Photograph by T.J. Kirkpatrick/Getty Images

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) heads to the weekly Senate Republicans policy luncheon on March 19, 2013 in Washington, DC.

The Senate is taking a “burner day” on an online sales-tax measure today, allowing a cloture motion time to mature. The wait threatens to keep Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander away from the Paris Fish Fry parade.

“If we continue to object to every amendment in this bill, I won’t get to walk in the parade at the Paris Fish Fry tomorrow,” Alexander said about the World’s Biggest Fish Fry in his home state of Tennessee.

Leaders on the sales-tax measure implored colleagues to drop their objections and come to agreement on moving forward swiftly. Barring such agreement, Senators would have to wait until Saturday to complete work on the bill.

That would mean Alexander would miss out on the fish fry. Today on the Senate floor he explained that parades are quite popular in his home state.

“This is the season for parades in Tennessee,” he said. “On weekends and Fridays, I go home and I have a rule of thumb: Walk in parades.”

At the Mule Day parade in Colombia County for example, “100,000 people are there, lots of mules.”

“I always try to walk at the front of the Mule Day parade for obvious reasons,” he said.

Alexander was confident that even with the procedural stalling, “we’ll pass the vote on Saturday and I suspect with 74 or 75 votes.”

Original post is Sales-Tax Measure Threatens to Rain on Alexander’s Parade by Political Capital.

Photograph by Charles Dharapak-Pool/Getty Images

Sen. John McCain, left, Sen. Charles Schumer, and Sen. Lindsey Graham during the State of the Union speech on Feb. 12, 2013 in Washington.

The green ribbons sported by many of those attending the State of the Union address – most obviouslyVice President Joe Biden, given his on-camera perch behind President Barack Obama – were designed to express solidarity with the victims of the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut.

Democratic Senate leaders Harry Reid and Dick Durbin wore them, as did most House Democrats. The ribbons also had some bipartisan appeal — Republican senators wearing them included John McCain of Arizona, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Kelly Ayotte of New Hamsphire, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Ted Cruz of Texas.

Eschewing the ribbons, though, was the core of the Senate Republican leadership, including Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Roy Blunt of Missouri and John Cornyn of Texas. Also lacking one was Biden’s seatmate on the dais with Obama, House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican.

Original post is Ribbons Honoring Newtown Victims Have Bipartisan Appeal, Except for Republican Leaders by Political Capital.

Photograph by Alex Wong/Getty Images

House Speaker John Boehner, right, wore the president’s color today at the inauguration. Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images.

House Speaker John Boehner, wearing a blue tie, spoke of renewing “the appeal to better angels” in the handing of the flag to President Barack Obama at the Capitol luncheon celebrating his second inauguration.

“In the spirit of harmony,” he said, he offerrf this flag, and addressed Obama and Vice President Joe Biden: “To you, gentlemen, I say, congratulations and Godspeed.

Another Republican, Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who also spoke at the inauguration, presented the official photographs of the swearing-in.

And then, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor came bearing the Lenox inaugural gifts. And Cantor, too, was wearing a blue tie. The gifts: images of the Capitol and White House etched in crystal vases.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, for her part, wearing a red dress in a show of reciprocity, was talking about the mementos the guests would take away: framed depictions of the Capitol as it stood in the time of the Civil War — unlike today’s era of harmony.

“I recognize democracy is not always easy, and I recognize thee are profound differences in this room,” Obama told the luncheon audience. “I know all of us serve, because we believe can make America for future generations.”

The presidency, he said, grows more humbling with every passing day.

And, with a toast for first lady Michelle Obama, the president said: “There is controversy about the quality of the president — no controversy about the quality of our first lady.”

Original post is Blue-Tied Republicans Bless Obama by Political Capital.

Photograph by STR/AFP/Getty Images

A FedEx plane carrying two giant pandas in Chengdu, southwest China's Sichuan province.

By Eric Roston, cross-posted from Bloomberg.com’s sustainability blog, The Grid.

U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander, a Republican from Tennessee, gave his daughter some reasonable advice as she finishes up a program in environmental management at Duke University: “Don’t use that word with a lot of people,” he said. “They won’t know what you’re talking about.”

The word he was talking about is “sustainability,” and while the Senator’s observation is correct, so was his daughter’s response: Well, they know what it means at the university, and corporate executives do, too. It’s a global company’s long-term strategy to thrive amid unprecedented change in population growth, middle-class consumption and resource availability.

Sustainability executives from Intel Corp., Procter & Gamble Co., Eastman Chemical Co. and FedEx Corp. brought that expertise to Capitol Hill Wednesday, at the request of a Senate subcommittee that oversees “children’s health and environmental responsibility.” Alexander, ranking Republican on the subcommittee, shared the anecdote at a hearing the name of which could have been ripped from a garden-variety conference agenda, “Growing Long-Term Value: Corporate Environmental Responsibility and Innovation.” Senator Tom Udall, a Democrat from New Mexico, is chairman of the subcommittee.

Sustainability hearings however aren’t garden-variety events in the nation’s capital. Congress tends not to direct its investigative powers at trends in corporate strategy. For one thing, such trends don’t make great TV. As I waited in the (very short) line outside the committee room before the hearing, a group of high-school students from a charter school in Pillager, Minnesota, filed in, after meeting with Senator Al Franken. Given a choice between the subcommittee hearing on corporate supply-chain environmentalism, and the FBI director testifying downstairs about anything else, nine of the 12 chose the latter.

In his opening remarks, Udall cited five recent reports summarizing executives’ thoughts on the topic, from MIT Sloan Management Review and the Business Roundtable, and affiliates of KPMG International Cooperative, PwC International Ltd., Ernst & Young Global Ltd. “The emerging trend toward corporate environmental responsibility in the business world is in contrast to Congress’s increasingly growing division,” Udall said.

The four executives each walked the senators through some of their company’s epiphanies. Intel invested more than $100 million in the last decade in water conservation measures that have saved more than 40 billion gallons. The company links sustainability performance to employees’ bonuses. Procter & Gamble developed Downy Single Rinse for developing countries. It’s a soap that saves water by washing out in one rinse. Energy efficiency improvements at Eastman Chemical help keep costs down and consequently make it easier to keep most of its manufacturing jobs in the U.S. Fed Ex took advantage of a federal measure for accelerated depreciation of capital spending, which allowed it to buy fuel-efficient planes that can fly non-stop to Asia, and get packages delivered faster. The full testimony is available online.

Business has gone through this before. The four panelists and two senators agreed that corporate sustainability reminded them of a business trend in the 1980s, called “quality,” a term about as useful as sustainability. In practice, “quality” offered concrete management procedures and employee best practices for rooting errors out of manufacturing lines to ensure the highest-quality products.

What business hasn’t gone through before is an efficiency revolution brought on by both global demographic and environmental trends external to the company. Sustainability strategy is a refuge from 21st-century risks: resource scarcity, the middle-class population explosion that is driving up consumption and the myriad other trends that make the ability to sustain an enterprise over the long-term no longer automatic.

Some companies are still getting the message. They’d better hurry up, lest even the U.S. Congress beat them to it. As for the companies at the hearing — and pretty much anybody younger than 30 — they’re way ahead of the pack.

Visit bloomberg.com/sustainability for the latest from Bloomberg News about energy, natural resources and global business.

Original post is What Students Can Teach Congress About ‘Environmental Responsibility’ by Political Capital.