Floor Statements

Mr. President, would the Chair let me know when I have consumed 9 minutes.

Thank you very much.

The Presiding Officer is a distinguished former Governor, and I am a former Governor. I suggested during the health care debate that anyone who voted for the new health care law ought to be sentenced to go home and serve as Governor for 8 years under the new law and try to make it work. People thought I was kidding. I was serious. The vote we are about to have this afternoon is another symptom of the same problem.

Here is what the vote today, which is characterized as being about teachers and Medicaid, actually does. It is a $10 billion bailout to help States pay teachers, but it ties the Governors' hands so a Governor can't change education funding levels if their State budgets are in trouble, which almost every State is.

Second, there is $16 billion for States to pay for Medicaid--the Federal program that is a combination of Federal money and State money--but, again, this ties the Governors' hands so Governors can't adjust the State Medicaid programs in a way that will make it possible for them to afford to continue to run the program. In other words, if you are the Governor of Tennessee, because of receiving this money or the stimulus money earlier, your ability to change benefits is limited and, in some cases, taken away.

Third, what we are about to vote on this afternoon raises taxes by about $10 billion to help pay for these proposals. This $10 billion in permanent tax hikes is on American multinational companies. That sounds like: Well, let's stick it to the company. But these are companies which employ 22 million Americans, according to the National Association of Manufacturers. This makes it harder for those companies to continue to employ people in the United States and it gives them more incentive to send jobs overseas.

Then there is the additional offset to this bill of $3 billion in military and veterans funding cuts and, as the Senator from Kentucky has pointed out, these are very broad cuts, and there is nothing to keep these cuts from being made from the operation and maintenance of the fighting men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Then the fourth problem with this vote this afternoon is it adds to the debt nearly $5 billion.

The fifth problem is we are already spending--41 cents out of every dollar we spend today is borrowed from someone, creating a serious deficit problem. There is sometimes back and forth about who caused the problem, but the solution to a boat with a hole in it is not to shoot another hole in the boat and have two holes or three holes, and that is what we would be doing with this bill.

We would be extending the so-called fiscal cliff in the States by tying the Governors' hands so they don't do what they normally would do in down times such as this, which is reduce spending so they can make their way through it. We are raising taxes on companies in a way that could send jobs overseas. We are adding to the debt. Those are all the things we are being asked to vote on this afternoon.

One might say that is a partisan comment I am making in describing the situation. I don't think so. I think it is the comment of someone with a background as Governor of a State who has consistently struggled with Washington's irresistible impulse to impose on States rules from Washington that may not fit States.

For example, the education money--the $10 billion--has five strings on it. No. 1, we have to keep spending on K-12 education at least as high as last year's money.

Again, that sounds good, but if you are a State that is reducing and has less revenue, you have to reduce costs or you will have fiscal cliff after fiscal cliff. The same with Medicaid--$16 billion more for Medicaid but, again, with restrictions on what States can do to change benefits. So, as a result, Governors and legislatures that have less State revenues continue to increase their spending on Medicaid. But guess what. Not on other programs such as public colleges and universities.

I am absolutely convinced the health care law and the new costs being tacked onto States to pay for an expansion of Medicaid is going to irreparably damage our public colleges and universities. It is going to hurt their quality because the money that should be going to colleges and universities is going to go to help pay for Medicaid requirements imposed from Washington.

Who else is going to be hurt? The students. I am sure the students protesting at the University of California the over 32 percent tuition hikes have no idea the reason they are having the hikes is because Washington keeps imposing new costs on State Medicaid Programs, causing Governor Schwarzenegger and the California Legislature to take money that otherwise most likely would have gone to the University of California and spend it instead on Medicaid.

Let me give a bipartisan twist to what I just said. There was a Wall Street editorial, written by Richard Ravitch in January of this year. He is the Democratic Lieutenant Governor of New York State. This is the way he describes this scenario we are being asked to vote on this year:

The Federal stimulus has provided significant budget relief

to the states--

Mr. President, that was the money that was passed in the beginning of 2009 to try to create new jobs, which apparently hasn't worked so well since unemployment is still very high. He says:

But this relief is temporary and makes it harder for states

to cut expenditures.

Just as this vote this afternoon will do so.

In major areas, such as transportation, education, and

health care, stimulus funds come with strings attached. These

strings prevent states from substituting federal money for

state funds, require states to spend minimum amounts of their

own funds,

and prevent states from tightening eligibility standards for

benefits.

The Lieutenant Governor of New York continues:

Because of these requirements, states, instead of cutting

spending in transportation, education, and health care, have

been forced to keep most of their expenditures at previous

levels and use federal funds only as supplements. The net

result is this: The federal stimulus has led states to

increase overall spending in these core areas, which in

effect has only raised the height of the cliff from which

state spending will fall if stimulus funds evaporate.

If we do it again this afternoon--the same thing done with the stimulus fund--we will be extending this fiscal cliff for New York, Tennessee, and States all over the country and making it more difficult for them to make the cuts they need to make the innovations they need to make, to try the different things they need to do, so they can afford their education programs, so they can afford their Medicaid Program.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record Lieutenant Governor Richard Ravitch's column in the Wall Street Journal.

Not long ago, the State of Tennessee was one of two winners in the race to the top in education funding. I was very proud of the State. This was not my doing. This was their doing--the teachers, the Governor, and the legislature. Both parties worked hard. I came to the Senate floor last week and praised President Obama and his Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, for their courage and vision on their K-12 education agenda, pushing for the holy grail of education, which is finding ways to award outstanding teaching and tying it to students' effectiveness and charter schools and higher standards, even common standards, and the race to the top itself, in terms of encouraging excellence. These are not easy things to do.

President Obama is not the first Democrat, or even the first Democratic President, who has pushed these changes. But he is the first President of either party who may have a chance to actually get them done. It may just be easier for a Democratic President to do this than a Republican President. When he does these things, it is important for Republican Senators to give him credit for it. I genuinely do.

Mr. President, it does not help for us now to come along and say, OK, we are going to make it harder to be the Governor of Tennessee and Virginia and Michigan and California and all these States because we are going to give them money, with more strings attached, and say when they take the money and spend it, they have to keep the same level of spending they had before. Just as Governor Ravitch says, it stops States from doing what they already need to do.

Mr. President, I wish every State had done what Tennessee has done. We have a Democratic Governor, Phil Bredesen, who is completing his time.

This is what he said in his State address in 2009:

Please let me make it clear that no proposed version of the

stimulus is any panacea or silver bullet; substantial cuts

are still needed under any circumstances.

He meant in the State budget.

Furthermore, it is vital to remember that this stimulus

money is one-time funds.

The Governor is saying we are going to have to cut the budget. In fact, our State has little debt. It has among the lowest taxes in the country. It has a solid pension fund that has survived this as well as anybody. But when we say to any Governor that here is some money, and here are some rules to keep you from doing what you need to do, I think we are doing no service there.

I wanted to say that before we have this vote today, and to say that there are four or five reasons I hope we don't go forward with it. The first reason, both in terms of education and Medicaid, is it ties the Governors' hands to keep them from doing what they should be doing. The next reason is there is $10 billion in permanent taxes on multinational corporations which will make it more likely that American jobs would go overseas. Another reason is there is $3 billion in spending cuts in defense that likely could come out of the operation and maintenance budget of soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The next reason is it adds to the debt $5 billion at a time when we don't have the money any more than the States do. We are spending 41 cents out of every dollar, which is borrowed.

Mr. President, I am going to oppose this measure this afternoon. I will support efforts to rein in spending, to give States more freedom to do what they need to do, to try to create a more limited government, to try to create less debt, and to try to create an economy that can focus its attention for the foreseeable future on a progrowth environment that creates jobs in the private sector, which is the real challenge for our country today.

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

Mr. President, the President of the United States made an important speech this morning. He spoke to the National Urban League Centennial Conference on Education.

Every speech a President makes is important, but this speech is especially important, and I commend the President for his courage, for his vision, and for his willingness to undertake the hard work of helping children across this country learn what they need to know and be able to do, and the competence with which he is doing that.

Let me be specific about why I say that. No. 1, the President began with teachers. He extolled teachers. He said he wanted to lift them up as high as he could, he wanted them to be on the front pages of magazines, and for us to dignify them in every way we could. But he didn't back away from tackling the most important and the most difficult challenge that any of us who have dealt with education reform have found; that is, how do we reward outstanding teachers. Especially, how do we tie that reward to student achievement? In other words, what can we do to help reward and encourage those outstanding men and women who help our children learn, particularly our children who are having the hardest time learning?

All of us know a great teacher makes a great difference. The President said that himself. Each of us in the Senate knows that. But any of us who have, over the last several years, spent time trying to find ways to reward outstanding teaching knows how hard it is.

I worked on it in 1983 when Tennessee became the first State to reward outstanding teaching. Not one State at that time paid one teacher one penny more for being a good teacher. They could make more money for being around a long time. They could make more money for getting a degree. But they didn't make more money at all if the children were succeeding.

For a while that worked because we were able to capture women. They had very few options and they became saints in the classroom and they were our teachers. But in the 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s, women had many options, and they took them. In the companies where they went to work, they were paid more for excellence. They made good salaries. As a result, it

became more difficult to attract and keep outstanding men and women in our classrooms.

Governor Graham, who was later a Senator, tried the same thing in Florida. Governor Clinton--later a President--was trying many of the same ideas in Arkansas. Those were the 1980s. Every education meeting I go to comes down to the same point: After you get past the role of the parent, the teacher is the center of it. Whether a child is a gifted child or whether a child comes from a home where he or she does not have breakfast, or whether a child comes from a home where he or she has never been read a book until they are 7, whether a child needs to be in school 12 hours a day or 8, on Saturdays or not, the teacher at the center of the education of that school is the indispensable product and the best and most important part of a child's ability to achieve and to learn.

What the President has done--through the Teacher Incentive Fund that he has continued to encourage, and through his leadership on the subject--deserves credit and support from all Americans. I for one am here to offer him that.

Second, he talked about charter schools. He is not the first to do that either. I remember as Education Secretary on my last week in office, in 1993, I wrote a letter to all the superintendents in America to encourage them to try charter schools. At the time they were the invention of a few Democratic liberal reformers in Minnesota. There were maybe a dozen charter schools at that moment. But charter schools were simply ``start over'' schools. It was simply saying to a faculty: Let's start over. What if we took off the rules and regulations and gave you the freedom to do with the children who are presented to you what they need, so if you need to start at 7 in the morning and finish at 7 in the night, do it. If you need 2-hour classes, do it. If you need 200 days a year instead of 180 days at school, do that as well. If you need to learn during Easter holidays, do that.

Who are the beneficiaries of the charter schools? When they work, the beneficiaries are most often the children who come from the most difficult circumstances.

I can point to a charter school in Memphis I visited 3 years ago where it was an Easter holiday. The children there were ninth or tenth graders. Instead of being on Easter holiday, they were studying for their advanced placement course in biology at the freshman or sophomore level. There was not any other school in Tennessee where children that age were studying advanced placement biology, especially during the Easter week break.

President Obama has done what President Bush did, what President Clinton did, what Vice President Gore did, what I have done, what many others have done, which is to say: Let's have independent public charter schools and give teachers the freedom to do what they know how to do. The first thing is rewarding outstanding teaching. As the late Albert Shanker, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, used to say: If we can have master plumbers, we can have master teachers, and we can pay them accordingly, pay them very well, and let's have charter schools and give teachers the freedom to do what they in their own good judgment know to do.

The third thing the President talked about was high standards. That is also not a new idea but he has advanced it down the road very well. Higher standards are an indispensable part of a good education in kindergarten through the 12th grade.

The way I used to help Tennesseans learn about that was to say look at all these big new auto plants that are coming into our State. To get a job there, you have to know a lot more today than you did when your parents might have worked there, or your grandparents. You have to know algebra and statistics. You have to know English well to be able to communicate. In other words, the standards are high if we are going to compete in the world and keep our high standard of living.

While a lot of work has been done by the Governors of the country through ACHIEVE, the President has advanced the idea of common standards very well in the last 18 months, and he has done it in the right way. He has not said: Okay, I am the President; we will write it from Washington. That would have killed it--or at least I hope it would have killed it. He didn't say that. He said let's create an environment in which States can make a difference and make their own choices, and States, in surprisingly large numbers, are beginning to do that, in terms of reading and math.

The fourth area the President spoke about, and this is his own initiative, is the Race to The Top. This is infusing one of the hardest things that is possible to infuse in public education and that is excellence. We have a democratic society. We are usually interested in leveling things. If we have five things, one goes to each person.

What is hard for us to do in government, and that means public education as well, is to say let's reward excellence. Let's say to those school districts or to those States or those teachers or those others who are making the A-pluses and the A's and doing the best job, we want to incentivize you to do that. He has found a way to do that. It is a fair way. He has kept politics out of it. He has put money into it and he deserves credit for it.

Finally, he has picked a very good Secretary of Education. I said when Arne Duncan was appointed that he might be the President's best appointment. I still think that. That is not because I agree with everything Arne Duncan has recommended. In fact, I think he was completely wrong about the student loan takeover. I think his proposal on gainful employment, which is an obscure higher education thing and a different subject, is, with all respect, a little wacky. But what I think is he is an excellent leader for education, and he has a big heart and he has worked in a bipartisan way, and he has gotten results that are as good as anybody could possibly have gotten on some of the toughest subjects facing our country.

The President and Arne Duncan deserve our applause and support for their efforts. We will have differences of opinion about how much we can spend and when we can spend it, but if the goal is to reward outstanding teaching, to create more charter schools, to help States raise standards in an environment where they are not told to do so by Washington, but create an environment to do it themselves; if the goal is to infuse excellence into public higher education by challenging States to do better, then we should be for that and we should do it together.

I think President Obama has the opportunity in public education to do what President Nixon did in China. It may be easier for a Democratic President to make these changes or to lead the country in these changes than it would be for a Republican President, just as it was easier for a Republican President in the early 1970s to cause us to have an opening to China. That is a large claim to make but I think it is an equally important goal.

About the only thing I disagreed with today in the President's speech was this. He said teachers were the most important part of a child's education. I think a parent is and I think he does, too. I think he would agree. I think parents and teachers are 90 percent of it and it starts with the parent. The reason I think he would agree with that is because he had good parents and he is a good parent and a very good example to the rest of the country.

Anyone who has read his biography, ``The Audacity of Hope,'' knows the story of his mother getting him up at 4 o'clock in the morning in Indonesia and teaching him math and to read and telling him: Buster, it's not any fun for me so get busy and learn, and he learned very well. His example as a good parent and good student is exactly the kind of example we need for students and parents across our country.

This is a time when we have differences of opinion on many issues. I will have some differences of opinion with the President on education, as I mentioned. But I have no lack of enthusiasm for the importance of his leadership on K-12 education, on rewarding outstanding teaching, on giving teachers the freedom to create schools in which they can use their common sense, on creating high standards, on the Race to The Top, on setting a good example as a good parent, and I thought it was important--perhaps especially for a Republican Senator who spent a number of years

working on these issues as Education Secretary and president of a university and Governor--to come to the floor and say: Good work, Mr. President. An excellent address. And on those broad issues and themes, you have my full support.

The President's remarks can be found at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/ the-pre ss-office/remarks-president-education-reform-national-urban-league- centen nial-conference.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Madam President, will you let me know when 9 minutes has expired?

Madam President, I wish to thank the Senator from Texas for his lucid explanation of this DISCLOSE Act, and I like the name he used for it. As the Republican leader has said, this is a piece of legislation that is primarily about saving the jobs of Democratic Members of Congress. I think the American people would rather we spend our time saving their jobs during a time of 10 percent unemployment.

I would like to talk about that for a minute because one way to save American jobs is to stop sending jobs overseas looking for cheap energy, which is what the Democratic proposals have been about this year.

We hear that maybe this afternoon the majority leader will propose an energy bill. It is being proposed in a way that has become all too familiar here. It is being written in secret, offered at the last minute, and there will be time for little debate. We have 1 or 2 days at most to work on this bill, given the need to consider the President's nomination of Ms. Kagan for the U.S. Supreme Court, and there apparently will be no amendments. So last minute, written in secret, little debate, no amendments, big issue--that sounds a lot like what happened at Christmas with the health care bill. But the question to ask is why have we waited so long on an energy bill?

In defense of the majority leader, he has a lot on his plate, and he has a tough job in trying to figure out what comes first, and it takes a while to get anything done in the Senate. The last time we had a great success with energy bills--2005-2007--they were offered in a bipartisan way. I remember working with Senator Domenici and Senator Bingaman on those bills. We did a lot of good and changed the direction of the country on clean energy in 2005 in the Energy bill. But it took a number of weeks on the floor of the Senate to do that, and any serious effort on energy would take that amount of time here as well.

So why have we not had an energy bill? We have had a clear consensus on how to have cheap energy. For years, Republicans have said: Why don't we build 100 new nuclear plants? That is 70 percent of our carbon-free electricity. Why don't we set as a goal electrifying half our cars and trucks? That is the single best way to reduce our use of oil, including oil from foreign countries. Why don't we support doubling energy research and development? That is the best way to get a 500-mile battery for electric cars and reduce the price of solar power by a factor of 4, which is what we need to do in order to be able to put solar on our rooftops and supplement the energy we need. But we haven't had bills like that. There are even 16 Senators--6 Republican, 9 Democrats, 1 independent--who are cosponsors of the Carper-Alexander bill on clean air. We know what to do about sulfur, nitrogen, and mercury, so why don't we do it? We have 16 Senators ready to do it.

Instead, the other side has been focused on two bad ideas--one has been a national energy tax in the middle of a recession, and the second bad idea has been a so-called national renewable electricity standard, which basically boils down a requirement to build 50-story wind turbines to try to produce electricity in this large country. Let me give one fact on that. Denmark has pushed its wind turbines up to 20 percent of its electrical capacity. We often hear on the floor what a great thing Denmark has done. That is about as many windmills as you can have and still have a viable electricity grid. But Denmark hasn't closed a single coal plant. It is still highly dependent on fossil fuels. It has to give away almost half of its wind-generated electricity to Germany and Sweden at bargain prices because it comes at a time it is not needed. And Denmark has some of the most expensive electricity in Europe. Meanwhile, France has gone 80 percent nuclear. Its per capita carbon emissions are 30 percent lower than Denmark, and it has so much cheap electricity that France is making $3 billion a year exporting it to other countries.

So why are we even thinking about passing a law making Tennesseans build 50-story wind turbines on our scenic mountains or buy it from South Dakota, which means running a lot of transmission lines through backyards, when the Tennessee Valley Authority says wind power is available when needed only 12 percent of the time?

So these are the two bad ideas that have had our clean energy consensus stuck on the sidelines for the last year.

There is another idea we should be focusing on, actually it should be our first priority; that is, the oilspill that has caused such destruction in the gulf coast. The bill we understand the majority leader may be bringing out this afternoon--of course, we do not know what is in it; it was written in secret--bringing it out this afternoon, may be the bill that came out of the Environment and Public Works Committee, which would, in effect, end offshore exploration for natural gas and oil.

That sounds pretty good, particularly in light of the fact that it has been 99 days since this terrible oilspill began. But what will happen if we were to, in effect, end offshore exploration of natural gas and oil? It means we would be depending more on oil from overseas. We use 20 million barrels of petroleum product a day. Unless we get busy with electric cars, we are still going to be using 20 million barrels a day.

It will probably mean higher prices, since about one-third of our natural gas and oil that we produce in the United States comes from the Gulf of Mexico. It would mean lost jobs in large amounts. The number of lost jobs is estimated, in a study released by IHS Global Insight on July 22--if we have a de facto end of independent oil production of offshore natural gas and oil in the gulf, the job loss would be 300,000 jobs by 2020; $147 billion in tax revenues over that time.

So, in addition to depending more on foreign oil, higher prices, lost jobs, it means we would depend on leaky tankers to bring that foreign oil--some from countries that do not like us--over to the United States so we could use it. So that is a bad idea as well--not a very good proposal.

There is a better way to approach the problem of dealing with an oilspill that has been offered by Senator McConnell and other Republicans last week. Here is what it would do: Instead of ending offshore exploration for natural gas and oil, which is what unlimited liability requirements, in effect, would do, it would fashion a proposal that is much like the proposal we use for the 104 nuclear powerplants we have operating in this country.

They operate under a law called Price-Anderson. Price-Anderson is an industry-funded insurance program that spreads the liability for any nuclear accident among all the operators of nuclear plants. It is important to note, we have never had to use it. Even though we have not built a nuclear plant in 30 years, there has not been a single death in the United States as a result of a nuclear incident at a commercial nuclear plant or as a result of a nuclear accident on one of our Navy ships, which have been operating with reactors since the 1950s.

But the Republican proposal, instead of saying unlimited liability, which sounds good but has all the problems I just mentioned, would employ a risk-based approach and allow the President to establish liability limits for offshore facilities by taking into account risk- based factors. There could be unlimited liability.

There could be unlimited liability. But the President, in setting those risk-based factors, could take into account that there might be a company with a spotless record operating at drilling 500 feet for oil, but there might be a company with not as good a record operating in 5,000 feet deep water.

In addition, the proposal would allow for collective responsibility. Instead of big oil companies just sitting around watching the one that spills clean up, everybody would have a stake in the game. In addition to that, it would not drive out of business the smaller oil companies and only leave big oil as the only ones that could risk unlimited liability and drill in the gulf, such big national oil companies as the Chinese, Venezuelan, or Saudi Arabians.

So I would recommend to my colleagues that the Republican proposal is where we should begin because a risk-based liability proposal would allow independent explorers for oil and gas to continue to operate, would not drive them out of business.

I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute to finish my remarks.

The 1.6 million of us who fly daily would not stop flying after a tragic airplane crash. We would find out what happened and do our best to make it safe. We cannot simply stop drilling after a tragic oilspill unless we want to rely more on foreign oil, run up our prices, turn our oil drilling over to a few big oil companies, and all our oil hauling over to more leaky tankers. I hope that instead of the proposal we have been hearing about, we can focus on the clean energy, low-cost consensus Republicans have advocated, and that the President has proposed as well, electric cars, nuclear power, energy research and development, and clean air.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I thank the Senator from Vermont, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, for his request. Jane Stranch is a well-qualified nominee.

It has long been my position, without going into the history in this body, that a President's judicial nominees deserve an up-or-down vote. She is President Obama's longest pending circuit court nominee yet to be confirmed. She was nominated last August. The committee reported her in November. She has my support, that of Senator Corker.

I know it is difficult, with the amount of matters we have on the Senate floor, to schedule anything, including a circuit judge.

But it would be my hope that the Republican leader and the majority leader could, before long, set a time certain for an up-or-down vote on Jane Stranch, the President's nominee for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. I thank the Senator from Vermont for his request. I will not object.

Mr. President, Senator Pete Domenici from New Mexico served in this body for 36 years. During that time, he was the first Republican chairman of the Budget Committee and later chaired the Energy Committee where, more than almost anyone, he helped spur the revival of interest in nuclear energy. He was truly one of the most consequential senators of the last half century. As we mourn the loss of another very consequential Member of this Chamber, Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, I thought it was appropriate to share Senator Domenici's thoughts on the passing of Senator Byrd.

I ask unanimous consent that Senator Domenici's statement be printed in the Record.

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

Mr. President, I have a statement that I would like to make, first on a letter and announcement that all the Republican members of the Senate Appropriations Committee have sent to the chairman of the committee today.

Because Federal spending and debt are at crisis levels, Republican Senators on the Senate Appropriations Committee are asking our Democratic colleagues to join us in supporting the Sessions-McCaskill freeze on discretionary Federal spending. Every Republican--every one of us--and 17 Democratic Senators already have voted for the Sessions- McCaskill amendment this session several times.

The amendment would basically freeze Federal discretionary appropriations--both military and nonmilitary--which constitute about 38 percent of the Federal budget. This action by the Senate members of the Appropriations Committee is especially important this year because the Democratic Congress has refused to produce a budget.

Here we are, at a time when almost every American is deeply worried about the level of Federal debt and the level of Federal spending, and the first thing we would expect the Congress to do before it plans for next year is to produce a budget that would be able to restrain this spending--both the discretionary part of it, the kind we appropriate year after year--and begin to deal with the entitlements--the mandatory spending that is on automatic pilot. The Democratic Congress has not produced that budget for next year, and it indicates it will not. So it, therefore, is the first job of the members of the Appropriations Committee to decide how much we can spend.

Year in and year out we decide where and how we spend the money. That is the constitutional responsibility of Congress under article I, and that is the job we do. Perhaps we haven't paid as much attention to the first responsibility as we should. Perhaps we have relied too much on the Budget Committee. Well, not this year. What we are saying is, if we are going to be members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and if our responsibility is to deal with Federal spending, then the first question we should decide is how much Federal spending.

At a time when Federal spending and debt is at crisis levels, when the President's 10-year budget, up through the year 2018, would double the debt and triple the debt, it is our responsibility to get this under control.

So our recommendation--and it is a serious recommendation, and one we hope and believe our colleagues who are Democrats on the Appropriations Committee will be able to accept because it is a bipartisan proposal that has already, as I mentioned, received between 16 and 18 Democratic votes on the floor of the Senate, and every single one of the 41 Republican Senators--is that we essentially freeze spending in the discretionary accounts, both military and nonmilitary, between this year and next year.

The Federal debt is a crisis that is imposing a burden on our children and our grandchildren that they will not be able to pay. It is our responsibility to deal with it and to begin to deal with it now. A Sessions-McCaskill freeze on Federal discretionary spending for next year is an important first step. The next step would then be getting entitlement spending under control, which we should move on as rapidly as possible.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a copy of the letter from Republican members of the Senate Appropriations Committee which I referred to earlier in my remarks.

Mr. President, 40 years ago, at the time of the first

Earth Day, Americans became deeply worried about air and water pollution and a population explosion that threatened to overrun the planet's resources.

Nuclear power was seen as a savior to these environmental dilemmas. It could produce large amounts of low-cost, reliable clean energy. Unlike oil, nuclear power did not need to be hauled in leaking tankers from countries that did not like us. Unlike coal, it did not spew tons of pollution out of smokestacks.

Then Three Mile Island and Chernobyl happened. The world pulled back, fearful of nuclear technology--even though no one was hurt at Three Mile Island. In fact, no one has ever died as a result of a nuclear accident at an American commercial nuclear reactor or on a U.S. navy ship powered by reactors. Chernobyl was the tragic result of a flawed technology never used in the United States. Still, the United States has not licensed a new reactor since 1978.

Now the rest of the world is returning to nuclear energy. France is 80 percent nuclear and has among the lowest per capita carbon emissions and cheapest electricity costs in Western Europe. Italy, Britain, Finland and Eastern Europe all are exploring new reactors. Russia, India, China and Japan are moving ahead. South Korea is selling reactors to the United Arab Emirates.

These countries realize that exploding populations demand large amounts of cheap, reliable electricity to help create jobs and lift people out of poverty. And nuclear power provides just that. The National Academy of Sciences in a 2009 report said that the cost of nuclear power is equal to or lower than natural gas, wind, solar, or coal with carbon capture. Reactors can operate for 80 years while wind and solar last about 25 years. And nuclear reactors operate 90 percent of the time while wind and solar are only available about a third of the time. Remember: wind and solar power can't be stored today in significant amounts. Most people do not want their lights and computers working only when the wind blows.

Nuclear plants occupy a fraction of the land required for wind or solar. For example, 20 percent of U.S. electricity comes from 104 nuclear reactors on about 100 square miles. Producing the same amount of power from wind would require covering an area the size of West Virginia with 183,000 50-story turbines as well as building 19,000 miles of new transmission lines through scenic areas and suburban backyards.

Nuclear fuel is available in the U.S. and is virtually unlimited. We do not have to drill for it. We do not have to mine it nearly as much as we do for coal. And thanks to technology, we can safely recycle ``nuclear waste'' and turn most of it into more fuel. After recycling, the French are able to store all of their final waste from producing 80 percent of their electricity for 30 years in one room in La Hague.

A more recently realized benefit of nuclear power is its ability to combat climate change. Nuclear power emits zero greenhouse gases. Today it produces 20 percent of our Nation's electricity but 70 percent of our carbon-free electricity. Wind and solar provide less than 2 percent of our electricity and 6 percent of our carbon-free electricity today.

The United States uses 25 percent of all the energy in the world. At a time when we need to produce large amounts of clean power at home at a cost that will not chase jobs overseas looking for cheap energy, Americans can't afford to ignore nuclear power.

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

Mr. President, I wonder if the Senator from New Hampshire would accept a question?

I ask the Senator from New Hampshire, who served as chairman of the Budget Committee of the Senate and is now its ranking member--and there is no one in the Senate more familiar with the numbers in the Senate budget--is it not true that this request by Republican members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, since it comes at a time when many Americans and most Senators believe the level of the Federal debt is at crisis levels and threatens the security of our country and since it comes at a time when the Congress has not produced a budget and it comes at a time when there have been substantial increases over the last year and a half in the 38 percent of the budget that is discretionary spending, would the Senator from New Hampshire, who has long served on the Budget and Appropriations Committees, not agree that the first job of Senate appropriators is not to decide where to spend the money but to decide how much money there is to spend, especially this year when there is no budget?

Mr. President, I wonder if I could ask the Senator another question. The Senator was talking about the increasing debt. Am I correct that it took the first 43 Presidents of the United States and the Congresses they served with about 230 years to run up $5.8 trillion in debt, but President Obama's 10-year proposal, through 2018, would add another $11.8 trillion?

In other words, am I right that the first 43 Presidents piled up $5.8 trillion in debt, and this President's 10-year budget, through 2018, would double that?

Mr. President, I have one other question, if I may, for the Senator from New Hampshire. I know we sometimes hear the American people say, or commentators say: Well, why don't those Senators work across party lines and get a result?

My question to the Senator from New Hampshire, who has years of experience on Appropriations and Budget, is, in the present circumstances where we have a debt crisis, and where we have no budget, no budget for next year, and we will not have, would he not agree that at the beginning of the process, taking a number that has been voted on by a majority of the Senate and has widespread bipartisan support, is a constructive bipartisan approach that ought to be able to gain the respect of Democratic appropriators and Democratic Senators, and that we could work together this year to essentially freeze discretionary spending as a first step toward reining in Federal spending?

In other words, sometimes we see amendments around here that are called message amendments, each side trying to score a point. Is this not a proposal that deserves respect as a serious attempt to restrain the debt and that should earn bipartisan support?

I thank the Senator.

Mr. President, I would like to leave by 3, but I will be glad to defer to the Senator from Connecticut if he would like to go ahead.

Mr. President, I see the Senator from Pennsylvania and I would ask through the Chair--I plan to speak for about 5 minutes. Does that leave him time to make remarks?

Mr. President, in 1981, after a surprising election, the Republican leader, Howard Baker, became the majority leader of the Senate, and the Democratic leader, Robert C. Byrd, became the minority leader.

According to Senator Baker, he walked to Senator Byrd's office and said to him: Bob, I will never know the Senate rules as well as you do, so I will make you an offer. I will not surprise you if you will never surprise me.

Senator Byrd looked at Senator Baker and said: Let me think about it.

The next morning, Senator Byrd called Senator Baker and said: It is a deal. And that is the way they operated the Senate in those 4 years when Senator Baker was the majority leader and Senator Byrd was the minority leader. They operated the Senate during that time under an agreement where Senator Byrd was careful to try to give every Senator the right of amendment. He thought that was very important. In return, Senator Byrd was able to get unanimous consent agreements on amendments that many Senators thought were frivolous or unnecessary or not germane, which permitted him and Senator Baker to have a fairly orderly management of the Senate during that time.

Senator McConnell a few minutes ago talked about the time Senator Byrd reexamined the Constitution and changed his mind on the first amendment and flag burning. Senator Byrd and Senator Baker during that time both read David McCullough's book and changed their minds on the Panama Canal Treaty, at great political cost to both of them. I bring this up today because I never saw Senator Byrd, after I was elected to the Senate a few years ago, when he did not ask me about his friend and colleague Howard Baker.

We will miss Senator Byrd's fiddling and his love of mountain music. He campaigned in Tennessee a long time ago for Albert Gore, Sr. who was running for the Senate and who also played the fiddle. Senator Byrd played the fiddle at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville and came back to Nashville in October of 2008 and sang along with a group of fiddlers who were playing songs at his request. I went over there with him. He knew all the songs and all the fiddlers knew him. A few days later I came to him on the Senate floor and talked to him about an old mountain song called ``Wreck on the Highway'' that Roy Acuff made famous in the 1930s or 1940s, and Senator Byrd began to sing the song--he knew all the words--so loudly that the staff was afraid the galleries would all notice it.

We will miss his love of United States history, not just any United States history, but in his words ``traditional American history.'' He was the sponsor of the Teaching Traditional American History Program, which is part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. He has provided nearly $600 million to 1,000 local school districts to improve the professional development of American history teachers. He and the late Senator Kennedy and I were working on a piece of legislation which we have introduced to consolidate all the Federal programs that support the teaching of U.S. history, hoping that our children can grow up learning what it means to be an American.

Senator Byrd is also responsible for the celebration of September 17 as Constitution Day and Citizenship Day.

Senator Byrd had no time for revisionists who didn't believe America was exceptional. He believed this is one country, unified by a common language and a few principles. He did not want our country to become a United Nations, but always to be the United States of America. He wanted us to be proud of where we came from, but prouder to be American.

We will especially miss Senator Byrd's love of and understanding of the Senate. One of the most special occasions I ever experienced was the opportunity as a freshman Senator in 2003 to attend an indoctrination, one might say--or orientation would be the proper description--on what it means to be a Senator. Senator Byrd began by saying: ``You are presently occupying what I consider to be hallowed ground.''

I wish to ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record following my remarks the remarks of Senator Byrd at the orientation of new Senators on December 3, 1996.

Senator Byrd served long enough to know that, as he put it:

As long as the Senate retains the power to amend and the

power of unlimited debate, the liberties of the people will

remain secure.

He believed that when he was lecturing Republicans in 2005 who were trying to change the rules when there was a controversy about President Bush's appointees to the Federal judiciary, and he said the same thing to young Democrats who grew impatient this year and wanted to change the rules to limit unlimited amendment and unlimited debate.

Perhaps his last Senate appearance was before the Rules Committee on May 19, 2010, where his opening statement on the filibuster and its consequences warned against a rules change.

I ask unanimous consent to have that statement printed in the Record following my remarks.

Mr. President, I was 12 years old when Senator Robert Byrd was elected to the House of Representatives. I was a senior in Maryville, TN, when he was elected to the Senate. When I came here as a Senate aide 42 years ago, he had just been elected to his second term and was working his way up the party leadership.

He was an imposing man. He had a wonderful photographic memory. But, after one got to know him especially, he was a kind man.

All of us can be replaced, but it is fair to say the Senate will never be the same place without Robert C. Byrd.

I yield the floor.

Exhibit 1

Remarks by U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd at the Orientation of New

Senators, December 3, 1996

Good afternoon and welcome to the United States Senate

Chamber. You are presently occupying what I consider to be

`hallowed ground.'

You will shortly join the ranks of a very select group of

individuals who have been honored with the title of United

States Senator since 1789 when the Senate first convened. The

creator willing, you will be here for at least six years.

Make no mistake about it, the office of United States

Senator is the highest political calling in the land. The

Senate can remove from office Presidents, members of the

Federal judiciary, and other Federal officials but only the

Senate itself can expel a Senator.

Let us listen for a moment to the words of James Madison on

the role of the Senate.

`These [reasons for establishing the Senate] were first to

protect the people against their rulers: secondly to protect

the people against the transient impression into which they

themselves might be led. [through their representatives in

the lower house] A people deliberating in a temperate moment,

and with the experience of other nations before them, on the

plan of government most likely to secure their happiness,

would first be aware, that those charged with the public

happiness, might betray their trust. An obvious precaution

against this danger would be to divide the trust between

different bodies of men, who might watch and check each

other. . . . It would next occur to such a people, that they

themselves were liable to temporary errors, through want of

information as to their true interest, and that men chosen

for a short term, [House members], . . . might err from the

same cause. This reflection would naturally suggest that the

Government be so constituted, as that one of its branches

might have an opportunity of acquiring a competent knowledge

of the public interests. Another reflection equally becoming

a people on such an occasion, would be that they themselves,

as well as a numerous body of Representatives, were liable to

err also, from fickleness and passion. A necessary fence

against this danger would be to select a portion of

enlightened citizens, whose limited number, and firmness

might seasonably interpose against impetuous councils.

[emphasis added]

Ladies and gentlemen, you are shortly to become part of

that all important, `necessary fence,' which is the United

States Senate. Let me give you the words of Vice President

Aaron Burr upon his departure from the Senate in 1805. `This

house,' said he, `is a sanctuary; a citadel of law, of order,

and of liberty; and it is here--it is here, in this exalted

refuge; here, if anywhere, will resistance be made to the

storms of political phrensy and the silent arts of

corruption; and if the Constitution be destined ever to

perish by the sacrilegious hand of the demagogue or the

usurper, which God avert, its expiring agonies will be

witnessed on this floor.' Gladstone referred to the Senate as

`that remarkable body--the most remarkable of all the

inventions of modern politics.'

This is a very large class of new Senators. There are

fifteen of you. It has been sixteen years since the Senate

welcomed a larger group of new members. Since 1980, the

average size class of new members has been approximately ten.

Your backgrounds vary. Some of you may have served in the

Executive Branch. Some may have been staffers here on the

Hill. Some of you have never held federal office before. Over

half of you have had some service in the House of

Representatives.

Let us clearly understand one thing. The Constitution's

Framers never intended for the Senate to function like the

House of Representatives. That fact is immediately apparent

when one considers the length of a Senate term and the

staggered nature of Senate terms. The Senate was intended to

be a continuing body. By subjecting only one-third of the

Senate's membership to reelection every two years, the

Constitution's framers ensured that two-thirds of the

membership would always carry over from one Congress to the

next to give the Senate an enduring stability.

The Senate and, therefore, Senators were intended to take

the long view and to be able to resist, if need be, the

passions of the often intemperate House. Few, if any, upper

chambers in the history of the western world have possessed

the Senate's absolute right to unlimited debate and to amend

or block legislation passed by a lower House.

Looking back over a period of 208 years, it becomes obvious

that the Senate was intended to be significantly different

from the House in other ways as well. The Constitutional

Framers gave the Senate the unique executive powers of

providing advice and consent to presidential nominations and

to treaties, and the sole power to try and to remove

impeached officers of the government. In the case of

treaties, the Senate, with its longer terms, and its ability

to develop expertise through the device of being a continuing

body, has often performed invaluable service.

I have said that as long as the Senate retains the power to

amend and the power of unlimited debate, the liberties of the

people will remain secure.

The Senate was intended to be a forum for open and free

debate and for the protection of political minorities. I have

led the majority and I have led the minority, and I can tell

you that there is nothing that makes one fully appreciate the

Senate's special role as the protector of minority interests

like being in the minority. Since the Republican Party was

created in 1854, the Senate has changed hands 14 times, so

each party has had the opportunity to appreciate firsthand

the Senate's role as guardian of minority rights. But, almost

from its earliest years the Senate has insisted upon its

members' right to virtually unlimited debate.

When the Senate reluctantly adopted a cloture rule in 1917,

it made the closing of debate very difficult to achieve by

requiring a super majority and by permitting extended post-

cloture debate. This deference to minority views sharply

distinguishes the Senate from the majoritarian House of

Representatives. The Framers recognized that a minority can

be right and that a majority can be wrong. They recognized

that the Senate should be a true deliberative body--a forum

in which to slow the passions of the House, hold them up to

the light, examine them, and, thru informed debate, educate

the public. The Senate is the proverbial saucer intended to

cool the cup of coffee from the House. It is the one place in

the whole government where the minority is guaranteed a

public airing of its views. Woodrow Wilson observed that the

Senate's informing function was as important as its

legislating function, and now, with televised Senate debate,

its informing function plays an even larger and more critical

role in the life of our nation.

Many a mind has been changed by an impassioned plea from

the minority side. Important flaws in otherwise good

legislation have been detected by discerning minority members

engaged in thorough debate, and important compromise which

has worked to the great benefit of our nation has been forged

by an intransigent member determined to filibuster until his

views were accommodated or at least seriously considered.

The Senate is often soundly castigated for its

inefficiency, but in fact, it was never intended to be

efficient. Its purpose was and is to examine, consider,

protect, and to be a totally independent source of wisdom and

judgment on the actions of the lower house and on the

executive. As such, the Senate is the central pillar of our

Constitutional system. I hope that you, as new members will

study the Senate in its institutional context because that is

the best way to understand your personal role as a United

States Senator. Your responsibilities are heavy.

Understand them, live up to them, and strive to take the

long view as you exercise your duties. This will not

always be easy.

The pressures on you will, at times, be enormous. You will

have to formulate policies, grapple with issues, serve the

constituents in your state, and cope with the media. A

Senator's attention today is fractured beyond belief.

Committee meetings, breaking news, fundraising, all of these

will demand your attention, not to mention personal and

family responsibilities. But, somehow, amidst all the noise

and confusion, you must find the time to reflect, to study,

to read, and, especially, to understand the absolutely

critically important institutional role of the Senate.

May I suggest that you start by carefully reading the

Constitution and the Federalist papers. In a few weeks, you

will stand on the platform behind me and take an oath to

support and defend the Constitution of the United States

against all enemies, foreign and domestic; to bear true faith

and allegiance to the same; and take this obligation freely,

without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and to

well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on

which you are about to enter: So help you God.'

Note especially the first 22 words, `I do solemnly swear

that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United

States against all enemies foreign and domestic . . .'

In order to live up to that solemn oath, one must clearly

understand the deliberately established inherent tensions

between the 3 branches, commonly called the checks and

balances, and separation of powers which the framers so

carefully crafted. I carry a copy of the Constitution in my

shirt pocket. I have studied it carefully, read and reread

its articles, marveled at its genius, its beauty, its

symmetry, and its meticulous balance, and learned something

new each time that I partook of its timeless wisdom. Nothing

will help you to fully grasp the Senate's critical role in

the balance of powers like a thorough reading of the

Constitution and the Federalist papers.

Now I would like to turn for a moment to the human side of

the Senate, the relationship among Senators, and the way that

even that faced of service here is, to a degree, governed by

the constitution and the Senate's rules.

The requirement for super majority votes in approving

treaties, involving cloture, removing impeached federal

officers, and overriding vetoes, plus the need for unanimous

consent before the Senate can even proceed in many instances,

makes bipartisanship and comity necessary if members wish to

accomplish much of anything. Realize this. The campaign is

over. You are here to be a Senator. Not much happens in this

body without cooperation between the two parties.

In this now 208-year-old institution, the positions of

majority and minority leaders have existed for less than 80

years. Although the positions have evolved significantly

within the past half century, still, the only really

substantive prerogative the leaders

possess is the right of first recognition before any other

member of their respective parties who might wish to speak on

the Senate Floor. Those of you who have served in the House

will now have to forget about such things as the Committee of

the Whole, closed rules, and germaneness, except when cloture

has been invoked, and become well acquainted with the

workings of unanimous consent agreements. Those of you who

took the trouble to learn Deschler's Procedure will now need

to set that aside and turn in earnest to Riddick's Senate

Procedure.

Senators can lose the Floor for transgressing the rules.

Personal attacks on other members or other blatantly

injudicious comments are unacceptable in the Senate. Again to

encourage a cooling of passions, and to promote a calm

examination of substance, Senators address each other through

the Presiding Officer and in the third person. Civility is

essential here for pragmatic reasons as well as for public

consumption. It is difficult to project the image of a

statesmanlike, intelligent, public servant, attempting to

inform the public and examine issues, if one is behaving and

speaking in a manner more appropriate to a pool room brawl

than to United States Senate debate. You will also find that

overly zealous attacks on other members or on their states

are always extremely counterproductive, and that you will

usually be repaid in kind.

Let us strive for dignity. When you rise to speak on this

Senate Floor, you will be following in the tradition of such

men as Calhoun, Clay, and Webster. You will be standing in

the place of such Senators as Edmund Ross (KS) and Peter Van

Winkle (WEST VIRGINIA), 1868, who voted against their party

to save the institution of the presidency during the Andrew

Johnson impeachment trial.

Debate on the Senate Floor demands thought, careful

preparation and some familiarity with Senate Rules if we are

to engage in thoughtful and informed debate. Additionally,

informed debate helps the American people have a better

understanding of the complicated problems which besiege them

in their own lives. Simply put, the Senate cannot inform

American citizens without extensive debate on those very

issues.

We were not elected to raise money for our own reelections.

We were not elected to see how many press releases or TV

appearances we could stack up. We were not elected to set up

staff empires by serving on every committee in sight. We need

to concentrate, focus, debate, inform, and, I hope, engage

the public, and thereby forge consensus and direction. Once

we engage each other and the public intellectually, the tough

choices will be easier.

I thank each of you for your time and attention and I

congratulate each of you on your selection to fill a seat in

this August body. Service in this body is a supreme honor. It

is also a burden and a serious responsibility. Members' lives

become open for inspection and are used as examples for other

citizens to emulate. A Senator must really be much more than

hardworking, much more than conscientious, much more than

dutiful. A Senator must reach for noble qualities--honor,

total dedication, self-discipline, extreme selflessness,

exemplary patriotism, sober judgment, and intellectual

honesty. The Senate is more important than any one or all of

us--more important than I am; more important than the

majority and minority leaders; more important than all 100 of

us; more important than all of the 1,843 men and women who

have served in this body since 1789. Each of us has a solemn

responsibility to remember that, and to remember it often.

Let me leave you with the words of the last paragraph of

Volume II, of The Senate: 1789-1989: `Originally consisting

of only twenty-two members, the Senate had grown to a

membership of ninety-eight by the time I was sworn in as a

new senator in January 1959. After two hundred years, it is

still the anchor of the Republic, the morning and evening

star in the American constitutional constellation. It has had

its giants and its little men, its Websters and its Bilbos,

its Calhouns and its McCarthys. It has been the stage of high

drama, of comedy and of tragedy, and its players have been

the great and the near-great, those who think they are great,

and those who will never be great. It has weathered the

storms of adversity withstood the barbs of cynics and the

attacks of critics, and provided stability and strength to

the nation during periods of civil strife and uncertainty,

panics and depressions. In war and in peace, it has been the

sure refuge and protector of the rights of the states and of

a political minority. And, today, the Senate still stands--

the great forum of constitutional American liberty!'

Exhibit 2

Statement of Senator Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), Senate Rules and

Administration Committee, May 19, 2010

The Filibuster And Its Consequences

On September 30, 1788, Pennsylvania became the first state

to elect its United States senators, one of whom was William

Maclay. In his 1789 journal Senator Maclay wrote, ``I gave my

opinion in plain language that the confidence of the people

was departing from us, owing to our unreasonable delays. The

design of the Virginians and of the South Carolina gentlemen

was to talk away the time, so that we could not get the bill

passed.''

Our Founding Fathers intended the Senate to be a continuing

body that allows for open and unlimited debate and the

protection of minority rights. Senators have understood this

since the Senate first convened.

In his notes of the Constitutional Convention on June 26,

1787, James Madison recorded that the ends to be served by

the Senate were ``first, to protect the people against their

rulers, secondly, to protect the people against the transient

impressions into which they themselves might be led . . .

They themselves, as well as a numerous body of

Representatives, were liable to err also, from fickleness and

passion. A necessary fence against this danger would be to

select a portion of enlightened citizens, whose limited

number, and firmness might seasonably interpose against

impetuous councils.'' That ``fence'' was the United States

Senate.

The right to filibuster anchors this necessary fence. But

it is not a right intended to be abused.

During this 111th Congress in particular the minority has

threatened to filibuster almost every matter proposed for

Senate consideration. I find this tactic contrary to each

Senator's duty to act in good faith.

I share the profound frustration of my constituents and

colleagues as we confront this situation. The challenges

before our nation are far too grave, and too numerous, for

the Senate to be rendered impotent to address them, and yet

be derided for inaction by those causing the delay.

There are many suggestions as to what we should do. I know

what we must not do.

We must never, ever, tear down the only wall--the necessary

fence--this nation has against the excesses of the Executive

Branch and the resultant haste and tyranny of the majority.

The path to solving our problem lies in our thoroughly

understanding it. Does the difficulty reside in the construct

of our rules or in the ease of circumventing them?

A true filibuster is a fight, not a threatt or a bluff. For

most of the Senate's history, Senators motivated to extend

debate had to hold the floor as long as they were physically

able. The Senate was either persuaded by the strength of

their arguments or unconvinced by either their commitment or

their stamina. True filibusters were therefore less frequent,

and more commonly discouraged, due to every Senator's

understanding that such undertakings required grueling

personal sacrifice, exhausting preparation, and a willingness

to be criticized for disrupting the nation's business.

Now, unbelievably, just the whisper of opposition brings

the ``world's greatest deliberative body'' to a grinding

halt. Why?

Because this once highly respected institution has become

overwhelmingly consumed by a fixation with money and media.

Gone are the days when Senators Richard Russell and Lyndon

Johnson, and Speaker Sam Rayburn gathered routinely for

working weekends and couldn't wait to get back to their

chambers on Monday morning.

Now every Senator spends hours every day, throughout the

year and every year, raising funds for re-election and

appearing before cameras and microphones. Now the Senate

often works three-day weeks, with frequent and extended

recess periods, so Senators can rush home to fundraisers

scheduled months in advance.

Forceful confrontation to a threat to filibuster is

undoubtedly the antidote to the malady. Most recently, Senate

Majority Leader Reid announced that the Senate would stay in

session around-the-clock and take all procedural steps

necessary to bring financial reform legislation before the

Senate. As preparations were made and cots rolled out, a deal

was struck within hours and the threat of filibuster was

withdrawn.

I heartily commend the Majority Leader for this progress,

and I strongly caution my colleagues as some propose to alter

the rules to severely limit the ability of a minority to

conduct a filibuster. I know what it is to be Majority

Leader, and wake up on a Wednesday morning in November, and

find yourself a Minority Leader.

I also know that current Senate Rules provide the means to

break a filibuster. I employed them in 1977 to end the post-

cloture filibuster of natural gas deregulation legislation.

This was the roughest filibuster I have experienced during my

fifty-plus years in the Senate, and it produced the most-

bitter feelings. Yet some important new precedents were

established in dealing with post-cloture obstruction. In

1987, I successfully used Rules 7 and 8 to make a non-

debatable motion to proceed during the morning hour. No

leader has attempted this technique since, but this procedure

could be and should be used.

Over the years, I have proposed a variety of improvements

to Senate Rules to achieve a more sensible balance allowing

the majority to function while still protecting minority

rights. For example, I have supported eliminating debate on

the motion to proceed to a matter (except for changes to

Senate rules), or limiting debate to a reasonable time on

such motions, with Senators retaining the right to unlimited

debate on the matter once before the Senate. I have authored

several other proposals in the past, and I look forward to

our committee work ahead as we carefully examine other

suggested changes. The Committee must, however, jealously

guard against efforts to change or reinterpret the Senate

rules by a simple majority, circumventing Rule XXII where a

two-thirds majority is required.

As I have said before, the Senate has been the last

fortress of minority rights and freedom of speech in this

Republic for more than two centuries. I pray that Senators

will pause and reflect before ignoring that history and

tradition in favor of the political priority of the moment.

Madam President, how much time do I have?

Would the Chair please let me know when 9 minutes have expired.

Thank you, Madam President.

Madam President, last week the New York Times ran a story, and I ask unanimous consent to have it printed in the Record at this time.

The above-referenced article is entitled ``Net Benefits of Biomass Power Under Scrutiny.'' It is about how the people of Massachusetts are starting to debate the idea that they are accomplishing anything by displacing coal with biomass to produce clean electricity. I am talking here about producing electricity, not biofuels which we use in our cars.

Biomass is essentially burning wood and other organic products in a sort of controlled bonfire to produce electricity. The argument for biomass goes like this: Wood is natural. Trees regrow. Burn them up today and more trees will grow tomorrow. Therefore, we won't run out of resources. Moreover, trees are carbon neutral. Burning wood may release carbon dioxide, but trees reabsorb carbon so we can benefit from this natural cycle by generating electricity. Therefore, we are not making climate problems any worse with biomass.

Indeed, biomass produces about 50 percent of our Nation's renewable electricity today, according to the New York Times, and by most of the definitions of renewable electricity that we use in proposals in the Senate. But we can't rely upon biomass to replace significant amounts of the fossil-based electricity we get today from coal. Biomass electricity has its place, and can be used to burn forest and other wood waste. In Tennessee we have a lot of pine trees. They need to be removed from the forest, and this is a good way to do that and make a little electricity. However, we cannot and we should not start cutting down and burning our forests to produce electricity. The loss of forest land is still one of the major ecological catastrophes in Africa, Asia, and South America. So are we, the most advanced country in the world, going to talk about going back to burning up our forests for energy? Many environmental advocates are now arguing that biomass should not even be considered to be ``renewable'' or ``carbon neutral'' because of the fact that burning wood releases greenhouse gases. While that is true, so does the natural process of decay, but the carbon is reabsorbed by the growth of new trees. Biomass can be, and should be, an important--albeit a small part--of our electricity portfolio by using excess forest material and industrial wood waste.

Unfortunately, the New York Times piece misses out on one of the most important concerns about biomass. Just like other renewable electricity sources, it cannot be the solution for our clean energy needs because of the problem of scale. We would have to continually forest an area 1\1/2\ times the size of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to replace the electricity created by two standard coal plants or one standard nuclear reactor. Wood has only half the energy density of coal. That means, if nothing else, we have to do twice as much work in hauling it around. There is a utility in Georgia that is using wood to replace coal in a 100-megawatt powerplant. This utility has trucks running in there day and night hauling wood to keep the plant running, and that is only 100 megawatts--about one-tenth the size of one nuclear reactor. For the southeastern United States to meet a 12-percent renewable electricity standard, as called for in the Waxman-Markey energy climate bill, by using biomass alone, we would have to cut down more trees than the entire U.S. paper industry uses each year.

I think it is worth taking note of all this as we move toward the idea that renewable resources are the answer to our energy problems.

Tomorrow, there will be a group of my colleagues going to the White House to discuss with the President the issue of how to proceed on clean energy. My fear is that we may all be asked to put our differences aside and settle this issue by pushing through a ``renewable electricity standard'' that says all we have to do is choose a number--17 percent by 2020 or 25 percent by 2030--and before you know it, we will have all the energy we need from wind, the Sun, and from the Earth running our highly advanced technological country.

In fact, more than half of the States already have adopted some version of these renewable electricity standards, but they haven't accomplished much. New Jersey wants to close down a nuclear reactor and replace it with an offshore wind farm. It will have to build 50-story wind turbines along its entire 125-mile coast, and it will still need to have the nuclear plant or a natural gas plant or coal plant or some other plant to provide electricity when the wind doesn't blow, which is most of the time.

To meet its requirement of 33 percent renewable electricity by 2020, California has put up wind farms, developed its abundant geothermal resources, and siphoned methane from almost every landfill in the State, and it still only gets 12 percent of its electricity from renewables.

Last year, a Wall Street Journal article cited the California State Energy Commission's warning that the renewable requirement could begin causing reliability problems--that means that when you turn your light switch on, the light might not go on--and increase electricity rates by 2011, which is next year. California State agencies were warning that simply increasing the renewable requirement from 20 percent to 33 percent could cost $114 billion.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the Wall Street Journal article from July 3, 2009.

Mr. President, countries such as Denmark and Germany have done the same thing. Denmark, which is often cited for its wind power, has pushed its windmills up to 20 percent of its electrical capacity. That sounds good. Many people regard 20 percent as about the theoretical limit that wind power can supply to a total electric grid, even for a small country such as Denmark. Yet Denmark hasn't closed even one single coal plant as a result of all these new windmills. So it is still dependent on fossil fuels, and it has the most expensive electricity in Europe because of all of its renewable electricity. Meanwhile, France, which has gone to 80 percent nuclear power, has per capita carbon emissions 30 percent lower than those of Denmark, and it has so much cheap electricity that France is making $3 billion a year exporting its electricity--mostly from nuclear power--to other countries.

So what are we getting into when we say we are going to solve our energy problems by passing a law telling ourselves we have to get 15, 17, or 20 percent of our electricity from renewable sources, very narrowly defined, by 2020?

First, it is important to point out that 80 percent of the facilities built to satisfy State renewable standards have been windmills. So a renewable electricity standard is really a national windmill policy instead of a national energy policy. Wind turbines are easy to put up, especially in remote areas. We have built 35,000 megawatts in total wind energy capacity, which represents an increase of more than 100 percent in the past 3 years. But most wind turbines only generate electricity about 33 percent of the time. That is how often the wind blows. The best wind farms--the ones on the eastern and west coast mountaintops or on the windy plains of the Dakotas--operate a little more than 40 percent of the time. That means our 35,000 megawatts in windmill capacity only generates about 10,000 megawatts at best--the equivalent of ten standard nuclear reactors.

Moreover, the wind doesn't always blow when it is needed and often blows when it is not needed. The strongest winds are at night or during the fall and spring, which are periods of low demand, while the periods with the least wind are hot summer afternoons, when the electricity demand peaks. Wind and other renewables are not dependable in the terms that utilities need dependable electricity. The Tennessee Valley Authority, in the region where I live, says it can only count on the wind power it produces in Tennessee and even the wind power it buys from the Dakotas about 10 to 15 percent of the time when it is actually needed. That is also what has happened in Denmark. They have to give away almost half of their wind-generated electricity to Germany and Sweden at bargain prices because it comes at a time when it is not needed. The result has been that the Danes pay the highest electrical prices in Europe and still haven't achieved much reduction in carbon emissions.

Then there is the matter of subsidies. We hear a lot about oil subsidies in the Senate. I suggest that when we talk about big oil, we also talk about big wind. The U.S. taxpayers are already committed to spending $29 billion over the next 10 years to subsidize the investors, corporations, and the banks that have financed the big wind turbines, and they only produce 1.8 percent of our electricity. If we went to 20 percent of our electricity from wind in the United States, that would be $170 billion from American taxpayers.

Windmills are and can be said to be a big success compared to solar electricity at today's prices. California now has more solar electricity than any other State, and in March, the California Public Utilities Commission announced the opening of one of the largest photovoltaic stations in California--21 megawatts. Solar power makes more sense as a supplement to our power by offsetting some of our demand by placing solar panels on rooftops, not large-scale electricity plants. We all hope we can reduce the cost of solar power, which today costs four times as much as electricity produced from coal.

These are technologies we are counting on to solve our energy problems. I think we have to exercise some caution here. The assumption is that all we have to do is subsidize these technologies and get them up and running, and they will find their place in the market. That doesn't seem to be true. All of these technologies still have much to prove before they can shoulder a significant portion of our electricity. Biomass facilities need to be placed where they are most efficient and can be used as a supplement to low-cost reliable sources of electricity that already provide the large amounts of clean and reliable energy we need. We already have a proven technology in nuclear power that provides us with 20 percent of our electricity and 70 percent of our carbon-free electricity. We should focus on that.

As the President and our colleagues consider our clean energy future tomorrow and the things we agree on, we can agree to electrify half our cars and trucks, and we can agree to build nuclear plants for carbon- free electricity. We can certainly agree on doubling energy research and development to bring down the cost of solar power by a factor of 4 and to create a 500-mile battery for electric cars.

But we need to remember, as we think about the next 10, 20, or 30 years, the United States is not a desert island. We use 25 percent of all the energy in the world to produce about 25 percent of all the money, which we distribute among ourselves, 5 percent of the people in the world. We ought to keep that high standard of living. We need to remember we are not a desert island. Someday, solar, wind, and the Earth may be an important supplement to our energy needs, but for today, we are not going to power the United States on electricity produced by a windmill, a controlled bonfire, and a few solar panels.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I have listened very carefully to my good friend from Michigan. It is puzzling to me to hear her say what she said because she voted against the amendment by Senator Thune last week which would have extended the expiring unemployment provisions until November and not added a penny to the debt. I want to say more about that in a minute.

What we are arguing about, what the debate is about is we want to extend unemployment insurance. We want to make sure the State and local tax deductions continue. We want to make sure tuition deduction and the various disaster relief credits and the research and development tax credits all stay in place. But we want to make sure it is done without adding to a Federal debt that we believe is out of control.

Unanimous Consent Request--S. 3347

Mr. President, before I speak about that issue, I wish to make a request which I hope is a request to which my colleagues could all agree. It is a bipartisan request on behalf of myself, Senator Nelson of Nebraska, and Senator Vitter of Louisiana to extend the Flood Insurance Program in Tennessee.

The largest natural disaster since President Obama took office is the flood of 2010 in Tennessee and a very severe flood in Rhode Island too.

On June 1, the Flood Insurance Program expired. This request I am about to make would permit that to be reinstated so small businesspeople could get flood insurance and get their loans. I will speak more about it in just a minute.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 372, S. 3347, a bill that extends the National Flood Insurance Program through December 31, 2010; that the bill be read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I am deeply disappointed. What I have done is ask to extend the Flood Insurance Program so that Tennesseans who are recovering from the worst natural disaster since President Obama took office could qualify for flood insurance so they could get their loans so they could operate their businesses again.

This does not add a penny to the debt. The money is there; the authority to do it is not. If you are in Rhode Island, if you are in Tennessee, if you are in New Orleans, if you are in any other place where you are waiting for flood insurance, you should know that Republicans just asked to extend the Flood Insurance Program so you could buy insurance, and Democrats just objected.

That is a very simple request. It does not add a penny to the debt. It is deeply disturbing to me this cannot be done in a simple way.

Tennesseans have not been looting and complaining despite the fact the flood of 2010, as I said, was the largest natural disaster since President Obama took office. Nashville alone had $2 billion of damage, maybe more than that. There were 45 counties the President eventually declared disaster areas. He declared other counties as disaster areas because of agricultural crops that were washed out. Thousands of homes in Nashville alone--people lost everything in their basements. That means their heating and cooling and all of that equipment. But in many places, in Bellevue, in Nashville, in Millington outside of Memphis, in Clarksville, TN, they lost much more than that. Twenty-nine people lost their lives in this flood--29 people. This was a huge natural disaster.

The President did not ask for extra funds for Tennessee. No one is complaining about that either. FEMA has done a good job with what it has done, but what good does it do for FEMA to be on the site and available, for small business loans to be available, and for flood insurance money to be available, and for Congress to object to a unanimous consent request to allow new policies to be written?

I am deeply disappointed. Let me address a couple of other things I heard said on the floor of the Senate tonight.

I heard some talk about jobs. From our point of view, the American people are concerned about jobs, debt, and terror. That is why the ferment in the country. That is why the people think the country is headed in the wrong direction. Jobs, debt, and terror. We have 10- percent unemployment. If we continue to grow at the rate we grew in the first quarter, we will be at 10-percent unemployment in the last quarter of this year. Jobs, debt, and terror.

Why do we have fewer jobs? Why do we have 10-percent unemployment? The distinguished Senator from Michigan talks about Republican actions, but I am thinking about what the Democrats have been doing the last year and a half. Every step they seem to take talks about jobs but causes us to have fewer jobs. For example, take the health care law which was passed in this Chamber by a purely partisan vote. The health care law taxes job creators and investors. That means fewer jobs.

The financial regulation bill that is being debated today, passing in a partisan way, puts higher tax rates on small business owners. Higher tax rates on small business owners means fewer jobs.

The debt is going up. That is the real argument we are having. We reached $13 trillion. There are various ways to describe what has happened, but one way to describe it is this: All the Presidents from George Washington to George W. Bush ran up a debt of about $5.8 trillion. President Obama, in his two terms--if he has two terms--is going to double that debt all by himself. That is what his budgets say. Doubling the debt in 5 years and nearly tripling the debt in 10 years means less credit, higher interest rates, less capital, and fewer jobs.

The financial regulation bill I just discussed--one can watch it being dealt with during the day on television. If one listens carefully to what is being said, it amounts to a Washington takeover of Main Street credit; another big Washington agency telling banks and credit unions, automobile retailers, and dentists what to do about credit.

What is the inevitable result? They are going to shrink away from providing that credit. It is going to be harder to get a loan, harder to get credit, so this financial regulation bill, which was supposed to be tough on Wall Street, is going to be hard on Main Street because it means fewer jobs.

When it comes to jobs, the difference between our friends on the other side and the Republicans on this side is that we are focused on creating an environment for growing private sector jobs. They are focused on creating more government jobs. About the only place the job creation plans and stimulus plans they have enacted are working are in Washington, DC, where incomes are up and jobs are up. But not in the small towns of Tennessee and not in the small towns across this country, people are out of work. They are out of work because of higher taxes, higher debt, higher spending, too many Washington takeovers, too much focus on more government jobs, and not enough focus on an environment in which to create more private sector jobs.

I mentioned a little earlier there was talk earlier about the unemployment provisions we want to be extended. Senator Thune will be here in a few minutes to talk about his amendment he offered last week on June 17.

Let's be very clear. The Thune amendment, which every Republican voted for and attracted a Democratic vote but Democrats voted it down, would have extended the expiring employment provisions until November. It would have extended for 1 year dozens of tax provisions. It would have extended the State and local tax deduction, the tuition deduction, the various disaster relief credits, the flood insurance provision that was just objected to. It would increase the payment the government makes to doctors for treating Medicare patients.

The American Medical Association said a little earlier this week that 30 percent of doctors, family physicians, will not see new Medicare patients. This would have taken care of that.

I see the Senator from South Dakota on the Senate floor, and I am sure he will speak more to that when he has the opportunity.

In my concluding remarks, let me say one word about debt and spending. Our policies, the policies of this Congress and this government, are shortchanging our children. The Democrats' runaway spending and debt is a serious crisis ruining the future of our children. That is why we do not want to pass even an unemployment compensation bill that adds to the debt. We want to pass it, but we want to make sure it does not add to the debt.

Why do I say it piles up a debt on our children? In January of 2009-- if you divide the national debt across each child under 18, in January of 2009 each child's debt was $85,000. By June of 2010, it was $114,000. By January of 2017, it will be $196,000. Because of budgets-- and these are the budgets proposed by a Democratic President--during the next 7 years, each child's share of the national debt will more than double, going from $85,000 to $196,000.

Here is another way to think about it. All the Presidents combined from George Washington to George W. Bush took 232 years to build up a $5.8 trillion debt. President Obama's budgets will double that debt in 5 years and triple it in 10. What that means is all 43 Presidents combined, from George Washington to George Bush, ran up a $5.8 trillion debt in 232 years. In 8 years, President Obama will add twice that much to the national debt, tripling the debt.

We on this side of the aisle and a growing number of Democrats, I am sure, and I know across this country a growing number of Americans are saying this national debt is a serious crisis. So we are grateful to the Senator from South Dakota and to others who recognize the real needs of this country, whether it is unemployment compensation, whether it is flood insurance, or whether it is important for doctors to be properly paid, reimbursed for dealing with Medicare payments. We can afford that in this country, but we need to pay for it. We need to do it without adding to the debt.

So I am deeply disappointed that Democratic Senators have objected tonight to providing flood insurance to Nashvillians and other Tennesseans who need it. The money is here; the authority is not. It could have been given tonight. We could have passed it. Tennesseans aren't looting or complaining; they are helping each other and cleaning up. This is an unfortunate slap in the face to Americans who are helping themselves get out of trouble, and I regret that it happened.

I yield the floor.