bennett amendment or as i suppose it will be known in utah, the bennett alexander amendment. there will obviously be a period of time before the stock can be distributed. he has anticipated roughly a year. in that period of a year, the secretary of the treasury will be in charge of controlling the stock, so my amendments will give the secretary of treasury my portion of this amendment, will give the secretary of the trade jury the same fiduciary responsibility that any director or official in a company would have. now, we talk about conflict of interest here in washington a great deal and that conflict of interest is not a good thing. the secretary of the treasury finds himself in a position of a conflict of interest. he has his interest as the chief financial officer if you will of the federal government, and conflicts of that with his position running an auto company, or at least overseeing the running of an auto company. the president has said we don't want to run an auto company so i say good, good on you mr. president. we will set up this circumstance with this amendment

if you don't like the alexander-bennett amendment, vote for the corker amendment. if you don't like that, vote for one of the other amendments. four ways to go about it, all carefully thought out. why don't we do that? i prefer the way the senate has op rated pretty much all the time up to today -- operated pretty much all the time up to today where you say senators, offer your amendments, offer your votes. today is for some reason an aberration, a change, a change away from the way the senate should function. my old friend, alex haley, the late author of good" used to saeup find a way and praise it. i will consider this an aberration. i hope we will vote to continue to amend, to continue to debate and get back to the practice that we practiced most of this year, which is to say if you've got an amendment, senator, bring it on over. put it up. we'll vote on it, and then we'll go on to the next thing. i thank you, madam president. i yield the floor, and i notice the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call khrop mr. brown

>> thank you, chairman bennett. and thank you, senator alexander, for your participation. i would also like to thank our witnesses for coming today. a cap-and-trade program would have a detrimental effect, i believe, on the american consumer and to our economy. like many of my colleagues i support efforts to reduce carbon emissions. i recognize that the future of energy is clean energy, including as senator alexander has said, building at least 100 new nuclear power plants in the next 20 to 25 years. i also believe that we can meet our growing needs of energy while fulfilling our obligation to the environment. nment. whether or not you believe in global warming, this should not be an excuse to enact a cab in trade system until we have an international agreement on co2 emissions. advocates of cap in trade argue that to implement the system, american take a global leadership position on climate change. i agree with that. they have argued other nations will voluntarily adopt emissions standards in the future. well, what good is it if you are leading if you are not assured tha

bennett, joined by sen. alexander and bunning. we are planning to run until 3:30. this is a hearing to investigate the effect of the national ene rgy tax on job growth. this will help keep the economy competitive as we protect the environment. obviously going to talk about climate change. people ask me about climate change and it should we pay attention to it. i always say yes, we should pay attention to it. climate change has affected the human condition for millennia. the one major challenge we have that our ancestors did not have is that there are now 7 billion of us on the planet. if jacob should take his family to israel to escape the drought, he would find 900 million people already living there and therefore the adjustments you might have been able to make to deal with climate change in the past centuries are perhaps not available to us. we have an outstanding panel of experts and witnesses available to us. i will withhold any kind of opening statement beyond that until we have heard from our witnesses, but recognize the senators in the order in which they h

. >> lamar alexander, this is senator bennett with me. senator kyl is coming in a few minutes from the finance committee. we are introducing today the although stock for every taxpayer act to require the treasury to distribute to individual taxpayers all the stock in the new gm and chrysler within one year following the emergence of the new gm from bankruptcy proceedings. this is the best way to get the auto companies out of the hands of washington bureaucrats and politicians and into the hands of the american people in the marketplace where it belongs. so instead of the treasury owning 60% of the shares in the new gm and 8% of the shares of chrysler, you would owned them. if you're one of about 120 million americans who pay federal taxes on april 15. this is the fastest way to get the stock out of the hands of washington and back into the hands of the american people who paid for it. to keep it simple and help the little guy also get an ownership stake in america's future, treasury would give each taxpayer an equal number of the availabl

so i have joined my amendment to his and we will be offering it as the alexander-bennett amendment. or as i suppose it will be known in utah, the bennett-alexandre amendment. there will be some time before the stock can be distributed. he has anticipated roughly one year. in that time, the secretary of the treasury will be in charge of controlling the stock. my amendment will give the secretary of treasury by portion, will give the secretary the same fiduciary responsibility that any director or official in the company would have. talk about conflict of interest , it's not a good thing. the secretary of the treasury finds himself in a position of conflict of interest. he has his interest as the chief financial officer, if you will, of the federal government and the conflict with his position of running the auto company, or at least overseeing the running of an auto company. the president of the united states has said we do not want to run and not a company, so i say good on you, mr

. >> senator alexander? >> thank you, senator bennett. this has been very helpful. i thank the four of you for your comments. mr. rockwell, you said you would speak from the engineering point of view. is it possible to build 100 new nuclear power plants of 1,240 megawatts or so over the next 20 years? >> i think it clearly is. i thought that in your right up, the talk that you gave in oak ridge, you pointed out that we did build 100 plants in the 20 years between 1970 and 1990. . . i think that it is perfectly possible. >> i was going to ask you to say something about the naval program. much of it is classified i suppose. we cannot talk about it in public. what lesson is there to us as we look ahead from our success or lack of success with the nuclear navy program. >> back before we had even proved that the prototype plan for the nautilus would work, we had not gone to the point where that had produced power. president eisenhower was concerned that the bomb was the only image that anybody had of nuclear power. ge anyone had of nuclear power. he set up the act comes

. >> senator alexander? >> thank you, senator bennett. this has been very helpful. i thank the four of you for your comments. mr. rockwell, you said you would speak from the engineering point of view. is it possible to build 100 new nuclear power plants of

. >> senator alexander? >> thank you, senator bennett. this has been very, very helpful and i thank the four of you for your comments. mr. rockwell, you said you just speak from the engineering point of view. is it possible to build 100 new nuclear power plants of 1240 megawatts or so over the next 20 years? >> i think it clearly is. i thought that in your write-up, the talk that you gave in oak ridge, you pointed out that we did build 100 plants in the 20 years between 1970 and 1990. and that's absolutely true. and in one of my handouts, i've got the story on what the naval reactors did in eight years when we didn't -- you know, we didn't have any resources. that we had to create everything from scratch, and yet we built 41 full-sized plants in connection with the naval program in eight years. and so i think that's perfectly possible. >> i was going to ask you to say something about the naval program because much of it is classified, i suppose, and we can't talk about it in public. but what lesson is there to us as we look ahead in the n

i am senator bob bennett from utah, i joined by senator lamar alexander from tennessee and senator jim bunting from kentucky and we are expecting some other senators to join us in the time period we have, we are planning to run until 3:30. rois is a hearing to investigate the effect of the proposed cap and trade national energy task on job growth. and to probe the ways in which building 100 new nuclear plants could help the economy and keep ame american economy competitive while at the same time protecting our environment. we are going to talk about limaate change. when people ask me about climate change and should we pay attention to it i always say yes, we should pay attention to it, climate change has been affecting the human condition for millennia. ise one major challenge we have that our ancestors didn't have is that there are now seven billion of us on the planet and its jacob should take his family to israel to escape the drought eocause of climate change he would find ninety million people already living there, and therefore the adjustments you might have been able to make to