Spencer Abraham

Mr. ABRAHAM

Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I rise today to express my deep condolences to the entire Bitar family of Dearborn, MI, who lost their two sons due to the most recent violence in Lebanon that occurred last Thursday. Hadi, who was age 8, and his brother, Abdul Mohsin, age 9, were visiting their grandmother in their home village of Qana during their spring break from school when the fighting broke out last week. They sought refuge in the United Nations shelter, which was tragically bombed. The loss of civilian lives, Mr. President, no matter where it occurs, is always devastating, but it is especially tragic when children, in this case, 8-and 9-year-old children, are killed senselessly. When a loss such as this occurs so close to home, as it did in an important city in my State, many individuals in the Michigan community were affected. They feel this very deeply. I am here today to speak on their behalf. This occurrence highlights both the urgency and the necessity of bringing peace to the Middle East. I strongly urge the administration to persist in trying to negotiate a cease-fire in Lebanon and to bring an end to the hostilities immediately. I sincerely hope that no more tragedies such as this occur and that no more innocent lives are lost while these negotiations persist. Yesterday, I attended a special prayer service for the two boys who were killed last week. The ribbon I am wearing today, Mr. President, was given to me at that service as a tribute to the lives that have been lost. All I can say, Mr. President, is I intend to be on the floor every day to talk about what is going on, and these tragedies, until, hopefully, we will see a cease-fire and an end to the senseless killing and the bloodshed.

Mr. ABRAHAM

Mr. ABRAHAM. Thank you, Mr. President. Let me begin by offering my appreciation and compliments to the Senators from Tennessee and Missouri for having worked as hard as they have on the issue of term limits and bringing the issue of term limits to the attention of the U.S. Senate. I think our freshman class is strongly supportive as a group of the term limits effort. I think that Senators who have led this battle deserve special acknowledgement for the support they have given. I rise today and thank them and also make some comments of my own which are pertinent to this debate. Mr. President, in my State of Michigan, the people have already spoken on an important issue the Senate will consider here this week; that is, term limits. In 1992, Michigan voters passed term limits for Federal officials by an overwhelming margin--6 years for the U.S. House of Representatives and 12 years for the U.S. Senate. I repeat, it was an overwhelming margin, Mr. President. This was not a close vote. In 1993, as a candidate for the U.S. Senate, and in 1994 I ran on a platform committed to trying to make certain that the will of the people of my State was acknowledged and was followed by the Congress of the United States. The fight for term limits in Washington, however, must continue. I pledge to fight in Washington and make sure that the limits the people of Michigan voted for would be permissible. Term limits are widely observed at other levels of Government, Mr. President. The President of the United States, 41 Governors, 20 State legislators, and hundreds of State and local officials currently abide by term limits. Why not Congress? There has been an overwhelming expression of support for term limits in State after State. Since 1990, more than 25 million votes have been cast by voters in 22 States supporting congressional term limits. Polls have consistently shown that more than three-quarters of the American people favor term limits. I believe, Mr. President, that it is our obligation to fight to make sure that the people's voice does not go unheard. The 104th Congress is the first Congress to have recorded votes in either Chamber on term limits. The Senate vote this week will join the 1995 House vote to produce first-ever votes in both Houses. The vote in the House was held in March 1995 and received a majority of 227 votes. Passage, however, of a constitutional amendment would have required a two-thirds majority, or 290 votes. For the first time in history, the Senate will vote on term limits. While the measure is not currently expected to receive the necessary 67 votes required for passage, this vote is an important beginning to what I believe is an inevitable outcome. While approval by two-thirds of the House and Senate will not be easy, the support of 75 percent of the American people will make a difference as we continue this important effort. When I campaigned for the Senate in 1994 in my State, I heard from one end of Michigan to the other a consistent and very, very responsive, positive public outpouring of support for term limits. People felt that the Congress, in particular, and Washington as an institution was out of touch. They felt that a lot of factors were at play, but, most importantly, they felt that too many people ran for Congress or for the U.S. Senate, went to Washington, and ultimately stayed so long that they lost sight of the reasons that they ran for in the first place. Promises in campaigns were seldom, if ever, kept. Indeed, by the end of a term the promises of the previous campaign had often been totally forgotten. People felt that this lack of contact and communication, this out-of-touch, Washington, inside-the-beltway mentality was the reason that Washington had not been able to deal with important problems confronting America and, in particular, the problems of the Federal budget deficit and runaway Federal spending. People in my State believe that they have sent too many of their hard-earned earnings to Washington. They would like to keep more of what they earn. They feel the Federal tax burden is too high. They cannot understand why they have to balance their family budget, but we in Washington have not been able for 25 years to balance the Federal budget. The reason, they feel, more than any other that has led to this problem, this lack of responsiveness, is that too many Federal officials have been away from home too long, too many Federal officials have lost touch with voters back home and do not understand the things that motivate the average working families in Michigan. Mr. President, I do not think Michigan is atypical. I suspect that virtually every Member of this body hears the same thing in their State. I suspect Members of the House of Representatives, likewise, hear the same sentiments expressed to them when they are in their constituency. Now, this Congress has begun to move, I believe, in the right direction to address some of these concerns. Last year, for the first time we voted in the very first action taken by the Congress, to apply the laws that apply to the rest of the country to Members of Congress themselves. We put an end, in the Congressional Accountability Act, to the double standard that said that things we adopted here as Federal law were fine for the rest of America but not fine for ourselves. That has begun to change the way we do things here in the U.S. Senate. I have been intrigued by the fact that so many of my colleagues and I have found that meeting the various labor and other laws, requirements that we now are required to follow, have changed the way we operate our office and made us more mindful and concerned about labor relations and other issues that come on a day-to-day basis before us in our Senate offices. In the same way that has put us more in touch, I think nothing will put Congress more in touch with people back home than a frequent and regular turnover in the composition of the House and Senate of the United States. Mr. President, I believe that the term limits movement is a movement that will only grow. If 75 percent favor term limits today, I believe it will be even a higher percentage in the years to come. That is why whether or not we are able to succeed this year in passing term limits, it is only a matter of time, I believe, before we will have term limits as part of our Constitution. To that, I want to commend the majority leader, Senator Dole, for scheduling the vote on term limits here in the Senate. For all the talk about bringing reform to Congress, I believe our best approach to make Congress better is through term limits. I urge all of my colleagues to support this much-needed reform of our political system. I urge them to support it because it is the right direction to take. I urge them to support it because it has such strong popular support. I also urge them to support it because I think it is only right that the citizens of the various States have the chance to set the limits on terms of Federal officials. To conclude, that the citizens of Michigan do not have the constitutional authority to determine how long their Members of Congress and their U.S. Senators may serve, is, in my judgment, a strong repudiation of the rights of people in a free democracy to make decisions for themselves. Mr. President, I close on this note, by urging my colleagues to support the term limit efforts we are undertaking this week. Before I yield the floor, I will ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for 2 minutes to make a brief statement.

Mr. ABRAHAM

Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I rise today to express my deep concern regarding the most recent violence in Lebanon. I have immediately contacted the Clinton administration and urged them in the strongest possible terms to do everything in the power of the United States to cease the hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Many innocent civilian men, women, and children have been killed and there have been thousands of refugees who have been forced to flee their homes. The Arab-American community, many who have family and friends in Lebanon, have communicated to me first-hand accounts of the recent violence and tragedy. The most disturbing fact is the great loss of civilian lives, especially the children. These deaths, no matter where they occur, are always tragic. To help us immediately address the plight of these innocent victims, I have requested emergency assistance for the Lebanese civilians and refugees from the Department of State, the Agency for International Development, and the Department of Defense. The Lebanese are in need of food, medicine, water, emergency electric generators, beds, and other necessities. Mr. President, I am hopeful that my colleagues will support this request for aid and I am hopeful that this administration will use all of American's influence to cease the fighting in Lebanon immediately.

Mr. ABRAHAM

Mr. ABRAHAM. I thank the Chair.

Mr. ABRAHAM

Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I should like to pick up on some of the topics which the Senator from Texas was discussing and particularly focus on one aspect of the Republican agenda on crime, prison reform. I would like today to discuss the proposals we Senate Republicans have developed under the leadership of the majority leader, Senator Dole, to end frivolous lawsuits brought by prisoners, to remove our prisons from the control of Federal judges, and return control over them to our State and local officials. Mr. President, let me begin by outlining the problem. In 1995, 65,000 prisoner lawsuits were filed in Federal courts alone. To put that in context, 65,000 lawsuits is more than the total number of Federal prosecutions initiated in 1995. In other words, prisoners incarcerated in various prisons brought more cases in the Federal courts than all Federal prosecutions last year combined. The vast majority of these lawsuits are nonmeritorious. The National Association of Attorneys General estimated that 95 percent of them are dismissed without the inmate receiving anything. Let me just list a few examples. First, an inmate claimed $1 million in damages for civil rights violations because his ice cream had melted. The judge ruled that the right to eat ice cream was clearly not within the contemplation of our Nation's forefathers. Second, an inmate alleged that being forced to listen to his unit manager's country and western music constituted cruel and unusual punishment. Third, an inmate sued because when his dinner tray arrived, the piece of cake on it was ``hacked up.'' Fourth, an inmate sued because he was served chunky instead of smooth peanut butter. Fifth, two prisoners sued to force taxpayers to pay for sex change surgery while they were in prison. On and on the list goes, Mr. President, with more and more ridiculous lawsuits brought by inmates in penitentiaries. A prisoner who sued demanding LA Gear or Reebok ``Pumps'' instead of Converse tennis shoes. These kinds of lawsuits are an enormous drain on the resources of our States and localities, resources that would be better spent incarcerating more dangerous offenders instead of being consumed in court battles without merit. Thirty-three States have estimated that they spend at least $54.5 million annually combined on these lawsuits. The National Association of Attorneys General has extrapolated that number to conclude that the annual costs for all of these States are approximately $81 million a year to battle cases of the sort that I have just described. In addition to the problems created by the lawsuits the courts have dismissed, we have what is, if anything, a more serious problem-- lawsuits the courts have not dismissed that have resulted in turning over the running of our prisons to the courts. In many jurisdictions, including my own State of Michigan, judicial orders entered under Federal law have effectively turned control of the prison system away from elected officials accountable to the taxpayers and over to the courts. The courts, in turn, raise the costs of running prisons far beyond what is necessary and undermine the very legitimacy and deterrent effect of prison sentences. Judicial orders entered under Federal law have even resulted in the release of dangerous criminals from prison. Thus, right now, our existing Federal laws are actually wasting the taxpayers' money and creating risk to public safety. Let me explain a little bit about how this works. Under a series of judicial decrees resulting from Justice Department lawsuits against the Michigan Department of Corrections back in the 1960's, the Federal courts now monitor our State prisons to determine: first, how warm the food is; second, how bright the lights are; third, whether there are electrical outlets in each cell; fourth, whether windows are inspected and up to code; fifth, whether a prisoner's hair is cut only by licensed barbers; and sixth, whether air and water temperatures in the prison are comfortable. Complying with these court orders, litigating over what they mean, and producing the reports necessary to keep the courts happy has cost the Michigan taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars since 1984. This would be bad enough if a court had ever found that Michigan's prison system was at some point in violation of the Constitution or if the conditions there had been declared inhumane, but that is not the case. To the contrary, nearly all of Michigan's facilities are fully accredited by the American Corrections Association. We have what may be the most extensive training program in the Nation for corrections officers. Our rate of prison violence is among the lowest of any State. And we have spent an average of $4,000 a year per prisoner for health care, including nearly $1,700 for mental health services. Rather, the judicial intervention is the result of a consent decree that Michigan entered into in 1982, 13 years ago, that was supposed to end a lawsuit filed at the same time. Instead, the decree has been a source of continuous litigation and intervention by the court into the minutia of prison operations. The Michigan story is a bad one, Mr. President, but let me tell you a story that causes me even more concern, and that is on the public safety side, the example that is going on even today in the city of Philadelphia. There a Federal judge has been overseeing what has become a program of wholesale releases of up to 600 criminal defendants per week to keep the prison population down to what the judge considers an appropriate level. As a result, a large number of defendants have been released back onto the streets. Following their release, thousands of these defendants have been rearrested for new crimes every year including 79 murders, 90 rapes, 959 robberies, 2,215 drug dealing charges, 701 burglaries, 2,748 thefts, and 1,113 assaults. Under this order, there are no individualized bail hearings based on a defendant's criminal history before deciding whether to release the defendant pretrial. Instead, the only consideration is what the defendant is charged with the day of his or her arrest. No matter what the defendant has done before, even, for example, if he or she was previously convicted of murder, if the charge giving rise to the specific arrest on the specific date is a nonviolent crime, the defendant may not be held pretrial. Moreover, the so-called nonviolent crimes include stalking, carjacking, robbery with a baseball bat, burglary, drug dealing, vehicular homicide, manslaughter, terroristic threats, and gun charges. Those are charged as nonviolent and consequently those arrested are not detained. Failure to appear rates, needless to say, for crimes covered by the cap are up around 70 percent as opposed to noncovered crimes for aggravated assault where the rate is just 3 percent. The Philadelphia fugitive rate for defendants charged with drug dealing is 76 percent, three times the national average. Over 100 persons in Philadelphia have been killed by criminals set free under this prison cap. Mr. President, I think this is all wrong. People deserve to keep their tax dollars or to have them spent on progress they approve. They deserve better than to have their money spent on keeping prisoners and prisons in conditions a particular Federal judge feels are desirable but not required by the Constitution or any law. They certainly do not need it spent on endless litigation over these matters. Meanwhile, criminals, while they must be accorded their constitutional rights, deserve to be punished. Obviously, they should not be tortured or treated cruelly. At the same time, they also should not have all the rights and privileges the rest of us enjoy. Rather, their lives should, on the whole, be describable by the old concept known as ``hard time.'' By interfering with the fulfillment of this punitive function, the courts are effectively seriously undermining the entire criminal justice system. Our distinguished majority leader, Senator Dole, working with Senator Hatch, Senator Kyl, Senator Hutchison, and myself, has developed legislation to address these problems. Our proposals will return sanity and State control to our prison systems. To begin with, we would institute several measures to reduce frivolous inmate litigation. We would require judicial screening, before docketing, of any civil complaint filed by a prisoner seeking relief from the Government. This provision would allow a Federal judge to immediately dismiss a complaint if either the complaint does not state a claim upon which relief may be granted, or the defendant is immune from suit. In addition, State prisoners would have to exhaust all administrative remedies before filing a lawsuit in Federal court. We would also create disincentives for prisoners to file frivolous suits. Under current law, there is no cost to prisoners for filing an infinite number of such suits. First, we would require inmates who file lawsuits to pay the full amount of their court fees and other costs. We also would make that requirement enforceable by allowing their trust accounts to be garnished to pay these fees. If a prisoner is unable to fully pay court fees and other costs at the time of filing a lawsuit, 20 percent of the funds in his trust account would be garnished for this purpose. Every month thereafter 20 percent of the income credited to the prisoner's account would be garnished until the full amount is paid off. We would also allow Federal courts to revoke any good-time credits accumulated by a prisoner who files a frivolous suit. Finally, we would prohibit prisoners who have filed three frivolous or obviously nonmeritorious in forma pauperis civil actions from filing any more unless they are in imminent danger of severe bodily harm, and we would cap and limit the attorney's fees that can be obtained from the defendant in such suits. As to the powers of judges to overrule our legislatures, we would forbid courts from entering orders for prospective relief--such as regulating food temperatures--unless the order is necessary to correct violations of individual plaintiffs' Federal rights. We also would require that the relief be narrowly drawn and be the least intrusive means of protecting the Federal rights. We would direct courts to give substantial weight to any adverse impact on public safety or the operation of the criminal justice system caused by the relief. And we would impose important new requirements before a court can enter an order that requires the release of prisoners, including that such orders may be entered in the Federal system only by a three-judge court. We also would provide that any party can seek to have a court decree ended after 2 years, and that the court will order it ended unless there is still a constitutional violation that needs to be corrected. As a result, no longer will prison administration be turned over to Federal judges for the indefinite future for the slightest reason. No longer will public safety be jeopardized by capricious judicial prison caps. And no longer will the taxpayers be socked for enormous, unnecessary bills to pay for all this. Instead, the States will be able to run prisons as they see fit unless there is a constitutional violation. If there is, a narrowly tailored order to correct the violation may be entered. This is a balanced set of proposals, allowing the courts to step in where they are needed, but puts an end to unnecessary judicial intervention and micromanagement of our prison system we see too often. These proposals were included as part of the Commerce, State, Justice appropriation bill. Unfortunately, President Clinton vetoed this legislation. As a result, we continue to have more frivolous prisoner lawsuits and we continue to have some courts running prisons. President Clinton said his veto was based on other parts of the legislation. Accordingly, we will shortly be sending him a new version of an omnibus appropriations bill that again includes these proposals. This is one measure we can take that will plainly advance our fight against crime. We hope this time, President Clinton will help. Mr. President, at this time, I yield the floor to the Senator from Tennessee for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. ABRAHAM

Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I ask that there now be a period for the transaction of routine morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 5 minutes each.

Mr. ABRAHAM

Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 3034 just received from the House.

Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be deemed read a third time and passed, that the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the bill appear at the appropriate place in the Record.

Mr. ABRAHAM

Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, as the Senate continues to debate our proper budget priorities, I have noted the presence of a number of inaccurate arguments. These arguments, in my opinion, are distracting us from the central question of how our taxing and spending policies affect middle-class Americans. Particularly worrisome to me are inaccurate views concerning the historical performance of tax cuts, and their impact on middle-class income in particular. Specifically, some are arguing that tax cuts in the 1980's produced lower incomes for our middle class, and saddled them with a larger percentage of total tax receipts. In an attempt to focus debate more effectively on questions of what will and will not work for the American people, I would like to have inserted into the Record an article of mine, published recently in The World & I. In this article I set forth my view of the real effect of tax cuts in the 1980's. As published, the article is accompanied by spirited responses and defenses from several distinguished observers, including Gary Burtless of the Brookings Institution, Michael Meeropol of the Center for Popular Economics, Bruce Bartlett of the National Center for Policy Analysis, Norman B. Ture of the Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation, and Paul M. Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation. I argue that the pro-growth and pro-family tax policies of the 1980's contributed significantly to the prosperity of America's middle-class families. In addition, I point out that tax cuts produce lower, not higher, deficits and that tax cuts help the middle class and poor more than the rich. Not all the respondents agreed completely with my argument. But I believe the article can help all of us form more useful, coherent arguments as we face the budget challenges ahead. The article follows: The Real 1980's (By Spencer Abraham) The debate over the budget is becoming a debate over the 1980s. Opponents of tax cuts and spending restraints are claiming that these policies wreaked havoc when tried before under Ronald Reagan. The policies of the 1980s, in this view, hurt American families and the American economy, and so should not be repeated. To answer this criticism, one must explode three interrelated myths that are exercising undue influence over the budget debate today: The progrowth and profamily tax policies of the 1980s actually hurt America's middleclass families. Tax cuts necessarily increase the budget deficit. Tax cuts disproportionately benefit the rich at the expense of the middle class and poor. Using these myths, defenders of the status quo paint reformers as heartless friends of rich people and enemies of the poor and middle class. By exploding them, we can return the focus of our budget debate to the question of how best to reform tax and spending policies for the benefit of all Americans. But to do this, we must reestablish the truth about how our nation's middle class really fared under the low-tax, limited-government policies of the 1980s. myth no. 1 The claim that middle-class families suffered under conservative reforms is based on an inaccurate representation of the income data. For example, opponents of reform have said over and over that household income fell over a 15-year period, from $38,248 in 1979 to $36,959 in 1993, and that this decline was the direct result of the policies of Ronald Reagan and the Republicans. They wield a frightening graph, much like figure 1. But the graph does not reflect reality. These 15 years did not constitute one monolithic era of Republican policy dominance. Rather, they included two periods characterized by overtaxation and overregulation (1979-81 and 1990-93) and one period (1982-89) during which Republican policies of lower taxes and less regulation were in place. An accurate portrayal of this overall period would look like figure 2. In truth, this 15-year period consists of one era of middle-class prosperity under low-tax, limited-government policies and two eras of middle-class pain under policies of high taxes and increased regulation. Americans had 8 years of improvement in middle-class incomes from 1982 to 1989. Unfortunately for the middle class, the periods from 1979 to 1981 and 1990 to 1993 were dominated by overtaxation and overregulation, policies that resulted in declines in middle- class incomes. Opponents of reform attempt to paint Ronald Reagan's low- tax, limited-government policies as harmful by treating the 1979-93 period as if all of it were in the Reagan era. They wrongly imply that Reagan was president and Republicans were in control throughout this period. On closer inspection, it becomes clear that the first 3 of the 15 years were under high-tax and heavy regulatory policies. It is also clear that, during this first period, real median family income fell precipitously from over $38,000 to under $36,000, for a total loss of over $2,500, according to Census Bureau data. In fact, one of the sharpest declines in median family income on record occurred in the year 1980. As anyone with a working knowledge of the calendar and even a passing interest in American politics Knows, Ronald Reagan was not president in 1979 or 1980. Jimmy Carter was. Further, Republicans controlled the Senate for only the first 6 years of Reagan's tenure. What is more, Republicans did not control the House of Representatives at any time during this 15-year period. Democrats were in charge the entire time. And, in 1979 and 1980, they controlled both the legislature and the presidency. Yet opponents of lower taxes and slower spending growth almost always include 1979 and 1980, the last years of the Carter era, in describing the impact of the Reagan administration's conservative tax and regulatory reforms. But no matter how much one opposes tax cutting and deregulation, it is difficult to argue that these policies, pursued under Ronald Reagan and the GOP in 1981 and beyond, were bad enough to cause income declines in the years before they were implemented. Unlike the 1993 Clinton income tax increases, many of which were implemented retroactively, the 1981 Reagan economic policies did not take effect until the middle of 1982. And what happened after these policies went into effect in 1982? As anyone can see from figure 2, real, postinflation median family income in the United States rose between 1982 and 1990, from $35,419 to $39,086, for an increase of 10.4 percent. cold water on the economy But in 1990, the Democratic majority in Congress began insisting that tax-revenue increases had to be part of any effort to reduce the budget deficit. The result was the budget summit deal of 1990. After that, again shown in figure 2, we saw a different pattern. Between 1990 and 1993, median family income plummeted 5.4 percent, from $39,086 to $36,959. The most severe drop in middle-class income began in 1993, the year the Clinton retroactive tax increases took effect. In that year, there was a remarkable $709 (1.9 percent) plunge in real median family income. So what conclusion should we reach? The answer seems clear: Republican economic and tax policies helped the middle class. Thus, to get middle-class incomes moving upward again, we should return to the low-tax, deregulatory policies of the 1980s. These policies produced one of the most dramatic increases in middle-class incomes in the last 30 years. Nineteen million new jobs were created between 1982 and 1989--2.4 million in 1989 alone. And 82 percent of these jobs were in higher-paying occupations: technical, precision production, and managerial and professional. Clearly then, tax cuts helped the middle class in the best way possible, by producing economic opportunity and good jobs. This brings us to a subset of the first myth: that the rich got richer and the poor got poorer during the 1980s. Once again, this claim is unsubstantiated by the facts. First, let us look at a graph (fig. 3) that surfaced during the economic policy debate. According to this figure, the 15 years between 1979 and 1993 produced: A 15 percent decline in real family income for the bottom 20 percent of America taxpayers. A 7 percent drop in income for the second-lowest 20 percent of taxpayers. A 3 percent drop in income for the middle 20 percent. Meanwhile, this 15-year period saw: A 5 percent increase in income for the fourth 20 percent. An 18 percent increase in income for the richest 20 percent of taxpayers, which was most problematic of all for critics of taxcut policy. Once again, however, the use of this 15-year conglomeration produces misleading figures. The data look bad for the poor and middle class on this graph because, once again, the figure lumps in the effects of Jimmy Carter's high-tax, high- regulation policies with those of low taxes and low regulation. When we separate out the 1979-81 period (fig. 4) from the 1982-90 recovery years (fig. 5), we find that everyone got poorer under the high-tax, high-regulation policies of 1979-81--the poor much more so and much more devastatingly than the rich. From 1979 to 1981, the poorest fifth experienced a drop in income of 9 percent, the next fifth a drop of 6.8 percent, the middle fifth a drop of 5.4 percent, the following fifth a drop of 3.5 percent, and the top fifth a drop of 4.5 percent. Meanwhile, when the government lowered taxes and regulations during the 1982-90 period, everyone got richer. During the 1982-90 Reagan-Bush era, everyone was better off. The bottom fifth experienced an 11 percent increase in income, the next fifth experienced a 9.7 percent gain, the middle fifth a 10.3 percent increase, the next fifth an 11.8 percent rise, and the highest fifth a 17.9 percent increase. After the 1990 budget deal, everyone again became worse off. And after President Clinton's retroactive tax hike took effect in 1993, average Americans were hit hard. Perhaps some would complain that people with high incomes did even better than other Americans during the prosperous 1980s. But government's goal should not be to make all people the same. It should be to allow everyone to become better off. And policies of low taxes and fewer regulations did precisely this. It really is very simple: Lower taxes and less regulation help the poor, along with everyone else, while higher taxes and more regulation hurt the poor, along with everyone else. myth no. 2 What about the notion that we cannot afford tax cuts and that the tax cuts of the 1980s produced the burdensome deficits our economy is staggering under today? This myth, unfortunately, has led some in Congress to abandon their commitment to tax cuts in the name of common sense. They now argue that common sense demands that we delay, cut back, or abandon entirely any tax cuts, at least until we achieve a balanced budget. In fact, tax cuts can help America achieve the goal of balancing the budget. Tax reductions--particularly those that strengthen incentives to work, save, and invest--increase the rate of economic growth and thereby produce higher tax revenues for the Treasury than would be the case under a high-tax regime. It is a paradoxical truth--to paraphrase what President John F. Kennedy said in 1962--that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low. And the soundest way to raise revenue in the long run is to cut the rates now. Kennedy was right and for a simple if somewhat unexpected reason: Irrespective of the top marginal tax rate, the government will take in about the same amount as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). Research by economist W. Kurt Hauser shows that government receipts as a proportion of GDP have continued to hover at 19.5 percent since 1960. In 1982, the tax share stood at 19.8 percent of GDP. By 1989, the tax share had declined slightly to 19.2 percent of GDP--much the same as it had been back in 1960. In short, whether we have raised or lowered tax rates, the percentage of GDP in taxes has hovered at 19 percent. The issue, of course, is 19 percent of what? Is it 19 percent of a large and growing GDP, or of an anemic, stagnant one? Here again, the real numbers destroy the myths and tell the true story. According to the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB), in 1982, the year the tax cuts were implemented, tax receipts stood at $617.8 billion. By 1989, tax receipts had increased to $990.7 billion. How did this come about? By lowering taxes, the government freed up capital and entrepreneurial spirit, creating jobs and wealth and expanding the size of the economic pie. From 1982 to 1989, GDP increased from $3.1 to $5.4 trillion. Therefore, while tax revenues as a share of GDP remained relatively constant at just over 19 percent, the dollar amount of tax revenues collected by the federal government rose dramatically, because the economy grew dramatically. Tax cuts will increase economic growth and thereby reduce the deficit. The question is, by how much? Economist Bruce Bartlett, a former assistant secretary of the Treasury, notes that the OMB figures show that increases in real GDP significantly reduce the deficit. By the year 2000, the deficit would be diminished by more than $150 billion if the economy grew just 1 percent faster than currently projected over the next five years. Of course, Bartlett says, there is no guarantee that the Republican tax cuts will achieve a 1 percent faster growth rate. But there is no doubt they will increase growth above what would otherwise have occurred. If growth is just 0.4 percent faster per year it would be enough to make the tax cut deficit-neutral, based on the OMB data. Thus, a dispassionate review of the figures shatters the myth that the Reagan tax cuts increased the deficit. The problem was not our revenue stream, either in terms of the percentage of GDP paid in taxes, or in real tax dollars received. The problem was too much spending. From 1982 to 1989, government spending rose from $745 billion to $1.14 trillion, a 53 percent jump. Tax cuts in the 1990s can help produce the same type of economic growth they generated in the 1980s. This growth in turn will help us reduce the deficit. All we must do is reduce the rate at which government spending grows. CBO figures show that, if we simply hold the rate at which federal spending grows to a little over 2 percent per year, we can cut taxes by $189 billion and balance the budget by the year 2002. myth no. 3 But this reference to tax cuts brings us face to face with another myth, namely, that tax cuts disproportionately benefit the rich at the expense of the poor. The myth explodes, however, on contact with IRS data conclusively show that lower income-tax rates actually increase the percentage of the total tax bill paid by the rich while decreasing the tax burden on the poor. There is an amazing historical correlation between decreases in the marginal tax rate and increases in the share of revenue paid by the top 1 percent of income earners. And, of course, along with this increase in taxes paid by the most wealthy went a decrease in the taxes paid by the lower 50 percent of income earners. For example, by 1988, the share of income taxes paid by the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers assumed just 5.7 percent of the income tax burden. Also in 1988, the average tax payment of the top 1 percent of taxpayers amounted to 27.5 percent of the total. On the other hand, after the budget summit deal of 1990, the top marginal tax rate was increased from 28 to 31 percent. This produced a 3.5 percent decrease in the revenue share paid by the top 1 percent--down to 24.6 percent of the total. That is, as marginal rates decreased, the rich paid more, and as marginal rates increased the rich paid less, leaving more for the middle class and poor to pay. Clearly, then, if we want to help the middle class, the last thing we should do is increase marginal tax rates. Such an increase will lead to lower productivity, lower tax revenues from the rich, and an increased tax burden for those who are not rich. The answer to our dilemma, then, is not to keep our current high taxes but to cut taxes while bringing spending under control. By bringing together disparate kinds of tax cuts, from a $500-per-child tax credit to a reduction in the capital-gains tax rate that will strengthen small businesses and entrepreneurs, we can increase the well-being and productivity of America's middle-class families. These tax cuts would allow middle-class families to build a better future for their children. The proposed $500-per-child tax credit directly benefits the middle class. The Joint Committee on Taxation has reported that three-quarters of the benefits from this tax cut will go to people with incomes less than $75,000. A capital-gains tax cut will accrue to the middle class as well. IRS data show that 55 percent of taxpayers who report long-term capital gains earn $50,000 or less. And 75 percent of them earn $75,000 or less. These tax cuts will bring real relief to America's middle class. They will help the economy and thereby help lower the deficit. The 1980s teach us--if only we will examine their lessons properly--that a vibrant economy, spurred by low taxes and fewer regulations, will produce balanced budgets and economic well-being for the middle class. We need only trust Americans to spend and invest their own money as they see fit. We need only trust the people, rather than government, to make their own decisions about how to take care of their families and improve their lot in life.

Mr. ABRAHAM

Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand in adjournment until the hour of 10 a.m., on Friday, April 19; further, that immediately following the prayer, the Journal of proceedings be deemed approved to date, no resolutions come over under the rule, the call of the calendar be dispensed with, the morning hour deemed to have expired, and the time for the two leaders reserved for their use later in the day; that there then be a period for morning business until the hour of 12 noon, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 5 minutes each, with the first 75 minutes under the control of Senator Coverdell, or his designee, and the last 45 minutes under the control of Senator Daschle, or his designee, with 10 minutes of that time reserved for Senator Murray; further, that at the hour of 12 noon the Senate begin consideration of Calendar No. 201, S.J. Res. 21, regarding a constitutional amendment to limit congressional terms.

Mr. ABRAHAM

Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, for the information of all Senators, the Senate will convene at 10 a.m. Shortly after convening, the Senate will consider a sense-of-the-Senate resolution regarding the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. The Senators are asked to be on the floor promptly at 10 a.m., as there will be a brief period of silence to remember the tragedy. Following morning business, the Senate will then begin consideration of the term limits legislation. No rollcall votes will occur during Friday's session. When the Senate completes debate Friday, it will resume consideration of the term limits legislation on Monday. No rollcall votes will occur during Monday's session. However, Senators are encouraged to debate the legislation and offer any amendments during Friday's and Monday's sessions of the Senate. The Senate may also be asked to turn to any other legislative items that can be cleared for action.

Mr. ABRAHAM

Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I now ask that the Senate stand in adjournment under the previous order following the remarks of Senator Lautenberg.

Mr. ABRAHAM

Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I rise in support of adoption of Senate Resolution 245 which will have the effect of removing me from membership on the Labor and Human Resources Committee. Although I would have liked to retain my assignment on the Labor Committee, I support this action in deference to rule XXV of the Standing Rules of the Senate. Rule XXV limits the number of committees on which each Member may serve during a Congress. In combination with rule XXV, and the seniority considerations within the Senate Republican conference, which dictate the basis by which Members obtain waivers to serve on more than two ``A'' committees, I am not eligible at this time to continue to serve on the Labor Committee during the remainder of the 104th Congress.

Mr. ABRAHAM

Mr. ABRAHAM. Thank you very much, Mr. President. I will attempt to complete my remarks in a short period of time.

Mr. ABRAHAM

Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I rise tonight to make an opening statement with regard to the bill, S. 1664, on illegal immigration. Let me begin by stating my support for this legislation. It is the product of much work in our Judiciary Committee and before that in the Immigration Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee. And, in my judgment, although there are parts of the bill that I still hope to see us modify during the deliberations this week, it is an extraordinary piece of legislation which moves in the right direction, and it is in no small measure thanks to the Senator from Wyoming that we have this fine piece of legislation before us. His work both in the context of this legislation and over the past 17 years on immigration-related matters has been exceptional. It is a reflection of a Senator who is deeply committed to accomplishing a job that is difficult, and I commend him for it. Mr. President, those who refuse to play by the rules who come here illegally become, as a result, a burden on our society, and it should not be tolerated. The illegal immigration is a betrayal of our long tradition of welcoming those who play by the rules. If the Federal Government did its job of keeping out, tracking down, and expelling illegal aliens, we would not have an immigration problem that confronts America today. By definition, illegal immigrants are lawbreakers, and based on statistics, illegal immigrants are coming here at a very high rate. It is estimated at about 300,000 per year. Our bill to address illegal immigration, S. 1664, deals effectively and aggressively with the real problem of illegal immigration--reforms to our border patrols, our visa policies, criminal alien policies and rules concerning immigrant use of welfare. First, with respect to border patrols, this bill begins in the obvious place, by fighting the problem of illegal immigration at the border. Our illegal immigration reform bill provides for the addition of 4,700 Border Patrol agents over the next 5 years, a 90 percent increase over the current level. It adds 300 new INS investigators for the next 3 years to investigate the smuggling and employment of illegal aliens, an increase of nearly 100 percent over current levels. These increases will help us address the fundamental, the basic problem of illegal immigration by providing the manpower necessary to address the problem of those who come to this country without proper documentation. That is only a start of how this bill attempts to reform the immigration laws as they pertain to illegal immigrants. Another category of illegal aliens is those who overstay their visas, aliens who come here legally but then overstay. This bill addresses that problem and forcefully. First, it establishes the first substantial penalties for visa overstays. Second, it bars visa overstayers for even applying for a new visa for 5 years if they fail to appear for a deportation hearing. It also charges 300 INS investigators to seek out these aliens and to enforce the bill's rules. It is important to keep in mind that contrary to some charges made over recent weeks, visa overstayers commonly are not individuals who come here on permanent family visas. Rather, the bulk of visa overstayers come to this country as tourists or students, then stay beyond the expiration of their visas. Thus, it is wise and fitting that we should address those who break the law, those who overstay the visa, with sharp, stiff penalties rather than attempting to address this problem by changing in some ways the penalties for those who are playing by the rules either by reducing the number of immigrants who may come to this country or dealing with those who are in fact not creating the problem. A third area which this bill addresses and which I have been very active in working on pertains to criminal aliens. By conservative estimates, almost half a million felons are living in this country illegally. These aliens have been convicted of murder, rape, drug trafficking, potentially such crimes as espionage, sabotage, treason and/or a number of other serious crimes and are therefore, under the current laws of our country, deportable. Unfortunately, in the vast majority of cases, our officials cannot deport these criminals because of a breakdown in the deportation process. Principally, the problem relates to the interminable amount of appeals which deportable aliens who are criminals have at their disposal. As a consequence, many of these noncitizen lawbreakers end up back on our streets to prey on law-abiding American citizens. In the original bill of the Senator from Wyoming, a number of needed provisions were contained. That bill originally directed the Attorney General to provide regulations permitting special inquiry officers to enter final orders of deportation stipulated to by the alien. It authorized Federal judges to order deportation as a condition of probation. And it made other similar efforts to address the criminal alien problem. I am glad, however, that the Judiciary Committee saw fit to go even further and to add to and strengthen these provisions by adopting four amendments on which I worked with a number of other Senators on the committee to see adopted. These amendments would create expedited procedures for deporting criminal aliens. The provisions would first prohibit the Attorney General from releasing such criminal aliens from custody; second, end judicial review for orders of deportation entered against these criminal aliens while maintaining the right to administrative review. In short, once the criminal alien had exhausted all appeals available under the criminal laws, the criminal alien would still have the full deportation administrative provisions to protect him, that is, a deportation hearing and the ability to appeal any order of deportation to the Board of Immigration Appeals, but that would end the process as opposed to triggering a return to the court system. That will be positive because it will mean the actual deportation of more criminal aliens and the freeing up of the court system from many of these frivolous lawsuits. In addition, the criminal alien deportation procedures require the Attorney General to deport criminal aliens within 30 days of the conclusion of the alien's prison sentence. What I believe this will lead to is the initiation of the deportation proceedings well in advance of the end of the sentence so that upon release the criminal aliens will be leaving the country. Finally, our legislation permits State criminal courts to enter conclusive findings of fact during sentencing that an alien has been convicted of a deportable offense. In addition, the State courts, upon making those findings of fact, will be required to report them to the Attorney General so that criminal aliens who are convicted of deportable offenses in State courts would be known by the authorities, that is, the Department of Justice and the Attorney General, in such a fashion as to allow for the deportation proceedings to begin. These reforms would not affect any of the aliens' due process protections on the underlying criminal offense. Aliens would still be entitled to the lengthy appellate and habeas corpus review, just like U.S. citizens. But abuses of the appeals process would stop there and not continue on through the deportation provisions themselves. Mr. President, this makes sense. The fact is, if there are, as is currently estimated, a minimum of one-half million noncitizens who are people who have committed serious crimes in this country, to me it makes sense that the laws which allow those people to be deported ought to be enforced so those slots can be taken by law-abiding citizens who want to come to this country and make a positive contribution rather than come to the country and commit serious criminal violations. These provisions collectively will allow us to dramatically increase the number of criminal aliens who are deported. Most recent estimates suggest that current amount is nowhere higher than 4 to 6 percent of the criminal aliens who are deportable in this country. That means that somewhere over 90 percent of the criminal aliens who could be deported are not, primarily because of a lack of a process to make expeditious deportation feasible. Our bill would change that. It would mean that criminal aliens would be leaving the country and, therefore, there would be more slots in this country for immigrants who want to make a contribution. Another area which this bill addresses effectively, I think, are restrictions on welfare benefits available to noncitizens. The problem of immigrant welfare use is often overstated. According to the Urban Institute, nonrefugee, working-age immigrants are no more likely to use welfare than are native-born Americans. But I continue to believe we should concentrate on requiring that all immigrants be responsible for themselves, rather than become dependent on Government programs. To encourage responsibility, we first should concentrate on preventing illegal aliens, who undermine our laws by even being here, from receiving welfare benefits. In addition, we should prevent immigrants from collecting welfare payments until they have worked here and contributed taxes to our welfare system or until they become citizens. Third, we should hold sponsors of legal immigrants financially liable for up to 10 years for welfare payments those they sponsor improperly receive. As you know, the sponsorship agreements that people sign in order to bring someone to this country are very, very infrequently upheld; very infrequently enforced. I think the legislation we have now will provide us with the tools to enforce such sponsorship agreements. It will attribute the sponsor's income to the immigrant sponsor for 5 years should the immigrant seek welfare payments. That will, on the one hand, dramatically reduce those eligible and, in addition, allow us to collect from the person who makes the original commitment of sponsorship. Collectively, these provisions address, and address effectively, the illegal immigration problems which we currently confront. They do so without punishing law-abiding people and companies. However, there are certain parts of the legislation before us which I think go too far and place the focus, not on those who are breaking the rules, but rather too much on those who are playing by the rules. First, in this respect, and most important, are the provisions in the legislation that pertain to what I believe will ultimately become a national ID system. The original bill included a national employee verification system. This mandatory system would have required all employers to verify with the Federal Government the work eligibility of every prospective employee. Because this system would be expensive and intrusive, riddled with mistakes and dangerous to our workers' ability to find work, the committee saw fit to strike that permanent system, which would have to have been in place within 8 years. I brought a provision before the committee to simply strike all of this verification process. It failed on a 9-to-9 vote. What we are left with now is a provision for a pilot program. While it is a smaller program than that originally envisioned in the legislation, I continue to see problems with this provision because, although the bill does not overtly establish a national verification system that is mandatory, it heads us in that direction. And there are no brakes provided in the bill to keep it from that destination. In this provision, the INS would be permitted to initiate large local or regional demonstration projects anywhere in the Nation. The language of the bill is vague here, but it leaves discretion to bureaucrats to decide whether the system will be mandatory or voluntary for employers. Also unclear is the size of the regional project that might be initiated, or regional projects that might be initiated. For example, such regions could encompass multiple States at one time. It is also unclear what happens during a demonstration project when U.S. citizens cannot prove that they are eligible to work. It is likewise unclear about whether or not individual Americans will have to consult the Government when they seek to hire someone even to do such things as mow their own lawn. One thing is clear. The bill sets in place the infrastructure necessary for a mandatory national system and establishes the principle that companies should gain Government approval before hiring any employee. I think this is headed in the wrong direction. People who want to break the rules will find ways to break the rules or get around the rules. That is happening today. But, if we move in the direction of a national employee verification system, whether it is the original mandatory nationwide program the legislation included or a pilot program which starts in place the infrastructure that leads to a national program, I think we are headed in the wrong direction. We will be penalizing those who play by the rules, both employers and employees of employers. Especially for those in small business, it will be a substantial increase in business overhead. For employees, native-born U.S. citizens, it could mean huge hardship if the database of such a system is in any way inaccurate. Just to put that in perspective, a mere 1 percent error margin in the database could, on an annual basis, affect 600,000 employment decisions in this country. To put that in perspective, that means twice the number of total illegal aliens that come into this country each year. I do not believe that is the way we should proceed, and, therefore, during consideration of this bill, I will be offering an amendment with Senators Feingold and DeWine to strike provisions for this overly intrusive infringement that is signified by the pilot program. This amendment, striking the verification provision, is supported by a significant number of groups concerned with the rights of workers and employers from the National Federation of Independent Businesses and the National Retail Association to the U.S. Catholic Conference to the Small Business Survival Committee. I look forward to working with my colleagues on specifics, but the debate we should be having here is, How do we reduce illegal immigration? I believe the proper place to start is by focusing on those who are lawbreakers, whether they are employees or employers, whether they are those who come over the border without documents or those who overstay their visas or if they are a criminal alien. I think it is important for us to take a very simple philosophical approach to deal with these problems. For those who are yearning to be free, who are willing to play by the rules and wait their turn, for them we should throw open the door to the land of liberty, which has been available as long as this country has existed. On the other hand, for those who flout our laws, they should find that Lady Liberty has turned her back on them, that she will not rise up to aid those who trample on the law on which liberty is built. Though Lady Liberty yearns to aid the righteous, those willing to work hard and to build a better life for themselves and their families, she does not allow people to come to this country simply to take advantage of the laws and of the citizens here. Those who prize both law and liberty, those who would be Americans are those we should protect with any legislation that we should address in this context. Mr. President, as virtually every Member of the Senate, I have a heritage that began in another part of the world. In my case, it was my grandparents who came here approximately a century ago. They did not come to this country in search of welfare payments. They did not come to this country for any ulterior motives. They came here because they wanted to live in a country that was free. They wanted their children and their grandchildren to know what it was like to be born in a nation that was free, and they made a positive contribution, both in what they did and in bringing up strong families who have made their own contributions. Last fall, I had the opportunity for the first time to go to Ellis Island in New York where my grandparents made their first visit to these shores. I was struck as I went there and as I looked through the history of Ellis Island of what it meant and what it still means. I believe as we address immigration issues, we should never lose sight of what Ellis Island and the various other points of disembarkation have meant to those who truly wanted to come to this country to enjoy all that America offers--the American dream. Legal immigration is the American way. It strengthens us economically, culturally, and spiritually, because by letting in those who come here playing by the rules and seeking to build a better life for their families, we welcome true Americans and live up to our own ideals. Indeed, an overwhelming percentage of people in our country have made it clear that they think we should address illegal immigration problems long before we consider changes in the legal immigration laws of this country, and indeed, Mr. President, as I will say at a later point in these debates, it is clear to me that these are very separate issues and, as a threshold matter, we have done the right thing in the Judiciary Committee, as the House did the right thing, in separating legal and illegal immigration. Cutting legal immigration precipitously could backfire and cause more people to come here illegally. So for those reasons, I strongly support the illegal immigration bill that is before us and believe it should be considered on its own merits as a freestanding piece of legislation. Indeed, that is the position that two-thirds of the members of the Judiciary Committee took when we began this debate a few weeks ago. I am convinced that we must concentrate on the real problem facing our country from immigration--lawbreakers--and we should not allow any fear of immigrants to distract us from the task of keeping the illegal immigrants out of the country. Mr. President, after we conclude that and once S. 1664 has been disposed of, then it would be appropriate to consider changes that we might wish to make in the laws pertaining to legal immigration. But it is my sincere hope and certainly will be my effort here on the floor to maintain the separation that we achieved in the Judiciary Committee and that was achieved in the House of Representatives. I think that we will make a major step forward if we pass S. 1664, hopefully with certain modifications. I think we would make a big mistake if we backtrack and begin to try and confuse and merge issues that I do not believe are appropriately linked together. I look forward in the days ahead to working hard on the floor, as we did in the Judiciary Committee, to make sure our country moves aggressively and forcefully to address the problems of illegal immigration. I strongly commend Senator Simpson and all the members of the subcommittee who worked hard to bring us to this point. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. ABRAHAM

Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I rise today to express my sincere congratulations to those individuals who are responsible for the creation of the Arab-American Cultural Center in Houston, TX. The center will be hosting its first annual gala ``Unity of Friendship'' in Houston on May 4, 1996, and it is worthy of recognition. Mr. President, I commend those members for their efforts in building this center, which in effect advances and demonstrates the continuing positive contributions of Arab-Americans. This center will primarily serve the cultural, educational, and social needs of the Arab-American community. The center proclaims their vision as ``a place where Arab- American culture, art, and language can be preserved and carried on for generations to come. A place where Arab-Americans can gather to celebrate holidays and festive occasions among relatives and friends. A place where children can play, study, and learn about their ancestors impressive history and heritage.'' Many in the Arab-American community have given generously of their time and money for the construction of this center. They are to be commended for their very worthwhile efforts and foresight, and I am pleased to recognize these efforts in the U.S. Senate.

Mr. ABRAHAM

Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I wanted to take just a minute to comment on the amendment offered by Senators Kerry and Kennedy to raise the minimum wage from $4.35 an hour to $5.15 an hour over the next 2 years and why I oppose closing debate on this amendment at this time. In my mind, few issues better define the differences between Republicans and Democrats than efforts to raise this starting wage. On the one hand, members of the Democratic Party seek to increase living standards through a Government mandate. On the other, Republicans are seeking to increase family incomes by cutting Federal taxes, reducing regulatory burdens, and increasing job opportunities. Democrats believe in Government while Republicans place their faith in families and individuals. The case for the minimum wage has been refuted time and again. Far from raising living standards, studies show the minimum wage actually hurts the very workers its supposed to help. Harvard economist Robert Barro argues that ``the minimum wage misses the mark because it worsens the status of most disadvantaged youths.'' Economist David Neumark of my alma mater, Michigan State University, and William Wascher of the Federal Reserve have concluded that raising the minimum wage to $5.15 an hour would result in over 500,000 lost job opportunities for teenagers and young adults. Fully 77 percent of the members of the American Economic Association believe an increase in the minimum wage eliminates entry-level jobs. Mr. President, under President Clinton's tenure, American families have seen their incomes stagnate while their tax burden have gone up. This Clinton crunch is forcing millions of families to get by with less. That's why the Republican Congress offered hard-working American families tax cuts like the $500 per child family tax credit, marriage penalty relief, and expanded individual retirement accounts. We wanted to let families keep more of what they earn, so they could finance their own priorities, not the Government's. These efforts were cut short when President Clinton vetoed the bill. Now, the President and his party are pressing forward to mandate higher standards of living through Government action. This effort is misdirected and destructive. Furthermore, its timing is suspect. I am troubled that the same week this issue is raised on the Senate floor, the AFL-CIO has pledged to raise and spend $35 million through November to defeat Republican candidates. If this issue is so pressing, why did President Clinton and congressional Democrats fail to bring it up in 1993 and 1994, when they controlled both the White House and the Congress? They joined hands to raise taxes on American families in 1993, but at no time during the last Congress did they ever consider raising the minimum wage. Now, with a Republican majority in Congress and the labor unions pledging them record financial support, raising the minimum wage becomes a priority. Mr. President, I am unwilling to turn my back on low-skilled workers or to sacrifice their interests for an ideological and political agenda. Nor am I willing to impose another unfunded mandate on small business men and women across the country. For that reason, I oppose closing debate on this amendment at this time, and I call on my colleagues from both sides of the aisle to assist all working families by reducing the real barriers to higher wages and living standards-- excessive taxes and regulations.

Mr. ABRAHAM

Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I rise today to join the distinguished majority leader, and my colleagues, in cosponsoring the National Missile Defense Act of 1996. This legislation builds on the Missile Defense Act of 1995. The 1995 act made significant progress toward securing the funding necessary for the eventual deployment of a missile defense system capable of protecting the United States. Unfortunately, that act fell short by not explicitly directing that we deploy the missile defense system as soon as possible. The majority leader, in close cooperation with Congress' National defense leadership, has crafted a proposal that achieves our nation's missile defense through prudent, incremental development of policies and force structures. To begin with, we would produce the system necessary to protect the United States from limited, unauthorized or accidental ballistic missile attacks. We then would augment that capability to defend our Nation against larger and more sophisticated ballistic missile threats. I am especially heartened that this bill allows for the development of the most promising anti-ballistic missile technologies, including sea-based systems such as Navy Upper Tier. This bill assigns the Secretary of Defense the considerable task of reporting a missile defense development and deployment plan by March 15, 1997. However, I feel confident that Congress will be more than willing to assist him in the formulation of that plan. This can, and should, be a joint endeavor, Congress will fulfil its constitutional responsibility to raise and support our armed forces, while the Executive determines how best to deploy these forces. At this time, Mr. President, I would like to expand upon section 5 of the act--that section regarding the ABM Treaty. Congress, through the Missile Defense Acts of 1991, 1994, and 1995 has repeatedly stated that the ABM Treaty does not, in any way, hinder the development of theater ballistic missile defenses. It has also called for a renegotiation of the ABM Treaty so as to allow the development of more robust national missile defense systems. Unfortunately, this country has abandoned the initiatives of the previous administration to cooperatively develop with the Russians a protective global missile defense systems. An insistence on keeping America vulnerable to attack, and a dogmatic faith in the deterrence of nuclear war through mutual assured destruction will no longer prevent missile attacks upon the United States. Mr. President, the times have changed since the ratification of the ABM Treaty. Our primary threats no longer come from a general nuclear attack by thousands of Soviet weapons--an attack that would probably overwhelm a ballistic missile defense system. Today our immediate threats come from rogue, unintentional, or unauthorized attacks of limited size and duration. The limitations of the ABM Treaty fail to address these new threats, and I believe, are incapable of being modified so as to address them. The administration has steadfastly stood by the antiquated strategies of the ABM Treaty, and I am afraid it is unwilling to address the threats posed to America by continued reliance on that treaty. Nonetheless, Mr. President, this Congress continues to be willing to work with the administration to address our missile defense needs. I believe the urging contained in section 5 represent our last, best hope of adequately modifying the ABM Treaty, and protecting America from ballistic missile attack. The Treaty may be fundamentally unable to address the threats we face today. It may be best to renounce it in its totality. Such a clear break with previous policy may not be feasible in this Congress. But it must be clear that this Congress worries that its urging and calls have fallen on deaf ears in the Executive, and that we believe the United States cannot afford to wait much longer. Therefore, I particularly support the provision in this bill that calls for withdrawal from the ABM Treaty if amendments allowing adequate national missile defenses are not agreed to within 1 year. I hope this is sufficient warning as to the extent of congressional frustration. The majority leader has displayed the foresight and perceptiveness critical for developing effective national security strategies. There can be no doubt that a fully operational and technologically capable ballistic missile defense system is crucial to that strategy. Nor can there be any doubt that antiquated treaties which fail to adapt to vastly different national security threats must be either changed or discarded. The majority leader's bill constitutes a reasonable and moderate attempt to bridge the broad philosophical gap that exists between Congress and the administration. We should not let this opportunity be lost. If concerns with the ABM Treaty prevent this bill from becoming law, then I believe it may be time to nullify that treaty.

Mr. ABRAHAM

Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I rise today in support of H.R. 956, a bill to reform product liability law. A few months ago, the 104th Congress took the first momentous step toward legal reform. Over President Clinton's veto, we passed H.R. 1056, a bill to reform securities litigation. This legislation will significantly curb the epidemic of frivolous lawsuits that are diverting our Nation's resources away from productive activity and into transaction costs. In passing H.R. 956, the Senate will be taking an equally important second step on the road toward a sane legal regime of civil justice. Our current legal system, under which we spend $300 billion or 4.5 percent of our gross domestic product each year, is not just broken, it is falling apart. This is a system in which plaintiffs receive less than half of every dollar spent on litigation-related costs. It is a system that forces necessary goods, such as pharmaceuticals that can treat a number of debilitating diseases and conditions, off the market in this country. This is a system in which neighbors are turned into litigants. I was particularly struck by a recent example reported in the Washington Post. This case involved two 3-year-old children whose mothers could not settle a sandbox dispute--literally, a pre-school altercation in the sandbox--without going to court. Something must be done about this situation and this litigious psychology, Mr. President, and this bill puts us on the road to real, substantive reform. It institutes caps on punitive damages, thereby limiting potential windfalls for plaintiffs without in any way interfering with their ability to obtain full recovery for their injuries. It provides product manufacturers with long-overdue relief from abusers of their products. And it protects these makers, and sellers, from being made to pay for all or most non-economic damages when they are responsible for only a small percentage. First, as to punitive damages. No one wants to see plaintiffs denied full and fair compensation for their injuries. And this bill would do nothing to get in the way of such recoveries. Unfortunately, punitive damages have come to be seen as part of the normal package of compensation to be expected by plaintiffs. George Priest of the Yale Law School reports that in one county, Bullock, AL, 95.6 percent of all cases filed in 1993-94 included claims for punitive damages. Punitive damages are intended to punish and deter wrongdoing. When they become routine--one might say when they reach epidemic proportions--they end up hurting us all by increasing the cost of important goods and services. For example, the American Tort Reform Association reports that, of the $18,000 cost of a heart pacemaker, $3,000 goes to cover lawsuits, as does $170 of the $1,000 cost of a motorized wheelchair and $500 of the cost of a 2-day maternity hospital stay. We can no longer afford to allow this trend to continue. I am glad, therefore, that this bill begins to cap punitive damages--although in my judgment it only makes a beginning in that area. I am particularly glad that the bill imposes a hard cap of $250,000 on punitive damages assessed against small businesses--the engine of growth and invention in our Nation. Of course, punitive damage awards are not the only things increasing the costs of needed products. Throughout the debate over civil justice reform I have been referring to the case of Piper Aircraft versus Cleveland. I use that example because it shows how ridiculous legal standards can literally kill an industry--as they did light aircraft manufacturing in America--and cost thousands of American jobs. In Piper Aircraft, a man took the front seat out of his plane and intentionally attempted to fly it from the back seat. He crashed, not surprisingly, and his family sued and won over $1 million in damages on the grounds that he should have been able to fly safely from the back seat. These are the kinds of decisions we must stop. Drunken plaintiffs, plaintiffs who abuse and misuse products--plaintiffs who blame manufacturers and sellers for their own misconduct--should not be rewarded with large sums of money. They may deserve our concern and sympathy, but we as a people do not deserve to pay for their misconduct through the loss of entire industries. I am happy that this bill establishes defenses based on plaintiff inebriation and abuse of the product because I believe these defenses will benefit all Americans. Finally, it seems clear to me that no manufacturer should be held liable for non-economic damages which that individual or company did not cause. In its common form, the doctrine of joint liability allows the plaintiff to collect the entire amount of a judgment from any defendant found partially responsible for the plaintiff's damages. Thus, for example, a defendant found to be 1 percent responsible for the plaintiff's damages could be forced to pay 100 percent of the plaintiff's judgment. This is unfair. And the unfairness is aggravated when noneconomic damages are awarded. Noneconomic damages are intended to compensate plaintiffs for subjective harm, like pain and suffering, emotional distress, and humiliation. Because noneconomic damages are not based on tangible losses, however, there are no objective criteria for calculating their amount. As a result, the size of these awards often depends more on the luck of the draw, in terms of the jury, than on the rule of law. Defendants can be forced to pay enormous sums for unverifiable damages they did not substantially cause. This bill would reform joint liability in the product liability context by allowing it to be imposed for economic damages only, so that a defendant could be forced to pay for only his proportionate share of noneconomic damages. As a result, plaintiffs would be fully compensated for their out-of- pocket losses, while defendants would be better able to predict and verify the amount of damages they would be forced to pay. This reform thus would address the most pressing concerns of plaintiffs and defendants alike. Mr. President, problems will remain with our civil justice system after this bill is made into law--if this bill is signed by President Clinton and made law. Charities and their volunteers will remain unprotected from frivolous lawsuits. Our municipalities will remain exposed to profit-seeking plaintiffs. And the nonproducts area of private civil law in general will remain unreformed--3-year-olds and their mothers may still end up in court over a sandbox altercation. In the last session I and some of my colleagues fought for more extensive, substantive, and programmatic reforms to our civil justice system. These were consistently turned back. I believe at this point it is time for us to consider more neutral, procedural reforms, such as in the area of Federal conflicts rules, to rationalize a system we cannot seem to tame. But I am certain, Mr. President, that this bill marks an important step toward a fairer, more reasonable and less expensive civil justice system. This is why I am frustrated that President Clinton has threatened to veto this bill. The President has stated repeatedly that he would support balanced, limited product liability reform. He has been singularly unhelpful in his opposition to more far-reaching reforms that would do more for American workers and consumers. But he has claimed that he would support product liability reform. Now the President is claiming that this legislation is somehow ``unfair to consumers.'' Mr. President, is a system in which fifty-seven cents of every dollar awarded in court goes to lawyers and other transaction costs fair to consumers of legal services? Is it really pro-consumer to have a system in which, as reported in a conference board survey, 47 percent of firms withdraw products from the marketplace, 25 percent discontinue some form of research, and 8 percent lay off employees, all out of fear of lawsuits? Please tell me, Mr. President, are consumers helped by a system in which, according to a recent Gallup survey, one out of every five small businesses decides not to introduce a new product, or not to improve an existing one, out of fear of lawsuits? The clear answer, I believe, is that consumers are hurt by our out- of-control civil justice system, a system which makes them pay more for less sophisticated and updated goods. I respectfully suggest that President Clinton look beyond the interests of his friends among the trial lawyers to the interests of the American people as a whole. If he looks to that interest he will find a nation hungry for reform, yearning to be freed from a civil justice system that is neither civil nor just, seeking protection from egregious wrongs, but not willing to sacrifice necessary goods, important public and voluntary services, and the very character of their communities to a system that no longer produces fair and predictable results. If we in this chamber consult the interest of the people, Mr. President, we will pass this bill. If President Clinton consults that primary interest, he will sign the bill and make it law. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. ABRAHAM

Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I rise today to congratulate St. Paul's Evangelical Lutheran Church of Northville, MI, on their 100th anniversary. Just over 100 years ago, a group of German speaking residents began meeting on Sunday mornings, forming what was to become the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Reformation of Northville. On August 30, 1896, the congregation celebrated Holy Communion for the first time. Remembering the verse in Proverbs, ``The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,'' the congregation started a Christian Day School in September with seven children attending the first semester. Less than 1 year later, St. Paul's church purchased the deed to property on Elm Street. The church still resides at that location. On November 28, 1948, ground was broken for the new church building. Dedicated in February 1950, the Gothic building contained three beautiful stained glass windows located above the altar symbolizing the Holy Trinity. Other windows throughout the nave tell the story of Christ's apostles. Since 1896, the congregation at St. Paul's has met faithfully on Sunday mornings. The Day School continues to serve families of St. Paul's and the Northville community. Again, congratulations to this community. I wish it many more years of fellowship and worship.

Mr. ABRAHAM

Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I rise today to congratulate the 75th anniversary of the Jackson Lions Host Club. For 75 years, members of this outstanding organization have been providing care and assistance to the handicapped and less fortunate as well as contributing both physical and monetary resources toward a brighter future. In 1921 at the International Host Lions Club Convention, Helen Keller challenged the delegates to dedicate their charitable outreach to the blind. The Jackson club has been generously meeting this challenge, furnishing free Leader Dogs, promoting the enactment of the White Cane Law, and supporting numerous other civic projects and local charities. Once again, I would like to congratulate this organization and to encourage the spirit of giving that its members have demonstrated in so many ways.

Mr. ABRAHAM

Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I rise today in support of H.R. 956, a bill to reform product liability law. A few months ago, the 104th Congress took the first momentous step toward legal reform. Over President Clinton's veto, we passed H.R. 1056, a bill to reform securities litigation. This legislation will significantly curb the epidemic of frivolous lawsuits that are diverting our Nation's resources away from productive activity and into transaction costs. In passing H.R. 956, the Senate will be taking an equally important second step on the road toward a sane legal regime of civil justice. Our current legal system, under which we spend $300 billion or 4.5 percent of our gross domestic product each year, is not just broken, it is falling apart. This is a system in which plaintiffs receive less than half of every dollar spent on litigation-related costs. It is a system that forces necessary goods, such as pharmaceuticals that can treat a number of debilitating diseases and conditions, off the market in this country. This is a system in which neighbors are turned into litigants. I was particularly struck by a recent example reported in the Washington Post. This case involved two 3-year-old children whose mothers could not settle a sandbox dispute--literally, a preschool altercation in the sandbox--without going to court. Something must be done about this situation and this litigious psychology, Mr. President, and this bill puts us on the road to real, substantive reform. It institutes caps on punitive damages, thereby limiting potential windfalls for plaintiffs without in any way interfering with their ability to obtain full recovery for their injuries. It provides product manufacturers with long-overdue relief from abusers of their products. And it protects these makers, and sellers, from being made to pay for all or most noneconomic damages when they are responsible for only a small percentage. First, as to punitive damages. No one wants to see plaintiffs denied full and fair compensation for their injuries. And this bill would do nothing to get in the way of such recoveries. Unfortunately, punitive damages have come to be seen as part of the normal package of compensation to be expected by plaintiffs. George Priest of the Yale Law School reports that in one county, Bullock, AL, 95.6 percent of all cases filed in 1993-94 included claims for punitive damages. Punitive damages are intended to punish and deter wrongdoing. When they become routine--one might say when they reach epidemic proportions--they end up hurting us all by increasing the cost of important goods and services. For example, the American Tort Reform Association reports that, of the $18,000 cost of a heart pacemaker, $3,000 goes to cover lawsuits, as does $170 of the $1,000 cost of a motorized wheelchair and $500 of the cost of a 2-day maternity hospital stay. We can no longer afford to allow this trend to continue. I am glad, therefore, that this bill begins to cap punitive damages--although in my judgment it only makes a beginning in that area. I am particularly glad that the bill imposes a hard cap of $250,000 on punitive damages assessed against small businesses--the engine of growth and invention in our Nation. Of course, punitive damage awards are not the only things increasing the costs of needed products. Throughout the debate over civil justice reform I have been referring to the case of Piper Aircraft versus Cleveland. I use that example because it shows how ridiculous legal standards can literally kill an industry--as they did light aircraft manufacturing in America--and cost thousands of American jobs. In Piper Aircraft, a man took the front seat out of his plane and intentionally attempted to fly it from the back seat. He crashed, not surprisingly, and his family sued and won over $1 million in damages on the grounds that he should have been able to fly safely from the back seat. These are the kinds of decisions we must stop. Drunken plaintiffs, plaintiffs who abuse and misuse products--plaintiffs who blame manufacturers and sellers for their own misconduct--should not be rewarded with large sums of money. They may deserve our concern and sympathy, but we, as a people, do not deserve to pay for their misconduct through the loss of entire industries. I am happy that this bill establishes defenses based on plaintiff inebriation and abuse of the product because I believe these defenses will benefit all Americans. Finally, it seems clear to me that no manufacturer should be held liable for noneconomic damages which that individual or company did not cause. In its common form, the doctrine of joint liability allows the plaintiff to collect the entire amount of a judgment from any defendant found partially responsible for the plaintiff's damages. Thus, for example, a defendant found to be 1 percent responsible for the plaintiff's damages could be forced to pay 100 percent of the plaintiff's judgment. This is unfair. And the unfairness is aggravated when noneconomic damages are awarded. Noneconomic damages are intended to compensate plaintiffs for subjective harm, like pain and suffering, emotional distress, and humiliation. Because noneconomic damages are not based on tangible losses, however, there are no objective criteria for calculating their amount. As a result, the size of these awards often depends more on the luck of the draw, in terms of the jury, than on the rule of law. Defendants can be forced to pay enormous sums for unverifiable damages they did not substantially cause. This bill would reform joint liability in the product liability context by allowing it to be imposed for economic damages only, so that a defendant could be forced to pay for only his proportionate share of noneconomic damages. As a result, plaintiffs would be fully compensated for their out-of- pocket losses, while defendants would be better able to predict and verify the amount of damages they would be forced to pay. This reform thus would address the most pressing concerns of plaintiffs and defendants alike. Mr. President, problems will remain with our civil justice system after this bill is made into law--if this bill is signed by President Clinton and made law. Charities and their volunteers will remain unprotected from frivolous lawsuits. Our municipalities will remain exposed to profit-seeking plaintiffs. And the nonproducts area of private civil law in general will remain unreformed--3-year-olds and their mothers may still end up in court over a sandbox altercation. In the last session I and some of my colleagues fought for more extensive, substantive, and programmatic reforms to our civil justice system. These were consistently turned back. I believe at this point it is time for us to consider more neutral, procedural reforms, such as in the area of Federal conflicts rules, to rationalize a system we cannot seem to tame. But I am certain, Mr. President, that this bill marks an important step toward a fairer, more reasonable and less expensive civil justice system. This is why I am frustrated that President Clinton has threatened to veto this bill. The President has stated repeatedly that he would support balanced, limited product liability reform. He has been singularly unhelpful in his opposition to more far-reaching reforms that would do more for American workers and consumers. But he has claimed that he would support product liability reform. Now the President is claiming that this legislation is somehow unfair to consumers. Mr. President, is a system in which fifty seven cents of every dollar awarded in court goes to lawyers and other transaction costs fair to consumers of legal services? Is it really pro-consumer to have a system in which, as reported in a conference board survey, 47 percent of firms withdraw products from the marketplace, 25 percent discontinue some form of research, and 8 percent lay off employees, all out of fear of lawsuits? Please tell me, Mr. President, are consumers helped by a system in which, according to a recent Gallup survey, one out of every five small businesses decides not to introduce a new product, or not to improve an existing one, out of fear of lawsuits? The clear answer, I believe, is that consumers are hurt by our out- of-control civil justice system, a system which makes them pay more for less sophisticated and updated goods. I respectfully suggest that President Clinton look beyond the interests of his friends among the trial lawyers to the interests of the American people as a whole. If he looks to that interest he will find a nation hungry for reform, yearning to be freed from a civil justice system that is neither civil nor just, seeking protection from egregious wrongs, but not willing to sacrifice necessary goods, important public and voluntary services, and the very character of their communities to a system that no longer produces fair and predictable results. If we in this chamber consult the interest of the people, Mr. President, we will pass this bill. If President Clinton consults that primary interest, he will sign the bill and make it law. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. ABRAHAM

Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, yesterday the Senate voted to adopt H.R. 3019, a bill to make continuing appropriations for the remainder of fiscal year 1996. During consideration of this legislation, the Senate debated and then voted upon two amendments which I would like to discuss at this time. The first was an amendment by Senators Bond and Mikulski and the second was an amendment by Senator Gramm. The Bond-Mikulski amendment included provisions to boost funding for environment and housing programs. These increases include funding directed to the States to clean up our Nation's water and funding to streamline the programs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. I believe the EPA funding level approved in last year's appropriations bill represented a reasonable, responsible allocation for environmental programs and oversight. At the same time, I understand how important the Superfund program and the EPA's State revolving loan fund for waste and drinking water infrastructure are to the State of Michigan and States across the country. Therefore, largely because the additional funding was fully offset, I supported this measure. On the other hand, my support of this en bloc amendment should not be interpreted as support for several of the programs listed, including additional funding for the National Corporation of National Community Service. Paying Americans tens of thousands of dollars per year to volunteer for community service may be President Clinton's idea of a good program, but it's not mine, and I would prefer to see this funding eliminated. The Gramm amendment would have struck that spending which remained in title IV of the bill following the adoption of the Bond/Mikulski and Specter amendments. This funding included $235 million for the Advanced Technology Program and several hundred million in international accounts. The President has indicated that without additional funding for programs like the ATP--which provides direct subsidies to some of America's wealthiest corporations--he would veto the overall bill and shut down the Federal Government once again. I think it is unconscionable that the President is willing to threaten all the programs of the Federal Government in order to provide McDonalds, AT&T, and Eastman Kodak with millions in direct subsidies, and for that reason I supported Senator Gramm. Earlier amendments by Senators Specter and Bond had gone a long way toward meeting the demands of the President with regard to education, the environment, and housing. While some programs remaining in title IV are worthy of support, an overwhelming amount of the funding would have gone to corporate subsidies and other unnecessary spending.

Mr. ABRAHAM

Mr. ABRAHAM. I would like to alert my Senate colleagues to today's editorial by the Wall Street Journal on why the Congress should think twice before cutting legal immigration. As currently written, the legal immigration reform measures, H.R. 2202 and S. 1394, would slash legal immigration by nearly half, largely through the elimination of whole categories of family-sponsored immigration by U.S. citizens. In my judgment, the drastic cuts in legal immigration contemplated in these bills would hurt U.S. economic growth, job creation; and competitiveness. The fact is that many immigrants contribute to our economic well-being by inventing new products, starting new entrepreneurial businesses, and creating jobs for Americans: A new study by immigration policy analyst Philip Peters found that one in four patents in this country is created by immigrants alone or by immigrants collaborating with U.S. born coinventors. Four of the immigrants surveyed in Mr. Peter's study started their own businesses, generating over 1,600 jobs here in America. Mr. President, it is also important to point out that not all these talented immigrants and entrepreneurs came to America through the employment-based immigration system; some of them, like the Intel Corp.'s founder Andrew Grove, arrived through the refugee system. Others came through the family-sponsored system as minor children, adult children, and siblings. The bottom line is that restrictions on immigration categories not labeled as ``economic'' will end up hurting our economy and our competitiveness. Both the academic literature and empirical evidence strongly suggest that legal immigrants make important positive contributions to American society. I would hope that my colleagues would keep this fact in mind as we debate the merits of the pending legal immigration reform bill. I ask that the Wall Street Journal article and the study by Mr. Peters be printed in the Record. [From the Wall Street Journal, Mar. 18, 1996] Review & Outlook scan the Congress First, require all laws that apply to the rest of the country also apply equally to the Congress.--Contract With America, September 27, 1994. Wise words, and we hope they apply to the immigration bill being pushed on the House floor by Congressman Lamar Smith (R., Texas) and up for a vote as early as Tuesday night. By all means, set up a little office in the House gym and let Congresspeople be the first to line up for their retina scans. Indeed, such an amendment was pondered by Colorado Democrat Pat Schroeder, bless her palpitating heart, though it didn't make the long list of amendments and resolutions available Friday. While the Republican Contract also called for a smaller government, Representative Smith's brainstorm would move toward requiring all citizens to get verification from a federal database before they are allowed to take a new job. Like the Senate version of the bill, it would also pilot a ``voluntary'' national ID system, although both sides, for the moment, seem to be backing away from the sinister biometric identifiers such as retina scans we heard about earlier. The ID system is an ornament, of course, on the bill reducing legal immigration by nearly half, cutting family reunions and slashing the intake of refugees. It at least has the virtue of not hiding behind arguments about illegal immigration; it is purely a mean-spirited outburst against legal immigration. The horde of amendments and resolutions try to separate ``good'' immigrants--former H'Mong soldiers, for example, from ``bad'' immigrants--parents of citizens, for example. All of this is to be decided by a Congress that routinely deplores micromanagement from inside the Beltway; proposals to vitiate the family unification principle for immigration come from the same lips that deplore the decline of family values. The reality of the immigration contribution to American society comes clear in a study by Philip Peters of the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute. As a proxy for intellectual and economic contribution, Mr. Peters looked at recent U.S. patents. He found that one patent in four in this country is created by immigrants or immigrants working with U.S.-born engineers or investors. This is three times their presence in our population (8.7%), so presumably immigrants are out there doing more than their share to keep the U.S. competitive with Japan. Nor of course did all the patenters in the Tocqueville study enter the country on skilled worker visas. Take Alexander Owczarz (O-zarz), a product development engineer who stopped counting after registering his 25th U.S. patent. Mr. Owczarz reckons that one recent patent alone generated 20 jobs at Semitool, the Kalispell, Montana, exporter where he works. Mr. Owczarz is a citizen now, but he entered this country on a tourist visa when he got sick of Communist Poland. Nineteen-nineties restrictionists would expel people like Mr. Owczarz when they overstay their visa. Or how about refugees? Mr. Smith would cut them. Tocqueville found Ernesto E. Blanco, a professor at MIT who fled Havana in 1960 on a visa provided through a special accelerated program to rescue Cubans from Castro. Mr. Blanco has 13 patents, including a flexible arm that makes endoscopic surgery easier. There are more famous examples: Smith-Simpson-style legislation would bar the door to the future equivalents of Intel's Hungarian refugee, Andrew Grove. For that matter, another big job creator in Silicon Valley, Borland International, was founded by an illegal immigrant, Philippe Kahn. In recent days we've seen growing recognition of these points. On the Senate side, Spencer Abraham was able to defeat the far more senior Alan Simpson, and split the Senate legislation into two bills, on legal and illegal immigration. On the House side Congressmen Dick Chrysler (R., Michigan), Sam Brownback (R., Kansas), Howard Berman (D., California) and Phil Crane (R., Illinois) were able to squeeze an unfriendly rules committee into letting them offer an amendment that would remove all Mr. Smith's cutbacks on legal, family- sponsored immigration. Steve Chabot, a freshman Republican, and John Conyers, a Democrat, are offering an amendment to strike the odious ID system. For freshmen Republicans, this is an issue of heritage. Put bluntly, are they children of Ronald Reagan and the House Contract, or Pat Buchanan and his nativist campaign? Between Senator Simpson and Representative Smith, all of the noxious provisions are likely to come back with the conference committee report. The best hope is that the bills will fall on their own weight, like Hillary Clinton's health-care boondoggle, and that the issue can be taken up by another Congress where cooler heads prevail.

Mr. ABRAHAM

Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate immediately proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations on today's executive calendar: Executive calendar nomination Nos. 365, 480, 498 through 501, 503, 504, 505 and 506. I further ask unanimous consent that the nominations be confirmed en bloc; the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table en bloc; any statements relating to the nominations appear at the appropriate place in the Record; the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action, and the Senate then return to legislative session.