Douglas Alexander

the House voted recently 405 to 2 to extend the current Internet tax moratorium which expires at the end of this month. They voted to extend it for 4 more years. I believe the Senate should do the same thing and do it before the end of the…

a lot is being said about whether Ken Burns included enough Latinos in his new television series on World War II. This is one more reminder that ``pluribus'' comes easy, but ``unum'' is hard. It would be a lot easier if ``e pluribus…

The strongest message I received, both in Iraq and in Tennessee, was this--not that we get out, not that we even win a victory of the kind we won in Japan or Germany, but it is time for the United States Government to speak with one voice…

I would not want all the accolades to Senator Kennedy to come from that side of the aisle. Forty years ago, in 1967, I came to this body as a very young legislative aide to Senator Howard Baker, and Ted Kennedy was a very young Senator but…

I would suggest that the America COMPETES Act will be as important as any piece of legislation the Congress passes in this session, and it has taken as much work as any piece of legislation that has been passed in this session. The point…

today I joined Senators Klobuchar and Lieberman in introducing the Regional Presidential Primary and Caucus Act. Our legislation would establish a rotating schedule of regional presidential primaries and caucuses. We introduced this…

after 9/11, the 9/11 Commission recommended that in light of the terrorism our country faces, we begin to study how we can have more secure identification cards. A number of the terrorists had stolen cards or had fraudulent cards or had ID…

Seventeen State legislatures, including Tennessee, have passed legislation against REAL ID. We do not want it. We want something else. But for those who do have it, they have to get cracking because it says here: States have to be ready to…

this amendment, the Alexander-Collins- Voinovich-Warner amendment, has to do with the law we call REAL ID. I will describe REAL ID in a moment, but fundamentally what the amendment proposes is to offer $300 million in funding to the States…

I hope my friends in the university community will see in me someone who values higher education, who defends the importance of it in our society, who is working hard to keep our brainpower advantage in the world marketplace, who supports…

I strongly resist saying that the Federal Government ought not to have anything to say about whether the Nashville Auto Diesel College ought to be required to accept a transfer of credit from the Harvard classics department. I am not sure…

I wish to say a few words--general words--about the student loan program in our country. The Direct Loan program--the program by which the Federal Government itself loans money to college students across our country--began when I was the…

with this political stunt tonight, the Senate has reached the approximate level of the Iraqi Parliament in dealing with the war on Iraq. There will be no more votes for a fixed deadline for withdrawal from Iraq at 3 a.m. than there would…

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…

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…

I compliment both Senators from New Mexico for their work on energy. 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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…