Floor Statements

Madam President, I support the Senator from Iowa and his request that this bill go to the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

In the Republican Conference, we talk a lot about the importance of taking legislation through committee so it can be amended and considered through the regular order. This is certainly important legislation. All of us would agree on that.

The Senator from Pennsylvania and the Senator from West Virginia deserve a lot of credit for bringing this terrible story to our attention and proposing we address it. And I think we should. But the appropriate way to do that here, is to take it to the committee of jurisdiction to be considered in a markup, amended, and see if anyone has a better idea.

My second reason for hoping this bill goes to the HELP committee is that I have my own idea. I think this bill poses an important question to the Senate about whether we want to constitute ourselves as a national school board. That is, in fact, what we would be doing if we passed it into law.

In our country there are 100,000 public elementary and secondary schools. They all have a principal who is in charge of the employees in that school.

This bill is about determining what kind of criminal background check those school employees should have. What is the principal supposed to do? Doesn't the principal have any responsibility for this? Can the principal just say that this is the job of the United States Senate, so I don't have to worry about that?

There are 14,000 local school boards across West Virginia, Tennessee, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and all of our other States. What is the responsibility of these local school boards when it comes to determining the qualifications of their teachers or the health and safety of their students? Do the members of the local school board say: We don't have to worry about those questions too much because the U.S. Senate will determine for us what the qualifications for teaching will be or how we will keep students healthy and safe in our local public schools?

There are 50 Governors of our states. I used to be one of them, as was the distinguished Senator from West Virginia. I got pretty tired of people flying to Washington, D.C. thinking that they were the only ones who had any sense of responsibility for the public school students in Tennessee. In fact, I felt like the more Washington, D.C. intruded into Tennessee by making decisions that we should be making for ourselves, the less responsible we felt for those decisions and the less effective we were at doing our jobs.

I remember in the early 1990s there was a piece of legislation which whizzed through the Senate and the House just like this piece of legislation has been doing. It was called the Gun-Free School Zones Act, and it came after a particularly terrible shooting at a school. We still have those shootings today, and it wrenches our heart every time they happen.

So, after the shooting, the U.S. Congress said: We will fix it. The Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional because it exceeded the authority of Congress under the commerce clause--that in effect it wasn't Washington's job; it was the job of the states and local communities to determine the issue of gun possession around schools.

I submit that the safety of our schools is the job of the parents of those schools, of the principal in that school, of the community which supports that school, of the local school board, of the supporting organizations, and of the governor and the legislature of the state. If they can pretend they can kick that responsibility up to Washington, I think that is wrong. I do

not think that is within our constitutional framework in the United States. Those responsibilities belong locally.

The Senator from Iowa and I have a terrific relationship and ideological differences on many occasions. I spent the morning debating with him about whether his proposal for early childhood education would in effect create a national school board.

He basically made the same argument that is being made here. He said: If we are going to give states money from Washington for early childhood education, we have a responsibility to define how that money is spent, including the parameters for what the teachers' salaries should be.

So if we can define what criminal background checks ought to be for school employees in Maryville, TN, public schools, we can define what the teachers' salaries ought to be in the Maryville, TN, public schools. If we can decide what the safety measures in the school ought to be, we can decide what the maximum size of classes ought to be. We can decide what the length of the school day ought to be and what kind of vision and health screenings we ought to provide. Those decisions are important for children as well. Whether the children are fed properly is important as well. Are we going to kick those decisions upstairs to the U.S. Senate and say: You set the rules for that.

Physical activity programs. The distinguished Senator from Iowa has been a champion for more physical activity his whole career here. He would like to set that as a goal from Washington. I think that is the job of a local community.

Professional development for school staff. If we make decisions about criminal background checks for staff, we can make decisions about their professional development as well.

How about academic standards and curriculum? In the State of Tennessee and in many other States there has been a near rebellion over the so-called Common Core State Standards. The important issue is about how we raise standards for children who need to learn more to succeed. But the problem is that Washington got involved with the standards, and people in our State and many other States don't like national school boards and Washington-control of public schools.

So I think we should stop and think about this. I would prefer to see the federal government in Washington act as an enabler of States and local school boards rather than a mandator.

I would like to see us take this terrific focus the Senators from Pennsylvania and West Virginia have put on the importance of criminal background checks and the safety of our children by making it easier for States and local school boards to search a State criminal registry, a State-based child abuse and neglect registry, a fingerprint-based FBI criminal history, a search of the national sex offender registry.

Forty-six States already require all public school employees to go through some form of a background check. Are we to say we know better than they do? If so, what does that say about our entire structure of public education and whether we should just tell the 14,000 local school boards in the U.S. to disband. We don't need you to make decisions about the safety of the schools in your district. We will do it in Washington. We don't need you to make decisions about academic standards and curriculum. We will do that here?

I think we in Congress should be enablers, not mandators. I think we should take this powerful focus the two Senators have put on criminal background checks for school employees, take it to the HELP committee, and put a spotlight on making it easier and more important for all 100,000 principals, all 14,000 local school boards, all 50 State Governors to do it, help parents to be aroused, and put the spotlight where the spotlight ought to be.

If they want a gun-free school zone, put the spotlight on the school and the community around it. If they want a safe school, put the spotlight on the school and the community around it. If they want to have a criminal background check system to keep predators out of schools, put the spotlight on the principal, the school board, and the community around it. That is the way to effectively do it. That is the way to respect our federalist system of government and our constitutional framework. That is the way to avoid creating a national school board.

So I look forward to working with the Senator from Iowa, the Senator from West Virginia, and the Senator from Pennsylvania. This is an important issue. I would like to see it become law. But I would like for our government in Washington to be more of an enabler of local school boards and school principals than a mandator from Washington.

I am willing to support holding a hearing on the bill, moving it rapidly through the HELP committee, and moving it back to the Senate floor. I will make my argument in committee or on the floor, and I may win or I may lose. But I have thought about the gun-free school zones act for more than 20 years, and I thought about it from the point of view of a parent and of a Governor.

The Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee has conservative Republicans on one side and liberal Democrats on the other. I spend most of my days on the committee trying to argue my Democratic friends out of their good ideas that they want to impose on every local school district in America. There is a moral imperative to have high academic standards for children. There is a moral imperative to have physical education for children. There is a moral imperative to have breakfast for children. There is a moral imperative to help disabled children. There is a moral imperative to do all these things. We all feel that. But just because we in Washington contribute 10 percent of the money spent on elementary and secondary education doesn't mean we should substitute our judgment for that of the local school board and the principal who is accountable to that community for the safety of each child in their school. We ought to think about that before we start assuming these responsibilities because if we pass this bill into law, leave people to think that we solved the problem, and another problem happens, then who is going to be held accountable? The local principal? The local school board? The Governor? No. Maybe the Senate will be held accountable because we took it upon ourselves to say to the parents: We have kept your child safe.

We should enable parents. We should enable schools. We should enable local school districts to create safe and effective schools with high standards. We should give parents choices of schools with effective teachers, but we shouldn't mandate it or define it from Washington. That is my argument, which I would like to be considered when we think about the extent to which we ought to say to a local school board or principal: We are going to define for you what a criminal background check should consist of for the people you hire in your schools.

I pledge to work on it as rapidly as Senator Harkin can move it through the committee. I will make my argument, and we will come to a conclusion.

I appreciate the Senators from Pennsylvania and West Virginia putting a focus on such an important issue, and I look forward to a speedy conclusion to the debate and a passage of an appropriate bill on an important issue. I just hope it enables instead of mandates.

Thank you, Madam President.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from North Carolina and I be allowed to engage in a colloquy for 20 minutes, and following that the Senator from Iowa be recognized.

Mr. President, the Senator from North Carolina and I were both involved in intercollegiate athletics. He was a scholarship athlete at Wake Forest University and I was a nonscholarship track person at Vanderbilt University several years before that.

We are here today to make a few comments on the recent ruling by a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board that defines student athletes as employees of the university. It affects only private universities for now--not the University of Tennessee. But it would affect Wake Forest, where the Senator from North Carolina was an outstanding football player, and it would affect Vanderbilt, where I attended.

I guess our message to the NCAA and intercollegiate athletes is: We hope they will understand the opinion of one regional director of the National Labor Relations Board is not the opinion of the entire Federal Government. That is the message I would like to deliver.

I would refer back--and then I will go to the Senator from North Carolina--to 25 years ago, when I was the president of the University of Tennessee, and I was asked to serve on the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. It was headed by the president of North Carolina, Bill Friday, and the head of Notre Dame, Father Hesburgh--a pretty distinguished group of individuals from around the country--to take a look at intercollegiate athletics.

The major conclusion they came to was that presidents need to assert more institutional control over athletics. But here is something that this group of university presidents and others emphasized. They said:

We reject the argument that the only realistic solution to

the problem [of intercollegiate athletics]--

And there have always been some--

is to drop the student-athlete concept, put athletes on the

payroll, and reduce or even eliminate their responsibilities

as students.

Such a scheme has nothing to do with education, the purpose

for which colleges and universities exist. Scholarship

athletes are already paid in the most meaningful way

possible: with a free education. The idea of intercollegiate

athletics is that the teams represent their institutions as

true members of the student body, not as hired hands. Surely

American higher education has the ability to devise a better

solution to the problems of intercollegiate athletics than

making professionals out of the players, which is no solution

at all but rather an unacceptable surrender to despair.

This was the Knight Commission 25 years ago.

I would ask the Senator from North Carolina, does he not think that while there may be some issues with intercollegiate athletics--and we could talk about what some of those are--that unionization of intercollegiate athletics is not the solution to the problem?

I thank the Senator from North Carolina.

The question should be obvious: What does a student at Wake Forest or Vanderbilt or--and we are using the private universities, again, because those are the only ones affected by this decision for now--but if you are at Vanderbilt University, according to the vice chancellor, the total scholarship could be nearly $60,000. That is the value each year of your athletic scholarship. Times four--so you are up to one- quarter of a million dollars.

The College Board says--roughly estimates--that a college degree adds $1 million to your earnings during a lifetime.

So the idea that student athletes do not get anything in return for their playing a sport is financially wrong. And just speaking as one individual who had the privilege to participate for 2 years as a student athlete without getting anything--I had scholarships, but they were not athletic scholarships--the discipline, the memories, the competition, the chance to be in the Southeastern Conference Tournament--that is very important to me. It was then, just as athletics always is. It is a rare privilege to participate in intercollegiate athletics.

The presidents have looked at the problems of intercollegiate athletics. And there are some. But people forget--and I know the Senator from North Carolina is aware of this. But let's say you are at Vanderbilt and you have a $58,000 scholarship--tuition, room and board but your total costs are over $60,000 and let's say you come from a poor family that has no money and you are put in the embarrassing position of not having walking-around money, money to go out and get a hamburger, or whatever you want to do.

Forty percent of student athletes in America also have a Pell grant similar to 40 percent of all students in America have a Pell grant, and the Pell grant can be, on average, $3,600. So that is $300 a month that could be added.

Now, perhaps there are other issues that ought to be addressed. But I wonder if the Senator from North Carolina would speak more about one thing he talked about. I imagine Florida State, the University of Tennessee, Stanford, maybe Wake Forest--they will all be fine with a more expensive athletic program. But what is going to happen to the smaller schools? What is going to happen to the minor sports? What is going to happen to the title IX women's sports if for some reason a union forces universities to have a much more expensive athletic program for a few sports?

I wonder if I can ask the Senator to reflect a little bit on some of the practical consequences of a student athlete suddenly finding himself thought of as an employee of the university. I wonder, for example, would the employee of the university, the quarterback or whatever position he plays, have to pay taxes on his income? I would think so.

I was thinking about the recent changes in Federal labor law that allow for micro-unions. Almost any little group can petition the National Labor Relations Board, under the Obama administration's views, to become a union. I wonder if quarterbacks would become a micro-union. They would say: We are more important. Look at the NFL. They get paid a lot more. We want a bigger scholarship than others.

I wondered about five-star recruits. Let's say there is a terrific defensive back--as I am sure Senator Burr was when he was in high school. He had five stars from all the recruiting services. Would the private schools who are unionized go out and compete to see who could pay the highest compensation to the five-star recruits, a lot less to the walk-on, maybe less for a three-star. What are the practical consequences of a student athlete suddenly finding himself defined as an employee of the university under the National Labor Relations Act?

Mr. President, I think our time is coming toward a close, but we have about 5 minutes left. Then we will be looking forward to the comments of the Senator from Iowa. We thank him for his courtesy in allowing us to go ahead.

I guess the message--I particularly enjoyed hearing the Senator from North Carolina. The message today is directed at two groups. One is to the NCAA, which is to say, do not think that the attitude of one Regional Director of the National Labor Relations Board reflects the view of the U.S. Government. It does not. The other is to the student athletes. Think about the value of the opportunity you have.

Here are two former student athletes of varying talents who benefited enormously from that. There are many others who would say the same. The university does not owe us anything. We owe the university--at least that is the way I feel about it--for the privilege of competing, for the privilege of attending. If I had a scholarship, that would have been even better--just the privilege of participating.

To the NCAA, the members of the NCAA have talked about issues such as should we provide more expense money for athletes. I mentioned earlier that 40 percent of them have Pell grants which can go up to $5,600 a year in addition to their $55,000 or $60,000 of football scholarships. So think about that. That was considered by the NCAA and voted down because the small schools said: It will hurt us. Women's programs said: We will have to drop women's programs.

So this is more complicated than it would seem at first. What about health care? Of course, a student athlete can be covered by his parents' health care insurance. Under the Affordable Care Act, I am sure many on the other side would be quick to say, they would always be able to be insured for any sort of preexisting condition, but these are issues that can be properly looked at by the NCAA.

Unionization, in my opinion, would destroy intercollegiate athletics as we know it. I think we should look back to the opinion of the Knight Commission, headed by Bill Friday of North Carolina and Ted Hesburgh of Notre Dame, and reaffirm that the student athlete is not a professional, not a hired hand. He or she is a student. One percent of the athletes in this country--there may be problems to solve, but the universities and the NCAA can address those problems. Unionization is not the way to do it.

I thank my colleague from North Carolina.

I thank the Senator from Iowa for his courtesy in allowing us to go ahead.

Some 50 years ago, I had the opportunity to compete in track and field for Vanderbilt University. Unlike my colleague from North Carolina, who as a fine defensive back at Wake Forest University, there was no athletic scholarship available for me. But I was fortunate enough to be a member of a record setting team.

Twenty-five years ago, while I was president of the University of Tennessee, I was asked to serve on the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. The Knight Commission was created in October 1989 in response to a series of scandals in college sports. After 18 months of careful study, our 22-member commission issued a report called ``Keeping the Faith with the Student-Athlete: A New Model for Intercollegiate Athletics.''

Our central recommendation was that college presidents needed to exercise stronger control of their athletics programs to ensure their academic and financial integrity. And our guiding principle in making that recommendation was that athletes are students first, not professionals. We wrote:

We reject the argument that the only realistic solution to

the problem is to drop the student-athlete concept, put

athletes on the payroll, and reduce or even eliminate their

responsibilities as students.

Such a scheme has nothing to do with education, the purpose

for which colleges and universities exist. Scholarship

athletes are already paid in the most meaningful way

possible: with a free education. The idea of intercollegiate

athletics is that the teams represent their institutions as

true members of the student body, not as hired hands. Surely

American higher education has the ability to devise a better

solution to the problems of intercollegiate athletics than

making professionals out of the players, which is no solution

at all but rather an unacceptable surrender to despair.

The Knight Commission's perspective on student athletes could not be more different to the perspective in the recent decision, issued by a regional director of the National Labor Relations Board in Chicago, to treat athletes as employees and permit them to form a union.

Student athletes are found throughout all levels and at all types of colleges--small through large, but those that receive athletic scholarships are only at division I and II schools. Division III schools are not allowed to award athletic scholarships.

For the purposes of the NLRB decision, we are talking about an even smaller subset of athletes--scholarship athletes at private institutions like Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, and Stanford. For example, as a non-scholarship athlete at Vanderbilt, I would not have been able to unionize. Senator Burr, on the other hand was given a scholarship to play defensive back at Wake Forest. He would be allowed to unionize.

In 2011, there were roughly 25 million undergraduate students; 9 million Pell recipients, which is approximately 36 percent of undergraduate students. In addition, there were 177,000 scholarship athletes enrolled in bachelor programs at public and private institutions. This is approximately 1.7 percent of all students in bachelor's programs. Of those, 71,000 received Pell Grants, approximately 40 percent of scholarship athletes. The number of scholarship athletes at private institutions enrolled in a bachelor's program was 104,000, approximately 4.2 percent of private students in bachelor's programs. Of those, 43,700 received Pell Grants, approximately 42 percent of private scholarship athletes.

The total number of division I and II schools is 662 of which 283 are private institutions. In division I the total is 350 with 119 of them being private, while the division II total is 312 with 164 private.

Athletic scholarships are limited to only tuition and fees, room and board, and required course-related books. At Vanderbilt the total scholarship could be as much as $58,520 which is a combination of $42,768 for tuition, $14,382 for room and board, and $1,370 for books. At Stanford the total scholarship could be as much as $59,240 which is a combination of $44,184 for tuition, $13,631 for room and board, and $1,425 for books.

Contrast that with the University of Tennessee where the scholarship total could be up to $21,900 consisting of $11,194 for in-state tuition, $9,170 for room and board, and $1,536 for books.

Scholarship athletes may also combine other sources of financial aid, namely Federal or State need-based aid or earned entitlements, in order to cover the full cost of attendance. These include, Pell Grants, Supplemental Education Opportunity Grants, work-study, State grants based on need using Federal need calculations such as Tennessee's HOPE Scholarship and veterans programs such GI Bill or post 9/11 GI Bill.

Athletic scholarships are awarded in most cases by the athletic department which encourages an athlete to complete the federal application. If an athlete is determined to have a need, then the financial aid office awards the need-based aid, Federal, State, or both. A student athlete is restricted to the institutional cost of attendance when combining other aid with their scholarship, unless they are using their Pell Grant or a veterans benefit. Thus a student athlete with need could receive a full scholarship covering all costs and receive additional funds.

Only 1 percent of student athletes will ever play professional sports. For the remainder, their college degree is the primary benefit of participating in college sports. According to the College Board, the value of a college degree is $1 million over an individual's lifetime. As a former student athlete, who wasn't on scholarship, I can speak from experience that the value of college athletics goes beyond the money. It can enrich every aspect of our education, teaching lessons and developing habits that will pay dividends no matter what a student pursues in life.

Unfortunately, the problems the Northwestern football players are concerned with are not unique to Northwestern and they are not new. These problems include: the NCAA does not

currently allow a full-ride athletic scholarship to cover the actual full cost of attendance; Other expenses include: transportation costs; health fees; student activity and recreation fees and personal expenses allowable under Federal financial aid rules.

For example, a full-ride scholarship at Vanderbilt University is worth $58,520 but the full cost of attendance is calculated by the school to be $62,320. The difference must be made up by the student.

For some student athletes, the lingering effects and potential disabilities will be felt for many years after their playing days are over. Some students are asking for long term medical coverage to help them cover costs of treating these injuries. Schools could provide for some form of additional medical coverage.

While playing sports has certain inherent risks, we do know more now than ever before about how injuries can be avoided. Better protections from injury--football concerns with concussions. Schools can take, and some are taking, steps to improve the safety of their student athletes.

Some students are asking for help to finish their education even when athletic eligibility has run out.

There is money available to address these concerns and take care of our student athletes without unions.

The NCAA and the member universities do need to reform their rules and guidance; and they will.

Earlier this week we spoke to David Williams, Vanderbilt University's athletic director, who had this to say:

The NCAA and its member universities have the authority and

the responsibility to correct the flaws that exist in the

system today, many of which are mentioned by the student

athletes at Northwestern University. The question is do we

have the will to do so. I believe we do and that we will.

Mark Emmert the President of the NCAA, quoted in a recent Meet the Press interview said:

We have twice now had the board of the N.C.A.A. pass an

allowance to allow schools to provide a couple of thousand

dollars in what we call ``miscellaneous expense'' allowances.

. . . The board's in favor of it. The membership, the more

than a thousand colleges and universities that are out there,

the 350 of them that are in division one had voted that down.

We're in the middle right now of reconsidering all that. I

have every reason that that's going to be in place sometime

this coming year.

What would actually happen if college sports teams were unionized? Well, David Williams, Vanderbilt's athletic director, said:

The decision by the NLRB regional board has the power to

change the structure, dynamics and maybe the effectiveness of

college athletics. It may ultimately end college athletics as

we know it today.

I agree with this statement. And think those who support turning college athletes into employees and unionize them should consider the potential consequences. One potential consequence relates to taxes. This recent decision, in essence, may require the entire scholarship to be treated as compensation thus making the whole amount taxable.

Another consequence of potential collegiate unionization relates to labor. One of the most commonly thought of traits when a union represents a workforce is the right to strike. Section 13 of the National Labor Relations Act, NLRA, expressly provides the right of employees to strike, with some exceptions. If a unionized college baseball team doesn't like the coaches' decision to switch practice times, they could decide to walk off the field right before the first pitch is thrown, and call a strike.

The NLRA requires the union and employer to bargain over wages, hours, and other conditions of employment. If a football team joins a union, will the union negotiate different compensation amounts depending on the player's position or contribution to the team? For example, a five star quarterback in high school could decide to attend Notre Dame, because the players' union promises to negotiate a larger scholarship package for him, but the one star, offensive lineman may only get the bare minimum. This could lead to a team and its union making value judgments based on the on-field contributions of a player.

What about when a coach decides to change the offensive scheme from a pro-style offense to the wish-bone. A union wide receiver might have a grievance because this could effect the ``condition of employment,'' in that his role on the team could be diminished. Under the NLRA, a decision like that would have to be bargained for. A coach could not unilaterally change the playbook without approval of the union.

But let's say that a wide receiver decides to go directly to the coach to discuss his grievance about switching offensive schemes. Under the act, that conversation will not be a one-on-one between the coach and the player. Instead, a union representative has the right to be present at that meeting. And instead of resolving the issue internally, the Federal government through the NLRB, or possibly the Federal courts could have the final say.

The current NLRB has struck down several employee conduct policies and handbooks, because they violate an employee's section 7 right to ``concerted activity'' under the NLRA. Will the NLRB now turn its attention to and interfere with the player conduct policies that schools require of their players?

The NLRB issued a 2011 decision in Specialty Healthcare, that permitted unions to organize, multiple, small groups of employees within a single workplace, known as ``micro-unions.'' It is conceivable that every different position on the football team could decide to have their own bargaining unit. The quarterbacks in one unit, the lineman in another unit, and the linebackers in another, etc. The university would then have to separately bargain with multiple different unions, all with different demands.

Universities require its athletes to maintain a 2.0 grade point average, GPA, to keep an athletic scholarship. Would the NLRA consider a minimum grade point average as a condition of employment under the law that must be bargained for? Schools and players' unions could bargain a lower GPA.

What if a coach benches the star point guard, who is a union member, on the basketball team, and replaced him with a non-scholarship, walk- on point guard? Could the team be accused of retaliating against a union player in violation of the NLRA? Under the NLRA it is unlawful to discharge, discipline or otherwise discriminate against an employee for engaging in protected concerted activities. If that star player could show that the benching came after he had been discussing a team related issue with his fellow teammates it would be considered retaliation.

The bottom line, is that importing the sometimes head-scratching rulings of the NLRB into a competitive, team atmosphere is recipe for disaster.

Do they now hire athletes and not worry if they are students? Mark Emmert, NCAA President, said:

To unionize them, you have to say, These are employees. If

you're going to do that, it completely changes the

relationship. I don't know why you'd want them to be

students. If they're employees and they're playing basketball

for you, don't let calculus get in the way.

Yesterday, the Senate voted against cloture on the Paycheck Fairness Act. This is a bill that would amend the Equal Pay Act to make it easier to sue for pay discrimination based on gender by limiting an important employer defense.

Under the bill, the employer would have to prove any difference in pay would be job-related and consistent with a business necessity; If these student athletes are now considered ``employees'' under the eyes of a regional director in Chicago, they would theoretically be entitled to protection under statutes like the Equal Pay Act; And if the Paycheck Fairness Act were to become law, it is conceivable universities could be liable for any differences in compensation that they provide the football team, versus the women's soccer team;

Then there is the effect on smaller schools. Big schools with big budgets may have the ability to negotiate with a union for better benefits for their student athletes. If a football union at Notre Dame negotiates for higher compensation that may set a standard the school must match for other athletes as well. I imagine that there is enough money coming into the Notre Dame or Stanford athletic departments to allow them to adjust to the realities of unionized college athletics.

But what about smaller schools? They will have to make cuts somewhere. If they preserve their football

program, it will likely be at the cost of other sports.

Another consideration that must be taken into account are public universities versus private universities. Because the NLRB regional director's decision only applies to private universities, it creates a different set of rules for private universities than for public universities.

The private schools with athlete unions may ultimately be forced to negotiate salaries or other benefits that violate NCAA rules; to continue competing, they would have to set up their own conference or association. The departure of schools from the NCAA to this new, union friendly association, would fracture the foundations of collegiate sports.

And what about possible title IX implications? As title IX was enforced related to college athletics, institutions made difficult choices to eliminate many athletic programs. Title IX is focused on improving equal access to education. If athletes are employees, then it is unclear how the requirements and protections of title IX will apply to them.

Due to the current limited nature of the ruling, if football players' compensation are considered salaries and not scholarships, then would one of the possible effects be a reduction in the number of women's scholarships that title IX requires the university to offer? Or would title IX require that any new benefits received by a football team under their collective bargaining be shared equitably with the women's sports at the university?

With limited resources and title IX requiring both proportional opportunity for athletes and pay, the recent decision may result in further reductions of athletic programs and opportunities on college campuses.

The Knight Commission's executive director, Amy Privette Perko, recently wrote in the New York Times that:

The commission supports many of the benefits being sought

for college athletes by groups like the College Athletes

Players Association, but unions are not needed to guarantee

those benefits. Colleges can enact proposals long recommended

by the commission for colleges to restore the educational

role of athletics and improve athletes' experiences.

I continue to believe that athletes are students first, not professionals. Some of the concerns raised by these college athletes are legitimate but unions are not the solution. They can and should be addressed by the schools and the NCAA.

Mr. President, if I may respond to the majority leader, the answer is no. The Alexander amendment, I say to my friend from Nevada, is a pretty simple amendment. It talks about giving working parents more flexibility so they can go to soccer games and piano recitals; in other words, to be better parents.

A few years ago Captain Kangaroo, Robert Keeshan, and I--along with some other people--started a company. After our company merged with another company, it became the largest worksite daycare company in America. What we found out was that the greatest value working parents with young children wanted was flexibility. Our fear is that this proposal, which is called paycheck fairness, would actually limit the flexibility of employers can give to working parents so they can go to their children's activities.

My amendment is a very simple amendment. It is only a paragraph or two, and it simply restates the law and makes it clear that if you run a dry cleaner with three people in it, you don't have to hire a lawyer to define a job for an employee with a child in such a way that that employee can go to the piano recital or soccer game. Instead of being about more litigation, it is about giving more flexibility for working parents.

Thank you very much, Mr. President.

The Finance Committee is considering something we call in the Senate tax extenders. One of those is the wind production tax credit. For the next 10 minutes or so, I wish to address that

law which has been on the books for more than 20 years. It expired in December, and, in my view, needs to stay expired.

One of the things we remember most about the late President Ronald Reagan, is what he said about government programs: The closest you will come to eternal life on this Earth is a government program.

Well, my nomination for the most glaring example of a government program that seems to have eternal life is the wind production tax credit--the Federal taxpayers' subsidy for what I would call ``big wind.''

Here is what the wind production tax credit does. Let's say you build one of those 20-story turbines and the wind turbines begin to go around, as they will about one-third of the time to produce electricity. So for every kilowatt hour of electricity that you produce, the taxpayers will pay you 2.3 cents. That is a pretty good deal because the wholesale price of electricity, depending on where you are at in the country, might range from about 3 cents per kilowatt hour to 7 cents per kilowatt hour. So let's say you are in Oregon or a part of the country where they have pretty cheap electricity and you sell wind for 3 cents a kilowatt hour. You will pay 1 cent of the money you get in Federal corporate tax. That leaves you with 2 cents, but then the taxpayer is going to come in and pay you 2.3 cents on top of that. Because it is a tax credit, it is worth even more.

Now it is even better than that. That subsidy is not just for 1 year, but it is for 10 years. So every time we have a 1-year extension of the wind production tax credit, we tell the owner of the wind turbine--and usually they take these ownerships and they put them in portfolios and they split them up and sell them to rich people around the country and around the world who can use the tax credits--it is for 10 years. So the wind production tax credit is 2.3 cents per kilowatt hour of taxpayer money, every year for 10 years if you are producing wind electricity.

This provision of the Tax Code was enacted in 1992. It was supposed to be a ``temporary'' subsidy. It was intended to do what we have done several times in our country, which is to jump-start a new energy technology. Well, as President Reagan observed, eternal life for a government program sinks in pretty quickly. This temporary tax provision, enacted in 1992--more than 20 years ago--has been extended eight times since its enactment. The wind industry has become a very well-developed industry.

I asked President Obama's Nobel Prize-winning Energy Secretary, Secretary Chu, in the first term of President Obama's administration how he would describe wind power. He said it was a ``mature'' technology.

The No. 1 problem with the wind production tax credit is its cost. Congress enacted a 1-year extension for 2013. That was at a cost of nearly $12 billion to the taxpayers--remember, not all in 2013; that was just for a 1-year extension. For 2014 there is another 1-year extension which is being considered by the Finance Committee, and that will be another $6 billion.

This is real money. I mean, just look at the amount of money we spend on energy research in multiple agencies. The number is about $10 billion let's say we, through our research, developed a way to capture carbon from coal plants and recycle that carbon and turn it into something commercially feasible and sell it. Then all of a sudden, these coal plants that people worry about because they produce carbon, would be as clean as nuclear power, as clean as wind power. As a result we would be building coal plants everywhere in America. That seems like a better use of taxpayer dollars. We would have cheap electricity--even cheaper electricity for a longer period of time.

We spend $10 billion on energy research in a year and the last 1-year extension of the wind production tax credit was $12 billion over 10 years. By comparison, take tax breaks for Big Oil. One of the last times President Obama wanted to end the tax subsidies for what he called Big Oil, he identified $4 billion worth of tax subsidies. Well, most of those tax breaks, he calls subsidies for Big Oil, are tax breaks that many manufacturing companies have.

The point I am trying to make is that we are talking about a lot of money.

The supporters of this tax credit will say: ``Let's phase it out.'' In fact, it is phased out. If Congress did not act, all of those people who currently today have their wind turbines would continue to get their subsidies for up to 10 more years. So that phases it out.

But let's say we phase it out according to a proposal that was made last year by the wind industry. Well, the American Energy Alliance said that might cost as much as $50 billion over 10 years--a huge amount of money. Now, there could be some other form of phase out--I would welcome the opportunity to see it--that would not cost so much. Maybe that would make sense, but beware the phase out.

The United States uses 20 to 25 percent of all of the electricity in the world. It is important to us. We use it for our computers, we use it for our businesses, we use it for our military, and we use it for our lights. If the lights go out in America, America stops. That is how important electricity is to us.

Where does that electricity come from? Four percent of it comes from wind power. Of course, that is only available when the wind blows-- usually at night, usually when we need it the least. Four percent of our electricity is wind after 22 years and billions of dollars. The rest of it comes from other sources--7 percent from hydroelectric power; 19 percent from nuclear power, which is about 60 percent of all of our clean energy; nearly 40 percent from coal; and 27 percent from natural gas. So 4 percent from wind.

It is true, as wind power advocates say, that in the past Congress has approved other jump-starts for energy technology. But the difference is that we put a cap on them.

We are very happy about all of the unconventional gas we have in this country today. Suddenly, we have an enormous amount of natural gas. The research for that partially came from Sandia Laboratory, from Department of Energy demonstration projects. There was a tax credit for fracking, but it expired in 1992. The demonstration projects are over. This technology is out in the marketplace and making lives better all across the country. Take plug-in electric cars. I supported that, but there was a cap on the number of credits we had for plug-in electric cars--200,000 per manufacturer. The nuclear production tax credit works just like the wind production tax credit. You sell a kilowatt hour of electricity from a nuclear power plant, and we will give you a taxpayer credit. But that is capped at 6,000 megawatts. So there is a limit to it. There is no cap on the subsidy for electricity produced by wind. I do not know the exact number, but it is probably in the 50- or 60- or 70,000 megawatt range.

Problem No. 1 is cost.

Problem No. 2 is reliability risk.

The problem here is that Congress is picking winners and losers. When it gives wind power such a big subsidy that is sometimes more than the cost of the electricity, it undercuts our coal and nuclear plants. And what that does is put us at risk as a country. Any country that uses that much electricity needs these big plants to operate almost all the time--coal and nuclear--to keep the lights on, to support jobs, to keep the cars running, and to make America run. Our country cannot run on windmills that only work when the wind blows. We cannot run only on solar power that only works when the Sun shines. We have to have baseload power.

Because the wind subsidy is picking winners and losers, it undercuts baseload power. It has caused the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a very well-respected organization, to say that the combination of the federal subsidy for wind power and low gas prices could cause as many as 25 percent of our nuclear plants in America to close within the next 10 years. That would be a terrible blow to our country's economy, to our effort to improve family incomes and to find jobs for middle-class Americans.

How could that be? How does it do that? Well, let's take this example. Let's say you are in Chicago and it is the middle of the night, 3 a.m., and the demand for electricity goes down as people go to sleep. Well, the supplier of electricity to your home or your business in Chicago is buying electricity from the market at the lowest possible

cost. Well, as the demand goes down, the price goes down, and who is left out there selling electricity? It is the wind power people because they can give away their electricity and still make a profit because of the subsidy. This negative pricing is what is undermining baseload, coal and nuclear.

We are very proud of the fact that in our country we have, in effect, a domestic price for natural gas. It is very low. Chemical companies are moving back to America instead of leaving. Manufacturing plants are enjoying the lower costs, and so are homeowners as they heat and cool their homes. But remember that natural gas prices can go up and they can go down. In 2005 they were not $3 and $4 as they are today, they were $13. In New England, even today sometimes natural gas prices spike to $30 a unit. So it is important to have diversity and it is important to have baseload power.

The third problem is that these large wind turbines destroy the environment in the name of saving the environment. Some people might like to look at them. I really do not. Particularly in my part of the country, the only places they work are along the foothills or along the tops of the most beautiful mountains in the Eastern United States. So you string these 20-story structures with blinking lights that can be seen for 20 miles in the middle of the beautiful view you have in the Eastern United States. They take up a lot of space.

You could run these 20-story windmills from Georgia to Maine to produce electricity, scarring the entire eastern landscape. Or you could produce the same amount of electricity with eight nuclear power plants. And you would still need the nuclear power plants to produce electricity when the wind is not blowing, which is most of the time.

The final problem is energy security. I had a meeting with George Shultz, the former Secretary of State, the other day in San Francisco. He made an observation that I had not heard him make before. George Shultz said, ``We should pay a lot of attention to generating more energy where we use it because of national security risks.''

George Shultz is head of the MIT Energy Initiative. He was observing that the supply of energy ought to be near the user of energy. That is especially true with military bases. It could be true for the rest of us in this age of terrorism. That is another reason it makes less sense to subsidize these giant turbines say in the Great Plains, and then someone has to pay for 700 miles of transmission lines through backyards and nature preserves to get the wind power to Memphis--to bring that electricity to Tennessee and the Tennessee Valley.

Expecting the United States to operate on windmills is the energy equivalent of going to war in sailboats while nuclear power is available. It is even worse than that. It is the same as destroying our nuclear ships--our nuclear plants, the same way--and replacing them with sailboats.

The energy subsidy for wind turbines has served a purpose for the last 22 years. We have spent enough money on them. We have distorted the market as much as we can stand. Because of the cost and because we are undermining the baseload power of coal and nuclear, which puts us at risk as a country that uses 20 to 25 percent of the electricity in the world, my hope would be that the Finance Committee would save some money and let the marketplace flourish. Give us the opportunity to allow the wind production tax credit to stay right where it is, expired, as it did at the end of last year. Let those persons who already have the benefit of the credits enjoy them for the rest of the period of time.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today I am introducing a bill with Senators McConnell, Isakson and Paul that will preserve the Tennessee Walking Horse tradition while stopping the contemptible practice of illegal soring.

The Horse Protection Act Amendments Act of 2014, will preserve the century-old Tennessee Walking Horse tradition and stop the contemptible practice of illegal soring.

This legislation builds upon a bill introduced in the House of Representatives by Congressman Marsha Blackburn that has support of 11 other congressmen and the American Farm Bureau. The Tennessee Farm Bureau commented about Congressman Blackburn's bill in a letter to me that said her legislation would ``allow the vast majority of horse owners, trainers and breeders and those who play by the rules to confidently participate in the horse shows.''

A competing bill, advocated by the Humane Society of the United States, has also been introduced in the Senate and would ban many industry-standard training and show devices. This legislation has been described by the Performance Show Horse Association as legislation that would ``do little more than create another layer of bureaucracy at the USDA while denying horse enthusiasts the opportunity'' to participate in competitions that are the

basis of the Tennessee Walking Horse industry.

The Humane Society Bill goes too far. In baseball, if a player illegally uses steroids, you punish the player--you don't shut down America's national pastime. With Tennessee Walking Horse shows, when trainers, owners or riders illegally sore a horse, we should find a more effective way to punish and stop them--not shut down one of Tennessee's most treasured traditions. The problem with the Humane Society bill is that it destroys a Tennessee tradition known around the world.

Julius Johnson, Commissioner of Agriculture for Tennessee, said that the Humane Society legislation will, ``damage the industry significantly and potentially eliminate the performance horse all together.''

When I first went to Japan in 1979 to recruit Nissan, the Tennessee Walking Horse was one of the things the Japanese knew best about our state. In fact, the emperor had his own Walking Horse because it has an enjoyable gait that makes riding a more pleasurable experience. When the first major supplier of Nissan, Calsonic, came to Shelbyville, the company's gift to Tennessee was Calsonic Arena, where the Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration is held.

In 2013 the Tennessee Walking Horse tradition included more than 360 affiliated shows, and it featured more than 220,000 registered horses nationwide, including more than 55,000 in Tennessee, according to the Tennessee Walking Horse Association.

Our goal is to find a way to preserve the Tennessee Walking Horse tradition and stop the cruelty to horses. We need a balanced approach, and that is what this bill provides.

This legislation takes four primary steps to preserve the Tennessee Walking Horse tradition while ending the illegal practice of soring. The bill would create consistent oversight by consolidating the numerous ``horse industry organizations'' that currently handle inspections into one organization overseeing inspections, governed by a board. The board would be composed of appointees by the States of Tennessee and Kentucky, as well as experts in the Tennessee Walking Horse industry.

Next the bill requires the use of objective, scientific testing to determine whether trainers, riders or owners are using soring techniques. Examples of this objective testing include blood samples and swabbing the horse for chemicals used to sore a horse.

Lastly, the legislation would ensure the integrity of horse inspectors by instructing the horse industry organization to establish requirements to prevent conflicts of interest with trainers, breeders and owners involved in showing the Tennessee Walking Horse.

We have proposed three improvements to the legislation introduced in the House. First, the new consolidated horse industry organization would be required to identify and contract with equine veterinary experts to advise the horse industry organization on testing methods and procedures, as well as the certification of test results.

Next the legislation creates a suspension period for horses that are found to be sore. Owners whose horses are found to be sore will have their horses suspended from showing for 30-days for the first offense, with additional offenses requiring 90-day suspensions. This is on top of existing penalties already in the Horse Protection Act. For a first time offense a person could spend one-year in jail and also pay a $3000 fine. For a second or future offense a person could spend two-years in jail and also pay a fine of $5000.

Lastly, the legislation creates four-year term limits for board members of the horse industry organization that would oversee inspections.

We can end the contemptible practice of illegal soring without shutting down the century-old tradition of the Tennessee Walking Horse. I urge my colleagues to carefully consider this legislation and the balanced approach it provides.

Mr. President, today I am introducing a bill with Senators McConnell, Isakson and Paul that will preserve the Tennessee Walking Horse tradition while stopping the contemptible practice of illegal soring.

The Horse Protection Act Amendments Act of 2014, will preserve the century-old Tennessee Walking Horse tradition and stop the contemptible practice of illegal soring.

This legislation builds upon a bill introduced in the House of Representatives by Congressman Marsha Blackburn that has support of 11 other congressmen and the American Farm Bureau. The Tennessee Farm Bureau commented about Congressman Blackburn's bill in a letter to me that said her legislation would ``allow the vast majority of horse owners, trainers and breeders and those who play by the rules to confidently participate in the horse shows.''

A competing bill, advocated by the Humane Society of the United States, has also been introduced in the Senate and would ban many industry-standard training and show devices. This legislation has been described by the Performance Show Horse Association as legislation that would ``do little more than create another layer of bureaucracy at the USDA while denying horse enthusiasts the opportunity'' to participate in competitions that are the

basis of the Tennessee Walking Horse industry.

The Humane Society Bill goes too far. In baseball, if a player illegally uses steroids, you punish the player--you don't shut down America's national pastime. With Tennessee Walking Horse shows, when trainers, owners or riders illegally sore a horse, we should find a more effective way to punish and stop them--not shut down one of Tennessee's most treasured traditions. The problem with the Humane Society bill is that it destroys a Tennessee tradition known around the world.

Julius Johnson, Commissioner of Agriculture for Tennessee, said that the Humane Society legislation will, ``damage the industry significantly and potentially eliminate the performance horse all together.''

When I first went to Japan in 1979 to recruit Nissan, the Tennessee Walking Horse was one of the things the Japanese knew best about our state. In fact, the emperor had his own Walking Horse because it has an enjoyable gait that makes riding a more pleasurable experience. When the first major supplier of Nissan, Calsonic, came to Shelbyville, the company's gift to Tennessee was Calsonic Arena, where the Tennessee Walking Horse National Celebration is held.

In 2013 the Tennessee Walking Horse tradition included more than 360 affiliated shows, and it featured more than 220,000 registered horses nationwide, including more than 55,000 in Tennessee, according to the Tennessee Walking Horse Association.

Our goal is to find a way to preserve the Tennessee Walking Horse tradition and stop the cruelty to horses. We need a balanced approach, and that is what this bill provides.

This legislation takes four primary steps to preserve the Tennessee Walking Horse tradition while ending the illegal practice of soring. The bill would create consistent oversight by consolidating the numerous ``horse industry organizations'' that currently handle inspections into one organization overseeing inspections, governed by a board. The board would be composed of appointees by the States of Tennessee and Kentucky, as well as experts in the Tennessee Walking Horse industry.

Next the bill requires the use of objective, scientific testing to determine whether trainers, riders or owners are using soring techniques. Examples of this objective testing include blood samples and swabbing the horse for chemicals used to sore a horse.

Lastly, the legislation would ensure the integrity of horse inspectors by instructing the horse industry organization to establish requirements to prevent conflicts of interest with trainers, breeders and owners involved in showing the Tennessee Walking Horse.

We have proposed three improvements to the legislation introduced in the House. First, the new consolidated horse industry organization would be required to identify and contract with equine veterinary experts to advise the horse industry organization on testing methods and procedures, as well as the certification of test results.

Next the legislation creates a suspension period for horses that are found to be sore. Owners whose horses are found to be sore will have their horses suspended from showing for 30-days for the first offense, with additional offenses requiring 90-day suspensions. This is on top of existing penalties already in the Horse Protection Act. For a first time offense a person could spend one-year in jail and also pay a $3000 fine. For a second or future offense a person could spend two-years in jail and also pay a fine of $5000.

Lastly, the legislation creates four-year term limits for board members of the horse industry organization that would oversee inspections.

We can end the contemptible practice of illegal soring without shutting down the century-old tradition of the Tennessee Walking Horse. I urge my colleagues to carefully consider this legislation and the balanced approach it provides.

I thank the Senator from Washington for her comments and her leadership in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, as well. She has been a consistent spokesman for children, especially for homeless children.

I want to make an observation about the Child Care and Development Block Grant Program that the Presiding Officer from New Jersey will especially find of interest because of his work with children and schools in New Jersey. We have heard this morning a great deal of support for the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act, which is a very remarkable piece of legislation in terms of the way it is structured, if we think about it.

It has been around for about 20 years, but it takes 5 to 6 billion Federal dollars each year and gives it to States--a block grant with a lot of flexibility. Then the money is distributed as vouchers to individual parents--low-income women, mostly--who then choose among thousands of certified childcare centers. That, I would argue, while it was done 20 years ago, fits the Internet age.

Newt Gingrich--and I have sometimes accused Newt of being Vesuvian in his qualities because he has such a steady flow of new ideas--has done some very interesting work recently. He quotes a computer programmer named Tim O'Reilly who made a suggestion for how the Internet could transform government. Mr. O'Reilly said:

The best way for government to operate is to figure out

what kinds of things are

enablers of society and make investments in those things. The

same way that Apple figured out, ``If we turn the iPhone into

a platform, outside developers will bring hundreds of

thousands of applications to the table.''

In a way, the developers of the Child Care and Development Block Grant Program in the early 1990s, under the first President Bush, were ahead of their time because, rather than having a big burdensome program run from Washington with lots of rules made here, we have a piece of legislation that survived for more than two decades and that helps 1.5 million children this year.

It enables people such as the mother in Memphis I talked about on the floor yesterday who became eligible for a childcare voucher in Tennessee. She was at LeMoyne-Owen College studying for her business degree and was able to place her infant in a childcare center of her choice. The State gave her $500 to $600 a month for a voucher--infant care is more expensive. She earned her degree and is now an assistant manager at Walmart. She now has a second child in the same childcare center--but she can afford to pay for it herself.

That is a perfect example of enabling her, using taxpayer money, to move up the economic ladder, to reach the American dream and succeed. Rather than making her do it or mandating her to do it, we enabled her to do it.

We also do this--and we have done it very successfully since World War II--with college grants and loans, which also have virtually unanimous support in the Senate on both sides of the aisle.

Beginning with the GI bill for veterans in 1944, we have given vouchers to veterans, and those vouchers follow them to any educational institution of their choice. At the beginning, many of them went to high schools. Some of them went to colleges overseas.

That was the beginning of our current system of Federal Government support for grants and loans, and now half of our college students have a Federal grant or a loan to help pay for college. All of those grants and loans follow them to the institution of their choice. That is a lot of money. It is over $100 billion in loans--new loans--every year. It is $33 billion in Pell grants each year.

We followed Tim O'Reilly's suggestion there as well. We haven't set up a lot of complicated Washington programs and managers. We have simply said this. If you are eligible and go to an accredited institution--whether it is public, private, for-profit, nonprofit, Yeshiva, Notre Dame or Rutgers--the money will follow you to the college of your choice. That is what we have done since World War II with college students--and since the era of George Walker Bush, with children--we have given them tickets to the institutions of their choice.

But what have we done in the middle? We have vouchers for college students and vouchers for very young children, but what about students who go to elementary school? And what about students who go to high school? Especially, what about students who are low-income students who are trapped in failing schools? Our childcare vouchers are for low- income parents, mainly women. Our vouchers for college students are for low-income students. We call those Pell grants. But we give our K-12 money to the schools instead of allowing it to follow students to the schools of their choice.

I have always wondered, if we have had such success with the GI bill and the Pell grant and the student loan and the childcare voucher, why don't we try it with kindergarten through the 12th grade? Many enterprising mayors and Governors have tried that, usually facing a lot of resistance from people who see something un-American about vouchers. It is not very un-American if it is the GI bill, not very un-American if it is a Pell grant, not very un-American if it is a childcare voucher, but something somehow is wrong with it if you are in third grade or the seventh grade or the ninth grade.

So I have introduced something called Scholarships for Kids, which is almost like the child care development block grant for students who are in elementary and secondary schools. It would take 80 Federal education programs that spend about $24 billion a year and say to New Jersey or Tennessee or Iowa: You can take all that money, whatever your share of that is, and create a $2,100 scholarship for every single child in your State below the Federal poverty level, and it can follow that child to whatever school in your State the child attends.

If you live in a city or a State where you want the child to be able to go to any accredited institution, public or private, the way we do with Pell grants, you may do that. If you believe that Federal dollars for elementary and secondary schools should only go to public schools, you may do that. You may design the program however you want to do it in your State. But the idea would be that we would enable low-income children, the ones who are below the Federal poverty level--and there are 11 million of those in our country--we would allow you to pin $2,100 to their shirt to follow that child to school. I think we know what would happen if we were to do that. Those children may need to be in school longer each day. They may need a meal. They may need to be there during vacation time. They may need to be there in the summer. And if the teacher has the extra money and the freedom to use it, that gives that school more autonomy and that helps that child succeed.

Does every school succeed at the same rate? No. Not every college succeeds at the same rate. Not every childcare center succeeds at the same rate. But if we have 70 years of experience with colleges of creating autonomy and choice and letting the money follow the students to the school--and people all around the world tell us we have the best system of colleges in the world--why don't we try it with our schools?

I see the Senator from Oklahoma, and I will wind down so he can wind up. I thank him for his contribution to the debate.

While we are in the middle of so much testimony about what a great thing the child care development block grant is--vouchers to little children who are poor--and while we all believe Pell grants are a great idea--vouchers to college students who are low income--should we not think about doing exactly the same thing with elementary and secondary school students as a way to help them succeed? And not as a Federal mandate but simply giving Governors and State legislators and educators the opportunity to say: Give us that share of our $24 billion. Give every one of our children who is below the Federal poverty level $2,100 each and let us decide how it follows them to the school they attend.

So I wanted to make that observation. And I am delighted to know the Senator from New Jersey is presiding today because of the work he has done in his State in that area.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to join in. One, as the Senator from Maryland said, I recognize he has been out front in trying to get value for the taxpayers' dollar; and, second, he is working in a cooperative way to help us get a result. Those are two

great characteristics in a body of 100 people which operates by unanimous consent. So I am grateful for that.

On the first point, I completely agree with him on the early childhood money. We have about $18 billion from various streams of Federal dollars aimed at children below 5 or 6; then we have State dollars; then we have local dollars; then we have private dollars. We have grappled with ways to try to make sure we spend that money more effectively. One way is to emphasize centers of excellence, like Oklahoma City, Nashville, or Jersey City, where they try to put all that money together.

But I am committed to work with Senator Harkin and Senator Mikulski to take the research which Senator Coburn has done and see if we can consolidate, streamline, and get more value for early childhood.

Second, he has called attention to a problem which I would appreciate his help in solving with his ``Millionaires' Amendment,'' which I think we will be voting on in a little while. Let me give an example, if I may.

The application form students fill out for Federal grants and loans to attend college is ridiculous. If I had it in my hand and held it up here, it would go from up here all the way to the floor. It is 100 questions. We had testimony in our committee that if we just answered two questions, in 95 percent of the cases it would be accurate. One: What was your family income 2 years ago? And, two: How many people are in your family? But the other 5 percent is the problem, because there could be abuse of the kind the Senator is talking about here.

What I would like to do--and I think others here would like to do--is to simplify the application form for Federal grants and loans, but do it in such a way we make sure the money goes where it is supposed to go. When there are 100 complicated questions to fill out, it discourages a lot of low-income people from going to college who we hope would, and it wastes time and money of administrators and families. Many of these families are not families with college degrees and accountants to help them fill out these long forms.

So we need the Senator from Oklahoma's help when we get to that discussion, sometime, of: How do we simplify the form of application for Federal grants and loans? And, with the 5 percent which remains, how do we narrow that down to 4, 3, 2, 1, to make sure almost all the money we are appropriating goes where it is supposed to go?

I salute him for both amendments. I look forward to supporting his amendment on the child care block grants, and hope it is a first step for dealing with the misapplication of Federal dollars aimed to help people move up the economic ladder.

I yield the floor.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, I will not extend this more than 2 minutes, but I think it is instructive to colleagues to note what the Senator from Maryland, the Senator from North Carolina, and the Senator from Iowa have done. We started this bill about 24 hours ago, right after lunch. More than 40 amendments were filed. More than half of them have been considered and disposed of. There was no objection to a motion to proceed. There was no cloture vote filed. There was no filibuster. And on both sides of the aisle, anyone who showed up with an amendment relevant to the childcare discussion had a chance to have it considered without anybody picking their amendment. Finally, on this side and that side of the aisle, many Members showed a lot of restraint and courtesy in adjusting their amendments so that we could get here. We will not be able to do this every time, but it is a modest step in a very good direction toward the way the Senate should work.

I want to especially thank the Senator from Iowa, the Senator from Maryland, and the Senator from North Carolina for their leadership.

I would also like to extend my deep thanks and sincere appreciation to the dedicated staff that worked on this bill for the past year. Without their hard work and tireless effort we wouldn't have been able to reach the successful conclusion on the passage of this important bill.

I would like to thank Senator Burr's staff, Christopher Toppings and Natasha Hickman for working so closely with my staff and working so well together and with our Republican offices.

I would also like to thank Senator Mikulski's staff, Brent Palmer and

Jessica McNiece for their hard work and steady support of getting this bill through the Senate.

The Chairman of the committee has an outstanding staff who are all very capable and dedicated, especially Mario Cardona, Mildred Otero, and his new Staff Director, Derek Miller. I thank them for their close working relationship with my staff.

We know that these bills don't just suddenly appear. Legislative Counsel staff work long hours on the bill and then on the amendments, so I would like to especially thank Liz King, Kristin Romero, Katie Grendon, Bill Baird, and Rob Silver.

And we always rely on our experts at the Congressional Research Service to give us good information in a timely manner, so I extend our thanks to Karen Lynch.

Finally I would like to thank my staff. They have put in a lot of time and effort to make this a process the Senate can be proud of, and I appreciate their efforts and late nights on this bill. So my thanks go out to Diane Tran, Bill Knudsen, Marty West, Patrick Murray, Peter Oppenheim, Michael Merrell, David Cleary, Liz Wolgemuth, and Jim Jeffries.

Madam President, I ask that a copy of my remarks to the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners be printed in the Record.

The remarks follow.

National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners

Five years ago, all the talk in the United States was about

a cap-and-trade program and deliberately raising the price of

energy as a way of achieving clean energy independence. Two

years ago, I visited Germany--a country that has adopted such

a policy--and what I found was an energy mess.

The Germans are subsidizing wind and solar, and closing

their nuclear plants--but because they are a big

manufacturing country they still need nuclear, coal and

natural gas for reliable electricity. So to meet those needs,

the Germans are buying nuclear power from France, and gas

from an unreliable partner, Russia. They're even building

their own new coal plants in order to have enough reliable

electricity.

The end result of this bizarre policy is that Germany has

among the highest household electricity prices in the

European Union. When I asked an economic minister what he

would say to a manufacturer concerned about energy costs in

Germany, he said, ``I would suggest he go somewhere else.''

This concern in Germany is spreading across Europe. A

recent headline in the New York Times reads ``Europe, Facing

Economic Pain, May Ease Climate Rules.'' The accompanying

article stated that ``the European Union proposed an end to

binding national targets for renewable energy production

after 2020.''

Europeans may end some of their climate targets to avoid

throwing a big, wet regulatory blanket over their economies.

The point is: in a competitive world, energy policies have a

lot to do with a country's economic well-being.

When you compare our country's energy needs with the

example of Germany, you can see that we are at a fork in the

road on our national energy policy. Which path we take will

help determine how well the United States competes in a 21st-

century economy.

The surest path toward cheap, clean, reliable energy is to

end Washington's obsession with wasteful energy subsidies and

to instead rely on free enterprise and government-sponsored

research.

Or, we can take the path of Germany, which is where we are

headed if we continue to waste tax dollars on subsidies that

prop up one type of energy over another.

In the United States today, production of electricity from

natural gas has grown to 28 percent of total production. This

is at the expense of coal, which is down to 39 percent.

Nuclear power holds relatively steady at 19 percent. Hydro is

7 percent. Wind, solar, biomass and geothermal make up only 6

percent, of which 4 percent is wind.

In Washington and in state capitols, there are debates

about whether to push this 6 percent of electricity by

renewables to a much higher number by forcing a so-called

national renewable energy standard, or by further subsidizing

an energy source because it's deemed ``clean,'' or by

implementing carbon regulations even though Congress has

never approved carbon regulations. To avoid the path of

Germany and maintain our competiveness, I suggest four grand

principles for the United States' energy future: 1) cheaper,

not more expensive, energy; 2) clean, not just renewable,

energy; 3) research and development, not government mandates;

and 4) free market, not government picking ``winners and

losers.''

The first step on the right path to our energy future--and

a prime example of how to apply these principles--is to not

extend the massive wind production tax credit that expired on

January 1. I believe energy companies basically should enjoy

the same tax benefits non-energy companies receive, which is

largely the case today with traditional forms of energy.

I believe that through tax reform we should simplify the

tax code and eliminate most preferences for specific types of

energy production. This would save a lot of money, which

could be better spent on doubling energy research and

reducing the federal debt.

The worst culprit for wasteful energy subsidies is Big

Wind. Under current law, the wind production tax credit will

have provided an estimated $22 billion to wind producers

between 1992 and 2022, according to the Congressional

Research Service. And that doesn't include the $12.9 billion

that wind received from President Obama's federal stimulus

bill.

I've been fighting against this subsidy for years because I

think it is a bad deal for American taxpayers, a bad deal for

rate payers, and a bad deal for U.S. competitiveness. And if

we want to see what the result of those policies would be

let's look again at Germany, and other parts of Europe.

Just last week energy expert Daniel Yergin wrote that one

of the biggest themes at this year's World Economic Forum in

Davos was ``competitiveness.'' ``This particular rivalry

[competitiveness] pits the United States head-on against

Europe,'' he said.

Yergin says that energy is one way to measure

competitiveness, and that was the focus at Davos. He went on

to say, ``European industrial electricity prices are twice as

high as those in some countries and are much higher than

those in the United States. To a significant degree, this is

the result of a pell-mell push toward high-cost renewable

electricity (wind and solar), which is imposing heavy costs

on consumers and generating large fiscal burdens for

governments.'' A January 2014 New York Times article entitled

``German Energy Official Sounds a Warning'' reports that,

``The minister, Sigmar Gabriel, in his first major policy

speech, said at an annual energy conference organized by the

publication Handelsblatt in Berlin that annual consumer costs

for renewables of about 24 billion euros, or about $32.5

billion, were already pushing the limits of what the German

economy, Europe's most powerful, could handle.'' In a BBC

News article, ``Can Germany afford its energy bender' shift

to green power?'' a minister for economics in Germany says

that Germany's ``law on renewable energy will not only lead

to increased electricity prices, but it is also a non-market,

planned system that endangers the industrial base of'' the

German economy.

This doesn't sound like the path down which America should

go to build a 21st-century economy. And yet, forces in

Congress are preparing to renew the expired wind subsidy and

continue to take us down the path that's currently causing

problems in Germany. The problem here is not being ``for or

against renewable'' energy or just wasting taxpayers' tax

dollars. The problem is that these huge subsidies are

propping up renewable energy at the expense of reliable

energy. In the case of wind, this increases the occurrence of

negative pricing.'

Government subsidies are so generous that in some markets

wind developers can give away electricity and still make a

profit. Such negative pricing' rewards expensive, unreliable

power like wind and undercuts and punishes cheap, reliable

power from nuclear and coal plants. This is a growing problem

in the U.S. The more wind we subsidize and the more we build,

the bigger the problem becomes. For a snapshot of where we

are going, let's take another look at Europe.

A Wall Street Journal opinion piece by Rupert Darwall

entitled ``Europe's Stark Renewables Lesson'' reports that

``the European Commission acknowledges that, because member

states over-incentivized investment in renewables, they

compounded the challenges'' posed by non-dispatchable

electricity generation like wind.

The same threat applies to some markets here in the U.S.,

according to the Center for Strategic and International

Studies. Negative pricing' caused by wind power tied to

energy subsidies undercuts the operation of nuclear plants

and could contribute to closing as many as 25 percent of our

nuclear plants by 2020.

So, these subsidies are putting at risk our largest source

of clean, cheap, reliable electricity--nuclear--and more

importantly, putting at risk energy diversity.

This audience understands more than most the importance of

energy diversity to help reduce price spikes and have a more

reliable grid.

The recent polar vortex cold wave reminded us of the

importance of diversity. When natural gas prices spiked, and

demand was unusually high, nuclear and coal generations saved

the day. You can't put a price on diversity, but when you

need the lights to come on and the heater to kick in,

diversity can be lifesaving, and wind subsidies are

threatening that.

We need to go down a path to cheap, clean, reliable

electricity.

That path would provide a pro-growth, pro-jobs energy

policy that puts us more firmly on the path toward a

competitive future and protects households and business

across the country, especially during extreme conditions.

To start, the best way to achieve cheap, clean, reliable

energy is through market-driven solutions. Some will say,

well what about oil and gas, what about nuclear subsidies?

The president in his State of the Union address called for an

end to tax policy that gives ``$4 billion a year to fossil

fuel industries.'' To begin with, fossil fuels contribute 67

percent of our electricity. ``Big Wind'' received $1.4

billion through the wind production tax credit last year but

only produces 4 percent of America's electricity.

The president often likes to cite the billions of dollars

in subsidies for the oil and gas industry. But here's the

catch: many of these ``Big Oil'' subsidies the president

likes to highlight are the same or similar to tax provisions

that benefit other industries.

For example, Xerox, Microsoft and Caterpillar all benefit

from tax provisions like the manufacturing tax credit,

amortization, or depreciation of used equipment that the

president is counting as ``Big Oil'' subsidies. And, of

course, wind energy companies also benefit from many similar

tax provisions--but the production tax credit for wind is in

addition to regular tax code provisions that benefit many

companies.

We should end wasteful, long-term special tax breaks, both

for ``Big Oil'' and ``Big Wind.'' We should use the money we

save from ending wasteful subsidies to reduce the federal

debt and double energy research. Then we can let the free

market determine the course forward, rather than the

government picking ``winners and losers.''

In addition to supporting research, I believe it is

appropriate for the government to jumpstart new technologies

to allow time for the free enterprise system to take the

reins, but these should be narrowly defined and temporary.

For example: Unconventional gas benefited from government

research and a temporary tax credit--that expired in 1992.

The full tax credit for plug-in electric cars was capped at

200,000 vehicles per manufacturer. The government provided

research and licensing support for small modular reactors--

but that ends after five years. There is a production

tax credit for nuclear power plants but it's limited to 6,000

megawatts.

On the other hand, we have the temporary wind production

tax credit that was enacted in 1992 to jumpstart an industry,

and according to the Congressional Research Service will cost

taxpayers a total of $22 billion from 1992 through 2022. The

most recent one-year extension--which gives wind developers

10 years of subsidies--would cost $12 billion over 10 years,

according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. This is for

what President Obama's former energy secretary called a

``mature technology'' that produces only 4 percent of our

electricity and only works when the wind blows.

President Reagan used to say ``the nearest thing to eternal

life we'll ever see on this Earth is a government program''

and that's too often the case with energy subsidies. The most

glaring example is the more than 20-year-old subsidy for wind

power, a technology that has matured. The United States uses

20 percent of all the electricity produced in the world for

our computers, our businesses, our homes and our national

defense. To rely on unreliable wind power when nuclear, coal

and natural gas are available is the energy equivalent of

going to war in sailboats. Those who oppose the path I am

suggesting like to say that nuclear and coal aren't clean

forms of electricity.

While this path isn't without its challenges, I'll take

that argument on. Nuclear power is our largest source of air-

pollution-free electricity, 60 percent. Then people opposing

nuclear power will say, ``what about the waste?'' This is an

issue of great concern to many of you. To address this

challenge, I have cosponsored legislation with Senators

Wyden, Murkowski and Feinstein that would implement the

recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's

Nuclear Future.

The bill would create a new federal agency to oversee the

nuclear waste program, and ensure that progress on

consolidated storage sites and repositories moves along

parallel tracks. The federal government should not be

collecting fees without keeping its promise to dispose of the

nuclear waste now sitting in your states. The D.C. Court of

Appeals opinion in your case has made this point clear.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee has held

two hearings on the legislation, and we are working toward

having the committee hold a markup and favorably report the

bill so it can move to the Senate floor.

We know how to control mercury, smog and soot, and many

utilities are leading the way in installing these

technologies, including the Tennessee Valley Authority.

So in order to burn coal in a clean way, the only remaining

obstacle is carbon emissions from coal plants. The best way

to solve that problem is not through a cap-and-trade system,

which would raise prices, but instead through research and

development, which could lower them. Finding a way to capture

carbon from coal plants and turn it into a product that can

be sold is the Holy Grail of energy research--and we are

working on solutions that will do just that.

ARPA-E, a small energy research agency, is working with

private companies to take the carbon from coal plants and

feed it to microbes that with electricity can produce liquid

transportation fuels. Such a solution might even make coal

cheaper than it is today.

When you think about it that way, this crossroads I'm

talking about--this fork in the road between clean, cheap,

reliable energy and the mess of Germany and other European

countries--is not just a challenge, but an opportunity.

It's true that our energy needs are great, and that there

are obstacles to meeting them. But we also have an

opportunity to get Washington out of the way and to liberate

our free enterprise system. If we do, the path toward cheap,

clean, reliable energy is full of possibility.

Madam President, I yield back our time.

Madam President, I want to say to the Senator from Iowa how much I appreciate working with him.

We were talking yesterday, and he told me--I think I have these facts about right--that our committee in this Congress has reported 17 bills that have passed the Senate and 10 that have become law, which I suspect exceeds that of any other committee. As our hearing this morning on the minimum wage showed, it is not because we always agree with each other all the time. We probably have the most ideologically split committee in the Congress by party, but we get a lot done. That is due in great measure to the way the Senator from Iowa leads the committee, and I appreciate that very much.

I will have more to say about Senator Burr and Senator Mikulski in a few moments because they have done the yeoman's work on this. They are the leaders of this effort. They immersed themselves in it for the last two years. They brought it to a position which convinced everybody on the committee it was time to move ahead, but that is not where we were when we started. We had lots of differences of opinions, and we came to a conclusion that they will be explaining in detail.

So the way we will proceed today is this. After my remarks, Senator Mikulski and Senator Burr will step up and begin to manage the bill. Senator Harkin and I will be here. We are continuing right through the afternoon.

We hope that Senators will bring their amendments to the floor. What we are hoping to do is to have a debate about the child care and development block grant. We are hoping to have amendments, and we will have votes on those amendments. It is not our desire to pick this Democratic amendment or this Republican amendment. If you have an amendment on the child care and development block grant that is related to the bill, please bring it over and talk to Senator Burr, Senator Mikulski, Senator Harkin, or me, and we will start lining them up. There will be time for debate. There will be a vote and it will be considered.

Our hope is to have votes this afternoon, votes tomorrow morning, and to let Senators know that there won't be votes tonight so they can plan their schedules. Senator Burr will talk more about that and the time for attempting to conclude the bill tomorrow. That is our goal. That is the way the Senate traditionally has worked. It is the way we hope it works today.

Since Senator Mikulski from Maryland and the Senator from North Carolina have done the principal amount of work on the bill, I see no need for me to go through the details of the bill. I think they are better equipped and prepared to do that. Let me try to put the whole effort in perspective before I step aside and Senator Mikulski and Senator Burr step up.

During World War II there were a great many mothers, women, who took jobs outside the home. That was different. In our agricultural society families worked together. As the industrial society in America developed during the 20th century, men largely went away from home to work and women mostly worked at home.

But in World War II something different happened. Many of the men were overseas fighting. There was a lot of work to be done at home, and so women took jobs in the factories that they didn't have before. That produced a new phenomenon in the American society which was called worksite daycare. Someone had to take care of the children. In many cases companies employing large numbers of women during World War II provided sites at the workplace so that mothers could bring their children while they worked.

Then after the war was over, things went back to the way they were before, and most American women worked at home. That began to change probably in the 1970s. It is probably fair to say that the greatest social change in our country over the last 40 years has been the gradual and steady phenomenon of more women in the workplace outside the home and the adjustments our society has made to that.

I was lucky. I had an early head start in the little town of Maryville, Tennessee, where I grew up at the edge of the Smoky Mountains. My mother had one of the town's two preschool education programs. She had it in a converted garage in her backyard. She had been trained in Kansas and in a settlement house in Chicago. It is hard for me today to imagine how she could do this, but she had 25 3-year- olds and 4-year-olds in the morning and 25 5-year-olds in the afternoon. That was Mrs. Alexander's preschool, which we called the institution of lower learning.

She had nowhere else to put me, so I became the first Senator to have 5 years of kindergarten, which I probably needed, but which gave me a head start. It gave me the understanding of what Senator Harkin said earlier--that research then, but especially now, shows the brain develops at least from the moment of conception and that all of the influences around an infant are important to that person's development over a long period of time.

Most parents who understand that want to make sure that they are with a child at a very early age stimulating that child, or if they can't be with their child for some period of time for some reason, someone else is looking after their child. Along with the changing role of women in the workforce came the idea of more childcare.

I remember in 1986 when I was Governor of Tennessee, the head of our human services division--a woman named Marguerite Sallee, now Marguerite Kondracke--came to me, and she proposed that I ask the businesses in Tennessee to create 1,000 worksite daycare places. I was kind of taken aback by that because I didn't understand the need for it, and I didn't think the businesses would do it voluntarily.

Well, we did that, and we got twice as many worksite daycare places as we requested. It was good for businesses to do and there was plenty of demand for it from the parents who had to take their children to work. The next year I was out of a job--I was through with my time as Governor--and so was Marguerite. Along with Captain Kangaroo--Bob Keeshan--my wife, and Brad Martin, we founded a company called Corporate Child Care, which provided worksite daycare places. After about 10 years, it merged with its major competitor Bright Horizons, and they became what is today the largest provider of worksite daycare in the world.

Companies have realized the importance of worksite daycare, but not all mothers and fathers can send their children to Bright Horizons while they work, and so there came to be a recognition that there needed to be some response by the Federal Government.

The next year, about 1988, the first Federal childcare programs came into existence. In 1996, the law we are considering today was basically a part of the reform of the Welfare Act. It is a remarkable law because it involves lots of State flexibility. In other words, it acknowledges that what is good for Maryland may not be good for North Carolina. It models our higher education system by letting the money follow the child to the institution that the parent thinks is best for their child. These are vouchers. It has gradually grown to an area where we spend $5 billion or $6 billion of taxpayers' money each year to provide about 1\1/2\ million children with an opportunity for childcare.

I will mention one success story so we have an example of exactly what we are talking about. I am thinking of a young mother in Memphis, TN, who was attending LeMoyne-Owen College and earning a business degree. She had an infant child, and so she put that child in a childcare center she chose. The voucher, through this program we are talking about today, provided $500 to $600 a month to help pay for the bill. Infant childcare is especially expensive. If you think about it, this is understandable.

The success part of the story is that she earned her degree. She is now an assistant manager at Walmart in Memphis. She has a second child who attends the same childcare center now, but she earns enough to pay the full cost.

This program encourages work, it encourages job training, and for those Americans who are low income and working or low income and training or educating themselves for a job, this helps them get that job. This is an important bill for many families.

In Tennessee, we have about 20,000 families affected each month and nearly 40,000 children. It is a big help to them. It makes a difference in their lives.

I thank Senator Mikulski and Senator Burr for their work on this legislation. I know of no two Senators in this body who approach issues in a more serious, effective, and determined way. They also understand that in a body of 100 Members, where we each have a right to object, that no bill is going to be exactly what any of us want.

For example, I am leery of the extent of the background checks required by this bill, which is one of its major accomplishments. As a former Governor, I am very skeptical of Washington setting rules for States, but I accept the compromise they have agreed to with the background checks. We talked that matter through, and I think it is a sound proposal. I congratulate them for the way they have done this over the last 2 years and the way we have approached it.

I will conclude with where I started. We are asking Senators to join us in a debate about the child care and development block grant. We hope Senators will come to the floor with their ideas on it. We know there are a number of Senators who have amendments on both sides of the aisle. What we are saying to those Senators is if you have an amendment that is related to our bill, you will have a chance to talk about it and you will have a chance for it to be voted on and perhaps accepted by the full Senate, and hopefully this bill will go to the House and become law.

We know that has not been the story as often as it should be in the Senate, but we would like to see that happen more often. It requires a little bit of restraint on the part of each of us as Senators. We can't all exercise all of our rights all the time and get anything done. It requires some trust and restraint on the part of our leaders, Senator Reid and Senator McConnell. We appreciate them turning the management of the bill over to Senator Mikulski and Senator Burr, with Senator Harkin and me in support of their efforts.

We appreciate the cooperation of the many Senators who have already come up with excellent amendments and notified us about them. Senator Burr and Senator Mikulski know about them and will talk about them.

At this stage, I wish to step down and turn this matter over to Senator Mikulski first, and then Senator Burr. We invite Senators to come over. We will continue through lunch and discuss, debate, talk, and begin voting on the Child Care and Development Block Grant Reauthorization.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, might I ask the Senator from Iowa and the Senator from North Carolina, is it not also likely, given the good progress we are making, we may be able to have another vote or two between 5 and 5:30 this afternoon so as not to interfere with meetings or the briefing many Senators are attending at 5:30?

So that would be two votes at 2:30 and perhaps two more at probably about 5:15.

Mr. President, I thank the Senators from Iowa and North Carolina.

I also thank the Senator from Wyoming for his leadership. For a number of years he was the ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee, and while he was there he focused on trying to help us spend our money more efficiently--which all of us want to do.

Sometimes we forget that Head Start is not the only early learning program we have in the country. It is the most famous. It is best known. It is very popular with most people. It is about $8.6 billion, but the bill we are debating today, the child care and development block grant, is another $5.3 billion. It is two-thirds the size of Head Start and affects 1.5 million children. And then there is another of $5 billion or so of Federal funding for early learning and early childhood. Without getting into a debate about whether we should have new programs, I think there is a consensus among most of us that we should at least start by taking the money we are spending for early childhood and spend it wisely.

One step we took a few years ago was to create centers of excellence for Head Start. This was, I believe, in 2007. The idea there was that the Governor of each State would be permitted to pick at least two communities or cities where they were doing the best job of spending money in a coordinated way for early learning and childhood development. Not only are these 18 billion Federal dollars being spent, but many States have additional funding for early childhood, most States have kindergarten programs, and many States have programs for 3- year-olds and 4-year-olds. The idea was to see if we could encourage Nashville or Denver or Des Moines to take a look at all the children between 0 and 6 and all the dollars being spent--public, private, Federal, State and local--and see who is doing the best job of putting that all together. It is always a problem with a big, complex country such as this when you have a decentralized government and there are several layers. There are lots of silos, and children don't live in silos. They are by themselves needing help and we need to find a way of getting the money to them. So the centers of excellence was a modest beginning to try to encourage better spending of what is up to $18 billion of money already being spent.

I think Senator Enzi's amendment, which I strongly support, would give us more information about how to better spend the Federal dollars we already spend for early childhood. I simply wanted to call the attention of the Senate and others who may be paying attention to that centers of excellence program. In the committee chaired by the Senator from Iowa, we had excellent testimony from the representative from Denver who had one of the first centers of excellence. She talked about the progress they have made in taking all the available money and using it in the most effective way to help children.

I hope as we move along through the process of dealing with the debate about how do we do a better job of early childhood education that we consider centers of excellence, and I hope Senator Enzi's amendment is adopted today because it will help us. It will make us a better steward of taxpayer dollars, and that means doing a better job of helping children.

Thank you, and I yield the floor.

Madam President, for the benefit of Senators, I wish to ask something about the schedule. I would like to ask the Senator from Iowa, the Senator from North Carolina, and Senator Mikulski about the schedule of this bill. We are off to a fast start. We have the Franken amendment to be voted on now. This is my understanding of the schedule, and I want to see if I have it about right and then ask the chairman and the floor managers if it is right.

We expect there to be a colloquy from 3 o'clock until about 4 o'clock involving several Senators on the child care and development block grant. Then at 5:15 we expect to have a vote--at least one vote--and may accept others by voice and maybe have some nominations. Senators who have other amendments are free to come and

speak between 4 o'clock and 5 o'clock. We would expect to have other votes tomorrow before lunch and finish the bill, it is my understanding, if we don't run into a snag, right after lunch tomorrow, about 2:00 or 2:15. That is the course we hope to be on.

I thank Chairman Harkin and Senator Mikulski and Senator Burr for getting us off to a fast start. We have had about 20 amendments from both sides brought forward. We have been able to deal with them all.

Is that about right in terms of the schedule?

Mr. President, I ask that a copy of my remarks to the Wilson County Friends of Scouting Luncheon in Lebanon, TN be printed in the Record.

The remarks follow.

Lessons From Scouting

Thank you very much. In a little book I did a few years ago

called Lamar Alexander's Little Plaid Book, it has lots of

rules in it and one of them is ``If you want a standing

ovation, seat a few friends in the front row.'' So, thanks to

the front row for that. And, thanks to Rob, my friend, for

inviting me here and all of the others of you who did, and

for the terrific job you do as aldermen and for your

friendship. Jason Flannery, Peter Williston, Chris Crowell,

Bobby Kane, Quin Cochran, thank you for your remarks, which

will come a little later. Representative Mark Pody is here,

and Mayor Hutto and Mayor Craighead and Mayor Jennings all

are here. It's exciting to be in Lebanon and to hear about

all of the good things that are happening here.

I had a great friend Alex Haley, the author of Roots, who

once heard me make a speech and he came up afterwards and

said, ``Lamar, may I make a suggestion?'' And I said ``Well,

of course, Alex.'' And he said ``Well, if when you start,

instead of making a speech you would say `Let me tell you a

story,' people might actually listen to what you have to

say.'' So let me tell you a few stories from scouting.

I was about 13 years old. It was in a hot summer over in

East Tennessee. But, when you're in scouting and you go up in

the Smokies, you learn that it drops about five degrees every

thousand feet, so by the time you get to the top of Spence

Field Mountain on the Appalachian Trail, it's pretty nice.

So, our explorer scout group had gone up there one August

day, and we'd loaded up our packs with Bisquick and bacon and

all the things that you cook for breakfast because that's

when all of the blueberries were ripe on Spence Field and we

were going to make blueberry pancakes the next morning.

We stayed in one of the trail shelters along the

Appalachian Trail--we'd done that many times before--with our

explorer scout leader, Dick Grave, who later was the head of

Alcoa in Tennessee, and went to bed that night. At about 3

a.m., I noticed someone rustling around--these trail shelters

had an open front--fire out front, and then three sides were

closed. I was sleeping down on one end and I noticed some

rustling around in the middle around where our packs were.

So, I thought it was one of the boys getting up and I looked

over there and there was a bear. Well, I woke everybody up,

which didn't take long, and we did the only thing you do in a

circumstance like that which was, we climbed up on top of our

trail shelter with our aluminum pans and our cooking

utensils, and we beat the cooking utensils on the aluminum

pans and shouted unprintable things at the bear, who took all

of our packs, including what we had for breakfast, down to

the spring in front of the Spence Field Shelter. I learned a

lesson about not sleeping with your breakfast bacon on top of

the Smoky Mountains when the bears are around.

That's not the only thing I learned in Boy Scouts. About

the same time, about the same age, when the weather was just

as hot, we went spelunking in Monroe County in East

Tennessee. That means you go down in caves. And if you have

been down in caves, you know that they're all about the same

temperature--I forget, but it's about 57 degrees, something

like that, but it was a hundred degrees outside. I decided,

which thirteen-year-old boys will do sometimes, to try

something I'd been told I couldn't do, which was to have a

chaw of tobacco. So, I took it down into the cave with me,

got down in there, and with a couple of other boys, we tried

it. Then, we came back up to the top in 103 degree weather,

which made us as sick as I have been in my entire life. And

so ever since that day, I've never even thought of having a

chew of tobacco. I learned that lesson in Boy Scouting as

well.

I learned how to go on a snipe hunt in boy scouting.

Essentially, you take a bag, and you're told you sit out

there all night with the bag open and you'll catch a snipe. I

learned a lesson there as well.

I learned a lesson when my father, when I was twelve or

thirteen, drove me the day after Christmas with two other

explorer scouts not much older, maybe a year or two older,

and just dumped us out on Newfound Gap at about 5,000 feet in

the Smokies with three feet of snow on the ground and said

he'd pick us up in Gatlinburg at the end of the day. The

three of us walked up to the top of Mount LeConte, and then

down, and we got to Gatlinburg. It wasn't very easy, but we

learned a lot about the importance of getting to your

destination on that day.

I was at Camp Pellissippi, which was our scout camp nearby

Maryville and Knoxville and I learned a little bit about

authority. We had a camp director named Kyle Middleton. He

must have been 7'10'' tall, at least he looked that tall to

us, and we would all assemble in the amphitheater at the

first day of Camp Pellissippi, and Mr. Middleton would stand

up in front of us. Actually, we all called him ``Kyle,'' I

don't know why we would do that, he was so familiar, but I

think it was because he told us to, and this is what he'd

say. He said, ``Camp is now open, and we have one thing we

need to get straight. I think I'm in charge. Does anyone here

think I'm not?'' And, of course, none of us did, and we

learned a little bit about the importance of authority. I

joined the order of the arrow there. I learned about how to

make a fire with flint and steel. One of my friends from

Maryville, a couple of years older than me, would have been

the first person ever to walk the entire Appalachian Trail

through my area, from Maine to Georgia, but he made the

mistake of getting all the way down to Virginia (he started

in Maine), and he called his father in August and his father

said he had to come home and go to college. So I learned the

importance of education.

And even in Cub Scouts, we learned lots of lessons. One of

the most vivid was when we were playing baseball and knocked

the ball through the upstairs window of the neighbor's house.

And, we all looked at each other wondering what to do until

Bill Ernest, I'll remember this until I die, said, ``What we

should do is go tell Mr. Smith (or whoever it was) what we

did.'' So, we all trooped up to his house and knocked on the

door and said, ``Mr. Smith, we just knocked a baseball

through your upstairs window.''

For more than 100 years, the Boy Scouts of America have

talked about leadership, have taught lessons of community

service. There are 110 million scouts in the world in 185

countries, and 2 million Eagles. There are 9 Eagles in the

United States Senate. There are a million adult volunteers in

the Boy Scout movement. It is the largest and most prominent

youth organization in the world. Its job is helping to turn

boys into men.

Looking back, I realize how much I took for granted, all

the time that our volunteer scout leaders gave to us. I know

there are a lot of volunteers here in the room, but we just

thought the world was made that way, that Mr. Studley--Joe

Studley--and Mr. Miller, that they just had all this time to

give to us. And because we grew up at the edge of the Smoky

Mountains, close to the great American outdoors, just like

you do in Middle Tennessee, we were out there all the time.

Almost every weekend or every other weekend, we were hiking

or camping or learning about the great outdoors. They taught

us to love the Great American Outdoors, and as important,

they taught us not to be afraid of the Great American

Outdoors.

Today we have fewer parents who take their kids into the

Great American Outdoors and I don't think it's because the

boys are afraid of the outdoors. I think it's because a lot

of the parents never had the chance to be in scouting and to

know what to do in the outdoors. I still remember the Scout

Law. I imagine most of you can say it: ``trustworthy, loyal,

helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, careful,

thrifty, brave, plain, reverent,'' I remember that. And I

remember the motto, ``Be Prepared.'' That's a good lesson in

life whether you're preparing for a piano concert or whether

you're running in a Republican primary. Over the years I've

tried to apply those rules to whatever I was doing in life,

and I've found it hard to improve on the Boy Scout lessons.

I've put my love of the outdoors to work as a senator,

trying to protect the parks, trying to keep the air clean,

trying to keep enough open space so that our children and

grandchildren can enjoy the outdoors as I did. And I've tried

my best to teach my boys and girls, or as Honey likes to say,

``our boys and girls,'' our family about the outdoors and to

help teach those grandchildren as well.

Some people say that it's naive in this tough world that we

live in to take the simple Boy Scout lessons, like to walk up

and say, ``Mr. Smith, I just knocked a baseball through your

window and I take responsibility for it.'' That's the right

thing to do but some people say it's naive in the

sophisticated world in which we live.

Well, let me close with a story that suggests it's not

naive at all. Shortly after I graduated from law school, I

had the privilege of working in the White House for a man

named Bryce Harwell, who had also worked for President

Eisenhower. He was President

Eisenhower's favorite staff member. He was a diminutive

little fellow who took shorthand, gave good advice, wrote

good speeches, and everybody loved him. And he told me this

story about President Eisenhower's cabinet meeting. The

Eisenhower cabinet was meeting one day in the cabinet room in

the White House right off the Oval Office where the president

works, and they had a particularly difficult decision to

make.

Now, Eisenhower as we know, was a sophisticated man. He was

a five-star general. He was in charge of our troops during

World War II, the Allied forces, in fact. He was president of

a university, he was the head of NATO and now he was the

president of the United States. He was a sophisticated fellow

who knew how to operate in a tough world, who even knew how

to win world wars. So he put an issue on the table, and asked

the cabinet members what to do. The secretary of state said,

``Oh, Mr. President, as a matter of foreign policy, we should

do x.'' The secretary of the treasury was next, and he said,

``No, Mr. President, we couldn't possibly do that; that would

damage the economy.'' The secretary of defense said, ``No, we

couldn't do either one of those two options, because it would

hurt our military strength.'' And so all the way they went

around the table and down the line, every single member of

the cabinet pointing out a problem with the option based on

how it would affect their particular department.

So, finally, President Eisenhower asked this question of

his cabinet: ``What would be the right thing to do?'' The

secretary of state said, ``Oh, Mr. President, the right thing

to do would be x,'' and the secretary of the treasury said,

``Mr. President, that's right, the right thing to do would be

x.'' And so said the secretary of defense and the secretary

of commerce and on down the line. So the president, this

sophisticated man who had won the world war asked that

question, ``What would be the right thing to do,'' heard from

his cabinet what it would be, turned to his press secretary

and said, ``Mr. Hagerty, then go out and tell the press that

that's what we'll do.''

The moral of the story, I think, is whether you're a Cub

Scout who's just broken a window, or whether you're a Boy

Scout trying to learn about life, that the lessons you learn

in scouting are lessons that are good for the rest of your

life. And another lesson, and I think particularly for this

group today, as we honor and salute the volunteers and the

supporters and the scouts in Wilson County, and those in the

Walton Trail district, is that it's hard to think of anything

more important that you could be doing with your time and

with your money for your community and for our country than

teaching these lessons of life that help these boys become

men. Thank you very much.

Mr. President, earlier this week I spoke to the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities. I ask unanimous consent that a copy of my remarks be printed in the Record.

Madam President, this morning the Senator from South Carolina, Mr. Scott, and I went to the American Enterprise Institute and outlined two bills that together represent the most ambitious proposals ever to enable States to use Federal dollars to allow parents to find a better school for their child.

I would like to take a few minutes to talk about my proposal, which is called the Scholarships for Kids Act, and the context in which we find ourselves today as we look forward to the President's State of the Union address. I would also like to briefly mention the

proposal of Senator Scott from South Carolina. He has already introduced his bill. He will be on the floor at another time to talk about it. But these are big ideas. Together they represent redirecting about 35 billion Federal dollars that are now being spent through a series of programs and instead spend them in a way that better fits the age in which we find ourselves, an age in which the best Federal investments can be made in things that enable Americans to do things for ourselves to make our lives better and happier and safer and longer.

Let me talk first about Scholarships for Kids. I ask unanimous consent that an article describing the bill be printed following my remarks.

The legislation that I am introducing today would allow approximately 11 million new Federal scholarships to follow low-income children to any school their parents choose as long as it is accredited. It is not a Federal mandate. It would enable States to create those choice options. But it would mean about a $2,100 scholarship of Federal dollars on top of the money that States already spend on elementary and secondary education for each child.

The State of Tennessee, for example, spends nearly $8,000 per child on public elementary and secondary education. This would be providing a $2,100 scholarship to the one-fifth of students who are low income and allowing that money to follow them to the school they attend.

Our country is united, not by race, but by a set of principles upon which we agree. One of the most important of these is the principle of equal opportunity. For me, equal opportunity means creating an environment where the largest number of people can begin at the same starting line. I believe this is a real answer to the inequality in America that we hear so much about, giving children more opportunity to attend a better school.

The Scholarships for Kids Act will cost $24 billion a year. It will be paid for by redirecting about 41 percent of all the dollars we now directly spend on Federal elementary and secondary education programs. About 90 percent of all of the spending on our elementary and secondary schools is State and local spending, and about 10 percent is Federal spending. This is 41 percent of that 10 percent.

It includes all of the money the Federal Government spends on elementary and secondary education except money for children with disabilities--and Senator Scott's legislation addresses that. It does not touch the Student School Lunch Program. It does not affect Federal research in education, and it does not affect Impact Aid.

The whole purpose of Federal aid to elementary and secondary education is to help low-income students. But unfortunately, often the Federal dollars are diverted to schools with wealthier students. The left and the right both have noticed this and would like to change it.

Scholarships for Kids would benefit only children that fit the Federal definition of ``poverty'' which is about one-fifth of all school children. That is because it would pin the $2,100 scholarship to the blouse or the shirt of the child, and it would follow that child to the school the child attends.

Allowing Federal dollars to follow students to a school has been a successful strategy in American education for more than 70 years. Last year, $33 billion in Federal Pell Grants and $106 billion in Federal loans followed students to the public and private colleges of their choice. Since the GI bill began in 1944, these vouchers--that is what they are--have helped to create a marketplace of about 6,000 autonomous institutions and a higher education system that is regarded by almost everyone as the best in the world.

Our elementary and secondary education system is not the best in the world. U.S. 15-year-olds rank 28th in science and 36th in math. I believe one reason for this is that more than 93 percent of the dollars that we spend through the Federal Government for higher education follows students to the colleges of their choice, but Federal dollars do not automatically follow students to the elementary or secondary school of their choice.

Instead, with our elementary schools and our middle schools and our high schools, money is sent directly to the schools. Local government monopolies run most of those schools. They tell most students exactly which school to attend. There is little choice and no K-through-12 marketplace as there is in higher education. Again, in higher education, you have 6,000 autonomous institutions. You have generous amounts of Federal dollars. They can follow you to the college or university of your choice, whether it is public or private or nonprofit or for-profit, as long as it is accredited. So students may go to Harvard, Yeshiva or Notre Dame, or to Nashville's Auto Diesel College or to the University of Tennessee or to the community college nearby. The former Librarian of Congress, Daniel Boorstin, often wrote that American creativity has flourished during ``fertile verges,'' times when Americans became more self-aware and creative.

In his book, ``Breakout,'' Newt Gingrich argues that society is on the edge of such an era, the Internet age, an age where everything will change, like everything changed at the time of the new internal combustion engine.

Newt Gingrich in his book cites computer handbook writer Tim O'Reilly for his suggestion about how the Internet could transform government. Here is how Tim O'Reilly says we ought to do our job as we try to help use the government to help Americans during this period of time:

The best way for government to operate is to figure out

what kinds of things are enablers of society and make

investments in those things. The same way that Apple figured

out, ``If we turn the IPhone into a platform, outside

developers will bring hundreds of thousands of

applications to the table.''

Already 16 States have begun a variety of innovative programs supporting private school choice. Private organizations in many parts of our country supplement these efforts. Scholarships For Kids, allowing $2,100 Federal scholarships to follow 11 million children, would enable other school choice innovations in the same way that developers rushed to provide applications for the iPhone platform.

Senator Tim Scott has proposed what he calls the CHOICE Act. It would allow 11 billion other Federal dollars that the Federal Government now spends through programs for children with disabilities to follow these 6 million children to the schools their parents believe provide the best services.

So there might be a child in Tennessee or Wisconsin or South Carolina who is eligible for both--the Scholarship For Kids, because he or she comes from a family that fits the Federal poverty definition. So there is $2,100. Then, if that child is also disabled, the child might be eligible for a scholarship under the CHOICE Act of several thousand dollars. That would then be in addition to the amount of money that South Carolina, let's say, spends on education per child, which is in the neighborhood of $9,000.

So to take the case of Tennessee again, $8,000 or so for the State, $2,100 more Federal dollars through Scholarship For Kids, a few more thousand dollars, depending upon circumstances, for the scholarship under Senator Scott's proposal, and you have a significant amount of money that a parent could use to follow a child to the school that helps that child succeed.

Especially in the case of children with disabilities, that seems to make so much good sense to me. Senator Scott tells a poignant story of a young girl in South Carolina who was in a kindergarten. She has Down syndrome. She was in a kindergarten that helped her succeed. But then her parents moved. They had to fight for a year to get her new school to treat her in a mainstream way. Then they realized that the school they had been fighting for a year was the one they were counting on.

Why not let that family take the $13,000, $14,000, $15,000 or $16,000 for that child with Down syndrome, pick a school that treasures that child, and let the money follow the child to the school the child attends.

So a student with a disability and from a low-income family would benefit under both programs. As I said when I began my remarks, taken together with Senator Scott's proposal, Scholarship For Kids constitutes the most ambitious proposal ever to use existing Federal dollars to enable States to expand school choice.

Importantly, this is not a Federal mandate. Washington is full of politicians who fly an hour or an hour and a half from their home town, and they

get here and think they have suddenly gotten smarter. They have a good idea and they say: Oh, let's apply that in Wisconsin and in Tennessee and in South Carolina. I try not to do that. I am a very strong believer, for example, in teacher evaluations. I led the fight for teacher evaluations as Governor of Tennessee 30 years ago. We were the first State to do it. When I came to Washington people said: Well then, you will want to make everybody do that? My answer was no, I will not. States have the opportunity to be right, and they have the opportunity to be wrong.

The last thing Tennessee needs is the Federal Government peering over the shoulders of communities and school districts and legislators and governors and school boards who are trying to work out the very difficult problem of teacher evaluations. It is the holy grail of education reform as far as I am concerned, but it should not be mandated from Washington. I very much believe in school choice, but it should not be mandated from Washington. So under Scholarships For Kids, States still would govern pupil assignments, deciding, for example, whether parents could choose private schools.

When I was Secretary of Education years ago, Milwaukee was in the midst of a major program to try to give low-income parents more choice of schools, including private schools. So along with President George H. W. Bush, we proposed what we called a GI bill for kids to allow Milwaukee and Wisconsin to do it if it wished to do it. But it did not impose what we thought was a good idea from Washington. Under Scholarship For Kids, schools that parents chose for their child with their $2,100 scholarship would have to be accredited. Federal civil rights rules would apply. My proposal does not affect school lunches. There also is an independent evaluation after 5 years so that Congress can assess the effectiveness of the new tool for innovation.

In remarks that Senator Scott and I made this morning, the issue of private schools came up, which always does when we talk about expanding school choice. But in this case, we are not necessarily talking about private schools. Most schools are public schools. I would assume that most of these $2,100 scholarships would follow students to the school they attend, which would be a public school.

So if a State chose to create a program whereby its low-income citizens could choose a private school, as long as it was accredited, that would be appropriate under the law. Why shouldn't a low-income family have the same opportunities for a better school for its child that a wealthier family, who may move to a different part of town or may be able to afford a private school, does?

The idea of allowing dollars to follow students to the school of their choice has not exclusively been an idea of the left or of the right in our country. In the late 1960s, the most conspicuous proposal for school choice was from Ted Sizer, then Harvard University's education dean. He suggested a $5,000 scholarship in his poor children's bill of rights. That $5,000 scholarship would be worth two or three times as much today.

In 1992, when I was the U.S. Secretary of Education, President George H. W. Bush proposed a GI bill for kids, a $\1/2\ billion Federal pilot program for States creating school choice opportunities. Yet despite its success in higher education, and despite the fact that it has had powerful advocates on both the left and the right, the word ``voucher'' remains a bad word among most of the kindergarten-through-12th-grade education establishment, and the idea has not spread widely. Equal opportunity in America should mean that everyone, as much as possible, has the same starting line.

During this week celebrating school choice, there would be no better way to help children move up from the back of the line than by allowing States to use Federal dollars to create 11 million opportunities to choose a better school.

State of the Nation

If I may conclude with a word about the context in which we find ourselves today, Senator Scott and I made our remarks today at American Enterprise Institute. I am speaking on the floor of the Senate on a very important day in our country's history. It is not only National School Choice Week, but it is the day the President of the United States makes his annual state of the Union address. Every President has done that except two--as the Senate historian told us today--and those two died before it was time to make the address, so it is a tradition that goes back to the beginning of the country. We will all go over to the House of Representatives, listen carefully, and the country will watch to listen to what the President has to say.

We are told the issue the President will address is the one of income inequality. If that is what he does, that is certainly an appropriate issue for any American President. Because if equal opportunity is central to the American character, so is the idea of the American dream, the idea that anything is possible, that anyone can go from the back to the front of the line with hard work; and equal opportunity, therefore, helps to create a starting line from which we move.

If the President makes that proposal, I think we know the kind of agenda we are likely to hear. It will have to do with a higher minimum wage that would actually cost jobs. It will have to do with more compensation for perpetual unemployment. It will have to do with canceling more health insurance policies, which is what ObamaCare will be doing in 2014--much more so than it did in 2013.

There is another agenda, another picture, another vision of how we can help the largest number of Americans realize the American dream; that is, more jobs, more job training, and more choices for low-income parents of better schools for their children so they can get a better job.

Instead of a higher minimum wage, which actually reduces the number of jobs, we would liberate the free enterprise system of the wet blanket of ObamaCare, other Obama rules and regulations, and create many more jobs with good wages. Instead of more compensation for long- term unemployment, we would say let's have more job training so they can take one of these good new jobs we propose to create.

Then, instead of directing the money to a model that hasn't worked as well over the last 70 years, let us take the Federal dollars we are now spending on elementary and secondary education and let them follow low- income children and disabled children to the schools of their parents' choice, So they have an opportunity to go to a better school, just as children who aren't disabled and with parents who have more money do.

We will be arguing that a better agenda for income equality to realize the American dream, to help Americans move from the back to the front of the line, is more jobs, more job opportunities, and more choices of better schools for low-income children. That agenda is especially right for the age we are in.

I mentioned the discussion Daniel Boorstin had about America's fertile verges, Newt Gingrich's new book, and the suggestion by the computer programmer that the best way for government to operate is not with Washington mandates or Washington programs but to spend money on things that enable each of us as Americans to do things for ourselves-- to live a happier life, to live a better life, to live a wealthier life, to live a safer life.

I hope in the remarks I have made today that I have done that, because we have 70 years of experience with such programs in education. I would argue there may be no more successful social program in American history than the GI bill for veterans. It began 70 years ago in 1944. It did not send money to the University of Chicago, Tennessee, Michigan, and Harvard. It followed the soldier, the airman, and the Navy veteran to the college of his or her choice. We began that practice in 1944. We continue it with the Pell grants today. We continue it with the student loans today. Why should we not follow it with the Federal dollars we spend for elementary and secondary education?

If Federal dollars following students to the colleges of their choice helped to produce the finest higher education system in the world, why should we not allow States to try to create the best schools in the world for our children--especially our low-income children?

I hope my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will recognize this isn't the proposal of the left or the right. I don't know many Democrats who want to get

rid of Pell grants or student loans. They are vouchers, pure and simple, that have lasted for 70 years and may be the most successful social program we have. Why not allow States in this Internet age to take the Federal dollars we are already spending for low-income children and make sure the money gets directly to them--and for disabled children, and make sure it goes to directly to them--and give their parents an opportunity to exercise the same kinds of decisions wealthier parents do? They would say: What school would be the best school for my child.

Would that not be a way to help a young American get a leg up on moving to the same starting line that children from wealthier families have--and maybe even a chance to move to the head of the line?

I hope my colleagues and American people will take a good look at the Scholarships for Kids Act, and Senator Scott's CHOICE Act. Together they constitute the most ambitious proposal ever to use existing Federal dollars to enable States, and to allow parents--especially low- income parents--to choose a better school for their child. There is no better way to create opportunity in America.

I yield the floor.

Health Care Reform

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

Mr. President, last week I said on the Senate floor that serving in the Senate is becoming like being asked to join the Grand Ole Opry and not being allowed to sing. Here is what I meant by that. Take last week. The Democratic majority leader from Nevada brought up unemployment compensation.

How do we help unemployed Americans go to work? I can't think of an issue more important to our country. All of us have ideas about how to do this, but he brought up his idea. It hasn't been considered by a committee. When he put it on the floor, he cut off amendments, he cut off debate, and he cut off votes.

Soon we will be discussing minimum wage. How to increase family incomes in America is the foremost issue facing our country. We all have ideas about that.

We were elected to deal with it. We have been in a long period of unemployment. We believe the economy is bad for a variety of reasons. We--on this side--believe a big, wet blanket of rules and regulations have been increased by the Obama administration. We want to debate that. We want to talk about it. We don't believe the old idea of a minimum wage is the solution. We are for maximum new jobs and maximum job training and learning opportunities so people can get those jobs. We want the economy to grow. We should be debating that. That is why we are here. But the Senator from Iowa, my good friend and the distinguished chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, said, No, we won't hear this in committee. There might be embarrassing amendments. So, unfortunately, insofar as the way the Senate functions, this year is beginning just as last year ended, and Republicans objected to this.

Some of the news outlets wrote down--I read some of the stories this morning--and they said, After a while, the Senate will begin to debate internal procedure and process. Sometimes process is important. We have something called the U.S. Constitution. It is kind of old-fashioned. It has a lot of process in it. In fact, it has a checks-and-balances system in it that is envied by the world. There are citizens all over the world who would like to have a government that functions in the way ours has for over two centuries. Process can be very important. In this case, as the Republican leader often says, process and procedure are substance, because when we are not able to talk about unemployment compensation, when we are not able to offer our ideas about how to help unemployed Americans go back to work, that is substance.

That is a central issue facing our country. We think we have better ideas than the idea the majority leader put on the floor and we would like to present those ideas on behalf of the people who elected us. We are not the important ones. We are all political accidents here--all 100 of us. We all know that. We worked pretty hard to get here and we had some luck to go along with it. What does that give us? Not just a chance to have our say, but to have a say on behalf of the people of Tennessee, in my case. They want me to weigh in on the big issues before our country.

ObamaCare is one of the reasons so many people are unemployed. I am sure the other side doesn't want to talk about that. I wouldn't if I voted for it. But I was in a room with the chief executive officer of a major restaurant company who told me that because of the new costs of ObamaCare on his large company, they were going to start running their restaurants with 75 employees instead of 90 employees. That doesn't sound like more jobs to me; that doesn't sound like help for unemployed Americans.

This is the forum in which we debate these issues. So I suppose it might be

embarrassing for our friends on the other side to debate these issues, but it shouldn't be. If they believe in them, they should want to stand up and defend the issues, just as strongly as we want to say our point of view. I suspect there are a good number of my Democratic friends who have amendments they would like to offer on putting unemployed Americans to work. They might wonder, How did I ever get to a U.S. Senate where I can't do that, just as someone might wonder in Nashville, why did I join the Grand Ole Opry if they won't let me sing?

The majority leader's actions go to the very heart of our government. It is not about internal procedure, it is not about process. It is about the major issues facing our country.

Tennesseans didn't send me to Washington to rubberstamp the majority leader's ideas--not this majority leader or any majority leader. Tennesseans sent me here to represent them and to advocate their point of view and to give them a say on ObamaCare, on balancing the budget, on fixing the deficit, on helping unemployed Americans find jobs, on dealing with wages, on raising family incomes. That is why I am here. That is my job. And they expect me to have a chance to have not my say but their say on the issues that face the American people. By his actions, the majority leader is destroying the Senate, which was once described as ``the one touch of authentic genius in the American political system.''

There is a new book out which I mentioned on the floor the other day. My guess is it will become the leading history of this body. It is written by the former Senate Historian, Richard Baker, and the late Neil MacNeil, who wrote what many consider to be the best history of the House of Representatives. They say in the book that the genius I just talked about--``the authentic touch of genius that is the Senate''--the major reason for that is the opportunity for extended debate.

They point out, as I think any of us would, that there have been abuses with the filibuster, more delays than are necessary; that the Senate doesn't work as well as it should not just over the last few years but over a long period of time. But the fact is, in this body, which is virtually unique in the world in requiring that 60 of 100 Members must agree before we cut off debate, that helps forge consensus. That helps forge consensus, as we did on the student loan agreement earlier this year. There is a good example of a good debate, of different opinions on both sides of the aisle, of Democrats and Republicans working together. When we finally got to 60 or 65, we got a result with the Republican House of Representatives and the Democratic President going along with us, and it was a victory for the students of this country. We cut in half the interest rates they pay and took the whole argument out of a political football.

The Senate was created for three reasons. The first is to encourage and forge consensus. We govern a complex society with consensus, not with ramrodding partisan ideas through one body or the other. We have a body for that; it is called the House of Representatives. Win it by one vote--the Rules Committee has two times as many members of the majority as the minority, and the majority can pass anything they want to pass. Send it over here, and the tradition has been to slow it down and cool it off. We take a second look.

The passions of the democracy--what de Touqueville called in his trip across America in the early 1800s--the great danger he saw to our country was the tyranny of the majority. He saw that as one of the two great dangers to the American democracy. And the Senate has been, through all that period of time, the guardian--the guardian of minority rights, the guardian against the excesses of the Executive, which in our country is the President. The Founders didn't want a king, so they set up this elaborate system of checks and balances, and the Senate is the key to that.

What is different about the Senate is the opportunity for extended debate. But, the Majority Leader now brings up a bill--one Senator's idea--cuts off debate, cuts off amendments, cuts off votes, that is it. That is not the way to govern our country, particularly on an issue of how do we put unemployed Americans back to work.

The Senate is losing its capacity to do the things it was created to do in the following ways: No. 1, less advice and consent. On November 21, the Democratic majority decided 60 votes are no longer needed to cut off debate on most Presidential nominees. So try asking a nominee: Will the National Security Agency stop monitoring the Pope? Now there will be no response, because the majority can ram through nominees.

The Senator from Nevada, the distinguished majority leader, said in 2006--I heard him and he put it in his book--that cutting off--allowing the majority to cut off debate would be the end of the Senate. The end of the Senate. Apparently, he changed his mind.

Operating without rules. The distinguished Senator from Michigan, Senator Levin, said on November 21: ``A Senate in which a majority can change the rules at any time is a Senate without rules.'' It is as if the Red Sox, finding themselves behind in the ninth inning in the World Series, added a couple of innings to make sure they won. When he wrote the Senate rules, Thomas Jefferson said it is not so important what the rule is, but that there be a rule.

Ignoring Executive orders. While it ignores its own rules, the Senate meekly watches as the Obama administration changes the health care law, suspends immigration laws, and rewrites labor laws.

Tolerating more czars. President Obama has appointed more czars than the Romanovs did. In both Russia and the United States, czars don't report to elected representatives.

Not passing appropriations bills. Hopefully, that is going to change. But the Senate's repeated failure to pass appropriations bills canceled the Senate's check on the Executive's power to spend.

Illegal recess appointments. That is being debated today in the Supreme Court. The majority acquiesced when President Obama used his recess appointment to appoint members to the National Labor Relations Board when the Senate was not in recess. Fortunately, three appellate courts disagreed with the President and the Supreme Court will decide. Hopefully, the Supreme Court agrees with the appellate courts. Otherwise, the Senate might go out for lunch and return and find that we have a new Supreme Court Justice.

There is blame to go around, and I am sure any of my friends on the other side who are listening would be quick to point that out. Baker and MacNeil pointed that out in their book. There have been abuses of the filibuster. It is true that some Republicans have unduly delayed nominations and unduly delayed legislation. And that is not new. I have seen it in other years. I have pointed out on this floor how Senator Allen from Alabama, in the 1970s and 1980s, would tie the Senate into knots with his knowledge of the rules. Senator Metzenbaum from Ohio would sit right down there on the front row and if a Senator wanted to pass a bill, that Senator had to go see him, and if the Senator didn't amend his bill to do what Senator Metzenbaum wanted done, he would use Senate rules to block it.

So this has never been an easy place to get something done, but it wasn't ever supposed to be. It was supposed to be a place where every single Senator is an equal, where every Senator's voice is not his or her voice but the voice of people that Senator represents. It is supposed to be a place of extended debate where almost any amendment can be discussed for almost any length of time, and usually the clock is all that would cut the debate off. But there has been a procedure by which a consensus can cut it off, and when we reach that consensus, we usually reach a result that can even pass unanimously after it has been massaged and changed and worked through and considered.

I think of the legislation we just passed on compounding pharmacies and making drugs more safely; making drugs more safe, 4 billion prescriptions a year. It went through the committee process, through both Houses, and eventually passed unanimously because we reached a consensus.

The delays that have occurred on nominations because, so-called, of the changes in rules on November 21 are hardly a crisis. Nonjudicial Presidential nominees have almost never

been denied their seats by a filibuster. Before the November rules change, there were two for President Obama, three for President Bush, two for President Clinton, and none before that, in history. That is seven. Only seven nonjudicial Presidential nominees, in the history of the Senate, had ever been denied their seats by a filibuster. Maybe it takes a while, but that is so we can ask questions.

The day before the rules were changed, I looked at the Executive Calendar--this calendar we have on our desks. It includes every single nomination that can be brought to the floor. If I have my numbers about right, there were not many people on the calendar. Half of them have been held up by the Senator from South Carolina who is trying to get some answers on Benghazi. That has happened many times in this body. If Senators want an answer, they do that to make the Executive tell them what is going on. There were only 8 nominees, I believe, who had been on the calendar for more than 9 weeks and only 16 others who have been on for more than 3 weeks.

So there were not very many people on the Executive Calendar, and we had changed the rules to make it easier to confirm them, anyway. There were 13 district judges, so the majority leader could bring them up on Thursday--Friday is the intervening day--and Monday there could be 2 hours of debate on each judge, and we could confirm four or five by doing it over the weekend in that way. But, no, we had to change the rules in the way that it was done.

The Senate does not need a change of rules; it needs a change in behavior. The current majority leader, I would respectfully suggest, could start by following the example of Majority Leaders Robert Byrd, a Democrat, and Howard Baker, a Republican, during the 1970s and 1980s. Here is how they would do things, and this is the way the Senate ran until 5 or 6 years ago. Baker and Byrd would bring legislation to the floor. Usually they would go to a committee and say to a chairman: We will put it on the floor if you and your ranking member of the other party agree. So you would have two Members--a chairman and a Republican ranking member; not the leaders--standing up there at the two desks. They would put the bill on the floor that already had gotten a consensus in the committee. Then, the majority leader would ask for amendments to the bill, and sometimes he would get 300--300. Then, he would ask consent to cut off the offering of amendments and to consider voting on them in an orderly way, all of which was written out in the unanimous consent agreement. Of course, he would get the unanimous consent to do that because everybody who wanted to offer an amendment could.

Then they would go to work. They would start on Mondays, and they would work into Monday night and on Tuesday and on Wednesday. They would table many of the amendments. That does not take long: 10 minutes of debate and table it with 51 votes.

Senator Byrd said in his book that when the Panama Canal Treaty came up at a time when he was the majority leader and Baker was the Republican leader, they had 192 amendments and reservations--many of them killer amendments--but he allowed every one of them, and he defeated every killer amendment. But he said: If we had not allowed them, we never would have gotten the ratification of the Panama Canal Treaty. The Senators had their say on the Panama Canal Treaty.

So after a while, those 300 amendments that might have been offered on Monday are whittled away. Some are accepted, some are dropped, some are voted on, some are tabled, and by about Thursday--the majority leader has said at the beginning of the week: We are going to finish the bill this week--people are ready to go home. Then they begin to think more carefully about whether their amendment is really that important. So they vote Thursday night, and they maybe vote Friday, and if they have to, they vote Saturday. But most of the time they finish their work on Friday.

They were not afraid, those majority leaders, to allow amendments. They were not afraid to defeat amendments. I believe if the majority leader would allow the Senate to work in this way, he would not have any problem on this side of the aisle with efforts to keep bills from coming to the floor. Almost all of the effort to keep bills from coming to the floor has to do with minority Members not being allowed to have the say of the people who elected them to serve.

Instead, the majority leader has set records for bringing legislation to the floor without committee approval, cutting off amendments, and records for cutting off debate. So there are no votes on reforming military sexual assaults, completing Yucca Mountain, sanctioning Iran, and other vital concerns, no votes on unemployment compensation or how to put unemployed America to work.

The Senate has become a Tuesday-Thursday club run by one Senator and orchestrated by the White House. One reason this is tolerated is that 43 Senators are in their first term--43 Senators are in their first term--most of them in the majority. They have never served in the minority. They have never seen the Senate function properly, the way it functioned for most of its 200-plus year history.

Most importantly, those Senators in their first term may not have heard Senator Byrd's final address when, among other things, he said that any majority leader could run the Senate under the then-existing rules. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record, following my remarks, an article from the Wall Street Journal from last Friday on this subject.

In an important address last week, Mr. McConnell, the Senator from Kentucky, the Republican leader, described three ways to restore the Senate: full committee consideration of bills; bills thoroughly debated, with robust amendments on the floor; and a decent week's work. We might work Monday through Friday instead of Tuesday through Thursday.

The Senate could change overnight. It does not need a change of rules. The Senator from Kentucky did not say that it has always been easy to navigate the Senate. The ideal regular order never has and never will be without exceptions. But what we call the regular order has become the exception rather than the rule.

I would hope we do not wait until November or the next year to restore the Senate to its proper place as the authentic piece of genius in the American government--the unique body, the unique senate in the world because of the opportunity for extended debate. It could change overnight by considering bills most of the time that went through committee, most of the time having a robust amendment process and debate on those bills, and vote on them. If it took Monday through Friday to get that work done, then we should do it. Otherwise, the great issues facing our country--what kind of health care system do we have? How do we help unemployed Americans go to work? How do we improve learning opportunities in this new America, where so much is decentralized and so much is on social media?

These are very exciting times. Daniel Boorstin, the former historian of the United States and Librarian of Congress, in his wonderful books on America, used to talk about verges, that when America was at a verge--and we have been there many times in our history--that we were more open to innovation, that we were more self-aware of where we were, that we tended to rely on each other, and that we changed our country for the better.

That is where we are today. We want better learning opportunities, better job training, better health care. Washington is in the way of much of that, and we need to debate how to change that.

So I would hope my friend, the distinguished majority leader, will listen to what the Republican leader had to say and reflect on the many years he has served here and realize all we are saying is we would like to have a say on behalf of the people who elected us on the great issues facing our country. Bring a bill through committee, bring it to the floor, let us have debate--defeat our amendments; you should be able to with a tabling motion--and then let's come to a result.

I think the American people would gain much more confidence in the Senate because it would deserve more confidence if it conducted issues in that way. But this diminishing of the Senate is tragic for a country with large problems to solve and whose system of checks and balances has been envied around the world.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

I yield the floor.