Floor Statements

Mr. President, I commend my friends on the Democratic side for their interest in health care reform and their coming here to express their views. I can say to them very clearly there is 100 percent agreement on the Republican side that we do not want the status quo, and there is 100 percent agreement on the Republican side that there would be one thing worse than the status quo and that would be higher premium costs, more debt for the government, and higher taxes.

I am afraid that is what my friends are arguing for because they are continuing to say they want to insure at least 30 million more people, they want to improve the benefits for people already on insurance, and they want to reduce costs. That does not add up. So I think it is time we get down to some reality in this discussion about: How can we best achieve health care reform in this country?

We, on the Republican side, want health care reform, but we do not want more debt, more taxes, and higher premium costs for people who cannot afford their insurance policies now. Yet the proposals we have seen on that side of the aisle do that.

Our focus should be about one thing. Health care reform should be about one thing: reducing costs, reducing costs to individuals and small businesses who are paying for health care, and reducing the cost to our government, which is the responsibility of every single one of us taxpayers in this country.

We have had several proposals from the Democratic side that increase the debt and increase the cost, and the President himself, in effect, rejected them in his address to Congress the other day because he said there cannot be one dime of deficit, not one dime. So the bill that came out of the HELP Committee in the Senate--it is out of here. The bill that is coming out of the House of Representatives that has been through several committees--it cannot be considered under the President's own standard that it cannot increase the deficit one dime.

I am glad he is saying that. I am glad he is saying that because he is already proposing we increase our national debt by $9 trillion over the next 10 years--doubling our national debt, tripling it over 10 years, spending more over the next 10 years, three times as much as we spent in World War II--amounts that have most people in this country alarmed about the debt of this government. So this should be a straightforward discussion about costs, reducing the cost of health care to you, if you are buying health care, and reducing the cost of health care to your government, which you are responsible for.

So the President has done us a favor. He said do not worry about the Senate bill that came out of the HELP Committee because--in effect, he said this--it adds to the deficit, so it has to go. For the bills coming out of the House of Representatives, the Congressional Budget Office has told us it adds to the deficit in the first 10 years, and it adds to the deficit even more in the next 10 years, so it has to go.

So now we have a new bill, and it is already a 250-page--I misspoke. It is not a bill yet. It is 250 pages of concepts. It is important for the American people to understand this. I think one of the things we have all heard, as much as anything, when we have gone home is: Did you read the bill? That is a pretty good question. It is a pretty big job because we have gotten in the habit around here of coming up with 1,000-page bills that Senators and Congressmen do not read. So the American people are saying to us: At least read the bill. They are saying to us, second: At least know what it costs. So that is a bare minimum of what we should insist on as we are going forward.

The bill introduced by the distinguished Senator who is the chairman of the Finance Committee is 250 pages of concepts. So everyone understands where we are in the process, the Finance Committee is meeting. They will be meeting all week. My guess is they will be meeting next week. They are trying to agree on what those concepts will finally be. The chairman has recommended what he thinks they ought to be, and now the committee is going to say what they think they should be.

Then, as I understand it, the Democratic leader is going to try to fit this bill that came out of the HELP Committee--that the President, in effect, has rejected because he says no deficit--well, it has a deficit--and he is going to try to put that bill that raises costs with the Baucus bill and turn it into one bill. The bill that came out of the HELP Committee is already nearly 1,000 pages. I do not know yet what will be coming out of the Finance Committee.

So in a week or two, we are going to be having another big bill we will have to read. Then the Congressional Budget Office, which is our official nonpartisan outfit that tells us what things cost--appointed by the majority

but still nonpartisan--told Senator Baucus yesterday it would take about 2 weeks for them to tell us how much it will cost.

So the way I am adding up the weeks, I am saying a week or two for the Finance Committee to come up with a bill--maybe a week to write the bill--and the Congressional Budget Office says after the bill is written, it takes 2 weeks to know the formal cost. Then we ought to have several weeks to debate the bill. That is what we did with the Energy bill for 4 or 5 weeks and, of course, we should do just that. So we need the time to do it, and we need to be able to say to people when we go home: I read the bill and I know exactly what it costs and here is what I think about it.

What about the Baucus concepts--not the Baucus bill; they don't have the bill yet--but the concepts. The Congressional Budget Office released an analysis of the impact of the Baucus budget plan on insurance. It shows that the premiums for those in the individual market under the Baucus bill don't go down, they go up. This is supposed to be about reducing the cost of premiums that Americans have for their health care, and under the Baucus bill so far, on its first day of consideration by the full Finance Committee, the premiums go up and taxes on insurers, drugs, and devices would be passed on to consumers in the form of higher premiums. This is not fearmongers saying that; this is not Republicans saying that; it is not the doctors saying that; it is the Congressional Budget Office appointed by the majority, the Democratic majority. Premiums go up under the Baucus bill. That means Americans will pay more, not less, for their health insurance under the bill as it is today.

Here is what the Congressional Budget Office said:

Under current law, premiums on employment-based plans would

not include the effect of the annual fees imposed under the

proposal on manufacturers and importers of brand-name drugs

and medical devices, on health insurance providers, and on

clinical laboratories.

These are new taxes.

Premiums for exchange plans----

These would be plans in the exchange that you might choose if you were an individual--

Premiums for exchange plans would include the effect of

those fees, which would increase premiums by roughly 1

percent.

That is the Congressional Budget Office about the Baucus concepts.

CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, went on to say:

At the same time, premiums in the new insurance exchanges--

--

These are the marketplaces where under this plan you would go to buy your insurance----

would tend to be higher than the average premiums in the

current-law individual market.

So the premiums under the new bill and the new exchange would be higher than you are paying today. CBO says:

Again, with other factors held equal, because the new

policies would have to cover preexisting medical conditions

and could not deny coverage to people with high expected

costs for health care.

CBO goes on to say:

People with low expected costs for health care, however,

would generally pay higher premiums.

So if you make a promise to improve the benefits, somebody else is going to pay for them. That is mathematics. That is the way the world works. Fortunately, we have the Congressional Budget Office to say under this plan premiums would go up. It continues:

For families, premiums plus cost-sharing payments would

range from about $2,900 for those with incomes of $30,000, to

nearly $20,000 annually for premiums for those with incomes

above $96,000.

So costs go up to individuals under the Baucus concepts. Additionally, we should consider the cost to our government. Most Americans are very much aware--I think that is why they have been turning out in record numbers in town meetings--that the government is not some remote, abstract thing; we own it, and we own the debt too. According to the Budget Committee staff, the real 10-year cost of the Baucus concept when fully implemented will be $1.67 trillion because the main spending provisions won't go into effect until 2013.

In other words, when we talk about 10-year costs around here, the next 10 years aren't an accurate picture because the bill isn't fully implemented until you get on down the road 3 or 4 years to 2013. So if you take a full 10 years--a full implementation of the bill--the Budget Committee says it is about $1.67 trillion in new costs. However, there are new taxes and fees to pay for that: $838 billion over 10 full years of implementation, and those new taxes and fees go into effect immediately.

The long-term deficit reductions predicted in the bill depend on Congress--that is us--approving cuts year after year to Medicare providers. Medicare providers are doctors, hospitals, hospices, and home health agencies. In other words, to make this bill balance the budget and not add to the deficit, we are going to have to have cuts year after year to Medicare, cuts to doctors, cuts to hospitals, cuts to hospices, and cuts to home health agencies.

I thought I heard the President say in his speech the other night there will be no cuts to Medicare. He did say that. It turns out not to be true in the Baucus proposal. It could be true if Congress were willing to support cuts year after year to Medicare, hospitals, doctors, home health agencies, and hospices, but we have never done that. In fact, a few years ago we Republicans tried to restrict the growth of Medicare by $10 billion a year--I think it was from 43 percent to 41 percent over 5 years--and we had to bring the Vice President back from overseas to cast the deciding vote because everybody on the Democratic side wouldn't even vote for $10 billion in reduced savings to Medicare. Yet what we are proposing here assumes that suddenly we have all changed and we are going to allow cuts year after year to people who provide services to Medicare.

CBO found that its projections ``assume that the proposals are enacted and remain unchanged throughout the next two decades, which is often not the case,'' it wisely said.

CBO goes on: ``For example, the sustainable growth rate''--we call that the ``doc fix'' around here when we come in once a year and automatically--doctors' payments under Medicare, which is already only 80 percent--doctors earn only about 80 percent under Medicare compared to what they earn when they see private patients--so we automatically cut their pay by 20 percent and we always come in and raise it back up to about what it was the year before.

So CBO is telling us that the sustainable growth rate--the ``doc fix'' ``governing Medicare to physicians--has frequently been modified.'' That is an understatement. It has been modified almost every year ``to avoid reductions in those payments'' and that ``the long-term budgetary impact could be quite different if those provisions were ultimately changed or not fully implemented.''

So unless we have massive cuts in Medicare, we are not going to be able to balance the budget with this bill.

We don't know how much this bill will cost State governments. The distinguished Senator from Nebraska is on the floor. He was a Governor. I was a Governor. We have all struggled with Medicaid. I think our view is that dumping another 15 million low-income Americans into Medicaid is not health care reform. Doctors and providers are only reimbursed about 61 or 62 percent of their costs for providing services to Medicaid patients, so 40 percent of doctors won't see Medicaid patients. Dumping a low-income American into the Medicaid program is like giving them a bus ticket to a bus line that only runs 60 percent of the time. It is not health care reform. Even so, this will cost State governments, and all the Governors--Democrats and Republicans-- are opposed to the concept in this bill that transfers some of the cost of increased Medicaid to the States. Their view is--and I think they are right on this--if the Federal Government wants to expand Medicaid, the Federal Government should pay for it. I haven't been able to even get an estimate of how much this will cost Tennessee. We are trying to figure that out. Senator Cornyn said his estimate is about $2 billion a year for Texas.

Additionally, the proposal cuts nearly $500 billion from Medicare to fund this new government program even though Medicare will start going bankrupt in 2017. Yesterday I heard the president of the Mayo Clinic on National Public Radio say that any public

option that looked like Medicare would bankrupt the country overnight, since trustees have said that Medicare is likely to go broke in 2015 to 2017.

I am afraid we need to start over. I admire Senator Baucus's effort, but we don't do comprehensive very well here. A 1,000-page bill is not likely to solve the problem. It is time to bring an end to the era of these 1,000-page bills that are so complicated no one can understand them or have time to read them. Instead, I believe we should move step by step to lower health care costs and re-earn the trust of the American people.

I see the Senator from Nebraska and I will soon defer to him, or to the Senator from South Dakota, whichever one is next. But in conclusion, these are the things we can start doing today to move step by step in the right direction to lower costs: allow small businesses to pool to reduce health care costs; reform medical malpractice laws; allow individual Americans the ability to purchase health insurance across State lines; ensure that Americans who currently qualify for existing programs such as Medicaid and SCHIP who are not enrolled to be signed up; create health insurance exchanges so you can find coverage; and incentivize health reform technology. We can agree on those things. We can take those steps and we can reduce the costs of health care to each American family and to our government.

I thank the President and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I say to the Senator from California that I join her in urging our colleagues to come to the floor and offer their amendments so we can move on through the bill. There is an opportunity to offer them and to debate them.

Mr. President, if someone comes to the floor I will finish quickly so they can take the floor and we can move on with the bill, but while we are waiting for that, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. President, with great respect to the President of the United States, I am still shaking my head a little bit in disbelief at his speech yesterday on climate change at the Climate Change Summit in New York. Here we had 100 leaders from around the world in our country to talk about climate change and the President said what he has said before, which is that we need to stop putting so much carbon in the air because carbon is the principal greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change, in the opinion of most scientists.

But in saying that, the President did not mention the one way we have to create a lot of low-cost electricity without putting any carbon in the air, and that is nuclear power--a process that the United States invented; a process that the United States operates more efficiently than any other country in the world. It produces 19 percent of our electricity, and our plants operate 90 percent of the time. Even France, which gets 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power, only operates its plants 80 percent of the time. He failed to mention nuclear power even though it produces 70 percent of our carbon-free electricity, and even though every one of the other top five carbon emitting nations in the world are committed to a full-scale construction program for nuclear power.

This is what the President said:

The developed nations that caused much of the damage to the

climate over the last century have the responsibility to

lead--and that includes the United States.

Well, according to the Wall Street Journal on Monday, September 21, in its news pages, we know who produces the carbon: China is No. 1--6 million metric tons; the United States is No. 2--nearly 6 million metric tons. So we produce about the same. Russia is next--1.7 million; India is next; Japan is next. Those are the top five carbo emitting nations.

President Obama lectured other countries when he said:

But those rapidly developing nations--

And here he means China and India--

that will produce nearly all the growth in global carbon

emissions in the decade ahead must do their part as well.

He is right about that. The President went on to say:

We cannot meet these challenges unless all the largest

emitters of greenhouse gas pollution act together. There's no

other way.

He is right about that. But then, to my great astonishment--and I am sure to others--he stopped there and he basically was saying to China and to Russia and to India, as well as Japan: You must do something about carbon. We are going to take the lead. Yet they all are building nuclear power plants that emit zero carbon and we haven't started one new reactor in 30 years, even though we invented it. How can the President of the United States lecture other countries about the carbon they produce--the principal greenhouse gas--when they are expanding the one technology that could do the most to solve the problem?

Let's be very elementary here. Coal and natural gas plants produce nearly 40 percent of the carbon when they produce electricity. The President did boast of how the United States is committed to building windmills and solar panels. In fact, his administration wants to build 20 percent of our electricity from wind turbines. These aren't grandma's windmills, these are the giant 50-story wind turbines that they want to string along the Appalachian Mountain tops, from the Smokey Mountains to the White Mountains, along the coastlines, and run 19,000 miles of transmission lines to get the power to our homes and businesses. That is the plan. And to a point, that plan can help. I mean, renewable energy--solar panels, wind turbines--is a supplement to the electricity we need. But today, wind turbines and solar panels produce about 3 to 4 percent of America's carbon-free electricity. Nuclear power produces 70 percent of our carbon-free electricity. So why not expand nuclear power? Yet we haven't built a new nuclear powerplant in 30 years.

What is happening around the world? Well, they are not slowing down. They are taking full advantage, as the world often has, of American ingenuity. We invented nuclear power here. And after we invented the atom bomb, President Eisenhower and other scientists in the 1950s said: Let's have an atoms for peace program.

So we went off on two tracks. We used nuclear reactors to operate our Navy, which we have done successfully, without incident ever since the 1950s. Admiral Rickover pioneered that. So today we have about 80 Navy vessels operated by reactors and, during the 1970s and 1980s, we built 104 nuclear reactors. This was the Atoms for Peace Program. We took what probably was the greatest scientific invention of the last century, the reactor, and used it to produce a lot of low-cost, reliable energy--which is the dream of the world, to have a lot of low- cost, reliable energy for everyone in the world. That is the one of the single best steps toward reducing poverty and increasing prosperity.

So here we are in the United States, using our 104 nuclear reactors-- not having built a new one in the last 30 years--to produce 19 percent of our electricity and 70 percent of our carbon-free electricity. But what is happening around the world? There are 44 new nuclear powerplants under construction in the world. China has four under construction. This was the first country the President would be lecturing: Do something about carbon-free electricity. So China is planning 132 nuclear powerplants and we are constructing zero. We have not constructed one in 30 years. How can we lecture China about carbon if they are building 132 nuclear powerplants, which would be enough to produce one-fourth of all the electricity the United States uses? That is more than we produce today through nuclear power.

Russia is building two a year. One reason Russia is doing it is because they want to sell their natural gas to Europe at a lot more expensive price, so they are taking advantage of nuclear power to raise their standard of living. Japan is 36 percent nuclear power today. Japan, as everyone knows, suffered under the two atom bombs that were dropped. But they have come to terms with the safe use of atoms for peace, nuclear-power-produced electricity--36 percent of their electricity is nuclear. They are building two more plants. The United States has not built a plant in 30 years.

South Korea, one of the most successful emerging countries--in America, one of those countries that the President might be saying you need to do something about climate change--they are. Forty percent of their electricity is carbon-free nuclear power and they are building eight more nuclear plants by 2015 and we have not built one in 30 years.

India, the largest democracy--we point our finger at them and say we don't have to do anything about climate change until you do. They are. They are considering a thorium reactor. They are committed to nuclear power, partly because of the agreement between the United States and the Bush administration and India, and we are helping them build nuclear powerplants. We are helping China as well. But we have not built one in 30 years.

The President even said Iran has the right to build a nuclear powerplant; not a nuclear bomb but a nuclear powerplant. We have not built one in 30 years.

France--we don't usually like to say the French are ahead of us. We have a little love-hate relationship with France, but look what they have done. They have taken our nuclear reactor invention and 80 percent of the electricity in France comes from nuclear power. They have among the lowest rates of carbon emissions in the entire European Union. They have among the lowest electricity prices in the European Union. They are selling electricity to Germany, which is the only one of the European countries that has said they don't want any nuclear power. So they are buying nuclear power from France.

There are many other countries in the world that are using nuclear power. But as the Wall Street Journal said: China, the United States, Russia, India, and Japan produce most of the carbon. Scientists believe carbon produces 40 percent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming and the United States is the only one of those five countries that is not committed to the construction of new nuclear powerplants.

The President's plan instead is an energy tax and renewable mandates that would force us to build more giant wind turbines. Wind turbines work some places. They don't work in my part of the country. The wind doesn't blow enough, and we don't want to see them on our mountaintops. I am a sponsor of Senator Cardin's mountaintop removal bill. We don't want people blowing up our mountaintops and dumping the tops of the mountains in our streams. We don't want them putting 50-story wind turbines that don't turn more than 19 percent of the time up there either. So there is a growing recognition that in addition to the unreliability of renewable energy, the energy sprawl on our landscape is something we should think about.

One thing we should think about is think about where to put renewable energy installations, to make sure they are in appropriate places. The other thing to think about is are there any alternatives to renewable energy. The answer, of course, is, yes, there are alternatives to renewable energy. The principal one is nuclear power.

Let me be specific. In order to make 20 percent of our electricity in the United States from carbon-free sources, we could either build about 186,000 wind turbines--these are 50 stories tall--that would cover an area about the size of West Virginia. Or we could build 100 new nuclear reactors. We have 104 today. Remember, China is building 132. Today, nuclear produces about 20 percent of all our electricity; wind provides about 1.3 percent.

Nuclear power is baseload power because it operates 90 percent of the time. That means we could have it on almost all the time. Wind power is intermittent. It only works when and where the wind blows and there is no way today to commercially store large amounts of that electricity.

Nuclear, as I mentioned earlier, operates 90 percent of the time. Wind operates about 33 percent of the time.

When you read that you have 1,000 megawatts of electricity from nuclear,

that means you have 900 megawatts because it operates 90 percent of the time. When you read you have 1,000 megawatts of wind, that means you probably have 300 or 350 megawatts because it only operates a third of the time and, as they found in Denmark and other places, the wind often blows at night when we don't need it. We have lots of unused electricity at night.

As far as additional infrastructure, building 100 new nuclear reactors would take very little new infrastructure because you could locate them mostly on the existing sites where we now have the 104 nuclear reactors we have today. Wind turbines, on the other hand, as I said, would take an area the size of West Virginia, plus 19,000 miles of new transmission lines that would go from unpopulated areas, through suburban areas, to populated areas where people need the electricity.

What about the Federal subsidy? Sometimes people say these big new nuclear plants must have a big federal subsidy, but the fact is they do not. To produce the first 100 plants that we have, they were built without much federal subsidy. To build 100 more, the estimates are for $17.5 billion over 10 years, including a capped nuclear production tax credit--that would build the 100 nuclear plants. To build 186,000 wind turbines the taxpayer would shell out about $170 billion.

We hear a lot of about green jobs, let's have renewable electricity because that produces green jobs. Green jobs are good jobs. We have two big new plants in Tennessee that the Governor recruited and they make polysilicone, which is for the purpose of making solar panels. We hope solar energy works and we believe it will. Today it costs four to five times in our area what other electricity costs, but we hope the price comes down and we are all for that. But the estimate for nuclear's green jobs to build 100 reactors would be about 250,000 construction jobs. To build 180,000 1.5 megawatt wind turbines would be about a third of that, 73,000 construction jobs, and then 70,000 permanent jobs for nuclear and 77,000 permanent jobs for the wind turbines. They would be about the same.

The lifetime of a nuclear plant is about 60 to 80 years. The lifetime of the wind turbines is about 20 to 25 years. At a recent hearing which was chaired by the Senator from California, we talked with the Interior Secretary about the possibility of bonds for the developers who are putting up these 186,000 turbines. What if they wear out after 15 or 20 years, which is what they are expected to do? Or what if policies change? Or what if subsidies disappear? Or what if we decide we prefer other forms of energy? Who is going to take them down? We need to think about that, just as we did not think about abandoned mines all over the country--47,000 alone in California.

Then there is the visual impact I mentioned. If you build 100 big nuclear powerplants, 100 reactors, they have tall cooling towers. There is a visual impact there. But you do it mostly on the sites where the 104 are today, where they are well accepted by the people in those communities and it is only 100 of them and it only takes about 100 square miles. Mr. President, 186,000 wind turbines would cover 25,000 square miles, which is an area the size of West Virginia.

I hope as we proceed, after health care, to our debate on energy and climate change, that we will take a more realistic attitude. I am one of those Senators who believe climate change is a problem. I believe humans are contributing to it. I think it is time for us to stop emitting so much carbon into the air. But I would like for us to do that in a low-cost, sensible way that permits us to keep our jobs in this country and not in a high-cost way that causes us to drive jobs overseas, looking for cheap energy. Every single Republican Senator has endorsed an energy plan that is, No. 1, 100 new nuclear powerplants in 20 years; No. 2, electrify half our cars and trucks in 20 years; No. 3, offshore exploration for natural gas, which is low carbon and oil--we should use our own while we use it; and, No. 4, doubling research and development for alternative energy. How can we make solar cost- competitive? How can we find a way to recapture carbon from coal plants? How can we have advanced biofuels? How can we find the fourth generation of nuclear energy that recycles used nuclear fuel in a way that doesn't produce any plutonium?

It is not just the 40 Republican Senators who are interested in that. I have had a number of Democratic Senators talk with me about that. Many were far out in front of the issue before I began to speak so much about it.

My hope would be that, as we look more seriously at the issue of climate change and energy, that we adopt a low-cost energy strategy. We don't need an energy tax that raises everybody's electric bill. We don't need a renewable energy mandate that requires us to put up wind turbines in the Southeast, where the wind doesn't blow, anymore than we need a nuclear energy mandate that requires people to put up nuclear plants where people don't want them or a hydroelectric mandate that requires States to put up dams where there is no river. We need a low- cost, clean energy policy. Almost every other major country in the world is deciding that nuclear power is the key to the future.

Wind is a supplement. One day solar may be widely used as supplement. But for baseload power for a prosperous country there is no choice, in my view. So climate change may be the inconvenient problem, as my friend and fellow Tennessean, Al Gore, says. But nuclear power, I am afraid, is the inconvenient solution, and I hope we will move to the day when the President of the United States will go to a summit on climate and say: Yes, we are building wind turbines in appropriate places; yes, we are having solar thermal panels in appropriate places; yes, we have doubled and tripled our investment in research and development for alternative energy. But as the country that invented low-cost, reliable, clean, carbon-free nuclear energy, I, the President of the United States, have set as a goal that we will double the amount of electricity we will produce from nuclear power.

If the President went to Copenhagen and said we were committed to build 100 new nuclear powerplants in 20 years and to electrify half our cars and trucks in 20 years, just implementing those two goals would get us close to the Kyoto Protocol standards in 2030; just implementing those two goals--100 new nuclear plants and electrifying half our cars and trucks--and we can do both. We already did both. Between 1970 and 1990 we built 104 reactors, not to mention the 81 U.S. Navy vessels powered by nuclear reactors, so we have done that. Most experts, including many in the Obama administration, agree we can electrify half our cars and trucks, and probably without building one new powerplant because we have so much unused electricity at night. We can plug them in at night. We will be reducing imported oil, keeping the price of fuel low, we will be cleaning the air, and we will be dealing with global warming.

So why are we engaged in a 1,000-page energy tax, a cap-and-trade system that doesn't effectively deal with fuel, that adds to taxes, and it runs jobs overseas, when we have before us the technology we invented that would lead us into the next century?

So I hope those issues evolve. I have seen that sometimes we do not have the votes on this side of the aisle, but we have the right message. Sometimes we find if we work with our colleagues on the other side, we can have the same message.

So I believe there are many Democrats and all of the Republicans who will join in setting a new national goal of 100 new nuclear plants in the next 20 years. I believe we already have consensus on electrifying half of our cars and trucks. So if that will help us reach the climate change goals, why don't we do that instead of a national goal that raises the price of energy, increases poverty, runs jobs overseas, and causes all sorts of unanticipated problems?

I yield the floor.

I congratulate the Senator from California. She is characteristically balanced in her approach and passionate about it which becomes a former mayor who is accustomed to making practical decisions. We have all had to change our minds about some things as we go along. There is in this body an entire range of views about climate change. Some are about ready to jump off the cliff. Others believe it is a complete hoax. That is probably the way it is in the country today among a variety of views.

My own view is that if I had this much information about my house probably catching on fire, I would buy some fire insurance. What we need to do in the Senate is say: Yes, it is a problem, and we are helping to cause it. What makes the most practical sense for dealing with it in a rapid way without running our jobs overseas where they are looking for cheap energy?

There are a variety of ways to do that. I totally agree that renewable energies are an important new source, but we need to be smart about it. One way to be smart is intensive research. We may find a way to make solar power a fourth the cost of what it is today. Then we have rooftops instead of thousands of square miles of thermal powerplants we can use. We may find cost effective ways to recapture carbon from coal plants. That would be a blessing not only for us but for the world because it would mean low-cost energy without polluting the world. It is important to recognize that the Obama administration's chief scientist, Dr. Chu, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, says unequivocally that nuclear power is safe and used nuclear fuel can be safely stored onsite for 40 to 60 years, while we have a mini Manhattan project to find the best way to recycle that used nuclear fuel, most likely in a way that doesn't produce highly enriched uranium of the kind that causes proliferation concerns.

So the two questions often raised regarding nuclear power--what to do with the waste and is it safe. The chief scientist in this administration says those concerns aren't a problem. If that is the case, then nuclear power has to be a big part of the solution.

I am delighted I had a chance to hear the Senator speak on climate change. I hope, as we talk more about this over the next several months, we can agree on a consensus and permit the President to go to international summits and show the United States is actually leading.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, the pending business is the Interior appropriations bill. I know several Senators have amendments. If they would like to come and speak on those amendments, this is a good time to do that. Then, working with the Senator from California, who is chairman of the committee, we will try to move those amendments to a vote as quickly as possible. If Senators do come to speak on amendments, I will stop talking and give them the floor. But for the time being, I would like to say a few words about Federal student loans.

President Obama said the other day, in what I thought was a very perceptive comment, that he understood the health care debate and all its intensity is a proxy for a larger debate, and that is about the role of government in our society. What I and many Republicans believe and, I think, many Independents and Democrats, as well, in the State of Tennessee, and I suspect across the country--is that we have suddenly seen too many taxes, too much spending, too much debt, and too many Washington takeovers. The President says, and he is correct to an extent with this, that some of these Washington takeovers were not his fault, were not his doing. I suppose he would say that about some of the bank takeovers and the insurance company takeovers. I am not so sure about the takeover of the automobile companies or the takeover of the farm bonds or the proposal to take over health care. But here is a voluntary takeover that is absolutely unnecessary, is unwise, and the American people should pay attention to this.

This goes to the center of what the President said. If health care is a proxy for a debate about the extent to which the American Government ought to be involved in our society, then the proposal by the President to take over the entire student loan program and move it from the private sector into the government is a perfect example of what we ought not to be doing.

Let me speak first to the dimensions of this program. The United States has the best system of higher education in the world. One of the greatest aspects of it, one of the greatest contributors to its quality, is that we have a generous amount of Federal dollars which permit about half or more of our students to either get a Federal grant, which we usually call Pell grants, or a Federal student loan which follows them to the institution of their choice. So unlike our elementary and secondary schools, your Pell grant--your grant going all of the way back to the GI bill in 1944--can follow you wherever you go. That choice and that competition and that money have helped to create not just some of the best colleges and universities in the world but virtually all of them. Most observers agree on that.

The higher education system today is 6,000 institutions. These are the universities of North Carolina and Tennessee. That is what we might think of first, but there are also community colleges,

the 2-year schools. There are also nonprofit colleges. There are also the religious institutions--Notre Dame and Brigham Young and many others. So there are 6,000 institutions.

Last year, 4,400 of those 6,000 institutions used the regular student loan program. That is the one where you go to the bank, usually your community bank or local bank, and you get a student loan. And 1,600 schools, or about one-fourth, used the direct loan program, which was put in at the time I was Secretary of Education about 20 years ago, and you just go to the U.S. Department of Education and get your money. On the private side of it, which is what 3 out of 4 students choose, there are 2,000 lenders that participate in the program. This year, there are nearly 18 million loans to students and parents--18 million--and 14 million of them are in the regular student loan program, 4.5 million through the government. There was $86 billion of loans made. So the regular student loan volume through the private lenders was about $64 billion; the direct loan volume was $22 billion.

So all in all outstanding, $617 billion of volume for both programs, and the President has said we are going to take all of that and put it in the U.S. Department of Education. So what his proposal is, if you are one of the 14 million students today who are getting their student loans from their local banks, starting in January you are out of luck. You better line up outside the U.S. Department of Education with the other 19 million people who want a student loan and hope they can provide you with the same sort of service your community bank or lending institution or nonprofit organization in your area provides you today.

There is a lack of evidence to show that the U.S. Department of Education can do a better job of making loans than banks can. I used to work at the U.S. Department of Education. I was the Secretary. It is one of the smaller departments in government. The people there know a lot about education, but none of them really is running for banker of the year.

Arne Duncan is President Obama's Education Secretary. He is one of his best appointments. I would much prefer seeing him in Memphis working on charter schools or in Denver trying to find ways to pay outstanding teachers more or trying to help create a better system of colleges and universities or community colleges instead of trying to manage the problem of, how do I grant $100 billion in new loans to 19 million people every single year? How do I replace 2,000 private lenders?

Let me give you an example of what a private lender might do. In Tennessee, we have EdSouth. This is a nonprofit provider. Here is what they do. They had five regional outreach counselors to canvass Tennessee to provide college and career planning, financial aid training, college admissions assistance, and financial aid literacy. They made 443 presentations at Tennessee schools through college fairs, guidance visits, and presentations. They worked with 12,000 Tennessee students to improve their understanding of the college admissions and financial aid process. They provided training to over 1,000 school counselors so those counselors could work better with their students. They distributed almost 1.5 million financial aid brochures to Tennessee students and families. Will the U.S. Department of Education start providing those services, or will the 19 million students who want student loans simply line up outside the U.S. Department of Education or one of its offices somewhere and apply for a loan? I think I know the answer to that question.

According to the Department of Education, it costs them about $700 million a year to administer the loans they make today. That is for one-quarter of all the students. They estimate they can make those same loans to 19 million students at about the same amount of money. I doubt if that is true, which brings me to the point of the savings--the alleged savings of this program.

Senator Gregg and I--the Senator from New Hampshire, who is the former chairman of the Budget Committee, ranking member now--talked about the alleged savings in moving all of these loans from the lending institutions that make them to 19 million students today, to the U.S. Department of Education.

Senator Gregg received a letter from the Congressional Budget Office on July 27. I ask unanimous consent to have that letter printed in the Record.

Senator Gregg basically asked: Is it true that if we stop making loans through private and nonprofit lenders whereby the Federal Government guarantees the loans and pays a regulated subsidy to the lender--if we stop that and start making all of them through the government directly, will we save $87 billion? And the short answer--if you want the long answer, the letter is available--the short answer is no, you do not save $87 billion; you are likely to realize $47 billion in savings over the next 10 years.

Then, in addition to that, we have to deduct for the--I see the Senator from Oklahoma. Is he ready to speak on his amendments?

I will be through in about 4 or 5 minutes. I welcome him and look forward to his comments.

Instead of saving $87 billion, we save $47 billion. Then we have to deduct the administrative costs. Remember, instead of making some of the loans, the Department of Education is going to make 19 million loans. The Department estimates it might cost it $7 billion over the 10 years to do that. Others think it might cost $30 billion. So the real savings--the real savings are either $47 billion or more like $20 billion or $23 billion in savings over 10 years.

In order to do that, of course, we are going to have to raise the Federal debt. We are going to have to borrow $1 billion a year for the next 5 years. So at a time when we are concerned that we are adding $9 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years, we are going to add another half trillion over 5 years so we can make student loans instead of doing it through private institutions.

Here is the real clincher. When you press and say: In order to make these loans, what is the real reason you think you can do this if the savings aren't really $87 billion but they are more like $47 billion or more like $23 billion over 10 years?

They say: Well, the real reason is the government can borrow money cheaper than the private banks can.

That is true. The government can borrow money at a quarter of a percentage point, and then it loans it to the students at 6.8 percentage points.

Well, my first point would be that I don't think the government ought to be making a profit by overcharging students for their student loans and then turn around and take credit for starting new programs. What the government is actually going to be doing is charging a student who has a job and is trying to get a student loan--is going to say: OK, we are going to borrow the money at one-quarter of 1 percent and loan it to you at 6.8, and then we are going to take that money and pay for your Pell grant or pay for someone else's Pell grant.

In other words, they are going to overcharge the student to make the Congressman look good. That is what we are doing. We are going out and announcing all of these programs. So we are spending $87 billion, when it is really between $23 and $47 billion--that is the amount we really have--and we make that money by overcharging the students.

At the very least, if we are going to take all of these loans into the government, we ought to reduce the interest rate so we don't overcharge the students.

I see the Senator from Oklahoma. I am going to defer to him and welcome him to the floor. But I hope, as we think about the issue the President so accurately described--he said: The health care debate is really a proxy for the role of government in our society. He is exactly right about that. And while some of the Washington takeovers may not have been avoidable at the beginning of the year, there is no reason in the world why Washington should take over 19 million student loans, eliminate 2,000 lenders, stop students on 6,000 campuses from having a choice in competition, and say: The

government is the best banker in America; line up outside the Department of Education, all 19 million of you, in January and get your student loan.

So I am thinking of introducing an amendment that is called a truth- in-lending amendment if this legislation were to pass, and it would say to every one of the 19 million students: Truth in lending--beware. Your government is overcharging you so your Congressman and your Senator can take credit for starting a new program.

I yield the floor.

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

No objection.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from New Hampshire and I be permitted to engage in a colloquy.

Mr. President, I don't think we can say it too often-- though some people may tire of hearing Republican Senators saying it-- we have too much debt and too many Washington takeovers. Today, we want to talk about the latest Washington takeover, the latest huge addition to the national debt, which is the voluntary takeover of the Federal Family Education Loan Program.

Rather than describe the situation myself, let me go to the New York Times article, on September 14, to paint the picture.

Between financial rescue missions and the economic stimulus

program, government spending accounts for a bigger share of

the nation's economy--26 percent--than at any time since

World War II. The government is financing 9 out of 10 new

mortgages in the United States. If you buy a car from General

Motors, you are buying from a company that is 60 percent

owned by the government. If you take out a car loan or run up

your credit card, the chances are good that the government is

financing both your debt and that of your bank. And if you

buy life insurance from the American International Group, you

will be buying from a company that is almost 80 percent

federally owned. Mr. Obama plans to argue, [the Obama

administration says], that these government intrusions will

be temporary.

If that is true, then why is the Obama administration insisting and the Democrats in the Senate and the House are insisting that we take the Federal student loan program which works very well and turn it wholly into a government-run program; borrow a lot more money, maybe $500 billion or $600 billion over the next 5 or 6 years, and turn the Secretary of Education into a competitor for banker of the year instead of educator of the year?

Just the size of this undertaking is enough to stagger the imagination. There are 19 million new student loans every year. They are made through 2,000 lenders at 4,421 schools. At 1,600 schools, one out of four of the student loans, you can get the money directly from the Federal Government. But ever since I was U.S. Secretary of Education in the early 1990s, students have preferred their local institutions. Now the President comes along and says we are going to have a lot of savings, we are going to have $87 billion in savings over the next 10 years, so we should end the student loan program as we know it and turn it all over to the government and have people stand in line at the U.S. Department of Education each year to get 19 million loans.

The Senator from New Hampshire is the former chairman of the Budget Committee, the ranking member of the Budget Committee, perhaps the leading Senator in this body on budgetary matters. I would ask him this question: Is there really $87 billion in savings over the next 10 years which the President and the Democratic majorities should be able to spend?

If I may interrupt the Senator for a moment, you mean the Congressional Budget Office, whose Director is appointed by the Democratic majority, has said that instead of $87 billion in savings, it is $47 billion; is that correct?

This $47 billion, just so I follow this, is the actual savings. Let me see if I can understand the figures a little better. The government's basic argument here is it can borrow money cheaper than banks can borrow money and then re-lend it to students, which is true. I think the government can borrow money at one-quarter of 1 percent. But the government is lending the money to students at about 6.8 percent depending on the loan. So even if it is $87 billion or $47 billion over 10 years, doesn't that mean the government is overcharging students who are getting student loans and then using that money for new programs?

These 19 million loans every year, we know who these people are. They are our sons and daughters. They are people in our families. Sometimes they have two jobs while they try to go to school. Maybe they have no job; they have gotten laid off and they are going back to school. They can get a student loan. But the government has borrowed the money at one-quarter of 1 percent and loaned it to them at nearly 7 percent and is taking that profit, whatever the amount is, and spending it on something else.

I am not ready to say there is $47 billion of savings. That assumes the U.S. Department of Education, which makes about a fourth of the current student loans in the country--which is 3 million loans a year, and it spends about $700 million a year on that--can make 18 or 19 million student loans a year from the same amount of administrative costs. That doesn't sound likely to me. If that is true, then even the $47 billion is a wrong number.

That is a pretty big nightmare. The Senator and I both worked on ways of simplifying the Free Application for Federal Student Aid or FAFSA. There are millions of individuals and families this year in America who have to get this government form, fill it out, and tell all about themselves in order to get a Pell grant or apply for a student loan, one way or the other. That is very complicated. I have been trying to imagine how the U.S. Department of Education, one of the smallest departments in the country, which has

in its higher education part of its division simply a mechanism for sending money out--Pell grants, paying bills--how it is going to make 19 million new loans a year.

In my State of Tennessee, the nonprofit provider of student loans, one of the 2,000 lenders that exist in the country to serve students in New Hampshire or everywhere--these are some of the things they do. They have five regional outreach counselors to canvass Tennessee to provide college and career planning; they made 443 presentations through college fairs; they worked 12,000 students to improve their understanding of college admissions and financial aid; they provided training to over 1,000 school counselors so they could work with students; they sent out 1.5 million financial aid brochures for Tennessee students. I cannot imagine the Department of Education having the capacity to do that.

I think the Senator is right. I think we are going to see long lines of very upset students, starting in January--because that is when they start filling out those forms--saying: What has happened here? I have to line up at the U.S. Department of Education to get my student loan, 19 million of us?

I appreciate the comments of the Senator.

In President Obama's address to us on health care the other day, he said:

My guiding principle is and always has been, the consumers

do better when there is choice and competition. That is how

the market works.

I guess he means except when we are talking about student loans.

Twenty years ago, we set up a system to give people a choice, and, as you said, they voted with their feet. This past year, 14 million students made a choice to be under the regular student loan program. They are at 4,000 campuses, went to 2,000 lenders, they got a lot of extra services, I assume, or they could have come to the Department of Education, which about 4.5 million students chose to do. The Senator has made it clear that the excuse for doing--but, well, let me say this.

I guess the Senator has heard many times the President and people on the other side of the aisle say: Well, we inherited this problem. The reason we own General Motors, or 60 percent of it, is because we inherited it from President Bush. Or: The reason we are dealing with the American International Group Insurance Company is because we inherited that problem. Or: The reason we had to take over the banks is we inherited that problem.

Well, this is a completely voluntary Washington takeover, if I am not mistaken.

Well, I thank the Senator. I think what we have seen is getting to be too familiar around here, an action by the administration, another Washington takeover, more debt, to the tune of $500 billion or $600 billion, more debt. You said on the $87 billion or $47 billion spending of money we do not really have.

They are going to spend the $87 billion. As you have eloquently said: There is no $87 billion. That adds to the debt.

Then there is the problem of 19 million students lining up at the Department of Education to get their student loans starting in January. Perhaps we need a piece of truth-in-lending legislation that would go on every student loan application that says: Congratulations. Your government is making you a student loan. We borrowed it at one-quarter of 1 percent, and we are going to loan it to you at 6.8 percent, and we are going to spend twice that much on new programs that we thought of while we take over the entire student loan program.

Unless the Senator from New Hampshire has further comments, I yield the floor.

How much time is remaining?

Please let me know when 1 minute remains.

Mr. President, today President Obama told the countries of the world thatthe United States is ready to lead on climate change. But while he is reassuring world leaders, he has a lot of work to do with us in the Senate.

Only yesterday in The Wall Street Journal, John Bruton, the European Ambassador to the United States, chided the Senate, saying:

Is the US. Senate really expecting all the other countries

to make a serious effort on climate change at the Copenhagen

Conference in the absence of a clear commitment from the

United States? Asking an international Conference to sit

around looking out the window for months, while one chamber

of the legislature of one country deals with its

otherbusiness, is simply not a realistic political position.

Now I understand the Ambassador's frustration, but I hope he understands that the Senate has work to do other than deal with climate change and energy. Reforming health care involving one-sixth of our Nation's economy is not somethingthe Senate is going to do in a hurry.

On the matter of climate change, however, he is asking a legitimate question. An even better question might be this: ``How can the United States lecture other countries about climate change when we won't take advantage of the one technology that shows the most promise of dealing with it?'' I am talking, of course, about nuclear power, which produces 19 percent of all our electricity but 70 percent of our carbon-free electricity.

Coal-fired powerplants produce 36 percent of the carbon dioxide; the principal greenhouse gas that most scientists believe contributes to global warming. Of the top five countries that produce carbon, indeed that produce most of the carbon in the world, four, China, Russia, India and Japan, are committed to a bold program of expansion of nuclear power.

Only the United States is not. We are the country that invented nuclear power, and we have not started a new nuclear plant in 30 years even though the 104 reactors we built during the 1970s which produce 19 percent of all our electricity, and produce 70 percent of our carbon- free electricity.

So, if climate change is the inconvenient problem, as my fellow Tennessean Al Gore says, the other large carbon-emitting nations are posing a legitimate and truly inconvenient question: If we, they may say, are building dozens of carbon-free nuclear powerplants in an effort to deal with climate change, why are you lecturing us when you have not started a new plant in 30 years and yourPresident and everyone in his administration seems to become tongue-tied or get a stomach ache whenever someone mentions the idea of nuclear power.

Everyone, that is, except the one member of the administration who knows the most about nuclear power, Dr.Steven Chu, the Nobel Prize winning scientist who heads the Energy Department. We have heard many say that the Bushadministration did a poor job of listening to scientists. Well, then, perhaps it is fair for me to suggest that the Obamaadministration, including the President, might do more listening to their chief scientist, Dr. Chu.

In testimony before Congress, Dr. Chu has flatly said that nuclear powerplants are safe.

He has said that the used nuclear fuel from those plants,the nuclear waste, can be safely stored on site for 40-60 years while scientists engage in a mini-Manhattan Project like the one we had in World War II to find the best possible way to recycleused nuclear fuel. Most likely that will mean that the waste's massis reduced by 97 percent and it will only be radioactive for 300 years instead of 1 million, or that it will be continuously used over and over again so there is none of the plutonium that might be used to make bombs.

In an interview on National Public Radio the other day, Dr.Chu said that he would rather live down the river from a nuclear plant than other forms of producing energy. ``There's less pollution we know about that's very dangerous. The nuclear power plants' record in the United States is really very, very good,'' he said.

Our whole fleet of 104 reactors is up and running 90 percent of the time, which shows we know how to operate nuclear powerplants better and more safely than any other country. Even France does not run its reactors as well and they have got plenty of experience, they get 80 percent of their electricity from nuclear power.

But if we have learned to run reactors in this country, we stillcannot bring ourselves to build any new ones. We have been stuck at about 100 reactors for 20 years now. We built those 100 reactors from 1970 to 1990 at a time when we had never built any before yet now that we have got all that under our belt we cannot seem to get started on the new generation.

But while we have not been able to start a new plant in 30 years, the rest of the world is taking the technology we invented and using it to create cheap, reliable, carbon-free electricity from nuclear plants. There are 44 reactors under construction right this minute, most of them in Asia. Asia? Yes, without most Americans realizing it, the center of gravity of nuclear innovation has moved to the Far East. China has four reactors under construction and has announced plans for 130 more. Russia intends to build two reactors a year in order to replace the 30 percent of their electricity they get from natural gas so they can sell the gas to Europe at six times the price they get at home. Japan already gets 36 percent of its electricity from nuclear, almost twice what we get, and is building two more reactors. South Korea gets nearly 40 percent of its electricity from nuclear and is planning eight more reactors by 2015. They have even got their own design now, a 1400-megawatt next generation reactor that evolved out of something they borrowed from us. India is developing thorium reactors instead of uranium and has a design for a mini-reactor that they are going to market to developed countries.

Just look down the list of the ten top carbon-emitting countries as listed in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. I have already mentioned that of the top five, China, the U.S., Russia, India and Japan, we are the only one that does not have an active nuclear construction program. Of the next four, Germany, Canada, the U.K., and South Korea, only Germany claims they do not want nuclear, but they are buying significant amounts of nuclear electricity from France.

Then there is the number 10 carbon emitter, Iran. Now that is an interesting case. A few months ago, President Obama said it was OK for Iran to develop a civilian nuclear power program, he did not have any problem with that. But if it is alright for Iran to have a nuclear power program, why cannot we do the same thing over here?

Leading on climate change does not require passing a complicated cap- and-trade regime with renewable energy mandates that will impose a huge new tax on energy, stifle economic growth, and leave us with intermittent and unreliable alternative energy sources such as wind and solar. That is the wrong direction.

It is time to lead by example and not just words. It is time to embrace the one technology that truly has the possibility of powering a prosperous planet without ruining the environment or covering our treasured landscapes with energy sprawl. It is time to build 100 new nuclear plants in the next 20 years.

And the bonus is we will get plenty of so-called green jobs out of it, twice as many as building the 186,000 wind turbines that it would take to create an amount of electricity equal to 100 new nuclear plants. Building 100 new reactors is going to mean rebuilding a forgotten American infrastructure. We are going to have to build steel forges that can turn out these 600-ton reactor vessels, which is something we cannot do in this country right now. The Japanese and the Chinese and the Russians are all working on it, but we are not. We are going to need scientists, we are going to need construction workers, and we are going to need a whole new generation of nuclear engineers and technicians to replace the last generation that is getting ready to retire.

I ask unanimous consent for 1 additional minute.

Madam President, I congratulate the Senator from California for her leadership. We Americans are united by our founding documents and our language and our history, not by our race or ethnicity or where we come from, so therefore we are very hungry for stories about ourselves. The great writers of American history, such as David McCullough, whose books are sold out immediately, would wish we had the same sort of documentation the Senator from California has proposed here about the writing of the Constitution or the American Revolution or the Civil War or the great world wars. Ken Burns would like to have more of it for his upcoming series on the national parks. This will mean we will have more of it for the great civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s. Alex Haley, the author of ``Roots,'' said an older person dying is like a library burning down. This will help to make sure we keep those libraries.

Mr. President, before the Republican leader leaves, I congratulate him for his statement. Over the years, he has been a consistent defender of first amendment rights, even for a great many Americans with whom he disagreed. Senator Byrd, who is the constitutional conscience of the Senate, often encourages Senators to carry with us a little pocket version of the Constitution.

I am reading the first amendment to the Constitution, which the Senator from Kentucky spent a great deal of his career defending:

Congress shall make no law--

No law--

respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the

free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or

of the press, or of the right of people peaceably to

assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of

grievances.

I ask the Senator through the Chair whether, as he understands the first amendment to the Constitution, it would be clearly unconstitutional for us to pass a law that would tell a major health care company that if they objected to a piece of legislation by informing their customers of its consequences that there would be some penalty?

Mr. President, as I understand it from reading it in the newspapers some of the big drug companies are lined up with the Obama administration with the Democratic health care bill. I wonder what the Republican leader would think if some Republican Senator called one of the big drug companies and said: You are going to suffer serious consequences or even went to one of the agencies of government and caused them to tell a big drug company that because of their speeches and remarks, they were going to suffer some consequences.

I assume, Mr. President, that the big drug companies that are running ads against Republican Senators for questioning the health care reform bill, they have a right to do that. I know what is happening in Memphis is people are seeing the ads and calling me and telling me: Continue to oppose what is going on. But that is part of our system.

I congratulate the Republican leader for bringing to the attention of all his colleagues this action.

Mr. President, I want to congratulate the Senator from Wyoming on his vigilance. There is no Senator--certainly on this side of the aisle, and I suspect not in this Chamber--who gets up earlier, works harder, or keeps in closer touch with what is going on in Wyoming and in this country than Senator Barrasso, and he is exactly right on this issue.

The chairman, Mrs. Feinstein, the Senator from California, has made fighting wildfires a major part of her effort this year. She and the administration have included within this appropriations bill the firefighting money that usually is set aside for emergency appropriations. So that money needs to be spent correctly, as it should be. I think Senator Barrasso and the other Senators who cosponsored it are exactly right, and I agree with the chairman of the subcommittee that it is a good amendment.

Mr. President, I wish to congratulate the Senator from Maine for her leadership on this issue. She has shown great respect for the President's authority under the Constitution. We all respect that. He has the right to appoint his own advisers, period, and to take their advice and, as

a result, assert some executive privilege. And we don't inquire into that. He is entitled to that.

But under the Constitution, article II, section 2, states that the Cabinet officers and other appointments of significant policy positions should be appointed by the advice and consent of the Senate.

It is true a number of Republican Senators have raised a question about the 18 new czars appointed by President Obama who are not confirmed by the Senate, all of whom are new. They didn't exist before. This large number of new senior positions is of great concern.

Senator Collins, in her letter of September 14 to the President-- written with great respect, signed by Senator Bond, Senator Crapo, Senator Roberts, Senator Bennett, and myself--basically made the argument she just made. She acknowledged the President's authority under article II to appoint his advisers and to be the leader of the country. But in terms of these specific responsibilities, the letter asks for information about the responsibilities of these 18 new czars; of how they were picked and how they were examined and whether they would be willing to testify before us.

In her remarks, Senator Collins pointed out if we have a Health Secretary and a health czar, who is in charge? If we have an Energy Secretary and an energy czar, who is in charge? Those are the big issues before us. Health care is nearly 20 percent of the economy. We have town meetings all over the country about it. Right after that comes energy and climate change, and those are going to be a massive issues for our country. So it is important for us to know who is in charge so they can testify before the Congress and so we can effect their appropriations if we should choose to do so.

The main point I want to underscore is the fact that this is not just a concern on the Republican side of the aisle. The senior Senator in the Senate, and the senior Democrat--the President pro tempore--is Robert C. Byrd. Sometimes we call him the constitutional conscience of the Senate. Senator Byrd was the first Member of this body to raise questions about the czars. I am sure he would have done it if there had been a Republican President--he probably has many times before--but he also did it even though there is now a Democratic President.

I think it is important to reflect upon what he said in his February 23 letter to President Obama. Senator Byrd said:

As presidential assistants and advisers, these White House

staffers are not accountable for their actions to the

Congress, to cabinet officials, and to virtually anyone but

the President. They rarely testify before congressional

committees, and often shield the information and decision-

making process behind the assertion of executive privilege.

In too many instances, White House staff have been allowed to

inhibit openness and transparency, and reduce accountability.

In speaking about the lines of authority between these new White House positions--these czars--and their executive branch counterparts, the Secretaries, Senator Byrd said this to the President:

Too often, I have seen these lines of authority and

responsibility become tangled and blurred, sometimes

purposely, to shield information and to obscure the decision-

making process.

Senator Byrd went on to say:

As you develop your White House organization, I hope you

will favorably consider the following: that assertions of

executive privilege will be made only by the President, or

with the President's specific approval; that senior White

House personnel will be limited from exercising authority

over any person, any program, and any funding within the

statutory responsibility of a Senate-confirmed department or

agency head; that the President will be responsible for

resolving any disagreement between a Senate-confirmed agency

or department head and the White House staff; and that the

lines of authority and responsibility in the administration

will be transparent and open to the American public.

Not only Senator Byrd, but Senator Lieberman, who is the chairman of the committee on which Senator Collins is the ranking Republican, has expressed his willingness to hold hearings on this issue. Senator Feingold of Wisconsin, a Democratic chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, has written to the President expressing his concern. Senator Feingold says:

The Constitution gives the Senate the duty to oversee the

appointment of Executive officers through the Appointments

Clause in Article II, section 2. The Appointments Clause

states that the President: ``shall nominate and by and with

the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint

ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of

the Supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United

States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided

for, and which shall be established by law.

Senator Feingold goes on to say:

This clause is an important part of the constitutional

scheme of separation of powers, empowering the Senate to

weigh in on the appropriateness of significant appointments

and assisting in its oversight of the Executive branch.

Senator Feingold and Senator Byrd and Senator Collins, and several of us who signed Senator Collins' letter, and Senator Vitter of Louisiana--we all respect the President's authority to be the President and to appoint his Cabinet members and other executive branch officers. But we expect that those officers, the people who are actually setting the policy and running the departments, should be accountable to those of us in the Senate because the Constitution says so.

As a practical matter, we all know in Washington most people in the executive branch measure their power by the number of inches they are from the President of the United States. In the White House, most of the scurrying around at the beginning of an administration is to see who can get the office closest to the Oval Office. So it is always an issue about the amount of power that begins to accumulate in the White House. When it begins to take away accountability and authority and responsibility and create confusion about whether the Cabinet Secretaries have the authority, that is the time that we begin to cross the constitutional line.

That is what Senator Byrd talked about in February, what Senator Feingold talked about last week, and what Senator Collins is talking about today. I congratulate her on her amendment. I think it is constructive. I think it is respectful to the President. It acknowledges his role in the Constitution, but it reiterates the importance of the role of the Senate in accountability and in transparency. I look forward to supporting her amendment.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, that would be the Reid amendment as modified?

No objection.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

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

Mr. President, we are back on the fiscal year 2010 Interior appropriations bill, which we started on Thursday of last week. Chairman Feinstein will be joining us shortly, but she asked me to say there is no reason why Members cannot come to the floor now and offer their amendments for the purposes of debate.

We have a busy schedule ahead of us and want to try to complete action on this bill and the remaining appropriations bills for fiscal year 2010, so I ask my colleagues to please come and offer your amendments and work with our respective staffs so we can get as much done today as possible.

Mr. President, I see no other Senator on the floor, so I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

But what I plan to do is, if a Senator comes with an amendment for the appropriations bill, I will yield to that Senator, and then after that I will resume my remarks if I am not finished.

Nuclear Power

Mr. President, if health care were not our first concern today, energy and climate change would be. It is lurking in the shadows, having had a lot of work done in the House, and it is about to come before the Senate. So as to the remarks I wish to make today, if I had to put a title on them, I would choose this: What the United States should really fear about nuclear power.

Communications experts say fear is the best way to get attention when you are trying to win an argument. Groups who oppose nuclear power have certainly mastered that technique by playing to economic, environmental, and safety fears.

So I wish to introduce a little element of fear into my argument here. I want to suggest what could happen if we do not adopt nuclear power as a more important part of our energy future, if Russia and China and India and a lot of other countries go with nuclear--as they are now--while we get left behind. Are we going to be able to compete with countries that have cheap, clean, reliable nuclear power while we are stuck with a bunch of windmills and solar farms, producing expensive, unreliable energy or, more likely, not much energy at all? The whole prospect of the United States ignoring this problem-solving technology that we invented is what I fear most about nuclear power.

Let me give you an idea of what I am talking about. A few years ago, in January 2006, the Chinese sent a delegation of nuclear scientists and administrators to the United States on a fact-finding mission. They toured the Idaho National Laboratory, the Argonne National Laboratory, and they visited GE and Westinghouse, trying to decide which technology to choose for their nuclear program.

Now you might wonder why anyone would be seeking our advice about nuclear power when we haven't issued a construction permit to build a new reactor in the past 30 years. But as Kathryn McCarthy, deputy director of the Idaho National Laboratory, said at the time:

The world still looks to us for leadership in this

technology. They'd prefer to copy what we've already done.

They don't like being on the cutting edge.

Well, that may have been true in 2006, but it's not anymore. The Chinese eventually chose Westinghouse technology for their first reactors. At the time, Westinghouse was an American company. In 2007, Toshiba bought Westinghouse, so now it is a Japanese-based company. Then when the Chinese got their Westinghouse reactor, they insisted on having all the specifications so they could see how it was put together. That is what we call ``reverse engineering.'' As you might guess, China's next wave of reactors is going to be built with Chinese technology.

By 2008, the Chinese had shovels in the ground. The first four Westinghouse reactors are scheduled for completion by 2011. They also bought a pair of Russian reactors, which should be finished around the same time. They started talking about building 60 reactors over the next 20 years and just recently raised it to 132. They're in the nuclear business.

What have we accomplished in the meantime? Well, people in the United States have been talking about a ``nuclear renaissance'' in this country since the turn of the century. In 2007, NRG, a New Jersey company, filed the first application to build a new reactor in 30 years. They're still at the beginning of what promises to be at least a 5-year licensing process before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. No one really knows how long this will take, since as soon as the licenses are issued, opponents will file lawsuits and the whole thing will move to the courts. If they are lucky, they might have a reactor up and running by 2020. Other companies have followed suit, and there are now 34 proposals before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but nobody in the United States has yet broken ground. So it is not likely the Chinese will be coming to us any time soon for more tips on how to build reactors. In fact, we will probably be going to them.

That is one aspect of what is going on in the world today. Here is another. As countries began constructing new reactors, it quickly became clear that the bottleneck would be in forging the steel reactor vessels. These are the huge, three-story-high, forged steel units that hold the fuel assembly--the reactor core. That means forging steel parts that may weigh as much as 500 tons.

In 2007, the only place you could order a reactor vessel was at the Japan Steel Works, and they were backed up for 4 years. Everyone started saying: This is going to be what holds up the world's nuclear renaissance. They will never be able to produce enough of those pressure vessels.

So what happened? Well, first, Japan Steel Works invested $800 million to triple its capacity. They are going to be turning out 12 pressure vessels a year by 2012. Then the Chinese decided to build their own forge. In less than 2 years, they put up a furnace that can handle 320-ton parts. They turned out their first components in June. Now they are building two more forges. So, you see, the Chinese will not be standing in line in Japan any time soon. The Russians are doing the same thing. They are in the midst of a big revival, planning to double the production of electricity from nuclear power by 2020. They are also building a forge and just cast their first 600-ton ingot in June. France, Britain, South Korea, and India are all following suit. Very soon, every major nuclear country in the world is going to be able to forge its own reactor vessels, except one--and that is us, the United States.

No steel company in America is capable of forging ingots of more than 270 tons. We are still stuck in the 1960s. That means when it comes to building reactors, we will have to stand in line in Japan or somewhere else. In fact, just about everything in our first new reactors is going to be imported. The nuclear industry tells us that at least 70 percent of the materials and equipment that go into these first few reactors will come from abroad. That is because we have let our nuclear supply industry wither on the vine. In 1990, there were 150 domestic suppliers making parts for nuclear reactors. Today, there are only 40, and most of them do their business overseas. Of the 34 proposals before our Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 20 are designed by Westinghouse, now a Japanese company, and nine are from AREVA, the French giant. General Electric, the only American company left on the field, has partnered with Hitachi. They together sold five reactors to American utilities but fared poorly in the competition for Federal loan guarantees. Two utilities have now canceled those projects, and there are rumors that GE may quit the field entirely. They do not seem very enthusiastic anymore about nuclear anyway. Have you seen those GE ads for windmills? They are all over the place. Have you seen their ad for the smart grid, where a little girl says: ``The sun is still shining in Arizona''? That was pretty good too. Now have you seen any GE ads, in this day of concern about climate change, that say that 70 percent of our carbon- free electricity comes from nuclear power? I certainly haven't.

Babcock & Wilcox is the one American company that stirred some interest recently when it announced plans for a new ``mini reactor.'' This is a 125-megawatt unit that can be manufactured at the factory and shipped by rail to the site, where several units can be fit together like Lego blocks. This left the impression that America might be innovating again, forging back into the lead. But the complete prototype for the Babcock & Wilcox reactor is still 2 years away, and then it may take another 5 years to get the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's design approval. Meanwhile, the Russians are already building a mini reactor that will be floated into a Siberian village on a barge to produce power. The Russians have already got orders for mini reactors from 12 countries. So in spite of Babcock & Wilcox's fine effort--and I am certainly proud of them--the Russians are considerably ahead of us.

Let's take stock. There are 40 reactors now under construction in 11 countries around the word--not one of them in the United States of America. In fact, only two are in Western Europe: one in Finland and the other in France, both built by AREVA. All the rest are in Asia. Although we have not gotten used to it, Asia may soon be leading the world in nuclear technology.

Japan has 55 reactors and gets 35 percent of its electricity from nuclear energy, almost double the 19 percent we get here in the United States. The Japanese have two reactors under construction and plans for 10 more by 2018. The Japanese are finding they can build a reactor, start to finish, in less than 4 years. That is less time than it takes to get one American reactor through licensing at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

South Korea gets nearly 40 percent of its electricity from nuclear-- that is twice as much as we do--and is planning another 8 reactors by 2015. So far, they have bought their reactors from the Japanese, but now they have their own Korean next-generation reactor--a 1,400- megawatt giant evolved from an American design. They plan to bring two of these on line by 2016. Taiwan also gets 18 percent of its electricity from nuclear and is building two new reactors.

In September, Bloomberg News reported that Japan Steel Works' stock had risen 8 percent on the Tokyo Stock Exchange because of China's decision to double future construction from 60 to 132 new reactors. They figure they will get some of the action at Japan Steel Works. Much of China's $586 billion stimulus package is going toward developing nuclear power. ``While China had been focusing on building new coal plants,'' said Bloomberg, ``it has now shifted its focus to nuclear because of the environmental issue,'' said Ikuo Sato, president of Japan Steel Works, in Bloomberg.

Meanwhile, India is embracing thorium, a technology a lot of people think may eventually replace uranium as nuclear fuel. Thorium is twice as abundant as uranium and doesn't produce the plutonium everybody worries will be used to make a bomb. There is a lot of enthusiasm for thorium among scientists in our country. But it is India that is going ahead, with 6 reactors under construction and 10 more planned. They began with a Russian design, but they are also trying some American technology they acquired in signing their 2005 agreement with the Bush administration.

What about Chernobyl. Well, just like everybody else, Russia stopped all construction on new nuclear reactors after that horrible accident. But they learned their lesson and started constructing much safer reactors in the 1990s, completing the first in 2001. Now they have plans to expand along the lines of France, building two reactors every year from now through 2030. They have a very good reason. Russia has huge natural gas supplies, but it is wasting them by using one-third of it to produce electricity. They could get six times the price by selling natural gas to Western Europe. So they are replacing gas generation with nuclear--which is exactly the opposite of what we are doing here. Since 1990, every major power plant built in this country burns natural gas. We now get 20 percent of our electricity from natural gas--more than nuclear's 19 percent, and the natural gas percent is still going up.

And be aware, all these countries that are developing nuclear just aren't building them for themselves. They are selling to the rest of the world as well. AREVA is building reactors in Finland, China, Italy, Brazil, and Abu Dhabi. The Russians have signed deals with China, Iran, India, Nigeria, and Venezuela. They are even selling to us. In July, Tenex, Russia's uranium corporation, signed a long-term contract to supply fuel to Constellation Energy, which has reactors in Maryland and upstate New York. It was the sixth contract Tenex signed with an American utility in the past 2 months.

How did the Russians end up supplying us with uranium? It is a long, interesting story and the most important players stood and worked on this Senate floor. In 1996, Senator Sam Nunn, Senator Pete Domenici, and Senator Richard Lugar pioneered a remarkable deal with the post- Soviet Government, in which we would buy highly enriched uranium from old Soviet bomb stocks. The uranium would be sent to France, where it would be ``blended down'' from 90 percent fissionable material to 3 percent to be used in American reactors. For the last two decades, old Soviet stockpiles have supplied half our nuclear fuel. One out of every ten light bulbs in America is now powered by a former Soviet weapon-- one of the greatest swords-into-plowshares efforts in history, although few people seem to know about it. Now the Russians have learned to do de-enrichment themselves. They have decided they don't need France. They say: Hey, we don't have to import this stuff anymore; we will produce it here.

Of course, producing things is one way countries get rich and its citizens improve their standard of living.

Once upon a time we were pioneers in nuclear technology. Forty years ago, we were the only people in the world who knew how to deal with the atom. That is not true anymore. We have shied away from the technology while everyone else has forged ahead. Even Europe is coming back. The British have announced they are going nuclear. They have hired the French national electric company to help. Italy closed all its nuclear reactors right after Chernobyl but ended up importing 80 percent of their electricity at a huge cost. Now they have announced they are going back to nuclear as well. France already gets 80 percent of its power from nuclear and has the cheapest electricity in Europe, not to mention the second lowest carbon emissions, behind Sweden, which is half nuclear. France also sells $80 billion worth of electricity to the rest of Europe each year. Notice how well France did in the last turndown--it barely went into recession at all. That is not because the French spend less on government or work harder than us or take fewer vacations. It is because nuclear power is helping to keep their whole economy afloat.

So does that mean we have fallen completely behind? Not at all. In fact, there is a great irony to all this. We still know how to run reactors better than anyone else in the world. Our fleet of 104 plants is up and running 90 percent of the time. No one else even comes close. France, for all its experience, is still at 80 percent. Other countries are even lower. We still understand the technology better than anyone else in the world. But because we have placed so many obstacles in our path, we aren't allowed to build reactors anymore. And that is what scares me. We are gradually losing our economic place in the world.

Now a lot of people say: Well, what is the difference? So what if we fall behind on nuclear technology. We will forge ahead with something else. Well, there are several reasons to be concerned:

First, there is energy security. America already spends $300 billion a year importing two-thirds of our oil from other countries. If we remain on the current path of no new nuclear power or start depending on other countries to build our reactors and supply us with fuel, we are going to be even more vulnerable than we are today. The best way to reduce imported oil, aside from ramping up domestic production, will be to use electricity to power cars and trucks. At first, we can plug our electric vehicles in at night when there is much unused electricity. After that, we should be using nuclear. We can't have Americans going to bed every night hoping the wind will blow so they can start their cars in the morning.

Second, there is the matter of technological leadership. Americans produce, year in and year out, 25 percent of all the wealth in the world. Most of that wealth has been driven by new technologies. We were the birthplace of the telephone, the electric light, the automobile, the assembly line, radio, television, and the computer. But nuclear energy--perhaps the greatest scientific advance of the 20th century--is passing us by. The 21st century is going to run on clean, cheap, greenhouse-gas-free nuclear power. And, how can we criticize India and China for not reducing their carbon emissions when we refuse to adopt the best technology ourselves?

Then there is weapons proliferation. In the 1970s, we gave up on nuclear reprocessing in the hope that by not dealing with plutonium, we would prevent nuclear weapons from spreading around the world. That has turned out to be an unwise decision. France, Britain, Russia, Canada, and Japan went right on reprocessing and no one has stolen plutonium from them. Instead, rogue countries, such as North Korea and Pakistan, have found their own ways to develop nuclear weapons. The technology of bomb making is no big secret anymore. The real problem is that by reneging on world leadership, we have left the field to others. For instance, right now the Russians are building a commercial reactor for Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. He is not exactly friendly toward the United States. To make things more interesting, Manhattan District Attorney Morganthau recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal that his office has recently uncovered evidence that Iran may be providing Venezuela with missile technology.

But what worries me are these two issues: First, if we do decide to move toward a nuclear-based economy and we have to import 70 percent of the technology and equipment, how are we any better off than when we were importing two-thirds of our oil? We will just be creating jobs for steelworkers in Japan and China instead of the United States. Second, if we don't move toward a nuclear-powered economy but try to do everything with conservation and wind and solar, we are going to be sending American jobs overseas looking for cheap energy.

So to ensure we have enough cheap, clean, reliable, no-carbon electricity in this country to create good, high-quality, high-tech jobs, here is what I believe we have to do. The United States should double its production of nuclear power by building 100 nuclear reactors in 20 years. Nuclear today provides 70 percent of our carbon-free electricity. Wind and solar provide 4 percent. Nuclear plants operate 90 percent of the time. Wind and solar operate about one-third of the time.

The Obama administration's Nobel Prize-winning Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, says nuclear plants are safe and that used nuclear fuel can be safely stored onsite for 40 to 60 years while we figure out the best way to recycle it. Producing 20 percent of electricity from wind, as the Obama administration proposes, will require building 186,000, 50- story turbines--enough to cover an area the size of West Virginia--plus 19,000 miles of new transmission lines to carry electricity from remote to populated areas. One hundred new nuclear plants could be built mostly on existing sites.

To produce 3 percent to 6 percent of our electricity, the taxpayers will be subsidizing wind to the tune of $29 billion over the next 10 years. The 104 nuclear reactors we have today were built basically without taxpayer subsidies. It will cost roughly the same to build 100 new nuclear plants, which will last 60 to 80 years, as it would to build 186,000 wind turbines, lasting 20 to 25 years. And this doesn't count the cost of transmission lines for wind. Finally, there will be twice as many green jobs created building 100 nuclear reactors as there would be created building 186,000 wind turbines.

An America stumbling along on expensive, unreliable renewable energy, trying to import most of our energy from overseas, is going to be an America with fewer jobs and a lower standard of living.

Nuclear opponents continue to prey on fear of nuclear power. The truth is, if we want safe, cost-effective, reliable, no-carbon electricity, we can no longer ignore the wisdom of the rest of the world. The real fear is that we Americans are going to wake up on one cloudy, windless day, when the light switch doesn't work, and discover we have forfeited our capacity to lead the world in creating jobs because we ignored nuclear power, a problem-solving technology we ourselves invented.

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

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

Mr. President, I want to repeat for our colleagues and their staffs that the Interior appropriations bill, one of the most interesting pieces of legislation before the Congress, is before the Senate right now. We know some of our colleagues have amendments to offer. We have already received some of them.

If any Senator would like to come to the floor to speak on those amendments this afternoon, there is time for him or her to do that. If they have not offered their amendments, I encourage them to do that because we would like to move the bill along.

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

Mr. President, I congratulate the Senator from California for thinking of this. The late Alex Haley, the author of ``Roots,'' used to say: When an older person dies, it is like a library burning down. And many who participated in it or many who even saw the major events of the civil rights movement are growing older and their stories need to be told. So this is an important amendment with bipartisan support. I am glad the Senator from California so thoughtfully offered it.

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

Madam President, how much time is remaining in morning business?

Thank you very much. Would the Chair please let me know when I have 1 minute remaining.

Monday on the Senate floor, I expressed my concern about the number of so-called czars in the White House and in the administration. I said then that the number of czars--I believe the number is now 32--is an affront to the Constitution. It is anti-democratic. It is a poor example of what was promised to be a new era of transparency. It is a poor way to manage the government. And it is the most visible symptom of this administration's 8-month record of too many Washington takeovers.

Yesterday, the White House blog and a White House press secretary objected to what I said on Monday, pointing out that I had supported manufacturing czars and AIDS czars 6 years ago. Of course I did; I acknowledged that in my remarks on Monday. As I said Monday, there have always been some czars in the White House and in the government since Franklin D. Roosevelt was President. Some of them were appointed by Presidents, some of them were created by statute, and a few of them were confirmed by the Senate. There's never been anything like we've seen with this administration.

Also on Monday, I joined in a letter from Senator Collins, Senator Bond, Senator Crapo, Senator Bennett, and Senator Roberts, making clear that not every czar is a problem. In that letter, we identified at least 18 czar positions created by the Obama administration whose reported responsibilities may be undermining the constitutional oversight responsibilities of Congress or express statutory assignments of responsibility to other executive branch officials.

In this letter from Senator Collins, in which the rest of us joined, we said: With regard to each of these positions, we ask that you explain: the specific authorities and responsibilities of the position, including any limitations you have placed on the position to ensure that it does not encroach on the legitimate statutory responsibilities of other executive branch officials.

Second, the process by which the administration examines the character and qualifications of the individuals appointed by the President to fill the position.

And, third, whether the individual occupying the position will agree to any reasonable request to appear before, or provide information to, Congress.

The letter goes on to say:

We also urge you to refrain from creating similar

additional positions or making appointments to any vacant

czar positions until you have fully consulted with the

appropriate Congressional committees.

Finally, we ask that you reconsider your approach of

centralizing authority at the White House. Congress has

grappled repeatedly with the question of how to organize the

Federal Government.

We went into some detail about that, and asked respectfully that the President consult carefully with Congress prior to establishing any additional czars.

I ask unanimous consent that this letter from six senators be included in the Record following my remarks.

Senator Collins and the five of us who joined in her letter were not the only Senators to be concerned about this issue. On Wednesday, Senator Feingold, the Democrat from Wisconsin, questioned President Obama's policy of policy czars and sent a letter to the President, just as we did. In that letter, Senator Feingold urged the President to release information about the role and responsibility of these czars, which is what we asked him to do in our letter as well.

Senator Hutchison of Texas, in the Washington Post on September 13, wrote an excellent op-ed describing how the system of checks and balances is upset by an excessive number of Washington czars who are unconfirmed and unaccountable to the Congress, and who do not answer questions from those of us who are elected to ask such questions.

I ask unanimous consent that Senator Feingold's letter to the President be printed in the Record following my remarks.

On Monday, I pointed out that not only Senator Hutchison and Senator Collins and the other Republican Senators have these concerns. Now Senator Feingold from the other side of the aisle has raised questions about these czars.

I mentioned this Monday, but I want to repeat it in case the White House press office missed it: Senator Byrd, our President Pro Tempore, widely considered by all of us in the Senate to be the constitutional conscience of this Senate, was the first to write the president expressing concerns over the increasing appointment of White House czars.

In his letter he said:

Too often I have seen these lines of authority and

responsibility become tangled and blurred, sometimes

purposely, to shield information and to obscure the decision-

making process.

Senator Byrd went on to say that:

The rapid and easy accumulation of power by White House

staff can threaten the constitutional system of checks and

balances. At the worst, White House staff have taken

direction and control of problematic areas that are the

statutory responsibility of Senate-confirmed officials.

Senator Byrd continues:

As Presidential assistants and advisers, these White House

staffers are not accountable for their actions to Congress,

to cabinet officials, and to virtually anyone but the

President. They rarely testify before Congressional

committees, and often shield the information and decision-

making process behind the assertion of executive privilege.

In too many instances, White House staff have been allowed to inhibit openness and transparency, and reduce accountability.

Finally, I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record following my remarks a list of 18 new czars created by the Obama administration.

I want to make it clear to the White House Press Office that we are focused on those 18 new czars. We recognize there have been czars before, that for the reasons Senator Byrd, Senator Hutchison, Senator Collins, and others have described. We believe this is too many, and we take seriously our responsibilities under Article II of the Constitution to confirm officials who manage the government, to ask them questions, to approve their appropriations, and to withhold their appropriations when it's appropriate.

We have these positions in the Executive Office of the President; there are 10 of them: central region czar, Dennis Ross; cyber-security czar, domestic violence czar, economic czar, energy and environment czar, and health czar. Those are some of the biggest issues facing Congress, and here are these czars with authority for policy close to the President but unaccountable to us. We have a senior director for information sharing policy, urban affairs czar, WMD policy czar, a green job czar, who resigned recently. Those are the positions in the Executive Office of the President, 10 new ones. Then there are eight more that are in departments or agencies, including: Afghanistan czar, auto recovery czar, car czar, Great Lakes czar, pay czar, Guantanamo closure czar, international climate czar, and the border czar.

I described on Monday, as Senator Byrd has said more eloquently, the problems with too many czars. The first problem is the constitutional

checks and balances described by Senator Byrd. The second problem is that this is a poor way to manage the government. When I was a young White House aide, I was taught that the job of the White House staff is to push the merely important issues out of the White House so you can reserve to the President the handful of truly Presidential issues for his attention. His job is to set the country's agenda, to see an urgent need and devise a strategy, meet the need and persuade at least half the people he is right. He can do that more effectively if the government is managed by Secretaries and Cabinet officers.

Finally, czars are anti-democratic. Czars are usually Russian, not American. Czars are usually imperialists, not Democrats. The dictionary says czars are autocratic rulers or leaders. That is not consistent with the kind of government we want. It is alien to our way of thinking.

Czars are becoming the most visible symbol of this administration's determination to have an increasing number of Washington takeovers: banks, insurance companies, student loans, car companies, even farm ponds. Some want to take over health care. Many Americans believe we have a runaway government with too many Washington takeovers, and the last thing we need are 18 new czars unaccountable to elected officials whose job it is to check and balance that government.

I am glad in a way that the White House has noticed my comments and those of Senators Collins, Bennett, Hutchison, and others. I hope they will respond to Senator Collins' letter, to Senator Feingold's request, and to other admonitions. We call on the administration to answer questions posed by these Senators: Who are these czars? What is their role? What is their responsibility? How were they vetted? What limitations are on their positions to make sure they don't encroach on legitimate statutory responsibilities of other executive branch officials, and will they agree to a reasonable request to appear before Congress?

I yield the floor.

Exhibit 1

U.S. Senate, Committee on Homeland Security and

Governmental Affairs,

Washington, DC, September 14, 2009.

Hon. Barack Obama,

President of the United States, The White House, Washington,

Madam President, I thank the Senator from California.

It is a joy for me to work on this legislation because, first, I care so much about it, as she does--this is about the great American outdoors, which is an essential part of our American character--and because of the privilege of working with Senator Feinstein. She has the great advantage of having been a mayor of a big city and she is capable of making a decision and she is results oriented, so we are able to work easily together. It is the way I liked to work when I was Governor. She is broad-gauged and cares about this country and about its environment and its outdoors and about not only protecting and conserving the outdoors but making it possible for Americans--300 million of us--and the people who visit us to enjoy that great American outdoors.

It is always a privilege to be in the Senate, but it is a special privilege to work on the outdoors--the great American outdoors--with Senator Feinstein from California.

Last week, we celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I am not objective at all about the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I grew up there, went hiking there, and I live 2 miles from its border. One reason I care about the trails so much is because I have hiked them. One reason I care about the quality of the air so much is because I breathe it. One reason I care about having enough rangers and making sure their salaries are paid is because I know them. So that helps in my objective.

But there was also a reminder. It was a beautiful day up on Newfound Gap, right on the border of North Carolina and Tennessee. Our mountains in the East are not as big as the mountains in the West. They are older, more mature. But the largest of the mountains in the Eastern United States are along the North Carolina and Tennessee border, 71 miles along the Appalachian Trail, in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

So there we were, at about 5,500 feet, at the place where President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, on the same day in 1940, a few years after the park was formed, dedicated the Great Smokies. But among other things on that beautiful day--and the Secretary of the Interior was there, Ken Salazar. It is good for our Western Secretary to get a good look at the Eastern park. Dolly Parton was there. She grew up in the next county, so she is our special ambassador for the Great Smokies, and there were all the Members of the Congress who were there from the area.

But when we look back 75 years, what did we see? It was 1934. So here we were, in the middle of the greatest depression in our country's history, and what were we doing? Well, in Tennessee, we had the State legislature appropriating $2 million to buy land from families and from lumber companies to create a park. In North Carolina, they did the same thing. That only made $4 million. Madam President, $10 million was needed. So they collected another million dollars from the people of the area.

Schoolchildren put pennies in jars. It is a wonderful story of how they got up to $5 million. Then one of the early leaders of the group organizing the Great Smoky Mountains National Park convinced John D. Rockefeller, Jr.,--who, I guess, is the grandfather of our Senator Rockefeller--to come; and the Rockefellers gave $5 million in honor of Laura Spelman Rockefeller, to match the $5 million the two States and all the people had contributed.

That $10 million bought the park and gave it to the country. This was not like almost every other park. It was

not just carved out of land the people already owned. It was given to the country in the midst of the Great Depression.

The reason I bring up that today is because it is a reminder that even in difficult times we kept our priorities right. India has its Taj Mahal. Rome has its art. England has its history. But we have the great American outdoors. If, as Ken Burns has said, our national parks are America's best idea, we in Tennessee and North Carolina think that must mean the Great Smoky Mountains are the very best idea because so many more people visit it than visit any other park in America.

But what those people did--whether it was the schoolchildren with the pennies, the Governors of the States, the legislators, the people in Asheville, NC, and Knoxville, TN, the civic leaders, whether it was the Rockefeller family--what they did also shows us the foresight of thinking ahead for the benefit of future generations.

In 1934, the assistant chief ranger of this big, new park wrote a memo to the superintendent outlining the wildlife he found there. There were 100 black bears in 1934. There are 1,600 today. There were 315 wild turkeys in 1934. The other day I saw 21 outside my window 2 miles from the park.

Seventy-five years ago in the Park, there were 12 whitetail deer in Tennessee and only 6 in North Carolina. They are all over the place today. There were no peregrine falcons, no river otters, no elk. They are there today. Twenty-five years ago, when as Governor of Tennessee I spoke at the 50th anniversary of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, there was no Federal law controlling acid rain, there was no organization called Friends of the Smokies, but both are great successes today. Those Federal laws were passed and Friends of the Smokies has contributed $30 million. So that celebration two weeks ago reminded us of the foresight 75 years ago. Those examples are everywhere in our culture today.

I am reading Douglas Brinkley's book about Teddy Roosevelt called ``The Wilderness Warrior.'' It is so thick, it will break your back if you carry it around, but it is a wonderful story of how our President, Teddy Roosevelt, during his relatively short term in office, had the foresight to make sure we have many of the wildlife refuges, the national parks, the national forests, and the others we enjoy today. This bill Senator Feinstein so ably described is the responsibility we have as stewards of that great tradition today, to look ahead to the future about preserving and protecting the great American outdoors; looking to the future as Teddy Roosevelt did, as the schoolchildren did in Tennessee, as John Muir did when Yosemite was created, as Lady Bird Johnson did half a century ago. As we look ahead, we should remember that we are custodians of that tradition.

What should we hope for as we work on this bill and we plan ahead? My hope of the future is that we finish cleaning up the air, so in the Great Smokies, we can celebrate the gray haze about which the Cherokee sang instead of seeing smog. I hope we do more to use our nearly 400 national park properties to teach about what it means to be an American so our children and our immigrants can know that story. I hope we can become better students of the remarkable environmental diversity of our country. Just within our Great Smoky Mountains National Park, we have 128 species of trees, as many as they have in all of Europe. I hope we do a better job of creating picturesque entrances and conservation easements to protect the wildlife and the stunning viewscapes that are not only in our parks but near our parks.

I am going to do my best--and Senator Feinstein and I have talked about our concern about this, and I have shared that concern with Secretary Salazar on many occasions, including last week when he visited Tennessee--I am going to make sure we pay attention to the perils of what some conservationists are calling energy sprawl, so that in our enthusiasm for renewable energy and alternative energy, which we need, we don't place 50-story wind turbines and acres of square miles of solar thermal plants in areas that damage the treasured landscapes we have spent a century trying to protect. It doesn't make sense to destroy the environment in the name of saving the environment.

I hope we can build on the legislation, too, that Congress enacted in 2007 when we expanded exploration for natural gas and oil in the Gulf of Mexico and for the first time created what I like to call a conservation royalty that contributes one-eighth of the revenues that are collected from that drilling. One-eighth of those revenues go to the Land and Water Conservation Fund. In this case, it goes to the State side portion, which is used by communities for local parks and local greenways. Suffice it to say, the most popular parks in America are not the Great Smokies and Yosemite; the most popular parks are the city parks and the community parks and the suburban parks, the parks down the street. The Land and Water Conservation Fund is the source of funding for many of those parks and much of that open space.

In the 1960s, Congress, as a result of a report by the first Commission on American Outdoors that was chaired by Lawrence Rockefeller, recommended that we take some of the money we receive from offshore drilling and exploration and use it for the Land and Water Conservation Fund. We had never really done that, but it makes good sense. It is good stewardship. Where there is an environmental burden, which we sometimes have to authorize, we should pay for it with an environmental benefit. That is the trade between offshore exploration and money for land and water conservation funding to create city parks.

One other thing. I hope we find additional ways, through increased private contributions as well as the kinds of Federal appropriations we talk about today, to support and care for the nearly 400 different national parks properties we have, as well as our other public lands and treasured landscapes and national forests and along our coastlines and our ridgelines in this country.

The Senator from California gave a very thorough statement of the various programs in our bill. I won't repeat all of those numbers, but I do have a handful of observations I wish to make. Obviously, we don't agree on every detail. But we are not here to agree on every detail, we are here to see whether we can produce a result. I believe we have done that. In the process, I thank Senator Feinstein for addressing a number of the concerns I and many of our colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle have. She has been terrific to work with in that respect.

As she said, this bill is $225 million below the President's budget request, even though it is substantially higher than last year's funding levels. I suppose if I were doing this all by myself, I would have spent less money, but that is not the way our system works. We each make our arguments, fight our spending battles, decide on a budget resolution, and we go from there. So I believe Chairman Inouye and the vice chairman, Thad Cochran, have allocated the funds made available to the Appropriations Committee by the Senate in a fair and responsible way.

Similarly, with the funds we have had to work with on the Interior bill, Chairman Feinstein and I have made our best judgment and done our best to meet the many competing priorities for the varied programs here. She mentioned some of the good things in the bill, and I wish to underscore just a few.

We have continued the Centennial Initiative started under President Bush by adding over $130 million to increase park operations in preparation for the national park centennial in 2016. This is a good time to think about the condition of our national parks. Many of us visit them, so we are familiar with their maintenance needs and their personnel needs.

Some are reading the book I mentioned about Teddy Roosevelt, and millions more, starting September 27, will see Ken Burns' film about the national parks called ``The National Parks: America's Best Idea.'' I am confident the film will remind us of how important those parks are to our national character and how determined we are to make sure that over the next several years, as we approach the centennial, we support them properly. That includes the law enforcement rangers who ensure the safety of the public in our parks, the interpreters who explain

its history and America's history, and the biologists and scientists who teach us about the plants and animals that live there. This bill helps to expand and improve that experience.

We have also provided necessary increases to pay for the rangers who keep visitors to all of our national forests, wildlife refuges, and other public lands safe; health care professionals who provide medical care; the Indian Health Service teachers who provide education in the Indian community--Senator Feinstein described that. Simply keeping pace with the inflationary pay costs and health benefits for park and forest rangers, Indian health care professionals, and other critical personnel required a $540 million increase in funding over the last year.

Senator Feinstein talked about fires. It seems as though when we read about fires or see them on television they are all in California, and our hearts go out to the families who have lost their homes and, a few, their lives as a result of these fires.

But the fires are not all in California. The national Forest Service is busy spending too much of its time on fire protection. It has an effective fire protection unit that is part of its job, but what we have been doing is paying for firefighting the way we used to pay for the Iraq war. We did it off budget. We did it a little later. I congratulate the administration and Senator Feinstein for putting into this budget the amount of money we think we will actually need to fight fires this year. We have added over $570 million compared to last year for firefighting and fire prevention programs. I hope that is enough. I hope we have made a budget that allows us to deal with that so we don't find ourselves coming back with supplementary appropriations and so we don't disrupt all of the other important programs in the Forest Service and in the Department of the Interior. As important as the firefighting function is to the U.S. Forest Service, we don't want to turn the U.S. Forest Service into the U.S. fire service.

Let me make one comment about our process. One of the major criticisms of the appropriations process in recent years has been the failure of the Senate to take up each bill individually. This denies the Members of this body an opportunity to offer amendments and help shape the final bill.

It is important to note that this is the first time in 4 years that the Interior bill has been brought to the floor of the Senate as a stand-alone measure for purposes of examination and amendment by all Senators. This is a tribute to Chairman Inouye and Vice Chairman Cochran, and I thank Senator Reid and Senator McConnell for the fact that we are here today and Senators should now come forward to offer their amendments.

This is the sixth appropriations bill to complete Senate floor action. We are nearly halfway through the process. I believe all of my colleagues share my desire that we are able to complete all 12 individual appropriations bills through the normal order and send them to the President for his signature. It is a much fairer way to operate. It gives those of us who are elected a chance to have our say, and it saves the taxpayer a lot of money by permitting the efficient operation of the government on an orderly, budgeted basis.

Let me close by saying again how much I have enjoyed working with Senator Feinstein and how much I look forward to that privilege in the future.

I thank the President, and I yield the floor.

I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

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

Madam President, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar recently announced plans to cover 1,000 square miles of land in Nevada, Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah with solar collectors to generate electricity. He is also talking about generating 20 percent of our electricity from wind. This would require building about 186,000 50-story wind turbines that would cover an area the size of West Virginia, not to mention 19,000 new miles of high-voltage transmission lines.

Is the Federal Government showing any concern about this massive intrusion into the natural landscape? Not at

all. I fear we are going to destroy the environment in the name of saving the environment.

The House of Representatives has passed climate legislation that started out as an attempt to reduce carbon emissions. It has morphed into an engine for raising revenues by selling carbon dioxide emission allowances and promoting renewable energy.

The bill requires electric utilities to get 20 percent of their power mostly from wind and solar by 2020. These renewable energy sources are receiving huge subsidies all to supposedly create jobs and hurry us down the road to an America running on wind and sunshine, as described in President Obama's inaugural address.

Yet all this assumes renewable energy is a free lunch, a benign so- called sustainable way of running the country with minimal impact on the environment. That assumption experienced a rude awakening on August 26 when the Nature Conservancy published a paper entitled ``Energy Sprawl or Energy Efficiency: Climate Policy Impacts on Natural Habitat for the United States of America.''

The report by this venerable environmental organization posed a simple question: How much land is required for the different energy sources that power the country? The answers deserve far greater public attention.

By far, nuclear energy is the least land intensive. It requires only 1 square mile for one reactor, that is to produce 1 million megawatt hours per year, enough electricity for about 90,000 homes. Geothermal energy, which taps the natural heat of the Earth, requires 3 square miles. The most landscape consuming are the biofuels ethanol and biodiesel, which require up to 500 square miles to produce the same amount of energy. Coal, on the other hand, requires 4 square miles, mainly for mining and extraction. Solar thermal heating, a fluid with large arrays of mirrors and using it to power a turbine takes 6 square miles. Natural gas needs 8 and petroleum needs 18. Wind farms require over 30 square miles.

This sprawl has been missing from our energy discussions. In my home State of Tennessee, we just celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, America's most visited national park. Yet there are serious proposals by energy developers to cover mountains all along the Appalachian chain from Georgia through the foothills of the Smoky Mountains through the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, all the way up to the White Mountains of New Hampshire with 50-story wind turbines because the wind blows strongest across mountaintops. I can tell from the Presiding Officer's smile that she is thinking of the strong winds on the White Mountains which are among the strongest in the entire United States of America.

Let's put this into perspective. We could line 300 miles of mountaintops from Chattanooga, TN, to Bristol, VA, with wind turbines and still only produce one-quarter of the electricity we get from one reactor on 1 square mile at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Watts Bar nuclear plant.

The 1,000-square mile solar project proposed by Mr. Salazar would generate on a continuous basis 35,000 megawatts of electricity. You could get the same output from 30 new nuclear reactors that would fit comfortably on existing nuclear sites. And this does not count the thousands of miles of transmission lines that will be needed to carry the newly generated solar power through and to population centers.

There is one more consideration. Solar collectors must be washed down once a month or they collect too much dirt to be effective. They also need to be cooled by water. Where amid the desert and the scrubland will we find all that water? No wonder the Wildlife Conservancy and other environmentalists are already opposing solar projects on some western lands.

Renewable energy is not a free lunch. It is an unprecedented assault on the American landscape. Before we find ourselves engulfed in energy sprawl, it is imperative we take a closer look at the advantages of nuclear power.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a summary of the Nature Conservancy paper entitled ``Energy Sprawl or Energy Efficiency,'' which was published on August 26.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.