The Public Record
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…
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…
Today, Senator Carper and I introduced the Internet Tax Freedom Extension Act of 2007. Other cosponsors were Senators Feinstein, Voinovich, and Enzi. All of those Senators have been interested in this subject for the last few years. The…
I admired him. I respected him. More importantly, I remember the respect Senator Baker and others had for him and for his long and distinguished career. My own father would be 100 years old this year, so I understand the enormous pride…
I salute the Senator from Colorado for his leadership, initiative, and patriotism, and the way he is approaching the foremost issue facing our country: Where do we go from here in Iraq? There is too much partisan game playing on the issue…
Today, I am making that same suggestion again, and I am going one step further. The Senator from Colorado and I are offering to our colleagues on both sides of the aisle--and to our country--a way to go forward on a bipartisan basis. I was…
at the end of March, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued the Salvation Army for allegedly discriminating against two of the Salvation Army's employees in a Boston-area thrift store by requiring them to speak English on…
last week, while the media covered Iraq and U.S. attorneys, the Senate spent 3 days debating and passing perhaps the most important piece of legislation of this 2-year session. Almost no one noticed. The America COMPETES Act, which was the…
let me say to Senator Bingaman, I greatly appreciate working with him. I do not believe there will be a more important piece of legislation to come before Congress this year because it goes right to the heart of something every American…
There are a number of issues before this body that are too big for one party to solve. This has been one of them. But after 2 years of work across party lines, we ended up with 63 cosponsors, 208 pages of legislation. We dealt with 40…
I want to describe how this bill got to the floor because it has been suggested it might not have come through committee. The energy parts of this bill were fully considered by the Energy Committee when it was chaired by Senator Domenici…
I am looking at the authorization bills for fiscal years 2003, 2004, and 2005, which is the current authorization bill. In each of those years--the authorization bill--there is a number for specific authorized allocations for, first…
I know how important the President believes this is. I have talked with him about it at least a half dozen times personally, usually in bipartisan sessions with a number of Senators, sometimes individually. I know the Vice President has…
We had a good discussion yesterday on the America COMPETES Act. To remind all Senators, this is the Reid-McConnell legislation, with 56 cosponsors, which seeks to help our country keep our brainpower advantage so we can keep our jobs. It…
I believe the election last November was as much about the conduct of business in Washington, DC, as it was about the conduct of the war in Iraq. I think most people--and I have said this many times--most people want to see us acting like…
I applaud his work on the math program. Among the other things which are important about the program is that it defines a fair way of identifying a high-need set of teachers--in this case math and science--and when they go into teaching…
I hope our colleagues can see that these senior Members of the Senate--in the case of Senator Kennedy and Senator Enzi, they have a large amount of jurisdiction over this subject; Senator Stevens and Senator Inouye, who spoke yesterday…
I strongly agree with him. Our immigration laws are archaic in this regard. We have 650,000 legal new citizens every year, and we should, in our own interests, allow highly skilled men and women--the brightest people in the world who come…
The American people know we all have our principles, and we have our politics. They know that. But I believe they also know there are some issues that are simply too big for one party to solve, whether it is Iraq, whether it is…
Mr. President, our former colleague Zell Miller was Lieutenant Governor of Georgia when I was a Governor. He was a professor by profession and he was always interested in education and very skillful in education policy. Every Governor I…
The Governor of Virginia has asked our country to take a moment of silence to remember the tragedy this week at Virginia Tech at noon today. It is also a good time for us to think about our responsibilities in the U.S. Congress. There is…
we will have plenty of time to debate this next week, so I will reserve most of my comments until then, but let me reiterate some of the major provisions that are here. As Senator Bingaman said, this is only an authorization bill. It is…
I am pleased that Senator Joe Lieberman, of Connecticut, who chairs a key environmental subcommittee, will be the bill's lead cosponsor, so it will be known as the Alexander-Lieberman Clean Air Climate Change Act of 2007. It will establish…
Senator Lieberman and I don't have all the answers with this legislation. I feel much more comfortable with this legislation today than I did with any I helped introduce last year or the year before because I have learned a lot more. But I…
I hope very much that we do that. That is our responsibility. It is too big a problem for one party to solve, and we should work on it in a bipartisan way. Today, I want to talk about legal immigration as opposed to illegal immigration…
Politicians like Douglas Alexander
