Lamar Alexander

I think maybe there was some feeling that, 'Well, if they ask these questions, then they're going to ask more questions.'

I know your deep interest in this, and strong feelings about it.

I hope you would--I was trying to do such a good job in encouraging accountability that I forgot to say...

I'm trying to align myself with Senator Durbin, too, so that he'll put more money in for the Opportunity Scholarship Program.

For public schools. But for independent schools.

I mean, what I'm getting at--let me go over to Ms. Rhee.

I think I asked you earlier, do you know how--

I don't think President Obama's made a better appointment than Arne Duncan, the Secretary of Education.

Education is the key to unlocking the potential of our children.

I think we want choice so that children can opt into better situations that ensure their learning is going on.

I think the intent, here, is--I hope--is simply to say, 'We want to make sure that the charter schools are working.'

Every child deserves a chance to succeed, and education is key.

I am asking you about a mandate. We have a mandate for wind and solar, really, mainly wind is the practical effect.

But it excludes nuclear power.

So why don't we have a clean energy standard or why don't we have a base-load clean energy standard and a renewable energy standard?

Well, we wouldn't want to destroy the environment in the name of saving the environment.

The biggest subsidies by far go to wind, which is 19 times per kilowatt hour times the subsidy for nuclear.

The relative cost of building a comparable amount of nuclear and wind would be about the same.

I believe that anyone who is very fervently for nuclear power should be for this type of global warming legislation.

So my question will be why not have a clean energy standard or a base-load standard that includes nuclear?

There would be more under building 100 nuclear power plants, a lot more, than there would be under building even 180,000 wind turbines.

The subsidy costs for nuclear to build 20 percent of our electricity from carbon-free would be about $17.5 billion over 10 years.

Maybe what we need is a base-load clean energy standard and a renewable clean energy standard.

He said what we believe, that it is safe, that we have ways to deal with the waste, and he wants to get it going.

Why don't we have a clean energy standard? Why do we leave out, for example, nuclear power, which produces 70 percent of our carbon-free electricity today?