i recently saw a man i admire a lot, lamar alexander, former governor and now senator from tennessee. i told him early on in this adventure what i was doing. he said that is exactly what you should do. he said it will probably make you more successful candidate, but it will definitely make you a better governor, and he was right. >> let's quickly go through the different things you have done. monongahela, pa., what year did you come to indiana? >> my family arrived in indiana in 1959. i was about 10 years old. we had lived around the south. we never lived in pennsylvania. i was born in the same hospital room as joe montana. we lived in tennessee and georgia, and moved to the indianapolis area when i was 10. i went to north central high school. at that time, i believe it was one of the handful of best high schools in north america. we were fortunate to go there. it showed me that you can have uncompromising excellence in public schools if you have the right elements. i went to princeton university, law school at night school. i finished at georgetown while working out here. >> what was

. >> 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

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

lamar alexander, you're up. >> thanks, mr. chairman. i have an amendment to title three, section 311. the purpose of it is to make sure that the right choices program which is in that title doesn't require the states to spend any money on it, and this is a relatively small item, probably, but i would like to make a larger point in making my proposal, if i could say just a word about it. >> certainly. >> we have talked a lot here about cost and usually the cost is described in terms of cost to the federal government, and the cbo, congressional budget office, score has said that the kennedy bill even without three of its major points would add $1 trillion over ten years. senator gregg has said that once the program is implemented fully by the fifth year, it would be more like $2.3 trillion. but i would like to talk about a different sort of cost that i'm particularly sensitive to because of my experience as governor, struggling with the medicaid program and watching every other governor struggle with the medicaid program. in 1980, shortly

lamar alexander said the government competitor is like an elephant in a roomful of mice. government will not compete fairly and we need to have more competition, not less competition. republicans would add to that statement, if you like where you have you can keep it, and you should also have even more choices than you have now. more opportunity to get into a system that everyone can find coverage in. we are for a system that everyone can have access to regardless of their pre-existing conditions. we think competition and better management, transparency, liability reform, make the system more affordable not less affordable. we also want to get realistic about the number of americans now that do not have insurance. that mine -- that number may be 45 million, but an awful lot of them could get insurance at work if they wanted to. a lot of them are healthy people under the age of 30. we're not satisfied. 10 million people can't get to the system now, we want everyone including this 10 million people who do not have access to have access. we want sick americans to have a pre-

. >> we just adopted lamar alexander's amendment, which i thought was a good amendment. we're not talking about adding cost to the states. we only have 23 states that get any kind of funding from cdc for coordinated school-based programs. we do almost very lit until the cardiac area nationally. so we're trying to increase in these areas of prevention, which we know in those four areas. put aside the school-based stuff. we do almost nothing in oral health. so on matters that are in at least two of the chronic areas, not even half the states are getting the kind of support nationally without man dating that states have to raise their costs. >> i don't disagree with you. let me just pose this question. if we have obesity programs in 25 of the states you said, do those 25 states have an obesity program? and the answer is they probably do. >> here's the point. we're listening to anecdotal statements, rather than saying we're going to spend all this money on programs we don't know whosht they're effective. so why are we going to spend the money until we know -- why aren't we g

we will next year for my good friend who i have enjoyed working with, lamar aga -- lamar alexander, we have worked on all sorts of issues and i admire him immensely. he gave me a wonderful book on the -- the little plaid a book and i will share with my colleagues another time. worthwhile period senator alexander. >> thank you mr. chairman. in this room and this is a rumor to predecessors and i see it as two important questions -- howard baker as what to the president know and when did he know in the watergate hearing and then fred thompson was his minority counsel and he said mr. butterfield, or there any recordings of the office of those became the nixon tapes. and as a matter of interest at that time the watergate hearings were on every day for five or six hours a day on all -- and there are only three television networks and it was on all three networks. a senator in no way told us after about a month george gallup came and told him it was only one person in the u.s. but in on the senator and it was president nixon because the whole country was riveted to that set of hearings in thi