Government Ownership Exit Plan Act of 2009

Mr. President, I would like to report a tremendous historic development in the ability of our country to have clean air, an effective way to deal with climate change, and enough low-cost, reliable electricity to help keep jobs in this country. Yesterday I attended a press conference from a company, Babcock & Wilcox. Also included was the Tennessee Valley Authority. The company and TVA announced that Babcock & Wilcox will soon make an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for permission to start building and selling a small nuclear reactor that can be built in a factory, shipped by railway to a site, and put together like Lego blocks at the site. The nuclear reactor is a 125-megawatt reactor. That compares with the large nuclear plants, of which we have 104 today in the United States. Those plants produce, on average, 1,000 megawatts of electricity. This would be 125. So the real prospect exists that we will be able to have, in this country, nuclear reactors for electricity that might cost as little as one-tenth as much to build, can be built in 3 years instead of 6, and will produce, as I said, 125 megawatts instead of 1,000-- making it easier to integrate them into our electric grid--and can be built in a factory and shipped to a customer.

The reason I am excited about this prospect is it has a real chance of happening. No one has built more small reactors in the world than Babcock & Wilcox, and the Tennessee Valley Authority is the largest public utility in the United States and the only utility in the United States that is currently building a nuclear powerplant.

Republicans and, I am sure, many Democrats, but certainly Republicans in the Senate and the House, unanimously believe our goal as a country ought to be to build 100 new large nuclear powerplants over the next 20 years, while we figure out renewable electricity. The reason we want to do that is we want to deal with climate change. We want clean air, but we want to be able to keep jobs here at the same time. If climate change is the inconvenient problem, nuclear power is the inconvenient solution.

Why is that? Climate change is caused by carbon that comes from coal plants and from a variety of other sources. Forty percent of the carbon that is produced in the United States comes from coal-fired powerplants. But if we are looking for a way to produce electricity in a way that is pollution free and carbon free, 70 percent of all the pollution-free, carbon-free electricity we have today comes from our nuclear plants. Six percent of our clean electricity comes from the Sun, the wind, and the Earth.

One day it may be that we are able to make more of our electricity from the Sun, the wind, and the Earth. But at the moment, not much is available. It is expensive and the Sun is only available when the Sun shines and the wind is only available when the wind blows. If you are wanting to operate your computer, or manufacture an automobile in Illinois or Tennessee, or turn on your light at night, you don't want to have to pray that the wind is blowing or that the Sun is shining. You want reliable, low-cost electricity.

In Tennessee, we are excited about the prospect of, one day, solar energy making a bigger difference in our electrical grid. In fact, two big new plants have moved into our State to make polysilicon, which is the product that goes into the solar cells that go on the top of your house. Each of those plants uses 120 megawatts of electricity. Where will they get that electricity? One reason they are in Tennessee is because the TVA supplies a lot of low-cost, reliable electricity. That comes from coal and nuclear power and a little bit from natural gas in our State. That is pretty much the way it is around the country. Solar power is not yet low-cost, reliable electricity. You can't run the plant making the solar energy products on solar power or wind power today. One day we may, but in the meantime, while we are trying to rebuild the auto industry in Michigan and Illinois and Wisconsin and Tennessee, we want low-cost, reliable electricity. We want our Alcoa plant to stay open in Blount County, in Maryville, where I am from in Tennessee. Why is it closed? The cost of the electricity. What will open it? A 20-year contract on low-cost, reliable electricity. If we say to the Alcoa plant: We will sell you a lot of wind power, they will say: But the wind doesn't blow in our area. If we say: We will sell you solar power, they will say: It is four times as much and we might like to operate a night shift and you can't store it.

But what we will be able to say, in light of this new development we heard about yesterday--we can say to the Alcoa plant, we can say it to Eastman Chemical in Kingsport, we can say it to the two plants making materials for solar cells: We can move in a 125-megawatt nuclear reactor, put it near your site, and supply all the low-cost, reliable electricity you need.

Another use for this new reactor could be to help us clean up our coal plants. We have a clean air problem in Tennessee, as does much of America. I am very much hopeful the Environmental Protection Agency or the Congress or some combination will reinstate the CAIR rule to deal with nitrogen and sulfur and mercury, for our health in this country.

The small reactor might be used as a substitute for coal plants. Some of the coal plants we have in the TVA system and around the country are very old and very dirty. The newest ones are much more efficient and a lot cleaner. It might make sense to take the nuclear reactor, the small one, and put two of them together where an existing coal plant is. There are a lot of possibilities for this. Instead of 100 nuclear plants in 20 years, we may have another option. We may be able to have 400 or 500 small nuclear reactors in 20 years. They may be 125 megawatts here or two together or three together.

My fellow Tennessean, Al Gore, who won the Nobel Prize for his campaign on the dangers of global warming, has a line he often uses about nuclear power. ``Nuclear power may have a role to play,'' Al says, ``but unfortunately, nuclear reactors come only in one size-- extra large.''

Until yesterday, you couldn't disagree with the former Vice President. Ever since President Eisenhower beached a 65-megawatt Navy submarine reactor at Shippingport, PA, in 1967, under the Atoms for Peace Program, we have been building reactors bigger and bigger. Most of the ones on the drawing board today, as I mentioned, are at least 1,200 megawatts. I believe we have 17 applications now for new nuclear powerplants. Also, one is being built right now and that is completing an old plant at Watts Bar.

We have not built a traditional large nuclear power plant from start to finish in the last 30 years in the United States. That is quite an irony. We invented the technology. We have used it successfully since the 1950s and without incident in our nuclear Navy. Twenty percent of our electricity comes from our older plants, the ones we built more than 30 years ago. They produce 20 percent of our electricity today and 70 percent of our clean electricity. But for 30 years we have not been building them.

In the meantime, France--that we don't usually like to emulate--has. France is 80 percent nuclear, and they have among the lowest carbon emissions--that contribute to global warming--in the European Union and among the lowest electric rates in the European Union. They are even selling electricity to Germany, which has invested money in solar energy and windmills and stopped nuclear but has found they do not have enough electricity to keep their jobs.

India and China, with our help, are building nuclear powerplants because they want clean, reliable electricity at a low cost.

We have appropriated money to help do that and sign treaties to help do that. Now even our President said the other day that Iran has a right to build nuclear powerplants. Well, if Iran has a right to do it, why don't we do it? We invented it. We are the ones who want low-cost, clean electricity. Let's go ahead and do it. So it will be 20 years, but it takes a long time to get one of those projects through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. I mentioned there were 17 applications. It takes another 5 or 6 years after you get through the 2- or 3-year process at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build these big plants. So that is a long ways.

If you are a utility and all you really need is 300 new megawatts to meet growing demand, this new, more flexible approach--this smaller reactor--is going to lower costs and open the door to more widespread use of nuclear power. It will help us achieve the goal of building 100 new nuclear powerplants in the next 20 years in order to deal with climate change.

To those who are still skeptical of nuclear power, we must say, if global warming is an inconvenient problem, then nuclear power is the inconvenient solution.

Babcock & Wilcox and TVA have shown us this new approach. They have proposed a reactor that can be built in a factory in 3 years, shipped to the site on rails, and fit together like Lego blocks. That is a very original idea. The larger reactors are still going to be necessary. We are going to need the power. But as B&W and the TVA have reminded us, there is more than one way to skin a cat. What we are seeing here today is what the business schools call a disruptive technology. I hope the public and the press will appreciate how the Tennessee Valley Authority is fulfilling its mission as a public utility by taking such a progressive stance on technology.

America's nuclear technology has been falling behind. Of that, there is no doubt. The French, the Japanese, and the Russians are all selling reactors out in the world, to India and China

and other places. This is going to make them sit up and take notice because the concept we saw yesterday is perfect for developing nations that do not have the infrastructure to handle the larger reactors. It is perfect for small towns and factories all over America that may need only 125 megawatts and cannot afford something larger. It is what is called ``distributed generation''--producing electricity onsite instead of wheeling it from deserts or mountaintops hundreds or thousands of miles away. As the old saying goes, ``Small is beautiful.''

One of the things we are going to have to face as we think about what kind of electricity we want for the future is the landscape of America. You know, landscape is a part of our environment as well, and the landscape becomes a real concern. When we look at the energy sprawl that could be created by some of the renewable energy projects, it takes a lot of space to produce a little bit of electricity.

For example, a big nuclear plant can be located on about 1 square mile. That is one that produces 1,000 megawatts. To get that much electricity from biomass, which means woodchips or dead trees, you would need a forest the size of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park--that is 550,000 acres--and the number of trucks that would be coming in and out to haul the stuff in and back out would be in the hundreds every day. You would be talking about millions of tons of woodchips and dead trees a year. So that is for just one big nuclear plant equivalent of electricity. On the other hand, to create the same amount of electricity from wind turbines that you would get from one nuclear plant, you would have to cover about 270 square miles.

In our part of the world, in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, we do not really want to see these 50-story towers with blades that are as long as football fields, with flashing lights on top that can be seen for 20 miles. We do not want to see them along the foothills of the Smokies, and I doubt the people of Virginia want to see them along the Blue Ridge Parkway, and I doubt they want to see them in Pennsylvania or in the White Mountains. And in the Eastern United States, they only work on the ridgetops, and they do not work very well. That is why there is only one wind farm in the entire Southeastern United States. It is in Tennessee and only operates 18 percent of the time, and part of that time is at night when we have a lot of extra electricity. So that does not work very well.

The Senator from California, Mrs. Feinstein, with whom I work on the Appropriations Interior Subcommittee, has expressed her concern about the size of the solar thermal plants proposed for the Mojave Desert, which she has tried to protect for years. They would have to be 5 miles on each side in order to get a decent amount of electricity, and that is only during the daytime.

You have the wind and you have the Sun, but you still need either the coal plant or the nuclear plant. So I believe there is a place for wind: far offshore, the middle of Lake Michigan, or in parts of the wind corridor. I believe there is a great future for solar because solar power comes during the peak times, during the day when we can use it. Perhaps we can use our rooftops to provide the space. So we think that is more promising for our area. I think biomass is useful, but I have already expressed how large an area it would take to produce a little electricity. And we might be able to get a few hundred megawatts out of the Mississippi River by putting turbines in the water.

So how are we going to reindustrialize America over the next 25 years? How are we going to keep those auto suppliers and assembly plants and aluminum plants and even the new plants making solar in our country if we have sky-high costs of unreliable electricity? We need another option.

While we are cleaning up the coal plants, while we are figuring out renewable electricity, we now have another way to skin the cat; that is, the small nuclear reactor, 125 megawatts. That is about the size of electricity that is produced by Fort Loudoun Dam in our State. It is significant, but it is a lot smaller than the big ones we are used to.

What I really hope is that when Americans see this user-friendly reactor sitting underground--that is another aspect: A lot of it, including the storage of the waste, goes underground. Another aspect is it is only two stories tall. Most people think nuclear plants, the big ones--they see these big cooling towers. That is to cool the water that has to be used. But these small ones are air-cooled, so they don't use much water. That is a great advantage. And they are not an eyesore, they are two stories tall. I mean, remember, the wind turbines are 50- stories tall, producing almost no electricity in a consistent way. The nuclear reactor is producing low-cost energy 90 percent of the time, and it is two stories tall.

So I think with this development people may begin to rethink nuclear power. It is already happening out there. People are recognizing that the dangers of nuclear have been widely exaggerated, there is nothing to be fearful about, and once we realize that, we are going to see nuclear power for what it is: an appropriate technology that will enable us to meet our future energy needs without overwhelming the world with pollution and warming the planet.

So I hope my colleagues in the Senate will join me in saying congratulations to Babcock & Wilcox and especially to the Tennessee Valley Authority for leading the country in this renaissance of nuclear energy. Congratulations, good luck, and I hope there are many of these projects on the drawing boards.

This is the way for us to clean the air, deal with global warming, and at the same time have low-cost, reliable electricity in large amounts so that we can keep our jobs here.

There is one other aspect to this that I ought to mention. As we talk about the different forms of energy, people worry that so much of what it takes to build the wind turbines or the solar plants or even the large nuclear plants, and how they may be manufactured overseas and that the jobs are there and not here. All of the jobs for the small nuclear reactors will be in the United States--virtually all of them. So this is not only American-made energy, all of the parts that go to building what I hope will be hundreds of these small reactors over time can be made and will be made right here in the United States.

I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, over the past 15 months, the Federal Government has taken unprecedented actions to stabilize the U.S. economy. Unfortunately, these actions include the Federal Government acquiring direct ownership stakes in private companies, which exposes the American taxpayer to significant liabilities and creates a dangerous conflict of interest between the Federal Government and the private sector.

Thanks to the fact that the government has intervened in all these private companies, we now have about 500 banks, we have auto manufacturers, financial institutions, and insurance companies that the government now has an ownership interest in. President Obama has become a de facto CEO managing large segments of our economy, and Congress is now acting as a 535-Member board of directors.

I think it is fair to say when you combine business with politics, it inevitably leads to harmful conflicts of interest--which we are already beginning to see--because political decisions get substituted for business decisions.

As everyone in this Chamber knows all too well, government control of private business hampers investments. It hampers innovation, job creation. It diminishes the entrepreneurial spirit on which our economy is based.

Having the Federal Government call the shots for private industry is plain bad for business. It is bad for the economy, and it is bad for the American taxpayer.

So today I am introducing a piece of legislation, S. 1242, which gives the Federal Government an exit plan, a way of exiting the scene from the ownership that the Federal Government now has in all these various private companies in our economy. It essentially has four basic provisions.

The first provision is that upon enactment of the legislation, the Treasury Department may not purchase any additional ownership stake of private entities, such as warrants, preferred stock, or common stock purchased through the TARP program.

The second provision is this: The legislation would require the Treasury to sell any ownership stake of a private entity by July 1, 2010. Any revenue that comes in from the sale of those TARP assets would have to be used for debt reduction.

The third provision of the bill is that if the Treasury Secretary determines the assets are undervalued and there is a reasonable expectation that the assets will increase to their original purchase value, the Secretary may hold the assets for up to 1 additional year.

Finally, the fourth provision of the bill is that beyond July 1 of 2011, the Treasury Secretary may not hold any direct ownership of private companies unless Congress grants additional authority.

Essentially, what we are doing is saying that all this ownership interest the Federal Government now has acquired in all these private companies would have to be wound down, if you will, divested, by that July 1 deadline in the year 2010. If the Treasury Department determines that, in fact, doing so would impair the ability of the Treasury to recover the full value of those assets or if those assets are expected to appreciate, there is an additional year, up to a year of flexibility--essentially a waiver--from the July 1, 2010, deadline that would extend it to July 1, 2011. So it buys an additional year. But it does put a time certain out there, a deadline, if you will, by which the Federal Government has to dispose of and divest itself of all these ownership interests it has in our private economy.

The other issue I think is important is it prevents the Federal Government from acquiring an ownership stake going into the future. As I said before, any funds that are returned to the Treasury as a result of these assets being sold would have to be used for debt reduction. They cannot be recycled; they cannot be reused; they cannot go into some fund that is going to be used for additional acquisition of private sector assets.

I think the reason why this is important is if you look at what Secretary Geithner has said, he has indicated before that their intention is that when

some of these funds come back into the Treasury--and we saw this recently with banks that agreed to pay this money back--they are going to reuse it. I don't believe that is what was intended in the first place. I don't think this was at any point designed to become a slush fund that could be used for the acquisition of other assets; it was designed to be used--at least initially, the way it was presented--for the purchase of toxic assets, illiquid assets on the balance sheets of many of our financial institutions. It quickly evolved into something else. It became a fund that was used to acquire an equity stake, equity interest in many of these companies. So I don't think that was the purpose for which it was intended.

I think a lot of people who made votes assumed at the time it wouldn't be used to buy toxic assets. It ended up being used to buy an ownership interest in these companies, and I think, again, the American people are uncomfortable with the notion of the Federal Government owning a big share of our private economy. I also do not think it was intended in the first place to be used to buy the assets of other types of industries--essentially, to do industrial policy, as some people have referred to it--to acquire assets of auto manufacturers, for example; it was designed specifically for the financial services industry.

There is no real exit strategy out there. In fact, Secretary Geithner was asked in front of the Senate Banking Committee a couple weeks ago about whether there was a plan to dispose of some of these assets, and he said there isn't a plan; it is not necessary at this point.

Well, I think we need to have an exit strategy. Everybody talks about an exit strategy. The President needs an exit strategy in Iraq. It seems to me we need to have an exit strategy that would allow the American taxpayer to recover funds they have been investing through the TARP program in all these various companies that would get the Federal Government out of the way of these companies and out of the day-to-day decisionmaking and management of these companies. My bill would prohibit that as well, in addition to some of these other provisions I mentioned.

It would prohibit or bar the Federal Government from dictating to these companies with respect to hiring decisions when it comes to senior executives, when it comes to boards of directors, when it comes to where to relocate or locate or close certain plants. Those are decisions that should not be made by politicians in Washington. They should not be made by bureaucrats in Washington, DC. They ought to be business decisions and not political decisions.

The bill, as I said, is very straightforward.

There are a number of folks who have commented on, made observations about what is happening in the economy right now, and this sort of proliferation of companies in which the Federal Government now has an ownership share. I wish to read for my colleagues some of what has been said by folks who I think know a lot about the private economy and whether it is a good idea to have the Federal Government owning and controlling as much as they do currently of some of these companies. If you look at the various percentages, they are significant. Of course, we know most recently General Motors, a $50 billion investment there gets the taxpayer ownership interest to about 60 percent; Chrysler, about 12 percent; Citibank, about 36 percent, and you can go down the list of all these various private companies in which the government now has an ownership interest.

There was an editorial in the Kansas City Star that said that:

What's worrisome is that while the administration said it

isn't interested in running car companies, it has said little

on an exit strategy.

It went on to say:

Any government bailout of private industry should be

temporary and as brief as possible.

Anne Mulcahy, chief executive of Xerox--I am sure I just butchered the name--said recently:

I think all of us understand the need for the government to

intervene and to take the actions they did, but I also think

there's a need for an exit plan.

Jim Owens, who is the chief executive at Caterpillar, said:

I think that's fundamentally unhealthy. The Federal

Government needs to be in and out.

Google's Eric Schmidt noted that the U.S. stimulus package was designed to cover a 2-year period. He said:

It's very important that government get out of business and

let business do its thing. The most important thing to

remember, I think, is that jobs, wealth, are created in the

private sector. That's about capitalism.

In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Paul Ingrassia argues:

. . . must have a clear exit timetable for the government

to sell its shares for both Chrysler and GM and get the

companies back in the hands of private investors. Mr. Obama

has an exit strategy for Iraq; he needs one for Detroit, too.

So there are a lot of people who have a lot of experience when it comes to running companies who have concluded that the government does, in fact, need an exit strategy. I think, as I said before, it is fair to say that one doesn't exist today, and when Secretary Geithner testified in front of the Senate Banking Committee a couple weeks back he admitted as much, that there isn't an exit plan.

What my bill does is it gives us an exit plan. It gives us an exit plan with a deadline, with a little flexibility in the deadline, some ability to provide a waiver for the Treasury Department that would allow for an additional year, if necessary; if those assets the government holds are considered to be assets that could appreciate over time and, therefore, yield a higher return for the Federal Government but, at some point, we have to say enough is enough. We have to put an end to this practice we have gotten involved with, this precedent we have now created of having the Federal Government own more and more of our private economy.

I would argue, again, that is not good for business, it is not good for the economy, it is not good for job creation; it stifles the entrepreneurial spirit which has built this country and made it great, and I don't think it does anything to create jobs and get our economy back on track.

I hope we will have an opportunity to debate this. It seems to me at least that in the days ahead there will be various bills that will be debated on the floor of the Senate that would give us a chance to debate this issue. I intend to offer this, if I can't get some interest in moving it as a freestanding bill, as an amendment to other vehicles that might be moving through the Senate in the days and the weeks and the months ahead. But I do think it is important. I think it is important to the American taxpayer. I think it is important to the American economy. I think it is important to American business that the Federal Government have an exit strategy. We have a plan whereby we can move and get away from this practice we have undertaken now with great regularity and great frequency of acquiring even more and more interests in American business.

Mr. President, over the past 15 months, the Federal Government has taken unprecedented actions to stabilize the U.S. economy. Unfortunately, these actions include the Federal Government acquiring direct ownership stakes in private companies, which exposes the American taxpayer to significant liabilities and creates a dangerous conflict of interest between the Federal Government and the private sector.

Thanks to the fact that the government has intervened in all these private companies, we now have about 500 banks, we have auto manufacturers, financial institutions, and insurance companies that the government now has an ownership interest in. President Obama has become a de facto CEO managing large segments of our economy, and Congress is now acting as a 535-Member board of directors.

I think it is fair to say when you combine business with politics, it inevitably leads to harmful conflicts of interest--which we are already beginning to see--because political decisions get substituted for business decisions.

As everyone in this Chamber knows all too well, government control of private business hampers investments. It hampers innovation, job creation. It diminishes the entrepreneurial spirit on which our economy is based.

Having the Federal Government call the shots for private industry is plain bad for business. It is bad for the economy, and it is bad for the American taxpayer.

So today I am introducing a piece of legislation, S. 1242, which gives the Federal Government an exit plan, a way of exiting the scene from the ownership that the Federal Government now has in all these various private companies in our economy. It essentially has four basic provisions.

The first provision is that upon enactment of the legislation, the Treasury Department may not purchase any additional ownership stake of private entities, such as warrants, preferred stock, or common stock purchased through the TARP program.

The second provision is this: The legislation would require the Treasury to sell any ownership stake of a private entity by July 1, 2010. Any revenue that comes in from the sale of those TARP assets would have to be used for debt reduction.

The third provision of the bill is that if the Treasury Secretary determines the assets are undervalued and there is a reasonable expectation that the assets will increase to their original purchase value, the Secretary may hold the assets for up to 1 additional year.

Finally, the fourth provision of the bill is that beyond July 1 of 2011, the Treasury Secretary may not hold any direct ownership of private companies unless Congress grants additional authority.

Essentially, what we are doing is saying that all this ownership interest the Federal Government now has acquired in all these private companies would have to be wound down, if you will, divested, by that July 1 deadline in the year 2010. If the Treasury Department determines that, in fact, doing so would impair the ability of the Treasury to recover the full value of those assets or if those assets are expected to appreciate, there is an additional year, up to a year of flexibility--essentially a waiver--from the July 1, 2010, deadline that would extend it to July 1, 2011. So it buys an additional year. But it does put a time certain out there, a deadline, if you will, by which the Federal Government has to dispose of and divest itself of all these ownership interests it has in our private economy.

The other issue I think is important is it prevents the Federal Government from acquiring an ownership stake going into the future. As I said before, any funds that are returned to the Treasury as a result of these assets being sold would have to be used for debt reduction. They cannot be recycled; they cannot be reused; they cannot go into some fund that is going to be used for additional acquisition of private sector assets.

I think the reason why this is important is if you look at what Secretary Geithner has said, he has indicated before that their intention is that when

some of these funds come back into the Treasury--and we saw this recently with banks that agreed to pay this money back--they are going to reuse it. I don't believe that is what was intended in the first place. I don't think this was at any point designed to become a slush fund that could be used for the acquisition of other assets; it was designed to be used--at least initially, the way it was presented--for the purchase of toxic assets, illiquid assets on the balance sheets of many of our financial institutions. It quickly evolved into something else. It became a fund that was used to acquire an equity stake, equity interest in many of these companies. So I don't think that was the purpose for which it was intended.

I think a lot of people who made votes assumed at the time it wouldn't be used to buy toxic assets. It ended up being used to buy an ownership interest in these companies, and I think, again, the American people are uncomfortable with the notion of the Federal Government owning a big share of our private economy. I also do not think it was intended in the first place to be used to buy the assets of other types of industries--essentially, to do industrial policy, as some people have referred to it--to acquire assets of auto manufacturers, for example; it was designed specifically for the financial services industry.

There is no real exit strategy out there. In fact, Secretary Geithner was asked in front of the Senate Banking Committee a couple weeks ago about whether there was a plan to dispose of some of these assets, and he said there isn't a plan; it is not necessary at this point.

Well, I think we need to have an exit strategy. Everybody talks about an exit strategy. The President needs an exit strategy in Iraq. It seems to me we need to have an exit strategy that would allow the American taxpayer to recover funds they have been investing through the TARP program in all these various companies that would get the Federal Government out of the way of these companies and out of the day-to-day decisionmaking and management of these companies. My bill would prohibit that as well, in addition to some of these other provisions I mentioned.

It would prohibit or bar the Federal Government from dictating to these companies with respect to hiring decisions when it comes to senior executives, when it comes to boards of directors, when it comes to where to relocate or locate or close certain plants. Those are decisions that should not be made by politicians in Washington. They should not be made by bureaucrats in Washington, DC. They ought to be business decisions and not political decisions.

The bill, as I said, is very straightforward.

There are a number of folks who have commented on, made observations about what is happening in the economy right now, and this sort of proliferation of companies in which the Federal Government now has an ownership share. I wish to read for my colleagues some of what has been said by folks who I think know a lot about the private economy and whether it is a good idea to have the Federal Government owning and controlling as much as they do currently of some of these companies. If you look at the various percentages, they are significant. Of course, we know most recently General Motors, a $50 billion investment there gets the taxpayer ownership interest to about 60 percent; Chrysler, about 12 percent; Citibank, about 36 percent, and you can go down the list of all these various private companies in which the government now has an ownership interest.

There was an editorial in the Kansas City Star that said that:

What's worrisome is that while the administration said it

isn't interested in running car companies, it has said little

on an exit strategy.

It went on to say:

Any government bailout of private industry should be

temporary and as brief as possible.

Anne Mulcahy, chief executive of Xerox--I am sure I just butchered the name--said recently:

I think all of us understand the need for the government to

intervene and to take the actions they did, but I also think

there's a need for an exit plan.

Jim Owens, who is the chief executive at Caterpillar, said:

I think that's fundamentally unhealthy. The Federal

Government needs to be in and out.

Google's Eric Schmidt noted that the U.S. stimulus package was designed to cover a 2-year period. He said:

It's very important that government get out of business and

let business do its thing. The most important thing to

remember, I think, is that jobs, wealth, are created in the

private sector. That's about capitalism.

In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Paul Ingrassia argues:

. . . must have a clear exit timetable for the government

to sell its shares for both Chrysler and GM and get the

companies back in the hands of private investors. Mr. Obama

has an exit strategy for Iraq; he needs one for Detroit, too.

So there are a lot of people who have a lot of experience when it comes to running companies who have concluded that the government does, in fact, need an exit strategy. I think, as I said before, it is fair to say that one doesn't exist today, and when Secretary Geithner testified in front of the Senate Banking Committee a couple weeks back he admitted as much, that there isn't an exit plan.

What my bill does is it gives us an exit plan. It gives us an exit plan with a deadline, with a little flexibility in the deadline, some ability to provide a waiver for the Treasury Department that would allow for an additional year, if necessary; if those assets the government holds are considered to be assets that could appreciate over time and, therefore, yield a higher return for the Federal Government but, at some point, we have to say enough is enough. We have to put an end to this practice we have gotten involved with, this precedent we have now created of having the Federal Government own more and more of our private economy.

I would argue, again, that is not good for business, it is not good for the economy, it is not good for job creation; it stifles the entrepreneurial spirit which has built this country and made it great, and I don't think it does anything to create jobs and get our economy back on track.

I hope we will have an opportunity to debate this. It seems to me at least that in the days ahead there will be various bills that will be debated on the floor of the Senate that would give us a chance to debate this issue. I intend to offer this, if I can't get some interest in moving it as a freestanding bill, as an amendment to other vehicles that might be moving through the Senate in the days and the weeks and the months ahead. But I do think it is important. I think it is important to the American taxpayer. I think it is important to the American economy. I think it is important to American business that the Federal Government have an exit strategy. We have a plan whereby we can move and get away from this practice we have undertaken now with great regularity and great frequency of acquiring even more and more interests in American business.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Home and Community Balanced Incentives Act of 2009, together with my colleague from Wisconsin, Senator Kohl. As we in the Senate embark on reforming America's health care system, we cannot forget those who are dependent on daily care in order to survive: those in long-term care. Long-term care provides health care and daily living services to the elderly and disabled population, providing them with the ability to live happy, productive lives that age, illness and disability would otherwise prevent.

In 2007, the U.S. spent close to $109 billion on long term institutional care services under the Medicaid program; in my state of Washington it was approximately $2 billion. This amount represents more than 30 percent of all Medicaid payments, and is a number we can easily reduce. This legislation seeks to rebalance how states handle long term care by providing the tools they need to shift people out of expensive institutional care facilities and into home and community based care, where they can remain vibrant, active members of their community.

As Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz once said: There is no place like home. I could not agree more, which is why I believe in providing individuals and

families with the option to remain in their home, where studies have shown the overall quality of life is far superior to that in an institutional facility. Additionally, home and community based care is far more cost efficient than institutional care; by diverting just 5 percent of the long term care community away from institutional care and into home and community based services, we would see a net savings of more than $10 billion dollars over five years. In a time when rising health care spending plays such a pivotal role in the health of the overall economy, these savings represent a giant step towards reining in unnecessary health care spending.

The Home and Community Balanced Incentives Act would achieve the goal of transitioning to home and community based services by offering states modest increases to their federal medical assistance payment, FMAP, for home and community based services. States would have to use these increases to develop the programs needed to provide effective home and community based services. These services will reduce barriers that currently prohibit people from accessing home and community based services.

This bill succeeds in not only saving the Medicaid program a significant amount of money, but it will empower families to make informed decisions about their long term care needs.

Specifically, this bill would: improve case management to help people remain in their homes and communities and out of nursing homes; provide consumer empowerment helping to put individuals in charge of their care; provide a coordinated transition structure for those wishing to leave institutional care and return to their homes and communities; create a clear and well coordinated system for providing long term care information and support; improve methodology for determining eligibility and tracking provider data on services and quality outcomes.

Senator Kohl and I are excited to introduce this important legislation and to begin working with our colleagues on improving the long term care system in America.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce Project 2020: Building on the Promise of Home and Community-Based Services Act with my colleague from Michigan, Senator Stabenow. By the year 2020, almost 1 in 6 Americans will be over the age of 65 and the population of people over the age of 85, the fastest growing segment of the population, will double. Our current long term care financing structure is unsustainable as the population in need of such services rapidly increases. As such, we must turn our focus to reforming the long term care system to provide the best care available to this vulnerable population.

The average cost of a nursing home in this country is $70,000 a year, making this an unrealistic option for most Americans. In fact, most people who end up in a nursing home last just six months before they have spent so much they become poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. This situation is expensive for consumers, for states, and for the federal government. Fortunately, there is a clear answer. It costs Medicaid one third as much to provide someone with home and community based care as it would cost to care for them in a nursing home. In addition, most people want to stay in their own home or community whenever possible. An independent analysis conducted by the Lewin Group shows that Project 2020 would reach over 40 million Americans, while simultaneously reducing Medicare and Medicaid costs by more than $2.8 billion over 5 years.

Project 2020 addresses the urgent need to shift away from institutional care and towards home and community based services in three distinct ways: through enhanced nursing home diversion; by increasing the use of person-centered access to information; and by utilizing evidence-based disease and injury prevention. As I previously mentioned, increased nursing home diversion will not only provide significant savings to the Medicaid program, it will also allow families to stay together and let people be active members of their communities. Through the creation of a person-center access point to information, consumers, family members, and caregivers will be given the tools necessary to make well informed decisions about long term care. Finally, this bill will provide for programs that help consumers get proven education about avoiding preventable diseased and injuries, such as falls and malnutrition, which result in thousands of unnecessary hospitalizations every year.

As you can see, these three programs constitute a common-sense, multifaceted approach to improving the quality of life of individuals and their families, while providing a substantial amount of savings to the health care system.

I am pleased to introduce this important legislation along with my colleague Senator Stabenow and I look forward to working with the rest of my Senate colleagues to provide families with the long term care services and support they need.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I rise today to discuss a bill to help promote and protect breastfeeding in the workplace.

The science is undisputable--babies who are breastfed the first 6 months of life have a greatly reduced risk for acute and chronic disease--yet only ten percent of all infants receive this nourishment that they need to remain healthy. One of the primary reasons for this is that working moms face real and serious challenges to expressing milk when they return to work.

Well, today is a day to change that. In Oregon, we have enacted strong legislation to make sure that working moms are afforded the time and space they need at work to express milk. In fact, my first event as a candidate for U.S. Senate was at a luncheon celebrating the success of Oregon's breastfeeding promotion law. I said that day that I would work to expand Oregon's efforts nationwide, and today we take the important first step towards enacting legislation to protect working moms across the country.

First, I want to thank Representative Carolyn Maloney of New York for her strong leadership on this issue. For years, she has been a champion for working moms everywhere, and I applaud her determination to make it easier for women.

We know that 72 percent of moms work full time, and that number is growing. In fact, according to the Center on Work and Family at Boston College, the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. workforce is women with children under three years of age.

Women who decide to breastfeed often face unique challenges and at times, social stigmas, for trying to give their baby the healthiest start in life.

In an environment where mothers return to work as early as 3 to 6 weeks post-partum, often driven by economic necessity, it is simply an act of human decency to protect their right to continue breastfeeding after they return to work to help meet their basic needs with regard to the care and nourishment of their children. But for most, it is an unachievable goal.

If we are to have any hope of increasing the number of babies being breastfed, we need to implement a strategy that addresses workplace conditions.

The Breastfeeding Promotion Act that Representative Maloney and I are introducing today is a measured step in this direction.

It protects breastfeeding women from discrimination in the workplace, provides tax credits to employers who make accommodations for breastfeeding moms, and most importantly, it affords working moms with the time, space, and privacy they need to express milk.

Many of these changes have been successfully implemented in my home State of Oregon where we have seen a tremendous difference in the experiences of mothers, as well as positive impacts for employers, as a result of this type of legislation.

Tonya Hirte, a senior customer service representative in Portland, said that before the law took effect, she had to express breast milk in a bathroom on a separate floor from her worksite, but that after implementation of the law, her company converted a storage closet into a private, simply-furnished room, bringing dignity to her experience as a mother, and helping her feel valued as an employee.

A Lane County employee said that having a breastfeeding-friendly workplace allowed her to focus better on her work, knowing her daughter's needs were being met emotionally and physically because the work breaks to express breast milk facilitated their breastfeeding relationship when they were together.

But it's not just the employees who are seeing positive changes as a result of the Oregon law. Jim Rochs, General Manager of Carinos Italian Restaurant in Bend, Oregon, says that they create a better team overall if they take care of one another. The time and space his employee needed to express breast milk was not difficult to provide.

Gretchen Peterson, Human Resources Manager for Hanna Andersson clothing design, manufacturer and retail store, said that ``legislation to encourage longer-term breastfeeding by eliminating potential workplace barriers has been successfully passed and implemented in Oregon with no negative impact to business.'' She goes on to say, ``Without this opportunity, our employees may have made the choice to stay at home or choose to work for another company which would have caused a significant disruption to our business.''

Research from the Maternal Child Health Bureau demonstrates a significant return on investment when businesses support worksite lactation programs.

The Mutual of Omaha insurance company conducted a study that found health care costs for newborns to be three times lower for babies whose mothers participate in their company's maternity and lactation program. Per person health care costs were $2,146 more for employees who did not participate in the program, with a yearly savings of $115,881 in health care claims for the breastfeeding mothers and babies.

This is truly a public health issue. Encouraging breastfeeding for working mothers will help alleviate the negative effects of low breastfeeding rates, including a 21 percent greater infant mortality rate for babies not exclusively breastfed for 6 months, and

greater risk over a lifetime for many illnesses including asthma, diabetes, obesity, and certain cancers.

Finally, the timing could not be better as we ramp up our efforts to reform our health care system and work to contain costs. A 2001 USDA study found that if half of the babies in the U.S. were exclusively breastfed for 6 months, we would realize a savings of $3.6 billion in health care costs for the three leading childhood illnesses alone. According to the U.S. Breastfeeding Committee, if we replicate that study based on current breastfeeding statistics, the savings could reach nearly $14 billion in health care costs for all childhood illnesses.

Colleagues, I look forward to passing the Breastfeeding Promotion Act to help make it easier for moms to breastfeed, which will lead to healthier babies, stronger families, and happier workers.