Floor Statements

Mr. President, I thank the Presiding Officer, Mr. Salazar, the Senator from Colorado, for his impressive leadership in helping our Senate and our Congress and our President and our country find a consensus about where we go from here in Iraq. That is, as he said, truly our most urgent and difficult issue. It is on the minds of every single Senator every day. It is the first thing on my mind. It deserves to be. Adding up the lives, the dollars--$10 billion a month, 3,600 lives, and many wounded--it is a difficult situation.

Mr. President, the occupant of the chair has said this himself. It struck me that we should spend less time in what we think of as the world's greatest deliberative body lecturing Baghdad about coming up with a political consensus and more time working together ourselves to come up with a political consensus about what to do in Iraq. After all, they are an infant democracy and we are the oldest democracy; we ought to be able to do more than make speeches and have partisan votes. Of course, we respect each other's positions, but at some point, there is consensus about where we go from here.

We owe it to our troops fighting there, when they look at Washington, not to see us shouting at one another but saying, yes, we can agree on why you are there, where we are going to be in a while, what our goals are, and say to the rest of the Middle East that we know what we are doing in Iraq, give them a chance to flourish and say we in the U.S. have free debate, but we are capable of coming to a conclusion, especially on our most urgent issue. That is why this report is so important.

When I saw this report in December, what attracted me about it was, first, the members of this group--Larry Eagleburger, Secretary of State for Bush 1; Vernon Jordan, National Urban League, a close friend of President Clinton's; Ed Meese, President Reagan's Attorney General; Justice Sandra Day O'Connor; Leon Panetta, President Clinton's Chief of Staff; William Perry, Secretary of Defense for Clinton; Chuck Robb, former U.S. Senator; Alan Simpson, the former Republican whip; and, at one point, Roberts Gates, who is now the Secretary of Defense in this administration. They unanimously agreed, after 9 months, about what to do in Iraq. In 9 months, they unanimously agreed.

I thought that perhaps President Bush, in January, in the State of the Union Address, would invite them to sit in the gallery, as Presidents often do, and point to them and say: There they are, nine of our most distinguished Americans who have been working for 9 months trying to understand where to go on our most difficult issue.

They say there is no magic formula. They say it is grave and deteriorating. They say the consequences of the cost, but they have a recommendation and it is a sensible recommendation, and the President might have said it is not my recommendation, it is theirs, but I accept their recommendation and I invite you to do the same.

I think the President would have received a good deal of bipartisan support in this body had he done that. The President and our country need that. A President's job is to see an urgent need, to develop a strategy to meet it, and to persuade at least half the people he is right. Even if President Bush is right about the current strategy, he hasn't persuaded a broad enough number of Americans that he is right or a broad enough number in this body that he is right in order to sustain his policy in Iraq.

A part of Presidential leadership is recognizing that adjustments have to be made to take into account the views

of others and then, having done that, to go forward. That is Presidential leadership. It is not Presidential weakness. It is what I wish President Bush had done in January, and I said so then, and I said so in March on the floor of the Senate. I have learned sometimes you have to say things two or three times around here before anybody hears.

Senator Salazar heard it. We talked about it and the outgrowth is this legislation that Senator Salazar worked so well on to develop, and so expertly, which Secretary Baker and Congressman Hamilton have told me accurately represents the recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton group.

Exactly what does Baker-Hamilton do? One, it establishes a long-term presence for the United States in Iraq but a limited one. Two, it says as soon as security conditions on the ground permit--and it estimates that would be a year--we would move our combat forces out of the combat business and into the support, training, and equipment business in Iraq. And third, it steps up regional and diplomatic efforts to cause others in the region to help Iraq succeed.

That is it. Those three things. There are 79 recommendations in this book. I am not sure all of us would agree with all of them. But that is not the point. There is a new direction for the United States in Iraq in this book, and if we were to adopt it and the President were to agree with it, what our legislation says is the President should formulate a comprehensive plan to implement the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. That in plain English to me means the President would take all these recommendations, call together his advisers, come up with a plan, and do his best to implement it.

Would he be able to implement every provision? I doubt it. Would he say this was recommended in December and I didn't get the law until September, so I am going to adjust some timetables? I would expect so. Would he have some improvements to make and some suggestions to make? I would guess he would. But he would come up with a comprehensive plan, and then he would proceed with it. Then, of course, we would have our constitutional duty to review it. We don't have to approve it under our recommendation, we just review it and we appropriate money and we have other things we could do. But what we could say to our troops, the world, and the country is that we have found a common way forward in Iraq. We know what we are doing, and we are doing it together. And that is the job of our Government.

The Senator from Colorado dealt with a couple of objections that have been made. Let me deal with three or four very quickly. We will have other time to do that. I see the Senator from Arkansas is here. I am looking forward to what he has to say.

One objection that was made was this may be dated. It was December. One Senator said this was a snapshot taken some time ago and times have changed. I don't see this as a snapshot. I see the war in Iraq as more like a movie. You go into it after 15 minutes or you go into it 30 minutes after it started and it is the same movie. You see the same characters. It is the same story. A few adjustments might have to be made, but it is the same story. And as Lee Hamilton said, the recommendations are as relevant today as they were in December. And I would say that February would have been a better time than March to adopt the recommendations. April would have been better than March. Today is better than last month, and last month would be better than today. The sooner they are adopted, the better.

A second point. One Senator said this doesn't have many teeth in it. I used to work in the White House for a wise man named Bryce Harlow 40 years ago. I was an impatient young man. I said: Mr. Harlow, we need to do more of this or more of that. I forget the issue.

He said: Lamar, in the White House, just a little tilt here makes a great big difference out there.

That was a very wise statement. If the President of the United States and the Congress of this country were to agree this month on a new course in Iraq that defined a limited long-term role, shifted the mission from combat to training, support, and equipment over a period of months, subject to unexpected developments on the ground, and stepped up our diplomatic and political efforts, that is a major shift in strategy.

Next, I have heard from the other side that it has too many teeth, too prescriptive on the President. That is not the way I read it. Sometimes that comes from this side. The White House has some worries about that as well. But that is not the way I read our amendment. It is the sense of the Congress that the President and the Congress should agree that the way forward in Iraq is to implement this and the President should formulate a comprehensive plan to do so.

I assume the way the President does that is he gets the law in September, and he sits down with his advisers. I suppose the first person he would sit down with is General Petraeus whose advice we are all looking forward to. He would ask his advice about the surge, ask the Joint Chiefs what they think, ask a lot of people, and then within a few weeks, send us his plan. That is what we ask him to do.

It is not so prescriptive either about the changes in troops on the ground because it says in another section, section 1552, that while we intend to move our troops out of the combat business into support, equipping, and training business--and the goal is within about a year to do that--that it is subject to unexpected developments on the ground.

Here is what the report itself actually said:

By the first quarter of 2008, subject to unexpected

developments in the security situation on the ground, all

combat brigades not necessary for force protection could be

out of Iraq. At that time, U.S. combat forces in Iraq could

be deployed only in units embedded with Iraqi forces, in

rapid-reaction and special operations teams, and in training,

equipping, advising, force protection, and search and rescue.

Intelligence and support efforts would continue. Even after

the United States has moved all combat brigades out of Iraq,

we would maintain a considerable military presence in the

region, with our still significant force in Iraq and with our

powerful air, ground, and naval deployments in Kuwait,

Bahrain, and Qatar.

In other words, when we move out of the combat business into these other areas, we still have troops there, we still are able to go after al-Qaida, we still can protect the troops who are there, and we are sending a message to the rest of the Middle East: Stay out, give Iraq a chance to flourish.

The other thing I have heard, and I say this in conclusion--I thank you, Mr. President, for your time--is that all people hear in the debate in the Senate is discord. I hear another message. It is not as loud as the discord, it is not as loud as the partisan votes, but I hear a lot of consensus. It may surprise some people to hear me say that. I hear a lot of consensus and the seeds of that consensus are in the Iraq Study Group report.

For example, the administration has already begun to act on some of the recommendations in the Iraq Study Group report by increasing the number of troops embedded in Iraqi forces, using milestones to chart progress, by meeting with Iraq's neighbors, including Iran and Syria. The President's National Security Adviser has pointed to the Iraq Study Group report as valuable. The President himself has spoken well of it.

Across the aisle on the Democratic side, where there is a great desire by many Members for a fixed timetable, which is not a part of the Iraq Study Group, the Democratic proposals still have been guided by this document. For example, working on milestones for improvement in Iraq, limiting the role of the United States to one of training and equipping and counterterrorism operations and stating as a goal the drawdown of combat forces by a year from now. That is all part of over there. I hear more consensus than I do discord.

I guess my message to my colleagues is much the same as the Senator from Colorado said. We have a responsibility to vote and state our convictions, but we also have a job to do, and our job to do is to look for a way to come to some consensus about where we are going from here in Iraq and agree on it so when our troops look back, they know we support them, we really support them because we know what they are doing. And when the Middle East looks it up, they know to stay out. And when the rest of the world looks at this great deliberative body, they know occasionally on the foremost issue facing our

time, we can come to a conclusion, we can join hands with the President, even though we may debate with him and say, OK, Mr. President, let's have a new strategy, one on which we agree, we together, and that we need to do.

We have an opportunity that is very rare, and it is impressive to have seven Democratic Senators and six Republican Senators on this subject at this time supporting a comprehensive recommendation. One of our former colleagues, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, wrote a book about Boss Plunkitt of Tammany Hall. Since I said some respectful advice to my colleagues about what I thought our job was, I say to the President respectfully: Mr. President, one of Boss Plunkitt's favorite maxims was: When you seize your opportunities, you take them. This is an opportunity for the President to develop bipartisan support for a way forward in Iraq that has a long-term presence there, but limited, with a different mission for our combat troops and enhanced political and regional support.

I respectfully suggest that January would have been the best time to seize this opportunity, but today is a much better time than September.

I thank the Chair and I congratulate him for his leadership.

I yield the floor.

I thank the Senator from Virginia for coming back to the floor from another engagement and offering his comments on our proposal. He has made an extraordinary effort to do that at a late hour in the evening. I am grateful to him for that.

I hope he will not mind my saying that I have seen him agonize over this war. We have talked about it privately, going many months back before many Senators did, about how do we reconcile our national interests with the lives of young men and women from Virginia and Tennessee, which we have to think about every day.

He was one of the first to raise questions about our strategy. Because he did and because of his background as Navy Secretary and his service in World War II and in the Korean War and his senior position on Armed Services, everyone paid attention when John Warner spoke.

We have paid attention to his advice every step of the way. What I would like to say, very briefly, in response to my friend from Virginia, is this: I would hope that over the next few days as we consider this, that he will think a little differently about his own contribution to the shift in direction our country needs.

His first contribution, in addition to his statement, is the Iraq Study Group report. He was a little too modest about it. He had a major role in getting it started. If he had not, we would not have the kind of membership on the Iraq Study Group that we had with Secretary Baker and the leaders of so many different administrations.

Their recommendations need not be put on the bookshelf as a bookend, they need to be used.

Having said that, I can understand how he and the President and others might be concerned that if one were to read our proposal too prescriptively, they would say: Well, how can we pick up 79 recommendations and say, Mr. President, do all of those things.

The way I read our amendment, we do not do that. The way I read our amendment we say very simply that the President and the Congress agree the way forward in Iraq is to implement this comprehensive set of recommendations, and the President himself should formulate a comprehensive plan to do so.

In another part of the amendment, when we get to the part about when the troops come home or when the troops' mission moves from a combat mission to a support and equipping mission, that is all subject to unexpected developments in the security situation on the ground.

So I would say with respect to my colleague from Virginia, that another way--and perhaps I am reading it wrong, but the way I read it, another way to read this is to say: Let's take the wisdom of this group of 10 people, one of them who has ended up as Secretary of Defense in this administration, and say: That gives us a framework. We can adopt that together. And then, Mr. President, you take these recommendations and you draw up a plan.

This is not going to be a plan that the Senator from Colorado and I drew up. The President is the only one authorized to draw it up. As it affects troops, it is subject to security developments on the ground; there is no fixed deadline of any kind here.

I assume that what the President would do, if he were to receive this as a law, which might be September by the time it got all the way through the conferences, the first person he would sit down with is General Petraeus and say: Tell me again about the surge. How are things on the ground? What is your recommendation?

The second thing he might do is sit down with General Jones and say: Tell me, General, what have you found out about the position of the Iraqi forces?

Then I think he would call in the Joint Chiefs and the intelligence folks and say: I have to develop a plan. Give me your advice about what works and what does not work. Then he would present us the plan within 90 days. But it is not subject to our approval. It is his plan.

Now, we can then do what we can do with our constitutional duties about it. But the one thing I am afraid we will miss if we do not move to adopt the recommendations now of the Iraq Study Group is the bipartisan support that was in that group that the Senator from Virginia helped to create and the bipartisan support that is on this floor for those recommendations. The President doesn't have that now. Without that, he cannot sustain a long-term mission in Iraq of any kind, I am afraid. I think we have to have one of some kind over a long time.

So I think this goes about as far as it can within this group to say to the President: Okay. We can agree with you. But now you draw up the plan according to these structures.

I greatly respect the Senator from Virginia. I will continue to listen to him. I am deeply grateful to him for coming back to the floor tonight. I thank him for his direction in helping to make possible the Iraq Study Group plan, General Jones' study. I know we will have many more discussions. But the one thing I do not want the President to lose is the opportunity to borrow for our long-term strategy the bipartisan support in this document and the bipartisan support on this floor.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I congratulate the 2006 winners of the Alfred P. Sloan Award for Business Excellence in Workplace Flexibility, which recognizes companies that have successfully used flexibility to meet both business and employee goals.

As I did last year, I wish to draw attention to the Sloan Awards because I think these companies are to be commended for their excellence in providing workplace flexibility practices which benefit both employees and employers. Achieving greater flexibility in the workplace--to maximize productivity while attracting the highest quality employees--is one of the key challenges facing American companies in the 21st century.

For 2006, businesses in the following 17 cities were eligible for recognition: Boise, ID; Chandler, AZ; Chattanooga, TN; Chicago, IL; Greater Dallas/Fort Worth, TX; Dayton, OH; Detroit, MI; Durham, NC; Long Beach, CA; Long Island, NY; New Orleans, LA; Providence, RI; Richmond, VA; Salt Lake City, UT; Seattle, WA; Tampa, FL; and Washington, DC. The Chamber of Commerce in each city hosted an interactive business forum to share research on workplace flexibility as an important component of workplace effectiveness. In these same communities, businesses applied for, and winners were selected for, the Sloan Awards through a process that included employees' views as well as employer practices.

In Boise, ID, the winners were American Geotechnics, American Red Cross of Greater Idaho, Chatterbox, DJM Sales & Marketing Inc, Healthwise, Hewlett-Packard Company, Idaho Shakespeare Festival, the Ashley Inn, and the Cat Doctor.

In Chandler, AZ, the winners were Arizona Spine and Joint Hospital, Chandler Chamber of Commerce, Civil

Search International LLC, Clifton Gunderson LLP, Hacienda Builders, Henry & Home LLP, Intel Corporation, Jewish News of Greater Phoenix, Martinez & Shanken PLLC, RIESTER, State Mortgage, and Technology Providers Inc.

In Chattanooga, TN, the winners were Center for Community Career Education at the University of Tennessee: Chattanooga, Chattanooga's Kids on the Block, First Tennessee Bank, G.R. Rush & Company P.C., Jewish Community Federation of Greater Chattanooga, and Tricycle Inc.

In Chicago, IL, the winners are Association Forum of Chicagoland, Ernst & Young, KPMG LLP, and Maxil Technology Solutions Inc.

In Greater Dallas/Fort Worth, TX, the winners are Brinker International, Community Council of Greater Dallas, Fleishman-Hillard Dallas, Kaye/Bassman International, Lee Hecht Harrison, McQueary Henry Bowles Troy LLP, the Beck Group, and the Salvation Army Greater Dallas Metroplex Command.

In Detroit, MI, the winners are Albert Kahn Associates Inc., Amerisure Insurance Company, Brogan & Partners Convergence Marketing, Detroit Parent Network, Detroit Regional Chamber, Farbman Group, Menlo Innovations LLC, Rossetti, and Visteon Corporation.

In Durham, NC, the winners are Community Partners, Inc., Dow Reichhold Specialty Latex, Durham's Partnership for Children, Nortel, Shodor Education Foundation Inc., and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at Research Triangle Park.

In Long Beach, CA, the winners are Boys & Girls Clubs of Long Beach, Klaris Thomson & Schroeder Inc., Long Beach Chamber of Commerce, Office Furniture Group, Inc., and PeacePartners Inc.

In Long Island, NY, the winner is Atlantic HVACR Sales, Inc.

In Providence, RI, the winners are Clarendon Group Inc., Embolden Design Inc., Lefkowitz Garfinkel Champi & DeRienzo P.C., and Rhode Island Housing.

In Richmond, VA, the winners are Bon Secours Richmond Health System, Capital One Financial, and Lee Hecht Harrison.

In Salt Lake City, UT, the winners are Carter & Burgess Inc., Cooper Roberts Simonsen Associates, Creative Expresssions, Jones Waldo Holbrook & McDonough P.C., McKinnon-Mulherin Inc., Stayner Bates & Jensen P.C., and Utah Food Services.

In Seattle, WA, the winners were ColorsNW Magazine, DHI Technologies Inc., Macy's Northwest, National Court Appointed Special Advocate, CASA, Association, NRG::Seattle, Personnel Management Systems, Inc., Puget Sound Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology, U.S. Government Accountability Office, and WithinReach.

In Tampa, FL, the winners were Kingery & Crouse, and Retail Merchandising Xpress.

In Washington, DC, the winners were Bailey Law Group P.C., Capital One Financial, Discovery Communications Inc., and KPMG LLP.

The Sloan Awards are presented by the When Work Works initiative, which is a project of the Families and Work Institute in partnership with the Institutefor a Competitive Workforce, an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Twiga Foundation. The When Work Works initiative is sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Building on the success of the first 2 years, the next phase of the When Work Works initiative will extend the number of participating communities to 24 in 2007 to include Aurora, CO; Brockton, MA; Cincinnati, OH; Houston, TX; Morris County, NJ; Melbourne-Palm Bay, FL; Savannah, GA; and Winona, MN. Again, I congratulate the 2006 winners of the Sloan Awards, and I look forward to the continuing expansion of this exciting initiative.

Madam President, I thank the Senator from Wyoming.

I have enjoyed the remarks, as always, by the Senator from Pennsylvania. It is not a bad idea to consider labor-management relations in a bipartisan way. A good place to start doing that is in the Senate committees, where this discussion belongs, rather than bringing directly to the floor the question of whether we should just one day decide to get rid of the secret ballot in elections.

The Senator from Pennsylvania has done a beautiful job of looking at history. Let me point to some history as well.

May 13, 1861, was the day set aside in North Carolina for the election of delegates to the State Convention on Secession from the Union. This is a book by William Trotter about bushwhackers. Part of the United States in which I grew up and my family has come from is where counties and families were divided during the Civil War.

On that day, May 13, 1861, according to Mr. Trotter's book, there was to be a vote about secession, and one of the most visible people in the square on that misty spring day was the sheriff, who was an ardent spokesman for secession. He had been elected, according to the author, and supported by the wealthier farmers and merchants, nearly all of whom favored the idea of secession.

The sheriff had gotten a little whiskey and was boisterous and encouraged by his supporters. He went around town making it clear the prevailing sentiment in the county was for secession. He was in an exuberant mood because he knew, at the end of day, secession would be ratified. So exuberant was he, that he shot one of the Unionists, and that person's father then shot the sheriff. That day is called ``Bloody Madison'' in western North Carolina.

But the point is that when the secret ballots were counted, despite the sheriff and the wealthy farmers and merchants, there were only 28 votes for secessionist delegates, and 144 voted to stay with the United States of America. The secret ballot they exercised that day was for a reason. It made a difference.

In a little more personal way, a few months ago, we had a contest here among friends for our No. 2 position on the Republican side of the aisle. I sought it. So did my friend of 40 years, Trent Lott, the Senator from Mississippi. Going into the election, I had 27 votes. When the votes were counted, I had 24. The secret ballot we employ in our Senate caucus we employ for a reason. It makes a difference.

The unions, in the 1930s, when they were gaining a foothold and being established, insisted on a secret ballot. They still have a secret ballot when the vote is to decertify a union.

In our democracy, the right to vote is prized. We keep candidates away from polling places. We don't want people looking over your shoulder while you vote. We help you, if you can't read the ballot. We got rid of the poll tax to give you access to the ballot. The Voting Rights Act has become the single greatest symbol of the civil rights movement in the 1960's. The right to vote is the essence of our democracy.

This proposed legislation is brazen kowtowing to union bosses. This bill creates the possibility that large union recruiters might come stand around you at the work site and encourage you to sign a card. They might visit your home. They might make phone calls. They might be like the sheriff in Madison County, elected by the powerful and very persuasive, going around with his pistol or his gun or his influence, or looking over your shoulder while you voted. Fortunately, instead of that scenario, we have a secret ballot, and we ought to keep it.

What is next if we get rid of the secret ballot for union elections? Will we get rid of the secret ballot for union leaders, for Senators, for Governors, for managers of the pension funds? Even most union members want to keep the secret ballot. According to a Zogby poll in 2004, 71 percent said that the secret ballot process is fair, and 78 percent said they favored keeping the current system in place.

So whether it is voting day in Madison County at the beginning of the civil war, whether it is the Senate caucus on the Republican or Democratic side, or whether it is a union election to organize or to decertify, the right to vote is precious in America. Not having someone looking over your shoulder while you vote makes that precious right even more precious. There is a reason we have a secret ballot. It makes a difference.

I intend to vote no on cloture. I urge my colleagues to do the same.

I thank the Senator from New Mexico for the courtesy of the next 10 minutes, and I would ask the Chair to let me know when 1 minute remains.

Mr. President, I compliment both Senators from New Mexico for their work on energy. As they did 2 years ago, they have made some important proposals. The 2005 bill was a terrific step forward, and there are some important suggestions in this bill. I want to especially say a few words about the tax part of the bill that came out today, and I will have more to say about that tomorrow and amendments to offer.

It is probably not the first time it has been said of the Senate that there is too much wind here, but I would like to suggest there is too much of that in the tax bill that has been reported to the Senate. Here is the tax bill. As I read the figures: $28.5 billion more over the next 10 years, $10 billion of it for wind. Almost all of it is for subsidies to wind developers. 34 percent of the bill's total goes toward this tax credit.

This isn't the first time the Senate has been generous to wind. In the 2005 bill it was 19 percent. Why would I say that is a little too much wind? It is because in many parts of the country the wind doesn't blow sufficiently for us to rely on it for electricity.

We have had some debate about Senator Bingaman's proposal, which might work very well in New Mexico or some other States to say that 15 percent of the electricity ought to be from renewable energy, mostly wind under this definition.

This map of the United States shows that much of the wind in the Southeast and Eastern United States doesn't blow enough for that to happen there. So under that proposal, the one we were debating earlier, called the renewable portfolio standard, I am afraid Tennesseans would have to pay basically a tax of 2 cents per kilowatt-hour, which would be $410 million a year.

We have one wind farm in the entire Southeast, and it is in Tennessee on Buffalo Mountain. Last August, while we were all sweating and perspiring with our fans on the front porch, the wind farm operated for 7 percent of the time. Most of us want our air conditioners when it's hot--not just when the wind blows enough to make electricity.

We are not the only ones who are beginning to see the limits of wind. Yesterday, the President of Pacific Gas and Electric in California, which likes wind power and is using wind power, said, according to California Energy Markets, that they will not make substantial new investments in wind generation, and ``we think we are approaching in California itself the limit on wind.''

So why then if we are going to spend $28 billion for energy sufficiency--that would mean reliable, clean electricity for the country in the world that uses 25 percent of all the energy in the world--why then would we develop a national wind turbine policy instead of a national energy policy? Isn't $10 billion more--which would make our total investment over the next 10 years more than $2 billion a year for wind turbines--isn't that too much wind?

I am not even talking so much about the fact of what these look like. I think I have said many times on this floor that in Tennessee I don't like the fact that these only work, when they work, on our most scenic ridgetops. We would prefer not to have them. That is not the case with everybody, I understand that. But it is important for people to know these aren't your grandmother's windmills.

These are twice as tall as the sky boxes at the football stadium, and the rotor blades go from the 10-yard line to the 10-yard line. So there are limits as to where they should go.

Across the country, even when performing well, they only work a third of the time. They often blow at the wrong time--at night, when people are asleep and not using so much electricity. And you can't store the wind. Basically, a utility makes a big investment, paying somebody $20 million--in the TVA Buffalo Mountain case $60 million for 20 years--to buy wind, whenever it comes, and if it comes at night when the lights are off, tough, they just lose it. If it comes 7 percent of the time in August, when everybody's air conditioners are up, it doesn't help very much. Of course, even if you had it, you still need nuclear or coal or something else because most people want their computers and their electricity on when they want them on.

As I mentioned, it is very difficult to store. It only uses about 1 percent of our current electricity needs. It does little to clean the air because we already have caps on sulfur and nitrogen, which I would like to accelerate, and it means lots of new power lines. So we have a 400-percent increase in wind capacity that would produce no change in emissions of nitrogen, no change in sulfur, and very little in carbon.

My point is, I believe there are better ways to spend that $10 billion of the $28 billion we propose to spend over the next 10 years, better ways to spend one-third of all this money than on a national wind policy, since it doesn't work very well, it is not very reliable, and much of the country can't use it at all.

For example, take fluorescent lighting. I know Senators Bingaman and Domenici have talked about this, but if we spent $2 billion a year just in tax credits for fluorescent lighting, we could save enough energy to equal eight 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactors, or 18,000 1.8-megawatt wind turbines.

Let's take another idea. What if we took the $2 billion a year and gave a credit for appliances, such as dishwashers, washing machines, and refrigerators. There is such a credit in the tax bill, and that is good. It costs about $100 million a year to encourage that. Why don't we extend that to 10 years? That would be $1 billion of the $10 billion we are spending on wind. It would save more electricity than we would get building wind.

We talk about not just carbon but clean air. I know Vermont wants clean air. We want clean air in the mountains in Tennessee. For $2 billion a year we could buy six new scrubbers a year at $300 million a scrubber. A scrubber takes the sulfur out of the air that contributes to the unhealthy aspects and to the soot and to the smog that is unhealthy for people and interferes with our view of the mountains.

Or take utility bills. The average utility bill for Tennesseans is $100 a month. This is $2 billion a year. We could just give the money to Tennesseans, 1.7 million households, for a full year. One month's electric bill for 20 million households, that is what we could do for $2 billion.

If we were a little more creative, we might go to the metering that some utilities are now putting in homes and say: If your electric bill is $100, and you reduce your use of electricity by $20, we will match it by $20 and we will collect all that information in the utility. And as a result, you will get a $60 bill instead of a $100 bill each month--instead of investing in more wind.

Or you could use that money for clean coal power plants. The 2005 bill that Senator Bingaman and Senator Domenici worked on had a number of initiatives for nuclear, clean coal, IGCC, and a number of things that are underfunded. We don't have enough money for them. Well, if we don't have the money for those things--which we decided by consensus in 2005 was the best way to create clean reliable electricity for a country that uses 25 percent of all the energy in the world--if we didn't have the money in 2005, why don't we take this $28 billion over the next 10 years, or at least some of this $10 billion for wind, and put it in clean coal or these other areas?

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, I wanted the Senate to know that of the $28 billion, one-third of it goes to wind turbines. We have a national wind policy instead of a national energy policy.

We will be spending $2 billion a year on wind subsidies. And there are many other wind subsidies in the Federal Government. You get bonds to build them, you get accelerated depreciation, and then there are the State subsidies. So I am suggesting there is too much wind, and a wiser use of at least half that $10 billion would be for conservation, efficiency, scrubbers, and other forms of energy that are reflected in the 2005 Energy bill.

I thank the Chair and the Senator from New Mexico for the time.

Madam President, if the Senator will yield.

The Senator has a worthy amendment of which I am proud to be a cosponsor. At the moment we are checking with Senator Domenici, so if at this point the Senator wishes to speak to his amendment and give us a few minutes, we would appreciate that.

Madam President, if I can say to the Senator through the Chair, the Senator still would like to have a chance to talk with Senator Domenici. In the meantime, both Senators Warner and DeMint have brief

statements they would like to make. We are working quickly on Senator Salazar's amendment.

Mr. President, I think now would be a good time for a former Governor to enter the discussion with my two distinguished colleagues. I think the biggest compliment I have been paid in the short time I have been a Senator was by some Washington insider who said, ``Well, the problem with Lamar is he hasn't gotten over being Governor yet.''

I have said to my constituents in Tennessee, ``If I ever do, it is time to bring me home.''

As I listened to the discussion between the Senator from New Mexico and the Senator from Idaho, I was greatly encouraged by the discussion of the Senator from Idaho until the very last part. I think there should be an opt-out. Why should there not be? What wisdom is there here in Washington, DC that is not there in state and local government?

When I was in Tennessee, I thought I was at least as smart as the Congress of the United States. I woke up every day trying to do what was best for my State. I fought for better schools, clean water, clean air, raising family incomes, paying teachers more. If I had to wait on Washington to do it, we would never have done it. I knew of a lot of people who flew to Washington and suddenly got smart, but I didn't think they were smarter than we were.

On issues of clean air, we Tennesseans, for example, feel like we care about it a lot. I live right next to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I grew up there. Five generations of my family are buried there. We have a great big clean-air problem.

I might say, both Senators from New Mexico are two of the very finest in our body in terms of their ability, intelligence, dedication, and purposes. I happen to have a little disagreement on this issue with Senator Bingaman from New Mexico, but let me go back to my point.

Growing up and living at the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park makes me very aware of clean air and the need for it, which is why, 2 or 3 years ago, with Senator Carper, I began to work in the Congress for stronger standards so we could do more in Tennessee. That is why, as Governor of Tennessee, I pushed ahead for more and why, as a citizen of Tennessee, I went to the Tennessee Valley Authority and encouraged them to adopt standards that would get more of the sulfur out of the air and more of the nitrogen out of the air. That is why I have encouraged the Governor of Tennessee to go further than the Federal Government is in getting mercury out of power plant emissions into the air, 90 percent instead of 70 percent. That is why I have been meeting with mayors and local county officials in Tennessee to clean the air. We care about it in Tennessee.

It is not necessarily true that it takes wisdom from Washington to cause us to want to have clean air or carbon-free air. Witness the fact that we are already on the honor roll of states leading the way in emissions-free electricity generation.

I see the Senator from Vermont, right in front of me, presiding. He should be very proud of Vermont as his state is No. 1 in the country in terms of carbon-free emissions. Vermont generates its electricity from forms that are free of carbon emissions. I assume that among Senator Bingaman's goals in the energy legislation before us is to encourage carbon-free emissions so that we can deal with climate change. I happen to be one of those who believe climate change is a problem and that human beings are a big part of the problem. I am ready to help deal with the problem.

But I think that we already are helping in Tennessee--that is my point. In this case, we need Washington to recognize what States are doing to solve this problem and not assume that a one-size-fits-all idea which might be good for New Mexico, or which might be good for North Dakota, also is good for Tennessee.

Tennessee is 16th in terms of carbon-free emissions. In other words, we produce about 40 percent of our electricity today from nuclear power and from hydroelectric power. All forms of power have their issues. Hydroelectric power means you dam up rivers. Some people don't like that. I have some problems with that, too, sometimes. With nuclear power, we have to get rid of the waste, and we have not solved that problem yet. But the one problem we have solved with hydro and nuclear is that they are clean in terms of emission--no carbon, no mercury, no sulfur, no nitrogen. That is 40 percent of the power in the Tennessee Valley Authority region, and in the State of Tennessee.

I might say: I have a great idea. I am now in Washington. I am not Governor anymore. I want to require everybody in America to have a 40- percent emissions-free energy standard, and the way they should do it is to have 33 percent nuclear power and 7 percent hydropower because that is my idea. That is the way we do it. So, North Dakota, have at it, start building nuclear plants, start damming up whatever river you have left. I have an idea. That is the way you should it.

I wouldn't say that because I believe in federalism. I believe that a lot of the best ideas come up from States toward the Federal Government. I have noticed how, over time, California has led the country in terms of clean air and clean water. I know Senator Bingaman's bill would permit us to go further in some ways, but it does not in other ways. What happens with the amendment from the Senator from New Mexico is this: Even though we are on the honor roll in Tennessee, and getting better--I mean, not only did the TVA just reopen the Unit 1 reactor at the Brown's Ferry Nuclear Plant, it is operating today at 100 percent capacity.

I will say a little more in a minute, if my colleagues will tolerate it.

The one wind farm we have in the whole Southeastern United States, the Buffalo Mountain Project in Tennessee, operated 7 percent of the time in August when we are all sitting on our porches, sweating and fanning ourselves and wanting our air-conditioners on, so wind energy doesn't help us in our part of the country. So we are at 40 percent emissions-free electricity generation. So how about a 40-percent portfolio standard for the whole country, with 33 percent nuclear power and 7 percent hydropower?

That probably wouldn't be fair to North Dakota. It might not be fair to some other States that have, as the brown color indicates on this chart here, a good bit of wind. They can use wind. They like wind. They don't mind having great big 300-, 400-, 500-foot white towers with flashing red lights you can see for 20 miles. If they want to see them, I guess that is their business. If they want them and it makes sense out there, fine. That is their State. But no more would I impose our formula for being clean on them than should they impose their formula for being clean on us. That is the problem with the Bingaman amendment, I respectfully suggest.

Here we are on the honor roll for being clean. We are getting better. TVA is thinking we might open a second nuclear reactor, maybe a third nuclear reactor. Maybe within 10 years--which in energy-producing time is a short period of time--we would be up to 40 percent of nuclear power, 7 or 8 percent of hydropower, and we might be in favor of making everybody do a 47-percent renewable portfolio standard based on our formula. We hope by that time that biomass, which is permitted under the amendment from Senator Bingaman, as I understand it, will increase in Tennessee. We have a great capacity, we believe, for biomass, especially as fuel for cars.

The President of the University of Tennessee was here this morning-- Dr. Peterson--talking with me about a demonstration project they have, about ethanol plants that are planned there. We are right in the center of the nation's population. We have a lot of land. We have a good agricultural base. Switchgrass could replace the tobacco income we used to have in Tennessee. We used to have 60,000 to 80,000 farms with a little independent income up in the mountains like you have in the great northern kingdom of Vermont. That would be great for us, so we hope biomass really works.

We like solar. I am the sponsor of the solar tax credit that passed Congress 2 years ago. It is not enough, but I sponsored it. I got an award from the solar industry for being for that renewable power. I also worked with the Farm Bureau on renewable power called biomass. We have the largest production plant for solar technology in America in Memphis in the Sharp plant, producing the solar panels you put on your roof. We hope all this works. We even hope there might be maybe a solar thermal steam plant someday. It is not there today.

TVA needs 31,000 or 32,000 megawatts of power every year to provide us with clean, reliable, inexpensive electricity, and the potential for solar with the present technology, the TVA says, is less than a Megawatt. The solar industry would say it is more. What if it is five times more? What if it is 10 megawatts, or 20 megawatts? There is not sufficient potential in the next 10 years for solar and wind in the southeast--which I will show in a moment we have virtually none of--to meet this idea.

So, what do we get to do? We get to pay a big tax, a great big tax. What good does the tax do us? It comes out of our pockets. We send it to Washington, and we never see it again. How much is it? It is $410 million a year, according to the Tennessee Valley Authority's scientists, to meet Senator Bingaman's 15 percent renewable portfolio standard. That is real money. By the end of the ramp-up time in the Bingaman amendment, which is the year 2020, it would cost, according to the Tennessee Valley Authority, which supplies Tennessee with electricity, it would cost the ratepayers $410 million to do what, to pay a tax to Washington, DC. It wouldn't clean our air. We are already on the honor roll for emission-free electricity production. It would just increase our cost. In fact, that money might come from money we might otherwise spend to clean our air.

But here is what we could do with $410 million. We could give away 205 million $2 light bulbs and have the energy savings equivalent to two nuclear power reactors, or it would be the equivalent of 3,700 great big wind turbines that would stretch along all the scenic ridge lines in east Tennessee, and nobody would come to east Tennessee to visit, to see our mountains. Most people who live there would go hide under a rug so we wouldn't have to see these white towers with flashing red lights that you can see from 10 or 12 miles away instead of the mountains. We could pay the electric bill for every Tennessean for a month and a half each year with $410 million or we could purchase a new scrubber. We have some coal-fired powerplants. About 60 percent of our electricity comes from coal. TVA has done a fairly good job of cleaning up the air with that, but they have a long way to go. Sulfur scrubbers are the main thing they need. They are very expensive, and we could put a new one on every 9 months with $410 million cost per year. That is what we could better do with $410 million rather than send it up here to Washington, DC.

Here is a letter I got today from the mayor of Chattanooga, TN, Harold DePriest--not the mayor, president and chief executive officer of the power company in Chattanooga. I probably should let Senator Corker read this letter since he used to be the mayor in Chattanooga. But he says:

The Bingaman amendment, if enacted into law, would have an

enormous adverse economic impact on our community. It would

result in a two-cent per kilowatt-hour tax on all electric

kilowatt hours that are used in the Chattanooga EPB service

area. We have projected the cost burden that will be imposed

upon those in our service area during the years 2010 through

2020. It appears the local government, local schools, the

universities, businesses and all citizens (including those in

fixed incomes and having a difficult financial time as it is)

will have to pay the additional sum of more than $133,000,000

. . . over 10 years for their electrical service.

Those are the workers, and those are the businesses. When businesses come to Tennessee--when Nissan comes or Saturn comes, when Eastman thinks about staying--what is one of the things they want to know? Can we get reliable, low-cost electric power? Today, we can say yes.

Every time we add an unnecessary charge on that rate, we drive jobs out of Tennessee and we cause people who cannot afford their bills to pay them.

I believe Senator Bingaman would say, and I will let him say it on his own behalf, as we develop more renewable power or other forms of power--I am a big subscriber to this--we bring down the price of natural gas. I helped introduce a bill called the Natural Gas Price Reduction Act, and I worked with Senators Bingaman and Domenici to try to stimulate growth in other forms of power to bring down the price of natural gas. So he is absolutely right. If we create new forms of energy, we will have less reliance on natural gas, and we want less reliance on natural gas. We don't want to be using natural gas to make electricity.

As we say often: It is like burning the antiques to make a fire. So he is right about that. Why shouldn't we say but one other form is nuclear power. It is clean, it is reliable, and it is another form to consider. And the more we have it, the less natural gas we have to use.

I also have a letter from Huntsville. This is in Alabama. I would not want you to think I was only arguing on behalf of one State. Huntsville, Alabama. ``Dear Senator Shelby,'' in this case. The letter goes on to talk about the severe penalties and the extra costs and the objection they have to this new tax.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at this point the two letters.

Mr. President, I see some other Senators on the floor. I see Senator Domenici, Senator DeMint, and there are other Senators here. But I want to wind up my comments in this way with a couple of pictures to summarize the point.

It is a laudable goal to move us as rapidly as we can to renewable energy. But we should allow the States to move in ways that fit those States. So I think there should be an opt-out for States. I think Tennessee should be able to say: We have a 40-percent clean power standard, but it is nuclear and hydro. We are working hard on biomass. As soon as we get that going, we will have 50 percent. But we do not have sufficient wind resources not located in our scenic mountains. In addition, wind is enormously subsidized. We will be getting more to that this year.

Let's put up this chart.

TVA looked all around for a place to locate the first and only utility scale wind energy project in the southeast. First they looked down on Lookout Mountain. The people there spent 30 years restoring the natural beauty to this historic location. They did not want to see a 400-foot tower they could see from the whole area up there. So they finally put it on Buffalo Mountain, which is also a beautiful place.

Here is what it looks like. They had hoped the wind would blow so that it would produce 35 to 38 percent of the turbines rated capacity. It operates 19 to 24 percent of the time; 7 percent in August. What most people miss with wind power is you use it or lose it. So if the wind is not blowing, your air conditioner is off.

Even though you have these large wind towers all up and down every ridge top in Tennessee, even if you had them, you would still need a dependable powerplant. Wind turbines do not replace your base load.

Here is what it looks like in West Virginia, which is north of us. It is a different point, but this makes strip mining look like a decorative art. I mean this ruins, in my view, the tops of mountains.

Why would we insist on that with Federal requirements to have a State that is already on the honor roll for clean power? There are other ways to do this rather than raise our rates, raise our taxes, drive jobs away, or ruin our landscape.

I appreciate the chance to talk about this. Wind already is highly subsidized too. The best facts I have suggest we will be spending $11.5 billion between 2007 and 2016, already obligated in taxpayers' money, to build these big wind turbines in Tennessee, which in Tennessee operate 7 percent of the time in August. They do not produce much power either. There are proposals on the Senate floor to extend the federal subsidies for wind power.

So back to this wind project, TVA pays 6.5 cents for every kilowatt- hour produced by this wind project. The taxpayers pay them another 2.9 cents, in effect, for the production tax credit; that is 9.4 cents for each one here, and this would have the whole Southeast running around looking for wind developers to buy further credits from. We should all retire from the Senate and go in the business, it looks like, if that is what we want to do.

But here is my main point, let's respect Federalism, let's honor those States that are on the honor roll. Let's honor Senator Bingaman for wanting to encourage renewable energy. But Senator Domenici, I would respectfully say, has a better idea. He would allow new nuclear power, for example, to be a part of the mix.

My final comment would be this: As climate change has become more of a concern, and people say we are going to have to deal with it in this generation, we have looked for ways to create large amounts of clean energy. There are only two or three ways to do that.

The first is conservation and efficiency. We have barely scratched the surface. But the second is nuclear power. Seventy percent of our carbon-free electricity in America today is nuclear power. So why would we exclude that from any standard that allegedly wants us to have carbon-free energy? It does not make much sense to me.

I respectfully oppose the suggestion of the Senator from New Mexico, Mr. Bingaman. I honor his service here. I honor his motives here. But I think he has a solution looking for a problem. The problem is, we do not have any wind in our part of the State, and a wind portfolio standard simply does not work. It puts a big tax on us we do not need to pay, do not want to pay, does not do us any good.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, with the cost of health care continually increasing for employers, individuals, and the Government combined with the growing number of uninsured Americans it is clear that our health care system is in dire need of change. My goal is to help every American have access to affordable health insurance and to continue the State Children's Health Insurance Program, SCHIP.

In an op-ed in The Hill on June 6, 2007, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Mike Leavitt, suggested a very good proposal for increasing access to health insurance. His proposal calls for reauthorization of SCHIP and keeping the program's focus on kids, providing the same tax advantage to all Americans through a standard deduction for health insurance, and encouraging State innovation through grants to help low income individuals afford private health insurance.

I support Secretary Leavitt's ideas. However, health care reform is too big of an issue for one party to tackle on its own. Our only chance of achieving true, meaningful reform is if both parties work together. This involves reaching across the aisle and getting Democrats to say two words ``private markets'' and Republicans to say to two words ``universal access.''

Two of my colleagues have put forward two different but thoughtful pieces of legislation addressing the uninsured Senator Wyden's Healthy Americans Act, S. 334, and Senator Coburn's Universal Health Care Choice and Access Act, S. 1019. But I am doing something that I rarely do cosponsoring both of them to encourage my goal of affordable health insurance for every American while continuing the SCHIP program helping children.

I have cosponsored these bills in the spirit of reform, but that does not mean I support every provision in both

pieces of legislation. In fact, there are some provisions that I oppose. Though not perfect, these bills are an important first step toward achieving access to health services for all Americans.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Colorado for his courtesy in arranging for me to speak next. The Senator from Colorado and I and the Senator from New Mexico, Mr. Bingaman, who is here, the chairman of the Energy Committee, Senator Domenici, the ranking member, and Senator Lieberman, who has already spoken, were at breakfast this morning at our usual Tuesday morning bipartisan breakfast. And Senator Bingaman expressed the hope, as I am sure he will on the Senate floor when he speaks, that we can make the kind of progress this year that we made 2 years ago on the Energy bill. And I hope so too.

He talked about how difficult it was and how impressive it was for four committees, plus the Finance Committee, all to make a contribution and how we might be able to make progress with alternative fuels, with energy efficiency. The more we learn about energy efficiency, such as with appliances and lighting, and the more we can do in accelerating research on how to recapture carbon, the better off we will be.

Earlier this morning, Senator Lieberman of Connecticut said in that spirit of bipartisanship that he hoped one amendment would not be added to this bill, and that would be an amendment calling for the drilling for oil in the Alaska wildlife area. That is a controversial piece of legislation.

I want to make a similar suggestion in the spirit of bipartisanship. I note my friend from New Mexico is on the Senate floor, and I hope the Senate would not agree to and maybe we would not even have to debate, the amendment that Senator Bingaman offered before in the last Congress and which he plans to offer again which would require a 15-percent so- called renewable portfolio standard in every State. I wish to spend a few minutes this morning talking about why I believe it is important that we not adopt that amendment.

I am reminded of a story about a Tennessee mountaineer who was convicted of murder, and the judge sentenced him and told him his choice was to be hanged or be shot.

The defendant thought a minute and said: May I ask a question, judge?

The judge said: Of course.

My question is, Do I have another choice?

Mr. President, we Tennesseans feel the same way about Senator Bingaman's proposed renewable portfolio standard which would require us to make 15 percent of our electricity from renewable fuels, mostly wind power. That would raise our taxes, it would raise our electric rates, it would run away jobs, and it would ruin our mountaintops. That is not the kind of choice we like to have.

Forcing Tennesseans to build 40-story wind turbines on our pristine mountaintops or pay billions of dollars in penalty taxes to the Federal Government amounts to a judge giving a defendant the choice of being hanged or shot.

In Tennessee, the wind simply doesn't blow enough to produce much electric power. Residential homeowners cannot afford these new taxes, industries will take their jobs to States with cheaper power, and tourists will spend their dollars where they can see the mountaintops instead of giant wind turbines.

There is, in this case, a better choice, fortunately, and that choice is for clean, reasonably priced energy in the Tennessee Valley from conservation and efficiency, from nuclear reactors--a new one of which just opened within the last few weeks in our region by TVA--and by clean coal. Because of its nuclear and hydro plants, Tennessee is already on the honor roll, ranking 16th among States in production of carbon-free electricity. But we are one of 27 States that would not meet the standards under Senator Bingaman's amendment, which he expects to offer during this debate.

This is real money. The Tennessee Valley Authority suggests that by the last year that this new standard is in effect, it would cost Tennesseans at least 410 million new dollars a year.

What could we do with that kind of money? If the goal were clean air, we could give away 205 million in $2 fluorescent lightbulbs per year, producing

energy savings equal to the combined output of almost two of the three units of TVA's Browns Ferry nuclear plant. In other words, the $410 million could buy enough fluorescent lightbulbs to equal two nuclear reactors. Or the $410 million would be the equivalent of 3,700 megawatt wind turbines that would span a 550-mile ridge line, more than twice the distance from Bristol in the northeast part of Tennessee to Chattanooga, which is about the only place in Tennessee that wind power could actually go, along those ridgetops. Or with $410 million, we could pay the $100 per month electric bill for Tennessee's 2.5 million residential TVA customers for 1\1/2\ months each year. Or if the goal is simply clean air, it would be better, I respectfully submit, to spend the $410 million purchasing one new scrubber each 9 months to clean emissions from TVA's coal-fired powerplants. I strongly back renewable power wherever it makes sense. In our State, I have worked hard to expand solar energy. The solar energy industry gave me an award last year for that work. I was the principal sponsor of the tax credit for homeowners to put solar panels on their homes. I have worked with the Tennessee Farm Bureau to encourage the use of biomass as a renewable energy. But this--and I will try to be a little bit more specific in the next 10 or 12 minutes--this proposal amounts to a wind portfolio standard which simply does not fit the Tennessee Valley nor, I submit, any other part of our region. It simply does not work in the Southeast.

Why is there a wind portfolio standard? There are other forms of renewable energy, of course, but they don't all fit in the definition, nor do all types of clean, carbon-free energy fit within the definition. Seventy percent of our carbon-free electricity in America comes from nuclear power. About 33 percent of TVA's power is carbon- free nuclear power. That doesn't count within the Bingaman definition. Neither does the existing 7 percent of clean, completely clean power that comes from hydro, from dams.

That makes about 40 percent of TVA's electricity carbon, sulfur, mercury, and nitrogen free, ranking it 16th among all the States in terms of producing carbon-free energy. As I said, Tennessee is on the honor roll. Yet we Tennesseans would still be subjected either to these taxes or putting these wind turbines along our scenic mountains, which I will discuss.

According to the Energy Information Agency assessment of the Bingaman proposal, 4 years ago, wind and, to a lesser extent, biomass are projected to be the most important renewable resources stimulated by the renewable portfolio standard.

There is some other evidence that biomass will be stimulated, but I think it is a fair comment to say that this is mostly a wind portfolio standard. And my argument is, that may be fine in North Dakota--which the Senator from North Dakota says is the Saudi Arabia of wind--maybe it works there, and maybe North Dakotans want to see the wind turbines there, but it doesn't work in Tennessee and in most of the Southeast because the wind simply doesn't blow enough to produce much electricity.

The National Academy of Sciences says 93 percent of potential wind energy capacity occurs west of the Mississippi River. We can see on this chart that in this white area, that is where there is the least amount of wind. There may be plenty of it somewhere else but not in Tennessee and not in the South. There is only one wind farm in this entire southeastern part of the United States. That is a TVA wind farm on Buffalo Mountain, which I will show in just a moment.

TVA had hoped that the wind on Buffalo Mountain would blow to produce electricity about 35 to 38 percent of the time. They have been disappointed that it only blows about 19 to 24 percent of the time. And in August, when we are sitting on the porches sweating, perspiring, and wanting our fans on and air-conditioning on, the winds on the only wind farm in the southeast--Buffalo Mountain--blew just 7 percent of the time. That is not an estimate. That is an actual count from TVA and the wind farm.

So the only places in the southeast region, if we can go to the next chart, that have wind resources are the ridges and the crests. Maybe unlike Iowa and North Dakota where they can have large wind farms, maybe even in Colorado they can have large wind farms, but in Tennessee, the only places that wind possibly works are on the ridges and the crests. In addition to being the places with the most wind, the ridges and the crests are also in the most visited national park in the United States, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Those are the highest mountains in the Eastern United States. They run up through Pennsylvania as well. They are the Great Smoky Mountains and the mountains around them. They are the reason most of us live in those areas.

It is quite a sight to see when you put wind turbines on top of those mountains. It is a sight that I would rather not see. Here is West Virginia, which is north of the southeastern part of the United States. Basically it cuts off the whole tops of those mountains. In my opinion, it makes strip mining look like a decorative art. These are 400- or 300-feet turbines. These are not your grandmother's windmills. They are white and large and have flashing red lights on top of them. You can see them for 10, 12, 14 miles away.

Then, since they are on remote ridgetops, they have to dig large power lines down through whomever's backyard to get there. It is quite a dislocation in the scenery. So one would think there would have to be a big payoff before we would take some of the most beautiful parts of the United States and basically ruin the mountaintops.

Here is what it looks like in Tennessee. You can get a little sense of how big these turbines are. In Tennessee, we like football and we can put things in perspective, sometimes putting things in football terms. Each of these wind turbines is twice as tall as the skyboxes at Neyland Stadium, which is the second largest football stadium in the United States. Penn State has one, I guess, about the same size. These rotor blades, which go round and round, stretch from the 10-yard line to the 10-yard line. I can see these turbines from the Pellissippi Parkway in Tennessee from about 14 miles away. This is at about 3,500 feet. These are some of our most beautiful vistas in Tennessee.

The problem is, even here, which ought to be a prime spot--this is the reason TVA put the turbines here--it didn't work very well. It was a disappointment. As I mentioned, in August, the wind turbines only operated 7 percent of the time. Wind tends to be strongest during the winter months and at dawn and dusk, but demand for electricity is highest during the summer and during the day. Basically, when we need the wind, it doesn't blow. And a point that many people often miss is that you can't store it. Unlike more conventional forms of power, you use it or you lose it. So it is of minimal help.

Also, it is more expensive. I have a chart showing the expense. Let's take nuclear power which produces 70 percent of the carbon-free electricity in the United States today, and wind, which is also carbon free. Actually, both are completely free of carbon, sulfur, mercury, and nitrogen, which are the problems for clean air in the Tennessee region. Let's compare a 1,000-watt nuclear plant reactor and a 1,000- megawatt capacity wind farm. The 1,000-megawatts is about the size of a new nuclear reactor. The new Browns Ferry plant in Tennessee that opened the other day is 1,280 megawatts. This column is the number of hours per year for both nuclear and wind. And this second column is the capacity factor.

In plain English, this is how much they operate. For TVA, its nuclear powerplants, which produce about one-third of our electricity and most of our carbon-free electricity, the nuclear powerplants operate 92 percent of the time. The wind turbines operate, at best, 24 percent of the time in the Southeast, in the area we know about. Remember, there is only one wind farm in the Southeast. We have it, and that is what it does.

The cost of electricity is up to twice as much for wind over nuclear. That is what people in the utility industry call the all-in cost--that is, including the cost of building the facility and the cost of operating the facility.

So the brief analysis is that wind is more expensive, on a per unit energy generated basis, and produces much less energy than nuclear power, for example. In addition to that, if we build

the wind turbines, we still have to build and operate the nuclear powerplant because, as we pointed out, the wind turbines only operate about 22 percent of the time.

My hope would be that we would not have a one-size-fits-all national mandate on States that are seeking to create clean energy. Tennessee wants to do its part. As I said, nuclear power creates 70 percent of the carbon-free energy in the United States. It produces 33 percent of the carbon-free energy in the Tennessee Valley through TVA, and TVA just opened a new reactor and they are planning more. Why would we impose on a State which is already leading the country in terms of helping to produce clean energy, carbon-free energy--why would we impose a mandate on that State that would raise its rates or impose new taxes and drive away jobs from industries that cannot afford to pay the higher rates and at the same time put on our mountain tops, from Bristol to Chattanooga, these huge wind machines that destroy the view?

We have 10 million people every year who come to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, nearly three times as many as come to Yellowstone. They come to see the mountains; they don't come to see the wind turbines. I guarantee, if we continue to provide incentives and mandates to put up these 300-, 400-, 500-foot-tall wind turbines with red flashing lights, that is all the visitors will see when they come to Tennessee. They will not be able to see anything else.

I am eager to work with Senators Bingaman and Domenici on the Energy bill. I had the pleasure, the last 4 years, of serving with them on that committee. I admire the way they work together. They made a point 2 years ago of saying that when we go too far in either direction, we will pull back a little bit so we can make sure we have a good, strong bill. I believe the bill in 2005 was underestimated. I believe the bill produced in 2005, produced by Senators Domenici and Bingaman and the Senate working with the House, literally set America on a different course in terms of producing large amounts of reliable, affordable, clean energy. It helped us do that in a way that would keep the costs of natural gas down, which was very important to us at that time and still is today.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter from the Southeastern Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners expressing the same views I have just expressed, that such a mandate would cause us to end up paying higher electric prices with nothing to show for it. I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record following my remarks.

Finally, I would like to reiterate what we could better do with the money. I see the Senator from North Dakota here. I mentioned a little earlier that he has said North Dakota is the Saudi Arabia of wind, and I admire North Dakota for that, I admire him for his outspoken advocacy of that, and I hope all the giant wind machines go to North Dakota. That is where I would like them to be, just not in Tennessee--not just because of how they look but because in our neck of the woods they do not work. They raise our taxes, or they raise our rates, or they destroy our mountains, or they run away jobs from industries and tourists who do not want to be part of that. I would rather see us look for better ways to spend those dollars.

As I suggested earlier, we could take the same amount of money we would be taxed, if we choose not to build these, by providing 205 million $2 light bulbs, which would be the equivalent energy savings of almost 2 nuclear reactors, or it would be the equivalent of 3,700 of these wind turbines, which would run along the ridge tops from Bristo to Chattanooga, or it would pay the monthly electric bill for Tennessee's 2.5 million TVA residential customers, every Tennessee residential customer, for a month and a half, or it would put a new scrubber on TVA's coal-fired powerplants every 9 month period.

I am afraid this is an idea looking for a problem to solve. It may solve it in North Dakota, it might solve it in New Mexico and perhaps it does in Colorado, but it does not in Tennessee. It raises our taxes, raises our rates, ruins our mountains, and it sends jobs away, runs them away.

I hope, in a spirit of bipartisanship, perhaps the Senator from New Mexico, one of our most thoughtful Senators, the leader of this debate, will decide there are other things we can focus on rather than a one- size-fits-all mandate which may work in some States but does not in my State.

I yield the floor.

Exhibit 1

Southeastern Association of

Regulatory Utility Commissioners,

Little Rock, AR, May 31, 2007.

Dear Senators Bingaman and Domenici, and Congressmen

Dingell and Barton: The undersigned state utility

commissioners are writing to express our concerns about the

nationwide, mandatory federal renewable portfolio standard

(RPS) being discussed/introduced by Senator Bingaman. As

state regulators, we are responsible for ensuring that retail

electricity consumers receive affordable, reliable electric

service. We are concerned that a uniform, federal RPS mandate

fails to recognize adequately that there are significant

differences among the states in terms of available and cost-

effective renewable energy resources and that having such a

standard in energy legislation will ultimately increase

consumers' electricity bills.

The reality is that not all states are fortunate enough to

have abundant traditional renewable energy resources, such as

wind, or have them located close enough to the load to render

them cost-effective. This is especially true in the Southeast

and large parts of the Midwest. Even in regions of the

country that do have access to wind energy, there is

frequently stiff local opposition to building huge wind

turbines, significant costs for the additional transmission

needed, and reliability concerns. As a result, some wind

renewable energy projects do not get built, while others take

years to build. The availability of other renewable energy

resources, such as geothermal, is even more limited.

Because of the limited availability and cost-effectiveness

of traditional renewable energy resources, we are deeply

concerned that our utilities will be forced to buy renewable

energy credits from the federal government or from renewable

energy generators in other regions of the country.

Correspondingly, our retail electricity consumers will end up

paying higher electricity prices, with nothing to show for

it.

Renewable energy resources may be able to make a

significant contribution to energy production in those

regions of the country that have abundant renewable

resources. In fact, over 20 states and the District of

Columbia have already seen fit to approve their own RPS

programs based on the resources available to them. Moreover,

those states have included a wider array of energy resources

in their definitions of eligible renewable resources than the

proposed federal RPS mandate, Some states consider power

produced from municipal solid waste, small hydroelectric

facilities or coal waste to be renewable energy. Other states

count expenditures on demand-side management or alternative

compliance payments toward meeting the state RPS

requirements. None of these alternative renewable energy

resources, however, would receive credit under the Senate

version of a federal RPS program.

While state public service commissions and energy service

providers should certainly consider available and cost-

effective renewable energy resource options as they make

long-term decisions for incremental energy needs, the

imposition of a strict federal RPS mandate, as contrasted

with a state-driven cost-effectiveness determination, will

only result in higher electricity prices for our consumers.

Because the availability and cost-effectiveness of

traditional renewable energy resources varies so widely among

states and regions, we believe that decisions regarding

renewable energy portfolios should be left to the states. If,

however, the Congress desires to address renewable energy

objectives in the upcoming Energy Bill, we urge you to

expressly allow each individual state to determine the extent

to which renewable energy can be reliably and cost

effectively utilized within that state.

Sincerely,

(Signed by Members of the Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia,

Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and

Tennessee commissioners.)

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the privilege of the floor be granted to Jack Wells on my staff for the duration of the debate on the Energy bill.

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

Mr. President, I appreciate the tremendous effort that has been made on both sides of the aisle to try to address the immigration dilemma facing our country. In my view, other than the war in Iraq, the war on terror, there is nothing more important before us, and we should leave the bill on this floor for as long as it takes to get it right because as difficult as it is to get it right, it seems to me that failure is not an option. If we fail, then what we have done is admitted that we have just simply allowed a situation to continue where perhaps a million new illegal persons will come into our country each year. That contravenes the rule of law upon which this country is founded, it works against our ability to be a country that lives by the motto that is engraved up there on the wall, ``one from many,'' to assimilate into our country the number of people who are coming, and it is a poor example for the rest of the world when we suggest to them that they create governments that rely upon the rule of law. It also absolutely enrages the American citizens, who look at Washington and say that the Government has done a horrible job for the last 10, 15, 20 years in enforcing our immigration laws. Americans have, in many cases, lost faith that we even have the ability to fix the mess. I used to feel that way myself before I came here. I haven't been here that long--just 4 years.

Twelve years ago, I was a candidate for President of the United States. I was in those debates which we watched on television last night, or those kinds of debates. One of my proposals was that we should create a new branch of the military in order to secure the border. In 1994, 1995, and 1996, Americans were upset about our inability to distinguish between legal immigration, which is the lifeblood of our country, and illegal immigration, which is an affront to the rule of law and the principles of what it means to be an American. So this has been going on year after year after year.

When I was home last week in Tennessee, I spent a lot of time listening and talking to Tennesseans. In fact, I just left a group of homebuilders from Tennessee in my office who were talking to me about the immigration bill and about some concerns they have. But of all the concerns that came through to me last week in my conversations with Tennesseans, it boils down to this: We don't really trust you guys in Washington, DC, to fix this problem. You don't seem to be willing to do it.

So I have a suggestion today that I will make, an amendment that I intend to offer. I won't call it up at this moment, but I want my colleagues to know about it and the country to know about it because I think if this bill were to become law, it would increase the level of trust the American people would have in the ability of this Government to enforce whatever law we pass. I am not suggesting it would solve everything or that we would regain trust overnight, but I am suggesting it would be a step forward. I will describe the legislation in just a moment, but it boils down to this: We would involve the Governors of the border States between the United States and Mexico in determining whether the new border control system we put in place is actually operational.

Right now, particularly amendment offered by my distinguished colleague from New Hampshire (Senator Gregg) the other day, the proposed bill has been strengthened in the following way: He said that his amendment would require the Department of Homeland Security to certify that it has established and demonstrated operational control over the entire U.S.-Mexico land border before other parts of the bill involving legal status could go into effect. We call this the trigger.

Senator Isakson from Georgia suggested this last year. It is a wise idea. It says, first we secure the border, and then, when it is secure, we do the other things about legalization of people already here, to the extent we decide to do that. But the question still remains: Who is going to say when the border is secure? The people out across the country--at least those in Tennessee--don't trust us, don't trust the Government in Washington, because of this poor record of 20 years. It doesn't matter that I just got here 4 years ago. They look up here and see the Government and they say: You didn't do it last year, you didn't do it 3 years ago, you didn't do it 10 years ago or 15 years ago, so how do we know you are ever going to do it, even if you pass the law?

Well, the three things I can think of that would make a difference are, No. 1, to pass a bill with teeth in it. For example, the Gregg amendment says

there will be 20,000 Border Patrol agents. That is more than we currently have. Today, there are 13,000. There will be four unmanned aerial vehicles. There will be 300 miles of vehicle barriers. Currently, there are about 78. There will have to be at least 370 miles of fencing already built. Now, there are 700 already authorized by the Secure Fence Act of 2006, and that hasn't changed, but 370 miles would have to be built. There would have to be 70 ground-based radar and camera towers on the southwest border. There would have to be a permanent end to catch and release. There would have to be an employment verification system that requires employers to electronically verify new hires within 18 months and all existing employees within 3 years. All of those things would have to be in place. The words are they would have to be ``established and demonstrated, that the Federal Government had operational control over the entire U.S.-Mexico land border.''

The amendment that is already part of the bill, the Gregg amendment, said the Director of Homeland Security would certify that. What I add with my amendment is it has to be concurred in, agreed with, signed off on by three of the four Governors on the United States-Mexico border. In other words, we pass the law with teeth--the teeth of the Gregg amendment and maybe more. I have suggested, and others seem to have agreed, what we ought to do is then fund the law. Either the President challenges us to pass an appropriations bill within 30 days after we pass the law, we do it ourselves, or we set up a trust fund--the way we do for highways and the way we do for Social Security, the way we do for anything else--and we say that money goes to secure the border, to fund these things. We pass a law with teeth. Then we provide the money. Then the Director of Homeland Security says the border is secure. That is the trigger. My amendment would say: The Governors of the border States, three out of four, have to agree.

The Governors of the border States are not in Washington, DC. They have not been infected with whatever is up here. They have not even been vaccinated. I have been up here long enough to be vaccinated with whatever disease is up here, and for that reason more Tennesseans trust the Governors than they do the Washington officials to solve this problem. If the Governors of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas say yes, the border is secure, we agree with the certification of the Department of Homeland Security, I think that would be good enough for most Americans. That is the point of my amendment.

We need to put together a good bill that secures the border first. After border security, the other biggest problem is what to do about those already here illegally. I think that issue is less of an issue if most Americans believe we would pass a law that permitted the Border Patrol agents and the verification system to be done, that we would fund it and we would actually do it as certified by the Director of Homeland Security and the Governors on the border. Then I think they would be willing to accept different solutions for those already here.

But the week before last I voted for the amendment offered by Senator Vitter that would have sent the bill's drafters back to the drawing board on the question of what to do about the 12 million illegal persons, more or less, who are already here.

Senator Hutchison and Senator Corker have done some very important work on this issue, which I intend to support and to cosponsor. That amendment would require illegal immigrants, who want to work here, to return to their home countries and reenter through legal channels in addition to paying a fine and passing the criminal background check.

In addition to that, this bill should be about another subject about which we hear almost nothing, and that is the number of people who come here legally every year. A little more than a million people come into the United States each year legally. Today, if I remember the figures right, most are family members. Some come here as students. Some come here as researchers, to create jobs for us. Some come here as refugees. For those Americans who come here legally and who are prospective citizens, especially given the large number of people coming from overseas, we need to do everything we can to help those persons become Americans.

I have filed several amendments. They seek to promote learning English, our common language, and what it means to become an American through an understanding of history and civics. For example, one of these amendments will help these legal immigrants learn English and what it means to be an American, to codify the oath of allegiance, and to make English our national language.

Another amendment would ask the Government Accountability Office to provide a comprehensive report on the costs imposed on the public and private sector by having millions of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents who are not proficient in English. So far in this debate the Senate has already passed my amendment to establish a Presidential award to recognize companies who have taken extraordinary efforts to help their employees learn English and American history and civics.

Some may say that is not so important, we all agree with that. It is awfully important. If you take a look at Europe today and you see the difficulty France has helping immigrants become French, and that Germany has helping immigrant workers become German, and that Japan has--because no one has an idea of what it might mean to become Japanese if you are not born Japanese--you can see how fortunate we are in this country to have literally invented the concept of becoming American. We say it does not matter what your race is, it doesn't matter who your grandfather is, you come here, you take the oath George Washington gave his officers at Valley Forge and you say: I am not whatever I was. I pledge allegiance to America. I learned the language, I learned the history, and we have a few principles we agree on, and I am an American. I am proud of where I came from, but I am prouder to be an American. Race doesn't matter. Religion doesn't matter. We pride ourselves on that. It is a tremendous advantage we have, so we ought not lose sight of the importance of helping legal citizens learn English and what it means to be an American.

I have heard some talk that encouraging people to learn English is somehow divisive. I can't imagine that. In fact, it is the reverse. It is our unifier. It unifies us, to have a common language. It unifies us to know that the rule of law and equal opportunity are common principles.

We debate what that means, and often they collide and conflict and we have to work that out as legislators, but we all agree on the same common principles and we enjoy the fact we have a common language, so I can speak to the President, and I can argue with the Senator from Colorado or I can agree with him as we are doing on an Iraq piece of legislation right now. We have a common language.

So, common language, what it means to be an American, finding many different ways to honor these new citizens who come here legally--that ought to be as important a part of this bill as securing the border and creating a verification system in dealing with the people who already got here illegally.

Primarily I came to the floor this afternoon to let my colleagues know I have a suggestion for how to begin to regain the trust of the American people on this issue, and that is this bill should pass with strong new provisions for border security, with funding to pay for it, and with a trigger that says the legalization parts of the bill don't take effect for 2, 3, 4, maybe even 5 years, until the border is secure.

Then the question is how are we going to know if the border is secure? The bill says trust the Director of Homeland Security. I say ask him, pay attention to him or her, but also trust the Governors of the border States. Let three out of the four Governors, of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas concur with the Director of Homeland Security that the border is secure before we begin the legalization process, and I think the American people might buy it, they might believe that, and we might begin to regain their trust, after 20 years of mismanagement, that we are willing to take seriously securing the border and establishing respect again so we can have a rule of law.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, we will miss Craig Thomas. Craig Thomas would want it to be said that he was a conservative. He enjoyed expressing conservative views on this floor. He enjoyed expressing conservative views in our Energy Committee on which we served together, and the Senator from Louisiana and I served with Senator Thomas. He kept his feet firmly planted on the ground in Wyoming from which his conservatism came. He obviously well represented the people of Wyoming because he barely noticed there was an election last year. When Craig Thomas ran, he was elected by an overwhelming margin.

Craig Thomas was a conservationist. He was chairman of the National Parks

Subcommittee during the time I served on the Energy Committee, and he enjoyed that very much. I am not a bit surprised because he took great pride in the fact that Yellowstone, a great, premier park--I can say that even though we have the Great Smokies in Tennessee--but Yellowstone, which has such a special place in the hearts of all Americans, Craig Thomas took special pride in his jurisdiction of that responsibility. He was honored by the National Parks Association a couple of years ago. Craig Thomas was awarded the singular honor of the National Parks Association for his stewardship of our national parks.

Craig Thomas was no-nonsense. That came from several places, I suspect. One was, as the Senator from Nebraska noted, he was a marine. One was that he was a cowboy, a real cowboy. I saw Senator Inhofe talking about him in that respect. Another reason is he came from Wyoming. I see that Senator Enzi from Wyoming is here. Wyoming citizens, I have noticed, don't waste words. They think about them before they say them, and they often don't say them. They don't feel a need to fill every vacuum with a string of words, which is an unusual characteristic on the floor of the U.S. Senate, but Craig Thomas was such a person. I think, in fact, he grew up in Wyoming, came from Wyoming, lived in Wyoming, kept his feet planted in Wyoming, and helped contribute to that no-nonsense approach to life he had which enriched the Senate.

Craig Thomas was also interested in working across party lines. Earlier this year, Senator Lieberman and I and others began a breakfast on Tuesday morning at 8 o'clock for those Senators who had time to come, not for the purpose of passing legislation but for the purpose of getting to know each other better across party lines so that we could perhaps come to solutions more quickly in other areas. It was interesting to see who came to that breakfast. We all are busy. We all have tremendous demands on our time. We started off with 40 Senators of both parties. Sometimes it got to be 10 or 12 or 14. But almost every Tuesday morning at the bipartisan Senators' breakfast, Craig Thomas was there, and he always had a contribution to make. He was there 2 weeks ago, in the week before our recess, which is why it was such a surprise to learn that he died yesterday, because when he was there, he sat quietly, but you could tell he had something to say, and he finally said it before he left. The subject was immigration. He had some questions, and he had some comments. He looked the perfect picture of health. He looked as if he would last forever. That was the last I saw of Craig Thomas.

We are a family here in the Senate. We say that often to one another, but it is true. We have breakfast together, as we did this morning at the bipartisan breakfast or as we will tomorrow morning at the Prayer Breakfast where we will remember Craig Thomas. We have lunch together, which we are about to do, Republicans on one side and Democrats on the other. We have committee hearings and meetings all day long and little visits, and then in the evenings, if that weren't enough, why, we get together and we go to receptions for each other. That is how we live our lives here. So it is a surprise to us to suddenly find ourselves without Craig Thomas, whom we saw at breakfast, whom we saw at lunch, whom we saw at committee meetings, and whom we saw in the evenings. We will miss him, but we greatly respect his presence here in the Senate for such a long period of time.

When he got sick last year, we heard that he was soon doing fingertip pushups again. So all of us thought--at least I thought--well, Craig is going to be fine. He is going to be fine. But, as will be the case with each of us, in the end, his life has come to a conclusion. It has been a life of public service, one I greatly respect.

To Susan and to his family, Honey and I offer our sympathy and our respect for his life. We will be thinking and praying for them, and we will be remembering how much joy our friend Craig Thomas brought to the U.S. Senate.

Thank you, Madam President.

Mr. President, last August, Ted Stevens and Dan Inouye led a bipartisan group of Senators to China for a parliamentary visit. Dan, of course, was accorded great respect because of his winning the Congressional Medal of Honor during World War II. But it was Ted Stevens for whom the Chinese rolled out the red carpet. Ted had flown with the Flying Tigers. He flew the first plane to land in Beijing after World War II ended, and the top Chinese leaders had not forgotten. They made more time for our delegation than they had for any other recent group of American visitors.

No one in our group, of course, was surprised to learn that Ted Stevens had flown risky missions and, for that bravery, earned the Distinguished Flying Cross. Ted still has the cockiness, adventuresome spirit and attitude that distinguish most pilots. And he has the love of country that permeates those who fought in World War II. We see both qualities every day in the Senate.

For example, 2 years ago, when we were considering how to maneuver through five Senate committees legislation based on a National Academies report that would help America keeps its brainpower advantage, Ted was both unconcerned about committee prerogatives and impatient about getting the job done. ``Let's form a select committee,'' he said many times. ``You be the chairman of it.'' He said this even though he was then the most senior Republican in the Senate and I was nearly the most junior. The Senate never formed that select committee, but Ted made sure the legislation passed because he thought it was important for our country.

I was Legislative Assistant to Senator Howard Baker in 1968 when Ted was appointed to the Senate. He hasn't changed much in all that time, even though he is now the longest serving Republican Senator. In his first year, he was pushing amendments that would help Alaska Natives maintain their fishing rights. This year, he is still busy working on legislation creating additional rights for Alaska Natives. And in the 39 years between, he has snagged every dollar that comes within 50 feet for his Alaskan constituents--and some dollars that were farther away than that.

Ted Stevens is, I would say, above all, an institutionalist in the United States Senate. In other words, he sees a unique role in our democracy for the Senate, and he is one of a handful here who is determined to respect that role and make it work.

I suppose Ted will have opposition when he runs for reelection in 2008. But, if he does, I wouldn't want to be that person. Last week, walking side by side with him to vote, I took the escalator when we got to the Capitol and Ted literally ran up the stairs, two at a time.

It would be hard to identify a ``More Valuable Player'' in the U.S. Senate than Ted Stevens.

Mr. President, Senator Salazar and I asked the leadership for 30 minutes this morning to discuss Iraq. I thank the leadership for giving us that time.

I ask unanimous consent that the time be allocated in the following way: 5 minutes each for, first, Senator Pryor, then Senator Bennett, then Senator Casey, then Senator Gregg, then Senator Alexander, and finally Senator Salazar. If the Chair would let each Senator know when 5 minutes has expired, I would appreciate that.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from New Hampshire. I can think of no two Senators on our side of the aisle whose words are listened to more carefully and more respectfully than the Senator from New Hampshire and the Senator from Utah. I salute the Senator from Pennsylvania for his statement and leadership, and the Senator from Arkansas, who spoke so constructively, and especially the Senator from Colorado, who is the principal sponsor of this legislation and whom I am proud to join.

Senator Pryor is exactly right when he said this morning that it is time for us to stop having partisan votes on Iraq. If I were an American fighting in Iraq, I would be looking back at us and wondering: What are they doing in Washington, DC, arguing and sniping at each other while we are fighting and dying? I would be thinking: If they are going to send us to Iraq to do a job, at least they could agree on what the job is.

We owe it to our troops and to our country to find a bipartisan consensus to support where we go from here in Iraq. We need a political solution in Washington, DC, as much as we need a political solution in Baghdad.

The announcements today by four more Senators, each well respected-- Senators Pryor, Bennett, Casey, Gregg--suggests the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group is the way to do that. Three Republicans, three Democrats from the North, South, East, and West, some relatively new Senators, some who have been here a long time, fresh voices, a fresh approach for a fresh attitude for this debate. Before the end of the week, I believe there will be two more Senators--one Democrat, one Republican. Then in June when we return to Washington, the six or the eight of us intend to offer the legislation Senator Salazar and I have drafted to implement the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group.

Today we are only six, perhaps eight--a modest beginning. But even we six or eight are a more promising bipartisan framework of support for a new direction in Iraq than we have seen for some time in the Senate. Those who know the Senate know we usually do our best and most constructive work when a handful of Senators cross party lines to take a fresh look at a problem, embrace a new strategy, and try to do what is right for our country.

We are not going to put hundreds of thousands of American troops into Iraq. We are not going to get out of Iraq tomorrow, and the current surge of troops in Baghdad, which we all hope is successful, is not by itself a strategy for tomorrow. The Iraq Study Group report is a strategy for tomorrow. It will get the United States out of the combat business in Iraq and into the support, equipment, and the training business in a prompt and honorable way. It will reduce the number of troops in Iraq. Those who stay will be less in harm's way--in more secure bases, embedded with Iraqi forces. Special forces will stay to counter al-Qaida. The report says this could--not must but could-- happen in early 2008, depending on circumstances.

The report allows support for General Petraeus and his troops by specifically authorizing a surge, such as the current surge. Because there would still be a significant long-term presence in Iraq, it will signal to the rest of the Middle East to stay out of Iraq.

It aggressively encourages diplomatic efforts. The President of the United States has spoken well of this report recently, and embraced parts of it, but it is not his plan. The Democratic majority has borrowed parts of the Iraq Study Group report, but it is not the Democratic majority plan. That is why the report has a chance to work. It has the seeds of a bipartisan consensus.

We six or eight, or hopefully more, will introduce our legislation in June, making the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group the policy of our country and inviting the President to submit a plan based upon those recommendations. I hope President Bush will embrace this strategy. I hope more Senators will.

It is ironic for the oldest democracy, the United States, to be lecturing the youngest democracy, Iraq, about coming up with a political consensus when we, ourselves, can't come up with one. This is the foremost issue facing our country. The Iraq Study Group report is the most promising strategy for a solution: getting out of the combat business in Iraq and into the support, equipping, and training business in a prompt and honorable way.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, our country does not have just some of the best colleges and universities in the world. It has almost all of them. Our higher education system is our secret weapon in America's competition in the world marketplace. It is the cornerstone of the brainpower advantage that last year permitted our country to produce thirty percent of the world's wealth, measured by gross domestic product-- for just 5 percent of the world's people.

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, to her credit, established a commission 2 years ago to examine all aspects of higher education to make certain that we do all we can to preserve excellence in this secret weapon and access to it. Among other things, the commission called for more accountability in higher education.

The commission got the part about accountability right. We in Congress have a duty to make certain that the billions we allocate to higher education are spent wisely.

Unfortunately, the commission headed in the wrong direction when it proposed how to achieve accountability. In its report, and in the negotiated rulemaking process, the Department of Education proposed a complex system of accountability to tell colleges how to accept transfer students, how to measure what students are learning, and how colleges should accredit themselves.

I believe excellence in American higher education comes from institutional autonomy, markets, competition, choice for students, federalism and limited Federal regulation.

The Department is proposing to restrict autonomy, choice, and competition.

Such changes are so fundamental that only Congress should consider them. For that reason, if necessary, I will offer an amendment to the Higher Education Act to prohibit the Department from issuing any final regulations on these issues until Congress acts. Congress needs to legislate first. Then the Department can regulate.

Instead of pursuing this increased Federal regulation, I have suggested to the Secretary a different course.

First, convene leaders in higher education--especially those who are leading the way with improved methods of accountability and assessment and let them know in clear terms that if colleges and universities do not accept more responsibility for assessment and accountability, the Federal Government will do it for them.

Second, establish an award for accountability in higher education like the Baldrige Award for quality in American business. The Baldrige Award, granted by the Department of Commerce, encourages a focus on quality in American business. It has been enormously successful, causing hundreds of businesses to change their procedures to compete for the prize. I believe the same kind of award--or awards for different kinds of higher education institutions--would produce the same sort of result for accountability in higher education.

Finally, make research and development grants to states, institutions, accreditors and assessment researchers to develop new and better appropriate measures of accountability.

This combination of jawboning, creating a Baldrige-type prized for accountability and research and development for better assessment techniques will in, my judgment, do a better and more comprehensive job of encouraging accountability in higher education than anything Federal regulation can do.

If I am wrong, then we in Congress and the U.S. Department of Education can step in and take more aggressive steps.

Are there some things wrong with the American higher education system? Of course.

And in my testimony in Nashville last year before the Secretary's Commission on the Future of Higher Education I detailed some of them.

One is the failure of colleges of education to prepare school leaders to raise our k-12 system to the level of our higher education system.

Two is the growing political one-sidedness that has infected many campuses. Too often true diversity of thought is discouraged in the same of a preferred brand of diversity.

Third, is the rising cost of tuition and large amount of students debt although costs are lower than most Americans realize and the reason for the increase is primarily the State failure to fund higher education because of all the money that is being soaked up by rising medicaid costs.

Fourth, there is no doubt that colleges and universities are not as efficient as they should be. Campuses are too vacant in the summer. Faculty teaching loads are too light. And semesters are too short to justify the large expenditures.

Fifth, no one in Washington takes a coordinated look at the tens of billions of dollars spent for higher education. Secretary Spellings is the first to do this, and I applaud her for it, although I had hoped the result would have been less regulation, not more.

Finally, deregulation. There is too much Washington DC, regulation.

Instead of debating how many more regulations we need, if we really are serious about excellence and opportunity, we should be debating which regulations we can get rid of.

The question is whether you believe that excellence in higher education comes from institutional autonomy, markets, competition, choice for students, federalism and limited Federal regulation or whether you don't.

I believe it does. In fact, I have spent most of my public career arguing that we should borrow these principles from higher education where we have excellence and try them in k-12 where we too often don't.

There is plenty of evidence that America's secret weapon is our system of colleges and universities. More Americans go to college than in any country. Most of the best universities of the world are in our country, attracting 500,000 of the brightest students from outside America--many of whom stay to create more good jobs for Americans.

Just a few short weeks ago, after two years of work, the Senate passed the America Competes Act. It authorizes investing $62 billion over 4 years to help our country keep its brainpower advantage so we can keep jobs from going to India and China.

In China, India, in Europe and Latin America countries seeking to improve the incomes of their citizens are seeking to emulate our college and universities because they know that better schools and colleges mean better jobs. The former Brazilian President, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, recently told a group of Senators that the strongest memory of the United States he would take back to his country is the American University. ``The uniqueness, strength and autonomy of the American university,'' Dr. Cardoso said, ``There is nothing like it in the world.'' ``Autonomy'' is the key word in Dr. Cardoso's response.

Deregulating higher education and preserving the autonomy of its institutions--not more Washington, DC, regulation--is the key to preserving the quality of this secret weapon in our effort to keep our high standard of living.

The United States system of higher education is a remarkable system of 6,000 autonomous institutions. Some are public, like the University of Tennessee of which I was once President. Some are private like Vanderbilt and New York University, from which I graduated. Some are Catholic. Some are Jewish. Some are non profit. Some are for profit. Some, like UCLA, are research universities.

Some are trade schools like the Nashville Auto Diesel College which graduate 1300 of the best auto mechanics in the world each year. Some are 2-year community colleges or technical institutes.

Some, like the University of Texas, have 100,000 students. Some, like Valley College in West Virginia have 34 students.

Some like Harvard, have 20,000 applicants for 1,700 freshman places. Some,

like University of Phoenix, accept every student who applies. Some teach sports management and some teach classics.

The largest university is online. In some colleges, most students graduate in four years. In others, most never actually graduate because they are there to learn skills on their way to a new job.

The average tuition private school is $22,218, for a public four year college the average is $5,836, for a public 2-year community college the average is $2,272.

More than half the students who attend these 6,000 institutions have a federal grant or a loan to help them to pay for college.

That means that this year taxpayers will spend $13 billion giving 5.2 million students Federal Pell grants providing up to $4,310 each--which pays the entire cost of attending many 2 year schools and almost three- fourths the cost of a public four year school.

Many States and private institutions and individuals provide generous additional scholarships and loans.

Mr. President, 56,000 Tennessee students each year receive up to $3,800 if they attend a 4-year institution or $1,900 if they attend a year institution.

Georgia's HOPE scholarship and grant programs benefit over 200,000 Georgia students a year, giving them grant and scholarship aid to attend a college or university.

In addition, 14 million students will borrow 66 billion more dollars this year by taking out federal guaranteed loans to help pay for college.

I once asked David Gardner when he was president of the University of California why his institution was one of the world's finest. Without a moment's hesitation he said, ``First, autonomy. Fundamentally the state of California gives us the money, then our board decides how to spend it. This authority has permitted us to set high standards.'' And then he said, ``We have a large amount of federal and state dollars that follow students to the educational institution of their choice.''

So, autonomy, excellence choice--Federal dollars following students to the schools of their choice. That is the California formula for excellence. It is the American formula for excellence since the GI bill for Veterans was enacted in 1944, and veterans were given the opportunity to attend the college of their choice.

Congress could have given the dollars to institutions. Instead, it created this marketplace and fueled it even further with the addition of Pell grants and loans--all following students to the institution of their choice.

Who, then, is the regulator of this marketplace?

Well, first, the marketplace itself. Students armed with scholarship dollars may choose or reject courses and colleges. Colleges must compete to attract faculty. Most Federal grants are awarded competitively after review by peers. Such competition and choice has permitted both excellence and a breadth responding quickly to a changing world that a more highly regulated system never would have. For example, the fastest growing institutions are 2-year colleges and for-profit institutions--the institutions in the closest touch with the rapidly changing global workplace.

The second regulator is the Federal Government. This stack of regulations I have here represent the 7,000--yes, 7,000 regulations-- that each one of the 6,000 colleges and universities who accept federal aid must deal with in order to accept students with Federal grants or loans.

The president of Stanford has estimated it costs 7 cents of every tuition dollar just to deal with federal regulations and loans. Universities have compliance officers and divisions to keep track of regulations from almost every Cabinet agency in Washington.

Then there are the State regulators. The Governor is chairman of the board of all Tennessee public universities. Of course, the State legislature has its say when it passes budget funding public universities. The Tennessee Higher Education Commission reviews budgets, duplicitous programs and standards--and it also has some rules for private universities.

Fundamentally the autonomous college or university regulates itself. As president of the University of Tennessee system of institutions, I had overall responsibility for admissions and standards of quality for faculty and students established by the board of trustees to which I reported. A chancellor supervised each campus. The faculty senate on each campus played a major role.

Then there is also the self-accreditation system--an elaborate, time consuming review of programs in each department for the purpose of determining whether that department held true to its mission and its level of quality.

With these multiple layers of regulation, higher education needs less, not more regulation from Washington, DC. In fact, I believe the greatest threat to excellence of higher education is overregulation, not underfunding.

Not long ago, the president of the North Carolina higher education system--Erskine Bowles--visited me along with several of his presidents of public and private institutions. That system has for years been one of the Nation's best. Their message was, ``Of course accountability is important. We believe in it. But we are the ones to do it and we are doing it.''

The best way for Congress to assure the quality of higher education is to determine that State regulators and accrediting agencies are doing their jobs.