Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum call be waived.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, in Jon Meacham's biography of President George W. Bush--actually, I believe it is in the biography of President George H. W. Bush--Meacham quotes Prescott Bush, H.W. Bush's father and Senator Prescott Bush, of Connecticut, as saying that the Senate is the place where everybody in politics ultimately wants to be. Senator Prescott Bush, of Connecticut, said that the U.S. Senate is the place in politics where everybody in politics ultimately wants to be. I have noticed that over the years, after an election, usually we have lost about 10 Members of the Senate--sometimes a couple more, sometimes a couple less. This year, it is 7. If you look at Georgia and what one has to go through to stay here or to get here given the amount of money being spent and the number of things being said in those two races, you would think that there might be a shortage of people today who would want to follow Senator Prescott Bush's advice but apparently not. Instead of 10 people leaving this year, it is only 7, and only 4 of us are retiring voluntarily. I would like to take just a minute or two about each of the other six U.S. Senators who will not be coming back in the next Congress.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding rule XXII, all postcloture time on the Kirsch nomination expire at 5 p.m. today; further, that if confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action; finally, that the mandatory quorum call with respect to the Crytzer nomination be waived.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I heard a lot about Doug Jones before he got here from another courageous former U.S. attorney, Hal Hardin from Nashville. I was not disappointed when he arrived. Doug Jones reminds me of another former Democrat who was very effective in the Senate, Ted Kennedy. Ted Kennedy would come on the floor and make the most--well, no one could ever say he abandoned his principles, based upon his speeches. He would stand back there in the back, and the things he would say would rally any Republican Lincoln Day Dinner. In fact, all I had to do back in Tennessee to stir up the Republican crowd was to mention Ted Kennedy. I did that on a regular basis. However, when I made my maiden address, without my knowing it, Ted Kennedy went around and got 20 cosponsors for the legislation I introduced that day, and I got a good dose of what it means to be an effective U.S. Senator, somebody who sticks to his or her opinions but, at the same time, who knows we are here to try to work on some sticky issues and get a result that most of us can vote for and that the country can accept. In his time here, Doug Jones did that. I got to watch him because he was a member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Senator Kennedy used to chair that committee, working with Senator Enzi, Senator Gregg, Senator Hatch, and others to produce a lot of legislation. He used to say that committee has one-third of all the jurisdiction in the Senate. Maybe that is about right. Doug Jones was one of the newest Senators. We have 23 members. He was way down at the end of the line, but I noticed he always came and he always asked questions and he always listened. He seemed to me to be trying to say what he believed but learn from the witnesses how to get a result. Let me just mention one contribution he made that I think will stick with him and with the people of Alabama and this country for a long time. That was the work we did in 2019. Senator Murray and I, Doug Jones, Senator Tim Scott, Senator Bennet of Colorado were on it from the beginning to do two things at once that helped low-income Americans who wanted to go to college. The first was to simplify the dreaded FAFSA, the Federal Aid application form that 20 million Americans fill out every year that is 108 questions long. About 90 of them are unnecessary; everybody agrees. For years, we have been working on that to try to simplify it. Finally, we got a significant part of that done. Doug Jones played a major role in that because what that legislation did was to say to the low-income family in Alabama or Tennessee or Arkansas or Illinois--wherever--you don't have to send your tax information into the Federal Government twice and let them then see if they can catch you making a mistake and hold up your Pell grant for 2 months while you figure that out. All you have to do is check a box, and the Internal Revenue Service will fill out the tax questions on your Pell grant application for you so that there is no chance of making a mistake. That made a big difference. And at the very same time, we agreed--Republicans and Democrats--to permanently fund historically Black colleges. It was a goal that had been there for a long time. So I would say to my friend from Alabama that I hope he puts that on his wall somewhere because that helps a few hundred thousand low-income families in Alabama alone. There is some work still to be done on that to finish the job, to finish the FAFSA simplification, and there may be some other support for historically Black colleges that we might even be able to get done while you and I are still here. Yet I wanted to acknowledge a Senator who arrived, went to work, stuck to his principles, worked across the aisle, and got results. You can't have a much better scorecard than that. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, here is my view of serving in the U.S. Senate: It is hard to get here, it is hard to stay here, and while you are here, you might as well try to accomplish something good for the country. Accomplishing something good in the U.S. Senate means working with a superior staff. Today, I want to pay tribute to the 270 men and women who have served on my staff since I came to the Senate in 2003, in my personal office, both here in Washington, DC, and in the six Tennessee offices; in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee; the Senate Rules Committee; the Senate Appropriations Committee; and at the Senate Republican conference. Some who started with me in 2003 are still working for me after 18 years, and some have moved on to other opportunities, but each has played a major role in the Senate, whether they were helping to pass laws, serve our constituents, or answering the front-office phone. We have some important traditions here in the Senate, including the maiden speech, which I delivered 17 years ago, in my case, and the farewell speech, which I delivered yesterday, but for me, something is missing. Usually staff is acknowledged in the farewell address, which either makes the address way too long or at least too little time to properly acknowledge their contributions. I am here today to make a ``Salute to the Staff'' speech. I know my colleagues agree that their own accomplishments are the result of working with superior staff, so perhaps, if I may not be presumptuous, a ``Salute to the Staff'' speech might become an additional Senate tradition. When I say ``superior staff,'' here is what I mean: superior in being what Senator Howard Baker used to call an eloquent listener--that the constituent on the phone might be right or even the staffer in the other office might be right; superior in courtesy to the Tennesseans for whom we work; superior in insight; superior in resolving complex issues and wrapping up the result in a nice package with a ribbon tied around it, ready to be passed and signed into law whenever the moment came that it could be passed, which would usually be a surprise and at an inconvenient time; and superior in writing and speaking plain English in order to persuade at least half the people we are right; and superior in working well together--something you are supposed to learn in kindergarten--so we have a good time while we are working. Unlike almost every other Senate office, at the suggestion of my chief of staff, David Cleary, we created a single team composed of personal office staff here and in Washington, DC, and the committee staff, with David in charge of all of that. I originally thought that was a big mistake. I didn't see how anyone could be in charge of all of that, but I was wrong about it because what it did was break down barriers and eliminate jealousy, improve communication, and create a much happier and effective working condition. The results have been exceptional. For 18 years, I have gotten up every morning thinking I might be able to do something good to help our country, and I have gone to bed most nights thinking that I have. That couldn't have happened without the privilege of working with an exceptional staff. The truth is--we all know this--that there is just no physical way for any U.S. Senator to see every single one of our constituents every time we want to see them or talk to them on the phone, although we all make our best efforts to do that. And you learn pretty quickly that constituents expect and deserve to be treated not just with courtesy but promptly. For example, Senator Estes Kefauver held this seat that I now hold when I was a high school student. One day, Maude from Madisonville, his hometown, called Senator Kefauver's office and said: ``I want to speak to Estes.'' The staffer said: ``I'm sorry but Senator Kefauver is tied up on the floor.'' There was a long silence. Maude said: ``Well, you go down and untie the son of a gun and get him up off the floor and tell him Maude's on the phone and wants to speak to him.'' So our constituents expect to talk with us when they want to. My first visit to the Senate was when I was a junior in high school. It was part of the American Legion Boys Nation Program. I was invited to visit Senator Kefauver. I was 17 years old. I was reluctant to do that because I was sure he had many more important people to see than a 17-year-old boy from Maryville, TN. I was even more sure of that when I arrived at his office because his office was just filled with people who looked important and looked like they had come from all over the world to see him. But his assistant came out and swished me in through all the important people, doing her best to make me feel comfortable. Kefauver had a reputation for being accessible, and it was because his staff made it appear that he always was. I remind my staff that there are many people who want to see us who suspect that we feel we are too important to see them, and we should do everything we can to help them understand that we know that they are the important ones. The staff and I have done our best to try to do that. With all of the Senators with whom I have served from Tennessee, we have what we call Tennessee Tuesday, which are breakfasts where any Tennessean can come and visit with both Senators, have a little breakfast, and have their photograph taken. In 18 years, 270 people have worked on my Senate staff--as I mentioned, in Jackson, Nashville, Tri-Cities, Knoxville, Memphis, Chattanooga, or in Washington, DC, on my personal staff or the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions staff or the Rules Committee or Appropriations Committee or at the Senate Republican conference. There are a lot of places to have a lot of staff--153 women, 117 men. Our staff has also benefited from the work of 433 interns. These interns usually stay with us 1 to 3 months, and they have some real work experiences while they are here, and they are pretty good. In fact, 30 staff members--that is 11 percent of our staff--began their work in our office as interns. Our staff has experienced some great personal joys. We celebrated the birth or adoption of 30 babies over those 18 years. Just as I met my wife Honey while we were both working in the Senate, some of our staffers met their spouses while working on my staff, including: Mackensie Burt and Paul McKernana, Will Patterson and Katherine Knight, Virginia Heppner and Bobby McMillin, Laura Lefler and John Herzog, Will Campbell and Victoria Souza, and Patrick Jaynes and Jill Salyers. They are all married now. We also have experienced some profound sorrows. Some have lost parents, nursed seriously injured children, or been through their own health emergencies. In November 2007, Trey Lefler, a very special staffer and friend, was involved in a serious car accident and died as a result of his injuries. Many staff members have stayed. We have worked together for a long time. Some have been a part of our team--meaning we worked together-- since I became a Senator: Patrick Jaynes, State director; Lindsey Seidman, deputy staff director on the HELP Committee; Jane Chedester, field representative in Knoxville; Kay Durham, constituent services representative in Nashville; Charlotte Jackson, who knows more about how to help people with a visa problem than anybody in the world; Matt Varino, field representative in Jackson; Gina Parkerson in Tri-Cities; Stephanie Chivers, a senior adviser in Nashville. It is pretty remarkable. It is not so easy to be on the staff of a U.S. Senator in the State they represent. Everybody knows who you are. Everywhere you go, you are likely to be sought out by people who need help, people who are hurting. It is easy to get burned out. It is hard to stay in a job like that for that long. Patrick Jaynes says that while these might be jobs in politics, the politics end when you start the job. You have to work with everyone and help everyone. Our Tennessee field representatives have traveled thousands of miles, meeting with mayors, businesses, schools, hospitals, and other organizations across our 95 counties. Caseworkers have handled about 20,000 cases over the years, like getting disability benefits, helping a World War II veteran get a medal, helping a family stranded overseas get home. For example, Laura Ray Goodrich is a staffer in Jackson. She heard of a single mother having desperate issues getting her tax refund. The mother needed the money to help pay rent and the rest of her bills. Laura got to work and reached out to the IRS. She discovered the mother's returns had been wrong for several years and helped the thrilled single mother recover far more money than she was expecting. Keith Abraham, who works in the Knoxville office, heard from a Tennessee company about an employee with a grim cancer diagnosis. The employee's parents lived in China. They were unable to see the employee because of COVID-19 restrictions. Long and short, Keith worked it out so they could receive the appropriate paperwork and fly here to be with their daughter. One story that I got to see in person was about Wilbur ``Bill'' Hoffman from World War II. Mary Wooldridge, in our Memphis office, was asked if there was some way he could be recognized for his World War II service. She worked with the service and discovered that he was not only eligible for a Purple Heart after he had been wounded at Pointe du Hoc on D-Day in 1944, he had also earned the Bronze Star and the Ranger Tab awards. In 2012, he was presented with these awards by our State's highest ranking military officer, General Haston at a ceremony I attended. He died a year later. Each fall, Kay Durham in our office works through about 150 Tennesseans' applications to attend our Nation's service academies. She has worked with over 2,500 candidates applying for those academies. There is no better State director than Patrick Jaynes. He also served as deputy chief of staff. He worked to create a smooth relationship between what happens in Tennessee and what happens here. I have traveled thousands of miles with Patrick. He has not run into anybody, but we have been through a lot of flat tires and some speeding tickets. Patrick and I have seen it all. He is full of insights. He always has energy for the next event and can always solve a problem. During my time in the Senate, the conference elected me three times as chairman of the Senate Republican conference. That is a little bit of a political job. What you are supposed to do is come up with something that Republicans can say to counter what Democrats are saying. It is especially a challenge to do that for Republicans to get them to talk on a single message. All of the Senators--every one of us--are experts in politics or we wouldn't have gotten here. And Republican Senators are especially independent-minded. Republicans and Democrats will often all do things together as a caucus, but we do it differently than they do. Democrats will all hold hands and jump off the cliff together. Republicans will also all jump off the cliff at the same time, but one will do a somersault, one will do a back flip, one will do a dive, and so forth. The goal was to come up in the caucus with a catchy phrase. For example, on energy, ``Find more, use less,'' or about ObamaCare, ``step by step,'' instead of ``comprehensive.'' To persuade Senators to say the same thing, staff would record clips of them saying what I thought they should say, and then we would show that back to them at lunch. I found that Senators paid a lot more attention to watching themselves say things than they did to watching me suggest to them what to say. It wasn't me doing all that; it was staff doing it. They came up with catchy phrases, many of them. They made sure we communicated them at the conference. While I was on the Rules Committee, I had a chance--I worked with Senator Schumer on that. We were ranking--really, like this year, we didn't know who would be the new President. I had an opportunity to speak at President Obama's inauguration. We talked about the peaceful transfer or the reaffirmation of power as a conspicuous symbol of our democracy. There is no possible way to organize a Presidential inauguration without a superior staff. Mary Jones and Lindsey Seidman were the ones who were in charge of all that for us. Then, in 2012, on the Senate HELP Committee--as the senior Republican for 2 years, then 6 years as chairman--the staff grew a lot. Senator Ted Kennedy used to say that the HELP Committee had about one-third of the jurisdiction of the Senate. It certainly does a lot of work, and it needs a lot of talented staff members. During my 8 years as the senior Republican, the staff helped organize 209 hearings, 752 witnesses, mostly bipartisan--meaning that I agreed with Senator Harkin first, then Senator Murray for the last 6 years, on whom the witnesses would be. We produced 90 bills that have become law. That is a lot of work--weeks of work by the staff. Securing each witness often takes a host of conversations with Democratic committee staff, numerous phone calls with experts. Every bill that becomes law takes efforts that are hard to comprehend outside the walls of Congress, from the consultations with constituents and experts to the drafting of the legislation, to the work with other members and outside groups, to consulting, to trying to soothe bruised feelings, to working with other committee members, bring it to the attention of the majority leader, try to find an opportunity for it to be on the Senate calendar, then bill support, then remove holes. There is a lot of work to do in passing a bill and making a law, and staff does most of the work. Senators do a lot, but they can't do it all. Here are some of the achievements worth highlighting. I mentioned many of them yesterday in my farewell address, so I won't go into great detail about them today; for example, the Every Student Succeeds Act. This was the bill to fix No Child Left Behind. It affects 50 million children in 100,000 schools. President Obama called it ``a Christmas miracle.'' The Wall Street Journal said it was the largest devolution of power from Washington to the States in 25 years. I will never forget what, to me, was a truly emotional moment, when every Senator on our committee--this is from Rand Paul to Elizabeth Warren--voted to recommend the bill to the Senate. This law was the result of complicated and nimble work by Peter Oppenheim, Lindsay Fryer, Matt Stern, and David Cleary. FAFSA Simplification. Twenty million Americans fill out this ridiculously complex form for Federal aid for Pell grants and student loans. You have seen me hold it up on the Senate floor. Everyone agrees it can be 33 instead of 108 questions. Almost everyone agrees it is the major obstacle to low-income students getting Federal aid to go to college because they are intimidated by it. Bob Moran, Lauren Davies, and Andrew LaCasse have worked hard with Senator Murray's staff. We have it about half done. We would like to get it across the finish line before the end of the year. Head Start. In 2007, we came up with the idea. Sarah Rittling was the staffer. It was to establish 200 centers of excellence for the Head Start Program. Then, in 2005, Katrina came and Rita came, two big hurricanes. Kristin Bannerman was critical to legislation, where we worked with Senator Kennedy, Senator Dodd, and Senator Landrieu for voucher funding to assist with the cost of educating 150,000 public and nonpublic school students in grades K-12 displaced by the hurricane. Then, reauthorizing the Perkins Career and Technical Education Act. Education Week said it was ``a watershed moment.'' Staffer Jake Baker worked on that. Senator Enzi did a lot of the heavy work. I have been fortunate to have two extraordinary women whom I work with on the team of staff on the HELP Committee who handle family health policy: Mary-Sumpter Lapinski and Grace Graham. Before they started, Melissa Pfaff, Page Kranbuhl, and Marguerite Salee Kondracke were instrumental in passing the PREEMIE Act in 2003, getting the bill well written and signed into law, working with the March of Dimes to help give more babies a chance to live long and healthy lives. Once I became senior on the HELP Committee, we began to work on the 21st Century Cures Act. Senator McConnell said it was the most important law of that Congress. It helps speed medical innovations to patients in doctors' offices. Margaret Coulter, Andy Vogt, Melissa Pfaff, Brett Meeks, and others spent countless hours getting ready for that. FDA user fees. This showed Grace Graham's ability to be a traffic cop working with Senator Murray's staff and with House committees. We had a really fairly seamless effort to take these complicated pieces of law to collect user fees from drug and device makers and include significant new provisions to speed those drugs and devices into doctors' offices. The most popular bill that never became a law was called Alexander- Murray. I even bought a case of Scotch called Alexander-Murray to give out to everybody when it passed, but it never was passed. The result of the immense efforts--the whole goal--was to reduce the cost of healthcare premiums in the individual insurance market. President Trump worked well with us on that. Virginia McMillin and Liz Wroe did countless hours of work, but we couldn't quite get it across the finish line. Then, this year, there was the shark tank. With the support of Senators Blunt and Shelby, we worked together with Francis Collins, of the National Institutes of Health, to create an initiative of $2.5 billion to produce 50 million more COVID diagnostic tests a month than current technologies would do. Grace Graham, Melissa Pfaff, and Laura Friedel on Senator Blunt's staff worked on that. During all of this, Grace Graham was in her third trimester--not during all of it. During the latter part of this, she was in her third trimester. She was working on design policies and being a traffic cop between here and the House. To date, she and Stash, her husband, have had their first child, Penn. She is back at work, and the country is better off for everything that she has contributed. Our committee leadership positions are often considered the plum positions, but you can do a whole lot with a talented personal staff. Ours has put in long hours and has met expectations. For example, on the Great American Outdoors Act, Anna Newton and Lindsay Garcia did yeoman's work. This is a bill that good people have literally been trying to pass since the Eisenhower years. It was the most important piece of outdoor legislation in that period of time. With the Music Modernization Act, we worked with Senator Hatch and his staff. We eventually got 85 cosponsors, but this one nearly ran off the road several times. Lindsay Garcia and Paul McKernan made sure it became law. The America COMPETES Act was back in my early years as a Senator, when I was very junior, so I got the Republican leader and the Democratic leader to cosponsor it. It passed with, I think, more than 60 cosponsors to improve our competitive position in the world. Matt Sonnesyn and David Cleary were the key staffers on that. They were not just working with staff people around here. For example, with the America COMPETES Act, the bill wouldn't have passed if it had not been for 800 outdoor recreation environmental groups outside of Congress who supported the bill and encouraged Senators to get off planes and come back here to cast crucial votes. We are grateful for that. Matt Sonnesyn worked with the Iraq Study Group recommendations that we made during the George W. Bush years, and Erin Reif and Lucas DaPieve have been experts on foreign affairs and appropriations. While I have been chairman of the Energy and Water Appropriations, we have had 5 straight years in a row--hopefully, we will have 6--of funding the Office of Science, which supports our 17 National Laboratories. We have also stepped up funding for all of the inland waterways, like Chickamauga Lock, and for supercomputing in order to keep us first in the world. Tom Craig, Tyler Owens, Meyer Seligman, Jen Armstrong, and Adam DeMella all played key roles in that. I met every week with what I called my Energy Working Group. I found the intersection of energy and environment to be, really, the most fascinating new subject for me during my time as a Senator, and we did a lot of work on that both on the Committee on Appropriations and with other Senators. Meeting with that energy policy staff helped to get the America COMPETES Act passed. It stopped the Road to Nowhere in the Smokies. It pushed back on the efforts to promote Big Wind on our mountain ridges, and it resulted in record funding for energy and water development. Sharon Segner, Jessica Holliday, Conrad Schatte, and Lindsay Garcia all led those teams. We spend a lot of time working with staff to get the policy right and trying to get the message right. You have to be able to persuade at least half the people that you are right in this business. Words matter. We spend a lot of time on headlines so that we convey what we are trying to do. The individuals who have led our communications unit include Alexia Poe, Harvey Valentine, Lee Pitts, Jim Jeffries, Brian Reisinger, Margaret Atkinson, Liz Wolgemuth, Ashton Davies, and Taylor Haulsee. You can't run an effective office without a good office manager. We have had the best--Trina Tyrer and Debbie Paul. Misty Marshall came to us from the White House, where she was the director of correspondence for Laura Bush. One of the toughest, most important jobs in the Senate office that people outside the Senate don't really appreciate as much is the job of scheduling. It requires constant changes, great discretion, enormous promptness, and attention to detail. Every day is a mismatch of meetings and calls. There is no schedule, really, in the U.S. Senate. You just kind of keep up with what is going on, and you put it down on a piece of paper. Suddenly, everything can get wiped out by an emergency call. Bonnie Sansonetti, Sarah Fairchild, and Alicyn York have been the very best. The legislative director conducts the office orchestra. I have been very fortunate that Allison Martin has been our conductor. She used to work for Bill Frist and Fred Thompson. She is a West Tennessean, but the whole State is what she cares about as well as the country. If you were to look for somebody with her skill and talent, you would be looking for a very long time. David Cleary, Richard Hertling, Matt Sonnesyn, and David Morgenstern were also legislative directors. One thing I know is I wouldn't be very good as a chief of staff, so I needed a very good chief of staff to do some things that I don't do as well. My first one was Tommy Ingram, whom I have known since 1966 when he was a Tennessean reporter, and I was working for Howard Baker in his second campaign. We have been friends ever since. He was my campaign manager and chief of staff as Governor. He did the same thing. He is really responsible for much of my success in politics. David Morgenstern joined my staff in 2005 as legislative director, and he became chief of staff in 2009. Matt Sonnesyn came to me from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He was initially a senior policy adviser. He was one of the few Republican students in the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, so he was well trained in defending his views. Ryan Loskarn served as chief of staff starting in 2007. Then, in my personal office, David Cleary has been the chief for the past 7 years. You can see him somewhere in an outrageous red and black suit on the Senate floor. David and I have worked together for almost 15 years. First, he served as staff director for the HELP Subcommittee on Children and Families. He used to work for John Boehner in the House In 2014, after becoming the ranking member of the HELP Committee, David suggested, as I said earlier, that he be both chief of staff and staff director of the committee. I recounted how, at first, I thought that was a bad idea, but it was one of the best ideas suggested to me because it made our staff so much more effective and work so much better. It was the key to our success, really, and I do not know of a more effective chief of staff of the Senate than David Cleary. He led our efforts to fix No Child Left Behind, the 21st Century Cures, the reauthorizing of Perkins, and the FDA user fees legislation. I appreciate how much time Marci, his wife, and Maria, their daughter, have given to our team. To close, I would like to thank all 270 staff members who have given time and energy to our office. One of those, Reynard Graham, has been my administrative right hand for many years. His bigger job is that he is a minister on the weekends. There isn't time to recognize the accomplishments of each one by name, but there are many, and I am grateful to every single individual. It has been a tremendous gift to work with a skilled and dedicated staff. Each person who has served in this office should be proud of what we have accomplished. I have been so fortunate to have been on the same team with each of you for the last 18 years. In a farewell address yesterday, I said that I wake up every day thinking I might be able to do something good for our country and that I go to bed most nights thinking that I have. It has been a great privilege to be a U.S. Senator. It has been a great privilege over these 18 years to work with such an exceptional staff. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a list of the names of my staff

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized to speak for as long as I may require.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to legislative session and be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank my friend Mitch, and I thank my friend Chuck for their remarks. I will have more to say to them later. On March 9, 1967, Senator Howard H. Baker, Jr., the newly elected Senator from Tennessee, made his maiden address, his first speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate. He spoke for too long. The Republican leader of the Senate, who was also Baker's father-in- law, Senator Everett M. Dirksen, walked over to congratulate him and then said, ``Howard, occasionally, you might enjoy the luxury of an unexpressed thought,'' which is good advice for a farewell address as well. As Senator Baker's legislative assistant, I was also his speech writer for that maiden address, or at least I thought I was. He had developed a bad habit of not saying what I wrote for his speech. So I asked to see him, and I said: Do we have a problem with our relationship? He said: No, we have a perfect relationship. You write what you want to write, and I will say what I want to say. I learned a couple of other things about ``saying what I want to say.'' One came from Alex Haley, the author of ``Roots,'' who heard me speak once and called me aside afterward and said: May I make a suggestion? He said: If, when you begin a speech, you would start by saying, ``Instead of making a speech, let me tell you a story,'' someone might actually listen to what you have to say. And then, from David Broder, who gave this advice to Ruth Marcus when she got her column for the Washington Post: one idea per column. So here is a story about my one idea for this speech. In August of 1968, Senator Baker was in the Republican leader's office, where Senator McConnell is today. He overheard this conversation. Senator Dirksen was saying: [No,] Mr. President, I cannot come down and have a drink with you tonight. I did that last night and Louella is very unhappy with me. About 30 minutes later, there was a commotion out in the hall, and in the door of the Republican leader's office came two beagles, three Secret Service men, and the President of the United States. And Lyndon Johnson said to Everett Dirksen: ``Everett, if you won't come down and have a drink with me, I'm here to have one with you.'' And they disappeared into the back room. Later that same year, around a long table, in that same office, the Democratic President and the Republican leader worked out the Civil Rights Act of 1968. It took 67 votes to break a filibuster, but when the bill passed and Johnson signed it, the Senators who voted no went home and said: It is the law. We have to accept it. And it still is today, along with many other civil rights laws. So that is the one idea I have for this speech. Our country needs a U.S. Senate to work across party lines to force broad agreements on hard issues, creating laws that most of us have voted for and that a diverse country will accept. In the 1930s, we needed a Senate to create Social Security; after World War II, the United Nations; in the 1960s, Medicare; in 1978, to ratify the Panama Canal Treaty; in 2013, more recently, to tie interest rates for student loans to the market rates, saving student borrowers hundreds of billions of dollars in the last several years; in 2015, to fix No Child Left Behind. That bill had 100 alligators in the swamp. The Wall Street Journal said, when we finished, that it was the largest evolution of power from Washington to the States in 25 years. When President Obama signed it, he said it was ``a Christmas miracle'' because, in the end, 85 Senators voted for it. In 2016, as Senator McConnell mentioned, there was the 21st Century Cures Act, moving medical miracles faster to patients and into doctors' offices. That bill ran off the track every 2 or 3 days. On one of those days, I called the Vice President, Joe Biden. I said: Joe, I am stuck in the White House. I have the President's personalized medicine in this. I have your Cancer MoonShot. Senator McConnell's regenerative medical proposal is in it. Speaker Ryan has worked out a way to pay for it. But I can't get the White House to move. I feel like the butler standing outside the Oval Office with a silver platter, and nobody will open the door and take the order. And Joe Biden said: If you want to feel like the butler, try being Vice President. Well, in the next few weeks, the Senate rules literally forced us to come to an agreement, and, in the end, we almost all voted for it. Senator McConnell said then, as he said today, it was ``the most important legislation'' of that Congress. And, today, it is helping to create vaccines and treatments in record time. Then, in 2018, there was a once-in-a-generation change in the copyright laws to help songwriters be fairly paid; this year, the Great American Outdoors Act. Everyone agrees that it is the most important outdoor and environmental bill in 50 years. All of that took a long time, a lot of palavering, many amendments, many years. Too many years, civil rights advocates, students, patients, songwriters, and conservationists would say. But the point was that those bills didn't just pass. They passed by big margins. The country accepted them, and they are going to be there for a long time, and most of them were enacted during divided government, when the Presidency and at least one body of Congress was of different political parties. That offers an opportunity to share the responsibility or the blame for doing hard things, like controlling the Federal debt. That is why our country needs a U.S. Senate, to thoughtfully and carefully and intentionally put country before partisanship and personal politics, to force broad agreements on controversial issues that become laws that most of us will vote for and that a diverse country will accept. Nearly 60 years ago, I had traveled from my home in the mountains of Tennessee to New York University's Law School in Manhattan, on Washington Square. It was my first trip ever to New York City, and I had asked for a roommate whose background was as different from mine as possible. One of those roommates turned out to be a tall skinny guy from New Jersey. When I would go to his home in New Jersey and spend the night--his mother was a seamstress and his dad was a contractor; they were Italian immigrants--his mother would become so concerned about my frayed collar on my one white dress shirt that she would turn it while I slept. Years later, that roommate, Paul Tagliabue, invited me to go to the Italian American Dinner here in Washington. They were bursting with pride for the Italian-American heritage at that dinner: cheers for Scalia, the Justice, and for Pelosi, the Congressman, and for Stallone, the actor, and for Tagliabue, the National Football League Commissioner. But what struck me was, as proud as they all were of their Italian heritage, they were most proud to say: We are all Americans. Ken Burns, whose films tell the story of who we are, reminds us that the late Arthur Schlesinger once wrote that our country needs less ``pluribus'' and more ``unum,'' and the fact that we have attracted people from everywhere in the world has made our country richer and stronger, but it is more important and a greater achievement that we have combined all of that diversity into one country. That is why the motto above the Presiding Officer's desk is not one word--``pluribus.'' It is ``e pluribus unum''--out of many, one. More than ever, our country needs a United States to turn ``pluribus'' into ``unum,'' to lead the American struggle to forge unity from diversity. Now, some advocate operating the Senate in a different way: End the filibuster--the Senate's best-known tradition. In the movie ``Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,'' he calls it ``the right to talk your head off.'' They say: Don't worry about party lines. Pass everything with a majority vote. Presidents would like that. They have said so. They would get their way more easily if we allow the passions to roar through the Senate like they roar through the House of Representatives. So if the Democrats are in charge, we could abolish every right-to-work law, repeal all limits on abortion, and pass restrictions on guns. That is very appealing for the moment, but what about if the train roars in the other direction and Republicans say: Let's impose a right-to-work law on every State and pro-life laws and gun rights laws. Is such back and forth and back and forth what we really want as a country? The Framers didn't think so. They created this cooling saucer for those passions that Washington talked about, and the filibuster-- ``the right to talk your head off''--is the preeminent tool we use to force broad agreements on tough issues that most of us will vote for and that the country could live with Alexis de Tocqueville, the remarkable young Frenchman who wandered through our country in 1831 and 1832 and who wrote the best book yet on democracy in America, saw two great dangers for our future: One, Russia; and, two, the tyranny of the majority. Ending the filibuster will destroy the impetus for forcing the broad agreements I have been talking about, and it would unleash the tyranny of the majority to steamroll the rights of the minority. Well, you may say that the Senate isn't solving some big problems, and you would be right. We are not even voting on some big problems. Sometimes it is because the majority doesn't bring it up, and sometimes the minority obstructs. If a carbon tax is a good idea, why aren't we voting on it? Or if we want to help the DACA kids, why aren't we voting on it? Or if the Federal debt is out of control, why aren't we voting on it? It doesn't take a genius. It doesn't take a genius to figure out how to gum up the works in a body of 100 that operates mostly by unanimous consent. But here is my different view of why we are here. It is hard to get here. It is hard to stay here. And while we are here, we might as well try to accomplish something good for the country. But it is hard to accomplish something if you don't vote on amendments. Lately, the Senate has been like joining the Grand Ole Opry and not being allowed to sing. It is a real waste of talent. Think about this body. Over the years, we have had astronauts, former Governors, Supreme Court law clerks, military heroes, turnaround CEOs. We even had one of us who ran the Olympics. A group of that much talent ought to accomplish a lot more, and you don't have to eliminate the filibuster to accomplish a lot more--meaning, restore the Senate to a time when it was working across party lines more often to solve big problems. Not so long ago, the Senate worked Monday through Friday, considered hundreds of amendments. Most votes were by majority, and conferences worked out broad agreements. That was under the existing rules. Let me say that again. That was under the existing rules. So the Senate doesn't need a change of rules. It needs a change of behavior, and the behavior to change first is to stop blocking each other's amendments. If you are against it, vote no. Why stop the entire body from even considering it? Why join the Grand Ole Opry if you don't want to sing? I guarantee you that if 15 to 20 Democrats and 15 to 20 Republicans decided they wanted to change that practice, they could do it. Some Governors don't like being a U.S. Senator, but not me. The jobs are different. Both jobs cause you to want to see an urgent need, develop a strategy to deal with it, and then try to persuade at least half of the people that you are right. But the Governor's job is more like Moses. You say: Let's go this way. The Senator's job, if you want to get something done, is more like a parade organizer. You pick the route, you recruit the marchers, you select the music, you even pick the drum majors sometimes, and then you march in the middle of the parade and hope it doesn't run off the road more than a half dozen times on the way to where it is going. I love the traditions of the Senate, the hard marble floors, the elaborate courtesies, Barry Black's prayers, and scratching my name beside Howard Baker's and Fred Thompson's names in this desk drawer. I have made a lot of friendships in the Senate. My best friendship began at a softball game between Senator John G. Tower's staff of Texas and Senator Baker's staff, in the summer of 1967, when a 21-year-old Smith College graduate named Honey slid into first base wearing red shorts. I was not only surprised but captivated, and 18 months later we were married. And for 52 years she has been an unselfish and caring wife, mother, campaigner, and advocate for families and children, especially her own. In 1969, as the leader mentioned, Senator Baker said to me: You ought to get to know that smart, young legislative assistant for the new Kentucky Senator, Marlow Cook. That smart, young legislative assistant was Mitch McConnell, and it began a half century of friendship. Mario D'Angelo, in the barbershop here, first cut my hair in 1977 when I came up for 3 months to work with Senator Baker when he was suddenly elected Republican leader. Some of my experiences in the Senate haven't been so friendly, such as my confirmation hearing in 1991, when Senator Metzenbaum of Ohio said: Governor Alexander, I have heard some very disturbing things about you, but I don't think I'll bring them up here. And he then put a hold on my nomination for 2 months, until I was mysteriously confirmed late one night--and I still don't know how. Back then I found a new way to make friends among Senators when I went to the Republican retreat, and they said: If you will stop talking and play the piano, we will support Bush's education program. So I did, and they did. I have strengthened friendships in the so-called ``inner sanctum'' that Chuck Schumer and I resurrected downstairs. It provides a private space for Senators to have a snack and a conversation. One-third of this body, of the Senators and their spouses, have come to the Smoky Mountains to be guests of Honey and me in our home for the weekend. We don't talk about politics much there. We talked about lost hikers and told bear stories. And I have even learned here how to count--how to count my friends. In 2006 I wrote 27 thank-you notes for 24 votes when I lost the race by 1 vote to be the Republican whip. Having learned to count, I got to be the Republican conference chairman. I enjoyed that, but 9 years ago I left to focus on issues that I cared the most about. Since then I have done my best to leave footprints that I hope are good for the country: fixing No Child Left Behind and 21st Century Cures and simplifying FAFSA, working with Patty Murray--Michael Bennet was there at the start for the FAFSA; working with Dianne Feinstein in building up our National Laboratories and supercomputing; joining the bipartisan parade of Portland and Warner and Gardner and King and Manchin and Daines and Heinrich and Burr and Cantwell that created the Great American Outdoors Act; the law to help songwriters; working with Murray and Jones and Tim Scott on permanently funding Black colleges; with Blunt and Shelby on the shark tank of the National Institutes of Health, creating new diagnostic tests, new ways; with Burr and Durbin and Manchin and King on the student loan law I mentioned; with Casey and Enzi on the Perkins Act; with Harry Reid and Bill Frist, when they were leaders, on the America COMPETES Act. None of this could have been done without an exceptional staff. But instead of thanking them in a rushed way now, I am going to make a separate ``salute to the staff'' speech tomorrow. Maybe I will start a tradition. My favorite time in the U.S. Senate has been with the American history teachers whom I invite to come to the Senate floor before it opens while they are attending the academies that were created by the legislation I introduced in my maiden address 18 years ago. After that address, Ted Kennedy, without my knowing it, went around and got 20 Democratic cosponsors. In the House, Roger Wicker and Marsha Blackburn helped pass the bill there, where they were then. The teachers who come to the floor before we open invariably go to our desks. They try to find Daniel Webster's desk. They look for the Kennedy brothers' desk. They ask, ``Where is Jefferson Davis's desk?''--Jefferson Davis, who resigned the Senate to become President of the Confederacy--because they have heard the story that there is a chop mark on the desk that was imposed by a Union soldier when they captured Washington. The soldier was chopping the desk until his commander said: Stop that. We are here to save the Union, not to destroy it. Invariably a teacher will ask: Senator, what would you like for us to take back to our students about being a U.S. Senator? My reply is always the same: Please suggest to your students that they look at Washington, DC, as if it were a split-screen television. On one side are the confirmation hearings and the tweets, and on the other side you have Democratic and Republican Senators working together to strengthen national defense, National Laboratories, national parks, and the National Institutes of Health. Please remind them of what a remarkable country this is: the strongest military, the best universities, producing 20 percent of all the money in the world for just 4 percent of the people. Tell them we are not perfect, but, as our Constitution says, we are always working to form a more perfect union and that, as Samuel Huntington wrote, most of our arguments are about conflicts among principles with which most of us agree, and most of our politics is about disappointments in not being able to reach the noble goals we set for ourselves, such as all men are created equal. The late NAACP President Ben Hooks used to teach his University of Memphis students, ``America is a work in progress. We've come a long way, and we have a long way to go.'' Please remind your students that the rest of the world wishes they had our system of government and that the U.S. Senate has been and I hope continues to be the single most important institution that helps to unify our country by creating broad agreements that most of us can vote for and that the citizens of the United States will accept. Finally, please tell them that I wake up every day thinking I might be able to do something good to help our country and that I go to bed most nights thinking that I have. Please tell them that it is a great privilege to be a U.S. Senator I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I am glad I was here to hear the wise words of the Senator from Texas. I look at our region, in the Tennessee Valley, compared to California. California is moving ahead with a policy a lot like Vice President Biden's. They have got a high goal for powering that whole State on wind and solar and closing their nuclear plants. What is happening in California? Rates are going through the roof, and they are having rolling blackouts. What is happening in Tennessee and the Tennessee Valley? The TVA has very wisely expanded nuclear power so that it is more than 40 percent of our electricity. Of course, nuclear power is totally emission-free--no carbon, zero carbon--it is reliable, and it is, by far, most of the carbon-free electricity we produce in this country. The combination of that nuclear power, hydropower, and natural gas in Tennessee has given us one of the cleanest areas. In the East Tennessee area where I live, I can see the mountains clearly now because pollution control is on all the coal plants. So we need a realistic energy policy, not a fanciful one. We don't want rolling blackouts throughout the country like California has because they have adopted exactly the policy that Vice President Biden is advocating.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Today, our committee--the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee--had its last hearing of the year, and it was my last hearing as chairman of the committee. While we are on the theme of education, one of the interesting--and I am here today to give a little report on what I consider to be an unprecedented sprint toward success in three areas: vaccines, treatments, and diagnostic testing. I asked Dr. Fauci, who was one of the witnesses, this question: Dr. Fauci, there are a lot of outbreaks on college campuses around the country as millions of students go back to thousands of colleges. Is the right thing to do to send the students home? He said: Absolutely not. That is the wrong thing to do. Segregate the students from the other students in the college until they are well-- and the people they have exposed until they are well--and then go on. Don't send them home to infect their parents and their grandparents and the community from which they came. I think that is important advice for the college administrators all over America who are dealing with this issue very bravely. I know at the University of Tennessee they had a big outbreak. It was some poor judgment on behalf of a number of students who had just gone back to school. You can just imagine 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds, they all want to get together. Well, they got together, and they infected one another, and they had a big outbreak--maybe 750, the Governor said, but it is now down to 150. So Dr. Fauci's advice to the school administrators is this: Isolate them, segregate them, track them, and don't send them home. The hearing today included Dr. Fauci and Dr. Redfield from the Centers for Disease Control. It included Admiral Giroir, who is in charge of testing, and it included Dr. Hahn, who is the head of the Food and Drug Administration. Here was the first question I asked Dr. Hahn, who is the only person who knows when the vaccines that are being developed will be distributed. He doesn't really know because he doesn't know the date, nor do any of the career scientists at the FDA know the date when the data will show that the vaccine is safe and effective, and it will not be distributed until it is. So I said to Dr. Hahn: Who makes the decisions at FDA? Do you make the decisions? Do the career scientists make the decisions? Or does the White House make the decisions about safety and effectiveness of a vaccine? He said: The career scientists make the decisions. The White House does not, and I will not make a decision about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines unless the career scientists and I agree that it is safe and effective according to independent and transparent data. I asked Dr. Fauci this question. I said: Dr. Fauci, you have been around a while. You came on in the Reagan days. You have been in your job as head of infectious diseases since 1984. Here is my question: Is this administration cutting corners on safety and efficiency? Dr. Fauci said: Absolutely not. I asked all four of the witnesses: If the vaccine is approved by the FDA, would you take it, and would you recommend your family take it? They said yes, that they had great confidence in the FDA. Here is a summary of what they told us today. Let's start with vaccines: According to the administration, it is already manufacturing tens of millions of doses of six vaccines, and by the end of the year, there will be tens of millions of doses of these vaccines already manufactured, ready to distribute--first, of course, to the priority individuals, those who are most vulnerable, healthcare workers, and others. Then, according to the administration, they expect to be able to produce 300 to 700 million doses of vaccines by March or April of next year. That is unprecedented. When I was a kid, we were terrified by polio. I had classmates who were in an iron lung and parents who were worried their children might be just as well. It took 10 years to get a polio vaccine, and polio is now eradicated. For most of the vaccines that our children take before they go to school--like mumps, measles, and chickenpox--you have to take these vaccines in all 50 States and the District of Columbia before you go to school. Most of them took 10 years to develop. If the optimism of the administration--they call it Operation Warp Speed--is accurate, vaccines will have been manufactured, and they are optimistic that at least one of them will be approved before the end of the year. They know they will be manufactured because they are already doing that. They don't know for sure, and they say: There is no guarantee of success, but we are optimistic that we will reach a goal that once was considered impossible and now seems likely. In other words, instead of waiting 10 years for a vaccine to save lives, this vaccine for COVID-19 will be developed in less than a year if it is approved before the end of the year. That is an unprecedented success story, and it is only possible for a variety of reasons, which I will go into in a minute. The same is true with treatments. There are five treatments-- medicines--for those who have contracted COVID-19. That is especially interesting to teachers and faculty members at schools and colleges. The children don't seem to get as sick, but the older teachers could, and they do get sicker. So it helps to know that there is a treatment for COVID if you get sick. What we are told by Dr. Fauci, Dr. Redfield, Dr. Hahn, and others is that they are cautiously optimistic that new treatments will be available in the next few weeks--specifically, the monoclonal antibodies, the antibody cocktails that were developed and used during the Ebola crisis to help prevent and cure it. If these work--and, again, they only can be approved based on data from the FDA. They are not approved yet. They are in clinical trials, but late clinical trials. If they are approved in the next few weeks, then, if you come down with COVID, you will have an antibody cocktail that, in the case of the Ebola, proved to prevent and help cure it. Knowing that these vaccines are being manufactured and are likely to be approved by the end of the year and that treatments will be broadly available by the end of the year, in addition to the five that now exist, should help give Americans more confidence in going back to school, back to college, back to childcare, back to work, and out to eat. Then, there is a third success story, and that is diagnostic testing. The United States got off to a bumpy start with diagnostic testing. The first CDC test flopped, and we lost some time. But since then there has been an explosion of diagnostic testing. Today, we have a capacity to deal with 90 million tests a month. Abbott Laboratories has announced that in October, it will produce 50 million rapid tests. You can get a result in 15 minutes with a higher degree of specificity--that means accuracy--and it costs $5. The administration has bought 150 million--the whole output--for the first 3 months of Abbott Laboratories' fast tests and is in the process of distributing them to nursing homes, schools, colleges, childcare centers, and States. I was able to say to the Governor that if Tennessee gets its rough share of 2 percent of 150 million tests, that is a lot of tests for the State of Tennessee to be receiving over the next few weeks. Again, the importance of that is, between now and the time a vaccine is administered and treatments are widely available, the surest path back to school, back to work, and out to eat is an oversupply of diagnostic testing so you could have it whenever you want. Just as Governor Lee was saying, we have 1,800 schools open in person, Nashville and Memphis worrying about whether they should open. I think if the teachers knew they had more treatments and if they could test whenever a class needs to test--a whole class--and do surveillance testing, that people would be safer and feel better about going back to school. The same would be true with the colleges and universities. If there is a breakout of 750 cases at the University of Tennessee and you can quickly do random surveillance testing of an entire dorm or a dorm floor or a class of students, then you can feel better about keeping the place safe. The hearing was a good hearing. During the hearing, I thanked Senator Murray, my partner over the last 6 years, the ranking Democrat. She is a member of the Democratic leadership. She is pretty tough when she wants to be. Because she is, I like working with her, and we have been able to do a lot with our committee. We have 23 members on our committee. I thanked them today. I said, Senator Ted Kennedy used to say that we have the broadest jurisdiction of any committee in the Senate. I think we have the broadest range of views in the Senate of any committee. We have some very able advocates of those diverse points of view, and still, we have a very impressive record from fixing No Child Left Behind to 21st Century Cures, to the opioids bill, to passing important bipartisan legislation that is good for the country President Obama called the Every Student Succeeds Act a Christmas miracle. Senator McConnell said the 21st Century Cures Act was the most important law of that Congress. I thanked Senator Murray and all the Democrats and Republicans on the committee for creating an environment where we can have our differences of opinion but still get important results. There was one other thing we discussed that I would like to mention. I see my friend from Connecticut on the floor. I know he wants to speak, and I will get out of the way so he can do it. But there were actually two things I wanted to briefly summarize, and then I will ask to put my statement into the Record. One was that the New York Times said on March 1, that the United States was as well prepared as any country for COVID. To the extent that was true, it was because of several Presidents and several Congresses doing such things as, in 2012, authorizing three standby manufacturing plants for vaccines. Of Operation Warp Speed, Dr. Slaoui, who is their principle adviser, said that they could not be producing four of those vaccines if those plants had not been put in place back then. In addition, earlier Congresses created more authority for the FDA, for example, to do emergency-use authorizations, which Dr. Hahn has used expertly. They have given the NIH record funding for 5 years in a row and new authority. All of this authority has been put to work by this administration to do what I would call an unprecedented sprint toward success on vaccines, treatments, and tests without cutting corners on efficacy and safety. There is a risk, but the risk is to the taxpayers. The reason things are going so fast is because they are doing everything in parallel. They are manufacturing while they are developing the vaccine and while they are reviewing whether it is safe and effective. Then, at the end of that process--say, at the end of this year--if it is effective, we are ready to distribute it. The States have been asked to get ready. If it is not safe, if it is not effective, then, we lose the money. The taxpayers lose the money. I think most of us would be glad to lose that money if the result was that one or more of those vaccines turned out to be the one that produces 300 to 700 million doses of vaccines that are safe and effective as we move into the new year. There is a lesson from all of this, and that is that the earlier Congresses and Presidents were visionary in this respect: They built those standby manufacturing plants. They created BARDA. Senator Burr from North Carolina was one of the leaders of that, for example. Without that, we wouldn't have this explosion of vaccines, treatments, and tests on the way. We need to do that again. Senator Bill Frist, the former majority leader, testified before our committee with some others. He said we go from panic to neglect to panic, and we don't do the hard things we need to do after the epidemic is over. The hardest thing to do is sustained funding. So we need sustained funding for manufacturing plants so they don't go cold while we wait for the next pandemic. We need sustained funding for our stockpile so they are not depleted by budget problems. We need sustained funding for the strategic stockpile, and we need sustained funding for our State and local public health agencies, which are about 50 percent supported by Federal dollars. Sustained funding is something we don't do very well--that means mandatory funding that needs advanced appropriations. We like to do it year by year. But if we don't do it, you can see what it costs us: 200,000 lives we lost already and $3 trillion we have already spent. So a little sustained funding to prevent the next pandemic would be a very wise investment, and we ought to do it now while we have our eye on the ball. Jared Diamond, who wrote ``Guns, Germs, and Steel,'' pointed out in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal that, in his opinion, what is different about this vaccine is the jet plane--that people can fly from Wuhan to San Francisco or from San Francisco to Nashville, and pretty soon, suddenly, this is spreading all over the world. Jared Diamond said that the next pandemic could be next year. We hope it is not, but it could be, and we should be ready for it. So I wanted to report to the American people and to my colleagues in the Senate that we hear a lot about problems, but I think it is important to know that vaccines are being manufactured, that the decisions are going to be made by scientists about when they are ready to distribute, that the States have been asked to get ready, that there are more treatments coming, likely, and that there has been an explosion of diagnostic tests. So, really, there should be plenty of diagnostic tests for anyone who wants to use them before very long in the United States. My theory has been for a long time that as soon as we had an oversupply, we wouldn't have a problem or an issue. I thanked those four witnesses, Senator Murray, and my Republican and Democratic colleagues for monitoring this COVID-19. I am glad the hearing was broadly carried for 2 hours on many television networks. I hope it gave the American people some relief and sense that our chances of going back to school, back to college, back to childcare, back to work, and out to eat are increasingly good. It is very simple: Wear the mask, wash your hands, stay apart, and keep this unprecedented sprint toward vaccines, treatments, and diagnostic tests going. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I come to the floor to talk about COVID in two ways. The Senator from Tennessee, who is presiding today, will appreciate this. She and I have a regular call with Governor Lee, our Governor, and we just finished part of it. Her staff was on part of that. He gave some very interesting information that I think would be important to all Senators and to our country, and that is the significant learning loss that occurs when children aren't in school. In Tennessee, Governor Lee and some national researchers have completed a study of the learning loss in the third grade for reading and math proficiency for children who were not in school from March through the summer. Now, you always have a learning loss in the summer, but for March through summer, this is what they found. Preliminary data shows an estimated 50-percent decrease in proficiency rates in third grade reading and a projected 65-percent decrease in proficiency in math. That, in the Governor's words, is a dramatic decrease. It shows that the vast majority of students learn in person, the Governor said, with their teacher, and he is working to get a safe environment so that they can get back to school. The good news on that is, according to the Governor, 1,800 schools in Tennessee are open, in person, and only 7 of those schools have any sort of closure incident today--in other words, one class or one school closed because of COVID. So, this problem we are just discussing, hopefully, will not be as pronounced this semester in Tennessee because, except in Memphis and except in Nashville, almost all of our schools are open in person to some degree. The Governor went on to say that the March through the summer school closings produced a learning deficiency that is expected to be 2.5 times that of a normal summer rate. He also said the learning loss impacts early grades greater than later grades, placing those students further behind in the learning trajectory. Students with lower proficiency rates are also disproportionately impacted by learning loss. In other words, students who are already behind fell behind even further as a result of leaving school in March. Then it shows that the research from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which worked with the Governor on these, shows that each additional year of schooling increases life income by an average of 7.5 to 10 percent. And with the loss of one-third of a year in effective learning--which is what we just heard about for just the students affected by the closures--that organization estimates it would lower a country's gross domestic product by an average of 1.5 percent for the remainder of the century. I don't know whether those numbers are exactly accurate, but the message is clear. Children, especially young children and especially young children who are further behind already, need to be in school so that they can be taught in person or their learning loss is dramatic. I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record the press release that Governor Lee of Tennessee released detailing this dramatic learning loss

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, congratulations to my friend, Bill Brock, who is celebrating his 90th birthday. When I think of Bill, I think of a Tennessean who has served our State and our country honorably for over a half century. Bill grew up in Chattanooga and started his lifetime of service in the U.S. Navy. He was then first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1962. Bill served for three terms before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 1971, replacing Democrat Senator Albert Gore. After his distinguished tenure in the Senate, Bill went on the serve as U.S. Trade Representative and U.S. Secretary of Labor. Bill was a force in the Republican Party, both nationally, serving as chairman of the Republican National Committee, and in the State of Tennessee. In fact, he was a pioneer in the transformation of our Tennessee Republican Party; turning Tennessee from a Democratic stronghold to a two-party State simply would not have happened without Bill. He laid the foundation for a long lineage of Tennesseans that include Howard Baker, Jr., Winfield Dunn, Fred Thompson, Bill Frist, Bill Haslam, Bill Lee, and others who have served our State proudly and left legacies of exceptional service to those who elected them. It has been a pleasure to know Bill over the years; he has been a champion of the principles that united us as Americans and has a strong record of working with others to get results. I wish my friend the best on the celebration of his 90th birthday and hope that his legacy serves as an example to future Tennesseans seeking to represent our State in public office.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I am here this morning to talk about a hearing that we had in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee this morning that affects 20 million families who have to fill this out every year. This is called the FAFSA. Usually, there is an adjective ahead of it. It is called the ``dreaded'' FAFSA. There are 400,000 Tennessee families who fill it out every year. If you want to go to college and you need a Pell grant or a student loan, you have to fill this out--108 questions. And then after you fill it out, the way it has been working and still works today, you have to send in the information on 22 of the questions to two different agencies: one to the IRS and one to the Education Department. And then they go through an elaborate process to check to see whether you have made any mistake. So let's say you are a homeless student or a student in foster care or you are not able to identify your parents or you are living with your grandparents or any of those people have an aversion to filling out 108-question Federal forms or giving their information to the government twice, then you don't go to college. That is what happens. In Tennessee, we have had a Governor named Bill Haslam in the legislature that said everybody in Tennessee without a degree, that you can have 2 more years of college free, but first you have to fill out this Federal form. They say this is the single biggest impediment to having the opportunity to have those 2 free years of higher education in our State. So you would think somebody would do something about that, right? Well, somebody has or at least has been trying to. Here is what it could be. This is 33 questions. Almost everybody agrees that this is better than this--the State counselors, the Governors, the teachers, the students, the families. You could fill it out more easily. It keeps many fewer students from walking away from the opportunity to go to college. So you would ask: Why don't you pass it? Well, Mr. President, that is exactly what Senator Michael Bennet, the Democratic Senator from Colorado, and I said 7 years ago in a hearing before the Senate Education Committee when we had four witnesses and we talked about this. And I said at the end: There seems to be a lot of agreement about this. Why don't the four of you experts--and these are people who work in financial aid who try to help students and who try to help minority students. I mean, this is the kind of stuff we are talking about all over America today. What do we do about racial justice? What do we do to help low-income students? How do we help people who are especially hurt by a pandemic? Well, 7 years ago, I said: Would you be willing to write us a letter, each of you, and tell us exactly what to do to eliminate the complexity of this FAFSA? What they said was that most of these questions are unnecessary and that the Federal Government doesn't need to know the answer to these questions to decide whether you are eligible for a Pell grant or eligible for a student loan. That is what they all said. So the four witnesses who had testified looked at each other and said: We don't need to write you separate letters. We will write you one letter because we all agree on what to do. So they did. Senator Bennet and I introduced legislation called the FAST Act that would reduce this to the size of a postcard. It only had two questions on it. Well, that was too simplified. What we found out, for example, was that the State of Indiana and the State of Tennessee have their student aid, and they rely on some of this information to decide what aid to give in addition to the Federal aid. So we took the questions off this, and then they would have to ask the questions, so we really hadn't solved any problems. So we kept working. Senator Murray, the Democratic leader of our committee, and I worked together on this during these 7 years, and we began to make some progress. The progress we made first was with the Obama administration, and they agreed to what sounded like a simple change. They just administratively allowed you to use your previous year's tax returns rather than your current year's tax returns to fill out the 22 tax questions on this form. You can imagine how hard it would be to use this year's tax returns, so that was a big help. Then the Trump administration put this 108-questionnaire on an app so you can use your iPhone to fill it out. Now, that would be pretty hard for me, but I have seen a lot of the youngsters in Tennessee in the Sevier County High School, for example, who went right to work. They did a pretty quick job of doing this. That helped a lot. Then, Senator Murray and I, Senator Jones from Alabama and Senator Scott from South Carolina--last year we introduced a bill called the FUTURE Act, and the FUTURE Act did two things. It said that for 22 of the questions here, the ones that you have to give to the government twice--you give it to the Education Department and you give it to the IRS, and then they check to see if you made a mistake, and if they do, they slow down your aid. We said: Let's simplify that. Let's just say all you have to do is check a box, and the IRS will answer those 22 questions for you. That is a law now, and it will take a couple of years to implement because, again, we are talking about 20 million families a year. So we saved them that trouble. Now, guess what else we saved. We saved enough money to permanently fund historically Black colleges. How about that? Filling out all this form didn't save the government money; it cost the government money. So we were able, in one act, to save 20 million families--many of them minority families and most of them low income--the trouble of filling out those 22 questions and permanently fund Black colleges. So now we have legislation, Senator Jones and I and others--and there are many Senators who have been involved in this, in addition to Senator Murray. Senator Booker has had an interest, and Senator Collins, Senator King, Senator Burr. Again, I mentioned Senator Bennet earlier. You can see Republicans and Democrats all see the wisdom of this, as well as every witness we have ever had who comes before us. So we have a new bill that says: Let's get rid of 53 questions and turn this into this. That is what the hearing was about today. Now, why wouldn't we do that? Almost everyone says we should. Should we deliberately require 20 million families to answer 53 unnecessary questions that discourage many low-income students from going to college? Should we insist on that? I don't think so. According to the Congressional Budget Office, this would probably mean that about 400,000 more students would apply for Pell grants. That is what the Pell grant is for. It is to encourage low-income students who want a ticket to the head of the line, a ticket called higher education, a ticket that the college board said increases your earnings by $1 million over your lifetime if you get a 4-year degree, and this is our effort to help low-income students get that ticket to a better life and a better education and more money. So why wouldn't we do it and why wouldn't we do it during this pandemic? This has to be the strangest year of college in a century--at least a century. Students are stressed out, families are stressed out, and then we are going to add to the stress by saying: And in addition, your friendly Federal Government, in order for you to get a Pell grant, is going to insist that you answer 53 questions that everybody says are unnecessary for the government to determine whether you are eligible for the loan or for the grant. And then there is one final reason we should do it. The act that Senator Murray and Senator Jones and Senator Scott and I introduced and became law last year with President Trump's signature, the one that saved enough money to permanently fund historically Black colleges, that is going to take a couple of years to implement. So if we go ahead and pass the law that turns this into this before the end of this year, we can do both of them at the same time. I think the American people would feel pretty good about the U.S. Congress that, in the midst of a pandemic, finished its work on such an important piece of legislation. Our hearing today was well attended. We had four of the same witnesses who came 7 years ago and said: There is no need to ask all these questions. Nobody needs them. Nobody needs the answers. All it does is turn away from college students whom we want to encourage to go. Now, think about that. That is a deliberate act by the Federal Government not to change that. It doesn't save any money. It doesn't eliminate any fraud. All it does is turn away from college the people whom we want to encourage to have a chance to go. I am hopeful that the hearing today and our repeated efforts will help us create approval of this before the end of the year. Since nobody tells me they are against it, you would think we would do it. Sometimes people say: Well, we need to agree on everything before we pass anything. Sometimes that is true. But when something is this important, when it affects this many families, and when it comes at a time when families are under stress anyway, let's turn a 108-question FAFSA into a 33-question FAFSA. Let's allow that to be implemented by the Federal Government at the same time last year's law is implemented, and let's make it simpler and easier for deserving Americans to go to college. There are lots of other things we need to do about higher education. We need more accountability. We need to deal with student loans. There are many things we need to do. We have had a lot of discussions about those. We are not going to get agreement on that this year, but just as we were able to do for the historically Black colleges last year and the first step of the FAFSA, I think it would be wise to finish the job. I was very pleased with our hearing. I am grateful to Senator Murray for her kind comments this morning that she made and for her friendship and her willingness to work with me on this, and I would hope that, for the benefit of those 20 million families, we would have some success. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to use, during my remarks, two exhibits of the Federal aid application form.

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, this morning in the Education Committee, we had a really interesting discussion on intercollegiate athletics--specifically on the proposals that are appearing in various States to pay student athletes for their name, image, and likeness. This is the jurisdiction of the Commerce Committee, and Senator Wicker and his committee are considering whether there should be any congressional action, but we were looking at the impact of the proposal to pay student athletes on the tradition of the intercollegiate student athlete in our country, and here is my own view. If student athletes are paid by commercial interests for their name, image, and likeness, that money ought to go to benefit all of the student athletes at that institution. In other words, if the quarterback at the University of Tennessee is paid $500,000 by the local auto dealer to advertise the auto dealer, that money ought not go to him; it ought to go for the benefit of all the student athletes at the University of Tennessee, including the women's sports, the men's sports, the minor sports, the major sports. Student athletes shouldn't be on the payroll and be treated as hired hands, in my opinion. I don't see a good ending to allowing a few student athletes to be paid by commercial interests while most of their teammates are not. If young athletes want to be part of a team, enjoy the undergraduate experience, learn from coaches who are among the best teachers in the country, and be paid a full scholarship that helps them earn a degree worth $1 million during their lifetime--that is according to the college boards estimates--those earnings of that student should benefit all student athletes at the institution. If a student athlete prefers to keep the money, then that student athlete should become a professional athlete. We had a bipartisan discussion this morning. I want to thank Senator Murray, the Senator from Washington State, who is the ranking Democrat on our committee. Our committee always has diverse views, but we always have good, civil discussions. We had excellent witnesses from the University of Wisconsin and from Utah State University. We had a representative of the players association as well, and we had a track and field coach from Ohio State University who has been Coach of the Year in the Big 10 for 4 years, and they all had a point of view on this question. The question is whether the tradition of an intercollegiate student athlete is worth preserving, and if so, how do you do it? Specifically, what would the impact be on that tradition if States pass laws allowing commercial interests to pay student athletes for the use of their name, image, or likeness? Now, I have had two experiences that help me form my own opinion on this. Here is the first one. In 1960, during my sophomore year in college, I was exercising at Vanderbilt University on the university's cinder track, and a man watching me had in his right hand a big stopwatch. He introduced himself as Track Coach Herc Alley, and he asked my name. ``Did you run track in high school?'' he asked me. ``No,'' I said, ``we didn't have track in high school.'' ``Why don't you run 100 yards for me,'' he said. So I did. He examined his stopwatch and said: ``10.1 seconds. That is very good. I have three really fast boys on my 440-yard relay team. Why don't you come be the fourth one?'' So I joined the Vanderbilt track team running the mile relay, the 440-yard relay, and the 440-yard dash. My job was to carry the baton from the first fast boy to the third fast boy. The next year, our team set a school record in the 440-yard relay. That record will never be broken for one reason--because they now measure the race in meters. So they don't run the 440-yard relay anymore. We sometimes practiced with some really speedy athletes. They were students from what we called then Tennessee A&I across town. This is before desegregation. These were Olympians. They included Ralph Boston, Wilma Rudolph, and Wyomia Tyus. Coach Alley, our coach, had no scholarships to offer. His teams rode buses to meets. Our cinder track made it hard to establish fast times. Scraping together teams of nonscholarship athletes, he produced several Southeastern Conference track champions. Coach Alley's enthusiasm that day gave me an experience that millions of young Americans have had--that of being an intercollegiate student athlete. Some of those athletes were good enough to win scholarships. Senator Richard Burr is one. He is on our committee and was at the hearing this morning. He had a football scholarship at Wake Forest University. My experience at Vanderbilt taught me a number of lessons, including this one: When running on a relay team, be sure to choose two teammates who can run faster than you can. That is not a bad recipe for being an effective U.S. Senator either. Now, as the college football season gets underway, even amidst COVID- 19, we are reminded of how important these games are to student athletes, to their institutions, and to millions of spectators. The fascination with sporting competition is nothing new, according to the Knight Commission, which said in its 1991 report the following: The appeal of competitive games is boundless. In ancient times, men at war laid down their weapons to compete in the Olympic games. Today, people around the globe put aside their daily cares to follow the fortunes of their teams in the World Cup. In the United States, the Super Bowl, the World Series, college football and the NCAA basketball tournament command the attention of millions. Sports have helped break down bigotry and prejudice in American life. On the international scene, they have helped integrate East and West, socialist and capitalist. The passion for sport is universally shared across time and continents. So said the Knight Commission 30 years ago. But concerns with problems in sports are also nothing new. The Knight Commission was established in 1989 to address scandals in college sports that were ``shaking public confidence,'' not just of big-time collegiate athletics but the whole institution of higher education. Well before that, in 1929, the Carnegie Foundation put out a report that said recruiting had become corrupt, professionals had replaced amateurs, education was being neglected, and commercialism reigned. Before that, in 1906, partially in response to President Teddy Roosevelt's criticism, the NCAA had been formed to protect the safety of players and deal with corruption. My second experience forming my opinion on today's hearing was my participation and membership in that Knight Commission at the time I was president of the University of Tennessee. Our commission recommendation was that university presidents take charge of college athletics and the huge amount of television money it attracted and restore the academic and financial integrity of the program. As a result, over the next several years, academic standards became more stringent, financial support for student athletes increased, and college presidents asserted more responsibility for financial integrity. What is especially relevant to today's hearing was that despite today's problems surrounding intercollegiate athletics and the problems then, the Knight Commission strongly endorsed keeping the student athlete tradition. What it said is worth repeating also: We reject the argument [the Knight Commission said] that the only realistic solution to the problem is to drop the student athlete concept, put athletes on the payroll, and reduce or even eliminate their responsibilities as students. Such a scheme has nothing to do with education, [said the Knight Commission] the purpose for which colleges and universities exist. Scholarship athletes are already paid in the most meaningful way possible: with a free education. The idea of intercollegiate athletics is that teams represent their institutions as true members of the student body, not as hired hands. Surely American higher education has the ability to devise a better solution to the problems of intercollegiate athletics than making professionals out of the players, which is no solution at all but rather an unacceptable surrender to despair. Well, I hope those words from the Knight Commission 30 years ago will guide how Congress deals with the newest issue threatening the concept of student athletes, and that is allowing commercial interests to pay athletes for use of their name, likeness, and image. Already four States have enacted laws sanctioning such payments in various forms. More than 30 other States are considering legislation. Senator Wicker, as I mentioned, chairman of the Commerce Committee, is considering whether there ought to be congressional action. Our purpose was to look at the impact on the student athlete. Who are the student athletes today? Well, it wouldn't make much sense to talk about this if we didn't say who and what we are talking about, so here it is. There are 20 million undergraduates in about 6,000 colleges and universities that exist in the United States today. Nearly 1,100 of those 6,000 colleges and universities belong to the NCAA. More than 460,000 young men and women participate in 24 different sports each year in about one-quarter of 1 million contests. About 300 of those institutions play football and basketball at the highest level. Fewer than 2 percent of athletes, student athletes, go on to play professional sports, according to the NCAA. This means we are talking about approximately 9,000 college student athletes who compete in a few sports out of the more than 460,000 college athletes across 24 sports. So the current controversy is about an even smaller percentage of those 9,000 students who play football, baseball, or men or women's basketball and whose skills--or the institutions for which they play-- make them attractive targets for recruiting offers that will combine their scholarship dollars with endorsement money. For example, an exceptional quarterback, pitcher, or running back might be offered a $500,000-a-year endorsement by a car dealer in the same town as a college with a big-time football, basketball, or even baseball program. As the Knight Commission report said, student athletes are already paid in the most meaningful way, with a free education. Athletic scholarships are limited to tuition and fees, room and board, and required course-related books, but this can add up to a lot of money. It is $115,000 a year, estimates the University of Tennessee, per student athlete, including room, board, student stipends, academic support, meals, sports medicine, training, travel, and expenses. Student athletes may also combine other sources of financial aid, including Federal or State need-based aid, to help pay for the full cost of attendance. These include Pell grants, for example, which could be $6,300 a year, supplemental education community grants, work-study, State grants based on need using Federal calculations, such as the Tennessee HOPE Scholarship or the GI bill. About 92,000--or 20 percent--of the student athletes receive Pell grants also. According to the College Board, the value of a 4-year undergraduate degree is $1 million over a lifetime, and according to the NCAA, 88 percent of Division I student athletes will earn a 4-year degree So the question at hand is, Should Congress act, or should varying State laws govern payments for name, image, and likeness to student athletes? Is a patchwork set of regulations worth the confusion it will cause with unrestrained boosters, creative agents, the impact on title IX on men's and women's programs, on a coach's effort, and most of all on the tradition of the student athlete? That is the Commerce Committee's job. We heard some interesting testimony this morning. Based on my experience as a student athlete, as a member of the Knight Commission, and as a university president, I offered these suggestions: The Knight Commission is correct to say that student athletes shouldn't be on the payroll. They shouldn't be treated as hired hands. Two, Congress should act but in a limited way--as limited as possible--to authorize an independent entity, safe from litigation, to write rules governing payments for the use of name, image, and likeness. Congress should provide aggressive oversight of that entity rather than try to write the rules ourselves. Three, that governing entity ought to be the NCAA. I know, I know-- the NCAA is controversial, but if it is not doing its job, the presidents who are supposed to be in charge of it should reform it. Giving the job to a new entity would take forever. Giving it to an existing entity like the Federal Trade Commission, without expertise and without any responsibility for higher education, would make no sense. Now, as to the rules that I would hope the NCAA would write, here is what I believe should be the overriding principle: Money paid to student athletes for their name, image, and likeness should benefit all student athletes in that institution. Following this principle would allow the earnings to be used for additional academic support, further study or degrees, more insurance options, and more support for injured players and other needs. It would avoid the awkwardness of a center who earns nothing snapping the ball to a quarterback who earns $500,000 from the local auto dealer. It avoids the inevitable abuses that would occur with agents and boosters becoming involved with outstanding high school athletes. It would avoid the unexpected consequences to other teams in an institution because of the impact on title IX or the impact on existing student aid available to athletes. Such a principle would preserve the right of any athlete to earn money for the use of his or her image, name, or likeness. It simply says: If you elect to be a student athlete, your earnings should benefit all student athletes at your institution. If you want to keep the money and be someone's employee, go become a professional. This system would create the same kinds of choices that today's NCAA rules for college baseball require. A high school student must stay 3 years if he chooses to participate in a college baseball program. Take Vanderbilt's baseball program. David Price, Sonny Gray, and Dansby Swanson--Major League fans know they are all very successful professional athletes--all were drafted by Major League baseball teams while they were in high school. They could have earned a lot of money going directly into professional baseball. Instead, they chose a Vanderbilt education, 3 years of college experience, and the opportunity to be taught by Coach Tim Corbin, a great teacher. If Price, Gray, and Swanson had been permitted to sell their name, image, and likeness while at Vanderbilt, under the principle I am suggesting, their earnings would have been used for the benefit of all of Vanderbilt's sports teams, men and women. Applying such a principle to all intercollegiate athletics might cause a few talented athletes to join professional leagues immediately after high school. That is their right. But if that young athlete prefers the college experience, the expert coaching and teaching, the free education, the other academic support, and the undergraduate degree that can earn $1 million over a lifetime, then their earnings ought to benefit all the student athletes at the institution. While the NCAA is making new rules, I suggest it ought to assign most of the new television revenue that comes to institutions--let it go to institutions and be used for academic support for student athletes rather than continue to encourage inordinately high salaries for some coaches. As I said at the beginning, I don't see a good ending to allowing a few student athletes to be paid by commercial interests while most of their teammates are not. If they want to be part of the team, enjoy the undergraduate experience, learn from coaches who are great teachers, and be paid a full scholarship that could help them earn $1 million during their lifetimes, their earnings should benefit all the student athletes. If they prefer to keep the money for themselves, let them become professionals. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that, notwithstanding the provisions of rule XXII, the postcloture time with respect to the Robinson nomination expire at 11:30 a.m. tomorrow and that following the disposition of the Robinson nomination, the Senate vote on the motions to invoke cloture on the Dugan and McGlynn nominations in that order; further, that if cloture is invoked on the Dugan and McGlynn nominations, the postcloture time expire at 3:30 p.m. tomorrow and the Senate vote on confirmation of the nominations in that order; finally, that if any of the nominations are confirmed, the motions to reconsider be made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, this morning, our Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee had a hearing, and one of the members came up to me on the floor and said: That was the most civil hearing I have attended in the Senate in a while. The truth is that most of our hearings in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee are civil. We have Senators of widely different points of view. I thank Senator Murray, the Senator from Washington State, who is the ranking member of our committee and a member of the Democratic leadership, for the way that she and the Democratic members of the committee worked with the Republican members so that we can have the Surgeon General of the United States, Dr. Adams, and Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health, who is one of our country's most esteemed scientists and the man who headed the human genome project, there for 3 hours and we can ask questions. Virtually every Senator participated, and we got some good answers. I would like to report to the other members of the Senate about that hearing. I began it by saying: I have been rereading the book ``Guns, Germs, and Steel,'' a book by Jared Diamond, written in 1997, which is as relevant today--maybe more relevant today--than it was when he wrote it. Mr. Diamond, who won the Pulitzer Prize and is a professor of geography in California, said: There is nothing new about mass epidemics that causes deaths and social upheaval that we are witnessing today, and there is nothing new about where most of those epidemics in history have come from. Diseases that caused those deaths for the last 10,000 years, he says, have come mostly from animals that transmit them to humans, and during most of history, there were three ways to deal with these epidemics. One was to isolate the infected, as in, for example, leper colonies to deal with leprosy. One was, according to Mr. Diamond, that over thousands of years, there have been genetic changes in the human population in response to the infectious diseases that have gone through those populations, and they have produced a resistance to the infectious diseases, as in the case of smallpox. Of course, that didn't do much to help the Native Americans in this country when European settlers, who had some resistance to smallpox, arrived here and gave blankets to the Native Americans that were infected with smallpox or contained smallpox and wiped out 90 percent of the tribes who received them because they didn't have that resistance. There is a third way of dealing with epidemics. Throughout most of history, the most common way was to let the epidemic run through the population until everyone had been either killed or recovered and developed some resistance to the disease. Diamond says that the Black Death killed about one-third of Europe's population between 1347 and 1351 as it ran through the population killing people. Now, what is new about dealing with epidemics is modern medicine. Modern medicine has given us ways to diagnose these diseases and to create treatments to make it easier to recover from these diseases, but the true miracle of modern medicine is the vaccine--a vaccine that can prevent humans from acquiring the disease at all. The Senator from Tennessee and I have actually worked together on that issue 2 or 3 years ago to encourage people, and, in her words, talk to your doctor if you have a concern about a vaccine. That is what we want to talk about today. Today, in all 50 States and the District of Columbia, school children are required to take vaccinations for a series of diseases--diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, measles, rubella, and chicken pox--before entering school. That vaccination will protect the child from getting the disease, which in turn prevents the child from infecting someone else--a pattern that eventually causes these diseases to disappear. Americans of my generation remember how polio terrified our parents in the early 1940s and into the 1950s. Many saw their children die of polio. When I was very young, I can remember classmates who were strapped into iron lungs so they could breathe and were destined to stay there for the rest of their lives. The lucky ones were like Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who was left only with a limp after having polio in the 1940s. The disease terrified Americans until Dr. Jonas Salk discovered the polio vaccine in 1955. After the vaccine was developed, the United States undertook a large-scale vaccination campaign, and polio was declared eradicated from the United States by 1979. The purpose of the hearing we had this morning was to explore the remarkable progression that science is making toward a COVID-19 vaccine and to remind parents to have their children get their childhood vaccinations and to encourage as many Americans as possible to take the flu vaccine this fall. First, the progress toward the COVID-19 vaccination--Dr. Collins, the Director of the National Institutes of Health, talked about that. He talked about the vaccine research and development, including Operation Warp Speed, which is working to develop, manufacture, and distribute safe and effective vaccines as rapidly as possible. He told us there are six vaccines currently under development. He reminded us that the Federal Government, using taxpayers' money, has helped accelerate this by providing money to manufacture these vaccines before they are deemed safe and effective and that he does not necessarily expect all of the vaccines to work. And if they don't work or if they are not safe, they will be thrown in the dumpster. They will not be distributed to anyone to use. He pointed out that AstraZeneca announced today that 1 person in its clinical trial--which probably has 30,000 people in the UK--had developed an illness and they had paused the trial. In other words, they stopped giving shots to the volunteers in the clinical trial until they could see whether the illness is related to the vaccine. Some people believe that Operation Warp Speed means cutting corners, but it does not. It refers to the extraordinary investment in research, development, and manufacturing scale-up for the COVID-19 vaccine. Perhaps most significantly, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority--we call it BARDA--has taken the unprecedented step, as I mentioned earlier, to speed up manufacturing for hundreds of millions of doses early in the process by buying those doses in advance so they can be ready to distribute as soon as the vaccines are approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Several of our Senators on both sides of the aisle asked Dr. Collins and Dr. Adams, the Surgeon General, whether they intended to let politics play a role in the decision about whether a vaccine is safe and effective and ready for distribution. They answered absolutely no, that they would be no part of such a decision. The same has been said by Dr. Stephen Hahn, who is the Commissioner of the FDA charged with making that judgement. ``This is going to be a science, medicine, data decision,'' he said. It ``is not going to be a political decision.'' That means if it is not safe, it will not be distributed. At the same time, the Centers for Disease Control is working on a plan to distribute the vaccine as soon as they are authorized or approved, prioritizing vaccines for healthcare workers and vulnerable populations. The CDC says its plan will be a fair system informed by nonpartisan health experts from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and others. Some have suggested--of course, this is a political season; we have an election in 2 months--that the reason we are rushing, as a government, to create the vaccine is so it will help President Trump before the election in November, or that the reason the Centers for Disease Control said to the States: Get ready now to distribute the vaccine when it is effective and safe--that that is a political move. Of course, I said that if Dr. Collins and Dr. Adams had come in and said it would be 5 years before we had a vaccine, we would probably ask the President to fire them, because people are dying, and we need vaccines. We don't want the alternative, which is to run the disease through millions of Americans until everybody either dies or is infected and recovers, and we don't want to have happen again what happened before with the H1N1 virus, where the vaccine was ready, but the States weren't ready to distribute it. So we were pleased to see what the response was Americans are saying that they might not take the vaccine. The first question people ask is, Are they safe? They are safe because they are reviewed by the FDA, which is the gold standard for safety. Vaccines are routinely given to children. They are specifically recommended by an advisory commission that looks at it carefully, consisting of doctors and physicians and scientists. In a 2015 article for the Scientific American, a distinguished scientist wrote: By age two, most children will receive almost 30 shots designed to boost a child's natural defenses against disease. Yet at the same time, parents who take their children for those recommended vaccinations might be inundated with Web site and celebrity-espoused rumors making false claims that shots are not necessary or cause autism. This distinguished scientist wrote: At best, navigating this landscape can be confusing. But when weighing the risks of encountering life-threatening disease against the benefits of receiving a vaccine there's no contest. The vast majority of children do not experience anything worse than short-lived redness or itching at the spot of the injection. I asked Dr. Collins this question, which I think is confusing to some people: When you take the COVID vaccine, you don't get COVID? There was a time in the old days when to get a smallpox vaccine, you, in fact, got a little smallpox. But that is not what happens. As Dr. Collins explained it, he said the vaccine creates a sort of machine within your body and your immune system to fight the COVID. It doesn't infect you with the disease. Then there is the question about whether the vaccines are effective. I talked about how polio is now eradicated. The number of polio cases since the vaccines has fallen rapidly to less than 100 in the 1960s and less than 10 in the 1970s thanks to the successful vaccination program. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the United States has been polio-free since 1979. Diphtheria was a terrifying prospect for parents in the 1920s, but according to the scientific agencies and the government, there are only a few of those a year. Then there is the concern about whether the doctor's office is safe. I have heard that from people, but the studies have shown that the pediatricians--and we heard that testimony today--have made great efforts to try to make their offices the safest places that a parent can go with their child in order to get a vaccination. Finally, I started my comments this morning with comments from Jared Diamond, and I concluded with a warning he wrote for the Wall Street Journal. He said in effect that the main thing that is different about this disease, COVID-19, is not that it is more infectious; the main thing that is different is the jet plane--the plane that can carry people all over the world, all over our country, spreading whatever the infection is. He said that as a result of that, the next pandemic could be next year. That is why I have introduced in the Senate legislation that would help prepare for the next pandemic. It has support on all sides. Senator Frist from Tennessee, the former majority leader; Senator Daschle, the former majority leader on the Democratic side; many experts--all say we have a problem in this country going from panic to neglect to panic. While we have taken some important steps, as Senator Burr pointed out today, to create the authority for the government to build manufacturing plants, to manage stockpiles better, to be prepared for pandemics, as soon as the epidemic is over, we move on to something else. So the time to deal with the next pandemic is now. There is specific legislation to make sure that we sustain funding for onshore manufacturing so we are not relying on China, India, and other countries to make our vaccines for the next pandemic. There is money to make sure that the stockpiles are filled with protective equipment so we don't have the kinds of delays that some people experienced in this pandemic. Former Governor Mike Leavitt said to our committee that we have underfunded public health for the last 30 to 40 years, and when we underfund public health and the next pandemic comes, we are not as ready for it as we should be. Fortunately, thanks to an unprecedented effort by scientists around the world, preparation by Republican and Democratic administrations over the last 20 years and several Congresses, we have done a lot to be well prepared for this pandemic, and we are moving more rapidly than we ever have to create new diagnostic tests, new treatments, and new vaccines. Some of the challenges that remain are how to distribute them, to whom they should go first, and how to persuade Americans they are safe to take. But while we are in the midst of dealing with all of this, it would be wise to remember that any legislation that we pass in Congress this year dealing with this pandemic should also take steps to make sure that our stockpiles are filled, that our manufacturing plants can stay functioning, and that public health State by State is well funded, because, as Jared Diamond said, the reason to do that now, while our eye is on the ball, is because the next pandemic could be next year. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

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

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, this morning, I had the privilege of attending the President's signing of the Great American Outdoors Act. Now, this is a town, Washington, DC, that is accustomed to hyperbole--that is exaggeration--and excessive partisanship. Yet, today, we had neither. As the Secretary of the Interior said, the bill the President signed is, clearly, the most important conservation and outdoor recreation legislation that has passed in this Congress and become law in at least a half century. It may only be exceeded by the actual funding of the National Park System itself as it was gradually created, over time, to become an agency with 419 properties. This legislation does two things. One, it tackles the deferred maintenance backlogs in the Park System. By that I mean, look at our campground in the Great Smokies, which normally has 5,000 families camping there, but it has been closed for a number of years because the sewage system doesn't work. There are examples all across this country, from the Pearl Harbor Visitor Center to the National Mall, of worn-out trails, of roads with holes in them, of roofs that leak, and of sewage systems that don't work. As a result, campgrounds are closed because bathrooms don't operate. All of these are our national parks and our public lands, which is where we want to go and where we especially want to go right now because what all of us want is to get out. We want to get outdoors. We want some fresh, clean air that we can breathe. The head of Bass Pro Shops was telling me at the White House this morning that, at first, COVID really hurt Bass Pro Shops and that they had to close a lot of stores. Guess what is happening now. The purchasing of fishing licenses is going up at a record level. People are taking their sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters fishing and hunting--outdoors and to the parks. This is something that everyone who cares about the outdoors has been worried about since the last generation--that young people were not going out to the parks. They are going today because they want to get outside. So today was a wonderful day, and everyone agreed that this was the most important bill for conservation and the outdoors in at least a half century. The Republicans agree with that. The Democrats agree with that. Hundreds of conservation groups agree with that. The President of the United States also agrees with that. It is no exaggeration to say that something remarkable and historic happened today when the President signed the Great American Outdoors Act. It is also accurate to say it was wholly bipartisan because it never would have passed if it had not been, and it barely passed even though it was. It took a Herculean effort. So I come to the floor briefly today to talk about some of those persons who made a difference in this historic event. There were many marchers in this parade. There always are when something passes in the U.S. Senate. One Senator never really does anything. It takes a parade of Senators--almost always of both parties--and it takes the House of Representatives. It also takes the President of the United States. Because Presidents don't always get the credit they deserve, I want to say that there were many marchers in this parade--there were Democrats and Republicans, and there were hundreds of outdoors groups-- but this historic conservation legislation would not have happened had it not been for President Trump. Here is why. He is the first President of the United States to allow and support the use of money derived from energy exploration on Federal lands for deferred maintenance in our national parks, and if the President and the Office of Management and Budget don't support that, it is not going to happen, which is one reason this bill hasn't happened even though people have been trying to do it for years. I mentioned the history of this and the deferred maintenance. As the Secretary of the Interior pointed out, it was in the Eisenhower years when we had the last big investment in our National Park System. I know for a fact that the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which was the other important part of this legislation--$900 million a year permanently for the Land and Water Conservation Fund--was a recommendation of the Rockefeller Commission in the Lyndon Johnson administration, which Congress enacted in 1964. I spent some time on that myself when I was Chairman of the President's Commission on Americans Outdoors in 1985 and 1986. It was our No. 1 recommendation that Congress should do what had been recommended in 1964, and now we are in 2020. So good people have been working since 1964 to make the Land and Water Conservation Fund permanent, and it was signed into law today. Good people have been working since the Eisenhower years to deal with the deferred maintenance backlog--the potholes, the roofs, the sewage systems, the visitor centers, and the malls--in our national parks. That bill was signed today. It is historic. If the President had not allowed the money to be used in that way and had not supported it strongly in the Republican caucus, where we had some trouble getting enough votes until we got plenty of votes, it wouldn't have happened. He did one other thing which people don't know about. Our bipartisan group of Senators asked me if I would ask him, when he visited Tennessee in early March, if he would add to the bill or if he would support adding to the bill the national forests and the national wildlife refuges in the Bureau of Land Management and the Indian schools, which are in disrepair, so that the deferred maintenance of all of those would be added to this. He said: Yes, let's do it. I called that information back to the bipartisan group of managers, and the group was excited. It was added to the bill, and that became law today as well. Take the Cherokee National Forest, which is adjacent to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We hear more about the Smokies, for 10 million, 11 million, 12 million people go there every year. It has a $224 million maintenance backlog. This will cut that in half over 5 years. The Cherokee National Forest is right next to the Smokies and has 3 million visitors a year, which is more than most national parks. It has a $27 million backlog, and this will cut that in half. The Indian schools will get hundreds of millions of dollars in order to build them back up, and they are in bad shape. So the President deserves credit for that. There were many important marchers in that parade, but it would not have happened without President Trump. Let me just mention some of the other marchers, and let's talk about the ones in the U.S. Senate. I will not go on at great length about them, but I do want to acknowledge them Let's start with Senator Warner, of Virginia, and Senator Portman, of Ohio. They, in working with the National Parks Conservation Association and others, introduced the bill to reduce the maintenance backlog in the parks. Secretary Zinke came to Tennessee 3 years ago and asked me to do a similar thing, and I worked with Senator King of Maine. We introduced a bill. Then we put those bills together. So Senator Warner, Senator King, and Senator Portman deserve a lot of credit for the work they have done on that part of the bill. Then we have the Land and Water Conservation Fund. I mentioned how long that work had been going on. Senator Burr of North Carolina has been an advocate of that for many years. Senator Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington State, has been as well. More recently, Senator Manchin, who is the ranking Democrat on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has taken a major leadership role in the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Then there were Senators Gardner and Daines. If there were a parade, you would have to say they were the drum majors. They were out front. They helped to work with the President. They helped to work with this group. So you can see what kind of parade we are talking about. Senator Heinrich of New Mexico--a strong, progressive Democrat, with great respect in his caucus--made sure that we kept the thing on balance and brought a real conservationist zeal to this effort. We take him for granted, but let us give Senator McConnell, the majority leader, some credit. In the middle of COVID, he agreed, at our request, to give us 2 weeks to debate this bill and try to pass it--2 weeks of Senate floor time. If Mitch McConnell had not put the bill on the floor, the bill would never have had a chance to pass. I thank the Democratic leader, as well, for creating an environment within his caucus wherein we could work through the difficult issues that arose. Now, that is just part of the honor roll of U.S. Senators who were involved in all of this, but it is an important honor roll. I should add Senator Collins, of Maine, who, from the beginning, was a strong supporter of both the Land and Water Conservation Fund and of the Restore Our Parks Act. So, when I say ``parade,'' that is what I am talking about. There are many marchers in this parade, and every single one of those U.S. Senators--both Democrats and Republicans--was essential to the passage of this bill. The final group was made up of outside groups. Some people said there were more than 800 conservation and outdoor groups in support of this. That sounds a little bit like hyperbole to me, but I think it might have been true. I mean, this is something that organizations have worked on for decades--literally decades. Some of the people I saw at the White House today were the same people I met in the mid-1980s when I was the Chairman of President Reagan's Commission on Americans Outdoors. Most of the people involved with the Rockefeller Commission are gone now, which was in 1963 and 1964, but people for decades have worked on this. I couldn't begin to mention all of them, but The Nature Conservancy would be one. Pew would be another. Then there is the National Wildlife Federation, the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation, the National Parks Conservation Association, and the National Park Foundation. Sally Jewell, the former Secretary of the Interior in the last administration, helped to organize and lead many of these folks. So you can see, with that sort of breadth and every Interior Secretary from Babbitt to Zinke, we had quite a parade of Americans who wanted to celebrate the great American outdoors. People say that Italy has its art, that England has its history, that Egypt has its pyramids, but that the United States has the great American outdoors. We celebrated that today, and I was proud to be one marcher in that parade. As the President signed the legislation, I was thinking of some gesture I could make to him or gift I could give him that would be appropriate so as to recognize, of all of the marchers in the parade, that he was the most consequential because, if he had not supported it, it wouldn't have happened. So I took with me a walking stick that was as tall as I am--about his size--that was given to me in 1978 when I was walking across Tennessee in my campaign for the Governor of Tennessee. I walked in a red and black shirt--a lot like the mask I wear today. People would give me walking sticks, and this was a walking stick that was carved by a Smoky Mountain craftsman. It is a mountain man walking stick. It is, really, a beautiful stick. I gave it to the President. He looked a little surprised, and then he took it and walked away with it. I said: Mr. President, you may find this will come in handy during the rest of the year. He said: I think it will. So that was a heartfelt gesture to the President. I am glad he liked it. I know the people in the Great Smoky Mountains like this piece of legislation and are grateful for his work on it. I hope he keeps that walking stick as a token of respect for his support and appreciation for what he has done to help this whole parade of Senators on both sides of the aisle create this new law. I yield the floor.