Floor Statements

I thank the Chair.

(The remarks of Mr. Alexander pertaining to the introduction of S. 659 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

Mr. President, on a day in a week when there is a lot of news where people are hurting in a serious economy, I have some good news to report, and it will just take me a few minutes to do it. Our senior Senator, Mr. Byrd, Senator Ted Kennedy, who is chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, and I introduced legislation today that will help push the teaching of U.S. history in our classrooms. The way I like to describe it is by saying this: that it will help to put the teaching of American history and civics back in its rightful place, in our classrooms, so our children can grow up learning what it means to be an American.

The legislation which we have introduced would expand summer academies for outstanding teachers, authorize new teacher programs, require States to set standards for the teaching and learning of U.S. History, and create new opportunities to compare the tests that students take on U.S. history.

Specifically, the legislation would, No. 1, authorize 100 new summer academies for outstanding students and teachers of U.S. history and align those academies with locations in our national park system, such as the John Adams' House in Massachusetts or the Independence Hall in Philadelphia. I see the pages sitting here today. They are real students of U.S. history because they live it and learn it each day they are here. I don't know what their scores are on the advanced placement tests for U.S. history, but I know one fact, which the Chair may be interested in learning: The highest scores in any high school in America on the advanced placement test for U.S. history is not from a New England prep school or a Tennessee prep school or an elite school in some rich part of America; it is from the page school of the House of Representatives. They had better scores on U.S. history than any other high school. I don't know what the Senate page scores were, so I won't compare them.

The point is--and this is an idea David McCullough, a well-known author, had: We would expand the number of presidential and congressional academies for outstanding students and teachers and have them placed in the National Park Service initiative.

Second, the bill we've introduced today would double the authorization of funding for the teaching of American history programs in local school districts, which today involve 20,000 students as a part of the No Child Left Behind Act.

Third, it would require States to develop and implement standards for student assessments in U.S. history, although there would be no Federal reporting requirement, as there is now for reading and mathematics.

Finally, it would allow States to compare history and civics student test scores in the 8th and 12th grades by establishing a 10-State pilot program expanding the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), which is also called the ``Nation's Report Card.'' We have a tradition in the Senate where each of us, when we first arrive, make a maiden speech. We still call it that. Most of us pick a subject that is important to us. I made mine almost exactly 6 years ago, on March 4, 2003. The subject was something I cared about then and care about today and on which we have made some progress.

I argued, as I mentioned earlier, it was time to put the teaching of American history and civics back in its rightful place in our schools so as our children grow, they can learn what it means to be an American. On the ``Nation's Report Card,'' our worst scores for our seniors in high school are not in math or science but in U.S. history. It will be very difficult for us as a country to succeed if we don't learn where we came from.

I ask unanimous consent that the speech I made 6 years ago be printed in the Record immediately following my remarks.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that if Senator Byrd and Senator Kennedy make statements today on this legislation, as I believe they will, that our statements be put in the Record in about the same place, with Senator Byrd's first, then Senator Kennedy's, and mine third.

Mr. President, in the speech I made 6 years ago, I called it the American History and Civics Education Act. I suggested we create summer academies for outstanding students and teachers of American history. The idea was to create one of those academies focused on American history and civics for teachers and one for students and to see how they worked and to gradually expand them.

These presidential academies for students and teachers were modeled after the Tennessee Governors School, which I began when I was Governor of Tennessee, which still continue today, after 20 years. They are relatively inexpensive. They are 2-, 3-, or 4-week schools for students, and one for teachers. They held students in a variety of subjects, such as mathematics, science, the arts, international studies. They come together for a while and inspire one another, and then they go back to their schools and inspire their fellow students. They have been a great success in Tennessee and in other States.

Senator Reid, the majority leader, was the whip at that time. He was on the floor when I made my remarks and he asked to be the prime cosponsor of the legislation, and he was. Senator Kennedy, who has had a long interest in U.S. history, takes his family once a year to some an historical part of the United States. A couple years ago, they went into Virginia and saw where Patrick Henry made his famous speech. I kid him and say he cares so much about history because he is a part of it in such a big way. Senator Kennedy heard about the proposal, and he went along the Democratic side and rounded up 20 cosponsors of the legislation. So, Senator Kennedy, Senator Reid and I and several Republican Senators introduced a bill. We had a hearing during which Senator Byrd testified on behalf of my proposal for summer academies. It passed the Senate and the House, and we have had those summer academies now for three summers. One of those is at the Ashland University in Ashland, OH, which has been a great success. I see the students and teachers every summer. I bring them on the Senate floor, and it has been proven that it is good for teachers and good for our country. So that is the reason we want to expand those programs. We also felt we would meet as a group--those of us who have something to do with U.S. history here--and we met with the Library of Congress and with other parts of the Federal Government and many of us are involved in helping Americans learn more about our country's history, especially young people. As part of that, we thought it would be wise to try to consolidate in one section of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act--which we call No Child Left Behind--the various programs we already have for U.S. history and then to expand those that seemed worthwhile.

That is what this legislation does. There is a great need for it. I mentioned earlier that it is our worst subject for high school, even though some of our pages seem to do pretty well. Very few students score at or above the proficient level on the American history exam conducted by the National Assessment for Education Progress. Twenty percent of fourth graders were proficient in U.S. history, 17 percent of eighth graders were proficient in U.S. history, and 12 percent of high school seniors were proficient in U.S. history.

In addition, the No Child Left Behind Act may have had the unintentional effect of reducing the focus on U.S. history, as some school districts have concentrated their efforts on reading and mathematics. Therefore, it is appropriate and necessary to improve and expand State and local efforts to increase the understanding and awareness of American history and to do it, of course, in a way that doesn't preempt State and local responsibility and authority for elementary and secondary education.

Therefore, what the legislation we are doing today will do is expand the summer academies. We call them presidential academies for teachers and congressional academies for students. Those academies were created in 2004 to the number of 100 in the summer gradually over the years. The priority would be to place those academies in the National Park Service's national centennial parks initiative so the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, and other museums that have innovative programs in U.S. history can be aligned with these academies. David McCullough, for example, suggested we have the academies at locations such as Andrew Jackson's home in Heritage. I think an even better idea would be to have a week for U.S. teachers at John Adams' home in Massachusetts, with Mr. McCullough as the teacher. That is the idea.

Secondly, we would expand the Nation's report card--we call that NAEP--so there could be a 10-State pilot program for American history and civics student assessment in grades 8 and 12. Today, our Nation's report card doesn't measure State performance in American history. It gives us a picture of how 8th to 12th graders do nationally. This would permit Colorado, Tennessee, Alaska, and California to compare the seniors and, in doing so, call attention to improvements that might need to be made.

The third thing would be to require all States to develop and implement standards and assessments in American history under the No Child Left Behind Act. But it doesn't require any Federal reporting, as we do in other subjects.

Finally, it would take Senator Byrd's program--called Teaching American History, which he put into the No Child Left Behind Act 6 years ago--and it would double the authorization for that program from $100 million to $200 million, so it can serve even more than the 20,000 teachers it serves today.

I thank David Cleary and Sarah Rittling of my staff, who have worked hard with the staffs of Senators Byrd and Kennedy to prepare this legislation. We intend to invite all Members of the Senate, and we hope the House will join us in cosponsoring this.

Finally, I wish to tell one short story to conclude my remarks about some of the teachers who have participated. One of the things a Senator can do is to bring someone on the Senate floor who is not a Senator. It has to be done when the Senate is not in session and I have found it is a great privilege for most Americans. Early one morning last summer, I brought onto the Senate floor the 50 teachers who had been selected-- one from each State--for the presidential academy for outstanding teachers of American history. I showed them Daniel Webster's desk right here, and I showed them Jefferson Davis's desk, which is back there, and where the sword mark is where when the Union soldier came in and started chopping the desk, and the soldier who was stopped by a commander who said, ``We came to save the Union, not destroy it.'' I showed them where the majority and minority leaders speak. They saw ``E Pluribus Unum'' up there, and ``In God We Trust'' back there. They learned that we operate by unanimous consent, and we talked about what it would be like to actually try to operate a classroom by unanimous consent, much less the Senate.

As you might expect, they asked a lot of good questions, being outstanding history teachers. I especially remember the final question. I believe it was from the teacher from Oregon who asked: Senator, what would you like for us to take back to our students? I said that what I hope you will take back is that I get up every day, and I believe most of us on either side get up hoping that by the end of the day, we will have done something to make our country look better. It may not look that way on television or read that way in the newspaper because we are sent here to debate great issues. That produces conflict and disagreement a lot of the time. I feel, and I believe all of us feel, we are in a very special place, in a very special country, with a very special tradition. We would like for the students to know that and to know that is how we feel about the job we have.

I am delighted today that Senators Byrd and Kennedy, who have contributed so much to U.S. history over the years, both in their own personalities and by legislation they have introduced, have joined me in this effort to expand the Federal programs that focus on putting U.S. history and civics in a little higher place in the classroom so that our students learn what it means to be an American.

I invite my colleagues to join us, and I invite all Americans to join us in their communities, in their schools and in their States, to make that a priority.

Exhibit 1

Remarks of Sen. Alexander--American History and Civics Education Act

Introduction

Mr. President, from the Senate's earliest days, new members

have observed as we just heard a ritual of remaining silent

during floor debates for a period of time that ranged from

several weeks to two years. By waiting a respectful amount of

time before giving their so-called ``maiden speeches,''

freshman senators hoped their senior colleagues would respect

them for their humility.

This information comes from the Senate historian, Richard

Baker, who told me that in 1906, the former Governor of

Wisconsin, Robert LaFollette, arrived here ``anything but

humble'' (and I'm sensitive to this as a former governor). He

waited just three months, a brief period by the standards of

those days, before launching his first major address. He

spoke for eight hours over three days; his remarks in the

Congressional Record consumed 148 pages. As he began to

speak, most of the senators present in the chamber pointedly

rose from their desks and departed. LaFollete's wife,

observing from the gallery, wrote, ``There was no mistaking

that this was a polite form of hazing.''

From our first day here, as the majority leader said, we

new members of this 108th Congress have been encouraged to

speak up, and most of us have. But, with the encouragement of

the majority leader, several of us intend also to revive the

tradition of the maiden address by making a signature speech

on an issue that is important both to the country and to each

of us. I want to thank my colleagues who are here, and I want

to assure all of you that I will not speak for three days--as

former Governor LaFollette did.

Mr. President, I rise to address the intersection of two

urgent concerns that will determine our country's future.

These are also the two topics I care about the most: the

education of our children and the principles that unite us as

Americans.

It is time that we put the teaching of American history and

civics back in its rightful place in our schools so our

children can grow up learning what it means to be an

American.

Especially during such serious times when our values and

way of life are being attacked, we need to understand clearly

just what those values are.

In this, most Americans would agree. For example, in

Thanksgiving remarks in 2001, President Bush praised our

nation's response to September 11. ``I call it,'' he said,

``the American character.'' At about the same time, while

speaking at Harvard, former Vice-President Al Gore said, ``We

should [fight] for the values that bind us together as a

country.''

Both men were invoking a creed of ideas and values in which

most Americans believe. ``It has been our fate as a nation,''

the historian Richard Hofstadter wrote, ``not to have

ideologies but to be one.'' This value based identity has

inspired both patriotism and division at home, as well as

emulation and hatred abroad. For terrorists, as well as for

those who admire America, at issue is the United States

itself--not what we do, but who we are.

Yet our children do not know what makes America

exceptional. National exams show that three-quarters of the

nation's 4th, 8th and 12th graders are not proficient in

civics knowledge and one-third does not even have basic

knowledge, making them ``civic illiterates.''

Children are not learning about American history and civics

because they are not being taught it. American history has

been watered down, and civics is too often dropped from the

curriculum entirely.

Until the 1960s, civics education, which teaches the duties

of citizenship, was a regular part of the high school

curriculum, but today's college graduates probably have less

civics knowledge than high school graduates of 50 years ago.

Reforms, so-called, in the '60s and '70s resulted in the

widespread elimination of required classes and curriculum in

civics education. Today, more than half the states have no

requirement for students to take a course--even for one

semester--in American government.

To help put the teaching of American history and civics in

its rightful place, today I introduce legislation along with

several distinguished co-sponsors including: Senators Reid,

Gregg, Santorum, Inhofe and Nickles. We call it the

``American History and Civics Act.'' This act creates

Presidential Academies for Teachers of American History and

Civics and Congressional Academies for Students of American

History and Civics. These residential academies would operate

for two weeks (in the case of teachers) and four weeks (for

students) during the summer.

Their purpose would be to inspire better teaching and more

learning of the key events, persons and ideas that shape the

institutions and democratic heritage of the United States.

I have had some experience with such residential summer

academies, when I was Governor of Tennessee. In 1984, we

began creating Governor's schools for students and teachers.

For example, there was the Governor's School for the Arts at

Middle Tennessee State University and the Governor's School

of International Studies at the University of Memphis as well

as the Governor's School for Teachers of Writing at the

University of Tennessee at Knoxville, which was especially

successful. Eventually there were eight Governor's Schools

helping thousands of Tennessee teachers improve their skills

and inspiring outstanding students to learn more about core

curriculum subjects. When these teachers and students

returned to their schools for the next school year, they

brought with them a new enthusiasm for teaching and learning

that infected their peers. Dollar for dollar, the Governor's

Schools were one of the most effective and popular

educational initiatives in our state's history.

States other than Tennessee have had similar success with

summer residential academies. The first Governor's school was

started in North Carolina in 1963 when Governor Terry Sanford

established it at Salem College in Winston-Salem. Upon the

establishment of the first school, several states, including

Georgia, South Carolina, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee

established similar schools.

For example, in 1973 Pennsylvania established Governor's

Schools of Excellence, which has 14 different programs of

study. As in Tennessee, students participating in the

Pennsylvania Governor's School program attend academies at 8

different colleges to

study everything from international studies, to health care

and teaching. Also established in 1973, Virginia's Governor's

School is a summer residential program for 7500 of the

Commonwealth's most gifted students. Mississippi established

its Governor's School in 1981. The Mississippi University for

Women hosts the program, which is designed to give students

academic, creative, and leadership experiences. Every year

West Virginia brings 80 of its most talented high school

performing and visual arts students to West Liberty State

College for a three-week residential program.

These are just a few of the more than 100 Governors'

schools in 28 states--clearly the model is a good one. The

legislation I propose today applies that successful model to

American history and civics education at the national level

by establishing Presidential and Congressional academies for

students and teachers of those subjects.

Additionally, this proposed legislation authorizes the

creation of a national alliance of American history and

civics teachers who would be connected by the internet. The

alliance would facilitate sharing of best practices in the

teaching of American history and civics. It is modeled after

an alliance I helped the National Geographic Society begin

during the 1980's to put geography back into the American

school curriculum. Tennessee and the University of Tennessee

were among the first sponsors of the alliance.

This legislation creates a pilot program. Up to 12

Presidential academies for teachers and 12 Congressional

Academies for students would be sponsored by educational

institutions. The National Endowment for the Humanities would

award 2-year renewable grants to those institutions after a

peer review process. Each grant would be subject to rigorous

review after three years to determine whether the overall

program should continue, expand or end. The legislation

authorizes $25 million annually for the four year pilot

program.

There is a broad basis of renewed support for and interest

in American history and civics in our country.

David Gordon noted in a recent issue of the Harvard

Education Letter: ``A 1998 survey by the nonpartisan research

organization Public Agenda showed that 84 percent of parents

with school-aged children said they believe that the United

States is a special country and they want schools to convey

that belief to their children by teaching about its heroes

and traditions. Similar numbers identified the American ideal

as including equal opportunity, individual freedom, and

tolerance and respect for others. Those findings were

consistent across racial and ethnic groups.''

Our national leadership has responded to this renewed

interest. In 2000, at the initiative of my distinguished

colleague Senator Byrd, Congress created grants for schools

that teach American history as a separate subject within

school curricula. We appropriated $100 million for those

grants in the recent Omnibus appropriations bill, and

rightfully so. They encourage schools and teachers to focus

on the teaching of traditional American history, and provide

important financial support.

Last September, with historian David McCullough at his

side, President Bush announced a new initiative to encourage

the teaching of American history and civics. He established

the ``We the People'' program at the NEH, which will develop

curricula and sponsor lectures on American history and

civics. He announced the ``Our Documents'' project, run by

the National Archives. This would take one hundred of

America's most important documents from the National Archives

to classrooms and communities across the country. This year,

he will convene a White House forum on American history,

civics, and service. There, we will discuss new policies to

improve the teaching of history and civics in elementary and

secondary schools.

This proposed legislation takes the next step by training

teachers and encouraging outstanding students. We need to

foster a love of this subject and arm teachers with the

skills to impart that love to their students.

I am pleased that today one of the leading members of the

House of Representatives, Roger Wicker of Mississippi, along

with a number of his colleagues, are introducing the same

legislation in the House.

I want to thank Senator Gregg, Chairman of the Committee on

Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, who has agreed that

the committee will hold hearings on this legislation so that

we can determine how it might supplement and work with

recently enacted legislation and the President's various

initiatives.

Mr. President, in 1988, at a meeting of educators in

Rochester, the President of Notre Dame University, Monk

Malloy, asked this question: ``What is the rationale for the

public school?'' There was an unexpected silence around the

room until Al Shanker, the president of the American

Federation of Teachers, answered in this way: ``The public

school was created to teach immigrant children the three R's

and what it means to be an American with the hope that they

would then go home and teach their parents.''

From the founding of America, we have always understood how

important it is for citizens to understand the principles

that unite us as a country. Other countries are united by

their ethnicity. If you move to Japan for example, you can't

become Japanese. Americans, on the other hand, are united by

a few things in which we believe. To become an American

citizen, you subscribe to those principles. If there were no

agreement on those principles, as Samuel Huntington has

noted, we would be the United Nations instead of the United

States of America.

There has therefore been a continuous education process to

remind Americans just what those principles are. Thomas

Jefferson, in his retirement at Monticello, would spend

evenings explaining to overnight guests what he had in mind

when he helped create what we call America. By the mid-19th

century it was just assumed that everybody knew what it meant

to be an American. In his letter from the Alamo, Col. William

Barrett Travis pleaded for help simply ``in the name of

liberty, patriotism and everything dear to the American

character.''

There were new waves of immigration in the late 19th

century that brought to our country a record number of new

people from other lands whose view of what it means to be an

American was indistinct--and Americans responded by teaching

them. In Wisconsin, for example, the Kohler Company actually

housed German immigrants together so that they might be

``Americanized'' during non-working hours.

But the most important Americanizing institution, as Mr.

Shanker reminded us in Rochester in 1988, was the new common

school. McGuffey's Reader, which was used in many classrooms,

sold more than 120 million copies introducing a common

culture of literature, patriotic speeches and historical

references.

In the 20th century it was war that made Americans stop and

think about what we were defending. President Roosevelt made

certain that those who charged the beaches of Normandy knew

they were defending for freedoms.

But after World War II, the emphasis on teaching and

defining the principles that unite us has waned. Unpleasant

experiences with McCarthyism in the 1950's, discouragement

after the Vietnam War, and history books that left out or

distorted the history of African-Americans made some skittish

about discussing ``Americanism.'' The end of the Cold War

removed a preoccupation with who we were not, making it less

important to consider who we are. The Immigration law changes

in 1965 brought to our shores many new Americans and many

cultural changes. As a result, the American Way became much

more often praised than defined.

Changes in community attitudes, as they always are, were

reflected in our schools. According to historian Diane

Ravitch, the public school virtually abandoned its role as

the chief Americanizing Institution. We have gone, she

explains, from one extreme (simplistic patriotism and

incomplete history) to the other--``public schools with an

adversary culture that emphasize the nation's warts and

diminish its genuine accomplishments. There is no literary

canon. There are no common readings, no agreed upon lists of

books, poems and stories from which students and parents

might be taught a common culture and be reminded of what it

means to be an American.''

During this time many of our national leaders contributed

to this drift toward agnostic Americanism. These leaders

celebrated multiculturalism and bilingualism and diversity at

a time when there should have been more emphasis on a common

culture and learning English and unity.

America's variety and diversity is a great strength, but it

is not our greatest strength. Jerusalem is diverse. The

Balkans are diverse. America's greatest accomplishment is not

its variety and diversity but that we have found a way to

take all that variety and diversity and unite ourselves as

one country. E pluribus unum: out of many, one. That is what

makes America truly exceptional.

Since 9/11 the national conversation about what it means to

be an American has been different. The terrorists focused

their cross-hairs on the creed that unites Americans as

one country--forcing us to remind ourselves of those

principles, to examine and define them, and to celebrate

them. The President himself has been the lead teacher.

President Bush has literally taken us back to school on

what it means to be an American. When he took the country

to church on television after the attacks he reminded us

that no country is more religious than we are. When he

walked across the street to the mosque he reminded the

world that we separate church and state and that there is

freedom here to believe in whatever one wants to believe.

When he attacked and defeated the Taliban, he honored

life. When we put planes back in the air and opened

financial markets and began going to football games again

we celebrated liberty. The President called on us to make

those magnificent images of courage and charity and

leadership and selflessness more permanent in our every

day lives through Freedom Corps. And with his optimism, he

warded off doomsayers who tried to diminish the real gift

of Americans to civilization, our cockeyed optimism that

anything is possible.

Just after 9/11, I proposed an idea I called ``Pledge Plus

Three.'' Why not start each school day with the Pledge of

Allegiance--as we do here in the Senate--followed by a

faculty member or student sharing for three minutes ``what it

means to be an American.'' The Pledge embodies many of the

ideals of our National Creed: ``one nation, under God,

indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.'' It speaks to

our unity, to our faith, to our

value of freedom, and to our belief in the fair treatment of

all Americans. If more future federal judges took more

classes in American history and civics and learned more about

those values, we might have fewer mind-boggling decisions

like the one issued recently by the Ninth Circuit.

Before I was elected to the Senate, I taught some of our

future judges and legislators a course at Harvard's John F.

Kennedy School of Government entitled ``The American

Character and America's Government.'' The purpose of the

course was to help policy makers, civil servants and

journalists analyze the American creed and character and

apply it in the solving of public policy problems. We tried

to figure out, if you will, what would be ``the American

way'' to solve a given problem.

The students and I did not have much trouble deciding that

America is truly exceptional (not always better, but truly

exceptional) or in identifying the major principles of the

American Creed or the distinct characteristics of our

country. Such principles as: liberty, equal opportunity, rule

of law, laissez faire, individualism, e pluribus unum, the

separation of church and state.

But what we also found as we find in this body was that

applying those principles to today's issues was hard work.

This was because the principles of the creed often

conflicted. For example, when discussing President Bush's

faith-based charity legislation, we know that ``In God We

Trust'' but we also know that we don't trust government with

God.

When considering whether the federal government should pay

for scholarships which middle and low income families might

use at any accredited school--public, private or religious--

we find that the principle of equal opportunity conflicted

with the separation of church and state.

And we find there are great disappointments when we try to

live up to our greatest dreams, for example, President

Kennedy's pledge that we will ``pay any price or bear any

burden'' to defend freedom, or Thomas Jefferson's assertion

that ``all men are created equal,'' or the American dream

that for anyone who works hard, tomorrow will always be

better than today. We are often disappointed when we try to

live up to those dreams.

We learned that, as Samuel Huntington has written,

balancing these conflicts and disappointments is what most of

American politics and government is about.

Mr. President, if most of our politics and government is

about applying to our most urgent problems the principles and

characteristics that make us the exceptional United States of

America, then we had better get about the teaching and

learning of those principles and characteristics.

The legislation I propose today with several co-sponsors

will help our schools do what they were established to do in

the first place. At a time when there are record numbers of

new Americans, and at a time when our values are under

attack, at a time when we are considering going to war to

defend those values, there can be no more urgent task than

putting the teaching of American history and civics back in

its rightful place in our schools so our children can grow up

learning what it means to be an American.

Mr. President, on a day in a week when there is a lot of news where people are hurting in a serious economy, I have some good news to report, and it will just take me a few minutes to do it. Our senior Senator, Mr. Byrd, Senator Ted Kennedy, who is chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, and I introduced legislation today that will help push the teaching of U.S. history in our classrooms. The way I like to describe it is by saying this: that it will help to put the teaching of American history and civics back in its rightful place, in our classrooms, so our children can grow up learning what it means to be an American.

The legislation which we have introduced would expand summer academies for outstanding teachers, authorize new teacher programs, require States to set standards for the teaching and learning of U.S. History, and create new opportunities to compare the tests that students take on U.S. history.

Specifically, the legislation would, No. 1, authorize 100 new summer academies for outstanding students and teachers of U.S. history and align those academies with locations in our national park system, such as the John Adams' House in Massachusetts or the Independence Hall in Philadelphia. I see the pages sitting here today. They are real students of U.S. history because they live it and learn it each day they are here. I don't know what their scores are on the advanced placement tests for U.S. history, but I know one fact, which the Chair may be interested in learning: The highest scores in any high school in America on the advanced placement test for U.S. history is not from a New England prep school or a Tennessee prep school or an elite school in some rich part of America; it is from the page school of the House of Representatives. They had better scores on U.S. history than any other high school. I don't know what the Senate page scores were, so I won't compare them.

The point is--and this is an idea David McCullough, a well-known author, had: We would expand the number of presidential and congressional academies for outstanding students and teachers and have them placed in the National Park Service initiative.

Second, the bill we've introduced today would double the authorization of funding for the teaching of American history programs in local school districts, which today involve 20,000 students as a part of the No Child Left Behind Act.

Third, it would require States to develop and implement standards for student assessments in U.S. history, although there would be no Federal reporting requirement, as there is now for reading and mathematics.

Finally, it would allow States to compare history and civics student test scores in the 8th and 12th grades by establishing a 10-State pilot program expanding the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), which is also called the ``Nation's Report Card.'' We have a tradition in the Senate where each of us, when we first arrive, make a maiden speech. We still call it that. Most of us pick a subject that is important to us. I made mine almost exactly 6 years ago, on March 4, 2003. The subject was something I cared about then and care about today and on which we have made some progress.

I argued, as I mentioned earlier, it was time to put the teaching of American history and civics back in its rightful place in our schools so as our children grow, they can learn what it means to be an American. On the ``Nation's Report Card,'' our worst scores for our seniors in high school are not in math or science but in U.S. history. It will be very difficult for us as a country to succeed if we don't learn where we came from.

I ask unanimous consent that the speech I made 6 years ago be printed in the Record immediately following my remarks.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that if Senator Byrd and Senator Kennedy make statements today on this legislation, as I believe they will, that our statements be put in the Record in about the same place, with Senator Byrd's first, then Senator Kennedy's, and mine third.

Mr. President, in the speech I made 6 years ago, I called it the American History and Civics Education Act. I suggested we create summer academies for outstanding students and teachers of American history. The idea was to create one of those academies focused on American history and civics for teachers and one for students and to see how they worked and to gradually expand them.

These presidential academies for students and teachers were modeled after the Tennessee Governors School, which I began when I was Governor of Tennessee, which still continue today, after 20 years. They are relatively inexpensive. They are 2-, 3-, or 4-week schools for students, and one for teachers. They held students in a variety of subjects, such as mathematics, science, the arts, international studies. They come together for a while and inspire one another, and then they go back to their schools and inspire their fellow students. They have been a great success in Tennessee and in other States.

Senator Reid, the majority leader, was the whip at that time. He was on the floor when I made my remarks and he asked to be the prime cosponsor of the legislation, and he was. Senator Kennedy, who has had a long interest in U.S. history, takes his family once a year to some an historical part of the United States. A couple years ago, they went into Virginia and saw where Patrick Henry made his famous speech. I kid him and say he cares so much about history because he is a part of it in such a big way. Senator Kennedy heard about the proposal, and he went along the Democratic side and rounded up 20 cosponsors of the legislation. So, Senator Kennedy, Senator Reid and I and several Republican Senators introduced a bill. We had a hearing during which Senator Byrd testified on behalf of my proposal for summer academies. It passed the Senate and the House, and we have had those summer academies now for three summers. One of those is at the Ashland University in Ashland, OH, which has been a great success. I see the students and teachers every summer. I bring them on the Senate floor, and it has been proven that it is good for teachers and good for our country. So that is the reason we want to expand those programs. We also felt we would meet as a group--those of us who have something to do with U.S. history here--and we met with the Library of Congress and with other parts of the Federal Government and many of us are involved in helping Americans learn more about our country's history, especially young people. As part of that, we thought it would be wise to try to consolidate in one section of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act--which we call No Child Left Behind--the various programs we already have for U.S. history and then to expand those that seemed worthwhile.

That is what this legislation does. There is a great need for it. I mentioned earlier that it is our worst subject for high school, even though some of our pages seem to do pretty well. Very few students score at or above the proficient level on the American history exam conducted by the National Assessment for Education Progress. Twenty percent of fourth graders were proficient in U.S. history, 17 percent of eighth graders were proficient in U.S. history, and 12 percent of high school seniors were proficient in U.S. history.

In addition, the No Child Left Behind Act may have had the unintentional effect of reducing the focus on U.S. history, as some school districts have concentrated their efforts on reading and mathematics. Therefore, it is appropriate and necessary to improve and expand State and local efforts to increase the understanding and awareness of American history and to do it, of course, in a way that doesn't preempt State and local responsibility and authority for elementary and secondary education.

Therefore, what the legislation we are doing today will do is expand the summer academies. We call them presidential academies for teachers and congressional academies for students. Those academies were created in 2004 to the number of 100 in the summer gradually over the years. The priority would be to place those academies in the National Park Service's national centennial parks initiative so the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, and other museums that have innovative programs in U.S. history can be aligned with these academies. David McCullough, for example, suggested we have the academies at locations such as Andrew Jackson's home in Heritage. I think an even better idea would be to have a week for U.S. teachers at John Adams' home in Massachusetts, with Mr. McCullough as the teacher. That is the idea.

Secondly, we would expand the Nation's report card--we call that NAEP--so there could be a 10-State pilot program for American history and civics student assessment in grades 8 and 12. Today, our Nation's report card doesn't measure State performance in American history. It gives us a picture of how 8th to 12th graders do nationally. This would permit Colorado, Tennessee, Alaska, and California to compare the seniors and, in doing so, call attention to improvements that might need to be made.

The third thing would be to require all States to develop and implement standards and assessments in American history under the No Child Left Behind Act. But it doesn't require any Federal reporting, as we do in other subjects.

Finally, it would take Senator Byrd's program--called Teaching American History, which he put into the No Child Left Behind Act 6 years ago--and it would double the authorization for that program from $100 million to $200 million, so it can serve even more than the 20,000 teachers it serves today.

I thank David Cleary and Sarah Rittling of my staff, who have worked hard with the staffs of Senators Byrd and Kennedy to prepare this legislation. We intend to invite all Members of the Senate, and we hope the House will join us in cosponsoring this.

Finally, I wish to tell one short story to conclude my remarks about some of the teachers who have participated. One of the things a Senator can do is to bring someone on the Senate floor who is not a Senator. It has to be done when the Senate is not in session and I have found it is a great privilege for most Americans. Early one morning last summer, I brought onto the Senate floor the 50 teachers who had been selected-- one from each State--for the presidential academy for outstanding teachers of American history. I showed them Daniel Webster's desk right here, and I showed them Jefferson Davis's desk, which is back there, and where the sword mark is where when the Union soldier came in and started chopping the desk, and the soldier who was stopped by a commander who said, ``We came to save the Union, not destroy it.'' I showed them where the majority and minority leaders speak. They saw ``E Pluribus Unum'' up there, and ``In God We Trust'' back there. They learned that we operate by unanimous consent, and we talked about what it would be like to actually try to operate a classroom by unanimous consent, much less the Senate.

As you might expect, they asked a lot of good questions, being outstanding history teachers. I especially remember the final question. I believe it was from the teacher from Oregon who asked: Senator, what would you like for us to take back to our students? I said that what I hope you will take back is that I get up every day, and I believe most of us on either side get up hoping that by the end of the day, we will have done something to make our country look better. It may not look that way on television or read that way in the newspaper because we are sent here to debate great issues. That produces conflict and disagreement a lot of the time. I feel, and I believe all of us feel, we are in a very special place, in a very special country, with a very special tradition. We would like for the students to know that and to know that is how we feel about the job we have.

I am delighted today that Senators Byrd and Kennedy, who have contributed so much to U.S. history over the years, both in their own personalities and by legislation they have introduced, have joined me in this effort to expand the Federal programs that focus on putting U.S. history and civics in a little higher place in the classroom so that our students learn what it means to be an American.

I invite my colleagues to join us, and I invite all Americans to join us in their communities, in their schools and in their States, to make that a priority.

Exhibit 1

Remarks of Sen. Alexander--American History and Civics Education Act

Introduction

Mr. President, from the Senate's earliest days, new members

have observed as we just heard a ritual of remaining silent

during floor debates for a period of time that ranged from

several weeks to two years. By waiting a respectful amount of

time before giving their so-called ``maiden speeches,''

freshman senators hoped their senior colleagues would respect

them for their humility.

This information comes from the Senate historian, Richard

Baker, who told me that in 1906, the former Governor of

Wisconsin, Robert LaFollette, arrived here ``anything but

humble'' (and I'm sensitive to this as a former governor). He

waited just three months, a brief period by the standards of

those days, before launching his first major address. He

spoke for eight hours over three days; his remarks in the

Congressional Record consumed 148 pages. As he began to

speak, most of the senators present in the chamber pointedly

rose from their desks and departed. LaFollete's wife,

observing from the gallery, wrote, ``There was no mistaking

that this was a polite form of hazing.''

From our first day here, as the majority leader said, we

new members of this 108th Congress have been encouraged to

speak up, and most of us have. But, with the encouragement of

the majority leader, several of us intend also to revive the

tradition of the maiden address by making a signature speech

on an issue that is important both to the country and to each

of us. I want to thank my colleagues who are here, and I want

to assure all of you that I will not speak for three days--as

former Governor LaFollette did.

Mr. President, I rise to address the intersection of two

urgent concerns that will determine our country's future.

These are also the two topics I care about the most: the

education of our children and the principles that unite us as

Americans.

It is time that we put the teaching of American history and

civics back in its rightful place in our schools so our

children can grow up learning what it means to be an

American.

Especially during such serious times when our values and

way of life are being attacked, we need to understand clearly

just what those values are.

In this, most Americans would agree. For example, in

Thanksgiving remarks in 2001, President Bush praised our

nation's response to September 11. ``I call it,'' he said,

``the American character.'' At about the same time, while

speaking at Harvard, former Vice-President Al Gore said, ``We

should [fight] for the values that bind us together as a

country.''

Both men were invoking a creed of ideas and values in which

most Americans believe. ``It has been our fate as a nation,''

the historian Richard Hofstadter wrote, ``not to have

ideologies but to be one.'' This value based identity has

inspired both patriotism and division at home, as well as

emulation and hatred abroad. For terrorists, as well as for

those who admire America, at issue is the United States

itself--not what we do, but who we are.

Yet our children do not know what makes America

exceptional. National exams show that three-quarters of the

nation's 4th, 8th and 12th graders are not proficient in

civics knowledge and one-third does not even have basic

knowledge, making them ``civic illiterates.''

Children are not learning about American history and civics

because they are not being taught it. American history has

been watered down, and civics is too often dropped from the

curriculum entirely.

Until the 1960s, civics education, which teaches the duties

of citizenship, was a regular part of the high school

curriculum, but today's college graduates probably have less

civics knowledge than high school graduates of 50 years ago.

Reforms, so-called, in the '60s and '70s resulted in the

widespread elimination of required classes and curriculum in

civics education. Today, more than half the states have no

requirement for students to take a course--even for one

semester--in American government.

To help put the teaching of American history and civics in

its rightful place, today I introduce legislation along with

several distinguished co-sponsors including: Senators Reid,

Gregg, Santorum, Inhofe and Nickles. We call it the

``American History and Civics Act.'' This act creates

Presidential Academies for Teachers of American History and

Civics and Congressional Academies for Students of American

History and Civics. These residential academies would operate

for two weeks (in the case of teachers) and four weeks (for

students) during the summer.

Their purpose would be to inspire better teaching and more

learning of the key events, persons and ideas that shape the

institutions and democratic heritage of the United States.

I have had some experience with such residential summer

academies, when I was Governor of Tennessee. In 1984, we

began creating Governor's schools for students and teachers.

For example, there was the Governor's School for the Arts at

Middle Tennessee State University and the Governor's School

of International Studies at the University of Memphis as well

as the Governor's School for Teachers of Writing at the

University of Tennessee at Knoxville, which was especially

successful. Eventually there were eight Governor's Schools

helping thousands of Tennessee teachers improve their skills

and inspiring outstanding students to learn more about core

curriculum subjects. When these teachers and students

returned to their schools for the next school year, they

brought with them a new enthusiasm for teaching and learning

that infected their peers. Dollar for dollar, the Governor's

Schools were one of the most effective and popular

educational initiatives in our state's history.

States other than Tennessee have had similar success with

summer residential academies. The first Governor's school was

started in North Carolina in 1963 when Governor Terry Sanford

established it at Salem College in Winston-Salem. Upon the

establishment of the first school, several states, including

Georgia, South Carolina, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Tennessee

established similar schools.

For example, in 1973 Pennsylvania established Governor's

Schools of Excellence, which has 14 different programs of

study. As in Tennessee, students participating in the

Pennsylvania Governor's School program attend academies at 8

different colleges to

study everything from international studies, to health care

and teaching. Also established in 1973, Virginia's Governor's

School is a summer residential program for 7500 of the

Commonwealth's most gifted students. Mississippi established

its Governor's School in 1981. The Mississippi University for

Women hosts the program, which is designed to give students

academic, creative, and leadership experiences. Every year

West Virginia brings 80 of its most talented high school

performing and visual arts students to West Liberty State

College for a three-week residential program.

These are just a few of the more than 100 Governors'

schools in 28 states--clearly the model is a good one. The

legislation I propose today applies that successful model to

American history and civics education at the national level

by establishing Presidential and Congressional academies for

students and teachers of those subjects.

Additionally, this proposed legislation authorizes the

creation of a national alliance of American history and

civics teachers who would be connected by the internet. The

alliance would facilitate sharing of best practices in the

teaching of American history and civics. It is modeled after

an alliance I helped the National Geographic Society begin

during the 1980's to put geography back into the American

school curriculum. Tennessee and the University of Tennessee

were among the first sponsors of the alliance.

This legislation creates a pilot program. Up to 12

Presidential academies for teachers and 12 Congressional

Academies for students would be sponsored by educational

institutions. The National Endowment for the Humanities would

award 2-year renewable grants to those institutions after a

peer review process. Each grant would be subject to rigorous

review after three years to determine whether the overall

program should continue, expand or end. The legislation

authorizes $25 million annually for the four year pilot

program.

There is a broad basis of renewed support for and interest

in American history and civics in our country.

David Gordon noted in a recent issue of the Harvard

Education Letter: ``A 1998 survey by the nonpartisan research

organization Public Agenda showed that 84 percent of parents

with school-aged children said they believe that the United

States is a special country and they want schools to convey

that belief to their children by teaching about its heroes

and traditions. Similar numbers identified the American ideal

as including equal opportunity, individual freedom, and

tolerance and respect for others. Those findings were

consistent across racial and ethnic groups.''

Our national leadership has responded to this renewed

interest. In 2000, at the initiative of my distinguished

colleague Senator Byrd, Congress created grants for schools

that teach American history as a separate subject within

school curricula. We appropriated $100 million for those

grants in the recent Omnibus appropriations bill, and

rightfully so. They encourage schools and teachers to focus

on the teaching of traditional American history, and provide

important financial support.

Last September, with historian David McCullough at his

side, President Bush announced a new initiative to encourage

the teaching of American history and civics. He established

the ``We the People'' program at the NEH, which will develop

curricula and sponsor lectures on American history and

civics. He announced the ``Our Documents'' project, run by

the National Archives. This would take one hundred of

America's most important documents from the National Archives

to classrooms and communities across the country. This year,

he will convene a White House forum on American history,

civics, and service. There, we will discuss new policies to

improve the teaching of history and civics in elementary and

secondary schools.

This proposed legislation takes the next step by training

teachers and encouraging outstanding students. We need to

foster a love of this subject and arm teachers with the

skills to impart that love to their students.

I am pleased that today one of the leading members of the

House of Representatives, Roger Wicker of Mississippi, along

with a number of his colleagues, are introducing the same

legislation in the House.

I want to thank Senator Gregg, Chairman of the Committee on

Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, who has agreed that

the committee will hold hearings on this legislation so that

we can determine how it might supplement and work with

recently enacted legislation and the President's various

initiatives.

Mr. President, in 1988, at a meeting of educators in

Rochester, the President of Notre Dame University, Monk

Malloy, asked this question: ``What is the rationale for the

public school?'' There was an unexpected silence around the

room until Al Shanker, the president of the American

Federation of Teachers, answered in this way: ``The public

school was created to teach immigrant children the three R's

and what it means to be an American with the hope that they

would then go home and teach their parents.''

From the founding of America, we have always understood how

important it is for citizens to understand the principles

that unite us as a country. Other countries are united by

their ethnicity. If you move to Japan for example, you can't

become Japanese. Americans, on the other hand, are united by

a few things in which we believe. To become an American

citizen, you subscribe to those principles. If there were no

agreement on those principles, as Samuel Huntington has

noted, we would be the United Nations instead of the United

States of America.

There has therefore been a continuous education process to

remind Americans just what those principles are. Thomas

Jefferson, in his retirement at Monticello, would spend

evenings explaining to overnight guests what he had in mind

when he helped create what we call America. By the mid-19th

century it was just assumed that everybody knew what it meant

to be an American. In his letter from the Alamo, Col. William

Barrett Travis pleaded for help simply ``in the name of

liberty, patriotism and everything dear to the American

character.''

There were new waves of immigration in the late 19th

century that brought to our country a record number of new

people from other lands whose view of what it means to be an

American was indistinct--and Americans responded by teaching

them. In Wisconsin, for example, the Kohler Company actually

housed German immigrants together so that they might be

``Americanized'' during non-working hours.

But the most important Americanizing institution, as Mr.

Shanker reminded us in Rochester in 1988, was the new common

school. McGuffey's Reader, which was used in many classrooms,

sold more than 120 million copies introducing a common

culture of literature, patriotic speeches and historical

references.

In the 20th century it was war that made Americans stop and

think about what we were defending. President Roosevelt made

certain that those who charged the beaches of Normandy knew

they were defending for freedoms.

But after World War II, the emphasis on teaching and

defining the principles that unite us has waned. Unpleasant

experiences with McCarthyism in the 1950's, discouragement

after the Vietnam War, and history books that left out or

distorted the history of African-Americans made some skittish

about discussing ``Americanism.'' The end of the Cold War

removed a preoccupation with who we were not, making it less

important to consider who we are. The Immigration law changes

in 1965 brought to our shores many new Americans and many

cultural changes. As a result, the American Way became much

more often praised than defined.

Changes in community attitudes, as they always are, were

reflected in our schools. According to historian Diane

Ravitch, the public school virtually abandoned its role as

the chief Americanizing Institution. We have gone, she

explains, from one extreme (simplistic patriotism and

incomplete history) to the other--``public schools with an

adversary culture that emphasize the nation's warts and

diminish its genuine accomplishments. There is no literary

canon. There are no common readings, no agreed upon lists of

books, poems and stories from which students and parents

might be taught a common culture and be reminded of what it

means to be an American.''

During this time many of our national leaders contributed

to this drift toward agnostic Americanism. These leaders

celebrated multiculturalism and bilingualism and diversity at

a time when there should have been more emphasis on a common

culture and learning English and unity.

America's variety and diversity is a great strength, but it

is not our greatest strength. Jerusalem is diverse. The

Balkans are diverse. America's greatest accomplishment is not

its variety and diversity but that we have found a way to

take all that variety and diversity and unite ourselves as

one country. E pluribus unum: out of many, one. That is what

makes America truly exceptional.

Since 9/11 the national conversation about what it means to

be an American has been different. The terrorists focused

their cross-hairs on the creed that unites Americans as

one country--forcing us to remind ourselves of those

principles, to examine and define them, and to celebrate

them. The President himself has been the lead teacher.

President Bush has literally taken us back to school on

what it means to be an American. When he took the country

to church on television after the attacks he reminded us

that no country is more religious than we are. When he

walked across the street to the mosque he reminded the

world that we separate church and state and that there is

freedom here to believe in whatever one wants to believe.

When he attacked and defeated the Taliban, he honored

life. When we put planes back in the air and opened

financial markets and began going to football games again

we celebrated liberty. The President called on us to make

those magnificent images of courage and charity and

leadership and selflessness more permanent in our every

day lives through Freedom Corps. And with his optimism, he

warded off doomsayers who tried to diminish the real gift

of Americans to civilization, our cockeyed optimism that

anything is possible.

Just after 9/11, I proposed an idea I called ``Pledge Plus

Three.'' Why not start each school day with the Pledge of

Allegiance--as we do here in the Senate--followed by a

faculty member or student sharing for three minutes ``what it

means to be an American.'' The Pledge embodies many of the

ideals of our National Creed: ``one nation, under God,

indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.'' It speaks to

our unity, to our faith, to our

value of freedom, and to our belief in the fair treatment of

all Americans. If more future federal judges took more

classes in American history and civics and learned more about

those values, we might have fewer mind-boggling decisions

like the one issued recently by the Ninth Circuit.

Before I was elected to the Senate, I taught some of our

future judges and legislators a course at Harvard's John F.

Kennedy School of Government entitled ``The American

Character and America's Government.'' The purpose of the

course was to help policy makers, civil servants and

journalists analyze the American creed and character and

apply it in the solving of public policy problems. We tried

to figure out, if you will, what would be ``the American

way'' to solve a given problem.

The students and I did not have much trouble deciding that

America is truly exceptional (not always better, but truly

exceptional) or in identifying the major principles of the

American Creed or the distinct characteristics of our

country. Such principles as: liberty, equal opportunity, rule

of law, laissez faire, individualism, e pluribus unum, the

separation of church and state.

But what we also found as we find in this body was that

applying those principles to today's issues was hard work.

This was because the principles of the creed often

conflicted. For example, when discussing President Bush's

faith-based charity legislation, we know that ``In God We

Trust'' but we also know that we don't trust government with

God.

When considering whether the federal government should pay

for scholarships which middle and low income families might

use at any accredited school--public, private or religious--

we find that the principle of equal opportunity conflicted

with the separation of church and state.

And we find there are great disappointments when we try to

live up to our greatest dreams, for example, President

Kennedy's pledge that we will ``pay any price or bear any

burden'' to defend freedom, or Thomas Jefferson's assertion

that ``all men are created equal,'' or the American dream

that for anyone who works hard, tomorrow will always be

better than today. We are often disappointed when we try to

live up to those dreams.

We learned that, as Samuel Huntington has written,

balancing these conflicts and disappointments is what most of

American politics and government is about.

Mr. President, if most of our politics and government is

about applying to our most urgent problems the principles and

characteristics that make us the exceptional United States of

America, then we had better get about the teaching and

learning of those principles and characteristics.

The legislation I propose today with several co-sponsors

will help our schools do what they were established to do in

the first place. At a time when there are record numbers of

new Americans, and at a time when our values are under

attack, at a time when we are considering going to war to

defend those values, there can be no more urgent task than

putting the teaching of American history and civics back in

its rightful place in our schools so our children can grow up

learning what it means to be an American.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Kyl and I be permitted to engage in a colloquy for 20 minutes, and that I be informed when we have 2 minutes left.

Thank you, Madam President.

President Obama's Budget

Madam President, President Obama's budget raises taxes by $1.4 trillion over 10 years. It is the largest tax increase in history, right in the middle of a recession--a recession we all hope we can get out of soon.

I have with me today on the Senate floor my colleague Senator Jon Kyl, a member of the Finance Committee, who is, in our party, at least, and certainly within the entire Senate, one of the experts on taxation and jobs and progrowth Government policies.

I say to Senator Kyl, I was looking through the history books a little bit this weekend. I noticed President Hoover, in 1932, raised taxes. He, in the Revenue Act of 1932, raised taxes across the board and raised the top tax rate from 25 percent to 63 percent. That was at a time when the unemployment rate was about 23 percent in this country. The effects of the 1932 tax increase were income tax revenues went down and the Federal deficit went up and unemployment stayed up all the way to 1940, when it was still 15 percent.

But President Kennedy, of course a Democratic President, came along after a little bit of a sluggish period of time, and he cut taxes in a variety of ways and tax revenues went up. President Reagan came in a few years later, after a difficult time in the late 1970s, which I remember very well, and he reduced taxes and tax revenues went up.

So I wonder what the lessons in history are. If we are in the middle of a recession and people are struggling for jobs--and in the Hoover and Kennedy and Reagan administrations we learned that tax increases often reduce revenues and impose costs--what is the lesson in history for the Obama budget?

I believe there is another lesson, too, if we look back 40 years to October of 1969. It sounds very good to say we are going to tax the rich people. There are just a few of them; they are not you. We are going to take their money. You will be all right. That is exactly what happened in 1969. That was the last time we had a millionaires tax--that is what they called it--because they found 155 people who had paid no income taxes, so they passed the millionaires tax. We have another name for it today; it is called the alternative minimum tax. This year, if Congress did not act, it would have taxed 28 million Americans. It started out to catch 155 rich Americans and now could catch 28 million, including a lot of the middle class.

One of the tax portions has to do with what Senator Gregg, the Senator from New Hampshire, who is our ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, calls the national sales tax on electricity, a tax that would be a so-called cap-and-trade system tax.

It doesn't just get rich people.

Madam President, I think he calls it the Making Work Pay credit.

Madam President, it is not entirely clear how much a cap-and-trade system on the entire economy will raise. The President estimates in his budget $646 billion over 10 years. Some observers think that is low; that it might be $60, $80, $100, $120 billion or even more over 10 years. The cap-and-trade system--the way of limiting the use of carbon in the economy--is the subject of a very important debate we should be having in the Senate. For the whole 6 years I have been in the Senate, I have recommended a cap-and-trade system just for powerplants, not for the whole economy. I see the distinguished Senator from New Mexico on the floor who is chairman of the Energy Committee. He has had his own bill there. But our point would be in the middle of a recession, you don't put on top of the American people a new tax on electric bills and gasoline purchases.

Just in December of last year, 10 percent of customers for Nashville Electric Service said they couldn't pay their electric bills, even with TVA's relatively low rates. So whatever the views are on cap-and- trade--and there are many views even within our conference: Our Presidential nominee, John McCain, supported cap-and-trade, and I support a limited one but not in the middle of a recession--the way to deal with a recession is not more taxes.

Our responsibility as the minority party is often to hold the administration accountable, to point out the other side of things, and to oppose things we think are wrong. Our responsibility also is to say what we are for. This week during the debate and over the next couple weeks you will hear Republicans offering different ideas for a clean energy agenda, one that begins with conservation, on which most of us agree. You will hear ideas including building 100 new nuclear powerplants, that is carbon free. You will hear ideas about finding more natural gas, that is low carbon and using plug-in electric cars, which we can plug in at night and we wouldn't have to build any more powerplants. So we could move toward more American energy, as clean as possible and as fast as possible, but what we want to remember--and this doesn't seem to be remembered in the budget--is to do so at as low a cost as possible because people are hurting today because of unemployment and high costs and a lack of jobs.

Well, the Senator from Arizona brings up a very good point, which is the limitation on deductions people might take. Now, again, that sounds pretty good because one may say: Well, that applies just to someone with a lot of money, but let's think about this for a minute. That means charitable deductions in the United States would not receive the same sort of treatment under President Obama's plan that they do today. So we take a college such as Maryville College in my hometown, which is a small Presbyterian college that doesn't have a very large endowment; a faith-based college. It is having a tough time in the economy anyway. Then we come along and we say to people to whom it might turn for charitable contributions: Sorry, we are going to take away the incentive that Americans have to make charitable contributions to the colleges, to the Boy Scouts, to the Girl Scouts, to the pro-life groups, to the pro-choice groups, to all sorts of associations in America that are having a

hard time raising money for charitable activities, and we are going to make it that much harder.

This country leads the world in terms of charitable contributions. Typically, about 2 percent of our income goes to charitable contributions. No other country in the world has that sort of tradition of giving, and in the middle of a recession we would limit charitable contributions to nonprofit organizations who are already struggling.

Madam President, we have been asking the question: Why would someone who is interested in seeing an economic recovery propose these kinds of tax policies--to limit charitable deductions, limit the deduction on home mortgages, punish American companies doing business overseas, and put a mandatory energy tax on the American people?

All of these are policies that don't seem to make any sense. As my colleague pointed out in the very beginning, they run opposite to the lessons we have learned historically. Why would this be done? It turns out that a very interesting op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last Thursday, March 12, may have the answer. It was written by Daniel Henninger. It is called ``The Obama Rosetta Stone.'' It is said that the Rosetta Stone is where you go to get the answer to the great mystery of life. The Rosetta Stone in the Obama budget Mr. Henninger finds is on page 5 of the budget. This, I think, provides the clue to why all of these negative policies are being introduced into the budget at this time.

Let me quote from page 5 of the Federal budget. He is referring to the amount of income the top 1 percent of earners in our country makes:

While middle-class families have been playing by the rules,

living up to their responsibilities as neighbors and

citizens, those at the commanding heights of our economy have

not.

Prudent investments in education, clean energy, health care

and infrastructure were sacrificed for huge tax cuts for the

wealthy and well-connected.

There's nothing wrong with making money, but there is

something wrong when we allow the playing field to be tilted

so far in the favor of so few. . . .It's a legacy of

irresponsibility, and it is our duty to change it.

I think what Mr. Henninger has found in the Obama budget is the rationale for these paradoxical tax provisions. It is not a matter of helping families or supporting small businesses to create more jobs or helping the economy grow out of the recession; rather, this is all being done to redistribute the wealth in the country because it is alleged that the people at the top end of our economy are making more money than they should.

I thank the Senator. I ask unanimous consent for 30 seconds to conclude.

Madam President, I hope all of us in the Chamber understand that people are hurting, and we

want to see jobs and see the economy moving again. I think our point is that the lessons of history show that raising taxes doesn't help create new jobs. Now is not the time to change inequities in the Tax Code. Now is the time to create new jobs and for people to have more money in their pockets.

We would like to join with the President in focusing attention on fixing the banks and getting credit flowing again in the same way President Eisenhower did when he said: I will go to Korea and concentrate my attention on this job until it is honorably done.

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

I thank the Senator from Vermont.

Mr. President, this morning Secretary Geithner appeared before the Budget Committee. He had good humor. He was resilient. He did a good job in his testimony. He said, a variety of times, approximately this: There would be no economic recovery until we fix the banks and get credit flowing again.

I would like to make a constructive suggestion to our new President, who I think is an impressive individual, and to Secretary Geithner, because while that may be the goal of the Government, the country is not yet persuaded the Government will do that or can do that.

I asked Secretary Geithner whether he is familiar with a book by Ernest May, a longtime professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. The book is called ``Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers.'' The reason I asked Secretary Geithner about that was because Ernest May's book ought to be required reading for any governmental decision maker. The thesis of the book is that any crisis one may be presented--if you are Secretary of Treasury, Secretary of Defense--usually has something in history to teach you a lesson. For example, if you are the Kennedy administration dealing with the Cuban missile crisis in the early 1960s, you may want to look back to Hitler's invasion of Rhineland in 1936 to see whether we should have stopped him then and avoided, perhaps, World War II.

Professor May often says one has to be very careful in thinking about the different analogies because you might pick up the wrong analogy and the wrong lesson from history. I would like to suggest to the President and to the Secretary of Treasury, in the spirit of Professor May's book, a couple of analogies from history that I believe would help this country deal with the banking crisis, deal with getting credit flowing again, and begin to get us back toward the economic recovery that we all want for our country and that we very badly need.

The first example comes from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was elected after a deep recession, and maybe even a depression was already underway, much worse than today. Mr. President, 5,000 banks had failed, and deposits were not insured. What did President Roosevelt do? He did one thing: Within 2 days after taking the oath of office, he declared a bank holiday, from March 6 to March 10, 1933. Banking transactions were suspended across the Nation except for making change. He presented Congress with the Emergency Banking Act. The law empowered the President, through the Treasury Department, to reopen banks that were solvent and assist those that were not. The House passed it after 40 minutes of debate, and the Senate soon followed. Banks were divided into categories. On the Sunday evening before the banks reopened, the President addressed the Nation through one of his signature fireside chats. The President assured 60 million radio listeners in 1933 that the crisis was over and the Nation's banks were secure. By the beginning of April, Americans confidently returned $1 billion to the

banking system; the bank crisis was over. Now, there was a lot more to come. That was not the end of the Great Depression, but it was the end of the bank crisis, and it came because of swift and bold Presidential leadership.

The lesson I would suggest from that analogy to our nation's history, is that President Roosevelt did not try to create the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Civilian Conservation Corps and the PWA and the WPA and pack the Supreme Court all in the first month of his term of office.

He declared a banking holiday within 2 days after taking office. He assured the country that he would fix the problem. He went on the radio not for the purpose of talking about the whole range of problems but to say, on March 12, 1933: I want to talk for a few minutes to the people of the United States about banking. And he explained what was going on. He said: We do not want and we will not have another epidemic of bank failures. He said: We have provided the machinery to restore our financial system.

The people believed him. They put money back in the banks because the American people were looking for Presidential leadership at that moment. They knew that the Congress or the Governors or other individuals in the country could not fix the bank problem. They knew the President had to fix it. When the President took decisive action and said he would fix the problem, the country responded and that part of the problem was fixed. The bank crisis was over. That is analogy No. 1.

Analogy No. 2--and I believe the analogy is closer to today's challenge facing President Obama and Secretary Geithner and all of us, really--is President Eisenhower's speech in October 1952 in which he declared he would end the Korean war. I'd like to read a paragraph from that speech because it seems to me so relevant to the kind of Presidential leadership that might make a difference today.

President Eisenhower said:

The first task of a new administration will be to review

and re-examine every course of action open to us with one

goal in view: to bring the Korean war to an early and

honorable end.

In these circumstances today, one might say to bring the bank crisis and the credit freeze to an early, honorable end.

President Eisenhower, then a general, not President, said:

This is my pledge to the American people. For this task a

wholly new administration is needed. The reason for this is

simple. The old administration cannot be expected to repair

what it failed to prevent.

In other words, the issue in the Presidential election of 1952 was change. That is also familiar. It just happened to be the Republicans arguing for change at the time.

Then the President said:

That job requires a personal trip to Korea. I shall make

that trip. Only in that way could I learn how best to serve

the American people in the cause of peace. I shall go to

Korea.

On November 29, in the same month he was elected to the Presidency, Dwight D. Eisenhower left for Korea.

The lesson from that instance in history, as Ernest May would have us look at, is not that President Eisenhower ended the Korean war by Christmas or even by Easter of the next year. The lesson is that he told the American people he had one objective in mind. Of all the things going on in 1952--inflation and other problems--he focused on the one that only a President could deal with. He did it in memorable terms. We remember the phrase today: I shall go to Korea. The people believed him. They elected him. They relaxed a little bit. The war was ended, and the 1950s were a very prosperous time.

I wish to make this a constructive and, I hope, timely suggestion because the President and the Secretary are about to tell us what they are going to do about banks. What I would like to suggest is this: they don't need to scare us anymore. Back in Tennessee, we are all pretty scared. There are a lot of people who are not sure what is going to happen with the banks. They don't need to explain the whole problem to us anymore. That is not what leaders do. Leaders solve problems. Maybe it needs to be explained enough so we grasp it, but basically Americans are looking for Presidential leadership to solve the problem.

I don't think we have to be persuaded that our impressive new President is capable of doing more than one thing at a time. He may have shown that better than anybody else in history. We have already had two summits--one on health and one on fiscal responsibility. I was privileged to attend one of the summits. I thought it went very well. The President has repealed some of President Bush's orders that he didn't agree with on the environment and stem cell research. The President has been out to a wind turbine factory in Ohio talking about energy. He has persuaded Congress to spend a trillion dollars, over my objection, but still he was able to do that in the so-called stimulus bill. The new Secretary of Education has worked with the President, and he made a fine speech on education the other day. He is doing a lot of things. A lot of things need to be done.

The point is, there is one overriding thing that needs to be done today, and that is to fix the banks and get American credit flowing again. President Roosevelt didn't create the Tennessee Valley Authority and the CCC and the WPA during the bank holiday. He fixed the banks. So my respectful suggestion is that our impressive, new President say to the American people as soon as he can, in Eisenhower fashion: I will fix the banks. I will get credit flowing again. I will take all these other important issues facing the country--health care, education, energy, on which I am eager to work--and I will make them subordinate to that goal. In the spirit of President Eisenhower: I will concentrate my full attention on this goal until the job is honorably done; that job being, fixing the banks and getting credit flowing again.

I genuinely believe that if this President did that, if he, in effect, made that speech, cleared the decks, gathered around him the bright people he has around him and said to the American people: Don't worry, a President can do this and I am going to. That statement would be the beginning of the economic recovery. Because lack of confidence is a big part of our problem. This crisis began with $140 oil prices. That was, in the words of FedEx chairman Fred Smith, ``The match that lit the fire.'' Then there was the housing subprime mortgage crisis and then banking failures.

Now, even in strong community banks in Tennessee, we have people who are out of work and who can't pay their small business loans or student loans. Some of those banks are beginning to have some problems.

We need to interrupt this train. We only have one person who can do it. A Senator cannot do it. The Vice President cannot do it. The Secretary of the Treasury cannot do it. No Governor can do it. The President can; only he can do it. Even though he may be able to do many things well at one time, he needs to do one thing until the job is honorably done.

My respectful suggestion is that Ernest May's book, which reminds leaders to think in terms of history, ``Thinking in Time,'' is a powerfully apt book for these times. As the Secretary and the President and his advisers think about how to present to the American people what their plan is, they should remember that a part of it is not only developing a strategy. The most important part is persuading at least half the people they are right. I believe that means clearing the deck: no more summits, no more trips in other directions. Focus attention on the problem facing the country until the job is honorably done.

In Eisenhower fashion, I hope the President will say: I will fix the banks. I will get credit flowing again. I will concentrate my attention on that job until it is done.

I yield the floor, suggest the absence of a quorum, and ask unanimous consent that the time during the quorum be split evenly between the parties.

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

Madam President, I ask the Chair to let me know when I have 2 minutes remaining. I believe we have 30 minutes allocated to us at this stage.

I thank the Chair.

Madam President, this is an important next 3 or 4 weeks for the United States. The President of the United States has outlined his 10- year blueprint for our country's future in the form of a budget. The budget is now before the Congress, and it is our job to consider it. We are doing that every day in hearings, and we are looking forward to the details the President will send later this month. But for the next 4 weeks, including this week, the major subject for debate in this Senate Chamber is this: Can we afford the Democrats' proposals for spending, taxes, and borrowing? And our view--the Republican view--is the answer is no.

As an example, in the 1990s, President Clinton and the Congress raised taxes, but they raised taxes to balance the budget. This proposal--and we will be discussing it more as we go along--will raise taxes to grow the government.

Not long ago, the President visited our Republican caucus, and we talked some about entitlement reform--the automatic spending that the government says we don't appropriate; mostly all of it is for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid--and he talked about the importance to him of dealing with entitlement spending. Senator McConnell, the Republican leader, made a speech at the National Press Club to begin this Congress in which he said that he was going to say to this President: Let's work together to bring the growth in entitlement spending, automatic spending, under control. We had a summit at the White House, which we were glad to attend, about that.

But I say to Senator Gregg, the Senator from New Hampshire, who is the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, I was disappointed to come back from the excellent meeting we had at the White House on fiscal responsibility and find, for example, that in this budget we have $117 billion more for entitlement spending on Pell grants. So my question to the Senator from New Hampshire is: Does this budget actually reform entitlement spending, or does it not?

At this point, let me ask the Senator from New Hampshire a question. I have heard you say, and I believe I said a moment ago, that in the 1990s, President Clinton raised taxes, as President Obama is planning to raise taxes, but that President Clinton used it to reduce the deficit.

I wonder if I may ask the Senator from New Hampshire about this. Some people may say, with some justification: You Republicans are complaining about spending, yet in the last 8 years you participated in a lot of it yourself. How would you compare the proposed spending and proposed debt over the next 10 years in this blueprint by the Obama administration with the last 8 years?

I see the Senator from Arizona, who is a longtime member of the Senate Finance Committee and pays a lot of attention to Federal spending and is the assistant Republican leader. I wonder, Senator Kyl, as you have watched the Congress over the years, to what do you attribute this remarkable increase in spending? We heard a lot of talk last year about change, but this may be the kind of change that produces a sticker shock. It may be a little bit more change in terms of spending than a lot of Americans were expecting.

I wonder if I might ask the Senator from Arizona, one might look at the chart Senator Gregg has up and say that is not too big an increase in Federal spending, but of course the United States produces about 25 percent of the world's wealth. When we go up on an annual basis by a few percentage points, it begins to change the character of the kind of country we have.

How do you see this kind of dramatic increase in spending and taxing and debt affecting the character of the country as compared with, say, countries in Europe or other countries around the world?

I wonder if either the Senator from Arizona or New Hampshire would have a comment on the way that spending was accomplished in the stimulus bill. For example, in the Department of Education, where I used to work, the annual budget was $68 billion. But the stimulus added $40 billion per year to the department's budget for the next 2 years. There were no hearings. There was no discussion about this. No one said: Are we spending all the money we are spending now in the right way, and if we were to spend more would we give parents more choices? Would we create more charter schools? Would we, as the President said yesterday, of which I approve, spend some money to reward outstanding teachers?

What about the way this is being spent on energy, education, and Medicaid, for example?

I heard the Senator from Arizona say it was not just a $1 trillion stimulus package, that by the time you add in all these projected costs in the future, it might be much more.

It is very hard to imagine, Senator Kyl. Just to make the point we are not being personal about that, my son attended the same school that the President's daughters attend when we were here and I was Education Secretary.

School vouchers may not be the solution in every rural county in America, but in the District of Columbia, 1,700 children who are low- income children have a chance to choose among private schools, their parents are delighted with the choice, and a study is coming out this spring to assess what they are learning. I do not know the motive behind this, but I do know the National Education Association has made its reputation opposing giving low-income parents the same choices that wealthy people have. That is a poor policy and one we ought not to have stuck on an appropriations bill like that.

The President has shown good instincts on education. His Education Secretary is a good one. But had we had a chance to debate this in committee and to hear from them, perhaps we could have had a bipartisan agreement that we need to pay good teachers more, we need more charter

schools, and we need to give parents some more choices like these District of Columbia parents.

I know our time is running short. I wonder if the Senator from New Hampshire has any further thoughts about spending.

Senator Kyl, to conclude our discussion, this is the beginning of a process in the Senate in which everyone in this country can participate. We are asking that they consider: Can you afford this amount of spending, this amount of borrowing, this amount of taxes? There is a different path we could take toward the future.

I thank the Senator from Arizona for his leadership and the Senator from New Hampshire for his views.

This is the beginning of a discussion about a 10-year blueprint offered by our new President about the direction in which our country should go. We on the Republican side believe American families cannot afford this much new spending, this many new taxes, and this much new debt. We will be suggesting why over the next 3 or 4 weeks, and in addition to that we will be offering our vision for the future. For example, on energy, some things we agree with, such as conservation and efficiency; some things we would encourage more of, such as nuclear power for carbon-free electricity.

This is the beginning of a very important debate, and the direction in which it goes will dramatically influence the future of this country and make a difference to every single family, not just today's parents but children and their children as well.

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

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time be equally charged to each side.

Mr. President, while the Senator from California is here, I wish to acknowledge her role in helping to create the DC voucher program for low-income children. It was not an easy vote for her. I listened to her remarks as I have before about the importance of trying new ideas in American public education. The new Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, who I think is one of the President's best-- maybe his best--appointments, believes the same thing.

I look forward to working with the Senator to see what the study, which comes out this spring, says about the first few years of this program. We know parental satisfaction is high.

Yes.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator. We do agree on that. The one area with which I respectfully disagree is that this was not the bill to put on restrictions and conditions to make sure the program ends. That is the reason we have an amendment, because someone thought it was

important to say that the program needs to end unless it is approved by the DC City Council which, unlike the Mayor, opposes the program. That is why we have an amendment.

Unfortunately, the circumstance we have is, unless we take very quick action in the Congress, the 1,700 children who are part of this program will not be a part of it after another year. The program will shut down. It is beginning to do that now, and it will not be accepting new applications.

I also regret that the amendment is being offered, but that was necessary because of the restrictions and the conditions that were placed on the scholarship program in the omnibus. But that does not change my attitude about working with the Senator from California to look to the future.

Mr. President, I ask that I be notified when 9 minutes is completed.

I thank the Chair.

(The further remarks of Mr. Alexander are printed in today's Record under ``Morning Business.'')

Mr. President, in the midst of much talk about bipartisanship and not much to show for it, I have a nomination for an issue upon which we can work together, and that is this: review the maze of conflicting forms, FBI investigations, IRS audits, ethics requirements, and financial disclosures to make it possible for President Obama and future Presidents to put together promptly a team to help them solve big problems.

This is an urgent problem today because during the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression, the man in charge of fixing the crisis, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, apparently is sitting in his office without much help, at least from any Obama Presidential appointees.

According to news accounts, among the key vacant positions at the Treasury Department are the Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy; the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy; the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis; the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax, Trade, and Tariff Policy; and the Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Tax Affairs. The first choice for Deputy Secretary of the Treasury appears to have withdrawn her name from consideration.

Four months after the President's election, according to TheBigMoney.com, the list of vacancies on the Treasury Department Web site shows that ``Main Treasury Building is a lonely place, conjuring up visions of Geithner signing dollar bills one by one . . . , watering the plants, and answering the phones when he's not crafting a bank rescue plan.''

Of course, there are the career employees available and at least one holdover Assistant Secretary and various czars in the White House--but even one of the czars has expressed concern about the slow pace of filling Treasury Department jobs at a critical time.

Part of the problem may be attributed to the Treasury Secretary's boss, our impressive new President, who is nevertheless subject to the criticism that he is living over the store but not minding it.

Presidents have many problems to solve, but no one ever suggested that the wisest course is to try to solve them all at once. There is a tradition that Washington, DC, can only do one thing well at a time. And Presidents are supposed to exclude from the White House the merely important issues so they may deal with the truly Presidential problems, which surely must not include being distracted by debates with radio talk show hosts.

President Eisenhower, who knew something about leading complex organizations, said in 1952: ``I will go to Korea.'' The country relaxed and elected him, confident that the general would end the Korean war.

We need for President Obama to say in Eisenhower fashion ``I will fix the banks''--and then stay home long enough to do it. Then the country might relax a little and gain some confidence that this might actually happen, which is the first step and perhaps the main step in economic recovery.

But the President needs a team at Treasury to help persuade the American people that he can and will get the job done.

The President has brought on himself some of the difficulty of putting together a team. In addition to having too many balls in the air at once, in my opinion, his standards for hiring sometimes seem to have the effect of disqualifying people who know something about the problem from being hired to solve the problem.

But another part of the President's difficulty in filling jobs--one that has afflicted every President since Watergate--is the maze of investigations and forms that prospective senior officials must complete and the risk they run that they will be trapped and humiliated and disqualified by an unintentional and relatively harmless mistake.

I voted against the nomination of Secretary Geithner because I thought it was a bad example for the man in charge of collecting the taxes not to have paid them. And I thought his excuse for not paying was not plausible. But that does not mean that we should disqualify every Presidential nominee for minor tax discrepancies that result from the complexity of our Byzantine Tax Code, a Tax Code which has reached 3.7 million words, according to a January report by the National Taxpayer Advocate, and which is badly in need of reform.

I suspect very few Americans with complex tax returns can go through a multiple-year audit without finding something with which the IRS might disagree.

Take the case of former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk, President Obama's nominee to be U.S. Trade Representative, who headlines report paid back taxes primarily because he failed to list as income--and then take a charitable deduction on--speaking fees that he gave away to charity. Common sense suggests, and his tax preparer thought, what Mr. Kirk did was appropriate. After all, he did not keep the money. The IRS apparently has a more convoluted rule for dealing with such things. In any event, the matter is so trivial as to be irrelevant to his suitability to be the trade nominee.

Tax audits are only the beginning. There is the FBI full field investigation during which friends of the nominee are asked such questions as: Does he live beyond his means?

When I was nominated for Education Secretary a few years ago, one of my friends replied to the FBI agent: Don't we all?

There are Federal financial disclosures. Then there is the White House questionnaire, and, of course, the questions from the confirming Senate committee. The definition of what constitutes ``income'' on some forms is different than the definition of ``income'' on others. It is easy to make a mistake.

This is not as bad as it could be. We have a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress with big majorities in both Chambers. So the nominees have gone through fairly quickly. But when the Congress is of a different party than the President, the congressional questionnaires expand and sometimes delay the nomination for more weeks.

Washington, DC, has become the only place where you hire a lawyer, an accountant, and an ethics officer before you find a house and put your kid in school.

The motto around here has become: ``Innocent until nominated.''

Every legal counsel to every President since Nixon would, I suspect, agree that in the name of effective government, this process needs to be changed. Most have tried to change it, but in Washington style, new regulations pile up on top of old ones, creating a more bewildering maze.

So I have this suggestion--and one of the Senators to whom I want to make the suggestion is here today, the Senator from Connecticut. I suggest Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins, who are the chairman and ranking member of the committee with jurisdiction over this mess and who have a tradition of working well together, should set as a goal to clean it up by the end of the year. Invite all the former White House counsels of both parties to give their opinions. Consolidate and simplify the forms so we learn only what we need to know.

To help with this, I suggest that Senators Lieberman and Collins form one of those ``gangs'' that we occasionally form in the Senate, maybe a dozen or more Senators equally divided among both parties--some from the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and some not-- in order to limit the possibility that everyone will run away from the final recommendations because they fear someone might think Senators are not interested in ethical and good government.

Good government right now means fixing the banks and having the best possible team to do it. As a Washington Post editorial writer said yesterday of the President:

As he convened his ``health care summit'' at the White

House . . . the stock market was hitting another 12-year low,

General Motors was again teetering on the brink of insolvency

and the country was still waiting to hear the details of the

Treasury's proposal to bail out banks.

Maybe we can make this grand bargain with our new President: If you will keep your eye on the ball--in this case, fixing the banks so the economy will get moving again--we will work in a bipartisan way to make it easier for you and for future Presidents to promptly assemble a team and govern us properly.

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

Madam President, I wish to discuss the DC voucher program, officially the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program. This is a program that was established in 2004 to provide low-income families with scholarships to attend private schools in the District of Columbia.

The legislation we are debating, unfortunately, makes it harder for that program to continue. The fiscal year 2009 omnibus legislation includes language that would end the scholarship program in September 2010, and it says we could not continue it by appropriation, which is unusual. It would also add the requirement that the DC City Council would have to approve whatever we did.

That is a very unwise situation, I believe. The U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, said yesterday that poor children getting vouchers to attend private schools in the District of Columbia should be allowed to stay there. He said that to the Associated Press. I am reading from that article where it says that Secretary Duncan opposes vouchers. But he says essentially that Washington is a special case, and kids already in private schools on the public dime should be allowed to continue.

To quote him directly, he said that ``I don't think it makes sense to take kids out of a school where they're happy and safe and satisfied and learning. . . . I think those kids need to stay in their school.''

I think Secretary Duncan is right. I also think--and I said this at his hearing--that Secretary Duncan is the best of the distinguished appointments President Obama has made. He can be a real help to the children in this country. I look forward to working with him.

I am an original cosponsor of an amendment that Senators Ensign, Lieberman, Gregg, Voinovich, Kyl, DeMint, Brownback, and Cornyn have introduced that would solve this problem, that would remove the language from the omnibus bill that would make it harder for the DC Voucher Program to continue.

I think we should also take note that DC Mayor Adrian Fenty and Chancellor Michelle Rhee, both of whom are acting courageously to try to improve the schools in the District, favor keeping the program.

The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal editorial pages have all voiced support of this program since this omnibus language was introduced in the House. The DC program is being singled out.

I understand this may cause some problem with some House Members who would rather see us not amend the bill that came to us, but that is our job. This is the Senate. That is the House of Representatives. If, in a great big bill that spends $410 billion, we see some things that need to be improved, we ought to have a chance to improve them. In this case, there is broad agreement with the President's Education Secretary and many others that the DC kids need this and deserve this. There are 1,700 children currently attending private schools in DC using these opportunity scholarships of up to $7,500 a year.

I make this point to call attention to the DC voucher program and the importance of making certain we have a chance to amend the omnibus bill--the bill before us--so we do not make it harder for the DC voucher program to continue. If that means we have to go on into next week in order to have a sufficient number of amendments, then we should do that.

I appreciate the fact that the majority leader has adopted this year, as he should, the practice that the Senate is a place that is distinguished primarily by virtually unlimited debate and virtually unlimited amendments and then we vote. So a premature conclusion to this bill before we have a chance to improve it, such as keeping the DC voucher program, I think would be unwise.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the Associated Press article, the Washington Post editorial, the Chicago Tribune editorial, and the Wall Street Journal editorial.

I thank the Senator from Illinois, and I look forward to working with him on helping the District of Columbia, including the mayor and the superintendent in the District who would like for this to continue.

The question I have is: Why is it necessary for this legislation to insist that the program end in September of 2010 and that we add the provision the city council would have to approve it if it is continued by the Congress?

Usually, when we have education programs whose authorization runs out, we continue them for a while as we go through the analysis the Senator talked about, such as the Higher Education Act which took us 6 years or the Head Start Act which took us 3 or 4 years or No Child Left Behind or so many others. Why is it necessary that we even address the ending of this program in this legislation?

I thank the Senator from Illinois, and would only note that Senator Lieberman is a cosponsor of the amendment we would like to have a chance to vote on.

Amendment No. 607

Mr. President, I understand the majority leader may want to close, and I am happy to wait until he does, if he wishes.

Mr. President, I will be delighted.

Mr. President, I thank the majority leader. On his comments about the omnibus appropriations bill, two brief points. One is that, of course, all Senators welcome the opportunity to debate and amend the bill. Senator Byrd has argued eloquently, as the majority leader himself has, that the opportunity to debate and amend bills is an important part of what makes the Senate unique. We often tend to argue that point more eloquently when we are in the minority. Amendments and debate are what make the Senate the Senate. It gives us a chance to represent the people who send us--the people for whom we work. All of us on the minority side appreciate that this year the majority leader has--as we believe he should, but nevertheless he has-- tried to create an environment in which we can debate and amend. Obviously, amendments aren't going to always be amendments we agree with. I don't agree with all the amendments that come from our side either, but I appreciate that chance to offer amendments, and we would like to see the Senate function in a way that gives us a chance to represent the people who hire us.

Second, I suspect every member of the Appropriations Committee and most Members of the Senate hope we can get back to the practice of passing our appropriations bills one by one and acting on them before the beginning of the fiscal year, which is October 1. I would hate to think how much of the taxpayers' money we must waste each year by missing that deadline, but grouping these measures together into giant ``omnibus'' bills, and by passing continuing resolutions which don't take into account the differences of opinion among members of Congress and the administration about budget priorities. I would hope we could get back to the practice of finishing our work and taking the bills one by one as we did not so long ago.

I appreciate the majority leader mentioning the fact that we will be debating all week on this appropriations bill, to try and give this massive bill the scrutiny it deserves. It would have been much better if these nine appropriations bills had been enacted last year, before October 1, and we could take them into account when we voted on the stimulus bill last week. That is the way we should have been able to do that, but we weren't.

I thank the majority leader.

Mr. President, I have two topics I wish to speak about this evening: One on Iraq and one on higher education. First, on Iraq and Afghanistan. President Obama on Friday told marines at Camp Lejeune and the world how the United States plans to end the war in Iraq. The President's plan turns out not to be so different than the agreement President Bush signed with Iraq just before he left office. Add Senator McCain's name to the list because on Friday he generally supported President Obama's decision. For the first time, I think it can be said we have a bipartisan consensus--and a consensus between the Congress and the President--about how to honorably and successfully conclude the war in Iraq.

Ironically, this is a bipartisan consensus that comes 2 years later than it could have. Because what President Bush and President Obama and Senator McCain seemed to agree on today is also a course that is consistent with the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group headed by former Republican Secretary of State James Baker and former Democratic House Foreign Affairs Chairman Lee Hamilton. That is not just my judgment. I asked Secretary Rice, the former Secretary of State, whether the agreement

President Bush signed with Iraq is generally consistent with the principles of the Iraq Study Group, and she said yes. I asked Secretary Gates, who has been Secretary of Defense both for President Bush and now for President Obama and who, for a little while, was also a member of the Iraq Study Group, whether the direction in Iraq that President Bush had agreed to go in is approximately the same as the principles recommended in December of 2006 by the Iraq Study Group, and he answered yes.

Unfortunately, instead of having, for the last 2 years, a consensus between the Congress--a Democratic Congress--and the President--a Republican President--we instead made it clear to our enemy and clear to our troops that we were divided in Washington about the course of the war and that we couldn't agree on how to conclude. I don't know whether we had reached agreement earlier by, for example, adopting the legislation that Senator Salazar and I and 17 Senators offered and that about 60 Representatives offered in the House, that would have made the principles of the Iraq Study Group the course upon which the United States would embark to successfully conclude the war in Iraq--I don't know whether, if we had done that in 2007, 2 years ago, the war would have been more successful or Iraq would have been better stabilized; if troops would have come home sooner and perhaps even American lives might have been saved; or if Iraqi lives might have been saved. I don't know about that. But I do know that we put in jeopardy--by our failure to agree between the Congress and the President over the course of the war in Iraq--we put in jeopardy the ability of the American people to have the stomach to see this mission all the way through to the end, which is an essential requirement, in my view, of any military endeavor in which the United States should engage.

President Bush, nevertheless, persevered, and it became, in the view of many Democrats and others, Bush's war, and it seriously damaged the Bush Presidency. It seriously divided the country. At least we can use this failure to agree, this failure to come to some consensus, as a guide about how to conduct ourselves in future conflicts, starting with the war in Afghanistan.

President Obama is sending 17,000 more Americans to Afghanistan. He is doing so after only a month in office. He says, quite candidly, he hasn't yet got a strategy, approved a strategy or, in his words Friday night in his interview with Jim Lehrer, an exit strategy. I assume that also means he hasn't yet decided upon what is even more important, which is a success strategy. The lesson of Iraq and of our failure to come to some agreement over the last 2 years is that we should give our new President time and support in his efforts to develop a strategy and then we should insist--we in the Congress--that we agree with him on a strategy; and if we can't agree with the one he comes up with, that he adjust it until we can, so we as a nation can have a compelling purpose, a clear set of goals, the money to supply more than enough force to reach those goals. So our enemies and our troops can hear clearly that the American people have the stomach to see the mission in Afghanistan all the way through to the end. In other words, it is important for our country not just for the success of the Obama presidency; it is important for our country that what some called Bush's war not be followed by what others might call Obama's war.

The Iraq Study Group was created by Congress in 2006. It had a remarkable group of members, including Lee Hamilton and Jim Baker who both cochaired it. Ed Meese, the former Attorney General for President Reagan, was there. Vernon Jordan was a member. Secretary Gates was a member for a while. The first President Bush's Secretary of State, Larry Eagleburger, was a member. Leon Panetta, President Clinton's Chief of Staff and now CIA Director, was there. President Clinton's Secretary of Defense was a member. Sandra Day O'Connor, former Supreme Court Justice, was a member. They spent many months and went to Iraq, and they talked to a variety of people. They tried to see if they could come to a consensus about how the U.S. could honorably conclude the war in Iraq. They were bipartisan and unanimous in their 79 recommendations, which would be boiled down to three major points.

I remember being very disappointed in early 2007 when, following that, President Bush didn't take advantage of the opportunity during his State of the Union Address to embrace the report. He knew then that a majority of Americans didn't support his strategy. He knew the strategy would have a more difficult time being sustained without their support. I think all of us knew, then, if he could get Congress to agree, the American people would be more likely to agree.

The President could have invited the distinguished members of the Iraq Study Group to sit in the gallery during his speech and, as Presidents do often, introduce them. The President could have said: This is not my recommendation, it is theirs. I accept it for the good of the country, and I ask the American people now to accept it.

If one goes back and reads the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group report made in December 2006, here is basically what it said we should do: Get the U.S. troops out of the combat business in Iraq and into the support business in a prompt and honorable way--maybe over the course of a year, they said. General Petraeus amended that to a little longer than a year. The Iraq Study Group said reduce the number of American forces in Iraq. The Iraq Study Group said there should be a limited military presence for the longer term in Iraq, and that would signal to the rest of the Middle East to stay out of Iraq. It said it would give support to General Petraeus and his troops for a military surge to make Baghdad safer. This was before President Bush authorized the surge.

It would expand diplomatic efforts to build support for Iraqi national reconciliation and sovereignty. The Iraq Study Group would recognize, as Prime Minister Blair said, that it is time for the next chapter of Iraq's history to be written by the Iraqis themselves.

Democratic Senator Ken Salazar--who is now a member of the Obama administration as Interior Secretary--and I wrote legislation that would make the Iraq Study Group recommendations national policy. As I mentioned, it attracted about nine Democrats and eight Republican Senators. In the House of Representatives, there were 27 Democrats and 35 Republicans.

At that time, we were having vote after vote on Iraq. Some Senators said there should be an immediate withdrawal. Others wanted victory of the kind we had in Germany and Japan. I thought the Iraq Study Group recommendations made the most sense; and, apparently, today, so does President Bush, so does President Obama, and so does Senator McCain.

Now, it is fair to say each of those men I just mentioned could find something in the Iraq Study Group report with which to disagree. I would respect those disagreements. But the 17 of us in the Senate could find within that report a course to agree about, just like the Commission itself of widely varying Americans could find enough unanimously to agree about, so they could say to the troops, to the enemy, and to the world: Here is our course forward.

I suggest we would have been better off if we had done that. I pointed out that President Bush would not support the report. I respected that, but I disagreed with it. At the same time, Speaker Pelosi and the Democratic leaders would not allow our amendment to come to a vote. We asked and asked--but their reaction was, ``No, no, we won't do that.'' I guess they had their reasons. We don't question their motivation. President Bush persevered in the war, and Democratic leaders persevered with their opposition to the war. They didn't allow the Iraq Study Group resolution to come to a vote. So then we had an election.

Senator Salazar said about the only way we could have united the President and the Democratic leaders was in their opposition to the Iraq Study Group--a set of recommendations that are now largely the principles upon which we are preceding as we seek to end the war in Iraq. But is the country better off for us not having had that 2 years of agreement?

Here are some lessons: One, the Iraq war reminds us that nation building costs many billions of dollars and many lives. Whenever possible, we

should use our military forces to defend America and use our ``shining city on a hill,'' which President Reagan talked about so often, as an example to spread freedom. If we must become involved in another country, as we are in Iraq and Afghanistan, then we must have a compelling reason, a clear mission, an overwhelming force to make certain we reach our goals.

The second lesson is this: In order to reach those goals, we have to persuade the American people to have the stomach to see the mission we have adopted all the way through to the end. It is much better if the President and the Congress, even if they are of different political parties, agree on that mission. Technically, the Commander in Chief can wage a war, leaving us not much to do but fund the troops, which almost all of us, regardless of party, do. We saw in Iraq the failure to agree between the President and the Congress--which made the war harder and longer and President Bush's presidency much less successful. We were in the position often of being the oldest democracy lecturing Baghdad, an infant democracy, for not coming up with a political solution when we ourselves could not come up with one.

Finally, we learned a lesson in Iraq about how to honor those who serve our country. Sometimes in airports now--unlike in the Vietnam era--passengers burst into applause when a group of service men and women appear. A great many Tennesseans have been to Iraq and Afghanistan. More are going this week to Afghanistan. Many have served two or three tours already--including men and women from the Tennessee National Guard and the 101st Airborne--and 100 have given their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hundreds have suffered wounds that will change their lives. They have performed heroically. I am glad to see that after 6 years, we finally seem to be united on a path which will bring the war to successful conclusion and hasten the time when most of those serving can come home. But it is disappointing that we did not take the advantage 2 years ago when we might have done it to agree on the principles of the Iraq Study Group. We had that opportunity. It might have shortened the war. It might have stabilized Iraq more rapidly. It might have saved lives.

We should remember that as we look ahead to Afghanistan. We do not want to succeed Bush's war with Obama's war. Whenever we go to war, it should be an American war and the President should make certain he has bipartisan support in Congress.

Mr. President, during the 1960s, American Motors Corporation president George Romney warned Detroit's automakers, ``There is nothing more vulnerable than entrenched success.''

The big three paid no attention. They were building the best cars in the world--highly profitable gas-guzzling vehicles we were quick to buy. Meanwhile, their future Japanese competitors were perfecting smaller, fuel-efficient cars. And today we are bailing out the Detroit companies that did not listen.

American higher education would do well to heed the warning that George Romney gave the Detroit automakers in the 1960s. We have the best colleges in the world today, just as we had the best cars in the world then. But even brisk competition at home seems to have little effect on rising tuition costs.

To deal with rising college costs, I suggest, No. 1, colleges offer some well-prepared students the option of a 3-year baccalaureate degree, cutting one-third the time and one-fourth the cost from a college education; and No. 2, make community college free for well- prepared students.

This seems impossible when State community college funding is tight. In my State, Vanderbilt's endowment has declined 16.5 percent and Maryville College is under a hiring freeze. The University of Tennessee is trying to decide what positions to cut. Impossible, that is, unless college administrators are listening to students, States, and Members of Congress who are up in arms about rising tuition.

What I hear in Congress is: Every time we increase Pell grants, colleges raise tuition. In their exasperation, Members of Congress then piled new rules on already overregulated colleges. The former president of Stanford University estimates complying with these regulations-- which today fill a stack of boxes 6 feet tall, which I have previously brought onto the Senate floor--adds 7 cents to every dollar cost of tuition. Last year, I even voted against the new higher education bill because it doubles those regulations.

The greatest threat to the quality of higher education, in my opinion, is not underfunding, it is overregulation. But to persuade other Members of the Senate and the House of Representatives to stop adding these stacks of regulations, colleges are first going to have to show that they know how to lower college costs.

Just as a plug-in hybrid car is not for every driver, a 3-year college degree is not for every student. But some well-qualified students may want to complete their work in 3 years--many today take 5 or 6 years--and in doing so save time and save money. This will require adjusting attitudes, faculty workloads, and using some campus facilities year round.

Five upper East Tennessee counties already are offering free tuition to qualified local students at Northeast State Community College. Federal Pell grants and the State HOPE Scholarship pay most of the $1,300 semester tuition. The five counties and private companies pay the rest. Sullivan County's bill last year was only $80,000 for its share.

These are very difficult times. We all know that here. But during the 1980s, when I was Governor of Tennessee, unemployment reached 11 percent, inflation reached 14 percent, and interest rates reached 20 percent. We were struggling then. Then the economy surged, as we hope it will soon again. Tennessee's higher education funding growth led the Nation for 3 consecutive years. This is more likely to happen again if higher education offers a 3-year college degree option and free community college tuition. That will help regain the support of legislators and families who are upset about colleges that seem able only to increase tuition every time legislators increase funding.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 3 minutes.

Mr. President, I simply wish to congratulate the Senator from Georgia for his leadership on housing. He has consistently, since he arrived in the Senate 6 years ago, been the Senate's foremost spokesman for housing, and we badly need it today. Housing helped us get into the economic mess we are in in the country, and housing will help us get out of the economic mess.

As the Senator from Georgia has so succinctly said, there are a number of things we can do to keep us from going further down the hole and to help people who are in trouble and cannot pay their bills. But we want to get out of the hole, and the way we get out of the hole is to give people who are creditworthy and have money the opportunity to buy a home. The Isakson amendment, as originally passed by the Senate, provided a $15,000 tax credit and would do that. It would create demand.

The idea of low-interest mortgage rates which Republicans have offered to give millions of creditworthy Americans, for the next year, an opportunity to have a low-interest mortgage to buy a home or refinance their home would help us get out of the housing hole. We are all in favor of helping those people who are hurting, but that is not going to end the economic crisis. We want to climb out of this economic mess, and the way to get out of it is to get out of the housing hole we are in. The way to do that is through the Isakson amendment that creates a $15,000 tax credit for homebuyers and to provide a low mortgage interest rate.

I thank the Senator for his eloquence and his persistence. I hope more and more Members on both sides of the aisle and this country will hear his call to fix housing first.

I yield the floor.

(At the request of Mr. Reid, the following statement was ordered to be printed in the Record.)