Floor Statements

Will the Chair kindly let me know when I have used 8 minutes?

Mr. President, last night the President spoke to the Nation in his State of the Union Address. It is one of the great traditions of American Government. One of the most interesting parts of this spectator sport is to watch and see who stands up on which issue when the President talks or who is sitting by whom. It is well watched across our country, and it is a sign of respect to the Presidency as an institution.

The President was in a good mood. It was his eighth such address. He was reflective, but he was decisive. He looked ahead. He talked about the issues facing our country. He did his job, and he challenged us to do ours.

The President devoted a good deal of time to the progress of the war in Iraq, and we devoted a good deal of time today to making sure we have a strong system of intelligence to protect ourselves from terrorists. So I wish to comment on what the President talked about at home, because a great deal of what President Bush said last night was that as important as our role is in the world, as important as the long-term fight against terrorism is, we have work to do at home, and we need to roll up our sleeves and get busy.

This is a Presidential year. Many of the pundits are saying, some politicians even: The Congress will get nothing done. We Republicans believe there is no excuse for taking a year off, given the number of serious issues facing our country. Let me mention a few the President discussed last night.

To begin with, the American economy. The President acknowledged that as strong as our economy is, 52 quarters of growing jobs, it has taken a downward turn, and we need to take appropriate action to help it continue to produce more jobs. That means steps that are temporary, targeted, and that grow the economy and not the Government.

The President has agreed with the Speaker of the House and the Republican leader of the House on a simple package that is aimed to do that: rebates for individuals, most of whom pay taxes, and incentives to small businesses to create new jobs. It is a simple idea.

Speaking as one Senator, I do not believe we can afford to let this economic growth package, which should pass the House today, become a Christmas tree in the Senate for everyone's favorite idea for spending taxpayers' dollars.

I have some ideas. I think every Member of the Senate has some ideas. But maybe we should recognize the American people would like to see us act and act promptly and act decisively.

Someone has said the Senate wishes to speak on the issue. I know very well none of us is guilty, usually, of having an unexpressed thought. We love to speak. But one way for us to speak is to say to the House of Representatives: Madam Speaker, and to the House itself, we agree with you. We think your package is simple, temporary, targeted, and a good idea. And to the President: Mr. President, each of us might have written the package a little differently, but we agree with you and we are ready to pass it before the end of next week.

I would like to write it differently, but I like the idea that it goes mostly to taxpayers, that it is family friendly, that it gives incentives to small business, and that it temporarily helps with housing.

I believe it is important for our Government, particularly at this moment, to send a strong message that we will take the action appropriate to keep the economy strong and that we are capable of functioning as a Government and working in bipartisan ways to deal with real issues.

The American people are tired of petty politics. They are tired of playpen politics on the Senate floor. They do not believe they elected us to stick our fingers in the eyes of the Democrats or the Democrats to stick their fingers in our eyes. We have a good example of our leadership working together with the President, and as one Senator, my recommendation is we support what the President and the House of Representatives is about to do.

The President said we should get to work this year to make sure every American can have access to health care insurance. At our Republican conference last week, that was the first item on our agenda, and I believe it is fair for me to say virtually every single Republican Senator believes every American should be insured and is ready to go to work this year to help make that possible.

The President talked about his plan, which he talked about last year, to redo our Tax Code so dollars would be available to American families to buy at least a basic health care policy that they wouldn't lose when they change jobs.

We have had a number of Senators on this side--Senator Burr, Senator Corker, Senator Coburn, for example, Senator Bennett who has authored a bill with Senator Wyden, which has significant bipartisan support. We are all ready to go to work this year. We believe we should start this year to help make sure every American is insured.

Runaway Federal spending. The President talked about controlling entitlement spending. This is an issue that is beginning to get the country's attention, and it should have the country's attention. It certainly has mine.

What do we mean by entitlement spending? We mean 40 percent of the budget is Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and it goes up automatically every year. Over the next 10 years, the annual growth of Social Security is predicted to be about 6 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Medicare about 7.2 percent, Medicaid about 8 percent. Entitlement spending and interest on the debt is 60 percent of every dollar we spend. Another 20 percent is defense, the war and other necessary actions to defend ourselves, and 19 percent is everything else.

The ``everything else'' was flat last year. The Congressional Budget Office says the ``everything else''--that is, parks and roads and many of the items Americans believe Government ought to be doing--that is going to go up about 2 percent annually over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Our defense goes up 3 percent annually, and entitlement spending goes up 7 or 8 percent.

Senator Gregg and Senator Bond have pointed out to us--they are the heads of our Budget Committee--that we pretty soon are going to be faced with an absolutely impossible situation that will require massive cuts in benefits, massive tax increases that the net worth even of this great country will not be able to pay, and that every year we wait, we risk another problem. The President said do something about it. He challenged us to do it, and Senator Gregg and Senator Bond have a proposal to do that. We should act on it this year.

That is not all there is to holding down spending. The President mentioned earmarks. There are too many earmarks. They are not as transparent as they ought to be. That is a smaller part of the budget. It is our constitutional responsibility to deal with earmarks, but we should do that ourselves. We should begin that this year.

We could pass a 2-year budget plan, such as Senator Domenici and Senator Lieberman and Senator Feingold at various times have proposed, and Senator Sessions, Senator Isakson. That would give us oversight to repeal rules and regulations every other year. So there are three ways to get a handle on Federal spending.

Senator Hutchison and Senator Bingaman have been leaders, as well as others here, on keeping good jobs from going overseas. We passed the America COMPETES Act last year, and the President challenged us to fund it this year. He is right about that.

Finally, President Bush mentioned something that is close to my heart. He called it the Pell grants for kids. I remember being in a visit with him a couple years ago, and he said to me: We have to do something about inner-city children who cannot afford to go to

good schools. Why don't we have Pell grants for kids? I said: Mr. President, I had a hearing on that idea last month. He looked at me and said: I thought it was my idea. I said: Mr. President, it is your idea. Any idea the President has is his idea, but he had it before anyone suggested it to him.

The idea is very simple. We take this brilliant idea that Congress has invented over the last 50 years of giving money directly to college students which they can spend at any institution of education of their choice--public, private, nonprofit, Catholic, Jewish, the University of Tennessee, Notre Dame, National Auto Diesel College. As long as it is accredited, they can go there, and it especially helps those with less money. Let's try that with the poorest children.

Sixteen years ago, when I was Education Secretary, the first President Bush proposed a GI bill for kids. Much the same idea. It was the largest provision in his budget, half a billion dollars that year, to give poor kids access to some of the same educational opportunities others had.

I proposed, in a Pell grants for kids version, that we give every child, the middle- and low-income children--that is 60 percent of them all $500 for afterschool programs or other programs. The President has advanced the idea.

President Bush has painted a strong agenda for America this year. He has said let's give a boost to the economy, let's begin to give every American health insurance, let's control entitlement spending, let's fund programs to keep good jobs here, and let's give poor children an opportunity to go to more of the better schools. He has challenged us to go to work. We are ready to go to work. We are ready to get results, which means working across the aisle in a bipartisan way.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

I ask unanimous consent that when I finish with my remarks, the Senator from Texas be recognized.

Mr. President, I would say to the Senator from Connecticut, welcome back. We are glad to have him here. He has traveled some roads that I know pretty well. We have missed some of his vigor and passion.

Sometimes the American people say they don't like to see us engage in partisan bickering, and I am going to say something about that in just a minute. But what I think they do like to see us do, if I may say so, is what the Senator from Connecticut was doing just then and what the Senator from Arizona did on Friday: They were debating the balance of each American individual's right to liberty versus each American individual's right to security--coming to different conclusions but having a serious discussion about an issue that affects every single American in this country. That is what the people expect of the Senate.

I come to a different conclusion than he does. We are moving to vote on cloture on a bill on Monday that has come out of the Intelligence Committee by a bipartisan majority of 13 to 2. But this is the kind of debate the Senate ought to have, and I am glad I got to hear his speech even though I disagree with much of it.

The Republican Senators gathered in a retreat at the Library of Congress on Wednesday. This is something we do each year, and the Democratic side does it each year as well. We think about our responsibilities, and we look forward to the future. Many of our Members have said to me that this was one of our best days of retreat. In the first place, it was very well attended: 44 out of 49 of us were there, and 3 of those absent were campaigning in Florida, and 1 was ill. So we had virtually perfect attendance. Most of those attending spoke and participated and made proposals. Every single Republican Senator with whom I have talked since that meeting on Wednesday has told me he or she felt rejuvenated and looks forward to this year. I believe the reason for that is because of the way we conducted the day.

It takes me back to what I just said a moment ago. Unless we are tone-deaf, I think we can hear what the American people are saying to us, especially through the Presidential campaign, which is that they are tired of the way we are doing business in Washington, DC, and they want us to change it. They want us to take the playpen politics and move it off the Senate floor and put it in the national committees or in the nursery where it belongs, and spend our time on big issues that affect our country--maybe in vigorous debates of the kind Senator Dodd and Senator Kyl would have on the intelligence bill, but spend our time on the serious issues facing our country. Then, after we have had our debate, work across the aisle to get a result.

There are only two reasons to work across the aisle to get a result. One is, it is the right thing to do for our country. This is our job, and that is why they pay us our salaries. That is why they sent us here. No. 2, if you can count, it takes 60 votes to get anything meaningful done in the Senate. So if you want to get a result, you have to work across party lines because neither side has more than 60 votes.

So what we Republicans did on Wednesday was say this: We have heard the talk that this is a Presidential year and we may get nothing done in Congress, and we reject that.

Our leader said--Mitch McConnell--on Tuesday when he spoke:

Republicans are eager to get to work on the unfinished

business from last year. We are determined to address the

other issues that have become more pressing or pronounced

since we last stood here. We have had a presidential election

in this country every 4 years since 1788 we won't use this

one as an excuse to put off the people's business for another

day.

So there is no excuse for Congress to take this year off, given the serious issues facing our country. We want to change the way Washington does business, and we know how to do it; that is, get down to work on serious issues facing our country, propose specific solutions that solve problems, and then work across the aisle to get a result. We are not here to do bad things to Democrats; we are here to try to do good things for our country.

That was the spirit of our retreat on Wednesday. I believe that is the way most Members on the other side feel. The more of that we do, the better. I would submit the approval rating of the Congress and of Washington, DC, will gradually go up if we were to do that.

Let me say a word about exactly what we talked about on Wednesday-- the kind of approach that one can expect from Republican Senators this year.

First, of course, is that we are here and ready to go to work on these specific solutions based on Republican principles, and we are either looking for bipartisan support or already have bipartisan support on many issues. Of course, to begin with, we know Americans are hurting and anxious because of the housing slump, because of gasoline prices, because of rising health care costs, and we are ready to work with the House and the President, across the aisle, to find the appropriate action to take to try to avoid an economic slowdown.

I imagine the Senate will have some of its own views about its proposals when the House brings its proposal here. But we want a result. I, for one, would like to see--and I believe most of my colleagues on this side of the aisle would like to see--a proposal that grows the economy and not the Government. But we will have a debate about that. That is not partisan bickering; that is the Senate in its finest tradition addressing an issue that is central to every single family in this country.

We know we need to intercept the communications of terrorists so we can keep our country safe from attack. We know when we do that, we have to carefully balance each of our right to liberty versus each of our right to security.

Samuel Huntington, the Harvard professor, once wrote--he was President of the American Political Science Association--that most of our politics is about conflicts between principles or among principles with which almost all of us agree. That is important to Americans because what unifies us, other than our common language, is these few principles, security and liberty being two.

Republicans support the Rockefeller-Bond bipartisan proposal which passed 13 to 2 by the Intelligence Committee. We want to make sure those companies which help us defend ourselves aren't penalized for helping to make the country secure, while at the same time protecting individual liberties.

We know there are 47 million Americans who don't have health insurance, and Republican Senators said in our retreat on Wednesday that we are ready to go to work this year to make sure every American is insured. Some say put it off a year. Well, perhaps we can't get it all done in 2008, but we can surely start. Senator Byrd and Senator DeMint and Senator Bennett and Senator Corker, among others, spoke at our retreat on this issue. We would like to get going now. We could begin with the Small Business Health Insurance Act, which would permit small companies to pool their resources and offer more health insurance at a lower cost to their employees. That would be a beginning.

Many of us on the Republican side have sponsored a bipartisan bill-- one of two or three that have the same general approach to reforming the Tax Code, to put cash in the hands of American families and individuals so they can afford to buy their own private insurance, putting together four words that usually don't go together: ``universal access'' and ``private insurance.'' Those are based on principles we Republicans agree with: free market and equal opportunity. We know on this side of the aisle--and I suspect many over on that side know as well; I know they do--if we don't do something about the runaway growth of Medicare and Medicaid--entitlement spending, in other words--we will bankrupt our country. Every year that we wait to deal with that is a year that makes the solution harder.

So Senator Gregg, at our retreat, talked about his proposal with Senator

Conrad, a Democratic Senator, to create a base-closing-task-force-type task force for the sole purpose of recommending to the Congress a way to control entitlement spending and force an up-or-down vote on that. That is the principle of limited government. That is a principle that most Republicans and a proposal that many Democrats can support.

We know there is a great force in Washington, DC, to spend more money, to issue more regulations and rules, and there are almost no countervailing forces to spend less money, repeal rules, and revise regulations. So Senators Domenici, Isakson, and Sessions, among others, have proposed an idea to change our budgeting and appropriations process from 1 year to 2 years. That may help us get appropriations bills done on time so we can save money in our contracting in the Defense Department and Department of Transportation, for example. But more important to me, and to many on this side of the aisle, it would create a countervailing force of oversight so that every other year we would spend most of our time on oversight, meaning we could review, repeal, and change and improve laws, regulations, and rules that have been in place for a long time.

We want to keep jobs from going overseas, and we believe we know how to do it. Last year, we worked with Senator Bingaman and others on the other side to pass the America COMPETES Act. This is an extraordinary response to our challenge to keep our brain power advantage so we can keep our jobs, in competition with China and India. Senator Hutchison has been a leader on this issue. She, with Senator Bingaman, began the effort to fully fund advanced placement courses so more children could take those courses. So we are ready--many on this side of the aisle--to implement the advanced placement provisions in the America COMPETES Act. That will help 1.5 million children to have those opportunities.

We are ready to implement the provision that would put 10,000 more math and science teachers in our classrooms. Many of us are ready to implement the recommendation that we pin a green card to every single foreign student legally here and who graduates from an American university in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics. Some proposals ought to be bipartisan, but they are not--or at least they weren't. I made one, and we talked about this for a while on Wednesday.

In order to encourage unity in this country, we need a common language. That seems to be common sense. Therefore, we ought to pass a law making it clear that the Federal Government should not be suing the Salvation Army, telling them they cannot require employees to speak English on the job. We got it through the Senate and to the House, where the Speaker stopped it. Now Senator Conrad has joined in support, as have Senators McConnell, Byrd, Landrieu, and Nelson of Nebraska. So now we have a bipartisan approach on another important issue.

We talked about the idea and the problem of the number of rural women in this country who are pregnant and cannot get the proper prenatal health care. OB/GYN doctors are leaving rural areas because runaway malpractice lawsuits are running malpractice insurance over $100,000 a year. So the pregnant women are having to drive 70 miles to Memphis or other big cities to see a doctor and get the prenatal health care they need and to have the baby. We have proposals to stop it in the way Texas and Mississippi did. We invite bipartisan proposals on that.

Mr. President, the Republican agenda will emerge over time. What I would like to say to our colleagues on the other side of the aisle and to the American people is, we want to change the way Washington does business, and we believe we know how. The way is to stand up every single day and week with new specific proposals on real issues and have a debate where one is needed. Let Senator Dodd and Senator Kyl have a principled argument about security versus liberty. That is in the finest tradition. Let's cut out the playpen politics. Let's don't have that, and let's earn back the confidence of the American people by dealing with specific solutions. That is what you are going to hear from Republican Senators.

No sooner had I heard some encouraging remarks from the majority leader, out comes this release from the Senate leadership and majority leader Harry Reid:

For immediate release. Democratic policy experts discuss

President Bush's legacy of broken promises.

That was announced. This is playpen politics. I am sure we do it here sometimes, but I will do my best as the Republican conference chairman to make the political reward for this playpen politics so low that this kind of release and activity is moved into the nursery school where it belongs, over to the national committee where it belongs, whether it is the Democratic playpen or the Republican playpen, and that we devote ourselves to the issues facing our country.

How can we help the economy? How can we help every American be insured? How can we stop the terrorists? How can we implement the America COMPETES Act? Those are the debates we ought to have. I hope that is clear to the American people and to our colleagues. We are looking forward to this year. Republicans are ready for change in the way we do business in Washington. The people of this country are ready for that, too. I look forward to it.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I wish to congratulate the Senator from Arizona on his thoughtful comments regarding intelligence.

How much time remains?

Mr. President, I will take half that, and if the Chair will let me know when 2 minutes remain, I will be grateful.

I, too, welcome Roger Wicker to the Senate. I have known him a long time. He has been a leader for the Tennessee Valley Authority. He is one of Congress's most knowledgeable Members, and he has been a leader in helping to put American history back in its rightful place in our classrooms so our children can grow up learning what it means to be an American. He was the lead sponsor in the House of Representatives on legislation that I introduced in the Senate that created summer academies for outstanding teachers and students of American history.

I would also like to congratulate Marty Paone on his service here. We all admire him and will miss him.

I thank the majority leader for his remarks at the beginning of the year, and I especially wanted to echo the remarks the Republican leader, Senator McConnell of Kentucky, made. He pointed out that we have had a Presidential election in this country every 4 years since 1788. Senator McConnell pointed that out, and he said we would not use this year's election as an excuse to put off the people's business for another day. In other words, it is a Presidential year, and some around town are writing and saying: Well, they will not get much done in Congress this year. We are saying on the Republican side of the aisle, and I hope it is being said on both sides of the aisle, that there is no excuse for Congress to take a year off, given the serious issues facing our country.

A number of politicians are campaigning for change, we have all heard. Republican Senators are ready to help, working with our colleagues, to give the Senate an opportunity to vote for real change. We wish to change the way Washington does business by going to work on big issues facing our country. And not just go to work on them but to get principled solutions this year. And because this is the Senate, where it often takes 60 votes to get a meaningful result, that means we invite the Democrats to work with us in a bipartisan way to get those results.

Republicans didn't seek our offices to do bad things to Democrats. We are here to do good things for our country, and there is plenty to do. We see what is happening in the housing market, with oil prices, with rising health care costs. We know we need to move quickly with a bipartisan approach to help get the economy back on track. Our preference is to let businesses and people keep and spend more of their own money to boost the economy. We want to grow the economy, not the Government.

We know we need, as Senator Kyl was saying, to intercept communications among terrorists to protect our country. We saw the Rockefeller-Bond bipartisan proposal passed by 13 to 2 in the Intelligence Committee. Our solution is to make sure companies aren't penalized for helping us protect ourselves, while at the same time securing individual rights. We want a strong national defense.

We see there are 40 million or so Americans uninsured, and we want to change that. We don't want to take a year off in dealing with health insurance. We want to start this year. As the Republican leader said, our goal is that every American have health insurance, starting with small business health insurance plans, moving on to reforming the Tax Code so Americans can afford to buy private insurance. There are a number of Democratic and Republican proposals on reaching the goal we have in helping every American to have health insurance. We can start this year.

There is no need to wait to deal with Medicaid and Medicare spending another year. We all know, at their present pace of growth, those two accounts will bankrupt our Government. It is irresponsible to wait. That is a bipartisan conclusion. There are a number of proposals from both sides of the aisle to begin to deal with that, from Senator Gregg and Senator Conrad, to Senator Feinstein and Senator Domenici and Senator Voinovich as well. We should get started. These are the principles of fiscal responsibility and limited Government.

Last year, we took some important steps to keep jobs from going overseas by growing more jobs at home. We see the problem of competition with China and India. We worked together to pass a bill-- the American COMPETES Act--authorizing $34 billion to keep our brainpower advantage. Now let us implement it. Senator Hutchison of Texas, Senators Bingaman and Domenici of New Mexico, and many others have worked hard on this. So let us implement more advanced placement courses for low-income students, a million and a half more; more highly trained scientists and engineers coming in to help grow jobs in the United States; and 10,000 more math and science teachers. That we can do.

We know we have to be bipartisan to get a result. Some things are bipartisan, and I have mentioned many of them, but some things should be bipartisan that aren't. For example, the Federal Government is saying the Salvation Army can't require its employees to speak English on the job. Well, Americans, by 80 to 17 percent, believe employers should be able to require their employees to speak America's common language on the job. We have legislation to make that clear. It is bipartisan to some degree, but not as bipartisan as it ought to be. The principle is right there above the Senate Presiding Officer's desk. It says: One from many--``e pluribus unum.''

Another challenge that should be more bipartisan, because most Americans see the wisdom of it, is addressing a shortage of medical care in rural America caused by lawsuit abuse. OB-GYN doctors are abandoning rural areas across America and mothers are driving too far for prenatal health care and to have their babies. We should work across party lines to change that. The solution we have offered is to stop runaway lawsuits that make doctors pay $100,000 or more a year for malpractice insurance. That is why they leave the rural areas. This is the principle of equal opportunity.

There is plenty of work to do. Thirty years ago, I began my service as the Governor of Tennessee. I was a young Republican Governor and the State was very Democratic, thank you. So the media ran up to the big Democratic speaker of the house, Ned McWherter, and said: Mr. Speaker, what are you going to do with this new young Republican Governor? And to their surprise, the speaker said: I am going to help him. Because if he succeeds, our State succeeds. And that is the way we worked for 8 years.

Now, we are not naive about politics in Tennessee. We had, and have, our fights. We argued about our principles. If I had a better schools program, they had an even better schools program on the other side. But we kept our eye on the ball. In the end, we worked together. In the end, we got results. That is why we brought in the auto industry and created the best four-lane highway system and created chairs and centers of excellence at our universities that still exist, and we began to pay teachers more for teaching well.

I would like nothing more than to move that kind of cooperation from Tennessee to DC. I sense that from Democrats and Republicans all through this body. Of course, we will argue. We were elected because we have differences. This is a debating society. But we don't stop with our disagreements, we should finish with our results. So we are here to change the way Washington does business, as the Republican leader said, and I look forward to a constructive year of helping our country move ahead with a steady

stream of specific solutions to big problems that get results because they either are bipartisan or because they should be bipartisan.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, once upon a time in the spring of 1968, even before Ted Stevens was a Senator, a young man with carefully combed hair came from Pascagoula, MS, to Washington, DC, and he moved into a spare bedroom in the house at the corner of Klingle Street and Foxhall Road.

It was almost 40 years ago. I remember it very well, because I was already in that house along with four other single young men in our 20s. Our new resident from Mississippi was different in several ways than the rest of us. No. 1, we were single, and he was married. Tricia and Chet, then a baby, were still back in Mississippi. No. 2, he was a Democrat and we were Republicans. But at that age, that did not matter to us very much.

And No. 3 is--and this is hard for anyone in the Chamber to imagine, for me even to say--I remember him as quiet.

Maybe it was because he did not stay long, because he remembers that we were noisy--playing the piano, staying up late, as he said yesterday, having parties, and then getting up at 6 a.m. in the morning and going to work.

So for whatever reason, maybe because of those differences, our friend from Mississippi moved out after a few months. Tricia and Chet came to Washington, I believe, and he continued his job with Mr. Colmer, the Congressman, from the area where he grew up.

My other roommate was Glover Robert, who was from Gulfport and who had introduced us all to Trent, and who later was Trent's campaign manager in his race for Congress. I can remember Glover saying at that time that everybody in Mississippi knows Trent Lott is one of two young men in Mississippi who is going to grow up to be Governor of Mississippi. The other young man who Glover talked about was Thad Cochran, who we also met that year in 1968. He was also a Democrat in 1968. Neither of them grew up to be Governor of Mississippi, at least not yet. But one became the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and one became the leader of the Senate, and both are our friends.

Now Trent, after 35 years in Congress, is moving on to the next chapter of his life. I understand his decision. We talked about it. As far as anyone can say from outside the Lott family, it looks like a wise decision on a personal basis. But on a personal basis too, I am truly sorry to see him go, because over those 40 years, we have been in different places most of the time--I mostly in Tennessee, he mostly here--but we have stayed in touch in many different ways.

When our roommates got together at the Governor's mansion in Tennessee in the 1980s, I remember reading to the group after dinner from a book on manners. When I came to the Senate, I received a book, ``George Washington's Rules of Civility,'' that was inscribed, ``To my friend, Senator Alexander, the history professor, Trent Lott.''

In 1986, I became a little bit exasperated with the House Republicans from a distance and I called up Trent and said: What is going on? Are we Republican Governors and the House Republicans on the same page? He introduced me to Newt Gingrich, and a group of the Governors and the Republican leaders in the House met at Blackberry Farm in the Smoky Mountains for a whole weekend and had a terrific weekend, in terms of charting the future course for our party.

A few years later I came to Washington as Education Secretary and immediately turned to Trent--who was always in some sort of leadership position, usually some different one--for advice and support.

Those who follow the Senate know that Trent has, along the way, taught all of us various lessons. He has especially taught me lessons, particularly how to count. It is because of Trent

Lott that a year ago, it was necessary for me to write 27 thank-you notes for 24 votes in the race for whip. I have worked hard to learn my lesson from him over a period of time.

About 6 weeks ago, Trent and Tricia invited my wife Honey, me, and the Greggs down to their home outside Jackson. We spent a weekend. It was following up a nice weekend we had had in the mountains of Tennessee sometime earlier. Most of the remarks today about Trent have been about Trent in Washington, DC and they are all very appropriate. And here in the Senate we often think of Trent as having the wiliness of Lyndon Johnson and the joyfulness of Hubert Humphrey--two other great figures in Senate history--but it is more fun to see him in Mississippi. Going through the airport, every single woman in the airport in Mississippi wanted to talk to Trent Lott, and he talked to them all of the way through the Jackson airport.

To see the number of buildings in Mississippi already named after him--and he is not even dead yet--and to see the beautiful home they have outside Jackson, MS is something to behold. Judd and I counted five different tractors in his garage, and we rode in most of them. We should have known, or I should have known, from seeing how happy he is there and how much he loves to do this, that his mind was probably more on becoming farmer of the year in Mississippi than it was on spending another 5 or 10 years in the Senate.

Trent, transitions--I have had a number of them--are not always easy, but they have been for me the most rewarding parts of my life. I believe for you and Tricia this next transition will be the same-- liberating, not entirely easy, but perhaps the most rewarding period of your life.

I tried to think of some words that would describe it, and I thought of words that better describe the Smoky Mountains where I am from than the Mississippi area where you are from. But the thought still applies. They are words from Emily Dickinson, which say:

Goodbye to the life I used to lead and the friends I used

to know. Now kiss these hills just once for me, for I am

ready to go.

It is a reassurance for us to know that you are not going far. I hope it will be reassuring to you to know that you are not going far, that your old friends are still here and we are still your friends.

Mr. President, sometimes here in the Senate we have so many competing views and so many different kinds of votes, some of them procedural, that it is hard to tell when something good happens. I wish to talk about such an opportunity that we have right now. This is a little bit like something my late friend Alex Haley used to say: ``Find the good and praise it.''

We are on a path in the Congress now to do something the Senate did a few weeks ago, which was to take a step that our country's largest energy laboratory, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has testified before our committees would be the single most important step we could take to reduce our dependance on foreign oil. By reducing our dependance on foreign oil, we would do something that we could actually honestly say would help to lower the $3-a-gallon gasoline price over time, something that we could honestly say would help deal with the urgent issue of climate change, something that we could honestly say would put us on a different path toward clean energy in this country. And those are the new fuel efficiency standards.

There is a clear consensus in this body--I gather in the House of Representatives, too--that for the first time in more than two decades, the Congress should say to everyone who makes cars and trucks in this country: You have to make cleaner cars; these cars have to use less oil one way or the other. We are not really saying to them, or at least I do not think we should say exactly how they achieve that; we are just saying that by the year 2020 the cars and the trucks have to average 35 miles per gallon. This is a big step.

As I said, the Oak Ridge Laboratory testified in the Environment and Public Works Committee, this is the single most important step the Congress can take to reduce our dependance on foreign oil. We have already voted to do it in the Senate, and we have already voted to do it in the House, and we had a vote today to strip away the taxes that the Senator from Texas just talked about. So we are on a path, a clear path to send this bill back to the House and then to the President and, before the first of the year, to take the most important step we can take to reduce our dependance on foreign oil.

There is a lot of talk and genuine concern about climate change. There is not as much commonsense talk about solutions.

On the electricity side, we know what works, and we began, in 2005 with the Energy bill, to take those steps. That bill could have been called--should have been called--a clean energy bill because it started with aggressive steps on conservation and then it went to a renaissance of nuclear power.

The inconvenient truth on solutions to climate change is that conservation and nuclear power are the only way we will be able to deal with climate change in this generation. We hope we will be able to move ahead to sequester the carbon from coal, but we do not have that technology yet in a way that it can be used in a wholesale way. We hope there will be solar thermal powerplants such as the one being built in California, and we hope photovoltaic solar panels will cost less and people can use them on their houses, but those renewable ways to create electricity only produce a very small percentage of what we need. So in this generation, on the electricity side, conservation and nuclear power, which today produces 80 percent of all of our carbon-free electricity, are the real ways to deal with climate change, and in our part of the country, in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, the real way to make the air clean.

In the same way, on the fuel side in this country that uses about 25 percent of all of the oil and gas, the single most important thing we can do is what we have already voted for once in this body, the House has voted for once, and if they take this bill and send it on to the President, the Congress will have done it; it will be fuel efficiency standards that say to everyone who makes and sells cars here: Your cars and trucks have to average 35 miles per gallon by the year 2020.

So in the midst of all of the procedural votes and debating these genuinely held differences of opinion, I simply want to put a spotlight on the fact that this Congress is poised to send to the President the most important thing we can do to lower prices, to reduce the dependance on foreign oil, and to deal with the climate change. It is the kind of result, the kind of bipartisan result that most Americans would like to see happen here. They know we have our differences. We will be back and forth on our votes. That is what we are here for. The tough issues come to the Senate. That is why we are a debating society. But in the end, we do not come here just to state our principles; we come here to get principled solutions. We are on our way to one of the most important principled solutions we can have in terms of energy efficiency.

I congratulate the Senators who have been so much involved in this. I hope we will pass the legislation that the Senator has promised, the majority leader has promised to produce here. I hope the House of Representatives will pass it, as well, and send it to the President. I hope that over Christmastime, Americans will look at this Congress and say: Good for you on energy independence, on climate change, on cleaner air, on reducing our dependance on foreign oil. You took the most important step you could take, and that is what we think a Congress ought to do.

I yield the floor.

I have up to 30 minutes to describe these two amendments, and then other Senators have time, I assume, to oppose the amendments. What I will do is--

Yes.

Mr. President, 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 thank my colleagues from Colorado and Vermont.

I say to the Senator from Iowa, what I will do is I will use a few minutes, maybe 5 or 10, summarizing the two amendments I have offered which I talked some about yesterday. Then I will yield the floor and sit down and allow the Senator from Colorado and the Senator from Vermont to use their 10 minutes each. Then Senator Harkin may want to use his 10 minutes. Then I will come back at the end. I probably will not use all of my time.

Mr. President, I offer two amendments. They are at the desk. The first one has to do with land grant university research funding, to try to get back on track a terrific program the Congress passed in 1998 to properly fund value-added research for our land grant universities across this country. That is No. 1.

No. 2 is to amend the amendment of the Senator from Colorado, which is a part of the bill, so that we would limit 100 kilowatt wind towers to farm areas and not residential areas. Those are the two amendments.

I wish to begin by summarizing the land grant university research amendment. What amendment 3551 does is it adds $74 million over the last 3 years of the farm bill for agricultural research at land grant colleges.

In my opinion, having been president of a land grant university, the University of Tennessee, I believe our land grant colleges and universities are our secret weapon in value-added products; in other words, taking soybeans and turning them into milk and creating higher incomes for farmers and more jobs in the United States.

Let me take an example, one which I used yesterday. Those who live in the Southwest, which I do not, are apparently very familiar with the guayule plant. I might call it a weed. That might not be a friendly designation, but it looks like a weed to me. The University of Arizona discovered--one of our land grant universities, as a part of the program I am seeking to get back on track--that it could use this plant to develop nonallergic latex to go into rubber gloves. Why is that important? Because according to OSHA, allergic reactions from latex rubber affect 10 percent of the Nation's health care workforce. So we have not only helped health care through the land grant universities, we have helped create incomes in the Southwest where this is grown. We have helped grow jobs in the United States as well.

There are examples of that all through our country. That is why the Congress, in 1998, created a program which is called the Future Agriculture and Food Systems Program. That very simply did, through the Department of Agriculture, which we do through many other parts of government, grants of research offered to land grant universities in a competitive way, not just doled out, not just pork, in a competitive way to try to help them create value-added products.

The program has worked for a couple of years since 1998. It didn't work so well in other years. I summarized that yesterday. The bottom line is, both appropriators and authorizers during this time got away from the idea of competitive, peer-reviewed grants and began to earmark and designate their favorite universities for some of the money. Then on another occasion in 2005, the Congress, looking for a way to bring the budget under control, saw this as a pot of money that could be used and took the money from agricultural research and used it to do a better job of balancing the budget.

There was a 2-year period, in 2001 and 2002, when under this program there were 183 grants to 71 of the 76 land grant universities, one in every State. Out of that came this research and a variety of other products.

The purpose of this amendment is to get this program back on track. It was first authorized in 1998, had a couple of problems, but here is what my amendment would do. My amendment would add $74 million in the last 3 years of the farm bill. The House, in its version of the farm bill, has added $600 million in those 3 years. So the conferees could look at those two amounts of money and come to a reasonable adjustment and get the program back on track, competitively awarded grants for land grant colleges and universities, our secret weapon in raising farm incomes.

How do we pay for it? The $47 million in funding over the last 3 years of the farm bill is fully offset by striking section 302 from the tax title. I described that yesterday. I will be glad to describe it again, if I need to. But it is fully funded.

Let me go to my second amendment, No. 3553. It affects the so-called small wind tax credit. The small wind tax credit in the bill allows up to $4,000 for someone to put a 100-kilowatt wind turbine in either a farm or rural area or residential area. Since this is a farm bill and not a residential bill, what my amendment would do is limit the ability of this subsidy to go to wind turbines to farms and rural businesses as defined in the Internal Revenue Code. If I could put it in plain English: It will be very difficult for Members of the Senate to go home and explain to their neighbors, whether they are in Tennessee or Colorado or Mississippi, why they passed a law saying we are going to take some of your tax money and give it to your neighbor so he or she can put up a 12-story tower in his or her front yard next to you. I don't think that is an appropriate use of our tax money. I don't believe it is a wise way to create electricity. It doesn't show the kind of common sense we need to show in creating clean energy.

The example I used yesterday, and which I could go into more detail later, is the $5 million tax credit in this bill

for these kinds of towers would create only about 12 megawatts of electricity. That is a pretty puny amount of electricity. Common sense suggests it would be much wiser to use the $5 million to buy $2 energy- efficient light bulbs and give them to people in residential areas. That would save 8 times as much energy as these turbines would produce.

There are other reasons the turbines are not necessary. One is that the wind industry is heavily subsidized already. For example, wind energy will receive $11.5 billion over the next 10 years from the production tax credit. By fiscal year 2009, the Federal tax subsidy for wind energy will be the largest subsidy for energy which is an astonishing figure when you take into account that wind provides less than 1 percent of the electricity we use. According to the Energy Information Administration, in the year 2020, it will provide not much more than that. Here we have billions and billions already going to subsidize wind power. That amount is half as much as all of the subsidies for oil and gas, and it is totally disproportionate to the value of the energy we get.

I stand as a Senator who is very concerned about clean air and climate change. Since I arrived in 2003, I have had in place--first with Senator Carper, then with Senator Lieberman--a climate change/ clean air bill that would put caps on utilities which produce one-third of the carbon in the United States. That bill also included stricter standards than now exist in law on mercury, on sulfur, and on nitrogen. I was the sponsor in the last Congress of the solar tax credit which I believe is important. In the hearing the other day we had on climate change, I proposed and the committee adopted, a low-carbon fuel standard. I voted for, and hope to be able to vote for again in final passage of the Energy bill, the fuel efficiency standards which were in the Senate-passed Energy bill.

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory has testified that is the single most important thing we can do to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. But I believe we should use common sense. I don't believe using tax dollars to give your neighbor up to $4,000 so he or she can create up to a 12-story tower in a residential neighborhood makes much common sense. My appeal is as much to common sense as anything else.

My hope is the Senate would agree that it will be fine if we want to subsidize the building of even such large wind turbines in rural areas, but it is not all right to subsidize the building of those wind turbines in residential areas. My amendment would also make clear that nothing we did in this bill overrode local zoning ordinances that people use to decide what sort of towers they want to permit.

That concludes my remarks. I will listen to my colleagues from Vermont and Colorado.

Mr. President, how much time remains?

I will take just a few of those, unless the Senator from Iowa wishes to speak now.

I appreciate the comments of the Senator from Colorado, and I know the Senator from Vermont as well has strong and deeply held views on this subject. So do I. I would only respond in these ways: I don't think it is necessary to destroy the environment in order to save the environment. I think there are more sensible ways to save the environment than to use tax dollars to encourage people to put up 12- story white towers of red lights in their own neighborhoods.

There is some talk about Congress interfering with land use. Well, what happens here is that when the Congress gives out tax money--my tax money, your tax money--and says you can use it for this purpose, people do it. So the Congress is distorting land use decisions, in effect. So it is the other side that is interfering with local land use decisions.

Maybe we have different conceptions of what the word ``small'' means. A 100-kilowatt tower is--can be 12 stories high. So we are not talking about your grandmother's windmill that snuggles up cozily next to the barn; we are talking about your neighbor in New Jersey or Tennessee or Vermont who comes in and says: Hey, I have a great idea. I am going to put up a 12-story tower in my front yard with your tax money. Now, if that person wants to do that and local ordinances permit that, then that is not the business of the Federal Government. We don't need to be encouraging it in residential areas. All I am saying is this is a farm bill, and what I am trying to say is we should limit these subsidies to rural areas.

The Senator from Colorado said this would be a crippling blow to the wind effort. I believe that suggestion, if I may respectfully say, is overblown. The biggest--through the renewable electricity production tax credit alone, the U.S. taxpayer will spend $11.5 billion on wind energy over 10 years, between 2007 and 2016. This doesn't begin to count other Federal, State, or local subsidies for wind. So without this subsidy, we are spending $11.5 billion for wind.

According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, by the year 2009 this wind subsidy and the production tax credit that is already in the law will be the single largest Federal tax expenditure for energy in the United States. Yet it only produces seven-tenths of 1 percent of the electricity we use. To put it in a little perspective--and I mentioned this yesterday--according to the same Joint Tax Committee, all the subsidies we give to oil and gas through taxes, according to the Joint Tax Committee, are $2.7 billion in the year 2009. The wind subsidies are $1.3 billion. Well, we use oil and gas. We use about 25 percent of all of the oil and gas in the world in this great big economy of ours. We don't use much of it to make electricity, but we have a $2.7 billion taxpayer investment in that, and that is debated here. But nobody seems to notice that we are spending $1.3 billion--nearly half as much--on these large wind turbines, and they are not producing much power--not much power at all.

Just so everyone understands, half of our electricity is produced by coal. Eighty percent of our carbon-free electricity is produced by nuclear power. I didn't hear my friends on the other side say a word about nuclear power.

Climate change is an inconvenient truth, Al Gore said. I am not one of those who believe that just because Al Gore said it means it is wrong. I believe climate change is a very serious problem for our country and our world. I am working hard to change that through low carbon fuel standards, through putting caps on utilities, and through sponsoring solar energy. But why would we make such an extraordinarily disproportionate investment in wind turbines when they produce so little energy and, according to the Energy Administration, are likely to produce so little?

So the only other points I would make are these: The Senator from Vermont mentioned the relentless melting of the Arctic. We agree. We need to deal with climate change. But I would suggest that conservation and nuclear power are the way to deal with climate change in this generation. That may be an inconvenient truth as well, but that is the way to do it.

As I mentioned earlier, just spending the $5 million that is allocated for these big residential wind turbines and farm wind turbines, just spending that on efficiency lightbulbs would save eight times as much energy. That would make more common sense to me.

The Senator from Vermont also pointed out that the UK--the United Kingdom--might power all of its houses with wind power. I read that article too; I believe it is the same article. But they are planning to do that with large wind turbines way out in the ocean where you won't be able to see them very easily. If they do have all of their power from wind power, I don't think I would want to live there because my computer and my lights and my air-conditioner and my heater would only work when the wind blows. Wind can't be stored in any effective way today, so it only works when the wind blows. It is not possible for it to be used as a base power of electricity. It is not a good peaking power.

So what we are doing with these extraordinary subsidies for wind is we are encouraging people to build large wind turbines in areas where the wind doesn't blow just so they can make some money on it because of all of these huge generous subsidies, and we are deluding ourselves into thinking we are dealing with climate change when, in fact, we are ignoring the real solutions to climate change, which are conservation, No. 1, and--in this generation, at least--nuclear power, No. 2.

So that is my reason for making this amendment. This is a farm bill. If we are going to subsidize wind turbines in the farm bill, let's do it on farms. Let's not take my tax money and your tax money and give it to your neighbor and say: You can put up a 12-story white tower next door, and we would like to encourage you to do that in your residential neighborhood. I don't think that makes common sense. Once it starts happening, neighborhood after neighborhood after neighborhood, I think a lot of taxpayers are going to be calling their U.S. Senator and saying: You did what? You did what? Why didn't you vote for conservation support? Why didn't you vote to have clean coal technology? Why didn't you vote to build more nuclear powerplants, which are the real way to do carbon-free energy? Why are you pretending to solve climate change by putting up 12-story towers or encouraging them to be put up in my neighbor's front yard?

So I hope my colleagues will recognize that the wiser vote today is for the Alexander amendment because that will make possible new subsidies, in addition to all of the other subsidies, for wind turbines in rural areas. They call them small, but they are up to 12 stories tall. It will make it clear that there is no interference with local land use rules about what kind of towers may go up and down.

Of course, the other amendment I proposed would help get the research programs back on track at our land grant universities which have been so valuable in helping raise farm incomes and creating jobs in this country.

I thank the President, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would like to conclude my remarks, if that would be all right.

Mr. President, just a few remarks.

I appreciate the comments of the Senator, who is chairman of the Energy Committee, and I appreciate his support for nuclear power, which is 80 percent of our carbon-free electricity in America even though it is only 20 percent of our electricity.

I will discuss briefly his point on my amendment that would seek to restore funding to the program for land grant universities. If the managers are able to find some extra money, that would be terrific, but it ought to be in addition to the $74 million I have proposed. The House proposes to spend $600 million over the last 3 years in the farm bill. I am proposing to spend $74 million.

Second, one of the problems with the section I am seeking to strike is that it appears to apply retroactively to transmission towers. I see no reason for that. A larger problem is that wind doesn't need more subsidies. The Senator talked about subsidies to other forms of energy for research and development. I have yet to hear anybody contradict the fact that the taxpayer, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, will spend $11.5 billion on wind energy over the next 10 years, which today produces less than 1 percent of our electricity, and only when the winds blows.

Even if you have wind turbines all over America, you still need nuclear plants, conservation, coal plants, and a base load of electricity. There is a long list of Federal subsidies for wind energy and, in addition, clean, renewable energy bonds, the Department of Defense energy incentive program, et cetera, including State programs. What is happening is that we are encouraging people to build wind turbines, as they have on Buffalo Mountain in Tennessee, in places where the wind doesn't blow, just to make the money the Federal Government provides in subsidies.

Finally, I think the greatest, most specific argument against the idea of giving tax breaks to landowners, where you are going to build new transmission lines, is this: This would mean the Tennessee taxpayer would be taxed to pay for transmission lines in New Mexico or South Dakota, or the Georgia taxpayer would be taxed to pay for transmission lines in Pennsylvania or Virginia. Transmission lines should be paid for by the utility that builds them and the ratepayer who benefits from that, not by the general taxpayers. So if all of the other reasons go to the side, the major reason in support of this amendment is that it is inappropriate for us to require taxpayers in Maryland, Tennessee, and Texas to pay for utilities' transmission lines in New Mexico, South Dakota, and Illinois. They should pay for them themselves.

Mr. President, that concludes my remarks.

We yield back our time.

Madam President, I ask the manager of the bill if he wishes us to begin our 1-minute discussion?

Madam President, this is a wonderful opportunity to take wasteful Washington spending and turn it into higher farm family income by using our secret weapon, land grant universities' competitive grants to create value-added agricultural products to get that program back on track. It is fully paid for, $74 million, by striking a provision that uses taxpayers' dollars so taxpayers in Virginia and Georgia, for example, will pay for transmission lines in Tennessee and other States. Those should be paid for by utilities.

The group that hopes Senators vote ``yes'' includes the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges, the National Coalition for Food and Agricultural Research, the National Association of Wheat Growers, and the National Cattlemen's Beef Association.

I urge a ``yes'' vote.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, the words I would like my colleagues to remember are ``farms, yes; residential, no.'' If the Alexander amendment is adopted, there would be subsidies for wind turbines up to 12 stories tall in agricultural areas, but there would be no subsidies for wind turbines in residential areas. This is called ``small wind.'' Twelve stories is not very tall, but I would not want to go home and explain to my constituents why I took their tax dollars and helped a neighbor build a 12-story-tall wind turbine with flashing lights in a residential neighborhood.

Farms, yes; residential, no. I ask for a ``yes'' vote.

Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, may I ask that I be notified when I have 5 minutes remaining?

First, I would like to congratulate the Senator from New Hampshire for his, as usual, eloquent remarks, but I would like to congratulate him especially.

I believe I am recognized for up to 30 minutes?

Madam President, I congratulate the Senator from New Hampshire. He is usually eloquent, and he was again today. But the subject matter is not just eloquent, it is critical in the State of Tennessee.

There is a medical liability crisis, especially for women who live in rural areas. The fact is, as the Senator from New Hampshire has said, women who live in rural areas do not have access to doctors for prenatal health care. They do not have access to doctors to deliver their babies.

According to data from the Health Services and Resources Administration, in 2004, in 45 of Tennessee's 95 counties, pregnant mothers had to drive for miles to get prenatal care or to deliver their babies. In 15 of those counties, pregnant mothers have no access whatsoever to any prenatal health care within their counties.

The Tennessean newspaper, on July 20, 2004, reported that only 1 of 104 medical students graduating from Vanderbilt University Medical School chose OB/GYN.

Dr. Frank Boehm said that:

We must not lose sight of the fact that one of the side

effects of our current medical malpractice crisis in OB/GYN

is the steady loss of medical students who are choosing not

to practice one of our most important medical specialties. If

the decline continues, patients having babies or needing

high-risk care will be faced with access problems this

country has not yet seen. The same story is true at the

University of Tennessee Medical School in Memphis.

On any given day, there are more than 125,000 medical liability suits in progress against America's 700,000 doctors.

There is a way to fix this. The State of Texas has shown us how, and it is similar to the way Senator Gregg has suggested. Put a reasonable cap on punitive damages, but let there be unlimited liability for any real damages. That was done in Texas in the year 2005, and in the following year, last year, more than 4,000 doctors applied for licenses to practice in Texas. OB/GYNs and other doctors are pouring back into Texas--up 34 percent from the previous year--because of a change just like the one the Senator from New Hampshire has suggested.

I am happy for Texas, but I would like Tennessee and the rest of the country to experience the same thing. Senator Gregg is exactly right to point out the medical crisis that is caused when women who live in rural counties cannot have access to prenatal health care and care for their pregnancy and for their babies.

Amendments Nos. 3551 And 3553

Madam President, I rise to speak in support of amendments Nos. 3551 and 3553, which were previously offered on my behalf.

The first amendment is No. 3551. This is an amendment which would add $74 million to the last 3 years of the farm bill for agricultural research at land grant colleges or universities. Specifically, it would provide mandatory funding for the Initiative for Future Agricultural and Food Systems as follows: $24 million in fiscal year 2010, $25 million in 2011, and $25 million in 2012. It would be fully offset by striking section 12302 of the tax title in the Harkin substitute amendment to the farm bill, which basically says that taxpayers in Georgia and in Tennessee, for example, will pay for transmission lines for ratepayers in North Dakota and South Dakota and in other States who want to build transmission lines through rural areas, primarily for wind energy.

I am here today to talk primarily about farm incomes, and I am talking about America's secret weapons for farm incomes in the day in which we live, which are the land grant universities of America. Iowa State is a great

land grant university. I imagine the University of Minnesota is a great land grant university in Minnesota. I know I was president of the University of Tennessee, which is our land grant university, and I confess to some bias because I think I am the only former president of a land grant university in the Senate.

Why is that so important? Earlier this year, we unanimously passed, after 2 years of work, a bill we called the America COMPETES Act. What it did was recognize America's brainpower advantage is what has given us our incredibly high standard of living.

In this last year, our country, the United States of America, produced about 30 percent of all the wealth in the world for about 5 percent of the people in the world--that is, our population. How did we do that? There are a variety of reasons, but primarily, since World War II, we have taken our brainpower advantage to create new jobs that have given us that great high standard of living. This amendment is about making sure we take advantage of that in the agriculture community. It will provide more competitive grants to our land grant universities so they can create value-added agricultural products, of which I have an example right back here.

Congress recognized the importance of this brainpower advantage our land grant universities have when it authorized the 1998 farm bill. It created something called the Initiative for Future Agricultural and Food Systems. In addition to farm income, this research was to be for future food production for environmental quality, for natural resource management, as well as, as I said, farm income.

Here is a specific example of the value-added opportunity I am talking about. There is a weed, I guess people would call it, called the guayule weed that grows out in the Southwest. Research that was done at the University of Arizona led to the development of a non- allergenic rubber product that is made from that plant that is as useful as latex rubber, for example, for gloves that we use with which to work. But it does not cause allergic reactions, as latex does, in 10 percent of our Nation's health care workforce. That is an example of the brain power advantage.

The University of New Mexico and the University of Tennessee are taking opportunities to use manure as sources of energy and as ways to create nursery crop containers. At Texas Tech University, the research that has come directly from the program I described that was started in 1998 has led to the development of a less toxic version of the castor seed created by using genetic modifications. This means we can grow more castor oil in this country instead of having to import it.

Now, one might say: Well, what is the big deal about castor oil? It tastes bad. It is what you take when you are sick. Not anymore. On the Defense Department's Critical Needs List there are multiple uses of castor oil for military purposes, including lubricants, adhesives, pharmaceuticals, waxes and polishes and inks.

The Senator from Georgia and from Iowa will know very well the value- added advantage to our country of all the products that have come from soybeans. Our great land grant universities have led the way to create these extra farm incomes, these new jobs for our country.

There are 76 land grant universities in America. During the 2 years where this program that was passed in 1998 worked well, 2001 and 2002, this grant program I am describing awarded 183 different grants, one grant at least in every State and in the District of Columbia.

So these land grant universities, created in Abraham Lincoln's administration, have been at the forefront of our agriculture in America for a long time. If we want to keep high farm income, they are a major part of our ability to do that.

We have had some experience now since 1998 with this grant program I am describing, which has a long name, called the Initiative for Future Agriculture and Food Systems. First, when it was appropriated, and the Senator from Georgia mentioned this to me, the appropriators got to the money and they canceled the appropriation and then increased another account and earmarked the money for their favorite university.

That practice stopped in 2001 and 2002. Basically, we went through a period where the research grants were awarded in the way they are supposed to be, the way most of our research grants are awarded. One reason our great higher education system works so well is because it is a large marketplace; students may choose their school, Government money follows them to the institution of their choice, public, private, nonprofit, and the billions of dollars we spend on research to create jobs, giving us the brain-power advantage, is competitively awarded, usually peer reviewed.

So in a couple years, that worked for this program. But then, the authorizers looked at what the appropriators had done and they said, in effect: We are going to earmark some of this money to our favorite universities. That happened for a while.

Then, in 2005, we got into a budget crunch, and those trying to balance the budget said: Here is a place to get some money. They took the money that was dedicated for agriculture research and used it for the 2005 budget reconciliation. So only in 2 years since 1998 has this excellent competitive grant program worked very well, 2001 and 2002.

Now, in the current House version of the farm bill we are debating today, they try to put it back on track. In the first 2 years of the bill, they appropriate the money to deal with the budget deficit that was dealt with in 2005. But in the last 3 years, they authorize money for this kind of research, $200 million in each of 2010, 2011, 2012, $600 million, amounts to about two-tenths of 1 percent of the total cost of the House version of the farm bill.

The Senate version, unfortunately, well, fortunately in the first 2 years, does pay the money to deal with the budget problem. The decision was made a few years ago. But in the last 3 years, during the time when the House put in 600 million, the Senate puts in zero.

So my amendment would restore $74 million of the $600 million, and in conference, hopefully, the conferees could decide this is an important provision. Since both Houses had provided money, we can put the program back on track.

How do we pay for it? Well, by striking section 12302 from the tax title. Now, section 12302 of the tax title provides new tax breaks for large transmission towers that transmit electricity, primarily from wind farms, in remote and rural areas.

In my part of the country, Tennessee, for example, wind farms barely work at all because the wind does not blow. But where they do work a little bit is up on top of some of our most scenic mountains. So what the effect of this provision would be is to say: We are going to give people who own the land an ability not to pay income tax on the income they get from running these big transmission towers from the top of our scenic mountains all the way down to where the electric grid is.

That is unnecessary in the first place because the provision, as written, is retroactive. In addition to applying to future deals that will be made with landowners, it seems to apply to current and existing deals.

No. 2, it provides tens of millions of dollars, about $55 million, in my computation, of new subsidy for wind. Wind already is, in my judgment and in the judgment of many others, over-subsidized in terms of an energy source.

Third, and perhaps the largest objection, is transmission towers should be paid for by the utilities that build the transmission towers. If the Tennessee Valley Authority builds a transmission tower for whatever purpose, those of us who buy our electricity from TVA ought to pay the bill. We should not send the bill to the Colorado taxpayer or to someone who lives in southern Georgia or someone who lives in Iowa or New York, and neither should they send their bills to us.

So I think it is inappropriate for all those reasons, to subsidize further the ability to build transmission lines, primarily from wind farms to the grid. What it tends to do is to create such extravagant subsidies for wind that investors see an opportunity to make a lot of money, and they build wind farms in places where the wind does not blow.

That might sound to some like a ridiculous statement. But we have one of those in the Southeastern United States. It happens to be in east Tennessee. It is a TVA experimental farm.

It is up on top of Buffalo Mountain, 3,500 feet up. It ought to be a particularly good place for it. You can see the big white towers and flashing lights, instead of seeing the mountain tops, which we prefer to see.

What does it do? Not much. It cost $60 million over 20 years to TVA ratepayers to pay somebody to provide this energy. But during August, when we were in a drought and we needed to turn our air-conditioning on, it was operating 10 or 15 percent of the time.

So there is a much better solution to the need for new electricity in our part of the world and in many parts of America than to encourage investors through extravagant subsidies to build huge transmission lines through rural areas to connect wind farms with grids that are a long distance away.

If the market supports that sort of electricity investment, let it support it. That will usually mean, if you are going to build big wind farms, you will build them fairly close to the electric grid so you will not have to spend a million dollars a mile on the transmission line.

That is the first amendment. We would take the $74 million from this unnecessary expenditure that causes people to pay, in one part of the country, for what should be an electric ratepayer's bill in another part of the country; gives an unnecessary amount of money to wind developers. It, in fact, takes an example of wasteful Washington spending and uses it for higher farm incomes.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter to Chairman Harkin from organizations stating their support for increased funding for research at land-grant universities.

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

Please let me know when there are 5 minutes remaining.

Amendment No. 3553

Here is my second amendment. It is amendment No. 3553. I say it with all due respect to the Senator from Colorado because he and I discussed this. I am sure he will have more to say about this. But here is what this amendment is about.

The question is whether every Member of this body--I hope a lot of Senators are watching or their staffs are watching, because you do want to help your Senator if you are a staff member go home and explain, wherever you may live in America, why you took $4,000 of their tax money and gave it to their neighbor to build a 12-story tower in that neighbor's front yard with a flashing red light on top.

That is the question. The farm bill tax title, as reported by the Senate Finance Committee, says it is called a small wind tax credit. Now, I would ask those who can see this picture whether they would consider this tower an example of a small wind turbine? I think you can see the large crane next to it. You can see the telephone pole by it. Imagine if that is in your neighborhood, in the front yard of your neighbor. What the proposal in the tax title as reported says, that a small wind tax credit would give you up to $4,000 toward building a turbine of up to 100 kilowatts. That is a 100-kilowatt wind turbine.

Now, you might build a smaller one, and the cost would vary--a 0.5 kilowatt turbine might cost about $1,900 and receive a $570 tax credit, which is 30 percent of the total cost. A 1 kilowatt turbine might cost about $4,000 and receive a $1,200 credit, which is also 30 percent of this turbine's cost. A 2.5 kilowatt turbine costs about $15,000 and would receive a $4,000 credit, which is 27 percent of the turbine's cost. But you could build one as big as the 100 kilowatt turbine depicted here with taxpayer funds under the provisions of this bill.

I would like to ask my colleagues to think about whether they think that is an appropriate use of tax money. My view is the puny amount of electricity produced by these wind turbines is not worth ruining the character of our neighborhoods.

So what my amendment would do is simply say: This is a farm bill. If the Members of this body and this Congress want to subsidize the building of 12-story white towers in rural areas for farms and businesses, then do that in the farm bill. But do not allow that to go into residential neighborhoods across America, which the bill, as presently written, does.

Now, when I say a puny amount of electricity, what do I mean by that? Well, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, which has examined this provision of the proposed farm bill, it would encourage the installation of 12 megawatts of electricity.

Electrical generators have something called rated capacity. The rated capacity is the power that an electrical plant generates when operating at its full capacity. A nuclear power plant, for example, in Tennessee on average operates at 90 to 95 percent of rated capacity. That is why so many Americans are beginning to understand that nuclear power is the way you deal with climate change, if you are serious about it, because they produce 1,100 or 1,200 megawatts of power 92 percent percent of the time, and that is clean power. That has no nitrogen, no sulfur, no mercury. It has no carbon. Nuclear power produces 20 percent of our electricity and 80 percent of our carbon-free electricity.

The idea here is that by putting 12-story towers or up to 12-story towers in our neighbor's front yard or in our front yard, we could produce under this proposal an estimated 12 Megawatts of electricity. Probably turbines like that would operate 20, 25, 30 percent of the time. So it wouldn't be 12 megawatts of electricity, it would be 3 or 4 mega- watts on average. This is equivalent to two-tenths of 1 percent of the energy from a nuclear reactor or six-tenths of 1 percent of the energy from a single coal plant.

My appeal is that we respectfully use our common sense as we think about how to deal with the various challenges we have with clean air, with climate change, with our need for energy. Common sense does not say we ought to subsidize the building of 12-story towers or up to 12- story towers in our front yards. For example, we would get a much better bang for the buck--$5 million is what is estimated to be spent-- if we simply bought energy-efficient light bulbs and gave them to our neighbors. Spending $5 million on $2 energy-efficient light bulbs would save eight times the electricity generated by these ``small wind turbines.'' So why should we ruin the character of our neighborhoods when we could do eight times as much good with the same amount of money by changing our light bulbs? That would be common sense.

I am very much aware of the concern about climate change. Ever since I have been a Member of this body, I have had legislation in the Senate--first with Senator Carper, then with Senator Lieberman--to establish caps on utilities which produce a third of all the carbon in the country. That legislation, which I introduced with those two Senators over the last 5 years, also would establish more aggressive standards for nitrogen, mercury, and sulfur than the administration does. In addition, last week when we were debating climate change, the Environment Committee adopted my proposal for a low-carbon fuel standard which would be one of the most effective ways, probably the most effective way, to reduce quickly the amount of carbon in the fuel we use. In the last Congress, I was the principal sponsor of the solar energy tax credit. So I, like most Americans, am looking for ways for us to continue to power our huge economy but to do it in a clean way. I make a plea for common sense while we do this.

I suppose it would be possible for us to give $4,000 to a homeowner and say: Build a big bonfire in your backyard, and then we will give you more money to sequester the carbon and bury it under the ground. That would be possible. But would it make common sense? No, it wouldn't make common sense. There are better ways to use the money. Why would we destroy the environment to save the environment, which is precisely what we are doing in residential neighborhoods with this proposal. I regret not that it allows farm families and farm businesses a small subsidy to build large wind turbines. I regret that we would extend that to residential neighborhoods at the same time.

Let me say something else about the number of subsidies for wind power that exist today in our country. Sometimes the need for wind has become nearly a religion. Instead of looking carefully at whether we should use more efficient light bulbs or smart meters on utilities or solar panels or efficient appliances or green buildings, a whole variety of things we can do as a country to be green--instead of doing that, I think we have gone overboard on the idea of wind.

Let me give a couple of examples of that, if I may. There are a great many subsidies already in existence for wind. The biggest, of course, is the renewable electricity production tax credit. Through that renewable production tax credit, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, the United States taxpayer will spend $11.5 billion on wind energy over the next 10 years. Let me say that again. The United States taxpayer is committed, through the existing renewable electricity production tax credit, to spend $11.5 billion on wind energy over the next 10 years. That doesn't count the value of various other Federal, State, and local subsidies for wind. There are the clean renewable energy bonds to help build the wind turbines. There are Department of Energy grants and incentive programs. There are Department of Agriculture renewable energy and energy efficiency grants and loans. There are various State subsidies for wind.

Texas is appropriating billions of dollars for transmission lines for wind. That is their decision. It is not as if this were a form of energy which lacked support. I am afraid the result is that the extravagant subsidies for wind are causing people to build wind farms and to use wind where they otherwise would not. In testimony before the Environmental and Public Works Committee recently, one utility manager from Oklahoma said he is tripling the amount of wind they are using.

I said: Why are you doing that? Can you use it as baseload power; that is, can you use it as reliable power all day long?

He said: We can only use it when the wind blows.

I said: Can you use it for peaking power?

He said: No, we can't use it for that because the peaking power, the busiest time of the day or year, might come when the wind is not blowing.

I said: Why are you doing it then?

He said: To make the legislators happy.

So we are not letting the market decide. We have become obsessed with the idea that this needs to be done. How big is that obsession? I think most Senators would be surprised to learn that by fiscal year 2009, the renewable electricity production tax credit will be the single largest tax expenditure for energy: $1.9 billion of that in 2009 would go for all renewable sources, but $1.3 billion would be for wind. We hear a lot about oil and gas and the subsidies for oil and gas. One might think that would be true since we have this massive economy. We use about 25 percent of all the oil and gas in the world. But according to figures from the Joint Tax Committee--and perhaps somebody will point out that the Joint Tax Committee is wrong, but this is what they say in the year 2009, the subsidies for oil and gas tax expenditures will be $2.7 billion from the taxpayers. The production tax credit for wind will be $1.3 billion. Wind, $1.3 billion; oil and gas, $2.7 billion. The reason I mention that is because of the disproportionate relationship between the value of oil and gas to an economy that uses 25 percent of all of it in the world and the amount of electricity produced by wind.

In 2006, wind energy produced seven-tenths of 1 percent of the electricity we consumed in the United States, yet it is the largest single energy tax expenditure by the taxpayer. Something is wrong there. The Energy Information Administration estimates that by the year 2020, after we have spent presumably tens of billions of dollars of subsidies for large wind turbines in your front yard and backyard and side yard and our national forests, along our beaches, our most scenic mountaintops, after we have done all of that, according to the Energy Information Administration, wind is projected to produce about 1 percent of our electricity needs.

I am skeptical of that figure. I think the Energy Information Administration is too conservative. It might be 2 percent. It might be 3 percent. Maybe it is 4 percent. But should the largest energy expenditure be to encourage the building of such towers, or should we be spending our money in different ways?

We have other ways to produce electricity: 49 percent of our electricity is produced by coal. Would it be wise to spend money in finding a way to sequester that coal, perhaps through algae, perhaps through enzymes, so we can use it to reduce our dependence on foreign oil? I think it would. But the largest single energy tax expenditure is for wind. Twenty percent of our electricity is produced by nuclear power, 80 percent of our clean power. In my view, if we are serious about climate change in this generation, climate change is an inconvenient truth, the inconvenient solution is nuclear power and conservation. But the largest single energy tax expenditure is for large wind turbines. Hydropower is clean as well. It is only about 7 percent of the electricity in the United States. It will drop a little by 2020. But wouldn't there be ways to encourage that as well?

It may be said that this is only a small matter. It is only $5 million. But

it won't be a small matter in residential neighborhoods in Knoxville and Denver and Los Angeles, all across the country, when a neighbor comes in and says: I just got $4,000 of your tax money, and I am going to put up a 12-story white tower with a blinking red light on top because I want to do what I can for climate change.

I think the proper answer is to say that is not the most commonsense thing we can do. There are many ways we can conserve. Efficient light bulbs would save eight times as much as this proposal would generate. Why don't we do that instead?

If you think this is not going to happen in your neighborhood, I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record following my remarks a story from CNN.com about neighbors in Atlanta who are already squabbling about someone who has built a wind turbine in their front yard in a historic neighborhood. It makes no difference that the wind doesn't blow very much in Atlanta. The neighbor is just making a statement. That is the kind of thing that this will encourage.

It would be my hope that this amendment would be accepted by the Senate. The effect of it would be to leave in place up to $4,000 support for building a tower that could be as large as that one, a 100 kilowatt turbine, in rural areas or for rural business. That would still be in place under my amendment. What would not be in place is the ability to use that in residential neighborhoods. The amendment would also make clear that nothing we are doing in this legislation preempts any local decision about the kind of decisions people will make. I am for caps on utilities. I am the sponsor of the solar credit. I am for cleaner air, more aggressively than the administration has been. I am ready to use smart meters. I am ready to try geothermal, almost anything, the low-carbon fuel standard. But I hope we will use common sense.

Common sense says to me, with all due respect, that we should not encourage using other people's tax money for your neighbor to build up to a 12-story white tower in his front yard as a solution to the current concern about climate change. There are other, better ways to do it, starting with energy efficiency, other ways that make much more common sense.

I yield the floor.

Exhibit 1

Neighbors Fight, States Scramble Over Clean Power

(By Thom Patterson)

Atlanta, Georgia (CNN).--Curt Mann's neighbors are livid,

accusing him of erecting an ugly wind turbine among their

historic homes for no other reason than to show off his

environmental ``bling.''

The 49-year-old residential developer is remodeling his

1920's house to be more environmentally friendly, including

installation of a 45-foot-tall wind turbine in his front

yard. ``It's really none of their business how I spend my

money,'' Mann said.

The towering turbine, which overlooks majestic trees and

Victorian rooftops, pits preservationists in Atlanta's Grant

Park Historic District against a property owner and his

individual rights.

``It's unattractive and it's a nuisance,'' said Scott

Herzinger, whose home is three doors down. Mann ``invaded the

public view . . . when he put that tower up.''

In blustery regions, home turbines can cut power bills by

up to 80 percent. But opponents claim Mann's wind turbine

needlessly threatens neighborhood property values because

Atlanta's low winds don't produce enough speed to make the

device worthwhile.

At a cost of $15,000, Mann said the turbine will shave at

least $20 per month off his power bill--hardly a windfall. A

proposed federal tax credit would bring Mann $3,000.

Acknowledging it could be decades before his investment pays

off, Mann said, ``even if it was a 50-year payback, at least

we've done something to reduce our dependency on fossil

fuels.''

Herzinger blames Atlanta, which ``let us down miserably''

when zoning officials sided with Mann.

Said Mann, ``If regulations for historic preservation don't

address modern-day issues, then they're not very sound.''

But Herzinger, 48, who shares Mann's support for wind

power, said Mann could have considered many alternatives

which would have helped the environment more than the

turbine. ``After looking at the facts, it doesn't seem

unreasonable to think of Mann's wind turbine as eco-bling.''

Although opponents filed a lawsuit in Fulton County

Superior Court against both Atlanta and Mann, the squabble

poses larger, far-reaching questions about how communities,

states and the nation as a whole should tackle the ongoing

shift toward cleaner energy.

``I don't think we're going to revolutionize the utility

industry through wind turbines in the front yard,'' said

longtime California energy consultant Nancy Rader, ``To

really make a dent in the power sector we've got to have the

big, central, bulk-generating facilities.''

At least 21 states and the District of Columbia have set

deadlines or goals for utilities to obtain electricity from

clean renewable sources instead of fossil-fuel burning

plants.

The scramble has triggered construction of large-scale wind

farms throughout much of the nation, including proposals for

the first U.S. offshore facilities.

Delaware and Galveston, Texas, have offshore projects in

the works, although a farm proposed off New York's Long

Island was shelved this year due to high projected

construction costs.

Top New York energy official Paul Tonko said the push

toward renewable energy became more urgent as oil prices hit

a record $80 a barrel September 13.

``We have precious little time to adjust,'' said Tonko,

president of New York State Energy Research and Development

Authority. ``We are behind the curve of several leading

nations who have moved forward with very aggressive

outcomes.''

In Massachusetts, where utilities are under the gun to

obtain four percent of electricity from renewables by 2009,

builders await federal approval of a hugely controversial

wind farm off historic Cape Cod.

The Cape Wind project envisions 130 wind turbines each

rising 440 feet above Nantucket Sound by 2011. State

officials said the farm will eliminate pollution equal to

175,000 gas-burning cars.

Like Mann's neighbors, Cape Wind opponents are rallying to

protect historic properties. The Massachusetts historical

commission said the wind farm's ``visual elements'' would be

``out of character'' and would have an ``adverse effect'' on

more than a dozen historic sites, including the Kennedy

family residential compound in Hyannis Port.

James E. Liedell, director of Clean Power Now, a grass-

roots group that supports the project, said he once asked

Sen. Edward Kennedy, during a random encounter in 2003, what

he thought of Cape Wind. ``It's the sight of wind turbines

that bothers me,'' Liedell said Kennedy said, reminding

Liedell that, ``that's where I sail, and I don't want to see

them when I sail either.''

According to polling in northern Europe where wind farms

are flourishing, residents eventually have come to accept

turbine towers dotting the landscape, said Dr. Mike

Pasqualetti, who has done much research on the topic.

Communities near many California wind farms, which were built

in the 1980s, have largely come to accept the turbines, said

the Arizona State University professor.

As the nation's fastest growing form of new power

generation, wind-born electricity may soon fuel commutes for

millions of Americans.

``If we power electric hybrid cars with electricity that

comes from wind farms, it means you aren't polluting on

either end of the equation,'' said Dr. Robert Lang, director

of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech. ``It doesn't

make sense to power electric cars with electricity from

fossil fuel burning plants.''

Governments should consider offering property owners

reduced energy rates or other incentives to win their support

for green energy projects, suggested Lang.

Washington state utilities are racing to obtain 15 percent

renewable energy by 2020--much of that from wind. When the

Kittitas County Commission unanimously rejected placing a 65-

turbine facility near residential property, Gov. Chris

Gregoire overruled the commissioners in a move that Chairman

Alan Crankovich called disappointing and unprecedented.

``To have a land-use decision overturned by the governor,

that scares me,'' Crankovich said. ``I'm concerned about it

because this is the first step in weakening local authority

and I hope she understands that.''

Bertha Morrison, 89, a lifelong resident whose property

abuts the proposed site applauded the governor's decision.

``There'll be money coming from it to the county and that

will keep our taxes down a little bit.''

Individuals such as Morrison, Mann and Herzinger can

influence public energy policy, said energy consultant Rader,

by participating in local government and casting votes on

statewide initiatives.

``We're going to have to bite the bullet,'' said Rader. ``I

think we need to do every damn thing we can to save this

planet and everybody on it.''

Mr. President, I unanimous consent that a fellow on my staff, Jack Wells, be granted the privilege of the floor for the duration of the debate on the farm bill.

On behalf of the Republican leadership, I object.

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

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

Madam President, I regret to report that the conference committee for the Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill has been indefinitely postponed. I wanted to take just a few minutes and say from my point of view why it has been postponed and to express my hope that it can be put back on track soon, in the regular order, and that we can move ahead and deal with it.

The Commerce-Justice appropriations bill includes funding for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. It includes appropriations for NASA, for the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Here is what has happened. It is important for my colleagues to know this. The reason the Appropriations Committee conference has been postponed is because the Speaker of the House objects to an amendment which I offered in the Appropriations Committee, which was adopted by the committee, adopted by the full Senate, and which the House of Representatives instructed its conferees to approve. I have been told that unless I agree not to bring the amendment up in conference, the conference will not meet.

Let me describe the amendment. I believe most Americans will be surprised to learn what its subject is. The amendment I offered in the Senate Appropriations Committee is an amendment to make clear that it is not against the Federal law for an employer to require an employee to speak English on the job. Let me say that again. My amendment, which was adopted by this Senate, was to make it clear that it is not against the Federal law for an employer to require an employee to speak English on the job. That was adopted by the Appropriations Committee. Among those voting for it were the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Byrd, and the ranking Republican member, Senator Cochran. When it went to the House, there were two votes on it, but the second vote had the House, as a majority, instructing its conferees to agree with the Senate position and make it the Federal law.

Why did I offer such an amendment? I offered the amendment because the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a Federal agency, has determined that it is illegal for an employer in this country to require employees to speak in English while working. As a result, the EEOC has sued the Salvation Army, for example, for damages because one of the Salvation Army thrift stores in Boston required its employees to speak English on the job. The EEOC says this is a discrimination in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It says, in effect, that unless the Salvation Army can prove this is a business necessity, it can't require its employees to speak English.

In plain English, this means that thousands of small businesses across America--the shoe shop, the drugstore, the gas station--any company would have to be prepared to make their case to the Federal agency--and perhaps hire a lawyer--to show there is some special reason to justify requiring their employees to speak our country's common language on the job. I believe this is a gross distortion of the Civil Rights Act, and it is a complete misunderstanding of what it means to be an American.

I do not say this lightly. Since the 1960s, in Tennessee, at a time when it was not popular, I have supported, I believe, and voted for, when I have been in a position to do it, every major piece of civil rights legislation that has come down the road from the early days. I believe in that passionately. I remember the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act and all those important pieces of Federal and State legislation which have made a difference to equal rights in our country. But I cannot imagine that the framers of the 1964 Civil Rights Act intended to say that it is discrimination for a shoe shop owner to say to his or her employee: I want you to be able to speak America's common language on the job. That is why I put forward an amendment to stop the EEOC from filing these lawsuits.

That is why the Senate Appropriations Committee agreed on June 28 to approve my amendment. That is why the full Senate on October 16 passed a bill including my amendment. That is why the full House of Representatives voted to instruct its conferees to agree with the Senate on November 8. That is why, I believe, that the Senate-House conference on this appropriations bill should include the amendment in the conference report so it can become law.

Let me step back for a minute and try to put this small amendment in a larger perspective. Our country's greatest accomplishment is not our diversity. Our diversity is magnificent. It is a source of great strength. Our country's greatest accomplishment is that we have turned all that magnificent diversity into one country. It is no accident that on the wall above the Presiding Officer are a few words that were our original national motto: E Pluribus Unum, one from many, not many from one.

Looking around the world, it is worth remembering that it is virtually impossible to become Chinese, or to become Japanese, or to become German, or to become French. But if you want to be a citizen of the United States of America, you must become an American. Becoming an American is not based on race. It cannot be based upon where your grandparents came from. It cannot be based upon your native religion or your native language. Our Constitution makes those things clear. In our country, becoming an American begins with swearing allegiance to this country. It is based upon learning American history so one can know the principles in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.

The late Albert Shanker, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, was once asked what is the rationale for a public school in America? He answered: The rationale for public schools is that they were created in the late part of the 19th century to help mostly immigrant children learn the three Rs and what it means to be an

American, with the hope that they would go home and teach their parents the principles in the Constitution and the Declaration that unite us.

Our unity is based upon learning our common language, English, so we can speak to one another, live together more easily, and do business with one another. We have spent the last 40 years in our country celebrating diversity at the expense of unity. It is easy to do that. We need to spend the next several years working hard to build more unity from our magnificent diversity. That is much harder to do. One way to create that unity is to value, not devalue, our common language, English. That is why in this body I have advocated amendments which have been adopted to help new Americans who are legally here have scholarships so they can learn our common language.

I have worked with other Members of this body on the other side of the aisle to take a look at our adult education programs which are the source of funding for programs to help adults learn English. There are lines in Boston and lines in Nashville of people who want to learn English. We should be helping them to learn English. We could not spend too much on such a program.

That is why with No Child Left Behind, one of the major revisions we need to do is related to children who need more help learning English, because that is their chance in their school to learn our common language, to learn our country's principles and then to be even more successful.

Not long ago, before Ken Burns's epic film series on World War II came on television, my wife and I went to the Library of Congress to hear him speak and to see a preview of the film. He was talking, of course, about World War II and that period of time. It was during World War II, he said, that America had more unity than at any other time in our history, which caused me to think, as I think it must have caused millions of Americans to think: What have we done with that unity since World War II? Our pulling together since then, our working as one country has been the foundation of most of our great accomplishments.

That is the reason we have the greatest universities, that is the reason we have the strongest economy, that is the reason we still have the country with the greatest opportunity. Quoting the late Arthur Schlesinger, in Schlesinger's 1990s book which was called ``The Disuniting of America,'' Ken Burns told us that: Perhaps what we need in America today is a little less pluribus and a little more unum.

I believe Ken Burns's quote of Arthur Schlesinger is right about that. One way to make sure we have a little more unum, a little more of the kind of national unity that is our country's greatest accomplishment, is to make certain we value our common language, that we help children learn it, that we help new Americans learn it, that we help adults who do not know it to learn it, and that we not devalue it by allowing a Federal agency to say it is a violation of Federal law for an employer in America to require an employee to speak English on the job.

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

Mr. President, I ask the Chair to please let me know when I have 1 minute remaining.

Mr. President, it is not too much to say that this vote on this piece of legislation on Head Start is about whose century this century will be. Some say it will be China's century. Some say it will be India's century. I think the jury is still out, but I do believe it can be the American century, and I believe it is up to us to make sure it is.

We have the advantages in our country. One of them, of course, is our brain power advantage. We don't have better brains than others, but since World War II, we have spent a great deal of time building our education system, our universities, our research laboratories. We worked together this year to pass the America COMPETES Act, authorizing $34 billion over the next 3 years to step that up. A second advantage we have is the e pluribus unum. We are one country. Where different countries are fractured, we are working here to help our children and our new arrivals learn English, our common language, and to learn our American history so we can stay as one country. That is an advantage we have. The third advantage we have is that we are the only country in the world that believes that anything is possible. We don't say leave just a few children behind, or 80 percent of us are created equal; we set these very high goals. Anything is possible. Most of our politics is about failing to reach the goals, dealing with the disappointment, and then trying again.

How do we make sure that the dream that anything is possible is real? Well, No. 1, we keep down taxes and we keep down regulations, and we keep markets free so people can go from the back to the front of the line. The other thing we do is to make sure that all Americans have a chance to get to the starting line ready. Some people need some help, and that is what Head Start is about.

I was very pleased to come to this floor in the earlier part of this year with Senator Kennedy, Senator Enzi, and Senator Dodd, introducing a piece of legislation that we hoped would get to the point this one has today. I thank them for the way they have worked on this for the last 3 or 4 years. It didn't matter much whether it was a Republican or a Democratic Senate; we all worked together and we are here now with this result.

A lot has changed, and there are four major advantages to this bill, in my opinion. No. 1, I call special attention to the 200 new centers of excellence that are created. These are opportunities for Governors to look, say, at Nashville or at Boston or at some place in their State and designate a center of excellence. These would be shining examples of all of the best efforts that are being made for early childhood education. The centers would get up to $200,000 a year for 5 years and would hopefully try to coordinate all early childhood education and development efforts.

When I was a child, my mother's preschool class in the garage in our backyard was the only preschool education program in town. In the 1970s, Tennessee adopted public kindergarten for the first time, a few years after Head Start. Well, today, Head Start is a $7 billion program. It has 1,700 agencies, 29,000 centers, but that is far from all the effort we are making. There are 21 billion Federal dollars for early childhood education, and many State and local dollars. They are not always spent in the most efficient manner. The President thought it would be better to give the Head Start funds to the States. I disagree with that. We have disagreed with that, but we have respected his impulse by saying in these 200 centers for the next 5 years, let's see what happens. Let's see what happens when States work with local governments and put all the Federal, State, and local money together for early childhood education in these centers for excellence.

Second, there is a system for renewal for Head Start agencies. There is not an automatic renewal after this time, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services will develop a process for that to make sure that for every cycle, the Head Start agency earns its right to continue. Third, there is clear authority to governing boards about the big dollars we are spending here and the big lives we are affecting. We heard eloquent testimony from the mayor of Shelby County, A.C. Wharton, about money that was stolen down there. So we have done a better job listening to Mayor Wharton and to others in making it clear who is in charge of the money, who is in charge of the administration, and at the same time, making sure that the parents, who are the lifeblood of the uniqueness of Head Start, are active and full participants through policy councils.

Finally, as the President also recommended, we have worked over the last 2 or 3 years in developing this bill to increase cognitive learning standards. Forty years ago, we didn't know nearly as much about how the brains of very young children work, but we know now that to be ready to learn, to be at the starting line when the time comes to go to school, children need to learn more in their earlier years. So Head Start will provide that opportunity.

It is not too much to say that this bill is about whose century this will be. We hope it will be the century of every child in the world, but we like the idea that it could be the American century, and we want to take full advantage of the assets we have. One of the assets we have is the dream that anything is possible, that you can go from the back of the line to the front. We will keep our markets free. We will try to keep our taxes down. We will get rid of unnecessary regulations so people can get ahead. But this bill is a commitment that says we will also make certain we will do our best to make sure every single child has an opportunity to get to the starting line ready to succeed.

Thank you, Mr. President.

No objection.

Mr. President, Senator Dorgan, by unanimous consent, is to follow me. I ask unanimous consent that Senator Domenici be recognized for up to 15 minutes, and then Senator Casey for up to 15 minutes, following the remarks of Senator Dorgan.

Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent that the next Democratic speaker in order be Senator Stabenow.

Mr. President, I further ask unanimous consent that, although I may not need it, I be granted an additional 5 minutes for my remarks to complete my speech, and that I be able to speak as in morning business.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, would you please let me know when I have 2 minutes remaining.

Mr. President, I first congratulate Senator Harkin and Senator Chambliss for their work on the farm bill. I know we want to move toward that as quickly as possible, and I look forward to a successful conclusion of that legislation. But for the next few minutes, I wish to speak on a different subject.

(The remarks of Mr. Alexander pertaining to the introduction of S. 2312 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Oregon. He has pursued the illegal logging issue in his usual way, with a lot of persistence and in a bipartisan way as well.

If he has not already done so, I will ask unanimous consent to list the 22 cosponsors of the Combat Illegal Logging Act he has helped to recruit, and I thank him for including me as a part of this bill. It is important to the great Northwest and it is important to the Southeast, where we have large paper companies, but it is also important to conservation and to the rule of law in our country.

The Senator from Oregon made a point that is maybe the central point here when he compared our efforts to stop illegal logging to our efforts to stop the bringing of illegal drugs into the United States. We all know the tremendous amount of effort we go to, for example, to keep cocaine out of the United States. We send millions of dollars to Colombia and to other countries and we try to stop that. But the real problem we have is we are a big, rich country, and there is a big demand for cocaine here. So no matter what we do in the other countries, the cocaine still keeps coming in, and the same with other illegal drugs. Here we have a chance to make a much bigger difference than we can with illegal drugs. We still are creating the demand problem. This is a country that accounts for 25 percent of all the wealth in the world. It is a country that perhaps buys a huge volume of illegal timber from around the world. Well, we can stop that. This is not a drug addiction, this is a business practice, and it is a practice we can stop according to the laws of this country. When we stop it, we will make an enormous difference for our country and for the other countries.

Let us be absolutely clear. We are talking primarily about the laws of other countries. We are not talking about imposing American laws on other countries. We are simply saying if you violate the laws of any other country in the world, you can't bring those logs into the United States without violating a criminal law here. If this big economy says that to the world, we will make a dramatic difference in illegal logging.

As the Senator from Oregon said, it is an estimated $1 billion a year in depressed prices and reduced exports. It depresses prices $500 million to $700 million annually. It means the people who play by the rules in the United States are having money taken from them by criminals who don't play by the rules in other countries, with the rules set by other countries; not by us, by other countries.

There are other ancillary benefits--climate change, for example. There is a lot of talk about that here in the Senate. We are all looking for ways to deal with that. It may be expensive to deal with, it may be inconvenient to deal with, but some estimates are that 20 percent of climate change is caused by deforestation. According to the World Bank, illegal logging accounts for 10 percent, or $15 billion, of the world timber trade. So if we are able to slow down illegal logging in other countries, we will be making an inexpensive contribution, from the American taxpayers' point of view, to dealing with climate change, and at the same time we will be putting money in the pockets of those who work in this country in the timber and timber products business.

This is a rare intersection of the rule of law, of good conservation practices, and of keeping jobs in the United States.

I salute the Senator from Oregon for his leadership, and with his permission I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the ``Dear Colleague'' letter which he and I sent to our colleagues, resulting so far in 22 Members of the Senate cosponsoring the Combat Illegal Logging Act of 2007.

The value of this letter is to highlight the organizations endorsing the bill, ranging from the American Forest & Paper Association, to Defenders of Wildlife, to the Friends of the Earth. That is pretty good company in which to be.

Again, I thank the Senator from Oregon. I hope very much that the Senate will agree to this amendment. It may seem like a small step, but it will put money in the pockets of American workers. It will help with climate change. It will uphold the rule of law in our country.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, Senators Kennedy and Enzi have recently said that early in 2008 the Senate will consider whether to authorize No Child Left Behind.

That law, which was enacted in 2001 as a part of the regular 5-year reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, required every State to set standards for math and reading and to test each child once a year in grades 3 through 8, and once in high school, in order to measure their progress toward meeting these State standards. In addition, the law requires States to report the results in a disaggregated way, meaning according to racial, ethnic, socioeconomic status, disability, and limited English proficiency, report the status of the children so it would be clearer whether groups of children are being left behind in their academic progress.

So my purpose today is, first, to announce my support for the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act but ask that we find a better way to do the job of reporting results. We should be trying to catch schools doing things right rather than seeming to penalize them for doing things wrong.

Second, to introduce legislation providing for greater flexibility in administering the law for up to a dozen States, if those States agree to maintain a high level or increase the rigor of the program, their standard-setting process, and reporting requirements.

Third, to express my concerns about early drafts and proposals of reauthorizing legislation that seem to require more Federal control and less State responsibility for results--the reverse of what we should be seeking to achieve.

Finally, I wish to call attention to several parts of the legislation that need to be strengthened and expanded: Support for teaching American history; the Teacher Incentive Fund; charter schools, which I know the Presiding Officer has been very interested in for a long time; and State collection of data to aid States in measuring student progress.

First, support for reauthorization. I have decided to cosponsor the No Child Left Behind Act of 2007, which has been authored by Senators Burr and Gregg, because I believe it represents a sound foundation for eventual reauthorization of the legislation. This legislative draft leaves in place the framework of the 2001 law: high goals, State standards, and disaggregated reporting of results, and it addresses some obvious deficiencies in the existing legislation, including more flexibility in helping children learn English, in measuring the progress of children with disabilities, and in how to report the progress of children who make great progress but still fall behind their goals. This bill--the Burr-Gregg bill--does not retreat from the bold goal that all children will be proficient in reading and math according to each State's standards by the 2013-2014 school year. Some have argued that sets schools up for failure. I would argue it is the American way to set high goals and then to

attempt to reach them. Our Declaration of Independence does not say ``life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'' for 80 percent of us. Our national character is not that some things are possible. Rightly or wrongly, we Americans uniquely believe that anything is possible for all of us, and much of our politics and debates in this body are about dealing with the disappointment of not reaching high goals that we set for ourselves, and then, of course, we set out and try again to achieve them.

I do think we would be wise to find a different way to talk about the progress of schools in reaching those high goals. Most schools, at least today, are succeeding in reaching their State's No Child Left Behind standards. There are more than 100,000 schools in the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Education, over 20 percent of those--21,000--did not make adequate yearly progress. Of those 21,000 schools, about one-fourth missed their goals by one subgroup of students.

The same is true in Tennessee. According to our Department of Education, there are 1,710 public schools. There were 245--or 15 percent--which did not make adequate yearly progress. Of those, 127 didn't do it because of one subgroup.

Therefore, I suggest we find a different way to talk about progress. Schools that reach their goals might be called ``high-achieving schools.'' Schools that do so for more than 1 year in a row might be called the ``highest achieving schools.'' Schools that, on the other hand, miss their goal by only one subgroup might be called ``achieving schools,'' and those that do not do as well might be called priority schools.

Second: A new State contract for flexibility. I am introducing today the State Student Achievement Contract which I will work to make a part of No Child Left Behind. The idea is simple: Now that we have 5 years of experience with No Child Left Behind, we should toss the ball back to at least some States and see whether those States can implement the law with at least as much rigor in reporting, more flexibility, and more innovation.

I know if the Presiding Officer and I were still Governors of our respective States, we would want to try that over the next 5 years.

This proposal would allow up to 12 States to negotiate with the U.S. Secretary of Education to enter into a State student achievement contract, which would permit States to improve their own systems of accountability, and in exchange, receive the necessary flexibility to innovate on finding ways to close the achievement gap.

In other words, instead of saying: ``Do it exactly this way'' to the States, the Federal Government would be saying: ``Give us results, and we will give you more flexibility.''

In determining which States would be eligible for this new contract, the Secretary would expect States to increase their standards, assessments, and expectations of students.

Washington, DC, itself is not going to make schools better in Wilmington, Maryville, Kansas City, and Sacramento. This can only happen locally, when parents, teachers, communities, and State officials take charge. In fact, No Child Left Behind is simply an extension of the State standards movement that began in the 1980s in most States. While it requires the setting of standards and requires public reporting, the solution to the problem of low-achieving students is left in the hands of communities, where it must be left. In fact, only 8 percent of funding of public schools comes from the Federal Government.

So this proposal seeks to recognize that solutions are local, to encourage those States that are trying the boldest programs, and to permit the flexibility needed to achieve those results.

Third, creeping Federal control. One reason I have introduced the State contract proposal is I don't want the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind to become a vehicle for increased Federal control of local schools. In fact, now that the first 5 years of confusion and learning the new law are completed, there ought to be fewer Federal requirements, not more. After all, the law is essentially a requirement for State standards and reporting disaggregated results.

But, unfortunately, Washington doesn't work that way. Our motto seems to be: Once we have stuck our noses into something, we will meddle with it forever. In some of the early drafts of No Child Left Behind, I have seen examples of increased Federal regulation that in my view offer the prospect of more Federal control and less local accountability. It ought to be the other way around.

Finally, there are three special provisions of No Child Left Behind that, based upon the first 5 years' experience, need to be expanded.

One, teaching American history. The late Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, once said the rationale for a public school is to teach immigrant children the three Rs and what it means to be an American, with the hope they would go home and teach their parents. Yet the lowest test scores for American high school seniors is not math or reading or science, it is U.S. history. Senators Kennedy, Enzi, and I have worked to create some new provisions for this reauthorization which would encourage putting the teaching of American history back in its rightful place in our schools so our children can grow up learning what it means to be an American. These provisions include: The teaching traditional American history provision. That was put in 5 years ago. It is a program of grants to school districts to encourage professional development and teaching of American history. It has been very successful. Senator Kennedy and Senator Byrd have had a major part in this law.

Next, Presidential and congressional academies. The pilot programs for these summer academies for outstanding teachers and students of American history have been low cost and very successful. It is my hope that in a partnership with States and the private sector, these can be expanded to a total of 100 each summer. They are very much similar to the Governors' schools many States have for students and for teachers. David McCullough has suggested perhaps we can match up the 10-year centennial program for national parks with these summer programs for students and teachers of U.S. history. Imagine what it would be like for a group of U.S. history teachers to spend a week with David McCullough at the Adams House in Quincy, MA.

Finally, a 10-State pilot program in U.S. history NAEP. Currently, the National Assessment of Education Progress--the Nation's report card--only measures student achievement in history every 4 years. We don't get State-level data; only a national sample of student achievement. Senator Kennedy and I have offered legislation to create a 10-State pilot program so there can be State-level data for 10 States, which will reflect the importance of this subject to our Nation and call attention to student progress or lack thereof in American history.

A second area of special emphasis that ought to be considered when we reauthorize No Child Left Behind is the Teacher Incentive Fund. After parents, nothing is more important to a child's success than the classroom teacher. In every hearing we have in the Senate, a witness emphasizes the need to attract specially equipped teachers for math, for science, for children with disabilities, for inner-city schools, for gifted students, and other special needs. Yet we struggle in this country with an across-the-board pay mentality that will not allow schools to lift themselves up when it comes to attracting and keeping outstanding classroom teachers.

Finding fair ways to pay teachers more for teaching well is not easy. I have tried it. But during the last 5 years, the Teacher Incentive Fund has helped at least three dozen cities, usually working with local teachers' unions, to find new ways to train and reward outstanding teachers and principals. We need to do as much of this as we possibly can. I wish to thank and acknowledge Senator Durbin of Illinois, the Democratic whip, for working with me to make certain that appropriations for this program continue.

Then, charter schools. I mentioned earlier the Presiding Officer was a national leader on charter schools when he was Governor of Delaware. Last year, I visited a charter school in Memphis. It was the Easter holiday, except those ninth graders weren't on vacation, they were in class. To be specific, they were in a ninth grade advanced

placement biology class. What was special was these children had come from so-called low-performing schools. To be blunt, they were labeled the least likely to succeed, except they were succeeding. This was because they were getting extra help during holidays, longer school days, Saturdays, and from special teachers.

The idea of a public charter school is simply to give teachers the freedom to use their common sense and their skills to help the children who are presented to them--freedom from Federal, State, and union rules so they can do it. It is nonsensical to me that we don't encourage, rather than discourage, such public charter schools.

Most of our children are learning, but for the 15 percent or so who are having genuinely special challenges in learning, it will take different kinds of schools, even better teachers and different methods. In this reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, we must do all of these things to cause that to happen.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill and a letter addressed to Senator Kennedy be printed in the Record.