,000-page bills which, in truth, most Members of Congress have not even read and in which voters have no confidence, and out of which will come unintended consequences and results that are bad for our country. The worst consequence is that the ambition of ours is so large, to solve these problems, that it inevitably adds to the debt-- the national debt, the Government's debt, our taxpayer debt--at a time when we are adding $9 trillion to the debt in just 10 years and everyone is worried about how we are going to pay that back; and at a time, fairly or unfairly, when the American people are saying the new administration, it seems, has a new Washington takeover every other day: taking over banks, taking over insurance companies, taking over student loans--nobody asked them to take over student loans, they are just going to take them all over, all 15 million student loans are going to be run out of the U.S. Department of Education--taking over your farm ponds, maybe taking over health care, taking over car companies, maybe taking over climate change by having a czar in the Environmental Protection Administration wave a magic wand and impose it on the country. The American people see 32 so-called czars who are unaccountable and it looks like a runaway Federal Government with no checks and balances. Senator Byrd, the senior Democrat, has warned about the consequences of these unaccountable czars. Senator Hutchison, Senator Collins-- senior Republicans--have warned about that as well. Instead of thousand-page bills that do not succeed and in which the people of this country have no confidence, I suggest we change course, we follow rule 259 in the ``Little Plaid Book,'' and we begin to work on major issues facing our country, step by step, to re-earn the trust of the American people, to begin to solve the big challenges of this country. We bite off what we can swallow. We make sure we get it right and after we have taken the first steps then we can take another series of steps until we eventually resolve the problem. A few steps in the right direction is a good way to get where you want to go. How would this work in practice? Let's take health care. Instead of a trillion-dollar thousand-page comprehensive health care government-run plan, as a first step we might allow small business pooling to reduce health care costs, increase accessibility for small business owners, unions, associations and their workers, members and families. This bill has been here for 4 years. It is ready to pass. There are actually competing bills. But the estimates are it would add a million workers that small businesses could afford to cover by insurance. That is a good step in the right direction. We might reform medical malpractice laws so runaway junk lawsuits don't continue to drive up the cost of health care. In Tennessee, there are 60 counties where there are not any OB/GYN doctors. That means mothers in those 60 counties of Tennessee have to drive a long way, they have to drive to Memphis, maybe 60 miles, to get the prenatal health care to have their babies. The President mentioned the other night some steps about junk runaway lawsuits, so there is a second small step we could take that could make a big difference about cost. Third, we could allow individual Americans the ability to purchase health care across State lines as they can with car insurance today. We can probably agree on that here and it would probably make a difference. I used to be a Governor so I have an aversion to not respecting State lines, but in this case we may need to do this because the cost of health insurance could come down if we did it and cost is what we are focused on. No. 4, we could ensure that Americans who currently qualify for existing programs such as Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program but are not enrolled get signed up. There are 11 million Americans, 20 percent of all the uninsured people in this country, who are eligible for current government programs called Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program but have not signed up. Rather than wringing our hands about whether to pass some new thousand-page bill to try to run up the debt and deal with uninsured people, why don't we sign up the uninsured people who are already eligible for programs, and, No. 5, create health insurance exchanges so Americans can find affordable coverage. The President mentioned that the other night. It is in almost all the Republican bills. In other words, that is just a marketplace, a shopping center where you can go look for a variety of programs. No. 6, we could enact meaningful insurance market reforms, meaning you are guaranteed you can get a policy and that if you have a preexisting condition, you can get affordable coverage. If we did this, this would probably raise the cost of insurance for some Americans. It would mean that every American would either have to be automatically enrolled or have to be enrolled. But a lot of Americans are getting tired of paying an extra $1,000 on their health insurance just so you do not have to buy any until you are on the way to the emergency room. So maybe we can do that as well. Those are just six steps. But six steps of that size in the right direction are a good way to get where we want to go. Then, if we can pass those, maybe we can pass six more. Or take clean energy. What do we have facing us out of the House of Representatives? A massive contraption, spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year, causing us to lose millions of jobs under an economy-wide cap-and-trade climate bill. That climate bill that is proposed by the House would raise the electric bill for every American and raise the price of your fuel at the gasoline tank. It is a high-cost energy and climate change bill. Well, instead of a high-cost energy and climate change bill, how about taking a few steps in the right direction toward a low-cost one? One. What about building 100 new nuclear plants in 20 years? That would double the amount of nuclear power we produce. Nuclear power is 70 percent of our carbon-free electricity. Is not carbon-free electricity supposed to be our goal? Did we not invent nuclear power in the Atoms for Peace Program? Is not the rest of the world now way ahead of us? And have not our Navy submarines operated safely since the 1950s and effectively with nuclear power and does not Dr. Chu, the Energy Secretary for this administration, a Nobel Prize winner, say they operate safely in America and that we can safely store the waste for the next 40 or 60 years while we decided how to reprocess it so it does not produce plutonium? The answer to all that is yes. So why not build 100 nuclear plants in 20 years? We have done it before, we can do it again. Two. We can make half the cars and trucks plug-in electric cars and trucks in 20 years. I think we can agree on that on both sides of the aisle. We can do that without building any new power plants because we have so much unused electricity at night; if we plug in at night at a cheap rate, we can fuel our cars and reduce our imported foreign oil, keep our fuel prices low, use less gas, clean the air, and deal with climate change all at once. Three. Offshore exploration for natural gas and oil. We need plenty of natural gas if we want our manufacturing companies to stay here with their jobs. We need plenty of natural gas. Every new big power plant built in the last 20 years has been a natural gas plant because it has less carbon than coal. We do not want to be importing natural gas in the same way we import oil. So let's do that. Four. Then double clean energy research and development. Instead of subsidizing entrepreneurs, let's have a mini Manhattan Project for the most promising efforts to make solar costs competitive, to make possible the recapture of carbon from existing coal plants, to have better electric batteries, to have advanced biofuels from crops we do not eat. So there are four steps in the right direction on clean energy which would actually lower our prices, instead of a 1,000-page bill, which would begin to collect hundreds of billions of dollars a year and put much of it in a slush fund that Congress would spend and raise your taxes, have all sorts of unforeseen consequences, send manufacturing jobs fleeing overseas; that would be what we should not do. Immigration. I mentioned immigration before and how the best Members of this body were trying hard on immigration, and it fell of its own weight. I do not think we can pass a comprehensive immigration bill. But I think we can take several steps in the right direction, such as a secure work card, a tamper-proof worker ID card, to make sure workers are legal. Senator Schumer has talked about that. I join him in talking about it. Most of the people who are illegally here are here to work. If they have to prove they are legally here, that will dry up the number of people illegally here and then we can deal with that. Second, we could achieve full operational control of our borders. President Bush and the Congress made a lot of progress on that, not always recognized, but we need to finish it. And third, help legal American immigrants and new Americans learn English and learn civics and learn American history and assimilate into our society and learn what it means to be an American. We can take the first steps on debt and fiscal responsibility, instead of more bailouts and doubling our debt, which is the route we are on. We can end government ownership of car companies, we can have a bipartisan commission to control spending. We call that the Gregg- Conrad bill because it means the commission would decide how to control spending, recommend it to us, and we would vote up or down, or a similar BRAC-like Commission to do the same thing. There are other steps we can take to reduce the debt. We might not be able to reduce it all in 1 day or all in one bill. But a few steps in the right direction to reduce the debt are a good way to get where we want to go. The same on taxes. Instead of a complicated Tax Code that penalizes working families, we probably would fail if we came in with a comprehensive proposal to change the Tax Code. In fact, President Bush asked two respected former Members of the Senate, John Breaux and Connie Mack, and others to recommend a plan to us. They recommended a pretty good plan, and it got lost in the dark. Nobody ever heard another word of it, probably because it was a comprehensive plan. Why do we not take a few steps in the right direction, such as an optional one-page flat tax, such as doubling the child tax credit to make it easier for parents to be better parents, such as ending the death tax on families with assets of less than $5 million? And then coming up soon: financial regulatory reform. We had a bipartisan breakfast this morning on this subject. Fifteen Senators attended, listened to Senator Dodd, a Democrat, and to Senator Shelby, a Republican, talk about financial regulatory reform. After the near collapse of the economy a year ago, we all know we need that. We would be best off doing it in a bipartisan way. But, again, rather than come up with a 1,000- or a 2,000-page bill on financial regulatory reform, maybe we can take a few steps in the right direction. Bipartisanship helps, but it is not, as some might say, an opportunity to sing ``Kumbaya.'' The Senate is a place for differences of opinion vigorously expressed. If we do not have those, we would not be here. The real value of bipartisanship is a better bill and a bill in which the people who elected us will have confidence. Such bipartisanship is absolutely essential to any comprehensive bill and even to a few steps. We had it on the Energy bill of 2005, which got 74 votes. We had it on the America Competes Act, an early version of which got 70 cosponsors. The Gang of 14 had it when we were dealing with Supreme Court nominees. On the controversial TARP vote, we had bipartisan support with 74 votes. How did we get it? We worked in the open with no secrets, everyone gets credit. I am afraid that even when we have that spirit, the problems we have to tackle are so large we need to begin to solve them in pieces. These are problems we must solve. But we are not a debating society. In the end, we need to get a result. I have concluded that the best way to get a result on health care, on immigration, on other major issues facing our country is to put aside the 1,000-page bills, and re-earn the trust of the American people by working step by step to begin to solve the challenges facing our country. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, according to news accounts, there are approximately 32 or 34 so-called czars in the Obama White House and government. Respected voices in the Senate--Senator Byrd, a senior Democrat and Senator Hutchison, a senior Republican--have pointed out that these czars are an affront to the Constitution. They are anti- democratic. They are a poor example of a new era of transparency, which is what was promised to this country. I would add that they are a poor way to manage the government, and they seem to me to be the principal symptom of this administration's 8-month record of too many Washington takeovers. We have an AIDS czar, an auto recovery czar, a border czar, and a California water czar. We have a car czar, a central region czar, and a domestic violence czar. There is an economic czar, an energy and environment czar, a faith-based czar and a Great Lakes czar. The list goes on, up to 32 or 34. One of these, for example, is the pay czar, Mr. Kenneth Feinberg, the Treasury Department's Special Master for Compensation. He will approve pay packages at seven firms receiving TARP funds, thus deciding how much pay is too much. This will affect the top earners at some of the major corporations in America. According to Mr. Feinberg, in answer to some questions, he said: The statute provides guideposts but the statute ultimately says I have discretion to decide what it is that these people should make and that my determination will be final. Anything is possible under the law. That is the pay czar. Then we have a manufacturing czar. The manufacturing czar's name is Mr. Ron Bloom. He is also the car czar. We have had manufacturing czars before in other administrations, but as Rollcall pointed out on September 8, Mr. Bloom's background and new position differs from the two czars who served under former President George W. Bush: Bloom is a former union official, remaining close to leaders in organized labor. Bush's manufacturing czars were placed in the Commerce Department. Bloom, on the other hand, was entrusted with a high profile Presidential task force on autos, and will operate within an office that has broad authority over domestic policy. He will head the auto task force which is in the Treasury Department. According to the policy director for the AFL-CIO, Mr. Bloom is expected to have a major role in the development of climate change legislation. So-called buy American provisions that favor home-grown products, and tax credits for domestic industry need to be included, said the policy director for the AFL/CIO, in the climate change provision. If it's not done right, the President could lose votes, said the AFL/CIO Policy Director. In other words, Mr. Bloom may end up being the protectionist czar as well. Then there is the health czar, a very distinguished Tennessean, Nancy-Ann DeParle, a very able woman I know well. But who is in charge of health care policy? Is it the Secretary of Health and Human Services, confirmed by the Senate, accountable to the Congress, accountable, therefore, to the people of the country? Or is it someone in the White House who, an administration official says will ``wake up every morning focused on health care reform, and she is going to be focused on that the entire day through?'' There have been czars in the White House, at least since President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Of the 32 or 34 we have today--and I am using those two numbers because there are different reports and 2 or 3 czar positions are vacant--only 8 are confirmed by the Senate. We have had czars before, but there has never been anything quite like this. Let me take my concerns one by one. Article I of the Constitution of the United States gives to the Congress the appropriations power and sets up, in articles II and III, the executive and judicial branches, a system of checks and balances to make sure no one branch of the Federal Government runs away with the government. Senator Robert Byrd, the President pro tempore of the Senate, wrote a letter to President Obama on February 23. Senator Byrd, who is often called the Constitutional conscience of the Senate, expressed his concern over the increasing appointments of White House czars and the relationship between these new positions and their executive branch counterparts, noting: 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. That is Senator Byrd speaking. He goes on to say: 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 programmatic areas that are the statutory responsibility of Senate-confirmed officials. Continuing: As presidential assistants and advisers, these White House staffers are not accountable for their actions to the 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. More recently, one of the senior Republicans, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, who is the senior Republican on the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, said in an op-ed in the Washington Post: I oversee legislation and agencies that cover policy areas as vast and varied as trade, technology, transit, consumer protection and commercial regulation. As many as 10 of the 32 czars functionally fall under my committee's jurisdiction. Yet neither I nor the committee chairmen have clear authority to compel these czars to appear before our panel and report what they are doing. The Obama administration presented only two of these officials for our consideration before they assumed their duties. We have had no opportunity to probe the others' credentials. That is Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record following my remarks the comments of Senator Robert Byrd and the op-ed of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Mr. ALEXANDER. As the Senator said, many of these czars have no vetting by the Senators, no appropriation requests to be considered by us, no testimony given, and answer no hard questions. Who is making the policy, then, on health care, on climate change, on energy? I have been reading President James K. Polk's diaries. I may be the only one in the United States reading them these days. They are actually very interesting. He wrote down every night what he did that day, back in the 1840s. Among the things he did, he had a Cabinet meeting every Tuesday and Saturday and every major issue that came before him, whether it was the war with Mexico, annexation of Texas, the argument with Great Britain about what to do in Oregon--he submitted all those questions to his Cabinet, and then the Cabinet, of course, had to go before the Congress and testify. He didn't always agree with the Cabinet. Secretary of State Buchanan disagreed with President Polk quite a bit, but Secretary Buchanan then had to go before the Congress and come back and tell the President what he heard. That was a long time ago, but what the Framers had in mind was checks and balances where the President leads the country, the Cabinet manages the government, and the Cabinet, as the managers of the government, are accountable to the people through their elected Representatives. The 32 or 34 czars are not representative of the way the American system of government is supposed to work. This is not an era of transparency. It creates so much centralization of power that it is the antithesis of freedom, which is the principal characteristic, the principal aspect of the American character. The second aspect of this large number of czars that is troublesome is the issue of managing the government. Forty years ago, I worked in the White House for President Nixon under a wise man named Bryce Harlow. I ask unanimous consent to proceed as in morning business until I am finished with my remarks.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. Harlow had worked for President Eisenhower. He was a wise counselor to President Johnson. He knew a lot about how the American Government is supposed to work. He said to me, then a very young staff member--he said: Lamar, our job here in the White House is to push the merely important issues out of the White House so that we can reserve to the President only that handful of truly Presidential issues. George Reedy, who was Lyndon Johnson's Press Secretary, wrote: The job of the President is three things--to see an urgent need, to develop a strategy to meet the need, and persuade half the people he's right. Mr. Reedy didn't say anything about managing the Government of the United States out of the White House. He talked about leading the country. Our current President is very skilled at persuading half the people he is right. He has demonstrated that in an election. He continues to demonstrate that with his speeches. That is not the issue. The issue is whether he ought to bring into the White House, or closer to him into the government, a large group of men and women who are accountable to him but not accountable to anybody else. It is not good for the President of the United States, I would submit, to have close to him people he listens to who do not have to listen to anybody else, or at least who do not have to listen to the elected Representatives of government. Everyone knows the first thing that happens when a new President is elected is people pick offices, and which office do they pick? They want the office closest to the President because it is an unwritten rule in Washington DC, that influence in Washington is measured in direct proportion to the number of inches one is physically from the President of the United States. So the First Lady usually ends up with the most influence. After that, go right down the hall in the West Wing over to the Executive Office Building. After a while you get out around the Cabinet offices. I used to be in one of the Cabinet offices in the first President Bush's administration. It is true, the persons with the most influence with the President are almost always the men and women who are closest to him. The other aspect of management that this seems to contravene in the White House is the ``one thing at a time'' idea. One thing at a time is best exemplified, I suggest, by President Eisenhower when he said ``I shall go to Korea.'' He said that more than a half century ago when the big issue before the country--there were many, but the biggest issue was the Korean war. President Eisenhower said, in October of the election year, ``I shall go to Korea,'' and in December he went. And he said to the American people, ``I will focus my attention on the war in Korea. It will have my full attention until the matter is concluded.'' Because he was President and because he had capacity for leadership, people believed he would probably get that one thing done. In fact he did because, in our system of government, people know if the President selects a single issue--say it is health care, say it is climate change, say it is resolving the debt, or fixing Social Security--if he picks one thing and throws himself into that for as long as he is there, the odds are he is going to wear everybody else out. He might have to compromise a little bit along the way. I used to think this as Governor--and the Presiding Officer was once Governor in Virginia. Often our best proposals would get changed in the legislature. I learned a long time ago you could either condemn that or say: Well, they improved my proposal. Give the other side some credit, and go on to the next issue. But a Governor and certainly a President who picks one thing can get a lot done. We have a lot of very talented people in and around the President. The President himself is highly intelligent and well liked by the American people, as well as he is by those of us in the Senate. But sometimes I am afraid the Obama White House resembles the Harvard Law Review meeting where everybody has a bright idea, everybody is very smart, but everyone forgets that someone has to be the operator. Someone has to make it run. Someone has to pick one thing and lean into it for as long as it goes. My point is, having a large number of bright advisers or czars for every issue under the Sun, clustered around the President, coming up with bright ideas, and who are unaccountable to the Congress for most of what they have to say, is not the best way for a President to pick a single, major issue--let's say health care--and lead the country. Finally, the number of czars we now have today, who have accumulated over the last several administrations and today have reached a record level is anti-democratic. Czars are usually Russians; they are not Americans. Czars are usually imperialists, not Democrats. The dictionary says a czar is an autocratic ruler or leader or an emperor or king. A czar is not associated with a democracy, not associated with an era of transparency. Czars are alien to our way of thinking and our way of government. I am afraid czars are becoming a symbol of this administration and the number of Washington takeovers. Let me not just use my own words, a New York Times article today said: But one year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers set off a series of federal interventions, the government is the nation's biggest lender, insurer, automaker and guarantor against risk for investors large and small. 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. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record this article from September 14 following my remarks.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Czars are becoming a symbol of a runaway government in Washington with too many Washington takeovers. Dr. Samuel Johnson, the British moralist a few centuries ago, was once introduced to a talking dog in a London pub. The proud owner of the dog asked Dr. Johnson what did he think of how well his dog talked. Dr. Johnson is reported to have said, he was not so impressed with how well the dog talked, but that the dog talked at all. That is about the way I feel about the nearly three dozen White House czars and government czars. I am not so worried about who they are, I am worried that the czars are there at all. I believe that the American people in addition to respected Senators, such as Senator Byrd on the other side of the aisle, and Senator Hutchison on this side of the aisle, sense this is a problem. My respectful suggestion to the President is along the same lines as Senator Byrd and Senator Hutchison have made. I believe it is time to push these czars out of the White House, and leave the management of government to the managers of government in the Cabinet and the positions in the departments of government who are accountable to the Congress. The positions who are accountable for their confirmation, accountable to answer the questions of Members of Congress, accountable for appropriations that have to be approved by Congress before they can spend the people's money. That is the American way. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the list of czars published in the newspaper Politico on September 4.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, how much time is remaining?

Mr. ALEXANDER. Will the Chair please let me know when 1 minute is remaining--after 9 minutes?

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, the assistant Democratic leader, in his eloquent remarks, mentioned Ted Kennedy's maiden address, which is a tradition we have here in the Senate. We try to wait for an appropriate time before we say much, and then we try to say something we think makes a difference. I waited an appropriate time and made some remarks on the floor in support of legislation that would help put the teaching of American history and civics back in its rightful place in our schools so our children could grow up learning what it means to be an American. I know the Presiding Officer has a great interest in that subject as well, and she and I have worked on that together. I proposed that we create summer academies for outstanding teachers and students of United States history. Ted Kennedy was on the floor. He was the chairman or ranking member of the committee that handled that at the time. He came over afterwards and said: I will get you some cosponsors. The next thing I knew, he had 20 Democratic cosponsors for my little bitty bill that I had introduced. However well I thought of him before that, I thought even better of him after that. I think it is a small example of why he was so effective here in what he cared about. I remember him talking about taking his family--his extended family-- once a year to some important place in America, some place that made a difference. He was especially taken with their trip to Richmond, I believe it was, where they went to the place where Patrick Henry went down on one knee and made his famous address. I guess one reason he was so interested in U.S. history was because he and his family were and are such a consequential part of it, but he made a big difference in what we call the teaching and learning of traditional American history. On another occasion, he called me up to his hideaway--he had been here long enough to have a great room somewhere; I do not know where it is, but it has a great view of the Capitol--to talk about Gettysburg and what we could do to preserve that. Then, we were working together, when he died, with Senator Byrd, who has been such a champion through U.S. history, on legislation that would tie the teaching of American history to our national parks, which we are celebrating this year, with Ken Burns' new movie, and with other ways to try to help use those nearly 400 national park sites we have to teach American history. He and I and David McCullough had breakfast, for example, and talked about David McCullough teaching a group of teachers about John Adams at the John Adams House in Massachusetts, as one example. Then, of course, that turned to what was Ted Kennedy going to do about finding an appropriate place to honor John Adams in Washington, DC. That was another piece of unfinished business Ted Kennedy left that others of us will have to continue to work on. That is why he got along so well here. When he cast his 15,000th vote, I remember saying the sure-fire way to bring a Republican audience to its feet was to make an impassioned speech against high taxes, against more Federal control, and against Ted Kennedy, and he laughed that great big laugh of his. But it was true. But almost everyone on this side will say there was no one on that side who we would rather work with on a specific piece of legislation because no matter how much we might disagree with him--and we certainly did on many issues--when it got to the point where it was time to decide: Can we do something? he was ready to do something. And his word was good. And his ability to help pass an important piece of legislation was unquestioned. Plus, we liked him. We liked his spirit, and we liked his personality. My first engagement with Senator Kennedy was as a very young man when I came here in 1967 as a young aide to then-Senator Howard Baker. Senator Baker, who was the son-in-law of Senator Dirksen, then the Republican leader, teamed up with Ted Kennedy, the younger brother of the former President, and they took on the lions of the Senate, Sam Ervin of North Carolina and Everett Dirksen, and won a battle over one man, one vote. I was the legislative assistant on this side and Jim Flug, the longtime friend and aide of Senator Kennedy, was the legislative assistant on that side. I am here today, as we all are, to pay our respects to Senator Kennedy. Maybe some of us can help with some of that unfinished business, such as helping to make sure we expand the idea of teaching American history in our national parks to larger numbers of outstanding teachers and to outstanding students of U.S. history; and continuing the effort to do something about the long lines of adults in America who are waiting to learn our common language--English. Ted was very interested in that, as I am. But most of all, what I wish to say is what I believe most of us feel: We will miss him. We will miss his big voice, we will miss his big smile, and we will miss his big presence. Thank you, Madam President. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I often think how the best stories in the Senate are not the political stories. We can all recount them-- Senator Inouye's bravery in World War II, leading to a Congressional Medal of Honor; the former majority leader, Bill Frist, performing open heart surgery on General Petraeus when he was accidentally shot in Fort Campbell; Ben Nighthorse Campbell on the Olympic judo team; Jim Bunning in the Hall of Fame; Jim Inhofe circling the world in an airplane the way Wiley Post did; Ted Stevens flying the first cargo plane into Beijing in 1944 at the end of World War II; and then after the elections of 2004, we had Ken Salazar from Colorado, 15th-generation American, whose family came to this country so early; we had Barack Obama with his incredible story; and then we had Mel Martinez in the same year. Despite the emotion of all those stories, the story of Mel Martinez stands out to me. As the Senator from Illinois said, imagine growing up in Cuba--a good life. Not a rich life, but a good life--so well recounted in this book, ``A Sense Of Belonging,'' that Senator Martinez wrote. Suddenly the Castro regime comes, it is 1958, and one day your parents put you on an airplane and send you to Miami, not knowing whether they will ever see you again. Then foster homes, then bringing your parents over, going to Florida State, meeting Kitty, becoming the first Hispanic lawyer, I guess, in Orange County, and then the mayor and then a Cabinet member, then Senator, then Republican National Committee chairman--what a terrific story, so well told in this book. One thing about our country that is unique is we believe anything is possible. The rest of the world looks at us and thinks that we Americans are very naive, but constantly we prove that anything is possible, over and over again--often with the election of a President from unusual circumstances, as we just had. But the story of Mel Martinez, his escape from Cuba's communism, his coming from that, speaking no English, to what he has already accomplished, and now moving on to yet another career, this one in private life, is an inspiration for our country. He has enriched this body. He says in his book: My journey has taught me that it is not an empty cliche that this country is a land where dreams can and do come true. His life shows that. We have enjoyed his friendship. We appreciate his example for the country, and we wish him and Kitty well for the next chapter in their lives.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, this year the National Association of Farm Service Agency County Office Employees, NASCOE, is celebrating its 50th anniversary. NASCOE was founded in Memphis, TN, in 1959 in an effort to provide a nationwide association through which county committee employees of the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service, ASCS, could render better service to American agriculture by having a national network for the exchange of ideas and information and to facilitate closer cooperation in working toward solution of mutual problems. In the USDA Reorganization Act of 1994, Congress combined the ASCS, the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation, and the agricultural lending programs of the Farmers Home Administration into a single Farm Service Agency. Today, NASCOE continues to represent the county office employees of the ``new'' FSA. In Tennessee last year, 250 NASCOE employees provided valuable assistance to 90,000 producers through a wide range of Federal programs from conservation to price support and helped them cope in times of emergency and disaster. I think we can all recognize the value of the local Farm Service Agency office to farmers and ranchers, and I commend NASCOE on its dedication to FSA county employees and the farmers they serve. I congratulate NASCOE on its 50th anniversary and hope that they will continue to assist in conserving and improving our Nation's natural resources and agriculture industry.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I believe I have 15 minutes, and I would ask the Chair to let me know when 2 minutes remains.

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, we have two speeches by the President of the United States today and tomorrow. The speech today is to the schoolchildren of America, and the one tomorrow night is to us--to a joint session of Congress and to the country. For the last several days, there has been a small uproar about the President's speech to schoolchildren. In some ways, that is very understandable. The country is very wary right now of more Washington takeovers. We have seen takeovers of banks and insurance companies and car companies and student loans and even farm ponds and health care, and all of a sudden some people may have thought the President was intending to take over the classrooms of America as well. That was compounded by the fact that the early lesson plans--probably drawn up by someone either in the White House or the Department of Education-- made the speech seem more about the President than about the children and inviting the children to help the President fulfill his goal of the way he wants to transform America. Well, all that has been changed. The lesson plan has been altered. The President has released a copy of his speech. I read it this morning in Tennessee on my way coming up. It is a good speech. It is about the importance of studying and education. It is about how the President grew up, which is an inspiring story, as is the case with almost all of our Presidents. So I am glad the President has spoken to the schoolchildren of this country. Of course, the President of the United States ought to be able to speak to the schoolchildren of America. President Reagan did it. Not long after he was elected, he talked about how our country was founded. When I was Education Secretary in 1991, the first President Bush did it. He talked primarily about drugs, with a warning about the dangers of drug use. Presidents should speak to our students, but, of course, parents and teachers should decide whether the children hear the speech and in what context they hear it. Tomorrow night, when the President addresses the country, no one has to listen to him, except those of us, perhaps, who volunteered to serve in the Congress. We will be here. Millions will listen out of respect to the office, but some could turn off their televisions, some could just read about it, some could listen to the commentators talk about it, and some could watch it on the Web. Children have a different situation. They are captive in their classrooms and they are inexperienced, so we rely on parents and teachers to use their good judgment to decide whether any speech is appropriate for children to hear and in what context. If I were a teacher, I would jump at the chance to take advantage of this speech. I believe I would put up a picture of Reagan and one of FDR and one of Abraham Lincoln, and I would talk about the Presidency and I would talk about how he is the agenda setter and how the President's election--this President and other Presidents--represents the unique American characteristic that anything is possible for any American of any background. I would point out that there is a Congress as well and the Congress often disagrees with the President. And then I would put up a picture of the leader of North Korea, and I would say: There is the dear leader of North Korea. If you criticize him, you go to jail. If you criticize the President of the United States, you have a constitutional right to do that. I believe we need more teaching of U.S. history and civics in our classrooms so our children can grow up to learn what it means to be an American. The lowest scores high school seniors have in America are not in math, they are not in science, they are in U.S. history. So we ought to take advantage of opportunities for children to learn about history and about civics, but parents and teachers ought to be in charge of it. They should decide in what context it is done, and I hope a great many have taken advantage of that and will take advantage of that. There is a second speech, tomorrow night, which the country is looking forward to, and that is about health care. Here are my hopes for that speech. First, respectfully, I would say to the President, I hope he says: My fellow Americans, let's start over. It is obvious we need health care reform, but it is also obvious that most Americans, or at least a majority, aren't comfortable with the direction in which we are going. So since this affects 17 or 18 percent of our economy, since it affects the 250 million Americans who have health insurance, let's start over. This has gone from being an issue to being something personal, or as we say in Tennessee, they have gone from preaching to meddling. That is why at the town meetings, which would normally attract 30 people, we have had a thousand people show up, because their health is at issue and they want to know what is going on. So it is a very healthy thing for people to show up and ask questions, and I hope that the President has heard the American people and that we start over. Next, I hope the President says: We will start with cost--the cost to you, Mr. and Miss American, the cost to your government. Health care costs too much for you to buy your policy, and it is about to bankrupt the government unless we do something about it. So that is where we will start. Third, I hope the President will say: One of the lessons I think we have learned--not just during the last several months while I have been President--if I were President Obama--but in President Bush's time and before that is that we don't do comprehensive very well. We found that out in immigration. We had a bipartisan effort here on immigration. We tried hard to solve a problem only the Congress can solve, and we failed. By the time it came up for a vote, it just fell around our necks. We have tried it with health care. We have tried to bite off the whole thing at once, and I think it is more than we can chew. We have been trying it with economy-wide cap and trade for climate change, and it looks as if we are biting off more than we can chew there as well. That should be no big surprise. This is a huge country--300 million people--an economy that produces 25 percent of all the wealth in the world, so diverse that if we were to put ourselves all in one room, it would explode, which is why it is such a good reason we have such a big country. So I hope the President will say we don't do comprehensive well. We have heard the American people, so let's see if we can agree on a few things. Let's go step by step in the right direction, which is one good way to get where you want to go--step by step to re-earn the trust of the American people, starting with health care. I can think of some things on which I believe we have bipartisan agreement in the Senate which would make a difference: Small business health insurance--allow small businesses to pool their resources. It has been estimated that you could offer insurance to a million more workers at a lower cost. That is one thing. Make it possible for people not to lose their insurance. If they are able to buy insurance, make it possible for them to buy insurance if they have a preexisting health condition--we could probably do that. Allow people to buy insurance across State lines. The Presiding Officer and I were both Governors. We are jealously protective of States' responsibilities and rights. But maybe we need to allow insurance to be bought more often across State lines to make it available to more people and less expensive. Junk lawsuits against doctors--that increases the cost of health care from 1 percent to 10 percent, depending on whom you believe. But we could take that step. It is an important step in the right direction. As far as those who are uninsured, about 20 percent of those who are uninsured are already eligible for existing programs. We could see if we could find ways to help them sign up for programs that already exist. Step by step in the right direction will help us get where we need to go in health care. Step by step will re-earn the trust of the American people. Fourth, I would hope the President would say: Let's do this in a bipartisan way. There is some talk of just ramming this through the Senate with a bare majority of votes. I hope that doesn't happen. It would be bad for the country and it would be bad for the majority party, if I may say so. The reason it would be bad for the country is it would be a bad bill. The way our rules work, the Parliamentarian, who is a very wise individual, would end up writing the health care bill because he would have to make all these decisions about what was germane and about what fit in the bill. For example, he might have to say: Well, you can't put a provision about preexisting conditions in the bill under the Senate rules. All you can vote on is whether to raise taxes or cut Medicare. Now, that would be a very unappetizing vote, I would think, for many Members of the Senate, and it would be a very bad health care bill, which would cause me to think that such an unappetizing vote would be bad medicine for those who insisted on ramming it through. But it would be bad medicine for another reason. It would be thumbing our nose at the people of America who have been trying to say to us over the last several weeks: Whoa. Slow down. This is my health care you are talking about. Let's make sure we do this right. Start over, and let's take it step by step. Health care is not the only issue. Health care is the entry into a larger issue, which is too many takeovers, too much debt, too many czars, and the American people would like for us to settle down and deal with this issue. Some of the people have said over the last few weeks that the American people didn't know what they were talking about; that they thought there weren't any real issues out there. I am afraid that is wrong. When you have the Mayo Clinic and the Democratic Governors and the Congressional Budget Office telling you that you are headed in the wrong direction, maybe you are. When you read about a new trillion-dollar debt added to a debt that is already going to double in the next 4 or 5 years, maybe you are going in the wrong direction. When the New York Times editorial says the new program is going to be paid for about half by cuts in Medicare, that is a serious issue for the 40 million people on Medicare. There are 177 million people with employer insurance, and they worry they might lose that employer insurance. People are worried that they might be dumped, if they are low-income, into a government program that already exists called Medicaid, which 40 percent of the doctors won't serve because they are underpaid, or they are worried they might be dumped into a new government program, if they are middle income, and they might not want to be dumped into a government program. There is worry, especially among older Americans, because someone might say: You are 70 years old and you can't have a hip replacement. And there are employers who in a recession aren't interested in paying more of an employer tax. And the Democratic Governors and the Republican Governors have said: Don't send us more costs for Medicaid or we won't be able to afford it here. We will have to raise taxes. And Federal taxes would go up. Those are real issues. Those aren't made-up issues. Those are all part of the bills that are making their way through Congress, and that is why people are saying: Whoa. Finally, I hope President Obama will say: I am the President. I am the agenda setter. I am going to take charge of this debate. The President and his team are very smart. We admire them very much. But in some ways, it reminds me of a Harvard Law Review meeting, with everyone sitting around the room thinking of very bright ideas and nobody getting anything done. When you are dealing with a big and complex issue such as health care, the President needs to clear the decks, set the agenda, tell us what to do, and sit down with the Democratic leader and the Republican leader and say: What can we do? And then the President, I respectfully suggest, needs to say--as President Eisenhower did half a century ago when he said, ``I shall go to Korea''--that health care is the issue. I am the President, here is what I think we should do, and I am going to stay on this issue until it is done. Now, a Governor knows--and most Presidents know--that if they say that and do that and stick to it for as long as it takes, they can very usually wear everybody else out. The President may not get exactly what he wants. Of course, he probably won't. But there might be improvements to the bill. When the Democratic majority in Tennessee used to improve my proposals, I could either attack them or say: You have improved my proposals. I usually said: You have improved my proposals, gave them credit, and went on to the next issue. So people all over America are alarmed, some are even scared about Washington takeovers, debt doubling and tripling, and I suggest the right course for us is for the President to say: Let's start over with health care. Let's go step by step to re-earn the trust of the American people. Careful steps in the right direction are a very good way to get where we want to go, and I hope he tells us exactly what those steps should be. I made a statement at the 75th anniversary of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park last Wednesday. It is our most visited national park. Secretary Salazar was there. He did a beautiful job, only exceeded by Dolly Parton, who was there and who made all the rest of us completely irrelevant by her performance. But to have that great park for 75 years in the Eastern United States, where 9 million people visit--three times as many visiting our great western parks--is a great advantage for our country. I am grateful to the Secretary for coming, and I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a copy of my remarks.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, we are concerned about the health care reform legislation that we have seen in the House and here in the Senate. It is headed in the wrong direction. The Mayo Clinic has told us so. The Democratic Governors have told us so. The CBO has told us so. We are hearing already from people around the country who fear that millions of people may lose their employer-based health insurance and may find themselves in a government-run plan, with new State taxes to pay for Medicaid. My purpose is to point out that as we go back to our States in August, there is plenty of opportunity to go in a new direction. I hope when we come back, we will start over in that direction. As an example yesterday, 12 Senators--7 Democrats and 5 Republicans-- wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post about the Healthy Americans Act, the bill that is sponsored by Senator Wyden, a Democrat, and Senator Bennett, a Republican. I am a cosponsor among the 5 Republicans on that bill. There are a number of things I agree with in the bill and some things with which I don't agree. I agree it is the right framework upon which we can build a bipartisan discussion. For example, the things I like about the bill and the reason I endorse the effort is that it has been scored as budget neutral. In other words, it doesn't add to the deficit, according to the CBO. It doesn't create a government-run plan to compete with private insurance plans. People would have choices among private plans just like most people have today. It replaces Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program with private insurance plans. It doesn't replace all of Medicaid, but about 40 million of the people who are on Medicaid today, which is the largest government-run program we have, would have a choice to buy plans like the rest of us. I think one of the worse things about the bills we are seeing is that it dumps low-income Americans into a government-run program that is failing--Medicaid--that 40 percent of the doctors will not see, and that none of us would want to join if we were forced to do so. This proposal takes away that problem. The Healthy Americans Act makes a fairer distribution of the government subsidies we already spend subsidizing health care by giving more Americans a chance to benefit from that. It would give more Americans a chance to purchase the same kind of health insurance policy Federal employees and Members of Congress have. It provides a tax deduction for all American individuals and families to address the unfairness of our tax system. It includes an individual mandate. In other words, no free ride. We are all in this together. States that implement some sort of reforms against junk runaway lawsuits against doctors, which drive up the cost of malpractice insurance, will receive bonus payments. It also includes some of the insurance market reforms about which we are hearing so much from our Democratic friends. What they don't tell you is we are all for those changes. These are the insurance reforms that say you will have a right to purchase insurance without a physical examination, and if you have a problem when you go in to get the insurance, you cannot be denied insurance for that reason. These are insurance reforms that virtually all Republican plans I have seen, and all the Democratic plans, have already in there. Those aren't the issue. It provides a full subsidy to people living under 100 percent of the Federal poverty level to buy insurance, a private plan. This would mean roughly $5,000 for an individual and $12,000 for families to buy a plan. Americans earning between 100 to 400 percent of the Federal poverty level will receive subsidies on a sliding scale. After that, you pay for it yourself. There are some points I don't like about the bill, but I endorse the framework, as well. I will mention those. I don't like the employer responsibility provisions. During negotiations, if this were the bill we were discussing, I would urge to change that. I don't like the fact that plans are required to be at the higher benefit level of the Federal employee plans. That is a level higher than most Federal employees have, and we can save dollars if we use the basic plan and use that money to provide higher subsidies to middle-income Americans to buy health insurance. I don't believe the subsidies in this bill are enough for many middle-income families. I have suggested a place to get some of that money. We phase out the tax deduction at $62,500 a year, which may not be high enough to make this a fair proposal. I am concerned about the abortion provisions in the bill, although it doesn't provide government subsidies for abortion. The point is, there is a framework that is headed in a different direction, and it has the support of 12 Senators. I ask unanimous consent that the op-ed from the Washington Post be printed in the Record following my remarks.