Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, 1 year ago I went to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee to propose a new Manhattan Project to put America on the path to clean energy independence. The project would focus on seven grand challenges: plug-in electric cars and trucks, carbon capture from coal plants, making solar power cost competitive; recycling used nuclear fuel, advanced biofuels from crops we don't eat, green buildings, and fusion. Last week I went back to Oak Ridge, spoke to a gathering, a summit of people from several States who were meeting to talk about how to attract and keep high technology jobs. I proposed that the United States should build 100 new nuclear plants during the next 20 years, while scientists and engineers figure out the grand challenges I discussed 1 year ago. This would double America's nuclear powerplants which today produce 20 percent of all of our electricity and 70 percent of our pollution-free, carbon-free electricity. This is an aggressive goal. But with Presidential leadership, it could happen. I am convinced it should happen. Conservation and nuclear power are the only real alternatives we have today to produce enough low-cost, reliable, clean electricity to clean the air, deal with climate change, and keep good jobs from going overseas. Climate change may be the inconvenient problem of the day, but nuclear power is, for many skeptics, the inconvenient answer. These nuclear skeptics cite regulatory delays and past problems with safety. They appoint commissions to slow walk decisions about recycling used nuclear fuel. They point to the shortage of welders for new plants. They complain that Japan and France are building most of the essential equipment for new nuclear plants. No surprise, since Japan is building 1 nuclear plant a year, and France is producing 80 percent of all of its electricity from nuclear powerplants. The skeptics say that carbon from coal plants contributes to climate change, which is true, and so they offer their solution: operate our big complex country, which uses 25 percent of all of the energy in the world, on electricity generated from the wind, the sun, and the Earth. One day that might be possible. But today there is a huge energy gap between the renewable electricity we wish to have and the reliable, low-cost electricity that we must have. My guess is, it will be 30 or 40 or 50 years before these new sources of electricity are cheap enough and reliable enough to supply most of the power to our electric grid. The nuclear skeptics in Congress, urged by the President, reported last month an energy and climate change bill that would require 20 percent of our electricity to be made from a very narrow definition of renewable energy. My visit to Oak Ridge was to a gathering to discuss how to attract and keep high tech jobs in the region. I tried to paint a picture for those attending about how this legislation would affect those who attended. To put things in perspective, the Tennessee Valley Authority produces an average of about 27,000 megawatts of electricity for industrial and household customers in our seven-State region. Sixty percent comes from coal, 30 percent from nuclear, 8 percent from hydroelectric power, and 1 percent from natural gas. Across the country, it is 50 percent coal, 20 percent nuclear, 20 percent natural gas, and 6 percent hydroelectric power. Nationally, only about 1\1/2\ percent of electricity comes from the Sun, the wind, and the Earth. Almost none of the TVA's power does. But the 40 percent of TVA power that comes from nuclear and hydro plants is just as clean as these narrowly defined renewables. It is free of pollution that dirties the air, and it is free of carbon that contributes to global warming. In that sense, TVA is the sixteenth cleanest utility in the country already. Here is another yardstick. The new nuclear powerplant at Watts Bar in Tennessee can produce 1,240 megawatts of electricity. The Bull Run coal plant produces about 870 megawatts; the Fort Loudoun Dam, 150 megawatts. All three operate almost all the time. This is called base load power, which is important since large amounts of power can't be stored. Some forget that solar power is only available when the Sun shines and wind power is only available when the wind blows. So how much renewable electricity is available in our region? The new solar plant our Governor Phil Bredesen has proposed in Haywood County would cover 20 acres but produce just 5 megawatts. The 18 big wind turbines atop Buffalo Mountain, a few miles away from where I made my speech, have the capacity to produce 29 megawatts but actually produce only 6 megawatts. It may be also possible to squeeze a few hundred megawatts from turbines in the Mississippi River. The Southern Company's new biomass plant in Georgia--biomass is sort of a controlled bonfire of waste wood products--would produce 96 megawatts. All this for a utility that needs 27,000 megawatts to operate at any given time. Each of these sources of renewable energy consumes a lot of space. For example, the big solar thermal plants in the western desert where they line up mirrors to focus the Sun's rays take more than 30 square miles--that is more than 5 miles on a side--to produce the same 1,000 megawatts that one can get from a single coal or single nuclear plant that sits on one square mile. Or take wind, to generate the same 1,000 megawatts with wind, one would need 270 square miles. That is 16 miles on a side. An unbroken line of wind turbines 50 stories high from Chattanooga to Bristol would give us only one-fourth of the electricity we get from one unit of the Watts Bar nuclear powerplant which fits on one square mile, and we would still need the nuclear powerplant for the times when the wind doesn't blow. There is good reason why there is only one wind farm in the entire southern United States. In our region, the wind blows less than 20 percent of the time. Much of that time is at night when TVA already has several thousand megawatts of unused electricity. Biomass will be a renewable source that we will emphasize in the South, we are told. That's a good idea. It might reduce forest fires, and it will conserve resources. The National Forest Service told us last week that there are 2 million tons of wood scraps and dead trees in Tennessee's forests, and pulp and paper companies might produce another 2 million tons. That sounds like a lot. But let's not expect too much. We would need a forest the size of the entire 550,000-acre Great Smoky Mountain National Park to feed a 1,000-megawatt biomass plant on a sustained basis. That is a plant that would produce as much electricity as one nuclear power unit. Think of the energy it is going to take to haul this around. Georgia Southern says it will take 160 to 180 trucks a day to feed biomass into a 96-megawatt electrical plant. Remember, TVA uses at least 27,000 megawatts of electricity every day. Of course, conservation and efficiency are the places to start when looking at America's and, especially, Tennessee's electricity futures. Tennesseans use more electricity per person than residents of any other State. If we reduced our use to the national average, it would equal the electricity produced by four nuclear powerplants. We might still have to build some new powerplants, because our history and that of the country is that conservation only limits electricity growth. It usually doesn't reduce it. For example, 20 years ago we never would have guessed that computers would be using nearly 5 percent of our electricity. One can see we will need some breakthroughs, something like a new Manhattan project, before we can rely very much on renewable electricity. Of all these forms of electricity in our region, solar has the most promise. It takes up massive space, but we can use rooftops. It only works when the Sun shines, but the Sun shines during peak times of electricity use. I believe our Governor is exactly right to try to make Tennessee a hub for solar power. The first grand challenge of my proposed Manhattan project is to try to make solar power cost competitive. According to TVA, in our region, it is far from that today. Solar costs four to five times as much as the base load electricity that TVA now produces. Wind power, on the other hand, can supplement electricity on the Great Plains and perhaps offshore. But for our region, it would be a terrible mistake. In Tennessee it is a waste of money, and it destroys the environment in the name of saving the environment. The turbines are three times as tall as Neyland Stadium, which is our great big football stadium in Knoxville. In our region they only work on mountaintops where the winds are strongest, and they barely work there. I haven't mentioned the new transmission lines that will be necessary from the mountaintops through backyards in Tennessee. Someone asked Boone Pickens if he would put any of these turbines on his 68,000-acre ranch in Texas. ``Hell no,'' he said. ``They're ugly.'' Well, if Boone doesn't want them on his ranch because they are ugly, why would we want them on the most beautiful mountaintops in America, in North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, all the way up to the White Mountains of New Hampshire? Some of the jobs that we will be growing and attracting to our region and across the country are so-called green jobs, created as scientists and engineers work on the grand challenges I propose. Please remember that nuclear power is also green. Electric cars and trucks are green. One-third of Tennessee's manufacturing jobs are auto related. Even green jobs need low-cost electricity. The two new polysilicon plants located in Cleveland and Clarksville, TN manufacture polysilicon for solar panels that go on roofs. Together these two plants use 240 megawatts of electricity, about one-fifth of the production of the new nuclear unit at Watts Bar. Don't forget about places like the Aluminum Company of America in my hometown, which has closed its smelter and won't open until it can get a 20-year, low-cost electricity contract from TVA, or the steady stream of regional manufacturers who have been to my office saying that electric rates are already too high for them to keep jobs in our region. The point is, if we care about jobs of any color, the cost of electricity matters. Which is why it is especially galling to see France, a country we usually don't like to emulate, using the technology we Americans invented to give themselves some of the lowest electric rates and lowest carbon emissions in the European Union. So why is it that nuclear energy, perhaps the most important scientific advancement of the 20th century, was invented in America and yet we stopped taking advantage of it just when we most need it? Shortly after World War II, Glenn Seaborg, the great American Nobel Prize winner, said that nuclear energy had come along just in time because we were reaching the limits of fossil fuels. He was right. The succeeding decades proved that fossil fuels are not unlimited, and their supplies could seriously compromise energy independence. And that doesn't even address global warming. Yes, I do believe global warming and climate change are problems we must address. We can't go on throwing 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year without running into some kind of trouble. Every session I have been in Congress, I have introduced legislation to cap carbon emissions from coal powerplants. But the way to deal with global warming and to keep our jobs is to encourage what has been called the ``Nuclear Renaissance'' and start making nuclear energy the backbone of a new industrial economy. Right now there are 17 proposals for 26 new reactors in licensing hearings before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. That is a start. I think we need to go well beyond that. I propose that from the years 2010 to 2030 we build 100 new nuclear reactors to match the ones we are already operating. That is what we did from 1970 to 1990. During that 20-year interval, we built almost every one of the 104 reactors that now provide us with 20 percent of our electricity. If we build another 100 by 2030, we will be able to provide well over 40 percent of our electricity from nuclear power. Clean hydropower provides 6 percent of our electricity today, and with the electrification of small dams around the country, we may be able to expand that to 8 percent. With diligent conservation, and some renewable resources, we can add another perhaps 10 or 12 percent. Then, my friends, we will really be talking about a clean energy economy. Still, that is only the beginning. The second largest source of carbon emissions--and the biggest source of our energy instability--is the 20 million barrels of oil we consume every day to run our cars and trucks. I believe we should make half our cars and trucks plug-in within 20 years. That would reduce by one-third the oil we import from foreign sources. The Brookings Institution scholars estimate we can power those cars and trucks by plugging them in at night without building one new powerplant. Let me repeat that. If we electrify half our cars and trucks in America, we can plug them in at night without building one new powerplant because we have so much unused electricity at night. As our fleet of electric vehicles grows, the most logical option for plugging in will be supplied by clean nuclear power. Until we make great advances in storage batteries, it cannot be electricity that is sometimes there and sometimes not. We cannot have Americans going to bed every night praying for a strong wind so they can start their cars in the morning. Still, when it comes to nuclear power, a lot of people worry about safety. They say: Well, nuclear power sounds great to me, but I am afraid one of those reactors is going to blow up and cause a holocaust. Well, let's make a few things clear. As Oak Ridgers--where I was last week--know better than almost anyone, a reactor is not a bomb. It cannot blow up. That is impossible. There is not enough fissionable material there. What a nuclear reactor can do is overheat if it loses its cooling water, just the way your car engine can overheat and break down if it loses its antifreeze. It is called a meltdown. Nuclear scientists have warned about this from the beginning and take many precautions so it will not happen. Nuclear skeptics like to bring up Three Mile Island, so let's talk about that. What happened at Three Mile Island was basically an operator error. A valve failed, and when the automatic safety mechanism kicked in, the operators overrode it because of a mass of flashing lights and sirens on the control panel, which confused them about what was happening. Three Mile Island completely changed the nuclear industry. The Kemeny Commission, appointed by President Carter, analyzed the problems and made many recommendations, most of which were put into practice. The valve that started the whole thing had failed nine times before in other reactors and the manufacturer had tried to keep it a secret. People in the nuclear industry were not talking to each other. Now all of that has changed. Nuclear operators train for 5 years before they can take over control rooms. They spend 1 week of out of every 5 in a simulator honing their skills. The nuclear companies have special SWAT teams that can be dispatched anywhere in the country at a moment's notice in case anything goes wrong. A Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspector practically lives on the site. What is more, every reactor in the country is on the hook for $100 million if something goes wrong at another reactor. As you can imagine, they watch each other very closely. And it shows. Our entire nuclear fleet--104 reactors--is now up and running 90 percent of the time. There has only been one year-long shutdown for safety problems in the last decade. We have added the equivalent of 29 new reactors since 1990 by doing a better job of running the ones we already have. If the rest of America ran as well as the nuclear industry, we would be sitting on top of the world. ``But what about Chernobyl?'' someone will say? ``Wasn't that a nuclear catastrophe?'' Well, the Soviets did things very differently at Chernobyl than we know how to do in this country. For instance, they did not put a containment structure around the reactor, which is like not putting a roof on your house and then acting surprised when it rains and you get wet. In addition, they did something no American power reactor has ever done: They surrounded the core with carbon in the form of graphite. That is like building your reactor in the middle of a charcoal grill. When the graphite caught fire, it spewed radioactive smoke all over the world. That could never happen at an American reactor--and it will not happen again in Russia since they have made a lot of changes over there and now they are building reactors in the same way we build reactors. So let's build 100 new nuclear reactors during the next 20 years. Our new reactors have even better safety features--although it is never good to be overconfident. We have learned how to run the current fleet at its full potential. Most reactors are making close to $2 million a day. The attorney general of Connecticut proposed a windfall profits tax a few years ago when fossil fuel prices went through the roof. He said it was not fair that reactors could run so cheaply. So why not expand on our winnings? Why not build another generation of reactors? Well, a lot of people say it cannot be done. They say we do not manufacture anything anymore in America. We have to import all our goods from China. They say we do not have the nuclear engineers to design the new generation. They say we do not have the specialty welders to put them together on site. They say we cannot manufacture the steel vessel heads anymore, and our steel forges are not big enough. Right now, the only forge in the world big enough to make a reactor vessel is Japan Steel Works, and they are backed up. People say our new plants will spend a decade standing in line behind the 34 other reactors that are already under construction in the world, mostly in Asia. And you know something. They are right. They are right because all the things they are saying here are true. We do not have a nuclear construction industry. But then, they do not know America. America can respond to a challenge. Just as we rose to the occasion in 1943 when we began the Manhattan Project at Oak Ridge and at other sites in our country, so can we rise to the occasion today to build a new generation of nuclear reactors that will provide clean, reliable power for America for the rest of this century. It is not going to be easy. What we are talking about here is essentially a rebirth of Industrial America, and it is already starting to happen. Westinghouse is opening a school for training welders who can knit together a containment structure strong enough to protect both the environment from the reactor and the reactor from outside threats. Alstom, a French company, is investing $200 million in Chattanooga, in my State, to manufacture heavy turbines for nuclear plants. We also have to train nuclear engineers to take the place of the great generation that embraced the technology in the 1960s and 1970s, only to see their dreams come to naught when the Nation turned away from nuclear power. We have to find a steel manufacturer somewhere in this country that is willing to step up and say: ``Here, we can do those forgings right here in Pennsylvania or Ohio or Michigan or Illinois. We do not have to stand in line in Japan.'' And we have to find investors who are willing to put up their money and say: ``Yes, I have faith in America. I have faith in technology. I am ready to invest in building a cleaner, safer, more prosperous world.'' With Presidential leadership, we could add more loan guarantees to accelerate construction, and could streamline the permit system to ensure that new reactors do not become ensnared in regulatory mazes or combative lawsuits. But we cannot sit on our hands because in America we do not sit around waiting for the Government to do things for us. We do things for ourselves. So the task we face here today is no less formidable than the task the Oak Ridge pioneers faced when they first arrived in Tennessee in 1943. They were trying to save the world from Japanese militarism and Nazi totalitarianism. Now we are trying to save the world from the pending disaster of dwindling energy supplies, the uncertain dangers of a warming planet, and the stagnation and decay that can only follow if we do not revive American industry. So I propose today that we work together across the aisle, with the President, in the task of bringing about a Nuclear Renaissance in helping to generate the Rebirth of Industrial America. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, General Motors' decision to put the Spring Hill plant in Tennessee on standby is a blow to many employees who work there and to their families, but hopefully it will be a short- term problem. I have discussed with Governor Phil Bredesen how I can be of as much help as possible to the families who are affected, as well as the suppliers and the dealers. For the longer term, though, there is no reason in the world why the New GM cannot build cars and trucks at Spring Hill, TN, more competitively than any other location in America. Tennessee offers hundreds of suppliers, one of the country's best four- lane highway systems, a right-to-work law, thousands of trained workers, and low taxes. The Saturn plant was said to be the largest U.S. capital investment in history, and since then, General Motors has spent hundreds of millions of dollars modernizing it. For the same reasons Saturn and Nissan, Volkswagen, and their suppliers located here, Tennessee will continue to be a major automotive center. What is more, General Motors has a proud history in Tennessee. As Governor of our State in 1985, I wrote the full-page ad for the Wall Street Journal. I took almost all of our economic development funds for advertising that year, and the ad proudly said this: ``Saturn finally found a home in Spring Hill, Tennessee.'' Saturn was the most sought- after plant in America then. A Saturn car had not been built then. Yet the name was better known than Pontiac, which had been on the market for 60 years. Saturn, together with the arrival of Nissan a few years earlier, helped to attract auto industry to a State--Tennessee--that had almost no auto jobs and to a region that had very few auto jobs. Today, nearly 150,000 jobs--or about one-third of Tennessee's manufacturing jobs--are auto related, almost all of them at suppliers to the 12 auto-assembly plants that are now located in the Southeastern United States. Madam President, I would like to look ahead a little bit toward the New GM and the Government ownership of 60 percent of what we are calling the new General Motors. We are told that when General Motors emerges from bankruptcy in 60 or 90 days, the U.S. Treasury will own 60 percent of the New GM. To avoid the possibility of the Government owning New GM for years, I will introduce legislation authorizing the Treasury to distribute to individual taxpayers all of its stock in the New GM and in Chrysler as soon as is practical following the emergence of the New GM from bankruptcy proceedings. So instead of the Treasury owning shares in the New GM and Chrysler, you would own them if you were one of 154 million Americans who filed individual Federal tax forms on April 15. The stock certificates would be in your name, not that of your Government. To keep it simple, and to help the little guy also have an ownership stake in America's future, Treasury would give each taxpayer an equal number of the available auto shares. The Treasury Department has said it wants to sell its auto shares as soon as possible, but Fritz Henderson, the president and CEO of General Motors, told Senators and Congressmen in a telephone call this morning, in which I participated, that while it is the Treasury's decision to make, this is a ``very large amount'' of stock, and that the orderly offering of these shares to establish a market might have to be ``managed down over a period of years.'' Another option, of course, might be to sell blocks of the New GM stock to one or more large investors, but that might also take years. So I want the Treasury also to have the option of getting the ownership of these companies out of the hands of Washington and back in the hands of the marketplace in months rather than years. Distributing New GM shares and Chrysler shares to individual taxpayers is the way to do that. Those shares might not be worth very much today, but put them away and 1 day they might help pay for a college education. For example, General Motors' 610 million shares were only worth 75 cents just before bankruptcy, but they were worth $40 per share 2 years ago. I would not interfere with the loans the Federal Reserve Board made to companies in trouble. The Fed is independent. Its loans are collateralized. It makes money for the Treasury. I am only talking about the taxpayer bailouts that Congress has authorized since last October that have resulted in Government ownership of auto company assets. Under my proposal, the fiduciary duty that management owes to owners would be owed to the more than 154 million Americans owning New GM stock and not to a few Washington politicians and bureaucrats. You know what would happen if the Treasury owned 60 percent of the New GM for the next several years: Members of Congress would start holding hearings and saying things such as: ``We are the owners and we demand to know why are you building this model? Why are you closing the plant in North Carolina and not in Tennessee? Why are workers not paid more? What about these work rules? Why is this battery being built in South Korea and this engine being shipped from Mexico?'' When the company negotiates with the Federal Government on such things as, for example, fuel efficiency standards, won't it be negotiating with itself? And as the elections approach, might not the White House be tempted to build plants in States it might carry instead of States it might not? As the New York Times editorialized this morning: It was only March when the Obama administration let GM slide toward bankruptcy by denying it more taxpayer money, partly on the grounds that the company was too heavily dependent on SUVs, while its biggest stab at fuel economy, the Volt, was too expensive to work in the near future. Not long after that, we saw the President of the United States fire the president of General Motors. So if it is going to take years to sell the Treasury's New GM stock and Chrysler stock, the best way to help those auto companies succeed and recover the taxpayers' more than $50 billion in loans may well be to simply give all the Government stock to taxpayers and get Washington out of the business of owning and running auto companies--the sooner the better. Here is one disadvantage. Giving the stock to taxpayers might well add a few billion dollars to the Federal debt. But whose debt is it, anyway? The 154 million taxpayers'. So why not give individual taxpayers the ride up, if there is to be one. Some will say another disadvantage is that the old GM will not be able to sell its tax breaks to an acquiring company. But these tax breaks would be just another bailout paid by taxpayers. It would be better to distribute the Treasury's stock to individual taxpayers and let the marketplace decide what happens, rather than spend billions more on bailouts. Here are the advantages as I see them. No. 1, 154 million new investor cheerleaders. Think fan base of the Green Bay Packers, whose ownership is distributed among the people of Green Bay. This new investor fan base could produce customers for the auto companies. No. 2, better odds for success. Does anyone think Washington can run car companies? Did you ever ride in a Lada, a clunky Soviet car made by a government-run company? The standing joke was: How do you double the value of a Lada? Answer: Fill up the tank with gas. No. 3, fairness. Decisions about these auto companies would be made by collective decisions of people in a marketplace rather than by lobbyists with access to Washington. No. 4, any benefits are more likely to go to taxpayers rather than to some Government program. For example, the law says that all proceeds made from the Troubled Assets Relief Program, TARP, purchased assets should go to reduce Government debt. Yet that is not happening because Treasury has not purchased toxic assets yet and has not made any profit yet. My proposal would make sure taxpayers get the profit rather than recycling this money into more bailouts. Finally, this is the fastest way back to the wise principle, if you can find it in the Yellow Pages the Government probably should not be doing it. More than the money, it is the principle of the thing. The other day a visiting European automobile executive said to me, with a laugh, that he had come to ``the new American automotive capital: Washington, DC.'' To get our economy moving again, let's get our auto companies out of the hands of Washington and back into the marketplace--the sooner the better. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, today I am joining with Senator Bunning and other senators to introduce a resolution to declare a National Day of Remembrance in honor of the thousands of men and women that supported our nuclear efforts during the Cold War. The dedicated employees of the Department of Energy and its contractors were instrumental in our winning the Cold War. These employees worked in laboratories and factories related to nuclear weapons, under hazardous conditions that were sometimes not well understood. They put their health and their lives in jeopardy in the service of their country, often without knowing it. Tennessee has more workers that were made sick through their exposure to nuclear weapon hazards than any other state in the union. That is why one of my priorities in the U.S. Senate has been to help get our Cold War heroes and their families the compensation they deserve--from a major overhaul of the sick worker's program in 2004, to legislation that introduced last year to ensure that compensation for the families of sick nuclear worker won't be taken away in cases where sick workers or their eligible survivors die before their claims are processed. While the compensation program can provide some financial assistance, it can never fully make up for what was lost. I would also like to take a moment to mention one particular heroine among these Cold War heroes: Janine Lynn Anderson, a dedicated advocate for all the American nuclear weapons workers. Janine worked tirelessly for over a decade to ensure that nuclear weapons workers were not forgotten after the Cold War was won. Sadly, Janine passed away just a week ago on May 2. She will be missed. It was her idea that these patriotic men and women be recognized through a National Day of Remembrance, for their contribution, service, and sacrifice towards the defense of this great nation. That is why it is particularly appropriate that today we introduce this resolution to designate October 30, 2009 as a National Day of Remembrance in honor of these Cold War heroes. I look forward to working with my colleagues from both parties to pass this resolution soon.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Thank you very much. I am going to continue with the time on the Republican side, if I may. I look forward to a longer discussion with the Senator from Illinois on this subject. I would hope that when Senator Lieberman holds his hearing, we will have a full discussion of why it is a good idea to say to poor kids and poor families: You can't have a choice of a better school, but people with money can. That is not the way we operate our college system. This is our Nation's Capital. We are 3 years into a program. I have met with many of the children. Their lives are not going to be instantly changed in 3 years. There was much in the analysis that was completed by the Department of Education that showed the choices they made were helping the students academically and otherwise, and I will be glad to come back to the floor and discuss that when I have more time. But let me go on to my concern beyond the DC voucher program to the bad news. I regret to say this, but the bad news has to do with Pell Grants and student loans. Pell Grants, of course, are the 5 million grants or scholarships that were made to low-income students this year to help them pay for college, with $19 billion that we have appropriated for that purpose this last year. Almost on the day it was announced that we had a $1.8 trillion deficit for this 1 year--four times bigger than it was last year--the President's budget wants to add $293 billion over 10 years to entitlement spending. That is automatic spending. That is the reason the country's debt is so high. Sixty percent of our spending is entitlement spending. I think the punishment for the administration should be that they should all be made to stay after school and write on the blackboard, each, 100 times: I will never, ever again add to entitlement spending, even for a worthy purpose. It is no gift to students to give them a scholarship to live in a country they can't afford to live in because it has an interest payment of $800 billion a year, which it would in the 10th year of the President's budget. It is not as if the Congress has been stingy with Pell grants. They have gone from $7.7 billion 10 years ago to $19 billion today, and 5 million students are getting them. All we say today is if we don't have the money we have appropriated, we can't spend it on scholarships. The President's proposal would say we are going to spend it whether we have it or not. Spend it whether we have it, despite the fact that our debt has grown to such levels that we couldn't even qualify to be admitted to the European Union, which is a huge embarrassment. That deserves an F and a stay after school and detention, as far as I am concerned. Here is another F, and it is for student loans. There are 15 million of those student loans--about $75 billion--and what the President's budget proposes to do is turn this great recruit--this blue chip recruit, who I think has a good chance of being ``Educator of the Year,'' into ``Banker of the Year.'' He wants another Washington takeover, this time of student loans. Instead of letting 12 million students decide they would prefer to borrow from 2,000 institutions on 4,400 campuses all across America, they are saying: No--everybody just line up at the U.S. Department of Education to get your student loan. The only justification for that, that I can see, is the administration says it might save the taxpayers money because the Federal Government can borrow cheaper than the banks can. Well, if that is true, then we ought to not have any private financial institutions in America; we ought to turn every financial institution into a national bank and let the President run them. Andrew Jackson, the founder of the Democratic Party, would turn over in his grave because he ran against the national bank during his whole political career. It makes no sense to turn the U.S. Department of Education into a national bank for student loans. It should not be done. The savings are illusory. In the President's budget they say $94 billion is what will be saved, but they leave out the administrative costs which could go as high as $32 billion, and they leave out the fact that what they are doing is borrowing money at one-quarter of 1 percent and loaning it to the students at 6.8 percent. So they are taking money from the students and using it to pay somebody else a scholarship, with the Congressman taking the credit. There needs to be some truth in lending here so that when students line up to get their student loans, somebody says: Did you know that the interest you are paying by working an extra job or by going at night is being used to pay somebody else's scholarship? If we take that part out of it, we could leave the program just like it is. Twelve million out of fifteen million students prefer to have a private choice. They have had 15 years to choose either the public option or the private choice, and they have consistently decided they would rather deal with the community bank than a Federal agency. Well, I am about through with the report card. The rest I would put under ``incomplete.'' There is still a lot of good-faith effort: Deregulating higher education is a goal of mine and Senator Mikulski's as well, and the new Secretary of Education has said he will work on that. More flexibility in No Child Left Behind is a goal of mine; it may be of the Secretary's as well. We can work on that. My respectful suggestion to the President would be, instead of trying to make a tackle out of this wide receiver you recruited, instead of making Banker of the Year out of your Education Secretary, why don't you let him work on the education agenda? Why don't you let him focus on paying teachers more for teaching well and charter schools? If he runs out of things to do, to help parents, he could work on a tax system that is more favorable to parents with children; we used to have that in this country. He could work on encouraging perinatal care so every child has a medical home or helping nurses to help parents in their homes so children can grow up healthy or to make sure we do nothing to discourage home schooling for dedicated parents or helping adults learn English. There are lines in Nashville and in Boston and in other cities of adults who wish to learn English. He could encourage worksite daycare for parents who work and might take their child to work with them so they would be closer together. All that would be to help better parenting or to help create better teachers or better school leaders. The Pell Grant for Kids I mentioned for afterschool programs or higher standards in data collection, I know the Secretary is interested in that. Teach for America, that is an important part of new energy in our schools. The Secretary, instead of trying to be ``Banker of the Year,'' could take on the teachers colleges which have had a hard time spending their time on such things as how to give parents more choices, how to reward outstanding teaching, how to make charter schools successful, or how to help newly arrived children learn English. He could expand the UTeach Program started at the University of Texas and which our America COMPETES legislation put into national law. That needs to be implemented. Then, the summer academies, to help outstanding teachers and outstanding students of U.S. history so our children can grow up learning what it means to be an American. That would be a good thing to do. I look forward to working with this new Secretary of Education. I give the President credit. I give him an A-plus for his recruiting. I give him an A-plus for his agenda for rewarding outstanding teaching and a high grade for his focus on charter schools. I am grateful for that. I stand ready to work with him. I give him horrible grades for stopping the DC voucher program and another Government takeover, this one of student loans, and of taking money away from students who are getting loans to pay for scholarships for other students. That is not right. I think, in this day and age, when we are adding $1.8 trillion to the debt in 1 year, it is certainly no time to add $293 billion in entitlement spending to the budget over 10 years. The whole administration ought to write on the blackboard: I will never, ever again add to entitlement spending. I look forward to working with the President and his outstanding new Secretary on that incomplete agenda. Many of the items I mentioned are things in which they are interested in as well and things which all of us in the Senate would want to do to help improve our system of elementary and secondary education, as well as our excellent colleges and universities. I thank the President, and I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I am aware there are--the answer is yes.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I will after I am finished. Well, of course, I will. I will be glad to do that as a courtesy to my friend. I would say, first, the Senator from Illinois missed my first two grades, which were A-pluses to the President for recruiting--for blue chip recruiting of Arne Duncan and for the teacher incentive program, so he may have come in as I was giving the bad news.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, after 100 days, there have been a lot of report cards on the Obama administration. I would like, with respect, to offer one on a subject both the President and I think is of crucial importance: the education of the American people. As a good teacher would--or as my late friend Alex Haley used to say: Find the good and praise it--I would like to start with the good grades on this report card. So to begin with, I give President Obama an A-plus for recruiting. His best appointee, in my opinion, is the new Education Secretary, Arne Duncan from Chicago. The Acting President pro tempore might agree with that. The new Education Secretary grew up, as I did, in a family where the mom was a preschool teacher--my mother in the mountains of Tennessee, his on the South Side of Chicago. He has a background for leadership. He has an agenda for rewarding outstanding teaching, an agenda for encouraging the largest number of charter schools possible, an agenda for encouraging States to set higher standards. He has a close relationship with the President. He is truly a blue-chip recruit. On the subject of rewarding outstanding teaching and charter schools, if he succeeds with that in 4 years or 8 years, it could be a Nixon to China exercise in education. So an A-plus for recruiting. Then, here is another A-plus: for rewarding outstanding teaching. This is the greatest need we have in kindergarten through the 12th grade in America. Every problem we are faced with--after you deal with the question of having a good parent--has to do with a good teacher. Whether we are talking about a gifted child or the needs of a child with a disability or of a child who has come from a home where a book has never been read to them or whether they are in the mountains of Tennessee or on the South Side of Chicago, put a child with the best possible teacher, and the child almost always succeeds. In 1983, when Tennessee became the first State to pay teachers more for teaching well, not one teacher was being paid more for being a good teacher. Many good people have worked hard on that: Governor Jim Hunt, Governor Bob Graham, Senator Bennet of Colorado, Senator Corker of Tennessee when he was mayor of Chattanooga. But it is hard to do, to find ways to reward outstanding school leadership and outstanding teaching, to pay some teachers more than others. But if we do not, we will not be able to attract and keep the best men and women in our classrooms and in our schools. The President's new budget increases from about $100 million to $500 million the Teacher Incentive Fund, which has been a big success across this country. Thirty-four grantees--cities, school districts--across the country are experimenting with different ways of rewarding outstanding teaching. There is not necessarily one way to do it. It almost always has to be worked out locally. Most of these cities are working with their unions to make this happen. Memphis city schools are using their funds to train principles. Philadelphia's grant application was co-written by the local teachers union. The Northern New Mexico Network for Rural Education is working with four school districts. As I said earlier, if Secretary Duncan and the President can leave a legacy of dozens or hundreds of school districts, or even States, where outstanding teachers are paid more for their skills--not just for being there a long time or for going back to school--that would be the single most important legacy they could leave. Then, here is one more good grade: an A-minus for charter schools. Charter schools also have a little history behind them. They began in Minnesota. The last act I took as Education Secretary, in 1992, was to write every school superintendent in the country and encourage them to start charter schools. Albert Shanker, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, asked ``If we can have a Saturn plant, why not a Saturn school?'' What he meant was, why not start from scratch and take the union rules and the Government regulations off teachers and let them use their own good judgment to deal with the children who are assigned to them. The charter school is a pro-teacher idea. It has greatly expanded over the years, but it still runs into substantial opposition, usually from the National Education Association or other educators who do not like it. But these are public schools. These are designed to free teachers so they can use their judgment to help children. Secretary Duncan and the President are committed to them. The Secretary and I cowrote an op-ed for a Tennessee newspaper 2 weeks ago, which apparently helped to influence the vote of the legislature to begin to move along raising the cap on charter schools in Tennessee. I hope it did. I thank the Secretary for his bipartisan support and commitment. Again, if he is able to succeed, working with the President, and leaves a large number of public charter schools in our country when he leaves office, it will again be a ``Nixon to China'' experience and the country will be deeply grateful. The only reason why it is an A-minus is there is not much support in the budget for the major obstacle in creating more charter schools, which is support for financing for new facilities. Now for the bad news. Every parent has had this experience with the child's report card. Here is a D. That is for spending $80 billion over the next 2 years for more of the same in the Department of Education without even asking the question: Is what we are doing working? That is hard for me to imagine. The budget for the Department of Education would be at about $70 billion, so we are adding $40 billion to it this year and $40 billion next year for more of the same. Is everybody delighted with the way our K-12 grade system is working in America? I don't think so. We are challenged by it. We need to change it. So then why in the world would we put more money in for more of the same? The only thing that saves the grade from being an F is that there is $5 billion for the Secretary's Race to the Top, which is a good idea based on the agenda I described. What would we have done with the money? Well, I would have suggested we give a Pell Grant for Kids to every middle- and low-income child in the country and $500 for a state-approved afterschool program. Let the parents choose: for music, for art, for catchup, for academic improvement. It would have poured billions into the school districts. It would have created some competition and middle- and lower income children would be given more options. That would be what we could have done. Here is another unfortunate grade: D-minus. That is for the DC voucher program. I see the Senator from Illinois. I had this all prepared. I had no idea he would be here. He has been a major participant in this. What keeps this from being an F is that the President and the Secretary have said they will continue funds for the 1,700 children in the District of Columbia who are now in high school and who are continuing, but after that, it is gone. This is a death sentence for the program. This is a death sentence for the model of giving low-income parents choices of better schools--schools such as middle- and higher income parents have. It is the model that made our higher education system the best in the world. Senator Lieberman has said he will have a hearing on this DC voucher program. I hope he does.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Well, I am not going to get into a detailed analysis with the Senator. I would say this: My view of American education is that we should give parents and students the opportunity to choose among the schools they go to. If there are four times as many children and parents who apply for this program than can be accepted, that would indicate to me that these parents and these families and these children think this is an opportunity they would like to have to improve their lives and improve their future.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Oh, of course we should.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator for his questions. I know he is the most ardent supporter of the idea of not using Federal dollars to give poor children the same choices that middle- and higher income children have. I respect that difference of opinion. I am going to go on with my remarks. But I believe it is a wise--

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Thank you, Mr. President. Will the Chair please let me know when I have consumed 10 minutes?

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Chair.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I also ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the statement before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs of Michael F. Scheuer, former Chief of the CIA's Bin Laden Unit, in which he says: The CIA's rendition program began in late summer, 1995. I authored it, and then ran and managed it against al-Qaeda leaders and other Sunni Islamists from August 1995 until June 1999.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, even though President Obama has said we should look forward, some in Congress insist on looking backward to a broader investigation of interrogation tactics that were used against 9/11 terrorists to find out whether even more airplanes were on their way to kill even more Americans. These interrogation tactics are now well known. They had been approved by the National Security Council, approved by the Department of Justice, were known to senior Democratic and Republican Members of Congress who, CIA records now show, were briefed some 40 times. The CIA has not used the tactics in question for several years. They are not being used today. The Congress has since enacted laws that make clear that interrogation tactics used by the military are limited to those contained in the Army Field Manual. The President extended those same limitations to intelligence agencies this year by Executive order. The President is following his own advice about looking forward by asking the National Security Council to review what tactics would be appropriate when terrorists are captured who might have information about imminent attacks on Americans. The Senate Intelligence Committee is conducting its own review of tactics and is considering expanding the briefing process for interrogation tactics. Despite these investigations, some still say, let's have ``a full- blown criminal'' investigation. That raises these questions: Investigation of whom? Where do we draw the line? Where is the logical place to stop? On Thursday, I asked these questions of the Attorney General, Eric Holder, at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing. He found it difficult to give me specific answers. To begin with, the Attorney General did not answer my question about what directions he had received from the White House concerning interrogations. Then, he would only answer ``hypothetically'' when I asked if we are going to investigate lawyers for giving their opinions, shouldn't we also investigate intelligence agents who created the interrogation techniques and asked for the opinions, or officials who approved the techniques, or Members of Congress who knew about or approved or even encouraged the interrogation tactics? The Attorney General could not remember whether he knew or approved of renditions that occurred during the Clinton administration when he was Deputy Attorney General--renditions that took captured terrorists to other countries, for example, perhaps to Egypt, for custody, maybe for interrogation. He did not say what precautions he took to make sure these renditions followed the law. The Attorney General's unresponsive answers and poor memory suggest what a difficult path it will be if the Government continues to publicize and expand its investigation of interrogation tactics. This is not a pleasant subject. When we debated it in the Senate in 2005, I was among those Senators, including Senator McCain, who disagreed with the administration. We believed it was Congress's constitutional responsibility to set the rules for dealing with detainees and we helped enact a law requiring that techniques used by the military should be limited to those in the Army Field Manual. But showing videotapes of even those techniques will not be a pretty sight. Public officials, of course, should follow the law. But it is not necessary to have a circus to determine whether the law was followed. If there is to be a broader investigation than currently is underway, it must be fair and evenhanded and lead wherever it may lead--perhaps to intelligence officers, perhaps to administration officials, perhaps to Members of Congress. The Attorney General himself needs to be willing to say what he knew and when he knew it and what he did about renditions during the Clinton administration when he was Deputy Attorney General. Obsessively looking in the rear view mirror could consume our Nation's every waking moment. There is plenty about America's history that, in retrospect, we wish had not happened: Supreme Court decisions barring Blacks from public facilities, Congress filibustering anti- lynching laws, excluding Jews from major institutions, denying women the right to vote, incarcerating Japanese Americans during World War II. We have dealt with those instances best by acknowledging and correcting them, not wallowing in them by recognizing that the United States has always been a work in progress toward great goals, rarely achieving them, often falling back, but always trying. In fact, the late political scientist Samuel Huntington has written that most of our political debates are about dealing with the disappointment of not meeting great goals we have set for ourselves. Then there is the thoroughly practical question of who will want to serve in public life in Washington, DC, if the first thing a newly elected administration does is to try to discredit, disbar, or indict all those with whom it disagrees in the last administration. Some of that damage already has been done. For all these reasons, I would hope the President will follow his first instinct and insist that we go forward as a country--focus on the economy, on the banks and the auto companies, on health care and energy, on a Supreme Court Justice, and two wars in which our men and women are serving. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the questions I asked Attorney General Holder on Thursday, along with his answers.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I would like to join the majority leader in wishing happy birthday to Jim Jeffords. Jim is a friend of all of ours. I see the Senator from Arizona in the Chamber. We all served together. I served with Senator Jeffords when I was Education Secretary and he was ranking member of the Education Committee. We all know his deep concern for education, especially for children with disabilities. We wish him the very best on his 75th birthday.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I wish to make a few remarks about education, a subject that is important to virtually all of us. When figuring out what to do about education, my suggestion to those in my party is that Republicans should ask, ``What would Lincoln do?'' During the first 16 months of his Presidency, Abraham Lincoln helped enact three of the most important and successful pieces of legislation in American history: the Homestead Act, the Morrill Acts that created the land-grant colleges and universities, and the Pacific Railroad Act. What made these laws successful, according to Harvard Professor Bill Stuntz, in an April 6 article in The Weekly Standard, was that they ``did not depend on the complex judgments made by members of congress or government regulators. [They] were meant to confer opportunities, not to solve problems . . . the necessary elbow grease was supplied by the private citizens whose prospects Lincoln improved.'' These three laws helped American farmers create the world's most productive farmland and American universities produce the most educated workforce. The transcontinental railroad knitted together this sprawling Nation. A later version of this same thinking produced the GI bill scholarships which followed veterans to the colleges of their choice at the end of World War II. Then came Pell grants and student loans which today follow two out of three students to the colleges of their choice. Similarly $31 billion of Federal research money is handed out each year to universities. Almost all of it is peer reviewed and competitively granted, and not parceled out by legislators and regulators. All of this might be called the Lincoln approach to Federal Government involvement in education. Conferring opportunities. Now, compare it to the command-and-control Rooseveltian model best exemplified by our kindergarten through the 12th grade system of education. In that system, students do not choose--they are told--where to go to school. Government money goes directly to institutions, not to students. Government and unions write rules handcuffing teachers and principals and other student leaders. And virtually no teacher is paid more for teaching well. There is yet another approach. No Federal involvement at all. Some believe that. Leave education to the States or communities. I suppose that over the last 30 years I have embraced all three of these points of view. Some may call that unprincipled, but I prefer to align myself with former Senator Everett Dirksen, who once said: ``I am a principled man, and flexibility is one of my principles.'' During my second year as Governor in 1980, I asked President Reagan to support what I called a grand swap, give the States all of kindergarten through the 12th grade, and the Federal Government would take all of Medicaid. The President liked that. I liked it. But it did not go very far. In 1984, I helped make Tennessee the first State to pay teachers more for teaching well. I encouraged school choice and created centers and chairs of excellence at universities. Despite this aggressive State action, I concluded at the end of my 8 years as Governor that K-12 education depended entirely upon parents, teachers, school leaders, and community. So I traveled to all 132 school districts in Tennessee, creating Better Schools Task Forces, and challenging them to create better schools. As Education Secretary, I proposed America 2000, again emphasizing community responsibility for education, higher standards for States, and support for what we called then ``break the mold'' charter schools, and more choices for parents of low-income children. Later on, I said we can do without a Department of Education--the Department I used to head--meaning that I thought an agency handing out scholarships to K-12 students, as well as college students, plus some effective advocacy was all we needed at the Federal level. As a Senator, I reluctantly embraced No Child Left Behind, because it forces reporting on children who are indeed left behind, but have introduced legislation to empower States to try to do that reporting in their own way. Putting it all together, I may not have been quite as inconsistent as I have accused myself of being. No. 1, I believe the Federal Government should be involved in education, but I am for the Lincoln empowering model as opposed to the Rooseveltian command-and-control model. No. 2, I believe that 95 percent of making K-12 education better depends on parents and teachers and school leaders. And, finally, while I believe it is virtually impossible for regulators and politicians in Washington to make schools better, I believe it is sometimes possible for Washington to help parents, teachers, school leaders, and communities make schools better. So following that Lincolnian set of principles--conferring opportunities instead of making decisions--what exactly should the Federal Government do to empower parents and help them be better parents? One, a Pell grant for kids. Give every middle- and low-income child $500 to spend after school at any State-approved education program. This would help fund music and art lessons, English lessons, other catchup and get-ahead lessons. It would pour billions into poorer school districts, programs encouraging public schools in those districts to get busy and attract students by offering the afterschool programs themselves. A second thing would be a Federal tax system favoring parents with children. We had this during the 1950s in America. President George W. Bush did more to support this idea than most realize. Next, perinatal care. Make sure that pregnant mothers receive care and find a medical home, a team of medical professionals that is responsible for coordinating all of the new baby's health care needs from before the pregnancy until 6 weeks after. That would be the real Head Start. Nurses in homes. We could encourage nurses to visit homes to make sure every newly born child has a medical home. Remember, now, I am taking about what could the Federal Government be doing to help parents be better parents. Home schooling. Our policy should be never to hinder home schooling, and to look for ways to help. Why should we punish parents who are doing their job well? Professor Coleman at the University of Chicago used to say: School is for the purpose of helping parents do what the parents do not do as well. We could help adults learn English. There are lines of new Americans outside federally funded programs in Tennessee to help adults learn English. Senator Kennedy has told me the same is true in Massachusetts. Encouraging our common language is a Federal role, and if parents speak English better, the child is more likely to speak English better. Finally in this list of ideas: worksite day care. With so many parents working outside the home, there is less time for the child. One solution is worksite day care near the place where the parent works. Take the child to work. This is usually a private sector solution, but as assistance for low-income parents could make sense. To help teachers and school leaders be better, what could the Federal Government do? One thing would be to help fund higher standards and data collection. Those should be set by States or groups of States, not by those of us in Congress. But they should be set so teachers, parents, and students know what to expect. Probably nothing is more important than paying good teachers more for teaching well. I especially admire the work the new Secretary of Education has done in this area in Chicago. I know the new Senator from Colorado and the Senator from Tennessee, Mr. Corker, in their hometowns have done this. Every child benefits from exceptional teaching. Now that we know how to relate student achievement to the skills of the teacher or the groups of teachers, we should pay teachers for their superior skills. That means expanding the Teacher's Incentive Fund, which already exists, to help local school districts reward outstanding teaching in many different ways. As the late Albert Shanker, president of the large American Federation for Teachers, used to say, ``If you can have master plumbers, why not master teachers?'' We should encourage charter schools. That helps teachers because it liberates the teachers and school leaders to use their own good judgment to help the children assigned to them. I am encouraged that the new Secretary of Education has encouraged charter schools. Teach for America helps to supply new raw talent to the classroom, and I think, even more important, forms an alumni corps of support for excellence in the public schools, once those young teachers go on to whatever else they plan to do. Teachers' colleges. They need to be improved. One way to do it would be to award peer-reviewed, competitive research grants on the agendas most of them will not touch: how to give parents more choices, how to reward outstanding teaching, how to make charter schools successful, and how to help newly arrived children learn English. UTeach is another idea formed at the University of Texas-Austin. The America COMPETES Act that we passed in a bipartisan way in 2007 carries that nationally. It funds scholarships at universities where good students in math and science will switch to teaching. Summer academies. Senators Reid and Kennedy, a whole group of us, have helped to create summer academies for outstanding teachers of U.S. history, as well as the sciences. These are inexpensive and enriching and they do not intrude very much into State and local responsibility. School leaders. The biggest bang for the buck that we can do from here, or that States could do, or that school districts could do, is training school leaders. Generally, our role could be to expand the Teacher Incentive Fund and the New Leaders for New Schools Program. Our higher education system is molded upon the Lincolnian principles. It is also the best in the world. Our K-12 system is smothered by commands and controls from Government and the unions. It is a source of constant concern. Republicans should create proposals and policies that confer opportunities for parents, teachers, students, school leaders, and researchers, and stay away from programs that create command-and- control orders from politicians and regulators. That is a lesson from our founder, Abraham Lincoln. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the chairman of the Budget Committee. I am here to speak on a personal matter more than the budget. I made my comments on the budget this morning. I was listening, though, to the Senator from Arizona and the Senator from North Dakota. I have heard the Senator from North Dakota say he is opposed to using reconciliation to run the health care bill through the Senate with 51 votes. I have heard him say that. I agree with him. I know he stood up against some in his party for doing that. But if I am not mistaken, there were three Senate conferees, and if the Senator from North Dakota voted no, we would not have reconciliation instructions included in this conference report. I think I am correct about that.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, not more than 10 minutes.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the chairman of the Budget Committee for the time. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Of course.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, in the early 1800s, a perceptive young Frenchman came to America, Alexis de Tocqueville. He marveled at our new democracy. He wrote a classic book about it. He warned more than anything about something he called ``the tyranny of the majority.'' That was his worry about the American democracy. We now have finished 100 days for a popular new President. He has presented a blueprint for the country that is dramatically different from what we had before. Yesterday, a member of our Republican side moved his desk to the other side potentially giving that side of the aisle 60 votes and raising the prospect that we would have no check and balance on one- party rule, the genuine risk of what de Tocqueville called the tyranny of the majority. So the question arises, what is the blueprint for this popular new President, and is it the kind of change we really want? All of us can point to something, as the Republican leader did, to Afghanistan and Iraq, of which we approve. I could point to the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan and his focus on paying teachers more for teaching well and encouraging charter schools, something I greatly support. But both the Senator from Arizona and the Senator from Kentucky have pointed out that the blueprint presented by our new President has too much spending, too much taxing, and too much debt. Especially striking to me is the idea that we would have, in the 10th year of the President's budget proposal, $800 billion in interest to pay, which is more than we would be spending on defense that year, eight times as much as the Federal Government would spend on education that year, and eight times as much as it would spend on housing, $800 billion of interest to pay just on the debt. Yet there is another part of this blueprint that worries me, and that is too much government. We read that now our Government, through taxpayers, owns half of our largest automobile companies. In an interview I heard the Environmental Protection Agency Administrator say automakers are waiting for the Government to tell them what kind of car they ought to build. Already the President has fired the President of our largest auto company and our Government is telling the company who should be on the boards. I suppose it will be saying also what plants should be kept open or closed and what people should be paid. That is quite a bit of government. Or banks, instead of asking the Congress at the beginning of January for a $1 trillion line of credit so we could get the toxic assets out of banks and get credit flowing again, so jobs would come back and housing prices would stabilize, this new administration spent $1 trillion, a breathtaking, unimaginable amount of money, adding it to the debt. What about the banks? Well, we are going to own the banks or at least be the major shareholder in many of the biggest banks in the world. Again, that means politicians and regulators in Washington will be deciding who will be the bank president, who will be on the boards, who will get the loans, perhaps, and for what purposes the loans could be used. Isn't that the kind of thing that got us into trouble in the first place, politicians in Washington telling banks to loan money to people who could not afford to pay it back? This too much government in the first 100 days is not just the result of the recession in which we find ourselves. This is not a crowd that believes if you can find it in the yellow pages, the Government should not be doing it. This is a deliberate choice of more Government. As in the case of student loans, the first proposal from the President was that we take the amount of Pell grants and add that to the automatic spending in the budget, adding another $117 billion to the automatic spending over 10 years. This is something that could bankrupt our country and it didn't fly. But there is another proposal, which is still out there. That would take the entire student loan program and cancel the choices that students have, create a big new bank, a half-trillion-dollar bank, and have the Department of Education make all the loans. That is a massive takeover by the Government. Twelve million students today choose to get their loans from private lenders. There are 2,000 of those loaning money to students who choose to attend Nashville Auto Diesel College or Harvard or Princeton, where the Senator from Missouri was an outstanding student. There are 4,400 campuses that offer this choice. The proposal would be to create a big, new, half-trillion-dollar bank that would take all of that over, that would make $75 billion of loans in a year. It would make the promising new Education Secretary a candidate for banker of the year instead of Secretary of the year. It would cause Andrew Jackson, who fought against the national bank in his day, to roll over in his grave at what his party is doing. It would be Congressmen playing a trick on students because the end result would be saying: We are going to borrow the money, the U.S. Department of Education, at one-quarter of 1 percent, and we are going to lend it to you at 6.8 percent. Then we will turn around and give aid to other people that you students are paying for, and we Congressmen will take the credit. I don't think students will like that. It is all in the name of $94 billion in savings, but that is exaggerated because the Government already admits that it will cost $25 or $30 billion at least for the Government to manage the program, and I can't believe the Government is a better manager of a bank making 15 million loans a year than banks that are set up to do that. If the subsidy is too high, lower it; don't cancel the program. That is the direction in which we are going. This is an administration with a blueprint for a different kind of American future. But it is not the kind of American future that Abraham Lincoln saw for the Federal Government. In the first years of President Lincoln's administration, he not only was involved in the Civil War, but he and the Congress passed the Homestead Act and the Land Grant Colleges Act and the Transcontinental Railroad Act. They conferred opportunities on Americans everywhere, and then the Americans used their own elbow grease to make things happen. This administration, this 100 days, is a command-and-control type of administration, with regulators and politicians running the banks, running the auto companies, and nationalizing student loans. It is an opportunity to have a new blueprint of a kind we haven't seen before, not one that confers opportunities but a planned America with less freedom, with fewer choices, fewer opportunities, a society planned and run by Washington regulators and politicians that our children and grandchildren cannot afford, not a society that confers opportunities and choices for the people. In addition, there is the prospect of no check and balance on one- party rule which risks what the perceptive young Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, said in the early 1800s was the greatest threat to the new American democracy when he warned about the tyranny of the majority. I yield the floor.