[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 157 (Friday, December 3, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8468-S8472]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    THE NEW PROMISE OF AMERICAN LIFE

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I just returned from the Hudson 
Institute, a distinguished think tank downtown where I made an address 
called the New Promise of American Life--Less From Washington and More 
of Ourselves. It included a panel of the following people: Kate 
O'Beirne of the National Review; Christopher DeMuth, who was formerly 
the head of the American Enterprise Institute; Chester Finn, who runs 
the Fordham Foundation; Bill Kristol, the founder of the Weekly 
Standard; and William Schambra, who is a fellow at the Hudson 
Institute. They commented on what I had to say. It was one of my most 
enjoyable experiences because it was a reprise of something we did in 
1995.
  In 1995, I was a fellow at the institute and I was also touring the 
country trying to persuade Americans that I was the next logical choice 
for President of the United States. That didn't work out exactly right. 
In fact, when I lost, my brother-in-law, who is a preacher, said I 
should think of that political loss as a reverse calling. I have always 
tried to think of it that way. Nevertheless, during that time, Chester 
Finn and I edited a book called ``The New Promise of American Life.'' 
We selected that title because Herbert Croly,

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in 1909, had written a book called ``The Promise of American Life'' 
which really was the progressive manifesto that launched the thinking 
of President Wilson and more recently President Obama.
  Our thought then, in 1995 and 1996--Mr. Kristol, Mr. Schambra, and 
Mr. Finn were all contributors to our volume--was that progressivism 
had gone too far and that we needed less of Washington and more of 
ourselves. That is what we said in 1995. Looking back over that volume, 
that was pretty good advice, but obviously nobody took it. So today the 
Hudson Institute sponsored another forum about the new promise of 
American life. I talked about it, and the people I just mentioned 
commented.
  It was interesting for me in a variety of ways. I ask unanimous 
consent to have printed in the Record the address I made at the 
institute today as well as excerpts from ``The New Promise of American 
Life'' published in 1995, namely, the introduction, the preface, and 
the first chapter.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed the 
in Record, as follows:

Less from Washington and More of Ourselves: The New Promise of American 
                                  Life

      (By Senator Lamar Alexander, Hudson Institute, Dec. 3, 2010)

       A wise political candidate, like a good composer, listens 
     for words and music that resonate with audiences--and then 
     repeats those phrases and melodies over and over again.
       For the phrases that resonated during the 2010 election, we 
     might listen to the senators who were successful.
       In a year when television screens displayed anger, these 
     politicians often talked about hope.
       There were Rand Paul and Pat Toomey evangelizing about 
     spreading free market prosperity instead of dwelling on 
     government austerity.
       Rob Portman and Kelly Ayotte and Roy Blunt and Ron Johnson 
     using their experience to describe ways to make it easier and 
     cheaper to create new private sector jobs, rather than just 
     wringing their hands about ten percent unemployment.
       And Marco Rubio affirming with his life's story America's 
     exceptionalism, instead of lamenting America's decline.
       To be sure, the issues that fired up voters this year were 
     about too much spending, too many taxes, too much debt and 
     too many Washington takeovers.
       But the senators who voters elected to fix these problems 
     are mostly American dreamers who believe that in this country 
     anything still is possible for anyone who will work for it.
       Europeans and others find this to be an irrational view 
     held by citizens in no other country in the world. Yet most 
     of American politics is about setting high goals and dealing 
     with the disappointment of not meeting them and then trying 
     again--all men are created equal, pay any price to defend 
     freedom, no child left behind.
       This is not an enforced Americanism where the government in 
     Washington tells you what to believe. It is a spontaneous 
     patriotism of the kind you get reading Lincoln's second 
     inaugural address, or the oath of allegiance that George 
     Washington's men swore to at Valley Forge, or David 
     McCullough's 1776, or attending citizenship day at any 
     federal courthouse when new citizens from all over the world 
     become Americans.
       The vitality of that dream is why Herbert Croly's book, 
     ``The Promise of American Life,'' written in 1909, still is 
     powerful today. The first chapter of Croly's progressive 
     manifesto could be read with enthusiasm at any Tea Party. But 
     it is the rest of the book that we propose to discuss and 
     dispute in this forum, for in his remaining chapters Croly 
     argues that for individuals to realize the promise of 
     American Life the central government in Washington must play 
     a much larger role. His book launched the progressive 
     movement, featuring first President Wilson and most recently 
     President Obama. His is a strategy of made-in-Washington 
     policies, grand schemes to solve big national problems based 
     upon the assumption that these are things that individual 
     Americans can't do for ourselves.
       In 1995, at the Hudson Institute's request, Checker Finn 
     and I edited a book, which we called ``The New Promise of 
     American Life.'' Checker and I then both were fellows at 
     Hudson and I was touring the country hoping to persuade 
     Americans that I was the logical choice for President of the 
     United States. (The public didn't agree with my logic, 
     prompting my preacher brother-in-law to suggest that I should 
     think of that political loss as a ``reverse calling.'')
       Our book was an attempt to provide intellectual context for 
     the anti-Washington fervor of the moment, a fervor that 
     surges throughout American history. We chose the title ``The 
     New Promise of American Life'' because we believed that 
     progressivism had been carried too far and that what our 
     country now needed was a reverse mirror image of Croly's 
     vision--``Less from Washington and more of ourselves.'' Our 
     idea of America was one created by states, operating 
     community by community, depending upon civic virtue, valuing 
     individual liberty--a nation simply too large and too diverse 
     to be managed successfully by an all-knowing central 
     government in Washington, D.C.
       Speaking of phrases that resonate, my best political one 
     liner at the time was ``Cut Their Pay and Send Them Home'' 
     (referring to Congress), which made few friends in the 
     world's greatest deliberative body in which I now serve.
       Reading what we published 15 years ago, I have been 
     impressed with the prescience of the essays from contributors 
     such as William Kristol, Paul Weyrich, Howard Baker, David 
     Abshire, Francis Fukayama, William Schambra and Diane 
     Ravitch. Their advice resonates as well today as it did then. 
     Reading their advice also reminds me of how little of this 
     advice anyone took. Republicans who were elected in 1994 on 
     the cry of ``No more unfunded federal mandates'' soon were 
     promulgating conservative big-government rules to replace 
     liberal big-government rules. Since 1995, the size of the 
     federal budget has grown 140 percent, the federal debt has 
     grown from $5 to $14 trillion.
       Within the last two years, the progressive solution 
     symphony has been playing in Washington again, reaching a new 
     crescendo with budgets that double the debt in five years and 
     triple it in ten, with government bailouts, and, as one 
     blogger has suggested, the appointment of more new Czars and 
     Czarinas than the Romanovs ever had.
       Seeing the inevitable anti-Washington surge rising again to 
     counter the excesses of progressivism, I suggested to Checker 
     about six weeks ago that we ask Hudson to revisit our 1995 
     book. This forum is the result of that suggestion. After this 
     luncheon address we will hear from a panel that includes 
     three contributors from the 1995 volume--Checker, Bill 
     Kristol and William Schambra--as well as from Chris DeMuth 
     and Kate O'Beirne. Our hope is the same today as it was 
     fifteen years ago: to provide an intellectual context for the 
     latest anti-Washington surge--with the additional hope that, 
     this time, more elected officials listen to and act on our 
     advice.
       To begin the discussion, let me renew a suggestion that I 
     have made before: the new Congress should proceed step-by-
     step in the right direction to solve problems in a way that 
     re-earns the trust of the American people rather than invent 
     comprehensive, conservative big-government schemes in an 
     attempt to correct comprehensive, liberal big-government 
     schemes.
       To make this point, I thought of hanging up in the 
     Republican cloakroom photographs of Nancy Pelosi and Henry 
     Waxman because they symbolize what the federal government has 
     done wrong during the last two years: not just to head in the 
     wrong direction, but to try to go there all at once. This has 
     been government by taking big bites of several big apples and 
     trying to swallow them at the same time, which has had the 
     effect of enraging Republicans and terrifying the independent 
     voters of America.
       During the recent health care debate, I heard a number of 
     times from friends on the other side of the aisle this 
     question: What are Republicans for? My answer was that 
     Democrats would wait a long time if they were waiting for the 
     Republican leader, Sen. McConnell, to roll into the Senate a 
     wheelbarrow filled with a 2,700-page Republican comprehensive 
     health care bill, or, for that matter, a Republican version 
     of a 1,200-page climate change bill or an 800-page 
     immigration bill.
       Congressional action on comprehensive climate change, 
     comprehensive immigration bills, and comprehensive health 
     care have been well-intended but the first two fell of their 
     own weight and the health care law has been subject to 
     multiple efforts to repeal it since the day it passed the 
     Senate a year ago on Christmas Eve in a driving snowstorm.
       What has united almost all Republicans and a majority of 
     Americans against these bills has not only been ideology but 
     also that they were comprehensive. As George Will might 
     write, ``The. Congress. Does. Not. Do. Comprehensive. Well.''
       Two recent articles help to explain the trouble with the 
     Democratic comprehensive approach. The first, which appeared 
     in National Affairs, was written by one of our panelists 
     today, William Schambra, who explained the ``sheer ambition'' 
     of President Obama's legislative agenda as the approach of 
     what Mr. Schambra called a ``policy president.'' Mr. Schambra 
     wrote that the President and most of his advisers have been 
     trained at elite universities to govern by launching ``a host 
     of enormous initiatives all at once--formulating 
     comprehensive policies aimed at giving large social systems--
     and indeed society itself--more rational and coherent forms 
     and functions.''
       Or, in the terms of today's forum, this is the latest 
     outburst of Crolyism or progressivism. Mr. Schambra notes 
     that other most prominent organizational feature of this 
     Obama administration is its reliance on Czars to manage broad 
     areas of policy. In this view, systemic problems of health 
     care, of energy, of education, and of the environment can't 
     be solved in pieces.
       Analyzing Mr. Schambra's article, David Broder of the 
     Washington Post wrote this: ``Historically, that approach has 
     not worked. The progressives failed to gain more than a brief 
     ascendancy and the Carter and Clinton presidencies were 
     marked by striking policy failures.'' The reason for these 
     failures, as Broder paraphrased Schambra, is that ``this

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     highly rational comprehensive approach fits uncomfortably 
     with the Constitution, which apportions power among so many 
     different players.'' Broder then adds this: ``Democracy and 
     representative government are a lot messier than the 
     progressives and their heirs, including Obama, want to 
     admit.''
       In a memorial essay honoring Irving Kristol--Bill Kristol's 
     father--in the Wall Street Journal last year, James Q. Wilson 
     wrote that the law of unintended consequences is what causes 
     the failure of such comprehensive legislative schemes. 
     Explains Wilson: ``Launch a big project and you will almost 
     surely discover that you have created many things that you 
     did not intend to create.'' The latest example of the truth 
     of Mr. Wilson's observation can be seen by anyone watching 
     the new health care law increase premiums, add to the federal 
     debt, cause millions of individual policy holders to lose 
     their policies, cause businesses to postpone adding new jobs, 
     and inflict huge unfunded Medicaid mandates on states--all 
     consequences the sponsors of the law strenuously argued were 
     never intended (although, I have to say, they were all 
     predicted by Republicans).
       Wilson also wrote that neoconservatism, as Irving Kristol 
     originally conceived of it in the 1960s, was not an organized 
     ideology or even necessarily conservative but ``a way of 
     thinking about politics rather than a set of principles and 
     rules. It would have been better if we had been called policy 
     skeptics.''
       This skepticism of Schambra, Wilson and Kristol toward 
     grand legislative policy schemes helps to explain how during 
     the 2010 election the law of unintended consequences made 
     being a member of the so-called ``party of no'' a more 
     electable choice than a member of the so-called party of 
     ``yes, we can.''
       James Q. Wilson also wrote in his essay that respect of the 
     law of unintended consequences ``is not an argument for doing 
     nothing, but it is one, in my view, for doing things 
     experimentally. Try your idea out in one place and see what 
     happens before you inflict it on the whole country,'' he 
     suggests.
       That is why if the Republican Party aspires to be a 
     governing party rather than merely an ideological debating 
     society, the question ``What are Republicans for?'' still is 
     a question that must be answered.
       If you will examine the Congressional Record you will find 
     Republican senators tried to answer the question by following 
     Mr. Wilson's advice, proposing a step-by-step approach to 
     confronting our nation's health care and other challenges 173 
     different times on the floor of the Senate during 2009.
       On health care for example, we first suggested setting a 
     clear goal: that is reducing Americans' costs so that more of 
     them could afford to buy insurance. Then we proposed the 
     first six steps toward achieving that goal: 1. allowing small 
     businesses to pool their resources to purchase health plans; 
     2. reducing junk lawsuits against doctors; 3. allowing the 
     purchase of insurance across state lines; 4. expanding health 
     savings accounts; 5. promoting wellness and prevention; and 
     6. taking steps to reduce waste, fraud and abuse.
       We offered these six proposals in complete legislative 
     text, totaling 182 pages for all six steps. The Democratic 
     majority ridiculed the approach as ``piecemeal,'' in part 
     because our approach was not comprehensive.
       Take another example. In July of 2009, all 40 Republican 
     senators announced agreement on four steps to produce low-
     cost, clean energy and create jobs: 1. create the environment 
     for 100 new nuclear power plants; 2. electrify half our cars 
     and trucks; 3. explore offshore for natural gas and oil; and 
     4. double energy research and development for new forms of 
     clean energy.
       This step-by-step Republican clean energy plan was an 
     alternative to the Kerry-Boxer national energy tax that would 
     have imposed an economy wide cap-and-trade scheme, driving 
     jobs overseas looking for cheap energy and collecting 
     hundreds of billions of dollars each year for a slush fund 
     with which Congress could play.
       Here is still another example, a bipartisan one. In 2005 a 
     bipartisan group of us in Congress asked the National 
     Academies to identify the first 10 steps Congress should take 
     to preserve America's competitive advantage in the world so 
     we could keep growing jobs. The Academies appointed a 
     distinguished panel that recommended twenty such steps. 
     Congress enacted two-thirds of them. The America COMPETES Act 
     of 2007, as we call it, was important legislation, but it was 
     fashioned step-by-step.
       This style of governing squares with my experience as 
     governor of Tennessee during the 1980s. My goal was to raise 
     family incomes for what was then the third-poorest state. As 
     I went along, I found that the best way to move toward this 
     goal was step-by-step--some steps larger, step steps 
     smaller--such as changing banking laws, defending the right-
     to-work, keeping debt and taxes low, recruiting Japanese 
     industry and then recruiting the auto industry, but also 
     building four lane highways so that suppliers could deliver 
     parts to the auto plants just-in-time, and then a 10-step 
     Better Schools program--step one of which made Tennessee the 
     first state to pay teachers more for teaching well. I did not 
     try to turn our whole state upside down at once, but working 
     with leaders of both political parties, I did help it change 
     and grow step by step. Within a few years, Tennessee was the 
     fastest growing state in family incomes.
       What do this approach and these examples have to suggest to 
     Republicans as we look toward a new session of Congress? As a 
     result of the 2010 elections, we have enough clout to stop 
     risky, comprehensive schemes featuring more taxes, debt and 
     Washington takeovers replete with hidden and unexpected 
     surprises. And we have enough clout to suggest alternative 
     approaches for the most urgent problems of the day. In fact 
     we have an obligation to do so if we want to be able to 
     persuade independent voters as well as Republicans that we 
     ought to be the governing party in American after 2012.
       It is no mystery what our country's focus should be: jobs, 
     debt and terror. Jobs and debt dominated the 2010 election.
       Applying the step-by-step, rather than comprehensive, 
     approach our first goal therefore should be to make it easier 
     and cheaper to create private sector jobs. A quick list of 
     steps comes to mind: don't raise taxes on anybody in the 
     middle of an economic downturn; repeal one-by-one the 
     mandates on job creators in the health care law; reduce the 
     corporate tax rate; reduce or eliminate the tax on capital 
     gains; defend the secret ballot in union elections; defend 
     states' ability to protect the right to work; create the 
     environment for 100 new nuclear power plants; double research 
     and development for clean energy; build a first class 
     transportation system; repeal the so-called consumer 
     protection agency in the financial regulation law; and enact 
     Korea, Colombia, and Panama free trade laws.
       I would add repeal the health care law entirely, although 
     this might seem to be a comprehensive act violating the 
     Wilson-Kristol-Schambra step-by-step doctrine. Such a 
     comprehensive undoing carries the risk of scaring 
     independents, but as a practical matter there is no good way 
     to deal with that historic mistake other than by repealing 
     and replacing it with a step-by-step approach reducing health 
     care costs. In addition, most of its provisions do not take 
     effect until 2014.
       The same step-by-step approach can be applied to the second 
     goal: making annual spending come as close to revenues as 
     soon as possible. Trying to eliminate the annual deficit in 
     the first year would turn the nation upside down. It is at 
     points like this that the photographs of Pelosi and Waxman in 
     the cloakroom become useful.
       But for a nation that is borrowing 42 cents of every dollar 
     to wait one day longer to begin to address its debt is 
     suicidal. There are steps that can and should be taken 
     immediately, while larger steps are being fashioned:
       For example, step one could be no new entitlement automatic 
     spending programs. In other words, don't dig the hole any 
     deeper as would the President's budget proposal to shift a 
     half trillion dollars in Pell grants over ten years to 
     mandatory spending.
       No more unfunded federal mandates on state and local 
     governments. The Democratic governor of Tennessee, which has 
     a $1.5 billion revenue shortfall this year, estimates that 
     the new health care law will impose $1.1 billion in unfunded 
     Medicaid mandates on our state between 2014 and 2019.
       Caps on discretionary spending. While this is only one-
     third of the budget, even non-defense discretionary spending 
     increased by an average of 6.2% each year under President 
     Bush and by an average of 15% over the last two years under 
     President Obama. These dollars add up.
       Take the half trillion in Medicare savings that the new 
     health care law spent on new entitlement programs and use it 
     to make Medicare solvent.
       Adopt a two-year budget--this would allow Congress to spend 
     every other year on oversight, repealing and revising laws 
     and regulations that are out of date or wasteful.
       Give the rest of the government's General Motors stock to 
     every American who paid federal income taxes last April.
       I also support a 2-year earmark ban--Earmarks have become a 
     symbol of wasteful Washington spending; there are too many of 
     them and too many for less-than-worthy purposes. This process 
     needs to be cleaned up, but this is more about good 
     government than saving money since even unworthy projects are 
     paid for by reducing spending in other places; and long-term 
     it turns the checkbook over to the president at a time when 
     most Americans voted for a check on the presidency.
       Fifteen years ago Republicans captured control of Congress 
     during one of those recurring outbursts when American voters 
     announced that they wanted less of Washington, and more 
     freedom for themselves. That advice was not well heeded, and 
     now we find ourselves the political beneficiaries of another 
     such outburst and an opportunity to lay the groundwork to be 
     a governing party within two years.
       My hope is that this time, Republicans heed the advice of 
     Wilson, Schambra, and Kristol, that rather than attempt 
     comprehensive conservative schemes, we keep our eye on the 
     goals that matter most--making it easier and cheaper to 
     create private sector jobs; reduce spending closer to 
     revenues; and dealing in a tough, strategic way with 
     terrorism. And that we proceed step-by-step toward those 
     goals in a way that re-earns the trust of the American 
     people.
       We should give Hebert Croly credit for reminding us in 1909 
     in the first chapter of his Promise of American Life that 
     this is still the one country in the world where most people 
     believe that anything is possible and that anyone can succeed 
     if he or she works hard. This is a country where your 
     grandfather can tell you, as mine did, ``Aim for

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     the top; there's more room there,'' and really believe it.
       Hopefully, Republicans who were elected in 2010 will follow 
     their instinct not just to oppose the excesses of Croly's 
     progressivism but to offer a new promise of American life. 
     That they will continue to remind Americans that this debate 
     is not some dry, dusty analysis but a contest of competing 
     governing philosophies about how to realize the dream of an 
     upstart, still new nation in which most people still believe 
     that anything is possible. Our argument is that our country's 
     exceptionalism is best realized by the largest number of 
     Americans when we expect less of Washington, and more of 
     ourselves.

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the premise of my remarks was that we 
don't do comprehensive very well in the U.S. Congress. That was 
challenged by some of the conservatives on the panel today. That was my 
point. My suggestion was that those who were elected in the 2010 
election not make the same mistakes as those elected before made, 
which, in my opinion, was not just to head in the wrong direction but 
to try to do it all at once. It is one thing to think comprehensively; 
it is another thing to act comprehensively. There have been multiple 
attempts to repeal the health care law from the day it passed. Our 
efforts at comprehensive immigration and comprehensive climate change 
fell of their own weight.
  I am tempted, as I am sure most people are, to make comprehensive 
changes. We talked about some examples with the panel. Take education. 
I suppose I have had about every position on education reform possible. 
I have been for abolishing the Department of Education. I have been the 
U.S. Department of Education Secretary. I have been both.
  I remember as a Governor in 1981, I went to see President Reagan and 
asked him to swap all of elementary and secondary education for 
Medicaid. In other words, the Federal Government would take all of 
Medicaid and the States would have all of elementary and secondary 
education.
  The Presiding Officer is from the State of Minnesota, where there is 
a high value placed on education. My own view is that the high value 
placed on education by the communities of Minnesota does much more to 
assure quality education than anything we could do here. I thought if 
we got rid of the idea that Washington could make our schools better, 
those in the communities of Tennessee would feel more responsibility.
  President Reagan liked that, but it didn't get anywhere. Most big 
comprehensive schemes don't. Our country is too big and complicated and 
too diverse. Our constitutional system separates power into too many 
places. And on top of that, we just are not smart enough to figure out 
a solution for all the many different things that are happening in this 
country.
  My advice in this address is that those who were elected in 2010 head 
in a different direction. We talked a lot about less government, less 
taxes. We talked about fewer Washington takeovers. We don't like all 
the czars and czarinas. There are more of them than the Romanovs ever 
imagined. But as we head in a different direction, I suggest that we go 
step by step to attempt to re-earn the trust of the American people.
  There used to be signs that said: Think globally, act locally. I 
think we might think comprehensively but act step by step. Because if 
we don't, there are two dangers. One is that we won't succeed. It will 
be a lot easier, for example, to fix No Child Left Behind, the 
education law, than it will be to comprehensively reauthorize it. It is 
a 1,000-page law filled with provisions backed by those with vested 
interests--Members of Congress, teachers unions, principals, people all 
over the country. Comprehensively reauthorizing it will be hard to do. 
But if we want to fix it, we can probably pick four or five or six 
things we need to fix and maybe, in a bipartisan way, go step by step 
to do that.
  If we want clean energy, comprehensive, economy-wide cap and trade 
proved too much to swallow here. But we could create an environment for 
100 new nuclear plants. We should be able to encourage electric cars. 
We should be able to double energy research and development. Those are 
steps in the right direction.
  We took steps in the right direction with the America Competes Act. 
We did that in a bipartisan way.
  Our overwhelming priorities today are jobs, debt, and terror. We are 
not likely to solve any of those problems all at once. We might think 
comprehensively about how to do it, but we need to act step by step.
  For example, our goal would be to make it easier and cheaper to 
create private sector jobs. That should be the first goal. Especially 
on this side of the aisle, we believe that raising taxes on anybody--
anybody--in the middle of an economic downturn makes no sense, because 
it makes it harder to create private sector jobs. But that is only one 
step.
  If I were to make my list, I would add to that list: reducing the 
corporate income tax so our corporations can be competitive in the 
world, and I would say defend the right to work and the secret ballot 
in union elections. I would also say build a first-class transportation 
system. I would also say increase funding for research and development 
at major universities because it is that brainpower that creates jobs 
for us. So there are many different steps we would take to create a 
pro-growth economy. Take the issue of debt. We have a debt commission 
report today which has attracted all of our attention. We have a 
horrendous problem with Federal debt. Mr. President, 42 cents out of 
every dollar we are spending is borrowed. If we try to fix it all at 
once, the country would collapse. But if we wait another day to begin 
to fix it, we should be ashamed. We can take steps. We can say caps on 
discretionary spending. That is a third of the budget. We can say no 
new entitlement automatic spending programs. Let's not dig the hole any 
deeper. We could say, let's have a 2-year budget so every other year we 
can devote the year to reviewing the regulations we have and laws we 
have and the rules we have, so we can get rid of some of them. We may 
need some new laws, but let's get rid of some of the old ones.
  I stood right here on the floor of the Senate a couple years ago and 
voted against the Higher Education Act. Now, here I am a former 
university president and Education Secretary and so-called education 
Governor, and education is my passion--I say to the Presiding Officer, 
if another Senator comes to the floor, I will be glad to yield the 
floor--but I voted against the Higher Education Act. Why did I do that? 
During the debate, I got permission to bring to the floor all of the 
regulations that now exist under the current Higher Education Act.
  You have to ask for unanimous consent to bring demonstrative evidence 
on the floor. I had to do that once with Minnie Pearl's hat. I had it 
here in the drawer, but I could not bring it out unless I asked 
unanimous consent, which I got. And I got it to bring all these 
regulations.
  And what I said was that I am voting against this act because 
reauthorization of the act would double the stack of regulations.
  So all of these things have to do with debt, limited government, and 
spreading prosperity and spreading freedom. So my argument is basically 
that those of us who are in the Republican Party, those of us who this 
year won more of the elections--we know what it is like to be on the 
other side. Two years ago, we hardly won anything. Two years before 
that, we got elected one Republican Senator. But those of us who are on 
the winning side this time I think would do well to head in a different 
direction. Yes, make it easier and cheaper to create private sector 
jobs, get to work on the debt, be strategic and tough about terror, be 
resolute about the direction we are going, but do it step by step. We 
are more likely to be able to persuade people to do it. When we are 
through, we may be more likely to persuade them to live under those 
rules and regulations.
  When you do it comprehensively, when you bite off more than you can 
chew, when you offer a 2,000-page solution to anything--whether it is a 
comprehensive liberal solution or progressive solution or whether it is 
a comprehensive conservative solution--you are likely to frighten--
well, you are likely to make angry the people on the other side and 
scare the independent voters half to death. As a result, you will not 
succeed.
  We as Republicans have a chance in the next 2 years to prove to the 
Nation we deserve to be the governing party.

[[Page S8472]]

We are not today. There is a Democratic President and there is a 
Democratic Senate and there is a Republican House. So if we want to 
make progress, we have to work together when we can form a consensus.
  But if we want the privilege of being more than an ideological 
debating society and being actually a governing party, we have to re-
earn the trust of the American people. We have to say: What are 
Republicans for? I am suggesting that when we say what we are for, we 
pick our goals--make it easier and cheaper to create private sector 
jobs, reduce spending closer to revenues, be tough and strategic on 
terror--and then we go step by step in that direction, and we take 
people with us and we gain their support.
  I have mentioned on this floor before the example of the civil rights 
laws. Slavery was the greatest injustice in our country's history. It 
plagued us from the day of our country's founding. Our Founders punted 
on the subject, and then we tore ourselves apart in a war, and then we 
waited a century to do much about it. By any intellectual standard, by 
any moral standard, we should have fixed that all at once. But Lyndon 
Johnson, who was the majority leader at the time, knew better than to 
try to do that. In fact, he knew he could not do that. So starting in 
1958 and then in 1964 and then in 1968 and then in 1975 were the major 
civil rights laws in the country. We went step by step to realize the 
promise of American life: that all men and women are created equal.
  Now, it is easy to sit somewhere and say: Well, that went too slow, 
and a comprehensive approach toward civil rights would have been the 
right thing to do. It would have been the right thing to do, but it 
never would have happened.
  There is one other problem with it: it would not have been accepted 
by the country. The civil rights laws of 1964 and 1968, during a time 
of Democratic majorities and a Democratic President, were written--
where?--in the office of the Republican leader of the U.S. Senate, 
Everett Dirksen.
  Now, why did President Johnson do that? Well, you can say he did not 
need the votes. He had huge majorities in the House and in the Senate. 
Well, it was a little more complicated than that because he had 
southern Democrats, and they were against it. So first he needed the 
votes to pass the bill. But the thing President Johnson understood so 
well was that he not only needed to pass the bill, he needed the 
country to accept it. And as controversial as the Civil Rights Act of 
1968 was--the one written down the hall in the Republican leader's 
office by a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress--as 
controversial as it was, when it was over, Senator Russell of Georgia, 
for whom a building here is named, went to Georgia and said: I fought 
this for 30 years, but it is the law of the land, and we obey it. 
Lyndon Johnson knew that going step by step in the right direction was 
the right way to get where our country had to go.
  So we have some big challenges ahead of us, and some of them we will 
be able to do in a bipartisan way. I hope we can do that with No Child 
Left Behind. Let's fix it with four or five or six steps. Arne Duncan 
has some good ideas. They are very consistent with the ideas of a 
number of Democrats and a number of Republicans. That would be a start. 
The America Competes Act we should authorize at some point. That would 
be another step we could take. I think we have some steps on clean 
energy.
  There are some areas where we will disagree. We are going to have 
some Republican ideas about making it easier and cheaper to create 
private sector jobs that our friends on the other side will honestly 
disagree with. We are having one of those disagreements this weekend 
because we believe it makes no sense to raise taxes on anybody in the 
middle of an economic downturn if your goal is to make it easier and 
cheaper to create private sector jobs, and they have a little different 
view. So we will have votes on that.
  So we will have our differences of opinion. But if we want to be 
successful, we as a country--and if we as a party, the Republican 
Party, want to be successful in earning the trust of the American 
people to prove we are eligible, qualified, worthy of being a governing 
party after 2012, then we better set our clear goal: make it easier and 
cheaper to create private sector jobs and go step by step toward that 
goal, explaining carefully what we are doing, attracting independent 
voters, keeping independent voters, so that when we pass a law, the 
country accepts it, and then we move on ahead.
  So that is what our discussion was about today, and it is an 
important discussion. It is not just some dusty, dry thing. Herbert 
Croly's book in 1909, ``The Promise of American Life,'' is the 
manifesto for the progressive movement that has ascended in this 
country right now. And our idea of less from Washington and more of 
ourselves is an intellectual context for the antidote to that. It is 
for the resurgent movement in America that began with President 
Jefferson's yeoman farmer, with his distrust in the Federal Government 
and his skepticism of great big policy schemes imposed from Washington. 
That is the grand debate of the last century, and it is the one we are 
in the midst of today.
  So I thank the Senate for giving me an opportunity to present my 
thoughts. I thank my colleagues who attended the Hudson Institute 
discussion today. And I especially urge my Republican colleagues to 
remember that if we want to re-earn the trust of the American people, 
we need to set the right goals and move in that direction, step by 
step. We will have to be a little patient to get there, but that is a 
good way to get where we want to go.
  I see the distinguished Senator from the University of Arkansas on 
the floor.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. McCASKILL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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