Okay folks,
Below is the email from Alexander that I received tonight. I didn't read much of it because it frustrates me but I figure a group can have fun taking this on so let's have it.

From the Desk of Lamar Alexander:
The President’s Budget – Taxes, Spends, Borrows Too Much
Unfortunately, on the president’s 100th day, the Democratic budget passed with unprecedented spending and unprecedented debt that Americans cannot afford. It is a blueprint for a country we haven’t seen before – a command-and-control economy with less freedom, fewer choices, and fewer opportunities.


continued...

The So-Called Stimulus: More Spending and Debt While Unemployment Continues to Rise

In February, President Obama signed the so-called stimulus bill into law, effectively borrowing $1 trillion from future generations of Americans who will have to find a way to pay it back. The right way to have handled our ailing economy would have been to address the most pressing issues first, like fixing housing, letting taxpayers keep more of their own money, and spending borrowed money only on programs that create jobs quickly.

Scrap the Kennedy Bill and Start Over on Health Care

The Kennedy health care bill is so flawed and expensive that it cannot be fixed. It is so expensive it will literally bankrupt states. And also, it’s completely partisan. Republicans have offered health care plans that would give low-income Americans the same opportunities and choices that most Americans already have—plans that wouldn’t make it harder for American businesses to compete in the world marketplace by adding to their costs, plans that our grandchildren can afford that wouldn’t heap trillions of dollars of new debt upon them, devaluing their dollars and the quality of their lives, but they are not being considered.

As President Obama has said, the best way to do health care reform is in a bipartisan way—but in order to do that, we need to put aside the Kennedy bill and start over again.

Tennesseans should be especially wary of this proposal, because the cost is so high it could lead to a 10 percent state income tax for our state.

100 New Nuclear Plants in 20 years

The United States should build 100 new nuclear power plants during the next 20 years to put America on the path to clean energy independence. Climate change may be the inconvenient problem, but nuclear power is the inconvenient answer. The way both to deal with global warming and to keep our jobs is to encourage what is being called the “Nuclear Renaissance” and start making nuclear energy the backbone of a new industrial economy. Just as we rose to the occasion in 1943 when we built the complex at Oak Ridge to build the atomic bomb that helped win World War II, so can we rise to the occasion today to build a new generation of nuclear reactors that will provide clean, reliable power for America for the rest of this century.

I also discussed this proposal during the Weekly Republican Radio Address in April

Conservation and nuclear power are realistic options for clean electricity for our region, and we should move ahead aggressively with both. On the other hand, the idea of polluting our landscape with 500-foot wind turbines and their transmission towers is preposterous. It makes no sense to destroy the environment in the name of saving the environment. These were some of the important issues discussed at a TVA Congressional Caucus forum that I chaired in Knoxville called “Choices – TVA and Renewable Electricity.”

Give GM Stock to the Taxpayers

I have introduced the Auto Stock for Every Taxpayer Act to require the Treasury Department to distribute to individual taxpayers all of the common stock it has acquired in auto companies. Instead of the federal government owning 60 percent of the shares in the new GM and 8 percent of Chrysler, you would own them if you were one of the 120 million Americans who paid taxes on April 15th. Those shares might not be worth much now, but put them away and one day they might help pay for a college education.

Fighting Against a Washington Takeover of Student Lending

In his proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2010, President Obama called for eliminating the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFEL) – which provides funds from banks and other private lenders – in favor of government-controlled loans administered under the Federal Direct Loan Program. Packing up this nation’s successful student lending program and sending it to Washington to be administered there is not what 12 million students and over 4,400 universities have chosen to do. The Department of Education should not be a $500 billion bank.

During debate on the Budget Resolution for Fiscal Year 2010, the Senate twice passed measures I proposed that would have preserved choice in student lending. Unfortunately, that language was dropped from the final version of the budget, which I ultimately voted against.

Making Higher Education More Affordable

In a speech to the American Council on Education in February, I proposed that university leaders need to work to reduce the cost of attending college. To deal with rising college costs, I suggested that:

1. Colleges offer some well-prepared students the option of a three-year baccalaureate degree, cutting one-third the time and one-fourth the cost from a college education; and

2. Community college be free for well-prepared students.

It’s Not Necessary to Destroy Our Beautiful Mountaintops to Have Enough Coal

Coal is an essential part of our energy future, but it is not necessary to destroy our mountaintops in order to have enough coal. Millions of tourists spend tens of millions of dollars in Tennessee every year to enjoy the natural beauty of our mountains—a beauty that, for me, and I believe for most Tennesseans, makes us proud to live in our state. That’s why I’ve joined in introducing the Appalachia Restoration Act to prevent the dumping of waste from mountaintop mining into streams and rivers.

Interior Appropriations Subcommittee Ranking Member

This year, I became the senior Republican on the Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittee that funds the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and other national parks, the National Forest Service and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Given that this year marks the 75th anniversary of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, it’s a great privilege for me to be given oversight of it in this historic year.

Making Taxes Less Complicated

I introduced the Optional One-Page Flat Tax Act again this year to create an optional 17 percent federal flat tax with a single-page form. Americans would have the option of choosing this tax over the current income tax and its maze of confusing, multi-page forms.

Cleaning Up the Kingston Ash Spill

TVA should clean up the mess, make whole all the people who were hurt, and do everything possible to make sure this doesn’t happen again in the TVA region. We need to make a massive effort over the next five years to turn this environmental tragedy into a technology success story.

Keeping Our Universities Competitive

The United States is home to most of the best research universities in the world – they are our secret weapon for creating jobs. But other nations are catching up. We need the best minds in our country to help us figure out how to maintain this competitive advantage. That’s why in June I joined in writing a letter to the National Academies asking them to form a distinguished panel to provide for Congress, the states, and the universities themselves ten actions each could take, in priority order, to assure that this nation’s universities are in a position to keep our nation strong and secure in an increasingly competitive world.

Protecting Our Intelligence Community

The Department of Justice should follow President Obama’s instincts and look forward rather than obsessively looking in the rear view mirror at interrogation techniques used in questioning suspected terrorists. That’s why I offered an amendment to the Supplemental Appropriations bill to strip funding for Attorney General Holder’s interrogation task forces.

Protecting Tennessee Hospitals

In February, we won a big victory for Tennessee when the Children’s Health Insurance Program Improvements Act became law, reinstating the ability of the Regional Medical Center at Memphis (The Med) to be reimbursed by Arkansas and Mississippi for treating uninsured patients from those states.

Guaranteeing a Secret Ballot

The Employee Free Choice Act, a bill championed by union leaders that would allow union bosses to intimidate and pressure workers, should be called the “Employee No Choice Act” and is the most radical piece of legislation before Congress. That’s why I am a cosponsor of the Secret Ballot Protection Act, a bill designed to uphold the private vote by requiring that all efforts to organize unions be handled by secret ballot

Honoring the Clinton 12 and Green McAdoo

In March, Green McAdoo – the first desegregated public high school in the south – came a big step closer to being recognized as a historic site of national importance when my bill—the Green McAdoo School National Historic Site Study Act—became law. The Act directs the Secretary of the Interior to study the feasibility of designating the Green McAdoo School as a unit of the National Park System.

Saluting Our Cold War Heroes and Protecting Their Benefits

Our nation’s nuclear workers bravely served our country at a time when we needed them most and they deserve to be honored. Senator Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) and I introduced a resolution declaring October 30, 2009, a national day of remembrance in honor of the thousands of men and women who supported the nation’s nuclear efforts during the Cold War.

Senator Bunning and I have also introduced legislation to ensure that compensation for the families of sick former nuclear workers won’t be taken away in cases where sick workers or their eligible survivors die before their claims are processed. We should not allow an inefficient bureaucracy to run out the clock through a claims process that takes so long that our Cold War heroes are dying before their claims are processed, leaving their families with reduced compensation—or none at all.