Resolutions to Instruct Conferees

Floor Speech

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Mr. ALEXANDER. to 3:30 p.m. today for a briefing.

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Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, in a few minutes, I want to speak about President Trump's nomination of Eugene Scalia to be the Secretary of Labor, but first I want to introduce two speeches that I made in Tennessee into the Record. I notice the room nearly cleared when I observed I was about to make some speeches, but at least there are some people watching.

The first speech was on August 26 of this year in Clinton, TN. It had to do with the Clinton 12. These were 12 students, some as young as 14 years of age, who walked down a hill and enrolled in Clinton High School in 1956--63 years ago--and became the first students to integrate a public school in the South.

Many of us remember what happened the next year in Arkansas, when Governor Faubus stood in the door, and President Eisenhower had to send in the troops to integrate Little Rock Central High School. I remember those days very well. I was in high school myself then.

It is hard to imagine the courage it must have taken for those children to walk down that hill and integrate that school. Most of them were there in Clinton, TN, when they were honored in the month of August.

Tennessee Valley Fair

Secondly, the Tennessee Valley Fair. It is a big event in Knoxville, TN, that was held on September 6. It was attended by almost everybody who has anything to do with politics in Knox County, which means the room was full with 500 or 600 people.

It was an opportunity for me to make a suggestion to the people of Knoxville about what to celebrate. Many of us had been watching Ken Burns' ``Country Music'' special on PBS. He reminds us that Tennessee has a lot to celebrate in terms of country music. His first two hours were about Bristol, TN, which is the birthplace of country music. It is where Ralph Peer of New York City went to Bristol, in 1927, put an ad in the paper, saying: ``Hillbillies, come down out of the mountains with your music,'' and here came the Carter family, Jimmy Rogers, and several others.

One of the people on Mr. Burns' show this week was Charlie McCoy, the harmonica player, a great musician. It reminded me of a time when I was Governor and recruiting the General Motors' Saturn plant to Tennessee. We had the executives coming from Detroit. We talked about what to serve them for dinner. We served them country ham. We talked about whom to have play a piece of music after dinner, and I invited Charlie McCoy to play his harmonica.

A Nashville woman came up to me and said: Governor, I am so embarrassed.

I said: Why is that?

She said: You had all those fine people from Detroit, and then you had that harmonica player. She said: What will they think of us? Why didn't you offer them Chopin?

I said: Madam, why should we offer them average Chopin when we have the best harmonica player in the world?

The better people of Nashville had resisted for a long time calling Nashville Music City, but of course Music City is a wonderful signature, a great personality, and it is one reason Nashville is such a celebrated city today.

In the same way, Knoxville has violated the Biblical injunction about don't keep your light under a bushel because it rarely talks much about Oak Ridge. So the speech I made would suggest that the sign at the Knoxville airport, which says, ``Welcome to Knoxville: Gateway to the Great Smoky Mountains,'' ought to say instead, ``Welcome to Knoxville: Gateway to the Great Smoky Mountains and the Oak Ridge Corridor.''

There are nearly 3,000 scientists, engineers, and technicians who work at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the largest science and energy laboratory in America, and at the University of Tennessee and at the Tennessee Valley Authority. That part of the personality of the Knoxville area needs to be celebrated.

Nomination of Eugene Scalia

Mr. President, in my remaining time, I would like to say a few words about Eugene Scalia and the President's nomination of him to be Secretary of Labor for the United States.

The Senate will vote, probably tomorrow, on whether to confirm Mr. Scalia. I certainly hope the Senate does, and I believe the Senate will.

We have known for two months that President Trump intended for Mr. Scalia to be the Secretary. He announced that intention on July 18. We have had all of his papers since August 27. Those are the government ethics papers and the committee papers that are necessary. They all came a month ago. He gave us a copy of all of his writings. He came to a hearing the other day. The Presiding Officer was there. He testified for three hours. We had two rounds of questions. Senators could ask anything they wanted. He offered to visit, over the last month, with every member of our committee and did with all but two. So we know plenty about Mr. Scalia. He answered another 418 questions that committee members asked him after his hearing.

I think two months is long enough to consider him and consider all that information.

I remember when President Obama's Secretary of Education stepped down in the last year of the President's term. I encouraged the President to nominate John King, whom the President wanted to nominate, but he was afraid he couldn't be confirmed because we, the Republican majority, disagreed with him. I disagreed with him. I said: Mr. President, it is important for you to have a confirmed member of your Cabinet and to have that person considered and confirmed promptly. It is important to the Senate to have a Cabinet member who goes through the process of questions and advice and consent. That is our most important function in many ways.

We confirmed John King in a month.

We have had two months to consider Mr. Scalia, and that should be enough. He has a broad background in labor and employment law. He is a partner in a major Washington, DC, law firm, so he knows all the issues. He spent a year as Solicitor of Labor in the George W. Bush administration. He left the firm to be Special Assistant to the Attorney General of the United States in 1992.

Academically, he is very well prepared. He went to the University of Virginia. He was editor in chief of the University of Chicago Law Review. He has been a guest lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School and an adjunct professor at the David A. Clarke School of Law at the University of the District of Columbia. He is very well qualified.

It is important for the Department to have a well-qualified, steady leader. I like the demeanor that Mr. Scalia showed in his hearing. The Democratic members of the committee were there, and they were very vigorous in their questioning. I also like the fact that they were courteous to him. They didn't take the attitude that sometimes happens in U.S. Senate--that you are innocent until nominated. They took the attitude that he was a well-qualified person with whom they disagreed, so they asked him questions. He answered them, and he did a good job.

I like the fact that the Trump Administration has taken steps to create a more stable environment by having a more sensible joint employer standard that doesn't make it more difficult for American families to own and operate franchises. There are more than seven hundred thousand American franchise establishments. That is the way you get into the middle class in America. We need a steady hand there to make sure that happens properly.

I like the fact that the administration has a more reasonable overtime rule. The overtime threshold needed to be changed, but the last administration raised it too high too fast. It caused church camps to have to lay off people and close in the summer. It had all sorts of unintended consequences and bipartisan opposition. The administration announced yesterday a more reasonable step.

Next, association health plans. Among the people in America who have the hardest time paying for insurance are those who make $50,000 a year and don't get a government subsidy. Association health plans help people who work for small businesses to be able to get the same kind of insurance that people who work for IBM or big businesses get--insurance that covers preexisting conditions and offers the same sort of consumer protections.

It has been estimated by Avalere that the association health plan rule that the Department of Labor put out would help three to four million Americans be able to afford health insurance and save their premium costs by several thousand dollars a year. Mr. Scalia can work on that.

Mr. President, I received 32 letters in support of Mr. Scalia's nomination from small business owners, employers, industry groups, and his colleagues. I will mention a couple.

Former Obama administration official Cass Sunstein wrote:

His decency is part of what makes him someone who tends to go case-by-case, and to end up where the facts and the law take him. . . . He does not have an ideological straightjacket. He takes issues on their merits.

Thomas Susman, who was Senator Ted Kennedy's counsel, wrote:

Gene is precisely the kind of person that our country needs in the Cabinet: experienced, ethical, professional, open- minded, fair, and brilliant.

There are a number of other letters from former Department of Labor career attorneys, Chicago Law Review editorial board members, Fraternal Order of Police members, and others.

Suffice it to say that the country is fortunate the President has nominated Eugene Scalia to be the U.S. Secretary of Labor. He has conducted himself admirably in the two-month process of going through the Senate confirmation. We have a chance to bring that to a conclusion tomorrow. My hope is that the Senate will confirm him and that he will be in office by the end of the week.

To Lt. Governor McNally, Congressman Fleischmann, Representative Bob Clement, Judy Gooch, students and teachers, and especially, to members of the Clinton 12 and their families and friends.

It is hard standing here to imagine the courage that it took the Clinton 12, some of them as young as 14 years of age, to take a walk that we just took this morning and become the first students to integrate a public high school in the south.

In that year, 63 years ago, I was a rising junior at Maryville High School, about an hour away.

I remember reading in the Knoxville newspapers about John Kasper, and the demonstrations, and how the men and women we honor here today couldn't be intimidated.

I remember the uncommon courage of then-governor Frank Clement, whose son Bob is here, who sent in state troopers and national guardsmen in support of the Clinton 12.

Today it seems like it would be an easy decision, but it was not an easy decision for the governor.

I remember that the very next year in 1957, it was a different story in Arkansas.

The Governor of Arkansas stood in the door and stopped students from coming into Little Rock Central High School, and President Eisenhower mobilized the National Guard to support the students.

It's unpleasant to remember some of the things from then.

It's unpleasant to remember the Boys' and Girls' State program that we high schoolers would attend, was then segregated by race.

That the Alcoa student, who later became the first African American basketball coach at the University of Tennessee, when he was a teenager and wanted to go to the University of Tennessee football game, had to sit in a section of the stadium that was reserved for blacks.

It's unpleasant to remember that there never had been an African American athlete who played in the Southeastern Conference, or there hadn't been a black Supreme Court Justice in Tennessee, or a black chancellor, or a local judge.

It's unpleasant to remember that African American students couldn't sit at the front of the bus, couldn't sit at a lunch counter, and when traveling across our state and some other states in the South, had to sleep in the car because no motel would admit them because of their race.

So it is good to celebrate that things are very different today, and it's important to remember the courage of the Clinton 12 and to celebrate that progress.

But it's also important to remember, as we celebrate the Clinton 12, that things could be even better.

We still have a ways to go.

We have a United States Senator from South Carolina, whose name is Tim Scott.

He is an African American Senator elected from that state.

He told me that he was arrested seven times within the last few years in his hometown in Charleston, South Carolina, basically for being a black man in the wrong place.

And at the time, he was the Vice Mayor of Charleston.

When I first came to the Senate several years ago, your city manager, Steve Jones, came to see me to tell me Clinton's vision for preserving the story of the Clinton 12.

It's been a great pleasure to work with him and the city and so many of you to try to help him do that.

Our former senator, Bill Frist, worked with us to help us secure some of the first funding for Green McAdoo Cultural Center.

And a new law we passed in 2009 directed the Secretary of the Interior to take the first step to making it part of our National Park System.

The late reverend Benjamin Hooks, a Tennessean who was President of the NAACP, once told me this: ``Remember, our country is a work in progress.

In my life, I have seen us come a long way, but we have a long way to go.''

That is why the story of the Clinton 12 is so important to remember and celebrate today. Thank you. Tennessee Valley Fair

You know, it says in Lamar Alexander's Little Plaid Book that if you want a standing ovation, seat a few friends in the front row.

Thanks to those of you right there.

Thanks to Tim Burchett and to Kelly and Isabel.

I want you to know that Tim is not only good at the Vol Market, he's good in the United States Congress, and I appreciate the chance to serve with him in his good work there.

To Speaker Cameron Sexton, congratulations to Cameron. I've watched his career, he's off to a terrific start.

Mayor Jacobs, Mayor Rogero, Congressman Jimmy Duncan--my good friend for many years, and he still is--and Wanda Moody, with whom I worked for a long time.

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen: Coming up here, I was thinking that our favorite son, Howard Baker, used to remind us that it was wise to try to be an eloquent listener, but that gets harder to do the older you get.

For example, you may remember Bobby Bare who sang Detroit City.

He's in his eighties now.

He was on the Grand Ole Opry stage the other night.

Somebody asked him, ``Bobby, how long you've been wearing your hearing aids?''

He said, ``Well, it's like this. A few years ago, my wife said to me, `Bobby, I'm proud of you.' And I said back to her, `I'm tired of you too.' ''

He said, ``I've been wearing them ever since.''

A few years ago, when I was buying a car in Nashville, the salesman pulled out his billfold, and he pulled out a picture of his two-year-old and he said, ``What do you think of her?''

And I said what a politician always says. I said, ``That is a beautiful baby.''

And he looked up at me and said, ``She won second best baby at the Wilson County Fair.''

I've always remembered that because that's what we do at fairs. We celebrate the best among us.

We celebrate the tastiest tomato, and the biggest pumpkin, and the prettiest girl and the strongest man, the craziest quilt, the biggest tractor and the best baby.

And for a century, the Tennessee Valley Fair has been doing that.

Bob Booker wrote this morning about some of the history even before then, and I was thinking so much happened in 1919.

I know over in one county, a Maryville high school was started that year.

Proffitt's Department Store was started that year.

The Kiwanis Club started that year.

The West Plant was being built that year and this fair started that year.

And I think it was because the war ended in 1918 and everybody came home and had a burst of enthusiasm about our country.

They wanted to celebrate what was good about it.

And so here came the fair.

So this fair has been celebrating all the things I just talked about.

And also, had you come to the Tennessee Valley Fair over the last century, you could see pigs jumping through hoops, you could see dancing horses, you could see African American cultural exhibits, you could see the wildest roller coaster ride, and you could see the fastest new car.

That's why people came to the fair.

But in the depression, Professor Harcourt Morgan, who later was the U.T. president and the TVA Board Chairman, suggested this. He said, ``We ought to use the fair to try to think differently what we have to celebrate in the Knoxville area.''

So in that spirit, let me take about five or 10 minutes and suggest to you what I think we ought to be celebrating in the Knoxville area.

We have plenty to celebrate.

I mean, telling Eddie earlier, you'd come down to the airport and there's a sign that says, ``Welcome to Knoxville, Gateway to the Great Smoky Mountains.'' We've got the biggest mountains in the East, the most visited park. That's something to celebrate.

Ken Burns is going to have on television this year his series on country music.

He thinks it may be more popular than his Civil War series.

Where was the birthplace of country music? Right here in East Tennessee.

The Tennessee Valley Authority has become the largest public utility in the United States.

The University of Tennessee has become a major research institution and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory has grown from a Manhattan Project to build a bomb to win a war, to becoming the nation's largest science and energy laboratory, the home of the world's fastest computer, and the home of the best new work on 3-D printing for manufacturing.

So we've got a lot to celebrate.

Let's add up those last three. Let's add up TVA, U.T., and Oak Ridge for just a minute.

When I do that, here's one thing I get: about 3,000 scientists and engineers.

You know that's as large a concentration of brainpower in the Knoxville area as exists in North Carolina's research triangle, Route 128 of Massachusetts, or it even rivals the Silicon Valley--which we know a lot about--in California.

The trouble is when we come to Oak Ridge, the rest of us in this area are guilty of violating the parable that Jesus talked about in Matthew, which was don't hide your light under a bushel.

We just don't talk about it much.

It's not so unusual. It just doesn't happen to us.

About every 10 years at night in Nashville, some of the so- called ``better'' people will come up and say, ``We're getting a bad reputation. We'll get known for all this hillbilly music in Nashville. Can't we remind people we have a symphony?''

I remember one night when I was governor, we invited the General Motors executives from Detroit to have dinner at the mansion.

We were recruiting the Saturn plant like everybody else was.

So Honey and I decided we would serve a country ham, and I invited Charlie McCoy to play the harmonica after dinner.

A Nashville lady came up to me afterwards and said, ``Governor, I'm so embarrassed about what I see. About that harmonica player, what will those fine people from Detroit think of us?'' And I said, ``Madam, why should I offer them average Chopin when we got the best harmonica player in the world?''

Nashville is pretty happy about being Music City and off they go.

Then I go to Memphis and they're worrying about Nashville. They said, ``Nashville's got this, Nashville's got that.''

I say, ``Well, wait a minute. Okay, let's have a jobs conference.''

So we had a jobs conference and what'd they do? Well, they said, ``We've got Beale Street, we'll clean it up, we'll build an agricenter. Nashville doesn't want to do that, that fits us. We'll get the ducks back walking in the Peabody Hotel.''

And there went Memphis.

Then here come the people from Chattanooga, ``You gave Memphis money, we want to build a $2 million aquarium.''

I said, ``Why would you build such a stingy aquarium? If you're going to do it, build the biggest aquarium from Baltimore to Miami so people will come to see it.''

And that is what they did. And in the meantime they noticed they had the beautiful Tennessee River Gorge and a great downtown. And look where Chattanooga is today.

So let's think about Knoxville, just a minute, and all those cities.

The idea of hiding our light under a bushel doesn't just belong to the cities.

It's all over the state.

Some of you will remember Tennessee homecoming '86 when I asked everybody to find something to celebrate in your community--invite everybody who lived there to come do it, and then have a celebration.

And in the Forest Brook neighborhood in Knoxville, they invited everybody to come home on the 4th of July and they had a celebration.

And in Hickman County, Minnie Pearl and the people who lived there made a quilt with all the names of the little communities in Hickman County so the children would know, for example, where Bona Aqua came from.

And in Nashville, they invited all the writers who grew up in Tennessee to come home and they did. And the Festival of Books still is going on in Nashville.

So I think it's important to stop worrying about what you're not and start celebrating what you've got, which is why I have a suggestion to make in the spirit of Professor Harcourt Morgan, who said, ``We ought to use the fair to take a little different look about what we have to sell them.''

I suggest that we change the sign at the Knoxville airport and we say ``Welcome to Knoxville, Gateway to the Great Smoky Mountains and the Oak Ridge Corridor.''

Now our new governor, Bill Lee, who is an engineer, understands why we need to do that.

He told a group from Nashville, ``What Tennessee needs is a magnet to attract jobs and capital.''

Then he came up to Oak Ridge the next day and said, ``We've got a magnet right here.''

The first time I met Glenn Jacobs, he talked to me about the Oak Ridge Corridor before I could talk to him about it.

He's the mayor of Knox County, but he saw the interconnection.

So I'm sure Mayor Rogero must see those connections every day.

Tim Burchett is pretty good at the Vol Market, but the first visit he had with me in Washington was to come talk to me about the 8,000 Oak Ridgers who live in Knox County and what he could do to support Oak Ridge and Randy Boyd and Chancellor Plowman of University of Tennessee.

You know, U.T. now manages the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and they started a new hundred million dollar Oak Ridge Institute at the University of Tennessee to recognize the importance of that connection.

Last week, I talked to Sam Beall, who, many of you know.

Just like this fair, Sam Beall is 100 years old.

When he came to Knoxville in the 1930s, there was basically no Oak Ridge.

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park and TVA had just been created.

And there were no doctoral programs at the University of Tennessee and no one in their wildest dream could imagine a personal computer.

Today, Oak Ridge has the largest science and energy laboratory in America, TVA is the largest public utility, U.T. is a major research university, and the fastest computers in the world are about 15 miles away at Oak Ridge.

So things have changed.

When Sam Beall came here in the 1930s, which was about the time Professor Harcourt Morgan said, ``Let's think about a little different way to celebrate the Knoxville area.''

When Sam came in the 1930s, Oak Ridge was a secret city.

While a lot of people from around here work there, there didn't seem to be much relationship between Oak Ridge and Maryville, or Oak Ridge and Madisonville, or Oak Ridge and Sevierville, or even Oak Ridge and Knoxville.

So, my suggestion is that we take Professor Harcourt Morgan's advice in the 1930s and use it this year.

That, along with the prize chickens, the best babies, the birthplace of country music, and most visited national park.

Let's celebrate the fact that the Knoxville area is the home of one of the largest concentrations of brain power anywhere in the United States, rivaling the Research Triangle, Route 128 and even the Silicon Valley.

And it's also home to one of the best-known brand names in the world, a brand name that stands for science, energy, and excellence.

So my suggestion in the spirit of the fair and with the suggestion of Harcourt Morgan, is let's change the sign at the Knoxville airport from ``Welcome to Knoxville, Gateway to the Great Smoky Mountains'' to ``Welcome to Knoxville, Gateway to the Great Smoky Mountains and the Oak Ridge Corridor.''

If we want to take the professor's advice and celebrate what's special about where we live today, that would be the best way to do it.

Thank you.
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