[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 10980-10981]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, in the early 1800s, a perceptive young 
Frenchman came to America, Alexis de Tocqueville. He marveled at our 
new democracy. He wrote a classic book about it. He warned more than 
anything about something he called ``the tyranny of the majority.'' 
That was his worry about the American democracy.
  We now have finished 100 days for a popular new President. He has 
presented a blueprint for the country that is dramatically different 
from what we had before.
  Yesterday, a member of our Republican side moved his desk to the 
other side potentially giving that side of the aisle 60 votes and 
raising the prospect that we would have no check and balance on one-
party rule, the genuine risk of what de Tocqueville called the tyranny 
of the majority. So the question arises, what is the blueprint for this 
popular new President, and is it the kind of change we really want?
  All of us can point to something, as the Republican leader did, to 
Afghanistan and Iraq, of which we approve. I could point to the 
Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan and his focus on paying teachers 
more for teaching well and encouraging charter schools, something I 
greatly support. But both the Senator from Arizona and the Senator from 
Kentucky have pointed out that the blueprint presented by our new 
President has too much spending, too much taxing, and too much debt.
  Especially striking to me is the idea that we would have, in the 10th 
year of the President's budget proposal, $800 billion in interest to 
pay, which is more than we would be spending on defense that year, 
eight times as much as the Federal Government would spend on education 
that year, and eight times as much as it would spend on housing, $800 
billion of interest to pay just on the debt.
  Yet there is another part of this blueprint that worries me, and that 
is too much government. We read that now our Government, through 
taxpayers, owns half of our largest automobile companies.
  In an interview I heard the Environmental Protection Agency 
Administrator say automakers are waiting for the Government to tell 
them what kind of car they ought to build. Already the President has 
fired the President of our largest auto company and our Government is 
telling the company who should be on the boards. I suppose it will be 
saying also what plants should be kept open or closed and what people 
should be paid. That is quite a bit of government. Or banks, instead of 
asking the Congress at the beginning of January for a $1 trillion line 
of credit so we could get the toxic assets out of banks and get credit 
flowing again, so jobs would come back and housing prices would 
stabilize, this new administration spent $1 trillion, a breathtaking, 
unimaginable amount of money, adding it to the debt. What about the 
banks? Well, we are going to own the banks or at least be the major 
shareholder in many of the biggest banks in the world. Again, that 
means politicians and regulators in Washington will be deciding who 
will be the bank president, who will be on the boards, who will get the 
loans, perhaps, and for what purposes the loans could be used.
  Isn't that the kind of thing that got us into trouble in the first 
place, politicians in Washington telling banks to loan money to people 
who could not afford to pay it back? This too much government in the 
first 100 days is not just the result of the recession in which we find 
ourselves. This is not a crowd that believes if you can find it in the 
yellow pages, the Government should not be doing it. This is a 
deliberate choice of more Government.
  As in the case of student loans, the first proposal from the 
President was that we take the amount of Pell grants and add that to 
the automatic spending in the budget, adding another $117 billion to 
the automatic spending over 10 years. This is something that could 
bankrupt our country and it didn't fly. But there is another proposal, 
which is still out there. That would take the entire student loan 
program and cancel the choices that students have, create a big new 
bank, a half-trillion-dollar bank, and have the Department of Education 
make all the loans. That is a massive takeover by the Government.
  Twelve million students today choose to get their loans from private 
lenders. There are 2,000 of those loaning money to students who choose 
to attend Nashville Auto Diesel College or Harvard or Princeton, where 
the Senator from Missouri was an outstanding student. There are 4,400 
campuses that offer this choice. The proposal would be to create a big, 
new, half-trillion-dollar bank that would take all of that over, that 
would make $75 billion of loans in a year. It would make the promising 
new Education Secretary a candidate for banker of the year instead of 
Secretary of the year. It would cause Andrew Jackson, who fought 
against the national bank in his day, to roll over in his grave at what 
his party is doing. It would be Congressmen playing a trick on students 
because the end result would be saying: We are going to borrow the 
money, the U.S. Department of Education, at one-quarter of 1 percent, 
and we are going to lend it to you at 6.8 percent. Then we will turn 
around and give aid to other people that you students are paying for, 
and we Congressmen will take the credit.
  I don't think students will like that. It is all in the name of $94 
billion in savings, but that is exaggerated because the Government 
already admits that it will cost $25 or $30 billion at least for the 
Government to manage the program, and I can't believe the Government is 
a better manager of a bank making 15 million loans a year than banks 
that are set up to do that.
  If the subsidy is too high, lower it; don't cancel the program. That 
is the direction in which we are going. This is an administration with 
a blueprint for a different kind of American future. But it is not the 
kind of American future that Abraham Lincoln saw for the Federal 
Government. In the first years of President Lincoln's administration, 
he not only was involved in the Civil War, but he and the Congress 
passed the Homestead Act and the Land Grant Colleges Act and the 
Transcontinental Railroad Act. They conferred opportunities on 
Americans everywhere, and then the Americans used their own elbow 
grease to make things happen.

[[Page 10981]]

  This administration, this 100 days, is a command-and-control type of 
administration, with regulators and politicians running the banks, 
running the auto companies, and nationalizing student loans. It is an 
opportunity to have a new blueprint of a kind we haven't seen before, 
not one that confers opportunities but a planned America with less 
freedom, with fewer choices, fewer opportunities, a society planned and 
run by Washington regulators and politicians that our children and 
grandchildren cannot afford, not a society that confers opportunities 
and choices for the people.
  In addition, there is the prospect of no check and balance on one-
party rule which risks what the perceptive young Frenchman, Alexis de 
Tocqueville, said in the early 1800s was the greatest threat to the new 
American democracy when he warned about the tyranny of the majority.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Missouri.

                          ____________________