[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 132 (Thursday, September 8, 2011)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5397-S5399]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, tonight we welcome President Obama to
the Congress to deliver a jobs address. The President will be coming at
a time when we have had persistent unemployment at a greater rate than
at any time since the Great Depression. No one should blame our
President for problems with an economy that he inherited, but the
President should take responsibility for making the economy worse.
Unemployment is up. The debt is up. Housing values are down. The
morning paper reports we may be on our way--at least the chances are
50-50, the newspaper says this morning--to a double-dip recession. The
number of unemployed Americans is up about 2 million since the
President took office. The amount of Federal debt is up about $4
trillion.
As I mentioned in discussing the proposals of the Senator from
Nebraska, the President's policies, rather than helping over the last
2\1/2\ years, have thrown a big wet blanket over private sector job
creation. They have made it more expensive and more difficult for the
private sector to create jobs for Americans.
Let me be specific about that. The President chose, 2 years ago,
rather than to focus exclusively on jobs, to focus on health care. His
proposal was to expand a health care delivery system that already cost
too much, that was already too expensive. So we have new health care
taxes and mandates that make the economy worse.
Why do I say that? I met, for example, with the chief executive
officers of several of the nation's largest restaurant companies. They
reminded me that restaurants and hospitality organizations in the
United States are the largest employers, outside of government, and
that their employees are mostly young and mostly low income. One of the
chief executives said because of the mandates of the health care law it
would take all of his profits from last year to pay the costs, when it
is fully implemented, so he will not be
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investing in any new restaurants in the United States. Another said
they operate with 90 employees per store, but as a result of the
mandates and taxes in the health care law, their goal will be to
operate with 70 employees per store. One of the largest employers is
saying instead of having 90 employees per store, we are going to have
70. That doesn't help create new jobs in the United States.
Let's take the debt. The President inherited the debt but he has made
it worse. The economists who look at debt say we are heading toward a
level that will cost us, in the United States, 1 million jobs every
year.
Undermining the right-to-work law--the President's appointees to the
National Labor Relations Board have told the Nation's largest
manufacturer of large airplanes that they cannot build a plant in South
Carolina. It is the first new plant to build large airplanes in 40
years in this country. The Boeing Company sells those airplanes
everywhere in the world. It could build them anywhere in the world. We
want them to build them in the United States. Those kinds of actions by
the National Labor Relations Board make it worse.
Regulations that put a big wet blanket over job creation, such as the
one the Senator from Nebraska talks about, make it worse. The
President's refusal to send trade agreements to Congress makes it
worse. Let's be clear about this. Since the day the President took
office, he has had on his desk three trade agreements, already signed
by both countries. They simply need approval by Congress--one with
Panama, one with South Korea, one with Colombia. We are ready to
approve them in a bipartisan way if he will send them here. What will
that mean in Tennessee? We make a lot of auto parts in Tennessee. We
can sell them to South Korea. At the present time, Europeans sell them
to South Korea at a lower price because of the tariff situation,
because the President has not sent the three trade agreements to
Congress. So all these steps have made the economy worse. Of course,
with a bad economy home values have stayed down. That is making it
worse, too.
So what can we do about this? What are the kinds of things the
President could talk about tonight and that we could work on together
to make it easier and cheaper to create private sector jobs? We could
change the tax structure in a permanent way, not short-term fixes but
long-term lowering of tax rates for everyone, closing loopholes,
creating a situation where our businesses are more competitive in the
world marketplace. That is one thing we could do.
We could stop the avalanche of regulations that is throwing the big
wet blanket over job growth. The Senator from Nebraska suggested a
few--a moratorium on new regulations; avoiding guidance, as he
suggested, that circumvents the rules or regulations; stopping wacky
ideas such as regulating farm dust, as if everybody did not know that
all farms create dust.
More exports--the President could send, today, the three trade
agreements to Congress. We could ratify them and then crops grown in
Tennessee and Nebraska and every other State in this country, and auto
parts, and medical devices, could be sold around the world. Our State
alone has $23 billion and tens of thousands of jobs tied up in exports.
This could add to that.
In addition to that, we could agree on advanced research. The
President's recommendations have been good on that. But we should agree
on that and move ahead with appropriations bills and a fiscal situation
that permits us to do the kind of advanced research we need to do to
create jobs.
We need to fix No Child Left Behind. Better schools mean better jobs.
We need a long-term highway bill. We need roads and bridges in order to
have the kind of country we want. We need to find more American energy
and use less. We should be able to agree on that.
There is an agenda, not of more spending, not of more taxes, not of
more regulation, but an agenda that would make it easier and cheaper to
create private sector jobs and get the economy moving again.
In another time a President named Eisenhower said ``I should go to
Korea'' and he was elected President. He went to Korea before he was
inaugurated and then he said ``I shall focus my time on this single
objective until I see it all the way through to the end.'' The country
felt good about that, they had confidence in him, he did that, and the
Korean war was ended.
President Obama chose, instead of focusing on jobs 2\1/2\ years ago
in the same sort of Presidential way, to expand a health care delivery
system that already was too expensive and in fact makes the problem
worse. Tonight is an opportunity to make it better and we are ready to
join with him in doing that, especially if he were to recommend lower
tax rates, fewer loopholes on a permanent basis, fewer regulations, and
if he were to send the three trade agreements to us to ratify.
I wish to turn my attention to a different subject. September 11 is
Sunday. I listened carefully, as most of us in the Senate do, to words
that seem to resonate with my audiences. I have consistently found
there is one sentence that I usually cannot finish without the audience
interrupting me before breaking into applause, and it is this: ``It is
time to put the teaching of American history and civics back into its
rightful place in our schools so our children can grow up learning what
it means to be an American.'' The terrorists who attacked us on
September 11 were not just lashing out at buildings and people. They
were attacking who we are as Americans. Most Americans know this, and
that is why there has been a national hunger for leadership and
discussion about our values. Parents know our children are not being
taught our common culture and our shared values.
National tests show that three-fourths of the Nation's 4th, 8th, and
12th graders are not proficient in civics knowledge, and one-third
don't even have basic knowledge, making them civic illiterates. That is
why I made making American history and civics the subject of my maiden
speech when I first came to the Senate in 2003, and by a vote of 90 to
0 the Senate passed my bill to create summer residential academies for
outstanding teachers of American history and civics. Every year I bring
them on the Senate floor, and those teachers from all over our country
have a moment to think about this Senate. They usually go find a desk
of the Senator from Alaska, if they are an Alaskan teacher, or the
Senator from Tennessee, or Daniel Webster's desk, or Jefferson Davis's
desk, and they stop and think about our country in a special way.
The purpose of those teachers is better teaching, and the purpose of
the academy is more learning of key events, key persons, key ideas, and
key documents that shape the institutions of the democratic heritage of
the United States.
If I were teaching about September 11, these are some of the issues I
would ask my students to consider. No. 1, is September 11 the worst
thing that ever happened to the United States? Of course the answer is
no, but I am surprised by the number of people who say yes. It saddens
me to realize that those who make such statements were never properly
taught about American history. Many doubted that we would win the
Revolutionary War. The British sacked Washington and burned the White
House to the ground in the War of 1812. In the Civil War we lost more
Americans than in any other conflict, with brother fighting against
brother. The list goes on. Children should know why we made those
sacrifices and fought for the values that make us exceptional.
The second question I would talk about is, What makes America
exceptional? I began the first session of a course I taught at
Harvard's Kennedy School of Government 10 or 11 years ago by making a
list of 100 ways America is exceptional, unique--not always better but
unique. America's exceptionalism has been a source of fascination ever
since Tocqueville's trip across America in 1830 when he met Davy
Crockett and Jim Bowie on the Mississippi River. His book, ``Democracy
in America,'' is the best description of America's unique ideals in
action. Another outstanding text is ``American Exceptionalism'' by
Seymour Martin Lipset.
A third question I ask my students is, Why is it you cannot become
Japanese or French, but you must become an American? If I were to
immigrate to Japan, I could not become Japanese. I
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would always be an American living in Japan. But if a Japanese citizen
came here, they could become an American, and we would welcome that
person with open arms. Why? It is because our identity is not based on
ethnicity but on a creed of ideas and values in which most of us
believe.
The story Richard Hofstadter wrote:
It is our fate as a nation not to have ideologies, but to
be one.
To become American citizens immigrants must take a test demonstrating
their knowledge of American history and civics.
Fourth, what are the principles that unite us as Americans? In
Thanksgiving remarks after the September 11 attacks, President George
W. Bush praised our Nation's response to terror. ``I call it the
American character,'' he said.
Former Vice President Gore, in his speech after the attacks, said:
We should fight for the values that bind us together as a
country.
In my Harvard course that I mentioned, we put together a list of some
of those values: liberty, e. pluribus unum, equal opportunity,
individualism, rule of law, free exercise of religion, separation of
church and state, laissez-faire, and the belief in progress, the idea
that anyone can do anything. Anything is possible if we agree on those
principles.
I would say to my students, Why is there so much division in American
politics? Just because we agree on the values doesn't mean we agree on
how to apply those values. Most of our politics, in fact, is about the
hard work of applying those principles to our everyday lives. When we
do, we often conflict.
For example, when discussing President Bush's proposals to let the
Federal Government fund faith-based charities, we know, in God we
trust--we have it here in the Senate--but we also know we don't trust
government with God. When considering whether the Federal Government
should pay for scholarships that middle- and low-income families might
use at any accredited school--public, private, or religious--some
object that the principle of equal opportunity can conflict with the
principle of separation of church and state.
What does it mean to be an American? After September 11, I proposed
an idea I call Pledge Plus Three. Why not start each school day with
the Pledge of Allegiance--as many schools still do--and then ask a
teacher or a student to take 3 minutes to explain what it means to be
an American. I would bet the best 3-minute statements of what it means
to be an American would come from the newest Americans. At least that
was the case with my university students. The newest Americans
appreciated this country the most and could talk about it the best.
Ask students to stand and raise their right hands and recite the oath
of allegiance just as immigrants do when they become American citizens.
This is an oath that goes all the way back to the days of George
Washington and Valley Forge. It reads like it was written in a tavern
by a bunch of patriots in Williamsburg late one night. I recited this
with my right hand up during a speech I recently gave on my American
history and civics bill. It is quite a weighty thing and startles the
audience to say:
I absolutely renounce and abjure all allegiance and
fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or
sovereignty [and agree to] bear arms on behalf of the United
States when required by the law.
The oath to become an American taken by George Washington and his men
and now taken today in courthouses all across America is a solemn,
weighty matter. Our history is a struggle to live up to the ideas that
have united us and that have defined us from the very beginning, the
principles of what we call the American character. If that is what
students are taught about September 11, they will not only become
better informed, they will strengthen our country for generations to
come.
I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, how much time is left on the majority
side in morning business?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is 19 minutes remaining.
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