Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment so I may call up an amendment.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I would like to be able to reclaim my time.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I believe that concludes my remarks and I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I thank the Senator for his courtesy. And I see the Senator from Delaware. I will take just a few more minutes, if I may, to explain the amendment. So the reasons for doing this, to summarize, is that all of us seem to say--the President has said he does not want to micro-manage the auto companies. But if we own the companies, it is kind of hard for him not to do that. He fired the president of General Motors. His representatives are appointing the board. The President himself called the mayor of Detroit and seemed to get on the side of the issue of where the General Motors headquarters would be--in Warren, MI, or in Detroit. He has an Auto Task Force, whose business it is to pay a lot of attention to how these companies are running. There is a pay czar over in the White House whose job it is to check on the pay of certain executives in General Motors and Chrysler. It is hard for me to see how General Motors and Chrysler--with all they have to do and the challenges they have ahead of it--how they are going to compete with Honda and Nissan and Toyota and Ford, which posted a big profit. If General Motors is spending a large percent of its time responding to meddlesome questions and directives by its majority owner, the U.S. Government. I am not the only one who thinks that. According to the Nashville Tennessean, an AutoPacific survey reports that 81 percent of Americans polled ``agreed that the faster the government gets out of the automotive business, the better.'' Ninety-five percent disagreed ``that the government is a good overseer of corporations such as General Motors and Chrysler.'' Ninety- three percent disagreed ``that having the government in charge of (the two automakers) will result in cars and trucks that Americans will want to buy.'' According to a Rasmussen Poll done in June, 80 percent believe the government should sell its stake in the auto companies to private investors ``as soon as possible.'' According to the Wall Street Journal on June 18, 70 percent of those surveyed said ``they had concerns about federal interventions into the economy, including Mr. Obama's decision to take an ownership stake in General Motors Corp.'' But I do not think that is news to any of us. I think almost every Member of Congress understands that General Motors and Chrysler would be better off if we did not own them. So that leaves the remaining question: What is the best way to get the stock from where it is in the government to where it needs to be, which is in the marketplace? There have been a variety of good proposals made. I mentioned Senator Nelson's proposal, Senator Corker's, and Senator Thune's. But I would argue that a straight, simple stock dividend, which is what I am proposing, is the simplest and most effective way to accomplish this job. It is called a ``corporate spinoff,'' in corporate terms, or a spinout. It is a new entity formed by a split from a larger one. It often happens with very large companies. It usually happens when a major company--in this case, the U.S. Government--has a subsidiary--in this case, General Motors and Chrysler--which has very little to do with the business of the major company. Well, surely operating a car company is not the main business of the U.S. Government, which has a lot on its plate, when we go from health care, to climate change, to energy, to the budget, et cetera. Examples of corporate spinoffs are pretty familiar to us. Procter & Gamble did a spinoff with Clorox in 1969. In other words, Procter & Gamble owned Clorox. Procter & Gamble declared a stock dividend. It gave its shareholders shares in Clorox, and Clorox and Procter & Gamble were severed. Time Warner did a spinoff with Time Warner Cable in March 2009. Time Warner stockholders received a pro rata share of Time Warner Cable common share stock. That is the same idea I am proposing here today. Then PepsiCo did a spinoff with its restaurant business--KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell in 1997. This is also something familiar. PepsiCo shareholders each received 1 share in the new restaurant company for every 10 PepsiCo shares they held. The idea of Americans owning stock is not a new idea in the United States. Fifty-one percent of families hold stocks in publicly traded companies directly or indirectly. And many big companies have many shareholders. Several of us Congressmen and Senators were on a phone call with Fritz Henderson, the General Motors chief executive officer, several weeks ago. The question came up about, what is the government going to do with all this GM stock after the bankruptcy? Mr. Henderson made very clear that was not his decision, it was the Treasury's decision to make. But he said this is a ``very large amount'' of stock and that the orderly offering of those shares to establish a market might have to be ``managed down over a period of years.'' Well, if the government in Washington holds the shares of General Motors and Chrysler for a ``period of years,'' I cannot think of anything that will make it less likely that General Motors will succeed because we will be meddling every single day, and GM will never have time to design, build, and make cars. Instead, the government could declare a stock dividend within the next few months, which should be relatively easy to do because we have the names and the accounts of the 120 million people who pay taxes on April 15. The principle here is: they paid for it, they might as well own it. So if the taxpayers own it, and that is good for them, and if getting rid of the stock from the government is good for the government and good for General Motors--just like creating a fan base of 120 million Americans who might be interested in the next Chevy, like Green Bay Packers fans are interested in the next quarterback--then, it seems to me this is a very wise idea. I have talked with a number of corporate lawyers and bankruptcy lawyers and securities lawyers. I have discussed it with Governors. I have discussed it with financial officials. And I have talked about it with average Americans who are not happy about the fact that the government owns 60 percent of General Motors. They all think this stock distribution is a good idea. I am afraid some of my colleagues think: Well, he is just making a point. He is just being facetious. I am not. We need to get rid of this stock. We almost all agree with that. It will take us years to do it if we sell it just in an orderly way over a period of time. The single best familiar way to get the stock out of the hands of the government and into the hands of the marketplace is a stock dividend. Give the stock to the people who have now paid almost $70 billion for it--the 120 million people who pay taxes on April 15--and let's get this economy moving again. Not many weeks ago, a visiting European auto executive said to me, with a laugh, that he was in Washington, DC, which he referred to as ``the new American automotive capital: Washington, DC.'' Well, it would be a little humorous if it were not so sad. None of us like the fact that we are in the situation we are in. But to give General Motors and Chrysler a chance to succeed, let's get our auto companies out of the hands of Washington, DC, and back into the marketplace. And the sooner the better. The amendment I offer will achieve that purpose. At this point, I wish to once again ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up my amendment No. 1862.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I have provided it to the desk. I guess the answer is no, but I will be happy to do so.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, if the manager of the bill is congenial with my idea of going ahead and talking about the amendment while he considers the terms, I will see that he has a copy.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator from North Dakota for his courtesy, and I will ask that my staff get copies of the amendment to Senator Dorgan. I am offering today the auto stock for every taxpayer amendment. This is an amendment I and a number of other Senators, including Senators Bennett, Kyl, and McConnell, have introduced before. It basically would require the Treasury to distribute to all Americans who pay taxes on April 15 all of the government common stock in the new General Motors and Chrysler within 1 year following the date of emergence of General Motors and Chrysler from bankruptcy proceedings. In addition, General Motors, we are glad to say, has now emerged from bankruptcy proceedings, so the amendment becomes very timely. The amendment would prohibit the Treasury from using any more TARP funds to bail out GM or Chrysler, and it would require that the Secretary of the Treasury and his designee have a fiduciary responsibility to the American taxpayer to maximize the return on their investment as long as the government holds stock in these companies. This is the best way to get the auto companies out of the hands of Washington bureaucrats and politicians and into the hands of the American people in the marketplace where the companies belong. There is a great deal of sentiment on the Democratic side as well as the Republican side about this. I know Senator Nelson of Nebraska had introduced legislation along the lines of finding a way to move the stock of auto companies out of the hands of government and into some other hands as quickly as possible, taking the very sensible notion that the job of the U.S. Government is not to operate automobile companies in the United States. And Senator Thune, Senator Corker, and Senator Johanns all have offered amendments to that effect. I would like to suggest to my colleagues that this amendment, which I hope we have a chance to consider, is the most responsible way to take the taxpayers' investment in General Motors and Chrysler, maximize the return on the investment, get it out of Washington, DC, so we politicians are not tempted to meddle with it, and get it back out in the hands of the American people in the marketplace. It will create a sort of ``Green Bay Packers'' fan base for Chevrolets and whatever else General Motors decides to produce. Most Americans know that in the National Football League there are a lot of teams who have a lot of loyalty, but the Green Bay Packers have more loyalty than most. One reason is that the fans own the team. In this case, the taxpayers would own General Motors and the taxpayers would own Chrysler or at least part of it. They would own 60 percent of General Motors and about 8 percent of Chrysler. That would give about 120 million Americans who pay taxes on April 15 a few shares in General Motors and Chrysler. And it might make them a little more interested in the next Chevrolet, and produce a little consumer interest. That is not the best reason to do this. The most important reason to do this is that the American people, by overwhelming margins, understand what I think most of us understand: that the federal government has no business trying to run a car company. We do not know anything about running car companies. Yet, if we own it, we cannot keep our hands off of it. We have seen many examples of this on both sides of the aisle, I may say. I started giving out car czar awards a few weeks ago. I gave the first one to the distinguished Congressman from Massachusetts who called the president of General Motors and said to him: Don't close a warehouse in my congressional district. And, lo and behold, the warehouse was not closed. Well, the Congressman said he was only doing what any Congressman would do about a warehouse in his district. I think he is right about that. But the problem is, the Congressman owns part of the company. He happens to be the chairman of the House bailout committee--the Financial Services Committee--in addition to that. So it creates a political incestuousness that we need to end. Now, lest my colleagues on the other side think I am trying to pick on Democratic car czars, I had to give the second car czar award to myself because, lo and behold, General Motors came around visiting the delegations of Michigan, Indiana, and, yes, Tennessee to try to see where they might build a plant for small cars. Now, what was I to do, as a Senator from Tennessee and as the Governor who helped recruit Saturn to Spring Hill, TN, 25 years ago? I got with Senator Corker, and we got with the Governor, and we had a meeting in my office, and we met with the General Motors executives, and we put our best case forward. Of course, we own 60 percent of the company. I counted up that there are about 60 committees and subcommittees in the House and the Senate that conceivably could have jurisdiction over General Motors and Chrysler and could hold hearings about the color of their cars and why they are buying a battery for the Chevy Volt in South Korea when they could be buying it from Tennessee, or why they do not make a car that is this big or that big or that many miles per gallon. Or what about the dealers? That has been a matter of great concern in the Congress. There is legislation pending that would overrule whatever the management's decision on dealers is. You name it, we have a reason to meddle. And most of us have been meddling. So what do we have here? We have these chief executives of major companies for which we have now paid almost $70 billion of taxpayers' money for 60 percent of the stock in General Motors and 8 percent in Chrysler. And what do these CEOs do? They are reduced to the status of some assistant secretary, driving their congressionally approved hybrid cars from Detroit to Washington to testify. They dare not fly in an airplane or we would want to know what kind of airplane they are flying in. So they come to Washington. They testify all day before the committee. Of course, they have to get prepared for that, which takes some time. Then they turn around and drive back home. My question is, How many cars did they design that day? How many cars did they build that day? How many cars did they sell that day while they are up here talking to all of their distinguished owners--Senators, Congressmen-- all of us who are here in Washington, DC? Now, we are well meaning, and they are well meaning. But my point is, the chief executives are never going to be able to succeed if we are constantly meddling in their business. So this amendment would make sure we move the ownership of stock from the government in Washington, DC, into the marketplace. Madam President, I see the manager of the bill. I would be glad to yield to him for a moment, if I could retain the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. On the Senator's time, I will be happy to.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I was listening to the Senator from California, and with respect to her comments let me state the position of the Republican Senators on health care reform. Our leader, Mitch McConnell, the Senator from Kentucky, stated yesterday to the news media: This isn't about winning or losing. This is about getting it right. Health care is very personal to every one of us, to every one of our families, and to all the American people. Our goal, on the Republican side, and I am sure for many Democrats as well, is to start with cost and make sure we can say to the American people they can afford their health care policy; and when we have finished fixing health care, they can afford their government. So far, that has not been the case. We have offered plans which we believe will reach that goal. Just to give my own example: Last year, I joined with Senator Wyden, a Democrat; Senator Bennett, a Republican, in endorsing their plan. It is not perfect, but it is a very good plan, and it has a completely different approach than the bill that came out of the Senate HELP Committee or that is coming through the House. I believe it is a better approach. The point is there are 14 Senators on that plan today--8 Democrats and 6 Republicans. Why isn't it being considered? It doesn't have a government-run program in it. Why shouldn't we talk about not having a government-run program? Medicaid, the largest government-run program we have today, is used to cover low-income Americans and forces them to take their health care in a system that 40 percent of America's doctors won't serve because, in general, they are paid about half as much for their services as they are if they serve the 177 million of us who have private health insurance. The Wyden-Bennett bill is constructed along the idea of rearranging the subsidies we already give to the American people for health care and gives it to everyone in a way that will permit them--all the American people--to afford a health insurance plan that is about the same as a plan that congressional employees have. Literally, we would say to low-income Americans: Here, take this money and buy a private insurance plan of your own, like the rest of us do. This is a much better idea than dumping 20 million more people into a failed government program called Medicaid--which is not only not serving those low-income people but bankrupting States. What is wrong with that idea, 14 of us think it ought to be considered? Yet it has not been given the time of day. Senator Coburn and Senator Burr have proposals that I have endorsed. Senator Gregg has a proposal. Senator Hatch has a proposal. None of them have been given the time of day. We have had very friendly discussions, but they do not qualify as bipartisan discussions. I give the Senate Finance Committee members great credit for trying to work in a bipartisan way, but they are working in a bipartisan way that is still going in the wrong direction, which is expanding an existing government plan that has failed-- Medicaid--they are working on creating a new government plan for people who lose their health care under the theories that have been proposed. Don't think they are not. I would hope the President would see what is happening and say: Whoa, let's slow down. I have stated what I want. I have put my neck out. I have said to the American people, if they have a health care plan they like, they can keep it. Unfortunately, under the plans we see today, they are going to lose their health care. They have a very good risk of losing their health care and ending up, if they are poor, with their only option being a failed government program that none of us would join, if we could possibly avoid it. Why would we stuff 20 million people into a program we don't want to be in, when we could give them the opportunity to be in a program similar to the one we are in? That is what we should be doing. On the Republican side, we are saying to our Democratic colleagues: We know you have the majority. We know you have the Presidency. But we have some ideas we think the American people would benefit from. We only have one chance to pass this, to change this big system we have, and we better make sure we do it right. If you don't want to take our advice, we would say, respectfully: Why don't you listen to some others? There is the Mayo Clinic. The Senator from California asked: Why are they talking about government programs? Because the Mayo Clinic--often cited by the President, by many of us, as the kind of high-quality, good results, low-cost health care we would like to have more of--the Iowa Clinic, the Marshfield Clinic, and other clinics say these health care plans are headed in the wrong direction, and one reason is because they would create a new government plan which would eventually drive the Mayo Clinic and these other clinics out of the market, which means they wouldn't be serving Medicare patients. So why would we do that? I think we should take our time and get it right. If the Mayo Clinic is saying we are heading in the wrong direction, if the Democratic Governors are saying that, if the Congressional Budget Office is saying we are adding to the cost and adding to the debt, wouldn't the wise thing be to say: Well, maybe they have a point. Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee, a Democrat from my State, knows a lot about health care--Medicaid--and he says Congress is about to bestow ``the mother of all unfunded mandates.'' Governor Bredesen, a former health care executive, continued: Medicaid is a poor vehicle for expanding coverage. It is a 45-year-old system originally designed for poor women and children. It is not health care reform to dump more money into Medicaid. Here is the Governor of Washington, a Democrat. As a governor, my concern is if we try to cost-shift to the States we're not going to be in a position to pick up the tab. Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, a Democratic Governor, said: I'm personally very concerned about the cost issue, particularly the $1 trillion figures being batted around. Gov. Bill Ritter of Colorado, a Democrat. There's a concern about whether they have fully figured out a revenue stream that would cover the costs, and that if they don't have all the dollars accounted for it will fall on the States. So said Gov. Jim Douglas of Vermont. And Gov. Brian Schweitzer of Montana said: The governors are concerned about unfunded mandates, another situation where the Federal government says you must do X and you must pay for it. Well, if they want to reform health care, they should figure out what the rules are and how they are going to pay for it. So instead of standing on the other side and saying the Republicans are saying no, I am saying the Republicans are saying yes. We support the bipartisan Wyden-Bennett bill. We have offered the Burr-Coburn bill. We have offered the Gregg bill. We have the Hatch bill. Take our proposals and consider the ideas because they do not involve government-run programs, they do not dump low-income people into Medicaid, where you would not be able to see a doctor. That is akin to giving someone a bus ticket to a route with no buses. We already do it with 60 million people, so why should we do it with 80 million people, which is the suggestion we have. We want to work with the President and with our friends on the Democratic side to come up with health care reform this year. We want to be able to say to the American people: We want a plan you can afford for yourself. And when we're finished fixing it, we want a government you can afford. If the Mayo Clinic and the Democratic Governors and the Congressional Budget Office are all saying we are headed in the wrong direction, then why don't we start over and work together and try to get a result we can live with for the next 30 or 40 years? We can only do this once, and we need to do it right. I thank the President.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business and ask the Chair to please let me know when I have finished 9 minutes.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. It goes on to say: On behalf of some of the nation's leaders in health care delivery-- These are the people whose hospitals we go to, whose clinics we go to when we are sick or when we hope to stay well-- we write to you to comment on the House bill. They say: We applaud the Congress for working on this. However, we have got significant concerns. They go on to say there are three of them. The first is about the Medicare-like public plan, as they call it, a public plan with rates based on Medicare. They say it will have a severe negative effect on their facilities, that they lose a lot of money every year, hundreds of millions of dollars. Because what happens is that Medicare, a government-run plan, pays its doctors and its clinics and its hospitals about 80 percent of what private insurance companies are paying. So roughly 177 million of us have private insurance of one kind or another. If a doctor sees you, he gets paid 100 percent. But if you go to one of these clinics and hospitals, they are paid according to the government rate, which is roughly 80 percent of the private rate. These clinics say that is not sustainable for them, and that if that continues, some of those providers, such as the Mayo Clinic, will eventually be driven out of the market. What market? The market for Medicare patients. Those are the 45 million senior Americans who absolutely depend on Medicare for their service because for most of them, that is their only option. If that is the case, what that means is they will not be able to go to the Mayo Clinic or to the MeritCare Health System or to the Iowa Clinic or to the doctor they choose because that doctor will not be a part of the Medicare system because of low reimbursement. So that is the first objection these clinics make to the bill they see coming because the bill they see coming proposes to create another government-run plan with government-set rates. The second objection they have is geographic payment disparities. They say that we are a big country and there ought to be differences in the pay among different geographies. Third, and maybe this is the most important of all, that the President has said and many of us in the Senate have said we need to change the way we pay for medical care, and we ought to pay more for value, for quality, for results, and less for volume--in plain English, not how many patients a doctor can see but how many of his or her patients stay well or get well. We have talked about that for weeks here in our hearings. But what these respected voices in medicine are saying is that the legislation we see today--and understand, this is not even in a bill that has presented to us in the Senate yet in a way upon which we can act--does not meet the test for that. The legislation we have seen so far is running into a lot of trouble. David Broder, the respected columnist from the Washington Post, said that the plans which have been passed in a partisan way are ``badly flawed'' and ``overly expensive.'' I mean, the Democratic plans; we have Republican plans that we would like to be considered. I mentioned that the Wyden-Bennett plan, which is the only really bipartisan plan here, has not been given one bit of consideration so far in the Senate. And then Senator Burr and Senator Coburn have a plan, Senator Gregg has a plan, and Senator Hatch has a plan. We all have different ideas. As I said, we would like for them to be considered, today I'm talking about the Democratic plans that are now being considered. The Congressional Budget Office, of course, is the nonpartisan office in this Congress that we count on as an umpire to tell us what we are really doing. It is not supposed to have any political rhetoric. Last Thursday, the head of the Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf was asked at a Senate Budget Committee hearing what he thought about the bills which had begun to emerge. He said: The legislation significantly expands the Federal responsibility for health care costs. In other words, here we go, at a time when we are in a recession and where the President's proposals for other programs will add more to the debt in the next 10 years, three times as much as we spent in World War II, and we are talking about legislation that would add another $2 trillion. We haven't dealt with cost which is where we ought to start. Look at the 250 million who have health care and ask the question: Can you afford it? Then after we get through fixing it, can you afford your government? And what the head of the CBO is saying, as far as the government goes, the answer is no. Then the Lewin Group, a well-respected private agency, was asked what would happen if we had a government-run program which many of us believe will lead to another Washington takeover. We are getting accustomed to this, Washington takeovers of banks, of insurance companies, of student loans, of car companies, now maybe of health care. The Lewin Group said 88 million people will lose their private employer-sponsored insurance. How could that happen? It could happen because a small employer or a big employer would see one of these plans that is beginning to come out take place. To be specific, the Senate HELP Committee plan says you either have to provide everybody who works for you insurance or pay $750. There are a lot of employers who cannot afford to provide everybody the kind of insurance that is envisioned. So they will say: OK, we will pay the $750 fine to the government. What happens? All those employees lose their health insurance. Where do they go? Into the Government plan. That is their option. Some of them may have a choice of other plans, but if they do have a choice and one of the choices is a government-run plan, it may have the same future the Mayo Clinic and others were saying Medicare was causing to them. The government will set a low price for the doctors and a low price for the clinics. So all these employees who now have insurance that they like will lose that insurance because of the passage of this bill. The government will set the provider rates and physician rates low, and so they will be part of a government plan for which many doctors and many hospitals and many clinics will not offer services. It is similar to giving somebody a bus ticket to a bus station with no busses. Then there are the Medicare cuts. According to the Washington Post last week, Medicare cuts will pay for one-half the cost of health care for the uninsured in one of the bills being proposed. If we are to find savings in Medicare and take from the 45 million elderly people who depend on Medicare, every bit of those savings ought to be put back into Medicare and not spent on some new program. I don't think legislation that is paid for half by Medicare cuts is going to go very far in this Chamber. Then there are the employer taxes. According to the National Federation of Independent Businesses, the House version has an 8- percent Federal payroll tax. I mentioned the Senate version, a $750 annual fine per employee, if the employer doesn't offer insurance. The NFIB, small businesses, estimates that will lose about 1.6 million jobs. How could that be? Well, if a small employer or even a large one has government-mandated costs added and they have less money, they will hire less employees. That is one of the options they have. Then there is the income surtax. There is a whole string of trouble for these bills. USA Today on Monday said: It is the highest tax rate in a quarter of a century that is proposed: A 45-percent top tax rate with all taxes included. Then rationing, there are provisions in this bill which would have the government make decisions about which treatment you will have and how long you will have to wait to see a doctor. Finally--I say ``finally'' because this is the subject I want to spend a moment on--there is the Medicaid State taxes. Sometimes this gets confusing. Mr. President, 177 million Americans have private insurance, but a lot of people have government insurance now. Veterans do. Military people have TRICARE insurance. About 45 million older people have Medicare. But then there is a program called Medicaid, which is the largest government-run program. About 60 million people are in it now. The Federal Government pays about 57 percent of it, and the States pay 43 percent. Every Governor I know--and I was once one-- has struggled with the Medicaid Program. I once came up here in the early 1980s and asked President Reagan to take it all, let the Federal Government run it and give us Governors all of kindergarten through the 12th grade. I thought that would be a good swap. I saw a couple of Democratic Governors earlier today, and we talked about the story every Governor faces. If you have an extra dollar and you want to put it in higher education so you can improve the quality of the University of Colorado or Tennessee or keep tuition from going up, what happens to it? That dollar is stolen because it has to go in the increasing Medicaid cost. It is an inefficiently managed program. The Federal Government keeps changing the rules. The Governors have to get permission from Washington whenever they make minor changes. It is demolishing State governments right and left. If our real goal is to help people, then why under these new plans do we say to low-income people--defined as, say, a family of four who makes less than $32,000--your only option is going to be to go in the Medicaid Program under this plan. It is estimated by the Congressional Budget Office and others that 15 or 20 million Americans will be added to the 60 million in the Medicaid Program. What will they find when they get there? They will find that 40 percent of the doctors don't see Medicaid patients. When we add another 15 or 20 million people to it, it may be a larger number. Why don't they do see Medicaid patients? For the same reason the Mayo Clinic warned about this government plan in its letter. It is because Medicaid only pays its doctors and its hospitals about 72 percent of what Medicare pays. If you are confused by that, it works out pretty simply. Medicare pays 80 percent of what the private insurers pay, and Medicaid pays about 72 percent of what Medicare pays. If you are a doctor or a clinic or a hospital, you get paid about 60 percent, if you are helping a Medicaid patient, of what you would if you were helping one of us who has his or her own private health care. You can see that will be a pernicious trend. If we continue to dump low-income people into a government-run Medicaid Program, that is what will happen. There is another thing that happens with Medicaid. Many members of the committees working on this bill said: We can't let that happen. We can't be inhumane and just say we are out here to help people who are uninsured, and we are going to dump 20 million of them into a government-run program that doesn't have enough doctors and hospitals and clinics. We will have to raise what we pay to doctors and clinics. That sounds good, but that is very expensive, particularly for a program such as Medicaid that, according to the Government Accountability Office, $1 out of every $10 is fraudulent, is wasted. That is $32 billion a year. That is the program we are going to expand? That is the program we are going to say to low-income people: Congratulations, go into this program where you are not likely to find a doctor every time you want one, and there are a lot of hospitals and clinics that will not take you because we will not pay them for that. Because Senators and Congressmen hear that, they say: We will raise the rates. Here is the proposal: The proposal is, we are going to increase the number of people who are eligible for Medicaid by 133 to 150 percent of the Federal poverty level. That is a substantial increase. Then, if we are going to do that and put many more people into the program, we are going to have to order an increase in what we pay the doctors and the clinics to serve them, maybe up to 83 or 85 percent of the Medicare level. Let me talk about what that would do in one State. We called the State Medicaid director in Tennessee. Our program is called TennCare. We said: What would it cost Tennessee if we increase coverage of Medicaid up to 150 percent of the Federal poverty level? The answer came back, nearly $600 million a year. That is the State's share of the cost which is a little more than a third. The Federal Government's share is twice that. So the Federal Government is saying: That is all right. We know Tennessee doesn't have the money to do that, so we will pay it all for the first 5 years. Then, after 5 years, so the talk goes--and we were told, when we were working on this bill, this is an assumption--we will shift these costs back to Colorado, back to Tennessee. Back comes what in today's dollars is about $600 million to the State of Tennessee. Remember what I said. This is a program doctors don't want to go to because they don't get paid very well. So we will have to increase the amount of money we pay doctors. So if States are required to pay doctors and providers under the Medicaid system 110 percent of what Medicare is paid, that still isn't what doctors and hospitals get, if they see somebody with private health insurance. That is about the same amount of money, about $600 million added just for the State cost, which brings the total new state cost for paying physicians and hospitals more and for all the new people in the Medicaid Program to $1.2 billion. That is a huge amount of money. We throw around dollars up here and figures that make any amount of money seem unimaginable. What is $1 trillion, what is $10 trillion, what is $40 billion. We former Governors can imagine it. I figured it out. If in 5 years you shifted back to the State of Tennessee just its share of those costs from the expansion of Medicaid and paying the doctors and hospitals more, the bill for the State of Tennessee to pay the increased Medicaid costs would be an amount of money that equals a new 10-percent State income tax. The truth is, for our State--and I believe for almost every State--it is an amount of money that nobody has enough taxes to pay. You can run politicians in and out and defeat them for raising taxes all day long, and they still couldn't come up with ways to pay for it. In other words, these bills are based on a premise and assumption that will either bankrupt the States or, if the Federal Government says we will pay for it all, it will add $5, $6, $700 billion more over 10 years to the legislation we are considering. We need to think that through. Is that the best way to help people who are low income? I don't think so. I think there are much better ways. The Wyden-Bennett framework is a better way. It rearranges the tax deductions we have for people who have health insurance from their employers and it says: Let's take the available money and give the money to low-income people who then buy private health insurance. It may be a very basic plan. But at least they would have health insurance, and they wouldn't be stuffed in a government program 40 percent of the doctors wouldn't see and that many of the best clinics and hospitals wouldn't allow them to come in. We have been told already by the Congressional Budget Office that proposal would not add a penny to the debt. Not only does it not create a new government program, it actually makes the Medicaid Program, except for Americans with Disabilities, history. In other words, if you are poor, you are not stuffed into a program that nobody else would want to join anyway. You have a chance to buy your own insurance, and you are not consigned to the worst run government program we have today. So there are some real possibilities with health care, and there are some plans on the table that will lead us in the right direction. We have advice from distinguished Americans with a stake in this--which is every single one of us--but the most distinguished are those who deal with it every day. The Mayo Clinic is saying the proposed legislation misses the opportunity to help create higher quality, more affordable health care for patients. In fact, it will do the opposite. Shouldn't we slow down and get it right? Shouldn't we get it right? This is the only chance we have to do this. If we do it wrong, we will not be able to undo it. This is 16, 18 percent of the American economy we are talking about. People have tried to do it for 60 years, and they failed. The only way we will do it is if we do it together. The Democrats have big majorities over on that side. They do in the House. But that is not the way things usually happen around here. The President has said--and I take him at his word--and many of the leaders have said-- and I take them at their word--that we would like to get 70, 80 votes for the health care result. We would too. But in order to do that, we are going to have to do it the way we usually do when we have bipartisan events around here. We get some Democrats and some Republicans and they sit down with the President and they share ideas and they agree on some things. They don't just say: OK, here it is, and we are going to vote down almost every significant idea you have on the way through. I respect the fact that Senator Baucus is trying to do that in the Finance Committee, and perhaps he will succeed, working with Senator Grassley and others. But this is going to take some time. It cannot be done overnight. There are many sections to this bill. Each of them might be 500 pages long. They have enormous consequences to individuals. That is why we have all these clinics writing and saying: If you do it the way it looks like you are going to do it, you may drive us out of the business of helping Medicare patients. Do we really want to do that? Do we really want to say to 45 million Americans who depend on Medicare: We are going to pass a bill that will accelerate the process whereby respected clinics and the doctor you might choose will not see you anymore because they cannot afford to because the government will not pay them under the system we have? So I would suggest we start over, literally, conceptually; start over and listen to these clinics and doctors and focus on the delivery system and focus, first, on those 250 million Americans who already have health insurance and ask the question: Can they afford it? And, what could we do to make it possible for those Americans to afford it? And can we do it in a way that permits us to be able to honestly say when we are through that those same 250 million Americans can afford their government when we are through without adding to the debt? Then let's look at the 46 million people who are uninsured. Of course, we need for them to be insured. But the fact is, 11 million of the uninsured are already eligible for programs we already have; 10 million or so are noncitizens--half of them legally here, half of them not; a large number of them are making $75,000 a year and could afford it but just do not buy it; and another significant number are college students. So we are going to have to go step by step by step and see in what low-cost way we can include a large number of these 46 million Americans, who are not part of the system, in the system. But that is the wrong place to start. That is the place to end. So, Mr. President, all I am saying is, on the Republican side of the aisle we can tell you what we are for. Some of us are for the Wyden- Bennett bill with our Democratic colleagues. That is the only bipartisan bill before us today. It has not even been seriously considered by this body, but it is there, and it has significant support in the House. We have two doctors over here: Dr. Barrasso, who has been an orthopedic surgeon for 25 years, and Dr. Coburn from Oklahoma, an OB/GYN doctor. They would like to be involved in the process. So far their ideas are not really being adopted in the result we might have. We have Senator Gregg from New Hampshire, one of the most respected Senators, who has been a part of many bipartisan efforts, and he has his own bill. He would like to be more a part of it, but his ideas do not fit the way things are going. But the way things are going are too expensive for the Congressional Budget Office and take us in the wrong direction, according to the Mayo Clinic. So maybe we ought to step back and say: Well, let's listen to these other ideas. Let's go very carefully. Let's work with the President. Let's see if we can get a result. Let's keep a four-letter word out there that is a good word; and that is ``cost,'' and make sure we focus first on the 250 million Americans who have health insurance and make sure they can afford it; and, second, make sure when we finish fixing health care that those same Americans can afford their government. I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor. Exhibit 1 July 16, 2009. Hon. Ron Kind, Longworth House Office Building, Washington, DC. Dear Congressman Kind: On behalf of some of the nation's leaders in health care delivery, we write to you today to comment on the House health care reform bill introduced earlier this week. We would like to thank you for the opportunity to comment on this legislation. We applaud the Congress for its commitment to passing comprehensive health care delivery system reform this year. However, we have significant concerns about the current language of the bill and we ask that these concerns, set forth below, be addressed before the committee action is concluded. Medicare-like Public Plan First, we are concerned that a public plan option with rates based on Medicare rates will have a severe negative impact on our facilities. Today, many providers suffer great financial losses associated with treating Medicare patients. For example, several of the systems that have signed onto this letter lost hundreds of millions of dollars under Medicare last year. These rates are making it increasingly difficult for us to continue to treat Medicare patients. The implementation of a public plan with similar rates will create a financial result that will be unsustainable for even the nation's most efficient, high quality providers, eventually driving them out of the market. In addition, should a public plan with inadequate rates be enacted, we will be forced to shift additional costs to private payers, which will ultimately lead to increased costs for employers who maintain insurance for their employees. We believe all Americans must have guaranteed portable health insurance, but it is critical that we not lose sight of the need to ensure adequate and equitable reimbursement. Geographic Payment Disparities Second, our health care systems are among the most cost- efficient in the country in caring for Medicare patients. However, many of us operate in states with some of the lowest Medicare reimbursement rates in the nation. Current physician payments due to geographic disparities are actually greater under Medicare than under commercial insurance. This may be difficult to believe, given the government's rate-setting power, but flows from the fundamentally flawed payment methodology. To date, health care reform proposals simply continue the current payment methodology, despite the fact that formula changes have been identified to address this problem. We support payment changes that work to reduce geographic disparities, rather than perpetuating the flaws in the current payment system. While we believe that the Institute of Medicine study is a good first step, we encourage Congress to take this further and enact payment reforms that will address the existing disparities. Value Index Proposal Third, consistent with statements from President Obama, we believe that focusing on, defining, measuring, and paying for value is essential for controlling cost within the U.S. health care system. The system must be reformed to compensate for value instead of volume. We believe inserting a value index into various aspects of the Medicare payment system (e.g., physician fee schedule, hospital rates) is the means to accomplish this end goal of compensating for quality rather than quantity. We appreciate the opportunity to comment on this legislation. We urge you to address the above-stated concerns, which will demonstrate that Congress is serious about preserving the best parts of the existing health care delivery system. If we can be of assistance to you moving forward, please do not hesitate to contact us. Sincerely, Everett Clinic, Gundersen Lutheran Health System, HealthPartners, Intermountain Healthcare, Iowa Clinic, Marshfield Clinic, Mayo Clinic. MeritCare Health System, Park Nicollet Health System, Rural Wisconsin Health Cooperative, ThedaCare, Wisconsin Hospital Association, Wisconsin Medical Society.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I listened carefully to the Senator from Michigan. Republicans and I believe most Democrats want health care reform this year. The President said he wants health care reform this year. Republicans want health care reform this year. We want to make sure it is done right. Let me put it this way: If we were in an operating room and a seriously ill patient came in and we knew we had only one chance to save that patient's life and to make that patient healthy, our goal would not be to see if we could do it in the next week, it would be to see if we could get it right. So far, the proposals we have seen coming out of the committees have not gotten it right. One might say: Well, that is a Republican view of Democratic proposals. Perhaps it is. But the proposals we have seen coming out of the Senate HELP Committee and out of the House of Representatives flunk the most important test, which is cost. The most important test is whether Americans can afford their health care and, after we get through fixing it, whether they can afford their government. According to virtually everyone we have heard from, the legislation we have seen simply does not meet that test. In my opinion, what we should do instead is start with the framework of the bill sponsored by Democratic Senator Wyden and Republican Senator Bennett which has 14 cosponsors--8 Democrats, 6 Republicans. This is a different sort of framework that offers virtually every American coverage, does so without any Washington takeover or government-run programs without raising the debt one penny, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Remember, I said that is a framework. I do not agree with every single part of that bill, although I am a cosponsor, but it may be a much better place to start than what we have seen so far. That is not just my opinion. Lately, we have heard a lot about the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. President Obama has talked a lot about the Mayo Clinic. The point is, at the Mayo Clinic and a few other clinics around the country, there have been significantly better outcomes. In other words, if you go there and come out, you are more likely to be well, and at a lower cost. And the question is, Why? The President has repeatedly pointed to the Mayo Clinic, Democratic Senators point to the Mayo Clinic, and Republican Senators point to the Mayo Clinic. Here is what the Mayo Clinic had to say on Friday about the legislation that is being considered in the House of Representatives: Although there are some positives in the current House Tri- committee bill, including insurance for all and payment reform demonstration projects--the proposed legislation misses the opportunity to help create higher quality, more affordable health care for patients. In fact, it will do the opposite. That is the Mayo Clinic talking. In general, the proposals under discussion are not patient focused or results oriented. Lawmakers have failed to use a fundamental lever--a change in Medicare payment policy--to help drive necessary improvements in American health care. Unless legislators create payment systems that pay for good patient results at reasonable costs, the promise of transformation in American health care will wither. The real losers will be the citizens of the United States of America. That is the Mayo Clinic talking about the bill we are beginning to see in the House of Representatives. I think the prudent thing to do is to try to make that bill better or start over and certainly not try to pass a 1,000-page or 2,000-page bill in 1 week or 10 days without knowing what is in it, as we did with the stimulus bill earlier this year. That is not just the opinion of the Mayo Clinic. Here is a letter to House Members on July 16, a few days ago, from a number of clinics, including the Mayo Clinic. These are the Intermountain Healthcare, Gundersen Lutheran Health System, the Iowa Clinic, the Marshfield Clinic, the Rural Wisconsin Health Cooperative, ThedaCare, and Wisconsin Hospital Association. I ask unanimous consent to have this letter printed in the Record following my remarks.

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, President Obama was in Warren, MI, today, and a little while ago he made an announcement. He announced a new $12 billion national community college initiative. That sounds very good at first. As a former Governor and Secretary of Education for the United States, I am a big fan of community colleges. I think they are our secret weapon for helping men and women in this country go from one job to the next and to improve our workforce. But I respectfully suggest that what the President, his Education Secretary and his economic advisers--and I think his Education Secretary may be his very best appointee of all--I say this with respect, I think they ought to be asked to stay after school at the community college and write on the blackboard 100 times that in a year in which we have run the Federal deficit up by another $1.8 trillion, I will never again add another penny to entitlement mandatory spending. Then I think we in the Congress, as we legislate this year, ought to do some truth in lending. To do that, we would have to put a little card with every 1 of the 15 million student loans, if the President's proposal goes through, and say: The interest you are paying on the money you are borrowing is almost all being used to pay for somebody else's scholarship in the President's community college initiative. I think it is important to say that because, as good as it sounds to say: Let's help the community colleges, I am afraid this is a familiar refrain we have been hearing from the White House for the last 6 months. Instead of reducing entitlement spending the President is again adding to mandatory spending. Entitlement spending, which is driving up our debt to unbelievable numbers, a situation where the President's proposal for the next 10 years is more new debt than we spent, three times as much money as we spent in World War II. This is one more Washington takeover, in addition to banks and insurance companies and car companies and maybe health care. It is now the student loans of the country. It also changes the way we fund higher education, which is usually to take almost all our money and give it to students in Pell grants and student loans and let them choose the college, rather than to give grants the way we do with K-12. Let me take a few minutes to explain why I am saying this. The idea the President has is to spend $2.5 billion for community college facilities, buildings. Every State has community colleges. One of our major jobs as governors and state legislators is to fund those community colleges. Traditionally, the Federal Government gives scholarships, and the Pell grants often pay for almost the entire tuition at a community college, making them very important to American students. But this moves the Federal Government into construction and renovation of community colleges, as well as $9 billion for competitive challenge college grants to increase graduation rates and $500 million for online curriculum. So the choice is, instead of more money for Pell grants and administration of student loans, we are going to spend it on direct grants to some community colleges. In other words, we are going to start funding higher education, community colleges, in the way we fund kindergarten through the 12th grade. Despite the fact that higher education is by far the best in the world, the most admired system--and one reason is because we don't have a lot of Federal direct programs for it; we give the money to students, they choose the school--we are going to start doing it more like K-12, which is not the most admired system in the world. The $12 billion would be paid for out of savings from the regular student loan program we have now because under the President's plan all new student loans would go through the U.S. Department of Education. So let's take that idea first. We have about $75 billion in student loans every year. That is a huge bank. Fifteen million students borrow money for student loans. Twelve million of them borrow through 2,000 different institutions--banks--and spend the money at 4,000 institutions of higher education. Three million choose to go through the government, where they get a direct loan directly from the government. I was the Secretary of Education when this program was created. I didn't see any reason for the Direct Loan Program because I didn't think the U.S. Department of Education ought to be a bank. I thought the Secretary of Education ought to be trying to be the educator of the year, not the banker of the year. But the argument is, well, we can borrow money more cheaply in the government. We can borrow it for a quarter of 1 percent and then we can loan it out at 6.8 percent to students. Banks can't do that. So we will do it, and we will take it over and do it all here. We will do all 15 million loans from the U.S. Department of Education. We will be the banker of the year. Mr. President, the Federal Government is getting real busy. This is becoming the national headquarters for automobiles, where we own 60 percent of General Motors; we are running a bunch of banks; we run some insurance companies; we are talking about a government-run health care program; and now we are going to take over and make a huge national bank out of the U.S. Department of Education. The reason is because we can borrow money more cheaply here. Well, why don't we just abolish all the financial institutions in America and say: We can borrow money more cheaply than you can, so you go away and we will do it all. That is not the American way. In fact, most Americans would like to get the government out of the car business, out of the banking business, and out of the insurance business. I can guarantee you that as soon as 15 million students start lining up outside the U.S. Department of Education to get their student loans, instead of going through their local banks and dealing with their local universities, they are not going to be very happy about this either because they have had a choice for nearly 20 years, and they have chosen to go to their private lenders. So that is the first problem. We are canceling the choice that 12 million students are exercising this year to get a federally backed student loan from a bank even though they could have gotten a student loan directly from the government. Then we are saying: All right, because we are canceling that, we are saving $94 billion and we have money to spend. Well, in the first place, that is not right, Mr. President. By my calculation, according to the Congressional Budget Office estimate of what it costs to operate the current Direct Loan Program, it will cost about $32 billion over the next 10 years, at least, to operate the entire student loan program out of the U.S. Department of Education. My common sense tells me--and I have thought this for years--that there is not any way a group of educators in the Department of Education--a relatively small department--are going to operate more efficiently than banking institutions across America in making loans. That is not their business. They know about scholarships and graduation rates, not about being bankers. My common sense tells me that, and I think it does most Americans. Plus, we have a free market system, or at least we did, where we try to get things out of government, not into government. So that is the proposal. Yet 32 billion of the dollars over the next 10 years are illusory savings, so we are really adding to the debt. Then the President is saying, well, let's take some of that $90 billion as mandatory spending. I know this gets a little complicated, but it is really not that complicated. He is saying the money we now spend to pay the costs to the government of loaning out this $75 billion every year is automatic mandatory spending, so let's take it away from how we now spend it on the administration with banks, and let's spend it instead on mandatory spending for community colleges. In other words, he has an opportunity to say let's take away some money that is being automatically spent every year and save it. Let's save it. Or he could say, let's put it for students. But I think most of us would say--and he has said in his summit on entitlement spending--that we need to stop adding entitlement spending. But that is not what he is doing. Indeed, his other proposal--which is not announced today but is the rest of his proposal--is to say we have this $94 billion--which I think is closer to $60 billion or $50 billion--that we could save, and he is going to say we will make Pell grants entitlement spending. Well, Pell grants are terrific grants. There are 5 million of them. We appropriate them every year for low-income students. There was $19 billion appropriated for that purpose last year. The Congress has always been enormously generous with that. We appropriate a certain amount. It is almost automatic, but it is not automatic. In other words, we appropriate what we think we can afford, and then we spend it on the students who need it. This proposal to shift Pell grants to mandatory says it doesn't matter what we can afford, we are just going to do it. Again, it is exactly the kind of thing that most economists, most Americans, and the President himself has said we need to stop doing. Yet in the full light of day, we are saying and announcing that we are going to create a community college program, and later a Pell grant program, and we are going to pay for it with mandatory automatic entitlement spending. While the President says it is $94 billion that could be saved over 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office said it is $293 billion-- nearly $300 billion--in automatic spending over 10 years that we could avoid. Yet the President is saying we should spend it. I am very disappointed with that. Then here is the last point I would like to emphasize--well, there are two points really. The President is saying: I am here today to do a favor for you. I am going to spend $12 billion on community colleges. But what he doesn't tell you is the people paying for that are the people borrowing money to go to college. So if you are getting an extra job at night so you can go to college, and you are taking out a student loan, the government is going to borrow money at a quarter of 1 percent and loan it to you at 6.8 percent and use the difference for its own purposes. We are making money on the backs of students who are borrowing money to go to college and then taking credit for spending it for somebody else's scholarship or some community college program and we are not telling anyone that. So we need a little truth in lending. Finally, I am concerned about the changes in direction from the way we support higher education. We are very fortunate in America to have this terrific higher education system, including our community colleges. In a way, we got it by accident because with the GI bill, when the veterans came home from World War II, we just gave the money to them and they went anywhere they wanted to. That is not the way we do with kindergarten through 12. We have all these programs. It is command and control, and we support the institution instead of the student. We call the argument about that ``vouchers.'' When we have arguments like that, we get all excited. We did in the Appropriations Committee the other day, and the Senator from Illinois and I argued--we each got 15 votes--about the DC voucher program: Shall we give our money to students and let them choose a school or shall we support the school? Well, in higher education, 85 percent of the dollars we spend, or some figure about like that, goes to the student, who then chooses the school. It may be a community college or a Jewish school or an African American school or a Catholic school or a public school or a private school or a for-profit school. We don't care, as long as it is accredited. As a result, we have a higher education system that attracts the best foreign students anywhere in the world and gives Americans choices. As a result we have almost all the best colleges and universities in the world. So this proposal is a little shift from that to say the Federal Government would take all the money--which I would argue we don't have--but this $12 billion we are going to give to grants in higher education instead of to students. I would rather give it to students. So I applaud the President for his interest in higher education and community colleges, but I would suggest to him that we have too much debt and too many Washington takeovers, and we shouldn't be funding this program on the backs of the students who are borrowing money and working an extra job to go to college. I don't think they would appreciate knowing that the interest they are paying is mostly going to pay for someone else's scholarship. They might ask: Why do I have to do that? Why isn't that person in the same shape I am? The President was in Warren, MI, in the middle of the auto business, and we have some suggestions--or I would have--for other ways to deal with the problems we have with the economy today. One would be that since we are near the General Motors headquarters, to celebrate their emergence from bankruptcy by giving the 60 percent of the stock the government owns in General Motors back to the taxpayers who paid taxes on April 15; that we should focus on cheap energy so we can reindustrialize America, including our automobile industry, by 100 nuclear powerplants; that we could take the mandatory spending and instead of spending it, save it and have less debt. That would be a real favor to the students. To revitalize housing, we could have Senator Isakson's $15,000 tax credit to help get the housing market going again. Then in our health care debate we could stop talking about more government takeovers and, instead, take the available dollars and give the money to low-income Americans and let them buy their own insurance, like most of the rest of us have. So this is a big difference of opinion we have. As noble as the idea of supporting community colleges is, this is not the way to do it.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Another Washington takeover and too much debt. There is a better way. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I assume the order is to begin the Republican 30 minutes of morning business. I would like to take the first 20 minutes and be informed when I have 1 minute left, and Senator Gregg will take the last 10 minutes. Then the Democratic time remaining will be reserved for the Democratic side when they want to use it.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I delivered an address yesterday at the National Press Club about the Republican plan for clean energy. We call it a low-cost clean energy plan. It begins with the idea of building 100 new nuclear power plants in the next 20 years; electrifying half our cars and trucks in the next 20 years; exploring for natural gas, which is low carbon, and oil offshore--if we are going to continue to use oil, it might as well be our own--and then, finally, doubling our research and development budget, as President Obama has proposed, so we can have ``mini Manhattan Projects'' in renewable energy to try to reduce renewable energy technologies' costs and make them more reliable so they can contribute to our energy needs. I would like to make a few remarks today on our low-cost plan for clean, renewable energy and compare it with what is coming over from the House, which is a high-cost plan. Our country is at a critical point. The recession is the most severe in decades. Unemployment is nearing 10 percent. We have too much national debt. A gathering storm threatens the technological edge that has given Americans--only about 5 percent of the world's people--a remarkable standard of living that comes from producing 25 percent of the world's wealth. We remember last year's high oil prices. We know we are relying too much on other countries for energy. There is the unfinished job of cleaning our air, and, for many, the global warming of our planet is an urgent concern. It is against this backdrop that for the first time ever legislation dealing broadly with climate change and energy is coming out of the House. We are working on the same subjects in the Senate. The decisions we make will affect our well-being for years to come. The House has chosen the high-cost solution to clean energy and climate change. Its economy-wide cap-and-trade and renewable energy mandate is a job-killing, $100 billion-a-year national energy tax that will add a new utility bill to every American family budget. Republican Senators offer a different approach, a low-cost plan for clean energy based upon four steps: 100 new nuclear plants in 20 years, electric cars for conservation, offshore exploration for natural gas and oil, and doubling energy research and development to make renewable energy cost competitive. The Republican plan will lower utility bills and create jobs and should put the United States within the goals of the Kyoto protocol on global warming by 2030. Our plan should not add to the Federal budget since ratepayers will pay for building the new nuclear plants. Federal loan financing for the first nuclear plants is designed not to cost the taxpayers money, and nuclear plants insure one another. Offshore exploration should produce revenues through royalties to pay for programs to encourage electric cars and trucks; and doubling energy research and development should cost about $8 billion more per year, which is consistent with the President's budget proposals for 2009 and 2010. So in furtherance of that Republican plan, I have offered my own blueprint as one Senator about how to build 100 nuclear power plants in the next 20 years, and I am looking for support on the Republican side and on the Democratic side, in and out of Congress. For those who are watching and listening, I would like to have your comments and suggestions at www.alexander.senate .gov. This is a good time to stop and ask: Just what are we trying to accomplish with energy and climate change legislation? What kind of America do we want to create during the next 20 years? Well, first, we should want to see an America running on energy that is clean, cheap, reliable, and abundant. In order to produce nearly 25 percent of the world's wealth, we consume about 25 percent of the world's energy. We should want an America in which we create hundreds of thousands of green jobs, but not at the expense of destroying tens of millions of red, white, and blue jobs. In other words, it doesn't make any sense to put people to work in the renewable energy sector if we are throwing them out of work in manufacturing and high tech. 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 cheap energy. We want clean, new, energy-efficient cars, but we want them built in Michigan and Ohio and Tennessee and not in Japan and Mexico. We should want an America capable of producing enough of our own energy so we can't be held hostage by some other country. We should want an America in which we are the unquestioned leader in cutting-edge, job-creating scientific research. We should want an America producing less carbon. I don't think we ought to be throwing 29 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the environment every year, so that means less reliance on fossil fuels. We want an America with cleaner air where smog and soot in Los Angeles and in the Great Smoky Mountains are a thing of the past and where our children are less likely to suffer asthma attacks brought on by breathing pollutants. Finally, we should 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 the scenic landscapes. The great American outdoors is a revered part of the American character. We have spent a century preserving it. There is no need to destroy the environment in the name of saving the environment. None of these goals are met by the House-passed Waxman-Markey bill. What started out as an effort to address global warming by reducing carbon emissions has ended up as a contraption of taxes and mandates that will impose a huge and unnecessary burden on the economy. Renewable energies such as wind and solar and biomass are intriguing and promising as a supplement to America's energy requirements. Yet the Waxman-Markey bill proves once again that one of the government's biggest mistakes can be taking a good idea and expanding it until it doesn't work anymore. Trying to expand these forms of renewable energy to the point where they become our prime source of energy has huge costs and obvious flaws. What is worse, it creates what some conservationists call ``the renewable energy sprawl,'' where we are asked to sacrifice the American landscape and overwhelm fragile ecosystems with thousands of massive energy machines in an effort to take care of our energy needs. For example, one big solar power plant in the western desert where they line up mirrors to focus the Sun's rays and which spreads across more than 30 square miles--that is more than 5 miles on each side-- produces just the same 1,000 megawatts you can get from a single coal or nuclear plant that sits on 1 square mile. And to generate the same 1,000 megawatts with wind, you need 270 square miles of 50-story turbines. Generating 20 percent of our Nation's electricity from wind would cover an area the size of West Virginia. To those of us in the Southeast where the wind blows less than 20 percent of the time, they say ``use biomass,'' which is burning wood products, sort of a controlled bonfire. That is a good idea. It might reduce forest fires and conserve resources, but let's not expect too much. We would need a forest a lot larger than the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to feed a 1,000-megawatt biomass plant on a sustained basis. And think of all of the energy used and the carbon produced by the hundreds of trucks it will take every day to haul the stuff to that one plant. Already we are beginning to see the problems. Boone Pickens, who said that wind turbines are ``too ugly,'' in his words, to put on his own ranch, last week postponed what was to be America's largest wind farm because of the difficulty of building transmission lines from West Texas to population centers. And the Sacramento Municipal Utility District pulled out of another huge project to bring wind energy in from the Sierra Nevada for the same reason. According to the Wall Street Journal, California officials are worried that the State's renewable mandates have created ``a high risk to the state economy . . . and that the state may be short on power by 2011 if problems continue to pile up.'' Add to that a point that many forget: Wind and solar energy is only available about a third of the time because today it can't be stored-- you use it or you lose it. Solar's great advantage is that the Sun shines during peak usage hours, while the wind often blows at night when there is plenty of unused electricity. But with either, if you want to be sure your lights turn on or that your factory opens its doors when you go to work, you still need other power plants to back it up. Is this really the picture of America we want to see 20 years from now? There is a much better option. We should take another long, hard look at nuclear power. It is already our best source for large amounts of cheap, reliable, clean energy. It provides only 20 percent of our Nation's electricity but 70 percent of our carbon-free, pollution-free electricity. It is already far and away our best defense against global warming. So why not build 100 new nuclear plants in the next 20 years? American utilities built 100 reactors between 1970 and 1990 with their own (ratepayers') money. Why can't we do that again? Other countries are already forging ahead of us. France gets 80 percent of its electricity from 50 reactors, and it has among the cheapest electricity rates and the lowest carbon emissions in Europe. Japan is building reactors from start to finish in 4 years. China is planning 60 new reactors. Russia is selling its nuclear technology all over the world. We are helping India get ready to build nuclear plants. President Obama has even said Iran has the right to use nuclear power for energy. Yet we haven't built a new nuclear plant in 30 years, and we invented the technology. Why don't we get back in the game? There seem to be a couple of main things holding us back: first, a failure to appreciate just how different nuclear is from other technologies, how its tremendous energy density translates into a vanishingly small environmental footprint, and second, an exaggerated fear of nuclear technology. Many have forgotten that nuclear power plants were the result of President Eisenhower's ``Atoms For Peace'' program. The idea was to take perhaps the greatest invention of the last century and use it to provide low-cost energy to reduce poverty around the world. There is also a misconception that nuclear plants are uninsurable and can't exist without a big Federal subsidy. There is a Federal insurance program for nuclear plants called Price-Anderson, but it has never paid a dime of insurance. Today, the way it works is every one of the 104 nuclear plants in the country can be assessed $100 million in damages for an accident at another reactor. So that is another factor adding to safety consciousness. Most reactors have revenue of $2 million a day, which pays for the $5 billion construction loans and still makes possible low rates for consumers. For example, when the Tennessee Valley Authority restarted its Brown's Ferry Unit 1 reactor 2 years ago, TVA thought it would take 10 years to pay off the $1.8 billion construction debt. It took 3 years. When oil prices were skyrocketing, Connecticut proposed putting a windfall profits tax on the state's two reactors because they were making so much money. Nuclear power is the obvious first step to a policy of clean and low- cost energy. One hundred new plants in 20 years would double U.S. nuclear production, making it about 40 percent of all electricity production. Add 10 percent for Sun and wind and other renewable sources. Add another 10 percent for hydroelectric, maybe 5 percent for natural gas, and we begin to have a cheap, as well as a clean, energy policy. Step two is to electrify half our cars and trucks. According to estimates by Brookings Institution scholars, there is so much unused electricity at night that we can also do this in 20 years without building one new power plant if we plug in vehicles while we sleep. This is the fastest way to reduce dependence on foreign oil, keep fuel prices low, and reduce the one-third of carbon that comes from gasoline engines. Step three is to explore offshore for natural gas--it is low carbon-- and oil--using less, but using our own. The final step is to double funding for energy research and development and launch mini Manhattan Projects such as the one we had in World War II, this time to meet seven grand energy challenges: improving batteries for plug-in vehicles; making solar power cost- competitive with fossil fuels; making carbon capture a reality for coal-burning plants; safely recycling used nuclear fuel; making advanced biofuels--crops we don't eat--cost-competitive with gasoline; making more buildings green buildings; and providing energy from fusion. We can't wait any longer to start building our future of clean, reliable, and affordable energy. The time has come for action. We must open our minds to the possibilities and potential of nuclear power. We have a clear choice between a high-cost clean energy plan coming from the House--one that is filled with taxes and mandates and a new utility bill for every American family, one that will drive jobs overseas searching for cheap energy--or we can enact our own cheap and clean energy policy and lower utility bills and keep jobs here and produce food here at a price that is low so Americans can afford to buy it. This is the sensible way to go: nuclear power, electric cars, exploration offshore, and doubling research and development. This policy of cheap and clean energy will help family budgets and create jobs. It will also prove to be the fastest way to increase American energy independence, clean our air, and reduce global warming. I hope those listening will let me know their thoughts about our blueprint for 100 nuclear power plants in the next 20 years. The way to do that is to visit www.alexander.senate.gov. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the President has expressed several times his concern about our Nation's debt. We Republicans have a great concern about the amount of debt being stacked up in this country. President Obama's proposals will, over the next 10 years, add three times as much to the national debt, almost, as was spent during World War II, according to the Washington Post. The President has had a summit on entitlement spending, which is the principal cause of the debt. He has said we need to pay for programs as we go. If we spend a dollar, we should save a dollar or tax a dollar. More recently he has said that health care legislation has to be paid for. Well, Mr. President, we are rushing down a road to pass a bill without knowing what it costs. I just left the work we are doing in the HELP Committee. The Finance Committee is working hard. We had a bipartisan breakfast of nearly 20 Senators this morning discussing how we could have a bipartisan result in health care this year. But we cannot do it unless we know how much it costs. It affects 16 percent of our entire national budget. We do not have a bill yet. The HELP Committee may have one by the end of the week, in which Republicans have had almost no input. The Finance Committee is trying to develop a bipartisan bill, but they are not going to begin writing a bill until next week. Then it will take several weeks to know what it costs. We need to know, not just so we do not add to the debt, but so we can understand what the various options are and how much they cost. We are talking about Medicare cuts and spending Grandma's Medicare money on somebody else. How much does that cost? We are talking about taxes on employers. How much does that cost? We are talking about adding to the debt. By exactly how much? We are talking about a surtax on incomes. We are talking about extensive increases in State costs in Medicaid. So we want a health care bill. But we want something Americans can afford, and after we are through fixing health care, we want to make sure they have a government they can afford. We agree with the President. We cannot responsibly pass a bill on this floor until we know what it costs. So why the rush? Let's do it right. We are talking about one of the most important pieces of legislation ever, and we are talking about trillions of dollars.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Arizona for his courtesy. I enjoyed hearing his remarks. No Senator on either side of the aisle has been a more consistent spokesman on military preparedness than Senator Kyl has been over the years. His concern about our nuclear stockpile is well known and very important. I hope all Americans will pay close attention to what he had to say. I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 20 minutes in morning business.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, our job in the Senate is to debate. We are said to be the greatest deliberative body in the world. The great conflicts in our country come here so that we can resolve them. After 6 months of President Obama's administration, Americans admire him, like him, like his family, and appreciate his seriousness of purpose. But Americans are beginning to see some significant differences of opinion between the kind of country the Democrats are imagining for our Nation and the kind of country Republicans and many independents are imagining. There is concern in Tennessee, as well as around the country, about the lack of checks and balances on too much debt and too many Washington takeovers. In terms of debt, we see the President's proposals for debt for the next 10 years are nearly three times as much as all of the money the United States spent in World War II. As far as Washington takeovers, it seems to be a weekly running reality show. First the banks; then the insurance companies; then the student loans; then the car companies even, according to recent legislation; your farm pond, according to some Federal legislation; and now maybe even health care. But people have a right to say to us on this side of the aisle: What would you Republicans do? You can't just point with alarm--although that is part of our job. What would Republicans do? I wanted to mention three areas where Republicans have a different opinion than the current administration and where we hope we might persuade the American people and many Democrats and even the President to join us on a different path for the country. The first has to do with the Government's ownership of General Motors. We want to give the stock back to the people who paid for it, the taxpayers. The second has to do with health care. We want to begin at the other end of the discussion. We want to start with the 250 million Americans who already have health care and make sure they can afford it. After we are through making sure of that, that they can afford their government, because they can't afford these trillion-dollar additions to health care we keep hearing about. Third, on clean energy, we want clean energy as well as the President does. But we also want energy that Americans can afford. We know cheap energy is key to our economic success. We want jobs to be made. We want cars to be made in Michigan and Ohio and Tennessee and not Mexico or Japan. We have a plan for clean energy that is low cost, that will reduce utility bills and keep jobs here which would compare with the Waxman-Markey climate change bill passed by the House and headed our way. I would like to talk about each of those three very briefly. First, General Motors. I congratulate the new GM for emerging from bankruptcy today. General Motors has meant a great deal to our country and a great deal to our State, Tennessee. When General Motors decided nearly 25 years ago to put the Saturn plant in Tennessee, we had very few auto jobs. Nissan had already made a decision to come to our State. That was a pioneering decision because most auto plants were in the Midwest. Today there are a dozen such auto plants, including the General Motors plant in Spring Hill. In Tennessee, instead of having a few auto jobs, a third of our manufacturing jobs are auto jobs. So we are grateful to General Motors for its decision 24 years ago, and we want it to succeed. We want that Spring Hill plant to be making some GM products soon and believe that it will be because of all the natural advantages it has. What are the best ways we in Washington can help General Motors succeed? That was the question asked of me last week in Tennessee. The answer is to get the General Motors stock that is owned by the government out of Washington, DC, and into the hands of the taxpayers. I have legislation I have introduced, and I am looking for the opportunity to amend an appropriate bill on the Senate floor that is cosponsored by the Republican leader and Senator Kyl and a variety of others. It would take the 60 percent of General Motors the U.S. Government owns and give it to the 120 million Americans who pay taxes on April 15. What is the reason for doing that? They paid for it. They should own it. What is the second reason for doing that? If the stock stays here, we find that Washington bureaucrats and those of us in Congress can't keep our hands off the car company. We have the President calling up the mayor of Detroit saying: Yes, I think the headquarters ought to be in Detroit instead of Warren, MI. We have the Congressman from Massachusetts calling up the president of General Motors saying: Don't close the warehouse in my district. And you have the delegation from Tennessee and from Indiana and Michigan saying: Put a car plant here. And you have 60 committees in Congress authorized to summon the executives here--we own the company, after all; let's hear what they have to say--and tell them what to do. Paint it this color. Get your battery from this district. Make it this way. What are the poor executives going to do? Drive in their congressionally approved hybrid cars from Detroit to Washington to testify before 60 subcommittees while Toyota is busy making cars? GM will never succeed if we keep this incestuous political meddling alive. There are a variety of ways to get the stock out of the government and back in the hands of the people. The President has said he would like to do it. He has also said he wants to keep his hands off it. But that has not been the practice so far. Senator Bennett of Utah and I have introduced this legislation that would give the stock to the taxpayers who paid for it. That is the best way to do it, in my opinion. That would happen within a year. It would be a fairly common occurrence in the American corporate world. It is what Procter & Gamble did with Clorox a few years ago. It is what PepsiCo did with its restaurant businesses a few years ago. The company decided it had a subsidiary that did not fit the role of the major company, and so it spun it off--a stock distribution, a corporate spinoff. I think we can all agree--at least 90 percent of the American people agree, according to surveys--that the government in Washington has no business whatsoever trying to run a car company. What do we know about it? So the best way to get rid of it is to give it to the people who paid for it. There are other ways to do it, and several Senators--Senator Corker, for example, has suggested an ownership trust to try to make sure that while it is here, the government keeps its hands off the day-to-day operations. Senator Johanns and Senator Thune also have bills of this kind, as does Senator Nelson of Nebraska. But my point is, now that General Motors has emerged from bankruptcy, let's celebrate that by taking the 60 percent of the stock the American taxpayers paid $50 billion for and giving it to those same taxpayers and getting our hands off the company and cheer them on. There is another reason this would be a good idea. Most of us know the Green Bay Packers are a popular team, especially in their home area. Why is that? Because the fans own the team. That would be the same thing we would have with the General Motors stock distribution. Just as Green Bay Packer fans have a special interest in who the quarterback might be because they own the team, if 120 million Americans had a little bit of GM stock, they might be a little more interested in the next Chevrolet, and that might create a nice fan investor base for the new GM as it seeks to move ahead. So that is the first idea we Republicans have: get the government stock ownership of the car companies out of Washington and back in the hands of the marketplace where it belongs. Here is the second idea we have. It has to do with health care. We would start at the other end of the debate. We would start with the 250 million Americans who already have health care and say to them: We want to make sure you can afford your health care, that you can choose your health care, and that when we are done fixing it in this health care reform--that we would like to do this year along with our Democratic friends--we want to make sure you can afford your government as well. That is our message. Our friends on the other side--the Democrats--have more votes than we do, so they have set the agenda and they are writing the bill. In the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, on which I serve, they are being very polite and collegial and nice to us, but they are taking almost none of our ideas and recommendations, and they are starting at the other end. And their other end is not going very well. It is not going very well in terms of costs and debt because the Congressional Budget Office has begun to tell us how much some of these proposals will cost; and we are talking about $2 trillion in addition to all the trillions we have been spending this year. This Nation cannot afford that. Even though we are adding $1 trillion or $2 trillion to the debt in order to have this sort of health care reform that is being proposed, it does not begin to cover the uninsured people in America. We would like to cover the uninsured people, too, but we think we ought to do that after we make sure we keep the costs down for the 250 million who already have health insurance, including the small businesses of this country. That is our main goal: to lower costs. And we do not want to end up with a health care plan that adds debt to the government either. That is why we have introduced a number of plans. Senator Coburn and Senator Burr have introduced one. Senator Gregg of New Hampshire has introduced one. Senator Hatch has introduced a health care plan that gives the States more responsibility in figuring out exactly how to provide health care, especially to low-income Americans. The essential differences between our approaches and the Democratic approaches that are being presented is that, one, ours do not add to the debt; and, two, the government does not run ours. The essential nature of the Democratic proposals is to expand one failed government program for low-income people that is called the Medicaid Program and to create another, which we believe will tend to drive out your choices and your competition and not do very much to reduce your costs, while adding heavily to the national debt we already have. That is a major difference we have. And we have our proposals on the table. The discussion is not going very well because it is one-sided. I suggested, 3 weeks ago, when we began to discuss the Kennedy bill, we ought to start over and suggested they might want to take some of our ideas. There is a Wyden-Bennett piece of legislation I did not even mention. Mr. President, 14 of us--8 Democrats and 6 Republicans--are cosponsors of that legislation. It has a zero addition to the national debt, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The principle of it is basically to take the dollars we have available and give them to Americans and let them buy their health care insurance, so instead of expanding government programs, including for low-income Americans, you get the dollars, you get the health care, and that takes care of virtually everybody. All the plans from this side of the aisle, like those on the other side, say everybody needs to be insured. You are not disqualified for a preexisting condition. And the cost has to be affordable. All of us agree on that. The difference is whether it is going to be government programs or whether you are going to have dollars you can choose. That is the big difference, and we hope the American people will pay attention to the differences we are offering. We believe they will because, as you look at the Democratic plans, the costs are becoming alarming. The first cost we saw was to the national debt, which was to expand between $1 trillion and $2 trillion, at least in the bill we have been considering in the HELP Committee. But then in the new versions of it, the sponsors began to shift the costs. Well, where do they shift it? The first place they shift it is to employers. It is a bad idea. We have a 10-percent unemployment rate in the country today. People work for employers, and all the evidence shows, if we add costs to employers, one of a couple things happens. One is, the wages of the employees are reduced because the employer has to pay higher taxes. The second thing is, you add costs to employers and some of those employers go overseas. I was in Tennessee last week talking to a lot of auto suppliers, air- conditioning manufacturers. They watch their costs every day. They are in discussions with their companies about that if costs of electricity or health care or anything else go up too much, they begin to go overseas and look for lower costs. We have already seen what has happened to the automobile industry in the Midwest because of high health care costs. So why is it such a good idea to begin to shift the costs and have every employer pay at least a $750-per-employee tax as a way of reducing the cost of health care? Then the other place these plans begin to shift the costs is to the States. That is a convenient place to shift it. I used to see that as Governor. The Acting President pro tempore was speaker of the house in his State. We are familiar with Members of Congress who hold big press conferences and announce a good idea and take credit for it, and then they send the bill to the Governor or the speaker of the house or the legislature or the mayor and say: Here, you pay for it. It is called an unfunded Federal mandate. The unfunded Federal mandate in this case is to the Medicaid Program. The Medicaid Program, in my view, is a terrible choice for a way to expand coverage for low-income families. Already, 60 million Americans get their health care through their State Medicaid Program, which is usually funded about 60 percent by the Federal Government. But the problem is, it is so poorly run and so underfunded the way it is managed that 40 percent of doctors will not see Medicaid patients. So when you expand the Medicaid Program and dump more low-income Americans into it, you are giving people a bus ticket to a company that does not have very many buses. So they do not get good health care service. That is not the way we should be doing this. But that is the way we are trying to do it. Then there is another person who is going to be affected by that expansion of Medicaid, the government program, and that is the taxpayer. The costs of the expansions that are being discussed when you expand the program to 150 percent of the Federal poverty level--and when you, in addition to that, try to attract more doctors and hospitals to serve Medicaid patients, and you require States to pay more to doctors and more to hospitals than they are today--the numbers are staggering. The Congressional Budget Office has said: It is a $500 billion figure over 10 years, or maybe it is $700 billion if you go to the fourth year and go for 10 years after that, or maybe it is more than that, depending on the various formulas you come up with. And we will assume all that at the Federal level? Maybe we will to start with, but after a few years, it will go back to the States. We say that easily here because we have a printing press, and we have suddenly gotten used to talking about trillions of dollars. But States cannot do that. States do not have printing presses. They have to balance their budgets. I did a little calculation. If we expanded the Medicaid Program by 150 percent of the Federal poverty level and required States to put everyone in there, and if we increased the payments to doctors and to hospitals to 110 percent of Medicare levels, which is still significantly below what private plans pay, it would add about $1.2 billion every year to the budget just for the State's share of Medicaid. That is about a 10-percent new State income tax in our State to pay. So that is the shifting of a cost. That is not just a little cost shift. That is an impossible cost shift. That is not even in the area of reality. I think as employers begin to discover what they are going to be taxed and when States discover what they are going to be taxed and Medicaid recipients realize if they get into this program that 40 percent of the doctors will not see them, this is not going to be a very popular alternative. Then, last week, we heard about Medicare cuts. Some of the Democrats in the Senate have made an agreement with the hospitals to cut Medicare. That is not so bad, they say. But what is even worse--even worse--is they are going to take the savings from Medicare cuts and spend it on a different program. We all know that the biggest problem we have with the Federal budget is the rising cost of Medicare, and we have to bring that under some control--control the growth of Medicare. But if we are going to take any money out of the Medicare Program, it ought to be spent on the Medicare Program for the seniors who are in it. We ought not to take money from the Medicare Program and use it to pay for some new program we are talking about passing. So all these plans that are being talked about are shifting the costs. First, they are adding to the Federal deficit by maybe $1 trillion. And then they are shifting the rest of the cost to employers who are struggling, to States who are broke, to taxpayers in the States, 10 percent of whom are unemployed. Then they are taking money out of Medicare and spending it instead of spending it on Medicare. I do not think this is going to work. So I suggest my advice at the beginning of this discussion 3 weeks ago is still good: Start over. Start over with one of the Republican plans or with a bipartisan Wyden- Bennett plan. Fourteen Senators are already there: 8 Democrats and 6 Republicans. And let's begin with the 250 million Americans who are already covered and make sure their costs are appropriate, that they can afford their health care, and that when we get through with this health care fix, that Americans can afford their government. One other area of an idea that I hope--and we hope--our friends on the Democratic side will agree with and the President eventually will agree with and the American people will agree with has to do with how we go about having clean energy. On Monday, I will be making a speech at the National Press Club at 11 a.m. about a blueprint for 100 new nuclear powerplants. This is a part of the Republican clean energy strategy which has four provisions to it. The first is 100 new nuclear powerplants in the next 20 years. The second is: electrify our cars and trucks. I believe we can electrify half of them in 20 years. The third is: explore offshore for natural gas and oil. And fourth is: double research and development of energy. I would call it mini-Manhattan projects to help make alternative energy, such as solar, cost competitive with fossil fuels, so the use can be more widespread or for carbon recapture so our coal plants can be cleaner or for advanced biofuels from crops we do not eat to make that fuel more competitive with gasoline or even with fusion and green buildings. These are the kinds of things we should be doing. The Republican energy plan, which is based on 100 nuclear powerplants, is a cheap energy plan. It is cheap and clean energy. The Waxman-Markey bill, the so-called climate change energy bill that is coming from the House, the Democratic plan, is a high-cost clean energy bill. Let's stop and think about the kind of America we would like to have. We want an America in which we have good jobs, and that is going to take plenty of energy. We use 25 percent of all of the energy in the world. We want an America in which we don't create excessive carbon so we can reduce global warming. We want clean air--that kind of an America. We want one, too, in which we are not creating a renewable energy sprawl where these gigantic machines are spreading across landscapes we have spent a century preserving. Of course, we want the hundreds of thousands of green jobs that can come from renewable energy, but we don't want to do it in a way that kills the tens of millions of red, white, and blue jobs that most of us work in. We don't want to run our manufacturing and technology, high-tech companies overseas looking for cheap electricity because of the strategy we take for clean energy. The strategy that is coming toward us from the House, the Democratic proposal, is a high-cost strategy. It is a $100 billion a year burden on the economy which is unnecessary. It is high taxes, and it is more mandates, and it is a new utility bill for every American family. What Republicans want to say is there is a different approach that will get us to about the same place. I actually think it will get us there faster. This approach starts with 100 new nuclear powerplants. That means we will have electricity that is cheap enough so that cars can be built in Michigan and Ohio, as well as Tennessee, instead of Mexico and Japan. It means we would be producing more of our energy at home. It means our air will be cleaner. Nuclear power is 70 percent of our pollution-free, carbon-free electricity today, while solar and wind, for example, is 6 percent. And it will do what we need to do to reduce global warming. In fact, our plan should put us within the Kyoto limits by 2030, because nuclear power produces 70 percent of the carbon-free electricity, and carbon is the principal greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. So my question would be: Why would we adopt this contraption headed this way from the House--$100 billion of taxes on the economy, giveaways, payoffs, surprises, complications, cow taxes--why would we do that? Why would we raise our prices deliberately when we can deliberately lower our prices with the technology we already have? We haven't built a new nuclear plant in 30 years, but France has. They are 80 percent nuclear. So European plants are moving to Spain. France has among the lowest electric rates in the European Union and among the lowest carbon emissions in the European Union. India and China are building nuclear plants, with our help, our technology, and we are helping them do it. Japan is building a nuclear powerplant about every year, and the President has even said Iran can do it. Then why don't we get in the game? We know how to do it and we should, and we should be doing it. On Monday, I will be suggesting at the National Press Club on behalf of Republicans--but I want to recognize right at the outset that we are not trying to make this a Republican--it is a Republican initiative, but we don't want to end up there. We know that several of our friends on the other side are strong supporters of nuclear power. We would like for more of them to be. We would like for the President to be. I would like for him to be half as interested in 100 new nuclear powerplants as he already is in windmills. I think he would get a lot farther with a plan that includes 100 new nuclear powerplants. All this needs is Presidential leadership. It doesn't need a lot of money. The financing systems we need to help get the first six or eight nuclear plants up and going are designed so the taxpayer doesn't lose a cent. The first 100 nuclear powerplants which were built in about 20 years were built by the utilities with ratepayer money, not government money. As far as safety, as far as what do we do with the waste, we have come a long way in the last 30 years. Our plants are safely operated. Dr. Chu, the distinguished scientist who is the Energy Secretary, said that to me at a hearing this week. We have operated safely our nuclear reactors and our nuclear submarines since the 1950s. We sometimes forget about that. France and Japan and Germany and India and China all know that if they want clean air and cheap energy for good jobs, they will have to use nuclear power. So we need to do that as well. And the waste? Let's call it used nuclear fuel. Scientists assure us that used nuclear fuel can be safely stored on site--and there is not very much of it in mass--safely stored on site for the next 40 or 60 years. That is step one. Step two is a mini-Manhattan Project of the kind we had during World War II to explore all of the most important ways to safely recycle the nuclear fuel so we can use it again and never create plutonium in the process. Scientists believe we can do that, figure that out in 8, 10, 12 years. We already have acceptable ways to do it. France is doing it that way now. But while we store it, we can figure that out. The United States is smart enough to do it. So that would be our proposal on Monday. All 40 Republican Senators are united on it. We are looking for support on the other side. I think more support will come, because as Americans look at this $100 billion economy-wide cap and trade, they are going to say, Whoa, I hope that is not the answer to this problem. Let me give you one example. The economy-wide cap and trade applies to fuel. That is the gasoline in your car or your truck. One thing we know for sure: It will raise the price of your gasoline at the pump. You will be paying 10 or 20 or 30 cents more. You might be paying 50 cents more, but it probably won't reduce the carbon that comes out of it. Gasoline fuel produces a third of the carbon we are worried about, but they have adopted in the House a device called the economy-wide cap and trade that won't do anything about it. We have had plenty of testimony on that, because if it goes up 10 or 20 or 30 cents, that is not enough to change the behavior of Americans. The better way to do it is a low carbon fuel standard that gradually reduces the amount of carbon as people shift to other fuels. That is why we are for electric cars, because we have so much unused electricity at night that we can plug in our cars and trucks at night until we have electrified half of them without building one new powerplant. So why in the world would they go to the trouble of creating this 1,400-page contraption of mandates and taxes and rules that raises prices and doesn't reduce the carbon they are aiming at? Of course, on the coal plants, they are 40 percent of the carbon. If we can begin to build nuclear powerplants, then the utilities will probably close some of the dirtiest coal plants. Our vision is, as we look ahead 20 years, we can see 40 percent of our electricity from nuclear; maybe 25 percent from natural gas--that is a little more than we have today; maybe 8 or 10 percent from solar and wind and geothermal and biomass and some of these renewable energies; another 10 percent from hydroelectric; the rest from coal--a significant amount, still. Hopefully, along that way one of these mini- Manhattan projects will have found an even better way to capture carbon from coal plants. This is the real clean energy policy. That would get us to the Kyoto protocol. What is more important is that we want to reindustrialize this country with cheap energy, cheap electricity. We don't want to run jobs overseas. Then the final part of this for the dream of energy is that it is cheap. People around the world are poor, and the single thing that would help them most is to have low-cost or no-cost energy. We are on the verge of doing that with nuclear power. We should be pursuing that instead of deliberately raising the price of energy in an ineffective way toward a goal--in this case combating global warming--that seems to be completely lost--completely lost--in the manufacturing of this contraption that came from the House of Representatives that is going to give you a new utility bill every month. So those are three Republican ideas that we have and that we hope our Democratic colleagues will be interested in. We hope the President will see them as constructive suggestions. We hope they will provide a check and a balance on the excessive debt and the number of Washington takeovers we are beginning to see in Washington. First, we congratulate General Motors on its coming out of bankruptcy, and a good way to celebrate would be to give all of the stocks to the taxpayers who paid taxes on April 15, stop the incestuous political meddling in the car companies, give them an investor fan base to cheer on the new Chevy. Second, let's start over on health care costs. Let's start at the right end. Let's start with the 250 million Americans who already have health care and make sure it is good health care, and that they can afford it, and that when we are through with our reforms, they can afford the government that they are left with and they don't have trillions more dollars in debt. To do that, we have four or five proposals on the table which fundamentally say: Take the dollars we have and give them to Americans and let them buy their own insurance rather than stuff them into government programs. Finally, we want clean energy, but we want low-cost clean energy. We want clean air. We want global warming dealt with. We want American independence, but we want energy at a cost that will keep our manufacturing jobs and our high-tech jobs right here at home and not overseas looking for cheap energy. We have a way to do it: 100 new nuclear powerplants, electric cars, offshore exploration for natural gas--that is low-carbon oil. We are still going to need it, so we might as well use our own, although we will use less. Finally, several mini- Manhattan projects for research and development on solar and fusion and other areas that will help us change the energy picture, maybe after 20 years. These are exciting times. We are glad to be able to contribute our ideas to the debate, and we hope the American people will listen and, eventually, we hope our friends on the other side will join us, and that even the President will take some of our ideas and make them a part of his agenda. I thank the Chair, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Thank you, Madam President.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, in 1998, Norm Coleman ran for Governor of Minnesota against the son of one of the most revered Members of this body, Hubert Humphrey, who was also a former Vice President of the United States, and a noted wrestler, Jesse Ventura, who was elected Governor. In 2002, Norm Coleman ran a campaign against Paul Wellstone, a beloved Member of this body who was tragically killed in an airplane crash a week or so before the election, bringing into the race a former Vice President of the United States, a former U.S. Senator and Ambassador, Walter Mondale. The whole country watched and was riveted by that race during that last week. Norm Coleman won that race. This past year, Norm Coleman was a participant in a race that also riveted the Nation. He was opposed by a well-known television personality, Al Franken, now a Member of this body. The race went on for 2 years, with much publicity. Then it went on for another 8 months after election day. If Norm Coleman could have found some way to make the 2000 Presidential election Bush v. Gore v. Coleman, Norm would have been a participant in every single one of the most spectacular political races of the last decade. Norm and I arrived in the Senate on the same day in 2003. We not only were Members of the Senate family, which we often talk about here and which extends to both sides of the aisle, we were Members of the same class, and are good friends. My wife, Honey, and I got to know Norm and his wife, Laurie, the mother of their two children. We know of his love for his family and of his deep religious faith. Each of us in the Senate has enjoyed the good humor and cheer and civil relationship that Norm has had with his colleagues, both Democrats and Republicans. But most memorable--and the Republican leader spoke of some of this-- is Norm Coleman's record of service to our country: Chief prosecutor for the State of Minnesota, mayor of St. Paul, Senator. He has been a strong, eloquent, effective voice for the center of this country--an independent voice of the kind our country and the Republican Party needs to attract and represent and continue to bring into our party and into our political process the center. The political campaigns of Norm Coleman have been more spectacular than those of any of us in the Senate. But the public service chapters of his life have been equally impressive. As this door closes, I am confident new ones will open. When I was Governor of Tennessee, my chief of staff, a former Marine, came in and said to me during my last years: Governor, I would like to say to you that people remember the last thing you do. And I had no idea why he said that to me, but I never could get it out of my mind, and I think it is pretty good advice. People will remember the last thing Norm Coleman did in this campaign. He proved to be determined and courageous and, in the Minnesota tradition, a happy warrior in attempting to make sure that every Minnesota vote counted in the race, which was decided by just a few votes. But then, when the Minnesota Supreme Court made its decision, he immediately was gracious about accepting the rule of law and the court's decision and stepping aside and congratulating Al Franken. That is the picture of Norm Coleman that most Minnesotans and most Americans will remember. That may have been the last thing that Norm did in this race, but I am sure it is far from the last thing he is likely to do in public life. Norm Coleman, after those three spectacular races, deserves an easy, humdrum, conventional political race someday. And Minnesota and the Nation can hope we will deserve and have many more years of Norm Coleman's public service. Madam President, I thank the Chair and yield the floor. I see my colleague from Florida.