Floor Statements

Madam President, I just finished reading an excellent address by the Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. Secretary Duncan made this to the National Governors Association. He said this:

I am continually struck by the profound wisdom underlying

the American political system. The genius of our system is

that much of our power that shapes our future was wisely

distributed to the States instead of being confined in

Washington.

Continuing, he says:

Our best ideas have always come from State and local

governments, which are the real hothouses of innovation in

America.

Secretary Duncan says:

On so many issues: energy efficiency, mass transit, public

safety, housing, economic development, [and then he goes on

to say] education, it is the States that are often leading

the way, sometimes with Federal help and sometimes without.

That is indeed the American way. That is my comment. The American way was recognized by President Lincoln who honored the importance of States. He argued for a limited Federal Government. He used the limited Federal Government to confer opportunities through the Transcontinental Railway, the Land Grant Colleges, the Homestead Act, instead of a ``Washington knows best'' command and control sort of Federal Government.

It has been our tradition to rely on decentralism of government and a free market to build our country, and it has given us the best colleges and universities, and a standard of living that produces 25 percent of all of the money in the world for just 5 percent of the people in the world, the Americans who live here.

Unfortunately, the wisdom that Secretary Duncan expressed seems to lie almost exclusively in the Department of Education in this administration. It is an oasis of common sense, because at an astonishing rate, almost everything else in Washington seems to think that Washington knows best.

I was visited by a European auto executive the other day who said to me jokingly: Well, I am glad to be in the new American automotive capital: Washington, DC. It is not only America's automotive headquarters, it is becoming America's banking center and it is becoming America's insurance center.

Unfortunately, even in education, Washington, DC is now about to become America's student loan center for 15 million students, because the administration believes Washington knows

best. Instead of having 2,000 banks make 15 million loans, we are going to have the U.S. Department of Education make the Secretary the banker of the year.

And now, we are discussing in the HELP Committee and in the Finance Committee a brazen takeover representing 16 percent of our economy which would say: Washington knows best about our health care system. Washington will become America's health care center as well.

The health care bill we are discussing in the HELP Committee, of which I am a member, would expand one failed government program, Medicaid, and create a new one, a new government insurance program, a so-called public option.

Those who support the public option--this includes our President-- feel very strongly about it, and they speak eloquently about it. They say things such as one Senator said yesterday at our hearing, we need to ``keep the insurance companies honest.'' That is why we need a government-run insurance program. We need some ``good old-fashioned competition,'' so they said, and, ``we need to keep prices in check.'' They say that is why we need a government-run health insurance program.

Well, if that is the argument, perhaps we ought to start doing that with every sector of the economy, starting with automobiles. Why not buy the rest of General Motors--we already own 60 percent of it--and let's create a government car, and let's keep what is left of the American automobile industry honest by doing that. Let's have some good old-fashioned competition to keep prices in check.

We could own the car company, we could regulate the car company, we could subsidize the car company. And we could create a car that we knew is exactly the right size, the right color, that got 50 miles a gallon, that ran on ethanol, that had a solar panel, and that had a windmill on top. That would be the government car.

To be fair to the American communities across the country, because we would want to be, we could mandate that equal numbers of parts for the government car could be made in every congressional district and no one could buy an electric battery made in South Korea, even if it was the best battery in the world and would make the Chevy Volt an instant success.

We could have a board of directors on our government car company of 120 Members of the Congress or Senate. All of us, great car experts, right? We know how to build cars and trucks, how to design them, how to build them, how to sell them. And there are 120 of us who are the chairman or ranking member of some committee or subcommittee that has the authority to call the head of the car company into Washington, presumably driving his or her congressionally approved hybrid car, to come testify for 3 or 4 hours, and then drive back to Detroit having not a minute that day to design, build, or make a car.

That is what we could do. And we know what the result would be. The result would be a car a lot like the Soviet cars we all used to laugh about years ago. They were clunkers. They were the butt of jokes. They barely worked. No one wanted to buy them. And, of course, they kept lowering the price, so that people would want them. Pretty soon they priced everybody else out of business. There was only one car, the government car, and people either drove the government car or they walked, or they took the Metro, or they found some other way, maybe a bicycle.

That is what we are talking about here when we talk about a government-run health insurance program to keep the health insurance companies honest. It is the same idea as having a government-run car program to keep the American automobile companies honest.

We already have one government-run health care program. We call it Medicaid. It is a terrible example. The Government Accountability Office says we literally waste 10 percent of every dollar of all of the dollars that we give to Medicaid. That is $32 billion a year. It is filled with lawsuits, bureaucracies, inefficiencies. It is a tremendous expense to States. It is ruining higher education because Governors and legislatures are putting every available dollar into Medicaid, and they have nothing left for the community colleges.

The worst of it is it does not provide service. It is like giving you a Metro pass and there is no subway. Approximately 40 percent of the doctors will not serve Medicaid patients--low-income Americans--because of the low reimbursement rates.

So what do we have with our great government program called Medicaid? Twice as many Medicaid patients go to the emergency room to get their care as do uninsured Americans going to the emergency room. That is what we have with that government program.

Yet the Kennedy bill which we are considering in the Senate HELP Committee, the only bill we are considering even though there are other alternatives on the table, would expand that government-run program by 150 percent, increase its costs both to the Federal Government and to States, all in the name of keeping insurance companies honest.

There is a better way to give subsidies or grants to low-income Americans so they may buy their own health insurance.

There is a better way with autos as well. Instead of having a government car for the next 4 or 5 years, with politicians meddling in how GM and Chrysler operate their business, let's give the stock we own back to the American people. Give the 60 percent of General Motors stock and the 8 percent of Chrysler stock to the 120 million Americans who paid taxes on April 15 of this year. The reason would be they paid for it, they should own it. Some might say: Well, let's sell the stock. I would favor selling the stock. I would like to get the stock out of Washington and end this incestuous relationship of Congressmen calling up the President of General Motors and saying: Do not close the warehouse in my district. But it might take several years, according to the President of GM, to sell that block of stock. So the faster way to do it is a stock distribution, a corporate spinoff.

Proctor & Gamble did this with Clorox in 1969. Time Warner did it with Time Warner Cable in March of 2009. All of the stockholders of Time Warner simply received shares in Time Warner Cable. PepsiCo did it with its restaurant businesses--KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell. If you owned shares of PepsiCo, suddenly you had some of Colonel Sander's stock. PepsiCo shareholders received one share in the new restaurant company.

Madam President, would you let me know when I have 1 minute remaining, please?

I ask unanimous consent for an additional minute.

These companies did all of this when the main company decided that the subsidiary was not consistent with the core business. That is what we should do with General Motors--give taxpayers its shares and get General Motors back in the marketplace where it belongs. This idea is fast, it is simple, and it creates a market for the shares.

The United States is not like the Soviet Union where people are not used to handling shares. Half of American families own shares of stock. Distributing government owned shares in General Motors to taxpayers would create a fan base for the next Chevy, like the fan base for the Green Bay Packers, where the people in the community own the football team.

I have been giving ``Car Czar'' awards to political meddlers to put a spotlight on this incestuous relationship in Washington. American manufacturing of autos will not succeed if Washington is America's new automotive headquarters. Neither will American insurance succeed, neither will American banking succeed, neither will students be happy waiting outside the Department of Education for their student loans, and neither will health care help low-income Americans if Washington is the headquarters.

Later today or tomorrow I hope to be able to offer my amendment, cosponsored by Senators Bennett, Kyl, and others, to give all of the General Motors stock and all of the Chrysler stock our federal government owns back to

the people who paid for it. They paid for it; they should own it. Let's get the Washington meddlers out of the automobile business and auto manufacturing back on its feet.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record newspaper articles supporting the Auto Stock for Every Taxpayer Act I have introduced and plan to offer as soon as I am able.

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

Mr. President, today in the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions--HELP--Committee of the Senate, after several days of discussions, we are beginning to work on the health reform legislation that was proposed by our chairman, Senator Kennedy. As we begin our work today, I want to suggest that we put aside the legislation we were working on and that we start over because the Kennedy bill we are dealing with is so flawed and expensive that it cannot be fixed. There are better proposals available for us to work on, proposals advanced by Senator Burr, by Senator Coburn, there is a bipartisan proposal that Senator Wyden and Senator Bennett have offered, and Senator Hatch, a former chairman of the committee, is working with a number of Senators on a proposal that seems, to me, to be a much better base for a beginning.

As we go to work on health care reform, these are the things we should keep in mind. We would want to be able to say to the American people that we are interested in all 300 million of you, not just the 47 million uninsured; that our goal is to provide for each one of you a health care plan that you can afford, a plan in which you and your doctor--not Washington, DC--make the decisions, a plan that emphasizes prevention and wellness. We want to give low-income Americans the same kind of health plan that most Americans already have. We do not want to make it harder for American businesses to compete in the world marketplace by adding to their costs. And we do want a plan that your children and your grandchildren can afford so they are not saddled with a massive debt that devalues the dollars they earn and the quality of their lives.

As the President has repeatedly said, the best way for us to realize all those objectives is to fashion this health care reform in a truly bipartisan way. The bill we are marking up today in the HELP committee is not ready to be considered. We do not have the details of the bill. We do not know the costs of the bill--even though the President, within the last few days, has said that pay-as-you-go rule is important. If we are going to spend a dollar, he said, we ought to save a dollar. Or he might have said raise taxes a dollar. That is what the President said. So surely we are not going to mark up a bill or finish marking it up until we know exactly whether we are going to have to save a dollar or tax a dollar or how many dollars we will need to save or tax in order to pass the bill.

This we do know about the legislation our committee is considering. There are 47 million Americans uninsured today; it leaves 30 million of them still uninsured. We know that it expands one failing government program, Medicaid, and creates another, putting Washington in between you and your doctor. It reduces the ability of employers to give incentives for wellness and prevention--it doesn't increase it, it reduces it. It freezes 58 million low-income Americans into a Medicaid Program that offers sporadic, substandard care; is so expensive it will literally bankrupt States; and our Government Accountability Office has told us it wastes $1 for every $10 it spends--that is $32 billion a year, three-fourths as much as we spend on all the prescription drugs for senior Americans.

According to unbiased government officials, its additions to the national debt are astronomical. The Congressional Budget Office told us yesterday that the Kennedy bill, so far as it is written, will add $1 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years. That does not include the Medicaid expansion or the expansion of reimbursements for doctors seeing Medicaid patients. It does not include the government health insurance option. It doesn't include the employer mandate.

The Baucus bill, we are told, according to press reports, in the Finance Committee, may cost $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years and an independent study released yesterday says the Kennedy bill may mean $4 trillion. The National Governors Association says Medicaid itself will add a half trillion dollars to the State costs over the next 10 years if reimbursement rates are increased as they are proposed to be increased. This is on top of what the Washington Post said earlier this week is a set of proposals by the Obama administration that would add nearly three times as much to the national debt over the next 10 years as we spent in all of World War II.

This bill, I am sorry to say, is absolutely not a bipartisan bill. We are having a bipartisan discussion. We are all very friendly and civil to one another. Chris Dodd is doing a tremendous job of sitting in for Senator Kennedy. We all like him, but we know what a bipartisan bill is, it is when 15 or 20 of us from different sides of the aisle sit around a table and start from scratch and take our best ideas and put it together and get 60 or 70 or 75 votes for something. We have done it many times on energy, on intelligence, but we are not doing it on this. We were presented with a bill last Thursday, or some of a bill, and told: This is it. This is the way we are going to do it. We are going to have a lot of discussion about it but this is the way we should do it.

We should start over. If we start over based on the discussions we have already had, we should be able to agree that every American should be covered. We should be able to agree that it should be at a cost each American could afford. We should be able to agree that preexisting conditions do not disqualify you, and that prevention and wellness is encouraged. We should be able to agree that low-income individuals have the same choices, same opportunities for health insurance that the rest of us do. And we should be able

to agree that Americans should have choices.

On all of those things we ought to be able to agree, if we were starting from scratch. If we do all those things, why do we need to create a so-called government-run insurance plan? That is the big difference of opinion we have in the committee and I believe on the Senate floor. A government-run insurance plan inevitably leads to a Washington takeover, of which we are having far too many these days: Washington takeovers of banks, Washington takeovers of insurance companies, Washington takeovers of student loans, Washington takeover of car companies. Why do we need a Washington takeover of our health system? And why would a government-run insurance plan lead to a Washington takeover?

Think of it this way. It is like putting an elephant in a room with some mice and saying: All right, fellows, compete. I think you know what would happen. After a little while only the elephant would be left. The elephant would be your only choice.

We have a very good example of what that elephant would look like. We call it Medicare, a program that every State has, that the Federal Government pays 62 percent of and the State pays 38 percent, on the average, and it provides health care to low-income Americans, those who are not on Medicaid.

I would like to find a way to require every Senator who votes for expanding Medicaid coverage to be required to go home and serve as Governor of his or her home State for 8 years and try to manage and pay for a Medicaid Program that is expanded to meet the needs of what we are trying to do. The only way you could like the Medicaid Program is if you have been in Washington a long time and you don't have to manage it, you don't have to pay for it, and you don't have to get your health care from it.

Let me be very specific. The Medicaid Program--and I dealt with this for years as Governor myself--is filled with lawsuits. It is riddled with Federal court consent decrees from 25 years ago that restrict the ability of government and legislators to make improvements. It is filled with inefficiencies and delays that take a Governor a year to get permission from Washington to do something 38 other States are doing and, I mentioned, it has intolerable waste of taxpayer dollars. The General Accounting Office says $32 billion, every year, is wasted in the Medicaid Programs. That is 10 percent of all the money that is appropriated to it.

The second thing wrong with Medicaid, what a Senator who goes home to serve as Governor would find out, it would require higher State taxes at a time when States are making massive cuts in services and are very nearly bankrupt. The State of Tennessee, by my own calculations--I believe it would require a 10-percent new State income tax by the year 2015, if the Senate were to take the Kennedy bill and the Baucus draft and enact them today.

Why would it do that? The State director of Medicaid in our State says if we increase Medicaid coverage to 150 percent of the Federal poverty level, that costs the State of Tennessee $572 million. If the Federal Government pays for that, the bill for the Federal Government for that increase is $1.6 billion, just for the Tennesseans covered.

It would also increase the pay for Medicaid providers to 110 percent of what Medicare pays physicians. That would add another $600 million in Tennessee, because Tennessee's Medicaid pays physicians 70 percent of what Medicare pays physicians. And Medicare pays physicians 80 percent of what private companies pay physicians.

So the increased costs, just for Tennessee of the Medicaid expansion in the Kennedy bill, is $1.2 billion, according to our State Medicaid directors. If the Federal Government has to pay the whole thing, it is $3.5 billion.

But then they are talking in the Finance Committee about shifting those costs back after 5 years to the States. So here comes a $1.2 billion bill to whoever is Governor of Tennessee in 2015.

Last thing, to put this into perspective, they tried to pass an income tax in Tennessee. Today, a 4-percent income tax would produce $400 million a year. We are talking about finding $1.2 billion a year.

The National Governors Association said increasing the Federal poverty level to 150 percent would increase the cost to $360 billion over 10 years in all the States, and increases in Medicare reimbursement would bring that total to half a trillion in all of the States. That is on top of the trillion dollars that the Congressional Budget Office has said Senator Kennedy's bill already costs.

One of the effects of this is it would absolutely destroy our public colleges and universities across the country. It is already damaging them, because Governors and legislators are finding they barely have enough money to keep up with increasing Medicaid costs. They have nothing left for colleges and universities. So the quality of the universities goes down and the tuition at the universities goes up.

Finally, Senators serving as a Governor of their home State trying to manage an expanded Medicaid Program would find that most of the people, maybe a majority, would find a hard time getting service. Today, 40 percent of doctors nationally do not provide full service to Medicaid patients because of the low reimbursement rates.

So any version of the bill we are now considering in the Senate HELP Committee will explode into complexity and astronomical spending and will never succeed.

There is a better way. There are several better ways. Instead of stuffing low-income Americans into one failing government health care program, Medicaid, that now provides substandard care and creating a new government-run program, why do we not give low-income Americans government grants or subsidies so they can purchase private insurance as is provided by the Wyden-Bennett bill, for example, which has a cost of zero to the taxpayers, according to the Congressional Budget Office; or the Coburn-Burr bill, or Senator Gregg's bill, or the bill that Senator Hatch is working on with Senator Cornyn and others.

Those are the ways to meet our objectives. So here are our objectives once more: We want to provide health coverage to 300 million Americans, not just to the 47 million uninsured. We want for you a health care plan that you can afford. We want for you a plan in which you and your doctor make the decisions, not Washington, DC. We want a plan that emphasizes prevention and wellness. We want a plan that gives low- income Americans more of the same opportunities and choices for health care that most Americans already have. And we want a plan that does not make it harder for American businesses to compete in the world marketplace by adding to their cost.

We want, in the end, a program, a health care program your grandchildren and your children can afford and does not heap trillions of dollars of new debt up on them, that devalues the dollar they will eventually earn, and the quality of their lives.

As the President has repeatedly said, the best way to do that is in a bipartisan way. But in order to do that, we need to put aside the bill we are working on today in the HELP Committee and start over again in a truly bipartisan way to meet those objectives.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 12 minutes as in morning business.

Madam President, I am looking for a way to offer an amendment to the health care bill that would sentence every Senator who votes to increase Medicaid eligibility to 150 percent of the Federal poverty level to a term of 8 years as Governor in his or her home State, so they can have an opportunity to manage the program, to raise taxes, and to find a way to pay for that sort of proposal. If we Senators were to increase Medicaid in that way, and go home, we would find first that Medicaid is a terrible base upon which to build an improved health care system, because it is filled with lawsuits. It is filled with Federal court consent decrees that sometimes are 20 and 25 years old and take away from the Governor's and the legislature's authority to make decisions. It is filled with inefficiency. It is filled with delays. Governors request waivers to run their systems, and it may take a year or more for approval from the Federal Government for relatively simple requests. And finally, it is filled with an intolerable waste of taxpayer money because of fraud that is documented by the Government Accountability Office. As much as 10 percent of the entire program--$32 billion a year--according to the Government Accountability Office is lost to fraud. That is the Medicaid Program.

The second thing a Senator who goes home to serve as Governor for 8 years would find is that increasing coverage in this way will require much higher State taxes at a time when most every State is making a massive cut in services, and a few States are nearly bankrupt. For example, in my State of Tennessee, if the Kennedy bill were to pass, which would increase Medicaid expansion by 150 percent and increase reimbursement rates to 110 percent of Medicare, it would require, based on our estimates, a new State income tax of about 10 percent to pay for the increased costs just for our State, as well as perhaps adding another half a trillion dollars or so to the Federal debt.

Finally, if we were to base new coverage for the 58 million people now in Medicaid, and others who need insurance, upon this government- run Medicaid Program these Americans--who are the people we are talking about in this debate and who are the ones we hope will have more of the same kind of health care the rest of us have--we would find that a large number of them would have a hard time finding a doctor. Today 40 percent of doctors already refuse to provide full service to Medicaid patients because of the low reimbursement rates, and if we simply add more to that Medicaid Program, these people will have an even harder time getting served.

There is a better idea. Instead of expanding a failing government health care program which traps 58 million of our poorest citizens in that government-run program that provides substandard care, the better way to extend medical care to those low-income Americans now served by Medicaid is to give them government tax credits, or government subsidies, or vouchers, or money in their pockets they can use to purchase private health insurance of their choice. That sort of option for health care reform is before the Senate, if it could only be considered. It has been offered on one end by Senator Coburn and Senator Burr. It has been offered at the same time by Senator Gregg of New Hampshire. It has been offered in a bipartisan way by Senator Wyden and Senator Bennett who have offered a proposal that would basically give these dollars to the people who need help, let them buy their insurance, and according to the same Congressional Budget Office that said the Kennedy proposal costs at least 1 trillion more dollars, the CBO has said that Bennett-Wyden would cost zero more.

I ask that I am informed when I have 1 minute left.

Madam President, during the last 6 months, the four words we have heard most in Washington are ``more debt'' and ``Washington takeover,'' and all four words apply to the health care debate. We have seen a Washington takeover of banks, of insurance companies, of student loans, of car companies, and now, perhaps, of health care. The President insists on a government-run insurance option as part of a health care reform plan which would inevitably lead to a Washington-run health plan.

Why would it do that? Well, putting a government-run and subsidized plan in competition with our private health insurance plans would be like putting an elephant in a room with some mice and saying: OK, guys and gals, compete. I think we know what would happen. The elephant would win the competition and the elephant would be your only remaining choice.

As for more debt, the Congressional Budget Office, in a letter sent to Senator Kennedy, estimated that his bill, which is the only legislation the Senate Health Committee is considering, would add another $1 trillion during the next 10 years in order to cover 16 million uninsured Americans, leaving 30 million uninsured. That is another $1 trillion over the next 10 years that, according to yesterday's Washington Post, already is nearly three times as much as was spent in all of World War II. The Post said the proposed new debt over the next 10 years, before we get to the health care bill, is three times as much as we spent in World War II. The Congressional Budget Office estimate didn't even consider the cost of the Kennedy bill's proposals to expand Medicaid coverage.

So let's talk about Medicaid. Every State offers it. It provides health care in a variety of ways to low-income Americans who are not eligible for Medicare. The Federal Government pays about 60 percent of the costs and writes most of the rules; the States pay the rest. Fifty- eight million low-income Americans are trapped in Medicaid. It is the only place of any significant size where we don't have competition in our health care system. Think of the elephant in the room.

It was my experience as Governor--I believe it is for most Governors--that it is not only an administrative mess with substandard care, the Medicaid Program, but its costs have spiraled out of control, threatening the viability of public universities and community colleges because there is no money left for the States to support them.

Here is what would happen in Tennessee if the Kennedy bill passed, according to the State of Tennessee's Medicaid director. Our State costs would go up $572 million if we increased coverage to 150 percent of Federal poverty. If the Fed pays for this, the Fed's cost would be $1.6 billion--I mean the Federal budget paying for all of it, because normally the Federal budget pays two-thirds, the State one-third. If the State has to also provide Medicaid payments to physicians at 110 percent of Medicare, this would add another $600 million in costs to the State of Tennessee. Thus, the proposal of the combination of the Health and the Finance Committees' bills that are being considered would be 1.2 billion new dollars for Tennessee. If you add the Federal Government's increase in costs

just for the Tennessee program to which the Tennessee program was expanded, it would be $3.3 billion.

So you can see why the Kennedy bill has been called so expensive. That is not all. The Finance Committee has been discussing turning back to the States by 2015 these increased costs, although the Finance Committee is talking about a smaller expansion of coverage. So imagine a Senator going home to the State of Tennessee--it won't be me, because I have already had the privilege of being Governor--but say if one went back to be Governor of Tennessee, what would one find if we passed the Kennedy bill as it is now proposed? We would find a bill by 2015 of 1.2 billion in today's dollars, and where would the Governor get the money? Well, when one Governor proposed a 4-percent State income tax in Tennessee in 2004, a 4-percent income tax would bring in 400 million new dollars. We need $1.2 billion under the Kennedy bill to pay for the expansion of Medicaid. So to raise nearly $1.2 billion, a new State income tax of more than 10 percent would be needed, if all other services were held flat, and the Governor has already said that most State functions will see a decrease in funding after the stimulus money goes away.

This same problem would be true for all States. The National Governors Association says if we assume that all individuals under 150 percent of poverty are covered and there is no change in reimbursement rates, the cost to the States would be $360 billion more over the next 10 years. If you also increase the reimbursement rate for physicians from say 72 percent to 83 percent, the Governors Association says the new cost is $500 billion more over 10 years.

Then there is the fraud in the Medicaid Program. The Government Accountability Office says 10 percent of it is fraud--$32 billion a year--about three-fourths of the amount we spend on prescription drugs for all seniors. Then there is the problem of access of care, with 40 percent of doctors already not being willing to provide full service to patients who are on Medicaid. So why would we expand this government- run program when it is filled with inefficiencies, delay, and waste, when it would bankrupt States, when it would add hundreds of billions of dollars to the Federal debt, and when it would provide substandard service when, instead, we could pass the Coburn-Burr bill, or the Gregg bill, or the Wyden-Bennett bill and give to the 58 million low-income Americans who are trapped in a failing government program the dollars they need to purchase private health insurance much like the rest of us have?

I hope I can find a way to offer an amendment that would require any Senator who votes for a 150-percent increase in Medicaid, who says that Medicaid expansion will go to 150 percent of the Federal poverty level, will be sentenced to go home and serve for 8 years as Governor of his or her State so they can find out what it is like to manage such a program or to raise taxes to pay for it.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record following my remarks the letter from Douglas Elmendorf of the Congressional Budget Office to Senator Kennedy of June 15 stating that his bill would add $1 trillion more over the next 10 years to the debt, and that doesn't even include the Medicaid expansions I have talked about.

I also ask unanimous consent that an article from the Wall Street Journal of yesterday talking about State budget gaps, which shows what dire straits many States are in be printed in the Record.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I would like to report a tremendous historic development in the ability of our country to have clean air, an effective way to deal with climate change, and enough low-cost, reliable electricity to help keep jobs in this country. Yesterday I attended a press conference from a company, Babcock & Wilcox. Also included was the Tennessee Valley Authority. The company and TVA announced that Babcock & Wilcox will soon make an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for permission to start building and selling a small nuclear reactor that can be built in a factory, shipped by railway to a site, and put together like Lego blocks at the site. The nuclear reactor is a 125-megawatt reactor. That compares with the large nuclear plants, of which we have 104 today in the United States. Those plants produce, on average, 1,000 megawatts of electricity. This would be 125. So the real prospect exists that we will be able to have, in this country, nuclear reactors for electricity that might cost as little as one-tenth as much to build, can be built in 3 years instead of 6, and will produce, as I said, 125 megawatts instead of 1,000-- making it easier to integrate them into our electric grid--and can be built in a factory and shipped to a customer.

The reason I am excited about this prospect is it has a real chance of happening. No one has built more small reactors in the world than Babcock & Wilcox, and the Tennessee Valley Authority is the largest public utility in the United States and the only utility in the United States that is currently building a nuclear powerplant.

Republicans and, I am sure, many Democrats, but certainly Republicans in the Senate and the House, unanimously believe our goal as a country ought to be to build 100 new large nuclear powerplants over the next 20 years, while we figure out renewable electricity. The reason we want to do that is we want to deal with climate change. We want clean air, but we want to be able to keep jobs here at the same time. If climate change is the inconvenient problem, nuclear power is the inconvenient solution.

Why is that? Climate change is caused by carbon that comes from coal plants and from a variety of other sources. Forty percent of the carbon that is produced in the United States comes from coal-fired powerplants. But if we are looking for a way to produce electricity in a way that is pollution free and carbon free, 70 percent of all the pollution-free, carbon-free electricity we have today comes from our nuclear plants. Six percent of our clean electricity comes from the Sun, the wind, and the Earth.

One day it may be that we are able to make more of our electricity from the Sun, the wind, and the Earth. But at the moment, not much is available. It is expensive and the Sun is only available when the Sun shines and the wind is only available when the wind blows. If you are wanting to operate your computer, or manufacture an automobile in Illinois or Tennessee, or turn on your light at night, you don't want to have to pray that the wind is blowing or that the Sun is shining. You want reliable, low-cost electricity.

In Tennessee, we are excited about the prospect of, one day, solar energy making a bigger difference in our electrical grid. In fact, two big new plants have moved into our State to make polysilicon, which is the product that goes into the solar cells that go on the top of your house. Each of those plants uses 120 megawatts of electricity. Where will they get that electricity? One reason they are in Tennessee is because the TVA supplies a lot of low-cost, reliable electricity. That comes from coal and nuclear power and a little bit from natural gas in our State. That is pretty much the way it is around the country. Solar power is not yet low-cost, reliable electricity. You can't run the plant making the solar energy products on solar power or wind power today. One day we may, but in the meantime, while we are trying to rebuild the auto industry in Michigan and Illinois and Wisconsin and Tennessee, we want low-cost, reliable electricity. We want our Alcoa plant to stay open in Blount County, in Maryville, where I am from in Tennessee. Why is it closed? The cost of the electricity. What will open it? A 20-year contract on low-cost, reliable electricity. If we say to the Alcoa plant: We will sell you a lot of wind power, they will say: But the wind doesn't blow in our area. If we say: We will sell you solar power, they will say: It is four times as much and we might like to operate a night shift and you can't store it.

But what we will be able to say, in light of this new development we heard about yesterday--we can say to the Alcoa plant, we can say it to Eastman Chemical in Kingsport, we can say it to the two plants making materials for solar cells: We can move in a 125-megawatt nuclear reactor, put it near your site, and supply all the low-cost, reliable electricity you need.

Another use for this new reactor could be to help us clean up our coal plants. We have a clean air problem in Tennessee, as does much of America. I am very much hopeful the Environmental Protection Agency or the Congress or some combination will reinstate the CAIR rule to deal with nitrogen and sulfur and mercury, for our health in this country.

The small reactor might be used as a substitute for coal plants. Some of the coal plants we have in the TVA system and around the country are very old and very dirty. The newest ones are much more efficient and a lot cleaner. It might make sense to take the nuclear reactor, the small one, and put two of them together where an existing coal plant is. There are a lot of possibilities for this. Instead of 100 nuclear plants in 20 years, we may have another option. We may be able to have 400 or 500 small nuclear reactors in 20 years. They may be 125 megawatts here or two together or three together.

My fellow Tennessean, Al Gore, who won the Nobel Prize for his campaign on the dangers of global warming, has a line he often uses about nuclear power. ``Nuclear power may have a role to play,'' Al says, ``but unfortunately, nuclear reactors come only in one size-- extra large.''

Until yesterday, you couldn't disagree with the former Vice President. Ever since President Eisenhower beached a 65-megawatt Navy submarine reactor at Shippingport, PA, in 1967, under the Atoms for Peace Program, we have been building reactors bigger and bigger. Most of the ones on the drawing board today, as I mentioned, are at least 1,200 megawatts. I believe we have 17 applications now for new nuclear powerplants. Also, one is being built right now and that is completing an old plant at Watts Bar.

We have not built a traditional large nuclear power plant from start to finish in the last 30 years in the United States. That is quite an irony. We invented the technology. We have used it successfully since the 1950s and without incident in our nuclear Navy. Twenty percent of our electricity comes from our older plants, the ones we built more than 30 years ago. They produce 20 percent of our electricity today and 70 percent of our clean electricity. But for 30 years we have not been building them.

In the meantime, France--that we don't usually like to emulate--has. France is 80 percent nuclear, and they have among the lowest carbon emissions--that contribute to global warming--in the European Union and among the lowest electric rates in the European Union. They are even selling electricity to Germany, which has invested money in solar energy and windmills and stopped nuclear but has found they do not have enough electricity to keep their jobs.

India and China, with our help, are building nuclear powerplants because they want clean, reliable electricity at a low cost.

We have appropriated money to help do that and sign treaties to help do that. Now even our President said the other day that Iran has a right to build nuclear powerplants. Well, if Iran has a right to do it, why don't we do it? We invented it. We are the ones who want low-cost, clean electricity. Let's go ahead and do it. So it will be 20 years, but it takes a long time to get one of those projects through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. I mentioned there were 17 applications. It takes another 5 or 6 years after you get through the 2- or 3-year process at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build these big plants. So that is a long ways.

If you are a utility and all you really need is 300 new megawatts to meet growing demand, this new, more flexible approach--this smaller reactor--is going to lower costs and open the door to more widespread use of nuclear power. It will help us achieve the goal of building 100 new nuclear powerplants in the next 20 years in order to deal with climate change.

To those who are still skeptical of nuclear power, we must say, if global warming is an inconvenient problem, then nuclear power is the inconvenient solution.

Babcock & Wilcox and TVA have shown us this new approach. They have proposed a reactor that can be built in a factory in 3 years, shipped to the site on rails, and fit together like Lego blocks. That is a very original idea. The larger reactors are still going to be necessary. We are going to need the power. But as B&W and the TVA have reminded us, there is more than one way to skin a cat. What we are seeing here today is what the business schools call a disruptive technology. I hope the public and the press will appreciate how the Tennessee Valley Authority is fulfilling its mission as a public utility by taking such a progressive stance on technology.

America's nuclear technology has been falling behind. Of that, there is no doubt. The French, the Japanese, and the Russians are all selling reactors out in the world, to India and China

and other places. This is going to make them sit up and take notice because the concept we saw yesterday is perfect for developing nations that do not have the infrastructure to handle the larger reactors. It is perfect for small towns and factories all over America that may need only 125 megawatts and cannot afford something larger. It is what is called ``distributed generation''--producing electricity onsite instead of wheeling it from deserts or mountaintops hundreds or thousands of miles away. As the old saying goes, ``Small is beautiful.''

One of the things we are going to have to face as we think about what kind of electricity we want for the future is the landscape of America. You know, landscape is a part of our environment as well, and the landscape becomes a real concern. When we look at the energy sprawl that could be created by some of the renewable energy projects, it takes a lot of space to produce a little bit of electricity.

For example, a big nuclear plant can be located on about 1 square mile. That is one that produces 1,000 megawatts. To get that much electricity from biomass, which means woodchips or dead trees, you would need a forest the size of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park--that is 550,000 acres--and the number of trucks that would be coming in and out to haul the stuff in and back out would be in the hundreds every day. You would be talking about millions of tons of woodchips and dead trees a year. So that is for just one big nuclear plant equivalent of electricity. On the other hand, to create the same amount of electricity from wind turbines that you would get from one nuclear plant, you would have to cover about 270 square miles.

In our part of the world, in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, we do not really want to see these 50-story towers with blades that are as long as football fields, with flashing lights on top that can be seen for 20 miles. We do not want to see them along the foothills of the Smokies, and I doubt the people of Virginia want to see them along the Blue Ridge Parkway, and I doubt they want to see them in Pennsylvania or in the White Mountains. And in the Eastern United States, they only work on the ridgetops, and they do not work very well. That is why there is only one wind farm in the entire Southeastern United States. It is in Tennessee and only operates 18 percent of the time, and part of that time is at night when we have a lot of extra electricity. So that does not work very well.

The Senator from California, Mrs. Feinstein, with whom I work on the Appropriations Interior Subcommittee, has expressed her concern about the size of the solar thermal plants proposed for the Mojave Desert, which she has tried to protect for years. They would have to be 5 miles on each side in order to get a decent amount of electricity, and that is only during the daytime.

You have the wind and you have the Sun, but you still need either the coal plant or the nuclear plant. So I believe there is a place for wind: far offshore, the middle of Lake Michigan, or in parts of the wind corridor. I believe there is a great future for solar because solar power comes during the peak times, during the day when we can use it. Perhaps we can use our rooftops to provide the space. So we think that is more promising for our area. I think biomass is useful, but I have already expressed how large an area it would take to produce a little electricity. And we might be able to get a few hundred megawatts out of the Mississippi River by putting turbines in the water.

So how are we going to reindustrialize America over the next 25 years? How are we going to keep those auto suppliers and assembly plants and aluminum plants and even the new plants making solar in our country if we have sky-high costs of unreliable electricity? We need another option.

While we are cleaning up the coal plants, while we are figuring out renewable electricity, we now have another way to skin the cat; that is, the small nuclear reactor, 125 megawatts. That is about the size of electricity that is produced by Fort Loudoun Dam in our State. It is significant, but it is a lot smaller than the big ones we are used to.

What I really hope is that when Americans see this user-friendly reactor sitting underground--that is another aspect: A lot of it, including the storage of the waste, goes underground. Another aspect is it is only two stories tall. Most people think nuclear plants, the big ones--they see these big cooling towers. That is to cool the water that has to be used. But these small ones are air-cooled, so they don't use much water. That is a great advantage. And they are not an eyesore, they are two stories tall. I mean, remember, the wind turbines are 50- stories tall, producing almost no electricity in a consistent way. The nuclear reactor is producing low-cost energy 90 percent of the time, and it is two stories tall.

So I think with this development people may begin to rethink nuclear power. It is already happening out there. People are recognizing that the dangers of nuclear have been widely exaggerated, there is nothing to be fearful about, and once we realize that, we are going to see nuclear power for what it is: an appropriate technology that will enable us to meet our future energy needs without overwhelming the world with pollution and warming the planet.

So I hope my colleagues in the Senate will join me in saying congratulations to Babcock & Wilcox and especially to the Tennessee Valley Authority for leading the country in this renaissance of nuclear energy. Congratulations, good luck, and I hope there are many of these projects on the drawing boards.

This is the way for us to clean the air, deal with global warming, and at the same time have low-cost, reliable electricity in large amounts so that we can keep our jobs here.

There is one other aspect to this that I ought to mention. As we talk about the different forms of energy, people worry that so much of what it takes to build the wind turbines or the solar plants or even the large nuclear plants, and how they may be manufactured overseas and that the jobs are there and not here. All of the jobs for the small nuclear reactors will be in the United States--virtually all of them. So this is not only American-made energy, all of the parts that go to building what I hope will be hundreds of these small reactors over time can be made and will be made right here in the United States.

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

Mr. President, this is the ``Car Czar'' award for Wednesday, June 10, 2009. It is a service to taxpayers from America's new automotive headquarters: Washington DC.

It is the second in a series of ``Car Czar'' awards to be conferred upon Washington meddlers who distinguish themselves by making it harder for the auto companies your government owns to compete in the world marketplace.

On Monday, I presented the very first ``Car Czar'' award to the Honorable Barney Frank of Massachusetts for interfering in the operation of General Motors. Congressman Frank, who is chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, intervened last week to save a GM distribution center in his Massachusetts congressional district. The warehouse, which employs some 90 people, was slated for closing under GM's restructuring plan. But Mr. Frank put in a call to GM CEO Fritz Henderson and, lo and behold, the facility has a new lease on life according to the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Frank, of course, is chairman of the House committee that recently orchestrated paying $62 billion in taxpayer dollars to give the U.S. Treasury 60 percent ownership of General Motors and 8 percent ownership of Chrysler.

Now, for this second ``Car Czar'' award, there are many deserving contenders.

For example, this afternoon the Honorable Chris Dodd, Mr. Frank's Senate counterpart, is chairing a Banking Committee hearing featuring two of the administration's chief meddlers in Washington-owned car companies: Mr. Ron Bloom, a senior advisor on the auto industry at Treasury and Mr. Ed Montgomery, White House Director of Recovery for Auto Communities and Workers.

Tomorrow, over in the House, the Financial Services Committee will hold a hearing on salaries of workers in companies the government owns.

Another obvious contender for the award is the administration's new Chief-Price-Fixer for the cost of labor, Mr. Kenneth Feinberg who will review and approve how managers of car companies are paid. According to the New York Times article on June 8, Mr. Feinberg is likely not just to tell Government-owned car companies and banks how much to pay people, it is likely ``everyone else's compensation will be monitored, too.''

But there is time next week to honor all these worthy contenders. Today's ``Car Czar'' award clearly should go to the Members of the Wisconsin and Michigan and Tennessee congressional delegations, each of whom met today in Washington with GM executives, imploring them to build small cars in our home States. In Tennessee's case, of course, we were talking about the Saturn plant in Spring Hill, recently placed on standby.

In other words, I am giving the ``Car Czar'' award today to, among others, myself--the senior Senator from Tennessee.

Now, in my own defense, as Mr. Frank's spokesman said when Mr. Frank was caught calling GM about the warehouse in Massachusetts--I was ``just doing what any other Congressman would do'' in looking out for the interests of his constituency. But that is precisely the reason for these ``Car Czar'' awards. As the Wall Street Journal put it, ``. . . that's the problem with industrial policy and government control of American business. In Washington, every Member of Congress now thinks he's a czar who can call ol' Fritz and tell him how to make cars.''

But consider for a moment the implications of all 535 of us in Congress regularly participating in such incestuous behavior. It is one thing, as I did in 1985 as Governor, to argue to General Motors to put the Saturn plant in Tennessee right next to the Nissan plant. That was an arm's length transaction.

It is quite another thing for me as U.S. Senator and a member of the government that owns 60 percent of the company, to urge GM executives to build cars in my State. I can pretend I am making my case on the merits: central location, right to work laws, four-lane highways, hundreds of suppliers, low taxes, a successful Japanese competitor 40 miles away. But my incestuous relationship as owner taints the entire affair.

So I will continue to confer ``Car Czar'' awards--seeking to end the incestuous nature of these meetings and time-wasting hearings--until Congress and the President enact my ``Auto Stock for Every Taxpayer'' legislation which would distribute the Government's stock in GM and Chrysler to the 120 million Americans who paid taxes on April 15. Such a stock distribution is the fastest way to get ownership of the auto companies out of the hands of meddling Washington politicians and back into the hands of Americans in the marketplace. It is also the fastest way to allow the car company managers to design, build and sell cars rather than scurry around Washington--under oath--answering questions and being instructed by their political owners how to build cars and trucks.

Distributing the stock to the taxpayers also may be the fastest way for Congressmen to get themselves re-elected. According to the Nashville Tennessean, an AutoPacific survey reports that 81 of Americans polled agree ``that the faster the government gets out of the automotive business, the better.''

Now, here is an invitation for those who may be listening: if you know of a Washington ``Car Czar'' who deserves to be honored, please email me at [email protected], and I will give you full credit in my regular ``Car Czar'' reports here on the floor of the United States Senate.

And after you write to me, I hope you will write or call your Congressman and Senators and remind them to enact the ``Auto Stock for Every Taxpayer Act'' just as soon as General Motors emerges from bankruptcy. All you need to say when you write or call are these eight magic words, ``I paid for it. I should own it.''

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I am here to present the ``Car Czar'' award for Monday, June 8, 2009. It is a service to taxpayers from America's newest automotive headquarters: Washington, DC.

This is the first in a series of ``Car Czar'' awards to be conferred upon Washington meddlers who distinguish themselves by making it harder for the auto companies your government owns to compete in the world marketplace.

Today's ``Car Czar'' award goes to Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts for interfering in the operation of General Motors. Congressman Frank is chairman of the Financial Services Committee of the House of Representatives. One might call it the ``House Bailout Committee.'' Congressman Frank's phone call to General Motors always is likely to be returned since the U.S. Treasury recently purchased 60 percent of GM and 8 percent of Chrysler with $62 billion of your tax dollars.

According to the June 5 Wall Street Journal:

The latest self-appointed car czar is Massachusetts's own

Barney Frank, who intervened this week to save a GM

distribution center in Norton, Mass. The warehouse, which

employs some 90 people, was slated for closing by the end of

the year under GM's restructuring plan. But Mr. Frank put in

a call to GM CEO Fritz Henderson and secured a new lease on

life for the facility.

The Congressman's spokesman said that Mr. Frank was ``just doing what any other Congressman would do'' in looking out for the interests of his constituency--precisely the reason for these ``Car Czar'' awards. As the journal put it:

. . . that's the problem with industrial policy and

government control of American business. In Washington, every

Member of Congress now thinks he's a czar who can call ol'

Fritz and tell him how to make cars.

I will continue to confer ``Car Czar'' awards until Congress and the President enact my Auto Stock for Every Taxpayer legislation which would distribute the government's stock in General Motors and Chrysler to the 120 million Americans who paid taxes on April 15. That is the fastest way to get ownership of the auto companies out of the hands of meddling Washington politicians and back into the hands of Americans and the marketplace.

It also may be the fastest way for Congressmen to get themselves reelected. According to the National Tennessean, an AutoPacific survey reports that 81 percent of Americans polled ``agreed that the faster the government gets out of the automotive business, the better.'' And 95 percent disagreed ``that the government is a good overseer of corporations such as General Motors and Chrysler.'' And 93 percent disagreed ``that having the government in charge of (the two automakers) will result in cars and trucks that Americans will want to buy.''

There should be plenty of material for these ``Car Czar'' awards. For example, last week auto executives spent 4 hours testifying before congressional committees about dealerships. I assume the executives drove to Washington, DC, from Detroit in their congressional approved modes of transportation--probably hybrid cars--leaving them very little time on that day to design, build or sell cars and trucks.

I have counted at least 60 congressional committees and subcommittees with the authority to hold hearings on auto companies, and no doubt most will. Car executives trying to manage complex companies will be reduced to the status of some Assistant Secretary hauling briefing books between subcommittees answering questions--under oath, of course--about models, sizes, paint colors, plant closings, fuel efficiency, and why the GM Volt's battery is being made in South Korea.

And should Congressmen run out of reasons to meddle, the President and his aides stand ready. Already, the administration has warned General Motors it is making too many SUVs and that its Chevy Volt is too expensive. The President himself has weighed in on whether General Motors should move to Warren, MI, and has fired one president of General Motors.

Now, here is an invitation for those who may be listening: If you know of a Washington ``Car Czar'' who deserves to be honored, please e- mail me at [email protected], and I will give you full credit in my regular ``Car Czar'' reports here on the floor of the United States Senate.

And after you write to me, I hope you will write or call your Congressmen and Senators and remind them to enact the Auto Stock For Every Taxpayer Act just as soon as General Motors emerges from bankruptcy. All you need to say when you write or call are these eight magic words, ``I paid for it. I should own it.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Wall Street Journal editorial from June 5, entitled ``Barney Frank, Car Czar'' be printed in the Congressional Record at this time.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

I ask unanimous consent that morning business be extended until 1 p.m.

Mr. President, today along with Senator Bennett and Senator McConnell and Senator Kyl, I will introduce the Auto Stock for Every Taxpayer Act--to require the Treasury to distribute to individual taxpayers all its stock in the new General Motors and Chrysler within 1 year following the emergence of the new GM from bankruptcy proceedings. This is the best way to get the auto companies out of the hands of Washington bureaucrats and politicians and into the hands of the American people in the marketplace where they belong. So instead of the Treasury owning 60 percent of shares in the new GM and 8 percent of Chrysler, you would own them if you were one of about 120 million individual Americans who paid Federal taxes on April 15.

This is the fastest way to get the stock out of the hands of Washington and back into the hands of the American people who paid for it. To keep it simple, and to help the little guy and girl also have an ownership stake in America's future, Treasury would give each taxpayer an equal number of the available shares.

The Treasury Department has said it wants to sell its auto shares as soon as possible, but Fritz Henderson, president and CEO of General Motors, told Senators and Congressmen in a telephone call on Monday that while it is the Treasury's decision to make, this is a ``very large amount'' of stock, and that orderly offering of those shares to establish a market may have to be ``managed down over a period of years.''

Those shares might not be worth very much at first, but put them away and one day they might contribute something toward a college education. For example, General Motors' 610 million shares were only worth 75 cents just before bankruptcy, but they were worth $40 per share 2 years ago, and $75 a few years before that.

Already we can see what government ownership of car companies will look

like. Yesterday the presidents of General Motors and Chrysler spent 4 hours in front of congressional committees talking about dealerships.

I assume they drove themselves here from Detroit in their congressionally approved method of transportation, probably their newest hybrid cars.

They did not have much time yesterday to design, build, or sell cars and trucks for their troubled companies. Unless we get the stock out of the hands of Washington, this scene will be repeated over and over again.

There are at least 60 congressional committees and subcommittees authorized to hold hearings on auto companies, and most of them will hold hearings, probably many times.

Car company executives who need to be managing complex enterprises will be reduced to the status of an assistant secretary in a minor department hauling briefings books from subcommittee to subcommittee.

You can imagine what the questions will be and the president of each company will probably be asked these questions: What will the next model look like? What plant should be closed and which one opened? How many cars should have flex fuel? What will the work rules be? What will the salaries be? Where will the conferences be held, and in which cities should they not be held?

Congressmen will want to know why the Chevy Volt is using a battery from a South Korean company when it can be made in one of their congressional districts. There will be a lengthy hearing about the number of holidays allowed, and thousands of written questions demanding written answers under oath.

And it is not just the Congress we have to worry about. The President of the United States has already called the mayor of Detroit to reassure him that the headquarters of General Motors should stay in Detroit, instead of moving to Warren, MI. And the mayor of Detroit has announced his satisfaction with talking with members of the President's auto task force to make sure that the executives of the car companies do not get any ideas about moving their own headquarters.

Then there is the Treasury Secretary--and his Under Secretaries--who will want to keep up with what is happening to the taxpayers' $50 billion investment in the New General Motors.

There is a very active economic czar in the White House. He will have some questions and opinions as well about how to run the car companies, not to mention the Environmental Protection Agency officials who might be busy deciding what size cars they ought to build.

And, of course, it was not very long ago that this administration let General Motors know that it was making too many SUVs and that its Chevy Volt was going to be too expensive to work. That was the opinion here in Washington. And the President of the United States himself fired the president of General Motors.

Giving the stock to the taxpayer who paid for it will get the government out of the companies' hair and give the companies a chance to succeed. It will create an investor fan base of 120 million-plus American taxpayers who may be a little more interested now in what the next Chevrolet will be. Think of the fan base of the Green Bay Packers, whose ownership is distributed among the people of Green Bay.

This is the fastest way back to the wise principle: If you can find it in the Yellow Pages, the government probably shouldn't be doing it. More than the money, it is the principle of the thing.

The other day, a visiting European automobile executive said to me with a laugh that he had come to the ``new American automotive capital: Washington, DC.''

To get our economy moving again, let's get our auto companies out of the hands of Washington and back into the marketplace. Let's put the stock in the hands of 120 million taxpayers, the sooner the better.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, before I became a member of this body, I was privileged to serve as the president of University of Tennessee and as Secretary of Education under President George H.W. Bush. Therefore, I know how important it is for our nonprofits to make investments in our system of higher education. That is why I am pleased to report that Meharry Medical College in Nashville is poised to receive the single largest endowment gift in the college's 130-year history.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the largest philanthropic organization in America devoted exclusively to health care, has selected Meharry to receive a multimillion-dollar endowment and other funding to establish the Robert Wood Johnson Center for Health Policy at Meharry Medical College to produce our country's next generation of health care policy experts. Meharry will be partnering with Vanderbilt University College of Arts and Science on this project.

This gift is especially timely as the Nation grapples with economic challenges and millions of uninsured citizens amid growing bipartisan support for reforming the U.S. health care system. The new center aims to serve as a think tank for the pressing health care issues of the day; to increase the diversity of health policy scholars with doctors who are formally trained in sociology and economics; and to provide students and faculty with new curricula, research and academic offerings in health policy. The center seeks to reshape the future of America's health policies by creating a more inclusive pool of experts trained in health policy and allied disciplines.

Meharry Medical College is the Nation's largest private, independent, historically Black academic health center. It produces over 20 percent of the Nation's African-American physicians and 33 percent of the Nation's African-American dentists. These health professionals take care of those most in need: the underserved in our rural and urban communities across the country.

I know Meharry is pleased to be selected to receive this gift and produce scholars who will make a real impact on our health policy at this critical time. Though their graduates may serve the country, we Tennesseans are especially proud of Meharry and its many contributions to our State and the Nation.

Mr. President, 1 year ago I went to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee to propose a new Manhattan Project to put America on the path to clean energy independence. The project would focus on seven grand challenges: plug-in electric cars and trucks, carbon capture from coal plants, making solar power cost competitive; recycling used nuclear fuel, advanced biofuels from crops we don't eat, green buildings, and fusion. Last week I went back to Oak Ridge, spoke to a gathering, a summit of people from several States who were meeting to talk about how to attract and keep high technology jobs. I proposed that the United States should build 100 new nuclear plants during the next 20 years, while scientists and engineers figure out the grand challenges I discussed 1 year ago. This would double America's nuclear powerplants which today produce 20 percent of all of our electricity and 70 percent of our pollution-free, carbon-free electricity. This is an aggressive goal. But with Presidential leadership, it could happen. I am convinced it should happen. Conservation and nuclear power are the only real alternatives we have today to produce enough low-cost, reliable, clean electricity to clean the air, deal with climate change, and keep good jobs from going overseas. Climate change may be the inconvenient problem of the day, but nuclear power is, for many skeptics, the inconvenient answer. These nuclear skeptics cite regulatory delays and past problems with safety. They appoint commissions to slow walk decisions about recycling used nuclear fuel. They point to the shortage of welders for new plants. They complain that Japan and France are building most of the essential equipment for new nuclear plants. No surprise, since Japan is building 1 nuclear plant a year, and France is producing 80 percent of all of its electricity from nuclear powerplants. The skeptics say that carbon from coal plants contributes to climate change, which is true, and so they offer their solution: operate our big complex country, which uses 25 percent of all of the energy in the world, on electricity generated from the wind, the sun, and the Earth. One day that might be possible. But today there is a huge energy gap between the renewable electricity we wish to have and the reliable, low-cost electricity that we must have. My guess is, it will be 30 or 40 or 50 years before these new sources of electricity are cheap enough and reliable enough to supply most of the power to our electric grid.

The nuclear skeptics in Congress, urged by the President, reported last month an energy and climate change bill that would require 20 percent of our electricity to be made from a very narrow definition of renewable energy. My visit to Oak Ridge was to a gathering to discuss how to attract and keep high tech jobs in the region. I tried to paint a picture for those attending about how this legislation would affect those who attended.

To put things in perspective, the Tennessee Valley Authority produces an average of about 27,000 megawatts of electricity for industrial and household customers in our seven-State region. Sixty percent comes from coal, 30 percent from nuclear, 8 percent from hydroelectric power, and 1 percent from natural gas. Across the country, it is 50 percent coal, 20 percent nuclear, 20 percent natural gas, and 6 percent hydroelectric power. Nationally, only about 1\1/2\ percent of electricity comes from the Sun, the wind, and the Earth. Almost none of the TVA's power does. But the 40 percent of TVA power that comes from nuclear and hydro plants is just as clean as these narrowly defined renewables. It is free of pollution that dirties the air, and it is free of carbon that contributes to global warming. In that sense, TVA is the sixteenth cleanest utility in the country already.

Here is another yardstick. The new nuclear powerplant at Watts Bar in Tennessee can produce 1,240 megawatts of electricity. The Bull Run coal plant produces about 870 megawatts; the Fort Loudoun Dam, 150 megawatts. All three operate almost all the time. This is called base load power, which is important since large amounts of power can't be stored. Some forget that solar power is only available when the Sun shines and wind power is only available when the wind blows.

So how much renewable electricity is available in our region? The new solar plant our Governor Phil Bredesen has proposed in Haywood County would cover 20 acres but produce just 5 megawatts. The 18 big wind turbines atop Buffalo Mountain, a few miles away from where I made my speech, have the capacity to produce 29 megawatts but actually produce only 6 megawatts. It may be also possible to squeeze a few hundred megawatts from turbines in the Mississippi River. The Southern Company's new biomass plant in Georgia--biomass is sort of a controlled bonfire of waste wood products--would produce 96 megawatts. All this for a utility that needs 27,000 megawatts to operate at any given time.

Each of these sources of renewable energy consumes a lot of space. For example, the big solar thermal plants in the western desert where they line up mirrors to focus the Sun's rays take more than 30 square miles--that is more than 5 miles on a side--to produce the same 1,000 megawatts that one can get from a single coal or single nuclear plant that sits on one square mile. Or take wind, to generate the same 1,000 megawatts with wind, one would need 270 square miles. That is 16 miles on a side. An unbroken line of wind turbines 50 stories high from Chattanooga to Bristol would give us only one-fourth of the electricity we get from one unit of the Watts Bar nuclear powerplant which fits on one square mile, and we would still need the nuclear powerplant for the times when the wind doesn't blow. There is good reason why there is only one wind farm in the entire southern United States. In our region, the wind blows less than 20 percent of the time. Much of that time is at night when TVA already has several thousand megawatts of unused electricity.

Biomass will be a renewable source that we will emphasize in the South, we are told. That's a good idea. It might reduce forest fires, and it will conserve resources. The National Forest Service told us last week that there are 2 million tons of wood scraps and dead trees in Tennessee's forests, and pulp and paper companies might produce another 2 million tons. That sounds like a lot. But let's not expect too much. We would need a forest the size of the entire 550,000-acre Great Smoky Mountain National Park to feed a 1,000-megawatt biomass plant on a sustained basis. That is a plant that would produce as much electricity as one nuclear power unit.

Think of the energy it is going to take to haul this around. Georgia Southern says it will take 160 to 180 trucks a day to feed biomass into a 96-megawatt electrical plant. Remember, TVA uses at least 27,000 megawatts of electricity every day.

Of course, conservation and efficiency are the places to start when looking at America's and, especially, Tennessee's electricity futures. Tennesseans use more electricity per person than residents of any other State. If we reduced our use to the national

average, it would equal the electricity produced by four nuclear powerplants. We might still have to build some new powerplants, because our history and that of the country is that conservation only limits electricity growth. It usually doesn't reduce it. For example, 20 years ago we never would have guessed that computers would be using nearly 5 percent of our electricity. One can see we will need some breakthroughs, something like a new Manhattan project, before we can rely very much on renewable electricity.

Of all these forms of electricity in our region, solar has the most promise. It takes up massive space, but we can use rooftops. It only works when the Sun shines, but the Sun shines during peak times of electricity use. I believe our Governor is exactly right to try to make Tennessee a hub for solar power. The first grand challenge of my proposed Manhattan project is to try to make solar power cost competitive. According to TVA, in our region, it is far from that today. Solar costs four to five times as much as the base load electricity that TVA now produces. Wind power, on the other hand, can supplement electricity on the Great Plains and perhaps offshore. But for our region, it would be a terrible mistake.

In Tennessee it is a waste of money, and it destroys the environment in the name of saving the environment. The turbines are three times as tall as Neyland Stadium, which is our great big football stadium in Knoxville. In our region they only work on mountaintops where the winds are strongest, and they barely work there. I haven't mentioned the new transmission lines that will be necessary from the mountaintops through backyards in Tennessee.

Someone asked Boone Pickens if he would put any of these turbines on his 68,000-acre ranch in Texas. ``Hell no,'' he said. ``They're ugly.'' Well, if Boone doesn't want them on his ranch because they are ugly, why would we want them on the most beautiful mountaintops in America, in North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, all the way up to the White Mountains of New Hampshire?

Some of the jobs that we will be growing and attracting to our region and across the country are so-called green jobs, created as scientists and engineers work on the grand challenges I propose. Please remember that nuclear power is also green. Electric cars and trucks are green. One-third of Tennessee's manufacturing jobs are auto related. Even green jobs need low-cost electricity. The two new polysilicon plants located in Cleveland and Clarksville, TN manufacture polysilicon for solar panels that go on roofs. Together these two plants use 240 megawatts of electricity, about one-fifth of the production of the new nuclear unit at Watts Bar. Don't forget about places like the Aluminum Company of America in my hometown, which has closed its smelter and won't open until it can get a 20-year, low-cost electricity contract from TVA, or the steady stream of regional manufacturers who have been to my office saying that electric rates are already too high for them to keep jobs in our region.

The point is, if we care about jobs of any color, the cost of electricity matters. Which is why it is especially galling to see France, a country we usually don't like to emulate, using the technology we Americans invented to give themselves some of the lowest electric rates and lowest carbon emissions in the European Union.

So why is it that nuclear energy, perhaps the most important scientific advancement of the 20th century, was invented in America and yet we stopped taking advantage of it just when we most need it? Shortly after World War II, Glenn Seaborg, the great American Nobel Prize winner, said that nuclear energy had come along just in time because we were reaching the limits of fossil fuels. He was right. The succeeding decades proved that fossil fuels are not unlimited, and their supplies could seriously compromise energy independence. And that doesn't even address global warming.

Yes, I do believe global warming and climate change are problems we must address. We can't go on throwing 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year without running into some kind of trouble. Every session I have been in Congress, I have introduced legislation to cap carbon emissions from coal powerplants. But the way to deal with global warming and to keep our jobs is to encourage what has been called the ``Nuclear Renaissance'' and start making nuclear energy the backbone of a new industrial economy.

Right now there are 17 proposals for 26 new reactors in licensing hearings before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. That is a start. I think we need to go well beyond that.

I propose that from the years 2010 to 2030 we build 100 new nuclear reactors to match the ones we are already operating. That is what we did from 1970 to 1990. During that 20-year interval, we built almost every one of the 104 reactors that now provide us with 20 percent of our electricity. If we build another 100 by 2030, we will be able to provide well over 40 percent of our electricity from nuclear power. Clean hydropower provides 6 percent of our electricity today, and with the electrification of small dams around the country, we may be able to expand that to 8 percent. With diligent conservation, and some renewable resources, we can add another perhaps 10 or 12 percent. Then, my friends, we will really be talking about a clean energy economy.

Still, that is only the beginning. The second largest source of carbon emissions--and the biggest source of our energy instability--is the 20 million barrels of oil we consume every day to run our cars and trucks. I believe we should make half our cars and trucks plug-in within 20 years. That would reduce by one-third the oil we import from foreign sources. The Brookings Institution scholars estimate we can power those cars and trucks by plugging them in at night without building one new powerplant. Let me repeat that. If we electrify half our cars and trucks in America, we can plug them in at night without building one new powerplant because we have so much unused electricity at night.

As our fleet of electric vehicles grows, the most logical option for plugging in will be supplied by clean nuclear power. Until we make great advances in storage batteries, it cannot be electricity that is sometimes there and sometimes not. We cannot have Americans going to bed every night praying for a strong wind so they can start their cars in the morning.

Still, when it comes to nuclear power, a lot of people worry about safety. They say: Well, nuclear power sounds great to me, but I am afraid one of those reactors is going to blow up and cause a holocaust.

Well, let's make a few things clear. As Oak Ridgers--where I was last week--know better than almost anyone, a reactor is not a bomb. It cannot blow up. That is impossible. There is not enough fissionable material there.

What a nuclear reactor can do is overheat if it loses its cooling water, just the way your car engine can overheat and break down if it loses its antifreeze. It is called a meltdown. Nuclear scientists have warned about this from the beginning and take many precautions so it will not happen.

Nuclear skeptics like to bring up Three Mile Island, so let's talk about that. What happened at Three Mile Island was basically an operator error. A valve failed, and when the automatic safety mechanism kicked in, the operators overrode it because of a mass of flashing lights and sirens on the control panel, which confused them about what was happening.

Three Mile Island completely changed the nuclear industry. The Kemeny Commission, appointed by President Carter, analyzed the problems and made many recommendations, most of which were put into practice. The valve that started the whole thing had failed nine times before in other reactors and the manufacturer had tried to keep it a secret. People in the nuclear industry were not talking to each other.

Now all of that has changed. Nuclear operators train for 5 years before they can take over control rooms. They spend 1 week of out of every 5 in a simulator honing their skills. The nuclear companies have special SWAT teams that can be dispatched anywhere in the country at a moment's notice in case anything goes wrong. A Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspector practically lives on the site. What is more, every reactor in the country is on the

hook for $100 million if something goes wrong at another reactor. As you can imagine, they watch each other very closely.

And it shows. Our entire nuclear fleet--104 reactors--is now up and running 90 percent of the time. There has only been one year-long shutdown for safety problems in the last decade. We have added the equivalent of 29 new reactors since 1990 by doing a better job of running the ones we already have. If the rest of America ran as well as the nuclear industry, we would be sitting on top of the world.

``But what about Chernobyl?'' someone will say? ``Wasn't that a nuclear catastrophe?'' Well, the Soviets did things very differently at Chernobyl than we know how to do in this country. For instance, they did not put a containment structure around the reactor, which is like not putting a roof on your house and then acting surprised when it rains and you get wet. In addition, they did something no American power reactor has ever done: They surrounded the core with carbon in the form of graphite. That is like building your reactor in the middle of a charcoal grill. When the graphite caught fire, it spewed radioactive smoke all over the world. That could never happen at an American reactor--and it will not happen again in Russia since they have made a lot of changes over there and now they are building reactors in the same way we build reactors.

So let's build 100 new nuclear reactors during the next 20 years. Our new reactors have even better safety features--although it is never good to be overconfident. We have learned how to run the current fleet at its full potential. Most reactors are making close to $2 million a day. The attorney general of Connecticut proposed a windfall profits tax a few years ago when fossil fuel prices went through the roof. He said it was not fair that reactors could run so cheaply. So why not expand on our winnings? Why not build another generation of reactors?

Well, a lot of people say it cannot be done. They say we do not manufacture anything anymore in America. We have to import all our goods from China. They say we do not have the nuclear engineers to design the new generation. They say we do not have the specialty welders to put them together on site. They say we cannot manufacture the steel vessel heads anymore, and our steel forges are not big enough. Right now, the only forge in the world big enough to make a reactor vessel is Japan Steel Works, and they are backed up. People say our new plants will spend a decade standing in line behind the 34 other reactors that are already under construction in the world, mostly in Asia. And you know something. They are right. They are right because all the things they are saying here are true. We do not have a nuclear construction industry. But then, they do not know America. America can respond to a challenge. Just as we rose to the occasion in 1943 when we began the Manhattan Project at Oak Ridge and at other sites in our country, so can we rise to the occasion today to build a new generation of nuclear reactors that will provide clean, reliable power for America for the rest of this century.

It is not going to be easy. What we are talking about here is essentially a rebirth of Industrial America, and it is already starting to happen. Westinghouse is opening a school for training welders who can knit together a containment structure strong enough to protect both the environment from the reactor and the reactor from outside threats. Alstom, a French company, is investing $200 million in Chattanooga, in my State, to manufacture heavy turbines for nuclear plants.

We also have to train nuclear engineers to take the place of the great generation that embraced the technology in the 1960s and 1970s, only to see their dreams come to naught when the Nation turned away from nuclear power. We have to find a steel manufacturer somewhere in this country that is willing to step up and say: ``Here, we can do those forgings right here in Pennsylvania or Ohio or Michigan or Illinois. We do not have to stand in line in Japan.'' And we have to find investors who are willing to put up their money and say: ``Yes, I have faith in America. I have faith in technology. I am ready to invest in building a cleaner, safer, more prosperous world.''

With Presidential leadership, we could add more loan guarantees to accelerate construction, and could streamline the permit system to ensure that new reactors do not become ensnared in regulatory mazes or combative lawsuits. But we cannot sit on our hands because in America we do not sit around waiting for the Government to do things for us. We do things for ourselves.

So the task we face here today is no less formidable than the task the Oak Ridge pioneers faced when they first arrived in Tennessee in 1943. They were trying to save the world from Japanese militarism and Nazi totalitarianism. Now we are trying to save the world from the pending disaster of dwindling energy supplies, the uncertain dangers of a warming planet, and the stagnation and decay that can only follow if we do not revive American industry.

So I propose today that we work together across the aisle, with the President, in the task of bringing about a Nuclear Renaissance in helping to generate the Rebirth of Industrial America.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 15 minutes.