Floor Statements

Madam President, I will ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article I wrote, which appeared in the Legal Times for the week of April 4, entitled ``Free the People's Choice.'' This involves a piece of legislation that Senators Pryor and Nelson on the other side of the aisle and Senators Cornyn and Kyl on this side of the aisle and I have introduced, which would make it possible for newly elected Governors and mayors and legislatures to do what they were elected to do and be free from outdated consent decrees their predecessors may have agreed to, and which exist with the approval of the Federal courts.

We have hundreds of outdated Federal court-approved consent decrees across America, which are running our education systems, foster care systems, Medicaid systems, and they make it impossible for democracy to flourish in the U.S., at a time when people are fighting and dying to give other people democracy in another part of the world. We have strong Democratic and Republican support in the Senate for this. In the House, I finished a meeting with the Republican whip, Roy Blunt, who with Congressman Cooper from Nashville, and all of the Democratic Congressmen from Tennessee, have introduced the same bill in the House.

This piece of legislation would put term limits on Federal court consent decrees and cause them to be more narrowly drawn and do as the Supreme Court said they should do--get these issues back into the hands of the elected officials as soon as possible.

This legislation has strong support, and I hope it will be moving through the Judiciary Committee in proper fashion. It is the No. 1 priority of the National Governors Association and National Association of Counties, and many others. We cannot expect States to control the growth of Medicaid spending if we do not allow them to make their own decisions. We need to get flexibility from our laws, and we need to get the courts to step aside and let elected officials make policy decisions.

I ask unanimous consent that this article be printed in the Record.

Madam President, I would like to now praise the pages. I could say good words about the Senate pages and I will. I wanted to especially praise the House page school--and I hope the Senate pages will excuse me for doing that.

Madam President, my good friend, Alex Haley, the author of ``Roots,'' used to say, ``Find the good and praise it.'' Those words are engraved on his tombstone. When he wrote the story of Kunta Kinte, he minced no words in describing the terrible injustices his ancestors overcame, but he also acknowledged their courage and perseverance.

Since I joined this body, I have made improving the teaching of American history one of my top priorities. I have noted some deeply disturbing statistics about students' knowledge of our past. For example, of all the subjects tested by the National Assessment for Education Progress, also known as our Nation's report card, American history is our children's worst subject.

But today I am here to follow Alex Haley's advice to find the good and praise it. When it comes to teaching American history, some of the best news can be found right here on Capitol Hill.

On January 25, the College Board announced that the House page school ranked first in the Nation among institutions with fewer than 500 pupils for the percentage of the student body who achieve college-level mastery on the advanced placement exam in U.S. history. Twenty-one students, or about one-third of the school's student body, took the exam, and 18 received the required score of 3 or above to demonstrate mastery of the subject.

A number of Senate pages also take the AP U.S. history exam. Madam President, 12 students in the current class of 29 in the Senate page school will take 22 different AP exams this year. Eleven will take the U.S. history exam. But results for the Senate pages are not collectively known in the same way we know them in the House, and that is because the Senate Page School is only half the size of the House school. Senate pages register for the exam under their home high school name, rather than as a student at the page school. But based on what she hears from students, Principal Kathryn Weeden believes Senate pages score very well, but no complete tabulation of scores is available, as is with the House.

House pages attend classes in the attic of the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress. They are perched atop one the largest collections of historical documents about our country. But location alone cannot account for their great success. The House Page School puts a strong emphasis on social studies and American history.

Students take American history with Sebastian Hobson and Ron Weitzel, a House Page School teacher of 21 years who will retire this year. Surely, much of the credit belongs to Mr. Hobson and Mr. Weitzel. But students also find a focus on American history in their work with other teachers. On Saturdays, students participate in the Washington Seminar, a program that explores American Government and history here in the District of Columbia.

Math teacher Barbara Bowen, who is something of an expert on Presidents Jefferson and Washington, takes students to Monticello and Mount Vernon.

Computer and technology teacher Darryl Gonzalez takes students to Fort McHenry and the American History Museum.

Science teacher Walt Cuirle includes the history of U.S. energy policy when he teaches his class on energy. Mr. Cuirle also takes students to Philadelphia for the Benjamin Franklin portion of the school's Washington seminar.

Most students take English teacher Lona Klein's course on American literature, which has to include history as they read literature from the Puritans, the Enlightenment, and the slave rebellions. She also leads a field trip to Annapolis to see the State house and the Naval Academy.

Principal Linda Miranda has made the teaching of American history a priority at the House Page School, and it shows. It is no wonder the school has received this recognition from the College Board, which administers the advanced placement exams across the country. Ms. Miranda credits the outstanding quality of the students who are selected as House pages and her faculty, whom she calls ``Renaissance men and women.''

There is no question this has been a team effort at the House Page School, but I know good leadership starts at the top. So I salute Linda Miranda, her faculty, and the students at the House Page School. I hope their success may be an example to schools across the country as to how we can restore the teaching of American history to its rightful place in our schools so our children grow up learning what it means to be an American.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I join my colleague, the majority leader, in saying a word about Pat Summitt.

I am delighted the majority leader scheduled time for this discussion of Pat Summitt and submitted the resolution, which I am proud to cosponsor.

There are a great many superlatives one could offer about Coach Summitt. Perhaps the most obvious is sustained excellence over such a long period of time--as the majority leader said, 16 Final Four appearances, three back-to-back national titles, 107 NCAA tournament games, virtually undefeated on the floor of the Thompson-Boling Arena, which is now renamed The Summitt in her honor, always playing the toughest schedule, always high expectations.

I was president of the University of Tennessee for nearly 3 years. I remember going to a year-end Lady Vols basketball banquet because I remember the team had won the Southeastern Conference Championship and did not make the Final Four. Pat Summitt congratulated the players, but I remember the atmosphere was more like a funeral than a celebration because, obviously, the team did not meet the expectations Coach Summitt had for her players.

We live in a society of televised images in which we meet a steady stream of people who are at the top of their game for 15 minutes or for a few months or for a few years. But for Pat Summitt, it has been 31 years at the top of her game, and there is no end in sight.

There are a couple of other less obvious superlatives about Coach Summitt. One of these is unselfishness. The coaches whom she regularly defeats will tell you, to a woman or a man, that no one has done more to build the game of women's basketball than Pat Summitt. When she started, there were three girls at each end of the court playing in an empty gym. Today it is my favorite game to watch on television because of the skill of the players, because of the team play, because of the good coaching, and now because of the parity of the sport.

There are a lot of good teams, a lot of good coaches, and many of them are former assistants to Pat Summitt. It seems she always has a good word to say about this program or that program, this opponent or that opponent. Her objective is to build the game up as much as it is to win the game.

The final superlative is Pat Summitt's emphasis on academic achievement. Every young woman who has ever played for her over 31 years has either graduated or is working today on the requirements for graduation. That is almost as difficult as winning back-to-back NCAA championships. It certainly sets the right tone for college sports.

I know how proud I was as a university president to have that most visible symbol of our university have such high values. It is mentioned at all the games, people see it all the time. It is a superlative achievement.

This past year, Nicky Anosike, one of eight children of a mother from Nigeria now living in the United States, became a sudden star at the University of Tennessee as a freshman. There were six great recruits said to be the best recruiting class ever in the history of this country. Four of them were hurt. Nicky Anosike was not hurt, and she suddenly became a starter on the team and one of its best starters. Some people say she is a female Scottie Pippen at the top of his game.

As I suspect happens with many of Pat's freshman students, Nicky Anosike called home the next few weeks discussing with her mother how difficult it was to play for Pat Summitt because she demanded so much. Her mother said: What does she expect of you that I did not expect of you? That is the reason why I believe parents and young women want those young women to go to the University of Tennessee to play for Pat Summitt when they might be admitted to any school in the country. It is that for 31 years, Pat Summitt has brought out the best in those young women.

Mr. President, I wish to comment on the majority leader's remarks about Viktor Yushchenko, who will be addressing a joint meeting at 11 o'clock.

Two weeks ago, I had the privilege, with the Democratic leader, of visiting with Mr. Yushchenko for an hour. We also were in Georgia, Iraq, Palestine, and Israel. We saw emerging democracies across the country.

One of the most vivid impressions I had was after meeting with Mr. Yushchenko, we met with students in Ukraine. Senator Reid asked them how long before they expected results. These were the ones who Senator Frist described as being among the hundreds of thousands in November and December waiting outside in the bitter cold

causing this change. Some of the students said a year. Others disagreed and said 9 months.

It seems to me one of the greatest dangers we have with these emerging democracies is reminding them that there is no such thing as an instant democracy in Ukraine or anywhere else. So I said to the students with respect: In the United States, it took us 12 years to write a constitution after the Declaration of Independence, and we had to lock the press out to do it. It took us 130 years to give women the right to vote. It took us 200 years before African Americans could vote in every part of our country.

So in Iraq, in Georgia, in Ukraine, in emerging democracies, patience is important, and that is one of the examples we have.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum and ask that the time be equally charged.

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

Mr. President, today I am introducing the Natural Gas Price Reduction Act of 2005 and the ``Tax Provisions for Natural Gas Price Reduction Act of 2005.'' I send to the desk two pieces of legislation. One is the substantive provisions of the bill and one is the tax provisions of the bill.

Mr. President, I offer the legislation on behalf of myself and the Senator from South Dakota, Mr. Johnson, who is the lead Democratic sponsor on the legislation. I do so with appreciation to the chairman of our Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Chairman Pete Domenici, and the staff of that committee who have worked very closely with us on the development of this comprehensive piece of legislation, and with thanks to my own staff, Sharon Segner, who has worked on it for several months.

This is a piece of legislation to address aggressively and comprehensively the rising cost of natural gas in the United States. This is legislation for the blue-collar worker, for the American farmer, and for the American homeowner.

Natural gas prices in the United States are at record levels. We have gone from having the lowest natural gas prices in the industrial world to the highest. These high prices are threatening millions of our jobs. Our farmers are getting a 10-percent pay cut. Homeowners are having a hard time paying their heating and cooling bills because of our contradictory policies.

Our policies boil down to this: We are restricting the supply of natural gas, and we are encouraging the use of natural gas. You do not have to go very far in an economics class at the University of Oklahoma or the University of Tennessee to know that if you restrict supply and encourage demand, the inevitable result is higher prices. And higher prices is a very serious problem for U.S. workers, U.S. homeowners, and U.S. farmers.

Only an ambitious and comprehensive approach that both increases supply and controls demand can lower the price of natural gas and keep our economy growing. This is not a question of tweaking our natural gas policy. It is time, aggressively, to revamp it. We need aggressive conservation. We need aggressive use of alternative fuels. We need aggressive research and development. We need aggressive production. And, for the time being, we need aggressive importation of liquefied natural gas from other parts of the world.

Here on this chart is an idea of where we are today. This is the United States of America: $7 per unit for natural gas--the highest in the industrialized world. Until recently, we had the lowest natural gas prices in the world.

What that means is large parts of our industries--the chemical industry, for example--were built on the idea of $1.50 or $2 for natural gas, but today it is $7.

A million Americans work in those blue-collar manufacturing jobs in every State in our country. Now, if they are paying $7 here, and it is $5.55 in Canada and $5.15 in the United Kingdom and $2.65 in Turkey and $1.70 in the Ukraine, where do you suppose,

though, a million blue-collar jobs are going to be 5 years from now, if we do not do something about the $7 price? They are not going to be in the United States. They are going to be moving out of the United States, to the United Kingdom, to Germany, to the Ukraine, to other parts of the world. And people are going to be writing their Congressmen and saying: Why didn't you do something?

So here is what we can do. By aggressive conservation, I mean setting stronger appliance and equipment standards for natural gas efficiency so that a commercial air conditioner will cool the same while using less natural gas doing it. Those standards have been generally agreed upon by environmental groups with the industry. If they were put in place, by a rough estimate, they might save the equivalent energy that could be produced by 30 or 35 powerplants.

By aggressive use of alternative fuels, I mean, for example, fully commercializing coal gasification. Coal gasification is taking this abundant supply of coal we have in the United States--we are the ``OPEC,'' the ``Saudi Arabia'' of coal; we have a 400- or 500-year supply--and finding a clean way to use it instead of importing oil from a part of the world where people are blowing each other up.

That means starting with support so we can have six coal gasification plants in this country by the year 2013. Coal gasification means, you burn the coal to create gas, and then you burn the gas to create power. If we can do that commercially, we will not only be passing a clean energy bill, we will be passing a clean air bill, because if you do that, you remove most of the mercury, most of the nitrogen, most of the sulfur. And by additional research, we may be able to find a way to recapture the carbon that is produced and put that in the ground and solve the carbon problems that a lot of people are talking about around the world.

In addition to helping ourselves, we would help ourselves by helping others. China and India and other parts of the world are building hundreds of coal plants. We would much rather them build a coal gasification plant, one that is clean and does not contribute to air pollution. Because if China and India and Brazil build dirty coal plants, that air blows around the world, and it blows into Tennessee and it blows into South Carolina. It blows into Oklahoma.

So aggressive alternative fuels is a part of a natural gas supply. Aggressive research and development includes investment and research in gas hydrates. Gas hydrates is gas that is in the ground. Methane hydrates hold tremendous potential to provide abundant supplies of natural gas. Hydrates are like ice solid structures, consisting of water and gases, mainly methane, compressed to greater than normal densities.

Coastal U.S. areas are rich in this resource. The United States is estimated to contain one-fourth of the world's supply. We need to find a way to use that gas so we do not have $7 per unit natural gas prices. That sends millions of jobs overseas. That cuts the income of farmers. And that raises home heating prices and cooling prices for residential Americans.

Aggressive production means, among other things, allowing States to selectively waive the Federal moratoria on offshore production of gas and collect significant revenues from such production. Let me give you an example. Within the last few weeks, the legislature of Virginia decided it might like to explore the idea of drilling for gas offshore. Now, why would Virginia want to do that? Because there is probably a lot of gas offshore. What would that mean for Virginia? Well, they could put a gas rig out in the ocean, beyond 20 miles, so nobody in Virginia or North Carolina could see it, run a pipeline underground to Virginia, and take their share of the revenues. And they can lower taxes in Virginia and put the rest of the money in a trust fund to build the best colleges and universities in America. That is what they could do in Virginia.

If Tennessee had a coastline, and I were Governor of Tennessee, that is what I would be asking the Congress to let me do.

I think as other Governors and other legislatures and other people look at Texas and Louisiana and Alabama and see what they are doing and decide that they can in an environmentally sensitive way exercise a State option to drill for gas in Federal waters so far out you can't see it, that they will find that a good option because it will help lower the price of gas. It can build up the schools and keep taxes down, and it can avoid other worse forms of energy.

For example, you would have to have 46 square miles of windmills, these things that are 100 yards tall, in order to equal one gas rig that you couldn't see out in the ocean. This is a State option. Aggressive importation of liquefied natural gas starts with giving the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission exclusive authority for siting and regulating what we call LNG terminals. This means importing liquefied natural gas from other parts of the world. There is a lot of it around the world. They freeze it and put it in tankers, and they bring it here and put it in our pipelines, and then we have it.

That seems like a pretty big waste of effort when we have plenty of natural gas here in the United States that we don't have access to. But if we want an adequate supply of natural gas, we are going to have to import some from around the world, and that means we are going to need terminals to which to bring it. Some of them may be offshore. They might be 10, 12, 14 miles offshore. Some of them, like the four we have today, may need to be onshore. There is no silver bullet. There is no single answer. That is why we need aggressive conservation. If, for example, the United States adopted the conservation attitudes towards natural gas that California did a few years ago, it might equal what 50 powerplants could produce in the United States. If that is so, we ought to do it today. That would begin to bring this $7 figure down.

Aggressive use of alternative fuels such as coal gasification. I also would say nuclear power is the most obvious alternative fuel to natural gas. If we had more nuclear power, we would use less natural gas. In our country today, what do you suppose we are using to create electricity when we need more electricity even though the cost of it is $7 a unit, the highest in the world? Natural gas, because natural gas plants can be built for a few hundred million dollars, and we have created an environment where we can't use nuclear.

We haven't built a new nuclear plant since the 1970s, even though we invented the technology, even though France has 80 percent of its power now produced by nuclear power, even though Japan builds a new nuclear plant every year or so. We invented it. Our Navy has operated nuclear reactors since the 1950s without ever having a single accident. It is a clean, obvious alternative to $7 natural gas, and we haven't built a plant since the 1970s. So we need to think seriously about aggressive conservation, aggressive use of alternative fuels, aggressive research and development for solar, for methane hydrates, aggressive production, and that includes giving States the option of deciding whether they would like to drill offshore and take some of the revenues and put some of the revenues into a conservation fund, and aggressive importation of liquefied natural gas from overseas at least for the time being.

In March of 2002, the Secretary of Energy requested that the National Petroleum Council undertake an extensive study on the natural gas crisis. That advisory council produced a study. It talked about the results I have described. Our Senate Energy Committee, under the chairman, Senator Domenici, has paid a lot of attention to that report. Senator Domenici hosted what we called a natural gas roundtable that was well attended by Senators and went on for 3 or 4 hours. There were more than 100 proposals presented.

I am chairman of the subcommittee of that full committee, and so my purpose today is to take many of the ideas that we heard that made the most sense, some of which people haven't been willing to advocate, and put them into the discussion. Again, because I do not want to be a Senator who 10 years from now somebody comes up to and says: How did you let farmers get a 20-percent pay cut because of $7, $8, $9 natural gas; how did you let millions of jobs in the chemical industry, the auto industry go overseas because of $7, $8, and $9 natural gas; how did you let prices of natural gas for home heating

or cooling get so high that middle-income Americans can't even afford to heat their homes? I don't want to be that kind of Senator. So I am here today with a comprehensive proposal across the board even though some of the ideas will create that kind of controversy.

I have summarized in a few words the provisions of a 250-page piece of legislation.

We were ambushed in the United States on September 11, 2001. Even though you could argue that we might have known it was coming, terrorism wasn't new on September 11, 2001.

I remember being in a meeting with Prime Minister Rabin of Israel in 1994. At the end of a long day, I asked him: What is the greatest challenge threatening the world? And he said terrorism. That was many years before we were attacked. He was right. He was dead within a few months at the hands of terrorists within his own country. We didn't see the terrorism coming. We were ambushed, and we have paid a terrible price--in lives, in dollars. We have had to create whole new departments. We have had to interrupt the lives of thousand of national guardsmen and Army reservists and send them overseas, some to die and some to be wounded, because of terrorism. Maybe we couldn't have seen exactly that act coming, but we knew it was out there.

We are about to have another big surprise. That is to our standard of living. We are 5 to 6 percent of all the people in the world. Yet we produce a third of all the money in the world. We could wake up 10 years from now and that picture could be very changed. One way is if we lose our brainpower advantage. And we could lose it. Half of our new jobs have been created by science and technology since the end of World War II. And if we go through our budget balancing, deficit controlling exercise for the next 10 years and we don't double investments for the physical sciences and retake the lead in advanced computing, and if we don't see that we have plenty of graduate students in science and engineering, we are going to find most of the R&D will be done in other parts of the world. We are going to find most of the engineers who produce this brainpower that creates jobs in other parts of the world.

They are thinking in China, and they are thinking in India. There is no real good reason why the United States should make a third of all the money in the world every year with just 5 or 6 percent of the people, and we have so little. So they are keeping their bright people home. They are building up their universities. They are doing what we need to keep doing. That is one place we could get a big surprise.

But the other is in energy. We have taken energy for granted for a long time. I know I come from Tennessee. We have had the Tennessee Valley Authority. It has sat there since the 1930s, and it has produced reliable, low-cost electricity. Homes that have never been lit, barns that have never been lit, rural areas that have never been lit have enjoyed that. That is within my lifetime.

And then while I was Governor in the 1990s, I remember that one of the big attractions for Saturn and Nissan and the automobile industry coming into Tennessee was low-cost reliable power. But when I had a natural gas roundtable last fall in Tennessee, there was the president of Saturn, the president of Nissan, the head of the Tennessee Farm Bureau. There was the head of the University of Tennessee. They were all saying: We can't live in Tennessee on $7 natural gas. What do they do if they can't? It is very easy what they do. They don't have to have those jobs in Tennessee or South Carolina. They can move them to Germany, they can move them to Mexico, they can move them to Canada, and they are doing it every day.

And Tennessee Eastman in the upper part of east Tennessee, which we think is just like the great Smokey Mountains, has been there so long. There are 12,000 people there, real good incomes. What do they use to make chemicals there? They use natural gas.

How long are they going to be there? If we have $7 gas and they have $3 and $4 gas in other parts of the world, I am afraid they are not going to be there too long. And somebody is going to say to me: What did you do about it? At least my answer is I stood up on the floor of the Senate and said this is not the time to tweak our natural gas policy.

We do not need to sit around and wait for a big surprise on energy like we had a big surprise on September 11 on terrorism. We need an aggressive policy. We need a comprehensive policy. We need aggressive conservation. That is where we should start. We need aggressive alternative fuels. That means nuclear and that means coal gasification. We need aggressive research and development, whether it is hydrogen or whether it is solar, or whether it is methane gas hydrates. We need aggressive production. We have lots of gas in the United States. We should be using it if we have $7 gas.

For the time being, we need to create the terminals that will permit us to import enough liquefied natural gas to get that $7 price down to $6 or $5 or $4.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Johnson from South Dakota for joining me in this comprehensive aggressive approach. I thank Senator Domenici for taking the lead on an energy bill. I thank Senator Bingaman, who is the ranking Democrat on our committee, because I notice on our committee a greater sense of urgency, a greater sense of bipartisan cooperation on coming up with an energy bill this year. Our blue-collar workers, our farmers, our homeowners in Tennessee and across this country expect it from us.

Senator Johnson's and my contribution today is to introduce this comprehensive 250-page bill and to get on the table all the aggressive ideas we can think of that make sense about how to reduce the price of natural gas for workers, for farmers, and for homeowners. We hope it contributes to the discussion. We hope we find lots of these provisions in an ambitious energy bill.

I look forward to working with my colleagues, as I know Senator Johnson does, on a bipartisan basis to help lower the price of natural gas, keep our jobs, keep our homes cool and warm, and make it possible for farmers to make a living.

Natural gas prices are at record levels and the highest of any industrialized country. High natural gas prices are threatening our jobs, our farms, and hurting Americans who are trying to heat and cool their homes. Only an ambitious, comprehensive approach that both increases supply and controls demand can lower the price of natural gas and keep our growing economic recovery from becoming recent history.

This is not a question of tweaking our natural gas policy. It is time to aggressively revamp it. We need aggressive conservation, aggressive use of alternative fuels, aggressive research and development, aggressive production and for the time being, aggressive imports of liquefied natural gas.

Aggressive conservation, for example, means setting stronger appliance and equipment standards for natural gas efficiency so that a commercial air conditioner will cool the same while using less natural gas to do it.

Aggressive use of alternative fuels, for example, means fully commercializing coal gasification, starting with support for the deployment of six coal gasification plants by 2013. Coal gasification means that you burn coal to produce power but get the much lower pollution output of using natural gas.

Aggressive research and development includes investment in research of gas hydrates. Methane hydrates hold tremendous potential to provide abundant supplies of natural gas. Hydrates are ice-like solid structures consisting of water and gases, mainly methane, compressed to greater than normal densities. Coastal U.S. areas are rich in this resource. The U.S. is estimated to contain one-fourth of the world's supply.

Aggressive production means, among other changes, allowing states to selectively waive the federal moratoria on off-shore production and collect significant revenues from such production.

And aggressive importation of liquefied natural gas starts with giving the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission exclusive authority for siting and regulating LNG terminals, while still preserving states' authorities under the Coastal Zone Management Act and other acts.

In March 2002, Secretary of Energy Abraham requested that the National Petroleum Council undertake an extensive study on the natural gas crisis.

That council, a Federal advisory committee to the Secretary of Energy, produced in late 2003 one of the most extensive policy studies and recommendations on the natural gas crisis to date. Since that time, other prominent groups, such as the National Commission on Energy Policy, have also produced extensive studies on the natural gas crisis. In October 2004, I held a roundtable on the impact of soaring natural gas prices on Tennessee farmers and jobs. The Senate Energy Committee has held numerous hearings over the last 2 years and recently held an extensive natural gas roundtable on the subject on January 24, 2005. Over 100 proposals were submitted to the Senate Energy Committee on natural gas issues.

The conclusion of all of these forums has been clear.

High natural gas prices are threatening our country's economic competitiveness and costing us jobs. For example, high natural gas prices have been the equivalent of a 10 percent pay cut to American farmers.

The situation is urgent.

There are no silver bullets. We cannot conserve our way out of this problem, nor can we drill our way out of this problem. We will need to be aggressive on all fronts, in order to keep our industries competitive.

High natural gas costs are also tied to high oil prices. We need to address both natural gas and oil prices in order to lower natural gas costs.

Our country has contradictory policies on natural gas--on one hand, we encourage its use. On the other hand, we limit access to its supply. We need to amend our contradictory natural gas and environmental policies.

That's why I am introducing the ``Natural Gas Price Reduction Act.'' It is an aggressive, bold approach to tackle this issue. This 250-page legislation is an attempt to start a very difficult, but balanced, legislative discussion in the United States Senate on natural gas prices. I have taken the best ideas that I have heard in these roundtable discussions and from the various policy studies. I have met with hundreds of people in the past year discussing natural gas prices. This legislation is an attempt to be more aggressive on all areas impacting natural gas prices--energy efficiency and fuel diversity, natural gas supply, and improved infrastructure for importation of liquefied natural gas.

Half our Nation's increase in natural gas demand in the last decade has come from the power sector. So to conserve natural gas, one must not only reduce consumption of gas itself, but also of electricity. And, as I noted, since oil prices affect natural gas prices, conserving oil is also important. My bill addresses conservation in five ways.

The bill creates a 4-year national consumer education program on the urgent need for energy conservation. A statewide California effort to educate energy consumers resulted in savings of 10 percent at peak usage--the equivalent of five-and-a-half 1,000 Megawatt coal-powered power plants. My bill aims to take that effort to the entire nation.

The legislation sets higher appliance and equipment standards for natural gas efficiency. These standards have been negotiated between consumer and industry representatives and are codified in the bill. For example, the standards would require a new kitchen oven to produce the same heat while using less natural gas to do it. The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy estimates that these standards will reduce natural gas use by about 125 BCF in 2010 and 525 BCF in 2020. In addition these standards will reduce peak electric demand by about 33,500 MW in 2020, equivalent to 34 coal power plants of 1000 MW each, and will save consumers and businesses more than $60 billion.

The bill creates tax incentives and provides regulatory relief to enable manufacturing facilities to more easily produce their own power and steam from a single source--a process called cogeneration or CHP which saves money and energy while also reducing pollutants. A CHP system can produce the same electrical and thermal output at 75 percent fuel conversion efficiency as compared to 49 percent separate steam and power. This is a 50 percent gain in overall efficiency, resulting in a 35 percent fuel savings. Large industrial plants, such as International Paper, Alcoa and Eastman in my home State of Tennessee all use cogeneration in their manufacturing processes. More companies could do the same, and the bill particularly focuses on providing incentive for smaller cogeneration projects.

The Alexander bill provides incentive for public utilities to utilize their natural gas plants based on efficiency. The process of activating different power plants to meet demand during a given day is called ``dispatching.'' For example, on a hot summer day in Tennessee, the demand for electricity, for air conditioning, might be highest in the early afternoon, so then a power company would have to dispatch the most power plants to provide the energy. But during the cooler night, they might dispatch less plants since less power is needed. If power companies dispatched their most efficient plants first, this would save us a significant amount of natural gas. As you can see, the highest saving will be in the medium-term--2010-2015--but real savings continue for many years.

Our reliance on foreign oil is the silent elephant in the room when it comes to high natural gas prices. My legislation includes a provision that requires the President report to Congress annually on efforts to reduce U.S. dependence on imported petroleum 1.75 million barrels a day from projected 2013 levels, almost 10 percent. As I noted earlier, oil and gas are usually produced together; and, typically, there is a 6:1 ratio between natural gas and oil prices. Reducing dependence on foreign oil will help bring natural gas prices down.

Conservation of natural gas and related energy sources is critical to lowering prices and keeping our manufacturing and farming jobs here in the United States. But conservation alone is not enough. The second focus must be to develop alternative sources of energy. The ``Keep Manufacturing and Farming Jobs in the United States Act'' encourages the use of three alternative fuels:

The bill initiates a national coal gasification strategy. Eastman Chemical in Kingsport, TN, has been using coal gasification with a 95% availability factor for the past 20 years. Tampa Electric has successfully demonstrated large-scale coal gasification. It is time for this process to be more widely used. Coal gasification is a process whereby gas derived from burning coal is used as a source of energy or a raw material. When used in a power plant, coal gasification means that you burn coal but get the much lower pollution output of using natural gas. My legislation provides up to $2 billion in tax or other incentives to support the construction of six new coal gasification power plants. Similarly, the legislation provides up to $2 billion in assistance for industrial gasification projects. The bill also provides streamlined permitting for coal gasification facilities. Coal is an abundant resource in the United States; we should use it to produce clean energy and raw material for industrial applications.

Solar energy is another clean, alternative fuel source that could be developed further. Solar energy can be used directly for heating as well as to create electricity. To push an aggressive solar energy strategy, the Alexander legislation provides tax incentives for investment in solar power generation. Specifically, it provides businesses a tax credit for investing in geothermal or solar heating and/or power generation--10 percent heating, 25 percent for generating or displacing electricity.

My bill also contains language to invest in new technologies to use hydrogen to power fuel cell vehicles. The language in this bill mirrors language I offered in the last session of Congress on the Energy Bill that would have enacted President Bush's Hydrogenl/Fuel Cell Initiative. When I visited Japan last year, I visited a hydrogen fuel station--that looked much like a gas station--and saw fuel cell vehicles that range from small cars to SUVs. These cars not only allow us to use an alternative fuel source but are also great for the environment--their only byproduct is water vapor. The bill invests in research and development of technologies and infrastructure for 2 hydrogen and fuel cell vehicles.

Methane hydrates hold tremendous potential to provide abundant supplies of natural gas. Hydrates are ice-like solid structures consisting of water and

gases--mainly methane--compressed to greater than normal densities. Coastal US areas are rich in this resource--the U.S. is estimated to contain one-fourth of the world's supply. My bill invests $200 million over the next 4 years in research for this promising new resource, a number consistent with recommendations from the National Commission on Energy Policy.

Conserving natural gas and using alternative fuels will take us a long way to reducing gas prices and keeping jobs here in the U.S., but we must also address the other side of the equation: supply. As Energy Committee members learned at our Natural Gas Roundtable, our current policy encourages consumption of natural gas while restricting the supply. We need to stop putting unnecessary restrictions on production and supply of natural gas, and my legislation does so by addressing production off-shore and in the Rocky Mountains as well as the importation of liquid natural gas from abroad.

We have plenty of natural gas here in the U.S., we just cannot get to it. There are large fields off the coasts, especially the Atlantic, and in the Rocky Mountains. There is no reason for natural gas prices here in the U.S. to be so high when we have so much available here--if only we would use it.

Today, there are two moratoria on our outer continental shelf, OCS--a congressional moratorium and a Presidential moratorium. The Atlantic Coast--40 miles off the coast is believed to be largely natural gas- prone. The Pacific Coast is believed--to be mainly oil-prone. The Gulf of Mexico is both. Today, when production is greater than 9 miles offshore, a State that has oil and gas production gets zero percent of the production revenues. This is radically different than onshore production; on Federal lands, States get 50 percent of the production revenues. Alaska gets 90 percent of the production revenues. In order to have a constructive dialogue on OCS production, the right framework needs to be established.

My legislation provides the Department of the Interior with the legal authority to issue natural gas only leases. Currently, Interior can only issue combination gas and oil leases. Since there is greater hesitation about the environmental impact of producing oil off-shore, issuing natural gas-only leases may alleviate some concerns.

It also instructs the Secretary of the Interior to draw the state boundary between Alabama and Florida regarding Lease 181--a disputed area off the coast of both states in the Gulf of Mexico in which Alabama may wish to permit production while Florida may not. The boundaries shall be drawn using established international law. Under my bill, portions of Lease 181, which are not in the state of Florida and greater than 30 miles off of the coast of Alabama, shall be leased by December 31, 2007. However, of those portions of Lease 181 that are in the State of Florida, the State of Florida may keep the moratoria. Leasing would not be allowed to interfere with U.S. military operations in the Gulf Coast.

Finally, under the bill, States will have the authority to request studies of natural gas resources off their coasts and be permitted to waive Federal moratoria on offshore production. The states shall not have the authority to lift the moratoria at National Marine Sanctuaries or National Wildlife Refuge Area. The State of Virginia recently engaged on this issue, and the state ought to have the ability to license off-shore production--especially if it is far enough off-shore that you cannot even see it from land. My bill also allows States to collect significant revenue from such production, and designates that a portion of revenues also go to a conservation royalty. The conservation royalty would be shared equally by the Federal land and water conservation fund, state land and water conservation fund and wildlife grants.

Importing liquefied natural gas--LNG--requires the infrastructure to receive it. LNG comes to the U.S. by ship, and terminals to receive these ships and unload LNG must be built and appropriate infrastructure developed to transport gas from those terminals to users across the country.

My bill streamlines the development of offshore liquefied natural gas terminals. The siting of LNG terminals has become a difficult issue since we all want cheaper natural gas, but no one seems to want an LNG terminal in ``their backyard.'' The Alexander legislation gives FERC clear authority for regulating liquid natural gas terminals, but, unlike a related House bill, still preserves States' authorities under the Coastal Zone Management Act and other acts. I hope this will provide some balance so that LNG terminals can be sited, but environmental concerns will play a significant role in choosing their sites. In an effort to speed the siting of pipelines that allow natural gas to reach all parts of the country, the bill also requires that FERC grant or deny a terminal or pipeline application within one year.

Our country is facing an energy crisis. We are consuming more and more electricity. Gasoline prices are poised to reach all time highs. The price of oil is up. And so, too, is the price of natural gas.

The bill I introduce today, the ``Natural Gas Price Reduction Act,'' addresses high natural gas prices. Natural gas is not just used for heating homes, a source of electricity, it is a raw material for industries, and it is an important component in fertilizers used by farmers. High natural gas prices have cost farmers a 10-percent pay cut and are shipping manufacturing and chemical jobs overseas. We can not afford to let this problem fester any longer.

Bold action is required, and that is what my legislation provides. This bill takes a comprehensive approach to addressing the problem by encouraging conservation, developing alternative fuel sources, and reducing roadblocks to the production and importation of natural gas. I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. President, today I am introducing the Natural Gas Price Reduction Act of 2005 and the ``Tax Provisions for Natural Gas Price Reduction Act of 2005.'' I send to the desk two pieces of legislation. One is the substantive provisions of the bill and one is the tax provisions of the bill.

Mr. President, I offer the legislation on behalf of myself and the Senator from South Dakota, Mr. Johnson, who is the lead Democratic sponsor on the legislation. I do so with appreciation to the chairman of our Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Chairman Pete Domenici, and the staff of that committee who have worked very closely with us on the development of this comprehensive piece of legislation, and with thanks to my own staff, Sharon Segner, who has worked on it for several months.

This is a piece of legislation to address aggressively and comprehensively the rising cost of natural gas in the United States. This is legislation for the blue-collar worker, for the American farmer, and for the American homeowner.

Natural gas prices in the United States are at record levels. We have gone from having the lowest natural gas prices in the industrial world to the highest. These high prices are threatening millions of our jobs. Our farmers are getting a 10-percent pay cut. Homeowners are having a hard time paying their heating and cooling bills because of our contradictory policies.

Our policies boil down to this: We are restricting the supply of natural gas, and we are encouraging the use of natural gas. You do not have to go very far in an economics class at the University of Oklahoma or the University of Tennessee to know that if you restrict supply and encourage demand, the inevitable result is higher prices. And higher prices is a very serious problem for U.S. workers, U.S. homeowners, and U.S. farmers.

Only an ambitious and comprehensive approach that both increases supply and controls demand can lower the price of natural gas and keep our economy growing. This is not a question of tweaking our natural gas policy. It is time, aggressively, to revamp it. We need aggressive conservation. We need aggressive use of alternative fuels. We need aggressive research and development. We need aggressive production. And, for the time being, we need aggressive importation of liquefied natural gas from other parts of the world.

Here on this chart is an idea of where we are today. This is the United States of America: $7 per unit for natural gas--the highest in the industrialized world. Until recently, we had the lowest natural gas prices in the world.

What that means is large parts of our industries--the chemical industry, for example--were built on the idea of $1.50 or $2 for natural gas, but today it is $7.

A million Americans work in those blue-collar manufacturing jobs in every State in our country. Now, if they are paying $7 here, and it is $5.55 in Canada and $5.15 in the United Kingdom and $2.65 in Turkey and $1.70 in the Ukraine, where do you suppose,

though, a million blue-collar jobs are going to be 5 years from now, if we do not do something about the $7 price? They are not going to be in the United States. They are going to be moving out of the United States, to the United Kingdom, to Germany, to the Ukraine, to other parts of the world. And people are going to be writing their Congressmen and saying: Why didn't you do something?

So here is what we can do. By aggressive conservation, I mean setting stronger appliance and equipment standards for natural gas efficiency so that a commercial air conditioner will cool the same while using less natural gas doing it. Those standards have been generally agreed upon by environmental groups with the industry. If they were put in place, by a rough estimate, they might save the equivalent energy that could be produced by 30 or 35 powerplants.

By aggressive use of alternative fuels, I mean, for example, fully commercializing coal gasification. Coal gasification is taking this abundant supply of coal we have in the United States--we are the ``OPEC,'' the ``Saudi Arabia'' of coal; we have a 400- or 500-year supply--and finding a clean way to use it instead of importing oil from a part of the world where people are blowing each other up.

That means starting with support so we can have six coal gasification plants in this country by the year 2013. Coal gasification means, you burn the coal to create gas, and then you burn the gas to create power. If we can do that commercially, we will not only be passing a clean energy bill, we will be passing a clean air bill, because if you do that, you remove most of the mercury, most of the nitrogen, most of the sulfur. And by additional research, we may be able to find a way to recapture the carbon that is produced and put that in the ground and solve the carbon problems that a lot of people are talking about around the world.

In addition to helping ourselves, we would help ourselves by helping others. China and India and other parts of the world are building hundreds of coal plants. We would much rather them build a coal gasification plant, one that is clean and does not contribute to air pollution. Because if China and India and Brazil build dirty coal plants, that air blows around the world, and it blows into Tennessee and it blows into South Carolina. It blows into Oklahoma.

So aggressive alternative fuels is a part of a natural gas supply. Aggressive research and development includes investment and research in gas hydrates. Gas hydrates is gas that is in the ground. Methane hydrates hold tremendous potential to provide abundant supplies of natural gas. Hydrates are like ice solid structures, consisting of water and gases, mainly methane, compressed to greater than normal densities.

Coastal U.S. areas are rich in this resource. The United States is estimated to contain one-fourth of the world's supply. We need to find a way to use that gas so we do not have $7 per unit natural gas prices. That sends millions of jobs overseas. That cuts the income of farmers. And that raises home heating prices and cooling prices for residential Americans.

Aggressive production means, among other things, allowing States to selectively waive the Federal moratoria on offshore production of gas and collect significant revenues from such production. Let me give you an example. Within the last few weeks, the legislature of Virginia decided it might like to explore the idea of drilling for gas offshore. Now, why would Virginia want to do that? Because there is probably a lot of gas offshore. What would that mean for Virginia? Well, they could put a gas rig out in the ocean, beyond 20 miles, so nobody in Virginia or North Carolina could see it, run a pipeline underground to Virginia, and take their share of the revenues. And they can lower taxes in Virginia and put the rest of the money in a trust fund to build the best colleges and universities in America. That is what they could do in Virginia.

If Tennessee had a coastline, and I were Governor of Tennessee, that is what I would be asking the Congress to let me do.

I think as other Governors and other legislatures and other people look at Texas and Louisiana and Alabama and see what they are doing and decide that they can in an environmentally sensitive way exercise a State option to drill for gas in Federal waters so far out you can't see it, that they will find that a good option because it will help lower the price of gas. It can build up the schools and keep taxes down, and it can avoid other worse forms of energy.

For example, you would have to have 46 square miles of windmills, these things that are 100 yards tall, in order to equal one gas rig that you couldn't see out in the ocean. This is a State option. Aggressive importation of liquefied natural gas starts with giving the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission exclusive authority for siting and regulating what we call LNG terminals. This means importing liquefied natural gas from other parts of the world. There is a lot of it around the world. They freeze it and put it in tankers, and they bring it here and put it in our pipelines, and then we have it.

That seems like a pretty big waste of effort when we have plenty of natural gas here in the United States that we don't have access to. But if we want an adequate supply of natural gas, we are going to have to import some from around the world, and that means we are going to need terminals to which to bring it. Some of them may be offshore. They might be 10, 12, 14 miles offshore. Some of them, like the four we have today, may need to be onshore. There is no silver bullet. There is no single answer. That is why we need aggressive conservation. If, for example, the United States adopted the conservation attitudes towards natural gas that California did a few years ago, it might equal what 50 powerplants could produce in the United States. If that is so, we ought to do it today. That would begin to bring this $7 figure down.

Aggressive use of alternative fuels such as coal gasification. I also would say nuclear power is the most obvious alternative fuel to natural gas. If we had more nuclear power, we would use less natural gas. In our country today, what do you suppose we are using to create electricity when we need more electricity even though the cost of it is $7 a unit, the highest in the world? Natural gas, because natural gas plants can be built for a few hundred million dollars, and we have created an environment where we can't use nuclear.

We haven't built a new nuclear plant since the 1970s, even though we invented the technology, even though France has 80 percent of its power now produced by nuclear power, even though Japan builds a new nuclear plant every year or so. We invented it. Our Navy has operated nuclear reactors since the 1950s without ever having a single accident. It is a clean, obvious alternative to $7 natural gas, and we haven't built a plant since the 1970s. So we need to think seriously about aggressive conservation, aggressive use of alternative fuels, aggressive research and development for solar, for methane hydrates, aggressive production, and that includes giving States the option of deciding whether they would like to drill offshore and take some of the revenues and put some of the revenues into a conservation fund, and aggressive importation of liquefied natural gas from overseas at least for the time being.

In March of 2002, the Secretary of Energy requested that the National Petroleum Council undertake an extensive study on the natural gas crisis. That advisory council produced a study. It talked about the results I have described. Our Senate Energy Committee, under the chairman, Senator Domenici, has paid a lot of attention to that report. Senator Domenici hosted what we called a natural gas roundtable that was well attended by Senators and went on for 3 or 4 hours. There were more than 100 proposals presented.

I am chairman of the subcommittee of that full committee, and so my purpose today is to take many of the ideas that we heard that made the most sense, some of which people haven't been willing to advocate, and put them into the discussion. Again, because I do not want to be a Senator who 10 years from now somebody comes up to and says: How did you let farmers get a 20-percent pay cut because of $7, $8, $9 natural gas; how did you let millions of jobs in the chemical industry, the auto industry go overseas because of $7, $8, and $9 natural gas; how did you let prices of natural gas for home heating

or cooling get so high that middle-income Americans can't even afford to heat their homes? I don't want to be that kind of Senator. So I am here today with a comprehensive proposal across the board even though some of the ideas will create that kind of controversy.

I have summarized in a few words the provisions of a 250-page piece of legislation.

We were ambushed in the United States on September 11, 2001. Even though you could argue that we might have known it was coming, terrorism wasn't new on September 11, 2001.

I remember being in a meeting with Prime Minister Rabin of Israel in 1994. At the end of a long day, I asked him: What is the greatest challenge threatening the world? And he said terrorism. That was many years before we were attacked. He was right. He was dead within a few months at the hands of terrorists within his own country. We didn't see the terrorism coming. We were ambushed, and we have paid a terrible price--in lives, in dollars. We have had to create whole new departments. We have had to interrupt the lives of thousand of national guardsmen and Army reservists and send them overseas, some to die and some to be wounded, because of terrorism. Maybe we couldn't have seen exactly that act coming, but we knew it was out there.

We are about to have another big surprise. That is to our standard of living. We are 5 to 6 percent of all the people in the world. Yet we produce a third of all the money in the world. We could wake up 10 years from now and that picture could be very changed. One way is if we lose our brainpower advantage. And we could lose it. Half of our new jobs have been created by science and technology since the end of World War II. And if we go through our budget balancing, deficit controlling exercise for the next 10 years and we don't double investments for the physical sciences and retake the lead in advanced computing, and if we don't see that we have plenty of graduate students in science and engineering, we are going to find most of the R&D will be done in other parts of the world. We are going to find most of the engineers who produce this brainpower that creates jobs in other parts of the world.

They are thinking in China, and they are thinking in India. There is no real good reason why the United States should make a third of all the money in the world every year with just 5 or 6 percent of the people, and we have so little. So they are keeping their bright people home. They are building up their universities. They are doing what we need to keep doing. That is one place we could get a big surprise.

But the other is in energy. We have taken energy for granted for a long time. I know I come from Tennessee. We have had the Tennessee Valley Authority. It has sat there since the 1930s, and it has produced reliable, low-cost electricity. Homes that have never been lit, barns that have never been lit, rural areas that have never been lit have enjoyed that. That is within my lifetime.

And then while I was Governor in the 1990s, I remember that one of the big attractions for Saturn and Nissan and the automobile industry coming into Tennessee was low-cost reliable power. But when I had a natural gas roundtable last fall in Tennessee, there was the president of Saturn, the president of Nissan, the head of the Tennessee Farm Bureau. There was the head of the University of Tennessee. They were all saying: We can't live in Tennessee on $7 natural gas. What do they do if they can't? It is very easy what they do. They don't have to have those jobs in Tennessee or South Carolina. They can move them to Germany, they can move them to Mexico, they can move them to Canada, and they are doing it every day.

And Tennessee Eastman in the upper part of east Tennessee, which we think is just like the great Smokey Mountains, has been there so long. There are 12,000 people there, real good incomes. What do they use to make chemicals there? They use natural gas.

How long are they going to be there? If we have $7 gas and they have $3 and $4 gas in other parts of the world, I am afraid they are not going to be there too long. And somebody is going to say to me: What did you do about it? At least my answer is I stood up on the floor of the Senate and said this is not the time to tweak our natural gas policy.

We do not need to sit around and wait for a big surprise on energy like we had a big surprise on September 11 on terrorism. We need an aggressive policy. We need a comprehensive policy. We need aggressive conservation. That is where we should start. We need aggressive alternative fuels. That means nuclear and that means coal gasification. We need aggressive research and development, whether it is hydrogen or whether it is solar, or whether it is methane gas hydrates. We need aggressive production. We have lots of gas in the United States. We should be using it if we have $7 gas.

For the time being, we need to create the terminals that will permit us to import enough liquefied natural gas to get that $7 price down to $6 or $5 or $4.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Johnson from South Dakota for joining me in this comprehensive aggressive approach. I thank Senator Domenici for taking the lead on an energy bill. I thank Senator Bingaman, who is the ranking Democrat on our committee, because I notice on our committee a greater sense of urgency, a greater sense of bipartisan cooperation on coming up with an energy bill this year. Our blue-collar workers, our farmers, our homeowners in Tennessee and across this country expect it from us.

Senator Johnson's and my contribution today is to introduce this comprehensive 250-page bill and to get on the table all the aggressive ideas we can think of that make sense about how to reduce the price of natural gas for workers, for farmers, and for homeowners. We hope it contributes to the discussion. We hope we find lots of these provisions in an ambitious energy bill.

I look forward to working with my colleagues, as I know Senator Johnson does, on a bipartisan basis to help lower the price of natural gas, keep our jobs, keep our homes cool and warm, and make it possible for farmers to make a living.

Natural gas prices are at record levels and the highest of any industrialized country. High natural gas prices are threatening our jobs, our farms, and hurting Americans who are trying to heat and cool their homes. Only an ambitious, comprehensive approach that both increases supply and controls demand can lower the price of natural gas and keep our growing economic recovery from becoming recent history.

This is not a question of tweaking our natural gas policy. It is time to aggressively revamp it. We need aggressive conservation, aggressive use of alternative fuels, aggressive research and development, aggressive production and for the time being, aggressive imports of liquefied natural gas.

Aggressive conservation, for example, means setting stronger appliance and equipment standards for natural gas efficiency so that a commercial air conditioner will cool the same while using less natural gas to do it.

Aggressive use of alternative fuels, for example, means fully commercializing coal gasification, starting with support for the deployment of six coal gasification plants by 2013. Coal gasification means that you burn coal to produce power but get the much lower pollution output of using natural gas.

Aggressive research and development includes investment in research of gas hydrates. Methane hydrates hold tremendous potential to provide abundant supplies of natural gas. Hydrates are ice-like solid structures consisting of water and gases, mainly methane, compressed to greater than normal densities. Coastal U.S. areas are rich in this resource. The U.S. is estimated to contain one-fourth of the world's supply.

Aggressive production means, among other changes, allowing states to selectively waive the federal moratoria on off-shore production and collect significant revenues from such production.

And aggressive importation of liquefied natural gas starts with giving the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission exclusive authority for siting and regulating LNG terminals, while still preserving states' authorities under the Coastal Zone Management Act and other acts.

In March 2002, Secretary of Energy Abraham requested that the National Petroleum Council undertake an extensive study on the natural gas crisis.

That council, a Federal advisory committee to the Secretary of Energy, produced in late 2003 one of the most extensive policy studies and recommendations on the natural gas crisis to date. Since that time, other prominent groups, such as the National Commission on Energy Policy, have also produced extensive studies on the natural gas crisis. In October 2004, I held a roundtable on the impact of soaring natural gas prices on Tennessee farmers and jobs. The Senate Energy Committee has held numerous hearings over the last 2 years and recently held an extensive natural gas roundtable on the subject on January 24, 2005. Over 100 proposals were submitted to the Senate Energy Committee on natural gas issues.

The conclusion of all of these forums has been clear.

High natural gas prices are threatening our country's economic competitiveness and costing us jobs. For example, high natural gas prices have been the equivalent of a 10 percent pay cut to American farmers.

The situation is urgent.

There are no silver bullets. We cannot conserve our way out of this problem, nor can we drill our way out of this problem. We will need to be aggressive on all fronts, in order to keep our industries competitive.

High natural gas costs are also tied to high oil prices. We need to address both natural gas and oil prices in order to lower natural gas costs.

Our country has contradictory policies on natural gas--on one hand, we encourage its use. On the other hand, we limit access to its supply. We need to amend our contradictory natural gas and environmental policies.

That's why I am introducing the ``Natural Gas Price Reduction Act.'' It is an aggressive, bold approach to tackle this issue. This 250-page legislation is an attempt to start a very difficult, but balanced, legislative discussion in the United States Senate on natural gas prices. I have taken the best ideas that I have heard in these roundtable discussions and from the various policy studies. I have met with hundreds of people in the past year discussing natural gas prices. This legislation is an attempt to be more aggressive on all areas impacting natural gas prices--energy efficiency and fuel diversity, natural gas supply, and improved infrastructure for importation of liquefied natural gas.

Half our Nation's increase in natural gas demand in the last decade has come from the power sector. So to conserve natural gas, one must not only reduce consumption of gas itself, but also of electricity. And, as I noted, since oil prices affect natural gas prices, conserving oil is also important. My bill addresses conservation in five ways.

The bill creates a 4-year national consumer education program on the urgent need for energy conservation. A statewide California effort to educate energy consumers resulted in savings of 10 percent at peak usage--the equivalent of five-and-a-half 1,000 Megawatt coal-powered power plants. My bill aims to take that effort to the entire nation.

The legislation sets higher appliance and equipment standards for natural gas efficiency. These standards have been negotiated between consumer and industry representatives and are codified in the bill. For example, the standards would require a new kitchen oven to produce the same heat while using less natural gas to do it. The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy estimates that these standards will reduce natural gas use by about 125 BCF in 2010 and 525 BCF in 2020. In addition these standards will reduce peak electric demand by about 33,500 MW in 2020, equivalent to 34 coal power plants of 1000 MW each, and will save consumers and businesses more than $60 billion.

The bill creates tax incentives and provides regulatory relief to enable manufacturing facilities to more easily produce their own power and steam from a single source--a process called cogeneration or CHP which saves money and energy while also reducing pollutants. A CHP system can produce the same electrical and thermal output at 75 percent fuel conversion efficiency as compared to 49 percent separate steam and power. This is a 50 percent gain in overall efficiency, resulting in a 35 percent fuel savings. Large industrial plants, such as International Paper, Alcoa and Eastman in my home State of Tennessee all use cogeneration in their manufacturing processes. More companies could do the same, and the bill particularly focuses on providing incentive for smaller cogeneration projects.

The Alexander bill provides incentive for public utilities to utilize their natural gas plants based on efficiency. The process of activating different power plants to meet demand during a given day is called ``dispatching.'' For example, on a hot summer day in Tennessee, the demand for electricity, for air conditioning, might be highest in the early afternoon, so then a power company would have to dispatch the most power plants to provide the energy. But during the cooler night, they might dispatch less plants since less power is needed. If power companies dispatched their most efficient plants first, this would save us a significant amount of natural gas. As you can see, the highest saving will be in the medium-term--2010-2015--but real savings continue for many years.

Our reliance on foreign oil is the silent elephant in the room when it comes to high natural gas prices. My legislation includes a provision that requires the President report to Congress annually on efforts to reduce U.S. dependence on imported petroleum 1.75 million barrels a day from projected 2013 levels, almost 10 percent. As I noted earlier, oil and gas are usually produced together; and, typically, there is a 6:1 ratio between natural gas and oil prices. Reducing dependence on foreign oil will help bring natural gas prices down.

Conservation of natural gas and related energy sources is critical to lowering prices and keeping our manufacturing and farming jobs here in the United States. But conservation alone is not enough. The second focus must be to develop alternative sources of energy. The ``Keep Manufacturing and Farming Jobs in the United States Act'' encourages the use of three alternative fuels:

The bill initiates a national coal gasification strategy. Eastman Chemical in Kingsport, TN, has been using coal gasification with a 95% availability factor for the past 20 years. Tampa Electric has successfully demonstrated large-scale coal gasification. It is time for this process to be more widely used. Coal gasification is a process whereby gas derived from burning coal is used as a source of energy or a raw material. When used in a power plant, coal gasification means that you burn coal but get the much lower pollution output of using natural gas. My legislation provides up to $2 billion in tax or other incentives to support the construction of six new coal gasification power plants. Similarly, the legislation provides up to $2 billion in assistance for industrial gasification projects. The bill also provides streamlined permitting for coal gasification facilities. Coal is an abundant resource in the United States; we should use it to produce clean energy and raw material for industrial applications.

Solar energy is another clean, alternative fuel source that could be developed further. Solar energy can be used directly for heating as well as to create electricity. To push an aggressive solar energy strategy, the Alexander legislation provides tax incentives for investment in solar power generation. Specifically, it provides businesses a tax credit for investing in geothermal or solar heating and/or power generation--10 percent heating, 25 percent for generating or displacing electricity.

My bill also contains language to invest in new technologies to use hydrogen to power fuel cell vehicles. The language in this bill mirrors language I offered in the last session of Congress on the Energy Bill that would have enacted President Bush's Hydrogenl/Fuel Cell Initiative. When I visited Japan last year, I visited a hydrogen fuel station--that looked much like a gas station--and saw fuel cell vehicles that range from small cars to SUVs. These cars not only allow us to use an alternative fuel source but are also great for the environment--their only byproduct is water vapor. The bill invests in research and development of technologies and infrastructure for 2 hydrogen and fuel cell vehicles.

Methane hydrates hold tremendous potential to provide abundant supplies of natural gas. Hydrates are ice-like solid structures consisting of water and

gases--mainly methane--compressed to greater than normal densities. Coastal US areas are rich in this resource--the U.S. is estimated to contain one-fourth of the world's supply. My bill invests $200 million over the next 4 years in research for this promising new resource, a number consistent with recommendations from the National Commission on Energy Policy.

Conserving natural gas and using alternative fuels will take us a long way to reducing gas prices and keeping jobs here in the U.S., but we must also address the other side of the equation: supply. As Energy Committee members learned at our Natural Gas Roundtable, our current policy encourages consumption of natural gas while restricting the supply. We need to stop putting unnecessary restrictions on production and supply of natural gas, and my legislation does so by addressing production off-shore and in the Rocky Mountains as well as the importation of liquid natural gas from abroad.

We have plenty of natural gas here in the U.S., we just cannot get to it. There are large fields off the coasts, especially the Atlantic, and in the Rocky Mountains. There is no reason for natural gas prices here in the U.S. to be so high when we have so much available here--if only we would use it.

Today, there are two moratoria on our outer continental shelf, OCS--a congressional moratorium and a Presidential moratorium. The Atlantic Coast--40 miles off the coast is believed to be largely natural gas- prone. The Pacific Coast is believed--to be mainly oil-prone. The Gulf of Mexico is both. Today, when production is greater than 9 miles offshore, a State that has oil and gas production gets zero percent of the production revenues. This is radically different than onshore production; on Federal lands, States get 50 percent of the production revenues. Alaska gets 90 percent of the production revenues. In order to have a constructive dialogue on OCS production, the right framework needs to be established.

My legislation provides the Department of the Interior with the legal authority to issue natural gas only leases. Currently, Interior can only issue combination gas and oil leases. Since there is greater hesitation about the environmental impact of producing oil off-shore, issuing natural gas-only leases may alleviate some concerns.

It also instructs the Secretary of the Interior to draw the state boundary between Alabama and Florida regarding Lease 181--a disputed area off the coast of both states in the Gulf of Mexico in which Alabama may wish to permit production while Florida may not. The boundaries shall be drawn using established international law. Under my bill, portions of Lease 181, which are not in the state of Florida and greater than 30 miles off of the coast of Alabama, shall be leased by December 31, 2007. However, of those portions of Lease 181 that are in the State of Florida, the State of Florida may keep the moratoria. Leasing would not be allowed to interfere with U.S. military operations in the Gulf Coast.

Finally, under the bill, States will have the authority to request studies of natural gas resources off their coasts and be permitted to waive Federal moratoria on offshore production. The states shall not have the authority to lift the moratoria at National Marine Sanctuaries or National Wildlife Refuge Area. The State of Virginia recently engaged on this issue, and the state ought to have the ability to license off-shore production--especially if it is far enough off-shore that you cannot even see it from land. My bill also allows States to collect significant revenue from such production, and designates that a portion of revenues also go to a conservation royalty. The conservation royalty would be shared equally by the Federal land and water conservation fund, state land and water conservation fund and wildlife grants.

Importing liquefied natural gas--LNG--requires the infrastructure to receive it. LNG comes to the U.S. by ship, and terminals to receive these ships and unload LNG must be built and appropriate infrastructure developed to transport gas from those terminals to users across the country.

My bill streamlines the development of offshore liquefied natural gas terminals. The siting of LNG terminals has become a difficult issue since we all want cheaper natural gas, but no one seems to want an LNG terminal in ``their backyard.'' The Alexander legislation gives FERC clear authority for regulating liquid natural gas terminals, but, unlike a related House bill, still preserves States' authorities under the Coastal Zone Management Act and other acts. I hope this will provide some balance so that LNG terminals can be sited, but environmental concerns will play a significant role in choosing their sites. In an effort to speed the siting of pipelines that allow natural gas to reach all parts of the country, the bill also requires that FERC grant or deny a terminal or pipeline application within one year.

Our country is facing an energy crisis. We are consuming more and more electricity. Gasoline prices are poised to reach all time highs. The price of oil is up. And so, too, is the price of natural gas.

The bill I introduce today, the ``Natural Gas Price Reduction Act,'' addresses high natural gas prices. Natural gas is not just used for heating homes, a source of electricity, it is a raw material for industries, and it is an important component in fertilizers used by farmers. High natural gas prices have cost farmers a 10-percent pay cut and are shipping manufacturing and chemical jobs overseas. We can not afford to let this problem fester any longer.

Bold action is required, and that is what my legislation provides. This bill takes a comprehensive approach to addressing the problem by encouraging conservation, developing alternative fuel sources, and reducing roadblocks to the production and importation of natural gas. I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. President, today I am reintroducing the Prematurity Research Expansion and Education for Mothers who deliver Infants Early Act, or PREEMIE Act. This bipartisan bill expands research into the causes and prevention of prematurity, babies born 3 weeks or more early, and increases education and support services related to prematurity. I am pleased that Senator Dodd is once again my partner on this legislation and we hope the Senate will pass the PREEMIE Act in this Congress.

In June 2004, the Subcommittee on Children and Families, which I chaired, held a hearing to learn about the problem of premature birth. Unfortunately, Tennessee has the fourth highest rate of premature birth in the country. Fourteen percent of Tennessee babies are born prematurely. In an average week in Tennessee, 210 babies are born prematurely. Premature infants are 14 times more likely to die in the first year of life. It is the No. 1 cause of infant death in the first month of life. Premature babies who survive may suffer lifelong consequences including: cerebral palsy, mental retardation, chronic lung disease, and vision and hearing loss.

In February 2004, the National Center for Health Statistics, NCHS, reported the first increase in the U.S. infant mortality rate since 1958, from 6.8 infant deaths per 1,000 live births in 2001 to 7.0 in 2000. This increase is extremely disturbing because the infant mortality rate is a measure of the health of society. NCHS subsequently reported that 61 percent of this increase in infant mortality was due to an increase in the birth of premature and low birthweight babies. Almost half the cases of premature birth have no known cause--any pregnant woman is at risk. We must address this issue.

Finally, this is a costly problem. In 2002, the estimated charges for hospital stays for infants with a diagnosis of preterm birth or low birthweight, LBW, were $15.5 billion. The average hospital charge per infant stay with a principal diagnosis of prematurity/LBW was $79,000, with an average hospital stay of 24.2 days. Hospital charges for newborn stays without complications averaged $1,500 in 2002, with an average hospital stay of 2.0 days. Employers carry much of the burden. Almost half of that $15.5 billion was billed to employers or other private insurers, according to the March of Dimes. The other half is billed to Medicaid.

As a nation, we must address this problem. The PREEMIE Act calls for expanding Federal research related to preterm labor and delivery and increasing public and provider education and support services. It is supported by the March of Dimes, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses, and many others.

I hope my colleagues will join me in the fight to ensure a healthy start for all of American's children by cosponsoring and working with me for passage of the PREEMIE Act during this Congress.

Mr. President, today I am reintroducing the Prematurity Research Expansion and Education for Mothers who deliver Infants Early Act, or PREEMIE Act. This bipartisan bill expands research into the causes and prevention of prematurity, babies born 3 weeks or more early, and increases education and support services related to prematurity. I am pleased that Senator Dodd is once again my partner on this legislation and we hope the Senate will pass the PREEMIE Act in this Congress.

In June 2004, the Subcommittee on Children and Families, which I chaired, held a hearing to learn about the problem of premature birth. Unfortunately, Tennessee has the fourth highest rate of premature birth in the country. Fourteen percent of Tennessee babies are born prematurely. In an average week in Tennessee, 210 babies are born prematurely. Premature infants are 14 times more likely to die in the first year of life. It is the No. 1 cause of infant death in the first month of life. Premature babies who survive may suffer lifelong consequences including: cerebral palsy, mental retardation, chronic lung disease, and vision and hearing loss.

In February 2004, the National Center for Health Statistics, NCHS, reported the first increase in the U.S. infant mortality rate since 1958, from 6.8 infant deaths per 1,000 live births in 2001 to 7.0 in 2000. This increase is extremely disturbing because the infant mortality rate is a measure of the health of society. NCHS subsequently reported that 61 percent of this increase in infant mortality was due to an increase in the birth of premature and low birthweight babies. Almost half the cases of premature birth have no known cause--any pregnant woman is at risk. We must address this issue.

Finally, this is a costly problem. In 2002, the estimated charges for hospital stays for infants with a diagnosis of preterm birth or low birthweight, LBW, were $15.5 billion. The average hospital charge per infant stay with a principal diagnosis of prematurity/LBW was $79,000, with an average hospital stay of 24.2 days. Hospital charges for newborn stays without complications averaged $1,500 in 2002, with an average hospital stay of 2.0 days. Employers carry much of the burden. Almost half of that $15.5 billion was billed to employers or other private insurers, according to the March of Dimes. The other half is billed to Medicaid.

As a nation, we must address this problem. The PREEMIE Act calls for expanding Federal research related to preterm labor and delivery and increasing public and provider education and support services. It is supported by the March of Dimes, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses, and many others.

I hope my colleagues will join me in the fight to ensure a healthy start for all of American's children by cosponsoring and working with me for passage of the PREEMIE Act during this Congress.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Texas. I join with him in his thoughts about Pope John Paul II and the thoughts of our other colleagues that have been expressed. He was a man of sincerity and great character. He traveled more than any other Pope. He traveled the United States more than any other Pope. He carried a message of peace. He carried a message of charity. He had a profound impact on the world and his native country of Poland. It can fairly be said that Poland would not have overthrown communism, at least not when it did, had it not been for Pope John Paul.

I remember in 1987, our family had lived in Australia for 6 months, three teenagers and a 7-year-old, and we came home from around the world in a little different way. We took a train from Moscow to Paris. This was before the Berlin Wall came down. All of us, our different ages in our family, remember how in Poland the churches were open and vibrant, they were active, and people were there. In Russia, they were museums. We thought about that. We think about that today as we

reflect back on the role of this man who was an example for each of us and who deserves the world's attention, the world's prayers, and the world's acclaim.

Mr. President, I have remarks that I would like to make on two different subjects. One has to do with a visit by a delegation of Senators led by the Democratic leader, the Senator from Nevada, Mr. Reid, and then a brief remark about the proposal that we use the supplemental appropriations bill to turn State driver's licenses into national identification cards.

First I will comment on the 8-day congressional delegation that I was a part of over the last recess. It was led, as I said, by the Democratic leader. Let me say first how much I appreciate the style of his leadership. He is the Democratic leader, and occasionally there is a partisan word in this place, but this was a bipartisan delegation. We visited eight countries in 8 days, including Jerusalem, Israel, the Palestinian territories--visited leaders of the Palestinian Authority-- we visited Kuwait, Iraq, Georgia, and the Ukraine. In France, we received a NATO briefing from our ranking general.

I think it is important for this body to know that in all of his public and private comments, the Democratic leader spoke for the administration of the U.S. Government. In other words, whatever his private views of policy difference might have been, he did not express those outside of this country. I was not surprised by that--I think that is the way it ought to be--but I was impressed by that. I was impressed by that part of his attitude, by the bipartisan quality of the delegation, and by the hard work he expected of those on the delegation. I appreciated the chance to be included, and I appreciated his leadership.

As I am sure the Senator from North Carolina, who occupies the chair, knows, and the Senator from Texas feels the same way, there are so many thousands of people--in my case, Tennesseans--serving in Iraq and Kuwait that I almost felt at home visiting there last week. My wife Honey and I were greeted at the Kuwait Airport by an Army reservist who is publisher of the Dyersburg News and copublisher of the State Gazette. We had dinner with the 844th Engineer Combat Battalion, which is based in Knoxville, which includes more than 500 Tennesseans. One of those reservists is SGT Amanda Bunch, a nursing assistant at Asbury Acres in Maryville, my hometown where my mother and grandfather lived for a few years. The school superintendent from Athens, just down the road from my hometown; the president of the Lexington Rotary Club in west Tennessee, a physician; three Blount County deputies, from my home county--all among those serving in the Tennessee National Guard.

I may have felt at home, but as LTC Don Dinello, who commands the 844th, reminded me, no place there is entirely safe. A few days earlier, a patrol had discovered explosives on a bridge over which the colonel's soldiers might have traveled. Thankfully, the explosive device was disarmed before anyone was hurt.

In Baghdad, I ate lunch with three marines who were recent high school graduates from Savannah, Manchester, and Tullahoma, TN. Their mission is to guard the U.S. Embassy. I asked one of these young men what a U.S. Senator should know about their work. Andrew Pottier of Savannah told me:

Not much to know, sir. They shoot at us and we just shoot

them back.

Not even in the Green Zone, where several thousand Americans work every day, was it entirely safe. The protocol officer greeted us wearing a nice green dress covered by a flack jacket. When one of the members of our delegation, a female Senator, went to the ladies restroom, a female soldier with an AK-47 went first, inspecting every stall.

I was reminded just a couple of days ago how dangerous it can be when I went to the funeral in Sevier County of SGT Paul W. Thomason, III, the first member of our National Guard unit, the 278th, to be killed.

It is very difficult to grasp the reality of the security situation in Iraq. It is hard to grasp it from television. On the one hand, there is the danger I just described. On the other hand, our casualties are significantly down. Twelve of the 17 Iraqi provinces, we were told by our commanders there, are relatively without incident. An average of 800 supply trucks convoy each day from Kuwait to the edge of Baghdad. Since August, there have been 166 attacks on these trucks, killing 2 soldiers.

Forty percent of those serving in Iraq and Kuwait are reservists or guardsmen. Several thousand of them are from Tennessee. Most left behind families, jobs, and mortgages for up to 18 months. Far from home, they are dealing with child custody, insurance, births, and deaths. Thirty percent of the members of the 844th unit, with whom I visited, are continuing their education online. I brought home information so I could help seven reservists who are having trouble with their citizenship applications.

Here are three other thoughts from that visit:

One, armored vehicles. Commanders in Kuwait assured me that no humvee or truck is now going into a combat zone without Level I or Level II armor.

Second, in the training of Iraq forces, we met with GEN David Patraeus, the former commander of Fort Campbell's 101st Airborne Division and one of our most accomplished military leaders. He persuaded me and I think most other members of our delegation that training is proceeding in an impressive way. It is not complete, but we are making progress.

Finally, infant democracies. We have sacrificed many lives and paid a heavy price in dollars to invade Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein, but without that decision there would be no infant democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Georgia, Ukraine, and Kuwait would be less democratic, and Syria would not be pulling troops out of Lebanon. We in the world are safer without Saddam Hussein, who the new Prime Minister designate of Iraq, if he is elected, told us, in his words, that Saddam had buried alive 300,000 people.

When will our troops come home? I do not know. I believe we must have a success strategy, not just an exit strategy. This strategy should be based on whether Iraqis can reasonably defend themselves and whether they have some sort of constitutional government. Having liberated Iraq, it is now not our job to stay there until there is a perfect democracy.

We Americans are very impatient. We also sometimes have short memories. We are expecting the Iraqis to come up with a constitution by August. It took America 12 years to write a constitution after declaring our independence, another 130 years to give women the right to vote in this country, and nearly 200 years before African Americans were allowed to vote in every part of America.

I hope after the two Iraqi elections scheduled for the end of 2005 that we will begin to see large numbers of Tennesseans coming home; for our average stay in other instances where the United States has helped build nations, as in Germany and Japan, has been about 5 years.

The Presbyterian Chaplain of the 844th--which I visited--Rev. Tim Fary from Rhea County, I discovered I had met before. He was then 8 years old and I was Governor of Tennessee. I was playing a piano concert with the Chattanooga Symphony at a July concert at Chickamauga near Chattanooga. Tim Fary, 8 years old, was lost.

He told me:

When I found my parents 2 hours later, I had a handwritten

note that read, ``Dear Tim: Thank you for your advice.

Governor Lamar Alexander.'' That note kept me out of trouble.

I still have it.

We hope Tim's prayers, as well as our own, will keep our brave Tennesseans safe so they can accomplish their mission and come home soon.

Mr. President, I would now like to speak for 4 or 5 minutes on another subject. I again thank the Senator from Texas. This is a subject that I recently wrote an op-ed about, which was published last week in the Washington Post. Fearing that many of my colleagues might have been in places such as Texas or Tennessee or Iraq and might have missed

it, I will make virtually the same remarks here.

Specifically, I am concerned about the so-called ``Real ID Act,'' a bill recently passed by the House of Representatives that would require States to turn 190 million driver's licenses into national identification cards, with State taxpayers, I am afraid, paying most of the costs.

The first thing wrong here is that some House Members want to stick that identification card proposal on the appropriations bill that supports troops in Iraq. We should not slow down money for our troops while we debate identification cards.

The second problem is that States not only get to create these identification cards, States will likely end up paying the bill. This is one more of the unfunded Federal mandates that we Republicans especially promised to stop.

Supporters argue this is no mandate because States have a choice. Well, true. States may refuse to conform to the proposed Federal standards and issue licenses to whomever they choose, including illegal immigrants. But, if they do, States' licenses will not be accepted for ``Federal purposes,'' such as boarding an airplane. That is some choice. What Governor will deny his or her citizens the identification they need to travel by air or to cash Social Security checks or for ``other Federal purposes?''

Of course, this identification card idea might backfire on us, the Members of Congress. Some feisty Governor might ask: Who are these people in Washington telling us what to do with our driver's licenses and making us pay for them, too?

A Governor, let us say from California, might say: California will use its licenses for certifying drivers, and Congress can create its own identification cards for people who want to fly and do other federally regulated things. And, if they do not, I will put on the Internet the home telephone numbers of all the Congressmen.

That is what some feisty Governor might say.

If just one State refuses to do the Federal Government identification work, Congress would be forced to create what it claims to oppose, a Federal identification card for citizens of that State.

Finally, if we must have a better identification card for some Federal purposes, there may be better ideas than turning State driver's license examiners into CIA agents. For example, Congress might create an airline traveler's card, or there could be an expanded-use U.S. passport. Since a motive here is to discourage illegal immigration, probably the most logical idea is to upgrade the Social Security card, which directly relates to the reason most immigrants come to the United States, to work.

I have fought government identification cards as long and as hard as anyone in this Chamber. In 1983, when I was Governor of Tennessee, our Tennessee Legislature voted to put photographs on driver's licenses. Merchants and policemen wanted a State identification card to discourage check fraud and teenage drinking. I vetoed this photo driver's license bill twice because I believed driver's licenses should be about driving and that State identification cards infringed on civil liberties.

That same year, 1983, I visited the White House on the annual visit that Governors have with the President of the United States. As I got to the gate, a White House guard asked for my photo identification.

I said to the guard: We don't have photo driver's licenses in Tennessee. I vetoed them.

The guard said: Well, you can't get in without one.

Fortunately, the Governor of Georgia, the late George Busbee, was standing there next to me. He had his Georgia photo driver's license. He vouched for me. I was admitted to the White House.

The legislature at home overrode my veto, and I gave up my fight against the State identification card. For years, the State driver's licenses have served as a de facto national identification card. But they have been unreliable. All but one of the 9/11 terrorists had valid driver's licenses.

Even today, when I board an airplane, as I did this morning, security officials look at the front of my driver's license, which expired in 2000, and rarely turn it over to verify that it has been extended until 2005.

My point is, we already have a national identification card. They are called driver's licenses. They are just ineffective.

I still detest the idea of a government identification card. South Africa's experience is a grim reminder of how such documents can be abused.

But I am afraid this is one of the ways 9/11 has changed our lives. Instead of pretending that we are not creating national identification cards, when we obviously are, I believe Congress should carefully create an effective Federal document that helps prevent terrorism with as much respect for privacy as possible.

I thank the Senator from Texas for his courtesy. I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I will discuss for a few minutes this amendment and the Medicaid Program in our country.

I am glad I had a chance to hear the Senator from Oregon and the Senators

from Minnesota, New Jersey, and New Mexico. Their amendment would direct the Finance Committee to reduce the growth of Medicaid spending by $14 billion over the next 5 years.

Before I say anything else, let me point out there is no cut--no cut, no cut--of any kind. Medicaid spending over the next 5 years will go up 41 percent if left alone. The Budget Committee recommends it go up 39 percent instead of 41 percent. Where I come from, that is no cut; that is a 39-percent increase in the amount of money.

The amendment also has a very good idea, which is to enact a commission to take a broad look at the Medicaid Program and report back to Congress in 1 year with its recommendations, which means in another year we might get around to doing something about it.

The Senator from Oregon talked about the tsunami coming. He is exactly right. He is talking about the tsunami in mandatory spending we have all been talking about and how important it is to get spending under control. If I may respectfully say, I believe his position could be fairly characterized as saying we heard the tsunami is coming; let's wait around a year or two before we get off the beach and appoint a commission to study. My position is appoint the commission, but the prudent thing is to move to higher ground while we study all of this. And we can move to higher ground.

What I want to say in the next few minutes is that in order to restrain the growth of Medicaid spending from 41 percent over the next 5 years to 39 percent over the next 5 years, which is $14 billion out of $1.12 trillion, we know exactly what to do to do it and we should move to higher ground and get going with this before we are drowned by this tsunami of mandatory spending Social Security and Medicaid and Medicare that will make it impossible to fund preschool education, to fund kindergarten through 12th grade, to fund our research laboratories, our research and health, and maintain the greatest research universities in the world. That is the choice we will have to make.

We heard chilling evidence--there is no other way to talk about it-- chilling evidence in the Budget Committee this year from the most nonpartisan observers, the Comptroller of the Currency, for example, about the tsunami, as the Senator from Oregon discussed, and what it is going to do.

This chart shows all this red in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid spending as a percentage of gross domestic product today in the neighborhood of 7 or 8 percent. This is the amount of our gross product, everything we produce in the United States, that we spend on the total Federal Government--a little less than 20 percent. Here is where Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are headed. In other words, we will go down the road, 2030, and it is not so long away, and we will be spending 20 percent of everything we produce in the United States just on health care. We are not spending that much today on the whole Federal Government.

What the proposers of this amendment are saying is, we see this, we see it is coming, let's stay on the beach another year or two and not do one single, solitary thing about it except appoint a commission to talk about something every Governor in States worries about. We have committees in this Congress that have studied this for years. We know some things to do. We know how to take a few steps to higher ground.

Let me put a little perspective on this, if I may, for a moment. I ask to be told when I have 10 minutes remaining.

Let me make another point with another chart. This has to do with State government. I have a State perspective. Someone said, Alexander is still acting as though he were a Governor, and I hope he can get over that. I hope I never get over it because I think it is a contribution I can make from the point of view of a Governor.

What I struggled with as Governor was how to keep Medicaid growth under control, to create centers of excellence, and pay good teachers more for teaching well, and have low taxes. It was a fight every year. The red is the State spending in Medicaid. People here get Medicare and Medicaid confused, but Medicaid is a program, as earlier said, that helps many of our low-income Americans. It is administered by the State government, but it is funded, about 60 percent or so, by the Federal Government and run by the State government. The eligibility requirements are basically set up in Washington, and then you go down if you are the Governor and you have to run it according to what some Congressman decides you need to do. And then as you are running it and you make some decisions, the Federal courts come in and limit what you do. So you have eligibility requirements saying the caseload is going up 40 percent over 5 years. That is what the Governors are dealing with. And the CPI, the Consumer Price Index, for health care is three times that of the normal CPI and Governors are left sitting there with Federal eligibility requirements, rising health care costs, and courts not allowing them to make decisions, so they are stuck. I know that because I was a stuck Governor all during that time.

Let me point out what we are trying to say to do today. This is the amount of money we are going to spend on Medicaid from the Federal Government in the next 5 years, $1.11 trillion. This is the reduction in the growth of spending we are suggesting, $13.9 billion. We are suggesting instead of going up 41 percent, go up 39 percent.

That can be done. There are a few steps we know to do today to move to higher ground so we can do that while we are doing a full-fledged study of Medicare. But we cannot do it by repeating a litany of waste, fraud, and abuse, and better efficiency and flexibility. That will not cut it. We are going to have to change some laws here so Governors have more flexibility and so Federal courts do not interfere as much with the decisions that elected officials are supposed to make.

Let me make a few suggestions. I can suggest four or five steps we can take now and we can move to higher ground now that would help save this $14 billion so that States could serve people well while we are continuing to constrain the growth of Medicaid spending. These reforms would save money for both States and the Federal Government. They would be voluntary, giving the States flexibility, and they would not cut one person off Medicaid insurance options.

Here are the things we can do. These are a few of the most obvious things to do. We ought to be able to do them in 60 days. One, let Medicaid buy prescription drugs the same way Medicare does. That would save money, several billion a year in the first year, but it would require a change in our Federal law. Allow States to crack down on Medicaid spend-out abuses when wealthier individuals give away their money with the expectation that Medicaid will cover their health care costs if they become ill. We will have to change the law to permit that to be done.

Allow Governors to require copayments of benefits for optional Medicaid population. We require some people to be covered from here. States may add to that. When they do, they should have some flexibility.

No. 4, allow States to have flexibility to allow mothers and children in optional programs to enroll in what we call the SCHIP Program, a health insurance program.

Finally, make it easier for States to provide home and community- based care for beneficiaries who prefer it to more costly nursing home care.

We have a 2-year Congress here. We are here every week, about. We are here most weeks. We have lots of committees that have been studying this issue for a long time. We can adopt a budget in March and we can have a Finance Committee hearing and pass a law some time this year and we can restrain the growth of Medicaid spending by $14 billion and give Governors and States a chance to restrain the growth of spending and get budgets under control. That would save money here and it would save money in the States for preschool education and universities and other programs that Governors prefer.

There is another thing we need to do. We need to pass the legislation Senator Pryor and I and Senator Cornyn and Senator Nelson and others have introduced and Representative Cooper in the House has introduced that would make it easier for Governors to run

Medicaid and harder for courts and plaintiffs' lawyers to do it. We should put term limits on the outdated consent decrees that keep Governors like the Democratic Governor of Tennessee from doing what he was elected to do. He was elected to restrain the growth of Medicaid spending.

When I left the Governor's office, health care spending was 16 cents out of every State tax dollar, and education spending was 51 cents out of every tax dollar. Today, because of the growth of Medicaid spending in Tennessee, education is 40 cents out of every tax dollar, and health care is 26 cents out of every tax dollar, and going up.

We will not have great colleges and universities if we do not start today to restrain the growth of Medicaid spending. So I would respectfully suggest that a commission could be of some help. A commission could be of some help if we were serious about it, which I know its proposers are, but we are not going to be able to just move around the fringes. We are going to have to have a completely different view of health care in America. Then we are going to have to transform Medicare. Then we are going to have to transform Medicaid. And along the way, we are going to have to do what is a relatively easy thing to do compared to the other two, fix Social Security.

Together, those unfunded liabilities, that mandatory spending is going to grow. This red on the chart is going to grow to make this a noncompetitive United States of America and drown our States in debt.

I suggest that it is correct that the tsunami is coming. I suggest that this budget that Chairman Gregg has worked on makes only modest steps in fiscal discipline. Yes, it reduces our deficit if we stay on this path. By the time President Bush goes out of office, our annual deficit will only be half as much as it is this year. But our debt still goes up every year. Senator Conrad has made that point time after time after time.

This is the only proposal in this budget to restrain the most difficult part of spending growth, which is mandatory spending. This budget overall spends $2.6 trillion for next year, $100 billion more than last year. That whole $100 billion is mandatory spending.

So we are suggesting: Let Medicaid grow at 39 percent instead of 41 percent. See the tsunami coming. Appoint a commission to study it. But do the prudent thing. Take a few steps to higher ground that are perfectly obvious while we are studying it. We can easily do that this year.

I urge that we reject the amendment and that we support the budget which takes a modest but important step toward controlling the biggest challenge we have budgetarily in Washington, DC, and that is controlling mandatory spending.

I see the chairman of the Finance Committee in the Chamber. I wonder if he would like to speak.

Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Iowa.

Mr. President, how much time remains?

I thank the Senator for his commitment to work in a bipartisan way to create legislation that would give the States the flexibility they need to help people on the Medicaid Program and to restrain its growth and do it in a way that saves money for States and the Federal Government, that gives more flexibility, and then avoids cutting people off Medicaid.

I will sum up in this way. There is talk about fiscal discipline, about reducing the deficit. This is the only significant opportunity we have in this whole budget debate to reduce the growth of mandatory spending. What we are suggesting is, instead of letting it go up 41 percent, we let it go up 39 percent over 5 years. I suggest if we cannot do that, we cannot do anything this year, and we should not go home and say we are interested in fiscal discipline.

I don't believe there is anybody in this Chamber who is more of a defender of States than I am, but I believe that between March and October, we can take a few relatively minor steps, make a minor adjustment in the growth of spending, and give States important new flexibility.

I thank the Chair.

Why doesn't the chairman take the time?