Floor Statements

Thank you, Madam President.

Madam President, in 1998, Norm Coleman ran for Governor of Minnesota against the son of one of the most revered Members of this body, Hubert Humphrey, who was also a former Vice President of the United States, and a noted wrestler, Jesse Ventura, who was elected Governor.

In 2002, Norm Coleman ran a campaign against Paul Wellstone, a beloved Member of this body who was tragically killed in an airplane crash a week or so before the election, bringing into the race a former Vice President of the United States, a former U.S. Senator and Ambassador, Walter Mondale. The whole country watched and was riveted by that race during that last week. Norm Coleman won that race.

This past year, Norm Coleman was a participant in a race that also riveted the Nation. He was opposed by a well-known television personality, Al Franken, now a Member of this body. The race went on for 2 years, with much publicity. Then it went on for another 8 months after election day.

If Norm Coleman could have found some way to make the 2000 Presidential election Bush v. Gore v. Coleman, Norm would have been a participant in every single one of the most spectacular political races of the last decade.

Norm and I arrived in the Senate on the same day in 2003. We not only were Members of the Senate family, which we often talk about here and which extends to both sides of the aisle, we were Members of the same class, and are good friends.

My wife, Honey, and I got to know Norm and his wife, Laurie, the mother of their two children. We know of his love for his family and of his deep religious faith. Each of us in the Senate has enjoyed the good humor and cheer and civil relationship that Norm has had with his colleagues, both Democrats and Republicans.

But most memorable--and the Republican leader spoke of some of this-- is Norm Coleman's record of service to our country: Chief prosecutor for the State of Minnesota, mayor of St. Paul, Senator.

He has been a strong, eloquent, effective voice for the center of this country--an independent voice of the kind our country and the Republican Party needs to attract and represent and continue to bring into our party and into our political process the center.

The political campaigns of Norm Coleman have been more spectacular than those of any of us in the Senate. But the public service chapters of his life have been equally impressive. As this door closes, I am confident new ones will open.

When I was Governor of Tennessee, my chief of staff, a former Marine, came in and said to me during my last years: Governor, I would like to say to you that people remember the last thing you do. And I had no idea why he said that to me, but I never could get it out of my mind, and I think it is pretty good advice.

People will remember the last thing Norm Coleman did in this campaign. He proved to be determined and courageous and, in the Minnesota tradition, a happy warrior in attempting to make sure that every Minnesota vote counted in the race, which was decided by just a few votes.

But then, when the Minnesota Supreme Court made its decision, he immediately was gracious about accepting the rule of law and the court's decision and stepping aside and congratulating Al Franken.

That is the picture of Norm Coleman that most Minnesotans and most Americans will remember. That may have been the last thing that Norm did in this race, but I am sure it is far from the last thing he is likely to do in public life.

Norm Coleman, after those three spectacular races, deserves an easy, humdrum, conventional political race someday. And Minnesota and the Nation can hope we will deserve and have many more years of Norm Coleman's public service.

Madam President, I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

I see my colleague from Florida.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Arizona and I be permitted to engage in a colloquy for up to 20 minutes.

Will the Chair please let me know when 2 minutes remains.

Mr. President, I heard the majority leader talk about denying care, and that is the issue before us--one of the major issues. The vision of the Republicans is that there will not be someone in between a patient and a doctor who would get in the way of a treatment you need or the care you need or have you stand in line or wait too long. Our great fear is the Democratic proposal so far, in which we have not had a chance to participate, would put the government between you and the doctor and the government doing the rationing.

Republican proposals, such as those of Senator Gregg and Senator Burr and Senator Coburn and even the bipartisan proposal by Senator Wyden, a Democrat, and Senator Bennett, a Republican--of which I am a cosponsor of all--envision a system where those of us, the 250 million of us who already have health care insurance, would be permitted to keep it and that we would find a way to reform the Tax Code to give to individuals who do not have good health care the money they need to buy the health care and to choose it for themselves. Our concern is, the Government might become too much involved, and we might create a program that is filled with more debt, on top of the debt we already have, that our children and grandchildren simply couldn't afford it.

Mr. McCain, the Senator from Arizona, has been, I guess, in more town meetings about health care than any other American, at least any other American who serves today in the Senate. He was in Texas last week and home last week in Phoenix, at some of our leading institutions, to hear what people had to say about it.

I wonder if I could ask the Senator from Arizona if he heard concern from those in his home State of Arizona, or those at M.D. Anderson in Texas, about

the government getting in between the patient and the doctor.

I agree with my friend from Arizona. I think of the pregnant women in rural counties in Tennessee who have to drive all the way to Memphis, or all the way to Nashville to get prenatal health care because there are no OB-GYN doctors after their medical malpractice cases have driven up their insurance. So there is no way for them to get health care.

If I am not mistaken, I listened to the majority leader talking about the tragic case in Nevada of someone unable to get health care because of a preexisting condition. The Senator from Arizona knows all of the proposals. I believe all of the Republican proposals would say, everyone would be covered, that preexisting conditions would not disqualify you.

The issue before us is whether we are going to address trillions to the debt or put the government in between the patient and the doctor.

There is probably no one in the Senate who has been in the midst of bipartisan negotiations more times than the Senator from Arizona. This is not just for the purpose of feeling good, it is the way to actually get a broad base of support for an energy bill or an immigration bill or a Supreme Court nominee. Usually it involves, if I am not mistaken, sitting down with several members of each side and coming to a consensus, sharing insurance ideas, fighting off the left and right and producing 60 or 70 votes. If I am not mistaken, that is the way we do bipartisan bills around here.

I thank the Senator from Arizona. I know he is on his way to work on the health care bill, to take the leadership, to the extent we can, in making it a better bill. I thank him for coming to the floor to discuss that today, and to help us reemphasize that we do not have any disagreement with our friends on the other side about the need to reform health care. I do not think we have any disagreement. At least we want to make sure our principal goal is to make health care affordable for every American. We want your family and you to be able to buy health insurance at a price you can afford and to take care of tragic cases such as the one the majority leader talked about. I think there is a consensus on both sides of the aisle to make sure if you have a preexisting condition you can be insured, and it will not matter where you live.

The Wyden-Bennett proposal, for example, and others, actually also say that you may carry your insurance from one job to the other, so that if you lose your job, or if you change

your job, you still have your insurance because it is your insurance, and it does not just depend upon your employer.

What we are concerned about is the fact that President Obama's administration has already proposed adding, over the next 10 years, more new debt, three times as much new debt actually as was spent in all of World War II in today's dollars. That is the first thing.

The second thing is this idea of the so-called government option. Someone says: What is so bad about that? Think of it this way. Let's say you put some elephants and some mice in one room. You say: OK, fellows, compete. What do you think will happen? Pretty soon there are no mice left; they are all squished. You have a big elephant left. That is your only choice.

We have an example of that in the current Medicaid Program, which is one of the worst government programs imaginable. There are 60 million Americans stuffed in it, primarily because they are low income or disabled. It is run jointly by the Federal Government and by the State government. Every Governor--and this has been true for 25 years, from the time I was Governor--has struggled with finding money to both fund the State's share of it and still have money for higher education and for other State needs.

It is filled with waste. The Congressional Budget Office says 1 out of every 10 taxpayer dollars that are spent for Medicaid is fraud, waste, or abuse. That is $32 billion a year. That is $320 billion over 10 years, enough to make a real dent in whatever we decide to do on health care.

Yet the Democratic proposals that we are seeing involve putting more people into that government program. The problem for the taxpayer is how expensive that is. I have a letter from the Congressional Budget Office dated July 7 to Senator Gregg, the ranking member of the Budget Committee, which I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record.

That letter was from Douglas W. Elmendorf, the Director of the Congressional Budget Office, with whom I am about to meet, along with other members of the HELP Committee.

It says: The proposal envisions that Medicaid--that is the Democratic proposal--would be expanded to cover individuals and families with an income below 150 percent of the Federal poverty level.

That sounds good, but the draft legislation does not include provisions to accomplish the goal. About three-quarters of the people who would remain uninsured under this version of the legislation would have income--in other words, even though we are spending trillions more under this proposal, a lot of people are uninsured and three-quarters of them are going to be dumped into Medicaid. For the Federal Government, that is hundreds of billions of new dollars we would have to borrow, and the thought is over time it would be shifted to the States. In the State of Tennessee, based upon conversations we have had with the State Medicaid director, it might add an amount of money to the State's annual budget that would be equal to the amount that a new 10-percent State income tax would take.

That is not even the worst thing about it. The worst thing about it is what it would do to the low-income Americans who are stuffed into the proposal. Some 40 percent of doctors will not see Medicaid patients for all their services--40 percent of doctors. So we say: Congratulations, we are going to run up the Federal debt and add a big State tax, in order to stuff you into a proposal where 40 percent of the doctors today will not see you. It is like giving out a ticket to a bus system that does not have any buses.

What is the alternative? The Republican proposals are completely different. They focus first on the 250 million of us who already have health insurance to try to make sure it is affordable to us, that we can afford it. Then we say let's take the money that is available and give it to the low-income Americans and let them buy, choose, a private health insurance policy more like the policies most of us have. We offer this instead of stuffing them into the Medicaid proposals which are filled with inefficiencies, cannot be managed, and which many doctors will not work with.

That is a better course forward. But, unfortunately, our voices are not being heard on that subject. But we are going to continue to make our case. We have the Burr proposal, the Gregg proposal, the Coburn proposal, the Wyden-Bennett proposal. All are different from the government option, and all do not run up the debt.

In fact, the Wyden-Bennett proposal, which is the only bipartisan proposal before this body today, with several Republican Senators and several Democratic Senators, adds zero to the debt according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Maybe as we go through, if we were seriously considering it, we would find a need to add some costs. But at least we start with the idea that instead of adding $1, $2, or $3 trillion over the next 10 years to the Federal deficit and

dumping a new program onto the States after a few years, which the States in their bankrupt condition, in some cases, cannot afford, at least we would start out with an increased deficit of zero.

We are almost working at the wrong end. Our biggest problem facing the country is the cost of health insurance to every American, not just the uninsured Americans but the 250 million who already have insurance. The other big issue is the cost of government, caused by rising health care costs, and we have gotten away from thinking of ways to bring that under control. There are even proposals floating around to take savings, to cut Medicare and Medicaid and use those dollars to help pay for the Democratic plan.

If we reduce the growth of spending in Medicaid, we should spend it on Medicare, which is increasing at a rate that is going to cause our children and grandchildren never to be able to pay off the national debt.

Republicans stand ready to work with Democrats to produce health care reform this year, despite the majority leader's statement that it is time for Senator Baucus to stop chasing Republican votes. We are glad he is chasing Republican votes, and we hope he gets some. But the way we do things around here usually is a group of 15 or 20 Senators, such as Senator McCain and others, sit around and say: OK, let's put our ideas together and come up with a consensus bill, not to operate from a procedure that we won the election, we have 60 votes, and we will write the bill. It is more complicated than that. It needs a broad base of support in the Senate to have a broad base of support in the country. Without that base of support, it will not be successful.

We have made our proposals--the Burr proposal, the Gregg proposal, the Coburn proposal, the Wyden-Bennett proposal. Senator Hatch and Senator Cornyn have a slightly different idea that would give the money to the Governors and let them find a way to cover low-income individuals. As a former Governor, I like that idea. We have an imaginative Democratic Governor in Tennessee who has brought the Medicaid Program there under some control and has come up with several innovative ideas. The difficulty he and other Governors have is that it takes them a year to get permission from Washington to try their innovative ideas to offer the kind of health care to low-income individuals they might need which could be different in Tennessee and different in California.

This is the biggest issue before our country today. It is certainly the biggest issue before Congress. Republicans have our proposals on the table. We are ready to go to work. We want to make sure there are no preexisting conditions left out that disqualify people. We want to make sure that everyone is covered and that we have access to health care at a cost the family budget can afford. We are resolute in our determination not to add trillions more to the national debt and not to dump new debt on the States. We are resolute in our determination not to dump low-income people into a failing government program called Medicaid when a much better alternative is to give them the credits and the vouchers and the cash so they can purchase private health insurance and have coverage more like the rest of Americans have.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent if I might have 30 seconds before the vote to make a request?

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Washington. I am here because the Senator from Nebraska made a request to bring up a resolution of his a little while ago and an objection was made on my behalf. Out of courtesy to him, I want to explain.

The reason is that Senator Bennett and I, indeed, other Senators, have legislation that would give the government stock in General Motors and Chrysler back to the taxpayers who paid for it on April 15. We prefer that rather than do an expression, a sentiment, which is what the Senator from Nebraska offered.

We are prepared to bring our amendment up and to debate his and to vote on his. There are other Senators here with similar amendments. We simply want to make sure they are all considered at once.

So I ask unanimous consent that the Banking Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 1198, the Auto Stock Every Taxpayer Act, which would give all the government stock in General Motors to the taxpayers who paid for it; that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration, the bill be read for a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I am glad I was here to listen to the thoughtful comments of the Senator from Arizona. His leadership on the HELP Committee in trying to help make certain we help Americans have access to health care they can afford and that we do that in a way that leaves them with a government they can afford and with choices so they do not have government in between themselves and their doctors has been very important. I thank him for his leadership.

Mr. President, the Senator talked about spending and debt. During my week in Tennessee last week, if I heard about anything, it was about too much debt. People are genuinely worried about the amount of new debt and spending in Washington. But if I heard anything else last week, it was about too many Washington takeovers. Senator McCain mentioned some of them. He mentioned banking. He talked about, perhaps, student loans. He mentioned the health care industry. And he mentioned the automobile industry, which is what I would like to talk about for a few minutes this morning.

Yesterday was good news for General Motors. The judge in the bankruptcy case apparently approved a plan that by the end of the week should free General Motors from bankruptcy, and we could have a new GM, for which I wish great success because General Motors has made great contributions to our State of Tennessee over the last 25 years. Its Saturn plant has helped to attract hundreds of suppliers and has produced a good car, although they never made any money for one reason or another. But they made a great contribution to our State. So the good news is General Motors is going to get out of bankruptcy. The bad news is that the U.S. Government still owns 61 percent of General Motors, as well as about 8 percent of Chrysler. And it was paid for with real dollars.

Mr. President, $50 billion or so in taxpayer dollars went to buy 61 percent of General Motors. Well, I have a solution which I would like to discuss, offered by the Senator from Utah, Mr. Bennett; the Senator from Arizona, Mr. Kyl; the Senator from Kentucky, Mr. McConnell, other Senators, and myself. Our legislation would direct the Department of the Treasury, within 1 year after General Motors comes out of bankruptcy, to distribute all of the government stock in General Motors and in Chrysler to the 120 million Americans who pay taxes on April 15--in other words, a stock dividend. We want to give the stock to the people who paid for it. The idea is pretty simple: I paid for it, I ought to own it. Not only would that stop the incestuous political meddling that seems to go on here in Washington with General Motors-- Washington cannot seem to keep its hands off the car company--it would also create an investor fan base of 120 million Americans who might be interested in the success of General Motors or be a little more interested than they are today.

Think of the Green Bay Packers. The fans own the team, and the fans are even a little bit more interested in who the quarterback might be than they might otherwise be. Well, if 120 million Americans owned a little bit of General Motors, the New GM, they might be a little more interested in the next Chevy and it might help General Motors succeed.

I can suggest one thing that will make sure the company does not succeed, and that is to keep the ownership of General Motors in Washington, DC, with meddling politics interfering with the executives and the workers who are designing and building and selling cars--or who, I might say, ought to be designing, building, and selling cars.

Madam President, about how much time do I have remaining?

Thank you, Madam President.

When I first suggested that what we ought to do is just give the stock to taxpayers, I think some of my colleagues thought I might be being facetious. But this is a very normal corporate event. It is called a stock distribution or a corporate spinoff. In 1969, Procter & Gamble did a spinoff with Clorox, its subsidiary. Procter & Gamble decided its Clorox subsidiary was not a part of the core business of Procter & Gamble anymore, so it simply gave shares of Clorox to people who owned the major company, Procter & Gamble. Time Warner did it with Time Warner Cable in March of 2009. PepsiCo did it with its restaurant business in 1997 by spinning off KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell.

If you stop and think about it, it is the simplest way to solve the problem. The President has said he does not want to micromanage General Motors and that he plans to sell it. But the President himself has already fired the president of General Motors, put in the board, and called the mayor of Detroit and said he believes the headquarters ought to be in Detroit instead of Warren, MI. Next, you have the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee calling up General Motors saying: Don't close a warehouse in my district. Senators from Tennessee and Michigan and other States are saying: Please put a plant in our states. We have at least 60 Congressional committees and subcommittees that could have the General Motors and Chrysler executives drive their congressionally approved hybrid cars to Washington to testify all day when they ought to be home trying to figure out how to make a car that would sell better than a Toyota or a Nissan or a Honda or some other company.

So let's get the stock out of Washington and into the hands of the taxpayers.

Madam President, I have twice presented a car czar award to try to put a spotlight on the political meddling in Washington, DC. Once I gave it to Barney Frank, the chairman of the House

Financial Services Committee, who called up the General Motors president and said: Don't close a warehouse in my district, and General Motors did not close the plant. Once I gave the award to myself and others, who met with GM people and said: Please put a plant in our district. Today I would like to present it to a real car czar.

In the June 1 Wall Street Journal, there is an article by Lieutenant General Pacepa, who was literally the car czar of Romania.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that following my remarks, this article about what Lieutenant General Pacepa learned as car czar be printed in the Record.

Madam President, basically, he says:

The United States is far more powerful than Great Britain

was then, and no American Attlee should be capable of

destroying its solid economic and political base. I hope that

the U.S. administration, Congress, and the American voters

will take a closer look at history and prevent our automotive

industry from following down the [road of the Romanian cars.]

He cites many examples. For example, how the President of Romania decreed that the Oltcit parts were to be manufactured at 166 existing Romanian factories in parts of the country that corresponded to the voting districts. I can see that happening in the United States. We already have Congressmen saying: Don't buy a battery in South Korea; buy one made in my congressional district. General Motors might be buying a battery from South Korea because it would make the Chevy Volt a success.

In the New York Times in 1989, there was an article talking about Soviet cars called the Lada, which were the brunt of many jokes, and the difficulty the Soviet Union had coming out of perestroika and glasnost.

There were jokes such as: What do you call a Lada with twin tailpipes? A wheelbarrow.

Why do Ladas have heated rear windows? So you can keep your hands warm when you are pushing them in the snow.

We politicians don't know anything about making cars. We should not pretend we do. The American people know that. They don't like the fact that the federal government has spent more than $50 billion bailing out the car companies, but the American people like it worse that we in Congress are sitting on 60 committees and subcommittees acting as if we are going to help the auto companies succeed. The single most important thing we can do to celebrate General Motors coming out of bankruptcy this week is to pass legislation we have offered, which would give all of the stock the government has in General Motors and Chrysler, within 1 year, to the 120 million Americans who pay taxes on April 15.

The rationale is very simple: They paid for it; they should own it. That would begin to stop this trend we are seeing every day and every month in Washington of too many Washington takeovers and move us back in the direction we ought to go to rebuild a great car company and get jobs flowing in this country again.

I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Exhibit 1

What I Learned as a Car Czar

(By Ion Mihai Pacepa)

They say history repeats itself. If you are like me and

have lived two lives, you have a good chance of seeing the

re-enactment with your own eyes. The current takeover of

General Motors by the U.S. government, and United Auto

Workers makes me think back to Romania's catastrophic

mismanagement of the car factories it built jointly with the

French companies Renault and Citroen. I was Romania's car

czar.

When the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, decided in

the mid-1960s that he wanted to have a car industry, he chose

me to start the project rolling. In the land of the blind,

the one-eyed man is king. I knew nothing about manufacturing

cars, but neither did anyone else among Ceausescu's top men.

However, my father had spent most of his life running the

service department of the General Motors affiliate in

Bucharest.

My job at the time was as head of the Romanian industrial

espionage program. Ceausescu tasked me to mediate the

purchase of a minimum, basic license for a small car from a

major Western manufacturer, and then to steal everything else

needed to produce the car.

Three Western companies competed for the honor. Ceausescu

decided on Renault, because it was owned by the French

government (all Soviet bloc rulers distrusted private

companies). We ended up with a license for an antiquated and

about-to-be-discontinued Renault-12 car, because it was the

cheapest. ``Good enough for the idiots,'' Ceausescu decided,

showing what he thought of the Romanian people. He baptized

the car Dacia, to commemorate Romania's 2,000-year history,

going back to Dacia Felix, as the ancient Romans called that

part of the world. In that government-run economy, symbolism

was the most important consideration, especially when it came

to things in short supply (such as food).

``Too luxurious for the idiots,'' Ceausescu decreed when he

saw the first Dacia car made in Romania. Immediately, the

radio, right side mirror and backseat heating were dropped.

Other ``unnecessary luxuries'' were soon eliminated by the

bureaucrats and their workers' union that were running the

factory. The car that finally hit the market was a

stripped-down version of the old, stripped-down Renault

12. ``Perfect for the idiots,'' Ceausescu approved.

Indeed, the Romanian people, had never before had any car,

came to cherish the Dacia.

For the Western market, however, the Dacia was a nightmare,

To the best of my knowledge, no Dacia car was ever sold in

the U.S.

Ceausescu, undaunted, was determined to see Romanian cars

running around in every country in the world. He tasked me to

buy another Western license, this time to produce a car

tailored for export. Oltcit was the name of the new car--an

amalgam made from the words Oltenia, Ceausescu's native

province, and the French car maker Citroen, which owned 49%

of the shares. Oltcit was projected to produce between 90,000

and 150,000 compact cars designed by Citroen.

Ceausescu micromanaged Oltcit, but he didn't even know how

to drive a car, much less run a car industry. To save the

foreign currency he coveted, he decreed that the components

for the Oltcit were to be manufactured at 166 existing

Romanian factories. Coordinating 166 plants to have them

deliver all the parts on time would be a monumental job even

for an experienced car producer. It proved impossible for the

Romanian bureaucracy, which pretended to work and was paid

accordingly. The Oltcit factory could produce only 1% to 1.5%

of its intended capacity owing to the lack of the parts that

those 166 companies were supposed to furnish simultaneously.

The Oltcit project lost billions.

Ceausescu was an extreme case, but automobile manufacturing

and government were never a good mix in any socialist/

communist country. In the late 1950s; when I headed Romania's

foreign intelligence station in West Germany, I worked

closely with the foreign branch of the East German Stasi. Its

chief, Markus Wolf, rewarded me with a Trabant car--the

pride of East Germany--when I left to return to Romania.

That ugly little car became famous in 1989 when thousands

of East Germans used it to cross to the West. The Trabant

originally derived from a well regarded West German car (the

DKW) made by Audi, which today produces some of the most

prestigious cars in the world. In the hands of the East

German government, the unfortunate DKW became a farce of a

car. The bureaucrats and union that ran the Trabant factory

made the car smaller and boxier, to give it a more

proletarian look. To reduce production costs, they cut down

on the size of the original, already small DKW engine, and

they replaced the metal body with one made of plastic-covered

cardboard. What rolled off the assembly line was a kind of

horseless carriage that roared like a lawn mower and polluted

the air worse than a whole city block full of big Western

cars.

After German reunification, the plucky little ``Trabi''

that East Germans used to wait 10 years to buy became an

embarrassment, and its production was stopped. Germany's

junkyards are now piled high with Trabants, which cannot be

recycled because burning their plastic-covered cardboard

bodies would release poisonous dioxins. German scientists are

now trying to develop a bacterium to devour the cardboard-

and-plastic body.

Automobile manufacturing and government do not mix in

capitalist countries either. In the spring of 1978 Ceausescu

appointed me chief of his Presidential House, a new position

supposed to be similar to that of the White House chief of

staff. To go with it he gave me a big Jaguar car, That

Jaguar, which at the time had been produced in a government-

run British factory, was so bad that it spent more time in

the garage being repaired than it did on the road.

``Apart from some Russian factories in Gorky, Jaguars were

the worst,'' Ford executive Bill Hayden stated when Ford

bought the nationalized British car maker in 1988. How did

the famous Jaguar, one of the most prestigious cars in the

world, become a joke?

In 1945, the British voters, tired of four years of war,

kicked out Winston Churchill and elected a leftist parliament

led by Labour's Clement Attlee. Attlee nationalized the

automobile, trucking and coal industries, as well as

communication facilities, civil aviation, electricity and

steel. Britain was already saddled by crushing war debts. Now

it was sapped of economic vigor. The old empire quickly

passed into history. It would take decades until Margaret

Thatcher's privatization reforms restored Britain's place

among the world's top-tier economies.

The United States is far more powerful than Great Britain

was then, and no American Attlee should be capable of

destroying its solid economic and political base. I hope

that the U.S. administration, Congress and the American

voters will take a closer look at history and prevent our

automotive industry from following down the Dacia, Oltcit or

Jaguar path.

Mr. President, I congratulate the Republican leader on his remarks. I remember Senator McConnell's first address following President Obama's election at the National Press Club. It was to the President, saying: Mr. President, we look forward to working with you, and the pressing issue is the entitlements facing this country, the automatic spending that means more and more and more debt.

I would ask the Republican leader whether there has been any response from the administration to him about the opportunity to work together across party lines to deal with Social Security which, as I remember in January, was your proposal?

Mr. President, in my visits in Tennessee this past week, if I heard two things, one was too many Washington takeovers; the other was too much debt. I found in people--and I hesitate to use the word--a great deal of fear about the amount of debt we are piling up here in Washington.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator for his comment about checks and balances. There is something innate in the American character about checks and balances. Alexis de Tocqueville warned, in the early 1800s, about the tyranny of a majority. We like to see results, but we do not want to see one party or one faction run away with policy. We seem to know it is better if there is a check and a balance. And the genius of the American system is we have many checks and balances.

I wonder, Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?

I thank the Acting President pro tempore.

Mr. President, health care is not the only issue before the Senate. We have the nomination by the President of a distinguished jurist, Judge Sotomayor. Hearings will begin next week on whether she should be confirmed for the Supreme Court.

Tomorrow, the Senate, in the Environment and Public Works Committee,

begins discussion on climate change and global warming--a subject we have talked about a lot. The House of Representatives has made that an issue by passing, about 10 days ago, another one of these bills that by all reports no one in the House of Representatives read before it was passed--1,200 pages served up the day before they voted. They voted and sent it on over to us. So we have energy and climate change to deal with, which is the subject of my remarks this afternoon.

My question is this: Why is Congress and, to a great extent, the administration ignoring the cheap energy solution to global warming-- nuclear power?

Consider this: No. 1, coal-burning powerplants produce about 40 percent of carbon, and carbon is the principal greenhouse gas causing global warming. That is the first fact.

Second, nuclear powerplants, which produce only 20 percent of all of our electricity in America, produce 70 percent of our carbon-free, pollution-free electricity.

So coal-burning powerplants produce 40 percent of the carbon, and nuclear powerplants produce 70 percent of the carbon-free electricity, and our goal is to get rid of the carbon to slow down global warming. I think that is the goal anyway.

So if that is the goal, if global warming is your issue, why not build 100 new nuclear powerplants during the next 20 years to deal with it? Nuclear power costs less than one-half cent per kilowatt hour to produce, which means it is cheap enough to pay for building the plants and will still leave electric rates low.

The rest of the world seems to understand this a little better than we do in the United States today. France gets 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear and has among the lowest carbon emission rates and electricity prices in the European Union. The United States--our taxpayers--is helping India and China build nuclear plants. Japan is building one nuclear plant a year. The President has even said that Iran has the right to build nuclear powerplants. But the United States has not built one new nuclear plant in 30 years, even though we invented the technology.

So instead, the House of Representatives, 10 days ago, chose the high-cost solution to the climate change energy dilemma, narrowly passing an economywide so-called cap-and-trade bill, the Waxman-Markey bill. This is a job-killing $100 billion a year new national energy tax, which would add a new utility bill to the budget of every American family.

The House also mandated the use of solar and wind power, which is 6 percent of our carbon-free electricity. Remember, nuclear is 70 percent of our carbon-free electricity. So the House, ignoring nuclear, says: Let's expand solar and wind, which is 6 percent of our carbon-free electricity, even though both are more expensive and more unreliable since solar and wind power cannot be stored today, which means you have to use it when the Sun shines and the wind blows. Wind, especially, barely works in some parts of the country, such as the Southeast.

So the choice is between a high-priced or a low-priced clean energy strategy. I think we all want a clean energy future, but do we want a deliberately high-priced clean energy future or a low-priced one? High pricers want taxes and mandates. Cheap energy advocates--almost all Republicans in Congress and some Democrats, and I hope a growing number--say build nuclear plants and double research to make renewable energy cheaper and reliable. High-priced energy sends American jobs overseas looking for cheap energy. I see that in all of the auto plants we have in Tennessee, and the auto suppliers. They are operating on a very thin margin. Add a little cost and those cars and trucks are built in Mexico and Japan instead of Tennessee and Michigan.

Cheap energy not only creates jobs, it will reduce global warming faster than taxes and mandates. Here is why: 100 new plants in 20 years would double U.S. nuclear production, making it more than 40 percent of all electricity production. Add 10 percent or so for Sun and wind and biomass, another 10 percent for hydroelectric, and we begin to have a cheap as well as a clean energy policy.

Some predict renewable sources will be 20 percent of electricity in 20 years. I predict it will be about half that, after Americans understand its costs and its lack of reliability and they begin to see what some conservationists are calling the ``renewable energy sprawl''--50-story wind turbines along the foothills of the Great Smokey Mountain National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Shenandoah Valley and solar thermal plants 5 miles wide next to national parks, all with big new transmission lines. Plus, since the Sun shines and the wind blows only about one-third of the time-- remember, you can't store it--we will still need nuclear plants for base load power.

Step 2 for a clean and cheap energy policy is to electrify half our cars and trucks. There is so much unused electricity at night, we can also do this in 20 years without building one new powerplant if we plug in vehicles while we sleep. This is the fastest way to reduce dependence on foreign oil, keep fuel prices low, and reduce the one- third of carbon that comes from gasoline engines.

Step 3 is offshore exploration for natural gas--that is low carbon-- and oil. We should use less but use more of our own.

Finally, we should double energy research and development to make renewable energy such as solar more cost competitive.

Obstacles to nuclear power are diminishing. Used fuel can be stored safely onsite for 40 to 60 years while scientists figure out the best way to reduce its mass and recycle or reuse it. New plants can be one- tenth the size and one-tenth the cost of the big ones we are accustomed to today and can be put together at an American factory and shipped to the site and assembled like Lego blocks--all of this American made--and with air cooling towers, not water cooling, and the towers are only two stories tall.

I have introduced legislation to deal with global warming ever since I came to the Senate, but I am not in favor of economy-wide cap and trade. It is unnecessary. It is complex. It has unintended consequences. Our economy can't tolerate it. A simpler way to do it would be to focus on smokestacks, tailpipes, and find alternative ways to deal with the coal and the oil we want to use less of. We have that with tailpipes, cars, and trucks. We can shift to electric cars and trucks and the cost to the consumer will be as low or lower as they plug in at night to electricity. We also have that with smokestacks. We can shift some of our dirtiest coal plants to nuclear power, and instead of increasing the cost of energy, we could keep it steady or probably reduce it. So why would we want to deliberately proceed with a high-cost energy strategy when cheap energy is the key to our national security, to rebuilding our economy, and the key to so much of what is important to America's future?

There is an old rule of thumb that sometimes in government we take a good idea and expand it until it doesn't work. I am afraid we are doing that with renewable energy--which is a good idea--the idea of putting up your own windmill in your backyard, put some solar panels on your roof, use biomass, and cut your energy costs and cut your use of fossil fuels. That is a good idea, but it is only going to produce a small percentage of what we actually need to run a country such as this which uses 25 percent of all of the energy in the world.

Biomass, for example, to produce the amount of energy that one nuclear powerplant produces, you would have to forest continuously an area the size of the entire Great Smokey Mountain National Park, which is 550,000 acres. To produce enough electricity to equal a nuclear powerplant from solar power you would have to cover an area about the size of 270 square miles, and that is 5 or 6 miles on each side. The same with wind, or the same with hydroelectric, and we are not going to be building any big, new reservoirs anymore of that size.

So we should take what we can get in appropriate places of wind and solar and biomass. We should put a few turbines in the Mississippi River and pick up some megawatts for the TBA, for example, but that is a few hundred megawatts for a system that needs to produce 27,000 megawatts of reliable, low-cost, clean electricity every year.

The only technology we have available to produce large amounts of clean,

reliable electricity in the next 20 years is nuclear power. We invented it. We know how to use it. The rest of the world is taking advantage of it. Why don't we? Especially in this economy, when we have nearly 10 percent unemployment, when in Tennessee and Virginia and in the Midwest we are trying to find ways to rebuild the economy, when we know that cheap energy is the key to new jobs and that high-priced energy drives jobs overseas looking for cheap energy, why are we ignoring the cheap energy strategy for dealing with global warming, cheap energy based on nuclear power, No. 1; electric cars and trucks, No. 2; offshore drilling for natural gas and oil which we are still going to need, and pushing ahead with mini Manhattan projects in energy research and development to figure out renewable energy and help make it cost competitive while we move ahead?

This is not only the fastest way to increase American energy independence, clean the air, and reduce global warming, it is the best way to help strained family budgets and a sick economy with 10 percent unemployment.

I thank the President, I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, how much time is remaining on Republican time?

Thank you, Madam President. Will you please let me know when 4 minutes remain?

Madam President, let me talk about a threat to the middle-class family's budget, and that is health insurance. How do we pay for health care? I do not have to explain to anyone who might be listening or reading these remarks that health care, for most Americans, is a cost that is difficult to afford.

It is difficult for most small businesses. We have many large businesses who are having a difficult time competing in the world marketplace because of health care costs. We think of the auto industry in Detroit which has claimed that the legacy costs of health care have put them out of business, unable to compete, even with car companies that locate in the United States and make cars here employing American workers.

So we on the Republican side, like our friends on the Democratic side, want health care reform this year. President Obama is going to town meetings and saying what he is for. He is saying: Let's do it this year. He is saying: Let's make sure we cover the 47 million Americans who are uninsured. He is saying: Let's make sure we can afford it.

``We do not want more debt,'' the President is saying. We certainly agree with that. He already has proposed, over the next 10 years, more new debt than it cost to wage all of World War II according to the Washington Post. So we agree with him, we do not want any health care bill that creates more new debt. We do not want a health care bill that puts more new taxes on States as they pay for State-operated health care programs such as Medicaid.

We want to make sure that Americans who like their insurance are able to keep the insurance they have. About 177 million Americans have employer-sponsored health insurance which they like. They like the quality of the health care they get. We do not want to think about the 47 million who are uninsured, we want to think about all 300 million Americans.

We Republicans agree with the President. We want health care reform this year. We want a health care plan that you can afford. We want a health care plan your Government can afford, so your children do not get a big debt piled on top of them, and we want to make sure all of the uninsured are covered as well.

We want to make sure, on this side, that Washington does not come in between you and your doctor. In other words, you and your doctor make the health care choices, not some Washington bureaucrat who might cause you to wait in line or deny treatment that you and your doctor think is needed.

So how does the Senate bill that we are working on stack up with the President's ideas that we should cover everybody, be able to pay for it, and allow people to keep their insurance? Well, I am very disappointed to report that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, which is the nonpartisan agency in the Congress--and the Congress, of course, is majority Democratic, by a large margin--has given us some very disturbing information about the bill we are working on in the HELP Committee, a place that I am about to go in a few minutes to continue considering parts of the bill, since we only have a little bit of the bill that we are being asked to consider.

Here is what we know about cost: The Congressional Budget Office has said that in the first 10 years of the partial Kennedy bill which has been presented to us, it would add over $1 trillion to the debt, the national debt, $1 trillion.

Senator Gregg of New Hampshire, who is the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, has pointed out that once the health care program envisioned in the Kennedy bill is up and going, that over a 10-year period, say years 5 through 14, it would be $2.3 trillion added to the debt, a debt that already has more new debt in the next 10 years, according to the Washington Post, than we spent in all of World War II in today's dollars.

People in Tennessee and across this country are saying: Whoa. Wait a minute. This is getting out of control. We need some limits. We know you have got a printing press there in Washington, DC, but our children and grandchildren and even we are going to pay the consequences if we do not have some limits on the amount of debt.

I would think the President would say to the Senators who are working on this: Wait a minute, Senators, I said this needs to be something that pays for itself. We cannot add $2.3 trillion.

That is not all. We do not even have all the Kennedy bill. Some of the most important parts are yet to come. Some of the most expensive parts are yet to come. The assumptions that we are left to work with-- because we hear them discussed--is that there will be a big expansion of the Medicaid Program that States help to operate and help to pay for, usually about 40 percent of the cost, and an increase in the reimbursement rates that go to doctors and hospitals who participate in the Medicaid Program.

What would that cost? Well, in the State of Tennessee, if we increase Medicaid eligibility to 150 percent of the poverty level, which sounds pretty good, that adds about $600 million to the State cost of Medicaid in Tennessee.

If we increase the Medicaid reimbursement rates, that adds another $600 million to the State costs of Medicaid. When the stimulus funding goes away after 2 years, which was sent to the States to help pay for Medicaid costs, that is another $600 million.

Now we throw so many dollars around up here that it is hard to say what is important. But to give you one idea of what would happen if a Senator went home to be Governor and had to manage a Medicaid Program that expanded that much and were faced with a $1.2, $1.5, $1.8 billion new State cost about 2015, where would he or she get that money? A 10- percent income tax in our State would raise about $1.2 or $1.3 billion. So the costs we are talking about adding to States are astronomical. Most States are having a difficult time even balancing their budgets this year, some nearly bankrupt--think of California--and add to that huge new Medicaid costs, as well as a Federal addition to the debt of $2 or $3 trillion. It is an unimaginable prospect and totally inconsistent with what President Obama has said, who said very sternly to Congress 2 or 3 weeks ago: We need pay as we go. If we are going to spend a dollar, we need to save a dollar or we need to tax a dollar. So we would have to raise or save $2 or $3 trillion to pay for the Kennedy bill, as we know it, and if you live in a State that has increased Medicaid costs, you could have, depending upon what these provisions say, huge new State taxes to pay for it.

That bill gets an ``F'' on the first aspect of the President's request, cost, and debt.

The second is that we cover the 47 million uninsured. Unfortunately, even though we add perhaps $2 to $3 trillion to the Federal debt, and a lot of new State taxes, the bill we are considering in the Senate HELP Committee will only cover 16 million more people who are not now insured.

In other words, we would reduce the uninsured from 47 to 30 million. We would have 30 million people left even though we added $2 or $3 trillion to the Federal debt and a lot of new State taxes. I think that is a flunking grade as well for this bill.

Then what about allowing you to keep your insurance if you like it? Well, the Congressional Budget Office also had something to say about that. It said: If the Kennedy bill, as it is presently, were enacted, about 15 million people would go from private insurance that they now have to an existing or a new government-run health care plan.

You might do that because you choose to, or you might do that because your employer says: I think I will quit offering the insurance you now have.

So this does not seem to fit what the President is suggesting we do. With all respect, I know that there has been a lot of hard work done on this bill, but we need to stop and start over even to get close to the President's own objectives.

Let's take the 46 or 47 million uninsured Americans. We need to be realistic about what we are dealing with here. Some 11 million of those are non-citizens, and about half of those are illegally here. So we deal with those in one way or another. About one-third of the uninsured, about 15 or 20 million, have incomes of over $75,000 a year. In other words, they could afford health insurance but do not have it. About 13 million are young and believe they are invincible and would only buy health insurance on their way to the hospital.

So the question is, do we raise costs for everybody else in a failed attempt to try to pass a ``one size fits all'' for all of those 46 million uninsured Americans, or do we come up with different ways of trying to entice them or require them to have an insurance policy, at least a catastrophic insurance policy, so we all are not paying $1,000 more in insurance so you cannot have insurance and go to the emergency room when you have a problem?

That is who the uninsured are.

Then let us think about the approach the Kennedy bill and other bills are making to the so-called government-run programs. There are some competing polls in newspapers, depending on how you ask the question. The New York Times, the other day, had a huge headline: Everybody likes the government-run health care program. But the Wall Street Journal and other polls that have presented questions in different ways said that by a 2-to-1 margin most people preferred a private insurance policy that they choose themselves, which is what 120 or 140 million Americans have chosen today.

Why do we need a government program? Let's think about that. The President said: Well, we need to keep the insurance companies honest. That is a little bit like saying: We need a government drugstore to keep the drugstores honest, or we need a government car company-- actually we have almost got one with GM--to keep the other auto companies honest, or a government anything. That is not the way this country is supposed to work. We have a big free market system. We are entrepreneurs in this country. We want limited Federal Government.

We ought to get out of the car and banking business and out of the insurance business and stop these Washington takeovers. Yet the most imposing feature of the health care proposals proposed by our Democratic friends is a big, new government-run program to keep everybody honest.

I do not see that we need such a program under the proposals that Republicans have offered. I think we agree that whatever plan we have should require that everybody have a chance to be a part of it, that a preexisting condition you might have does not disqualify you, and that your rates need to be reasonable.

I thank the Chair.

We agree on that. We think competition is what helps keep prices low. The President says you need a government-run program for competition. But that is like putting an elephant, the government, in a room with a lot of mice and saying: All right, fellows, compete. After a while, there would not be any mice left. Your only choice would be big government, because it has the power to lower prices and subsidize itself to make sure it succeeds.

What is wrong with that? Most Medicaid patients can tell you what is wrong with that. Some 40 percent of doctors restrict access to Medicaid patients. Why? Mostly because the reimbursement rates are so low. The government program is cheaper, but it does not allow you to get any health care. It is like giving you a bus ticket, but there is no bus to catch.

So if what we chose to do in our plans is to expand the Medicaid Program, at enormous cost to State taxpayers, and have big increases in the Federal debt, we will be dumping low-income Americans into government programs that exist, and new government programs we create to which they might not gain admission.

So we think we have better ideas. They are in the Wyden-Bennett bill, which is bipartisan. They are in the Burr-Coburn bill. They are in the legislation introduced by Senator Gregg of New Hampshire. They are in the legislation Senator Hatch and Senator Cornyn are working on.

We would like to give dollars to low-income Americans so they can choose to buy an insurance policy and have the same kind of coverage that most of the rest of us can buy. We would rather give them choices in the private market, which is what, by far, most Americans have and choose today. We can do that without adding debt to the national debt. The Wyden-Bennett bill is scored at no extra debt. And we can do that in a way that reduces the number of uninsured more than the Kennedy bill does.

So, Madam President, with respect, I suggest we start over, we do it in a bipartisan way, that we take some suggestions actually from the Republican side, which has not been done at all. That is another thing the President said. He said he wanted a bipartisan bill. We have had a completely partisan bill in the Senate. We do not like that. We came here to be a part of solving this big problem. We have our ideas on the table. They are not being considered. Everyone is being polite to us, but it is: We have the votes. We won the election. We will write the bill.

I am afraid America will not be better off, and the President's goals will

not be met because we will have added $2 or $3 trillion to the Federal debt, have a big new tax for states and locally, stuff low-income people into government programs, and we will still have 30 million people uninsured.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I congratulate the Senator from Nebraska on his resolution to recognize the importance of the United States continuing to trade in the world, especially with our friends in Latin America, especially when they are already taking advantage of low tariffs with us and we are not taking advantage of low tariffs with them. Our principal concern on the Republican side, and I am sure for many Democrats, too, is the cost of living for middle-class families in America. There are many issues that come before us that deal with that--the level of taxes, the level of tuition, that we get Medicaid spending under control so States will be able to fund the Universities of Nebraska and Tennessee better--but another way to do that is to trade with the world.

People walk into stores in America, and they are looking, today, in bad economic times, for low costs. Are we going to erect barriers and raise costs? Are we going to say to families who do not have many extra dollars that it is in our national interest to raise our costs? Are we going to keep out of our country people with products and ideas causing them to keep our products and ideas out of their country? Are we that afraid of competing in the world?

We Tennesseans have been much better off since Federal Express started flying in China and Nissan started building cars in Tennessee. Federal Express employs 30,000 people in the Memphis, TN, area, and Nissan just announced this week it is going to build electric cars, not in Japan but in Smyrna, TN. That is because we trade with the world. So this creeping protectionism that we see is a threat to the middle-class budget of every American.

Senator Johanns has made an important step toward change.

Mr. President, will the Chair please let me know when I have consumed 5 minutes.

Mr. President, this morning one of our bipartisan breakfasts occurred which we have here every so often. Senator Lieberman and I and other Senators organized it. 16 Senators there attending this morning's breakfast. The Presiding Officer is often a participant in those meetings. At this morning's breakfast we discussed health care. As we listened to the chairman, ranking member, and other senior members of the Finance Committee one of the things we said is that we agree on about 80 percent of what needs to be done.

But one of the areas where we do not agree is cost. Another area is whether a so-called government-run insurance option will lead to a Washington takeover of health care. A lot of us are feeling like we have had about enough Washington takeovers: our banks, our insurance companies, our student loans, our car companies, even our farm ponds, and now health care.

Government-run insurance is not the best way to extend coverage to low-income Americans who need it. The chairman of the Finance Committee indicated that his bill would be paid for. But on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, on which I serve, that is not the case. The bill is not even finished yet, and already, as the Senator from New Hampshire has pointed out, in the 5th through the 14th year, 10 years, it would cost 2.3 trillion new dollars, raising the Federal debt to even further unimaginable levels.

Let me mention an aspect of cost which is often overlooked. Federal debt is certainly a problem, but as a former Governor, I care about the State debt and State taxes. The States do not have printing presses, they have to balance their budgets. So when we do something up here that puts a cost on States down there, they have to raise taxes or cut programs.

We know the programs they have to cut: education, and health care programs, both are important to people in Illinois and people in Tennessee.

The Medicaid Program in the Kennedy bill that we are considering would increase Medicaid to 150 percent of the Federal poverty level, which sounds real good until you take a look at the cost.

In Tennessee alone, if the State had to pay its share of the requirement, about one-third, that would be $600 million. It would be another $600 million if, as has been suggested, it is required that the State reimburse physicians up to 110 percent of Medicare. So that is $1.2 billion of new costs just for the State of Tennessee.

The discussion has been that the Federal Government will take that over for a few years and then will shift that back to the States. Well, my response is that every Senator who votes for such a thing ought to be sentenced to go home and serve as Governor of his or her State for 8 years and figure out how to pay for it or manage a program like that.

In our State, we talk about money. Up here, a trillion here, a trillion there. But $1.2 billion in the State of Tennessee equals to about a 10-percent income tax on what the people of Tennessee would bring in. We do not have an income tax. So that would be a new 10- percent income tax.

So one of my goals in the health care debate is to make sure we do not get carried away up here with good-sounding ideas and impose huge, unfunded mandates on the States, which, according to the tenth amendment to the Constitution, we are not supposed to. But we superimpose our judgment upon the Governors, the legislators, the mayors, the local politicians who are making decisions about whether to spend money to lower tuition or improve the quality of the community college or provide this form of health care or build this road or bridge. That is their decision. And if we want to require something, we should pay for it from here.

I am going to be very alert on behalf of the States and the citizens of the States to any proposal that would shift unfunded mandates on State and local governments. I hope my colleagues will as well.

My suggestion to every Governor in this country is, over the next few days, to call in your Medicaid director, ask that Medicaid director to call the Senate and say: Tell us exactly how much the Kennedy bill and the Finance Committee bill will impose in new costs on our State if the costs are shifted to the States. Then when we come back at the first of July, we can know about that cost.

I thank the Chair very much. So my interest is not just in additions to the Federal debt but not allowing unfunded mandates to the States.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article from the New York Times from June 22, 2009, showing what condition the States are in. Almost all are in a budget crisis and not in any position to accept this.

I also would like to thank the Senator from Arizona for allowing me to go ahead of him so I can go to the committee and offer an amendment.

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

Madam President, in about an hour, we will be asked to vote on whether the Senate can continue to do what the Senate is supposed to do and that is to amend and debate. When I ran for the Senate, the people of Tennessee sent me up here to represent them. They expected that when I got here, I would have a chance to say what I had to say on their behalf, and sometimes what I think may not be so important but what they think is important. The people of Tennessee know the history of the Senate--as Senator Byrd has so often said--is distinguished only by a couple things. One is virtually an unlimited right to amend, and another is a virtually unlimited right to debate.

What is going to happen at 5:30 is we are going to be asked to vote to cut off amendments and cut off debate. A vote of yes will be a vote to obstruct our right to amend, obstruct our right to debate and to make it impossible for me to represent the people of Tennessee, who voted for me with the idea that I might be able to do that.

Let me explain a little more what I mean by that. A great many people write books about America, but unquestionably I think the best regarded such book is a book by Alexis de Tocqueville, entitled ``Democracy in America.'' When the young Frenchman came to this country, he ran across Davy Crockett and all sorts of people. When he wrote about what he thought might be, in the long term, the greatest danger to the American democracy, he said he thought it might be the ``tyranny of the majority.'' He was afraid that in our type of system, what might happen is that the majority would get control and run over the minority.

The Senate was one of the institutions created to avoid that. So when we get a situation where we have only 40 or 41 Republican Senators and 57 or 58 or 56 or more Democratic Senators, the minority always has a right to make sure there is no tyranny of the majority. It has been the other way and it will be again; when I first came here the Republicans held the majority, and we had 55 Republicans at one point. So a vote of yes at 5:30 is a vote to obstruct the right of Senators to represent the people who hired them to come and offer amendments and speak for them.

Ironically, this vote will give the majority the right to suppress a majority view--because what is the issue that is attempting to be suppressed? The issue is whether we ought to get the government in Washington out of the automobile business. I think most people in

the country are thinking we are having too many Washington takeovers. That is not the American way. We know we have had trouble in this country economically, but taking over banks, insurance companies, student loans, car companies, and now maybe taking over health care-- the American people don't like that.

We have a series of amendments to be offered--both Republican and some with bipartisan support--which would say: Let's get the government out of the automobile business and put it back in the hands of the American people and the free enterprise system of America. That is a majority view in this country.

According to an AutoPacific Survey in the Nashville Tennessean, 81 percent of Americans polled agree that the faster the government gets out of the automotive business the better; 95 percent disagreed that the government is a good overseer of corporations, such as General Motors and Chrysler; 93 percent disagree that having the government in charge of General Motors and Chrysler will result in cars and trucks Americans want to buy. Most Americans don't want a car that a United States Senator engineered, designed, and sold. That is not what we are here for. They know better than that.

According to a Rasmussen Poll of June 13 and 14, 80 percent of those polled believe the government should sell the government stake in the auto companies to private investors ``as soon as possible.'' And 71 percent of those polled believe the government should sell their stake to private investors as soon as possible.

According to the Wall Street Journal on June 18, nearly 70 percent of those surveyed said they had concerns about Federal intervention into the economy, including the President's decision to take an ownership interest in General Motors, put limits on executive compensation, and the prospect of more government involvement in health care. We have a situation where the President is calling the mayor of Detroit to get into the question of whether the headquarters of General Motors is going to be there or in Warren, MI. We have the chairman of the House bailout committee--the House Financial Services Committee--calling the president of General Motors saying: Don't close the warehouse in my district. And all of us in Congress are saying: Please build a car in my district. We will have some Congressmen saying: Don't buy a battery from South Korea; buy one made in my district. We have automobile company executives driving to Washington in their congressionally approved hybrid cars to spend 4 hours testifying and then drive home. How many cars do they design, build, and make while doing this? The American people know the car companies cannot compete if they have 435 congressional political meddlers, 100 senators, plus a whole administration, trying to tell them how to compete in a very complex business.

Senator Bennett of Utah and I, cosponsored by the Republican leader, Senator Kyl, and others, have a bill called the Auto Stock for Every Taxpayer Act. We would like to offer it as an amendment this week and get a vote on it. The Auto Stock for every Taxpayer amendment would say that the Treasury can't use any more TARP funds to bail out General Motors or Chrysler. Also, while the government owns stock in these companies, the Secretary of the Treasury, or his designee, has a fiduciary responsibility to the taxpayer to maximize returns on that investment. And most importantly, our amendment says that within a year after General Motors comes out of bankruptcy, the government should distribute its stock to the 120 million Americans who pay taxes on April 15.

In other words, let's have a big stock distribution, the same way Procter & Gamble did when it distributed stock in Clorox or the same way other companies do every year. We have a core business, the car company, that has nothing to do with the owner, the United States government, and we should give the car company to the owners--the 120 million people who pay taxes. That is what we should do. And the rationale is: I paid for it, I should own it. That is the first amendment we want to offer.

Senator Corker, with a couple of cosponsors, including Senator Warner from the other side of the aisle, has another idea, which I am glad to support. It is a little different approach to the same idea. He would create a limited-liability corporation to manage the government ownership stake in companies in which the government owns at least 20 percent. By the fall of this year that will probably include AIG, Citigroup, and General Motors. The government's assets would be placed in a trust and managed by three independent, nonpolitical trustees. The trustees would have to liquidate the government's interest by December 24, 2011. And there is a waiver process in case the trustees think there is a problem with that deadline.

That is a responsible, interesting approach. Why shouldn't Senator Corker and Senator Warner have a chance to offer that amendment? That is what the majority of people in America would like to see done.

Senator Johanns, a distinguished former Governor of Nebraska, has his Free Enterprise Act of 2009. He has 29 cosponsors. He would like to require congressional approval before the Federal Government can use TARP funds to acquire ownership of an entity through stock.

Senator Thune, a member of the Republican leadership, has the Government Ownership Exit Plan Act of 2009. He would require the Treasury to sell any ownership of a private entity by July 1, 2010, and prohibit the government from acquiring any additional ownership stake in private companies.

Well, I think you can get the drift, Madam President. We have a number of Senators, mostly from this side but some cosponsored from the other side, who say that the American people are tired of Washington takeovers. They know cars aren't going to get better in this country if the government is meddling with them and designing them and building them and making them. I can just imagine what we will have if we meddle. We will have a purple polka dot car that gets 50 miles per gallon and will have a windmill on top and a solar panel on the side, and it will have this part made in this Congressman's district and that part made in that Senator's State, and it probably won't run 5 miles. Then we will lower the price to get people to buy it, all the while losing money, losing competition, and putting real competitors out of business. And then we will have no American automobile industry left. So we need to get the government out of the car business and stop the Washington takeover. And over 80 percent of the American people agree.

So what are we doing in the Senate? We are going to vote at 5:30 to say: No, Senators. No, Senator Corker. No, Senator Warner. No, Senator Alexander. No, Senator Bennett. We are going to say no to the other Senators, you can't continue to debate. You can't continue to offer your amendments. We are going to obstruct your right to do that. We are going to keep you from representing the people of Tennessee, the people of Utah, or the other people you were sent here to represent. We are going to stop the debate; stop the amendment.

That is the tyranny of the majority that Alexis de Tocqueville envisioned. That is not the way the Senate has been running this year. This year in the Senate, Senator Reid has made a good-faith effort, and Republican Senators appreciate that, in saying we are going to have some amendments. That means we are going to have some amendments offered on which some of us don't really want to vote. There have been some amendments I really didn't want to vote on, including some offered by people on my side of the aisle, but that is what we do in the Senate. So why are we doing this? Why are we saying suddenly, no amendments?

So I would hope Senators would agree that at 5:30 we should vote no. We should vote no. And by voting no, we would be saying: Let's continue to debate. Let's continue to amend. A vote yes is a vote to obstruct. A vote no is to continue to debate and continue to amend. And the issue is, shall we take the government ownership of automobile companies and put it, as soon as it is practicable, back in the hands of the American people, where it belongs, in our free enterprise system? That is the American way.

We have at least four different options. We have a whole menu here. If you don't like the Alexander-Bennet

amendment, vote for the Corker amendment. If you don't like that, vote for one of the other amendments. We have four ways to go about it, all carefully thought out, all in front of everybody. Why don't we do that? That is what the Senate does.

So I prefer the way the Senate has operated pretty much all the time, up to today, which is to say: Senators, offer your amendments, take your votes. Today is an aberration -a change away from the way the Senate should function. My old friend, the late Alex Haley, author of Roots, used to say: Find the good and praise it. Well, I can find plenty of good in the way the majority leader has conducted the Senate this year by allowing debate and amendments. I would consider this an aberration.

I hope we will vote to continue to amend, to continue to debate, and get the Senate back to the practice we had most of this year, which is to say: If you have an amendment, Senator, bring it on over, call it up, and we will vote on it, and then we will go on to the next thing.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article from the American Spectator entitled ``Are There Obamashares in Your Future?''

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

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

I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 10 minutes as in morning business on the Republican side.