Latest from Lamar, Notes from the Senate Desk

*U.S. Senate
considering legislation to cut in half the $224 million maintenance backlog
at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park*

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*I spoke
about this important piece of legislation last week on the Senate
floor. You can **click here [link 2] **to listen to my remarks or on the
above image.*

Last week, the United States Senate is considering the
most important conservation legislation that we've had in half a
century, the Great American Outdoors Act. The legislation has the strong
support of President Trump, the last six Secretaries of the Interior,
over 800 sportsmen and conservation groups, and 60 senators --
Democrats and Republicans -- who are working together in a remarkable way. It
will do more for our public lands than any piece of legislation we
have passed in at least 50 years.

Here is how this bill will help the
Smokies: the Great Smoky Mountains National Park has $224 million
dollars of deferred maintenance and an annual budget of about $20 million
a year. So you don't have to have gone too far in mathematics in the
Maryville public school system to understand that it would probably
never be able to get rid of the deferred maintenance in the Great Smoky
Mountains National Park without a bill like this. Now that's a massive
disappointment to people who consider our national parks as our
greatest treasures - who go to our parks and find a campground closed, a
bathroom not working, a bridge that's closed, a road with potholes, a
trail that's worn out or a visitor center that could be
dilapidated.

The Great American Outdoors Act includes [link 3] legislation I
introduced, the Restore Our Parks Act, which will help restore our 419
national parks - from the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to the Great
Smoky Mountains National Park to the Grand Canyon to Yosemite National
Park - by cutting in half that maintenance backlog over the next five
years.

Another important part of the Great American Outdoors Act is
that it fully funds the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF)
permanently. The LWCF's goal is to take an environmental burden - drilling
on federal lands - and turn it into an environmental benefit by
supporting state and federal conservation programs. The LWCF has played a
large role in protecting the outdoors. In our state, the LWCF has
provided about $221.4 million for conservation and outdoor recreation efforts
since the 1960s.

I hope we in the Senate have great success with
this bill. I know that the people of Tennessee are looking forward to
it.



*Changing discrimination requires changing behavior, not
just laws*

Benjamin Hooks, the former NAACP president from Memphis,
said that "America is a work in progress. We've come a long way, and
we have a long way to go." That long way to go will not be as easy as
passing laws. It will take changing behavior. One way to do that could
be last week's peaceful protest organized by Nashville teenagers,
which was a textbook example of First Amendment citizenship. And it
hopefully will encourage more victims of racism to tell their stories and
more Americans to adjust our attitudes. And perhaps a good first step to
changing attitudes toward racial discrimination would be for each of
us who are white to ask ourselves this question: How would I feel if
police in my hometown repeatedly stopped me for being a white man or a
white woman in the wrong place, especially if most of the people in
the town were black? I spoke about this issue on the floor of the United
States Senate last week. You can listen to me thoughts here [link
4].



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[link removed]] [link 5]

*I joined Fox News this week to share my
thoughts on the movement we are seeing across our country with race
relations, as well as how to safely return our K-12 students to school in the
fall. You can watch that interview here [link 6].*



*Using
what we learned from COVID-19 to prepare for future pandemics*

Last
week, I released a white paper with a foreword by former U.S. Senate
Majority Leader Bill Frist outlining five categories of recommendations
[link 7] to address future pandemics based on lessons learned from
COVID-19 and the past 20 years of pandemic planning.

In this internet
age, attention spans are short. Even with an event as significant as
COVID-19, memories fade and attention moves quickly to the next crisis.
That makes it imperative that Congress act on needed changes this year
in order to better prepare for the next pandemic.

The purpose of
the white paper is to solicit feedback that Congress can consider and
act on this year. I am inviting comments on my initial recommendations,
responses to the questions posed in the white paper, and any
additional recommendations for the Senate Committee on Health, Education,
Labor and Pensions I chair to consider. This feedback will be shared with
my colleagues, both Democrat and Republican.



*Exploring how to
return our country's 56 million K-12 students to school safely in the
fall*

Last week I chaired a Senate education committee hearing to
examine how our country's 56 million students - from kindergarten to
12th grade - will return in the fall to our 100,000 public schools and
34,000 private schools as safely as possible, giving our country its
surest step toward normalcy. A May 28 story in the Memphis Commercial
Appeal about schools planning for the 2020-2021 school year included a
bittersweet image -- a young girl reaching her hand out to touch a
teacher, who is standing in line to welcome students to the first day of
school in 2019. As the Commercial Appeal reporter writes: "The first
day of school in August 2019 would flunk 2020's course on social
distancing." The question for governors, school districts, teachers and
parents is not whether schools should reopen - but how.

Any teacher can
explain the risk of emotional, intellectual and social damage if a
child misses a school year. Schools need to assess how this year's
disruption has affected our children and get student learning back on
track. Today 91.3 percent of families with children have at least one
parent employed, and among married families with children, 64.2 percent had
both parents employed, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
And many children live in environments where the school is the safest
place they'll be all day. It's also the place where almost 30 million
students receive a school lunch -- more than 70 percent of those
students qualify for free or reduced-priced meals. Administrators have a
responsibility to make our schools among the safest small communities
this fall. In doing so, they will help our country take its surest step
toward normalcy.



*Important news from last
week:*

*Chattanooga Times Free Press: Tricia Mims: Help Senator Alexander make this
the time to fix our parks [link 8]*

*Tennessean: Op-Ed by Lamar
Alexander: Encourage victims of racism to share their stories and more
white Americans to adjust our attitudes [link 9]*

*The Oak Ridger:
Guest Column by Senator Alexander: Administrators can make colleges the
safest small communities [link 10]*

*Columbia Daily Herald: U.S. Sen.
Alexander: Great American Outdoors Act will restore our national
treasures [link 11]*



Finish what you start and don't start what
you can't do well.

*#177 in Lamar Alexander's Little Plaid Book *




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