Mike DeWine

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. Does the Senator agree with the Jordan Commission when they said that of those individuals that you just referenced, there are at least 850,000 of them who are not waiting to come in but who are already, in fact, here?

Mr. DeWINE. If you will yield for an additional comment or additional question.

Mr. DeWINE. If the figures of the Jordan Commission are true, that 850,000 spouses and children are here, would you agree that no one is seriously talking about kicking them out of the country? So, in other words, when we talk about it is important to reunify these families, that may be true on paper but in reality they are already reunified. They were never apart because they are here together.

Mr. DeWINE. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I want to speak again in opposition to the Simpson amendment. I commend my colleague from Idaho for his very eloquent statement. I urge my colleagues to retain current law, to retain the compromise that was made in 1986, and to vote the same way as the Judiciary Committee did, by an overwhelming vote of 12 to 5. This bill does represent, as it is written today, the status quo. I think it would be a mistake to change that. It is interesting to note that the INS says there is no reason to change current law. What is the history of this? Go back to 1984. You had a Supreme Court decision that said, in fact, you did not need a search warrant to go into an open field. But the court, in essence, invited Congress to speak on the issue. Two years later, with the Simpson-Mazzoli bill, Congress did speak on the issue and said that an open field, when used for agriculture employment, should have the same basic protection, that the employees and employers should have the same basic protection that they had if that business had been conducted within a building, if we had been in a restaurant or another form of business. So, what the status quo does is keep a level playing field and keep both types of businesses being dealt with by the INS the same way. We look at this many times from the point of view of the employer and say it would be unfair to ranchers, unfair to farmers, because of the time-sensitive nature of agriculture, to allow these searches without a search warrant. That is true. I think we also have to look at it from the point of view of the employee, because the reality is that before the law was passed, even though agriculture represented only 15 percent of the problem of illegal workers in the work force, 75 percent of the raids occurred in agriculture. I do not think you have to stretch your imagination too far to understand one reason why. It is easier. It is easier. The other reason is, however good, however well intentioned the employees of the INS are and the agents are, when they look into a field and see brown faces, they think that may be a place we need to go. That is a problem. It is a problem that we do not need to return to. My friend has just pointed out we need to talk about what the current status of the law is and what it is not. It says you have to have a search warrant. But many cases are resolved, obviously, by consent. If you have consent, the INS can go onto the property. Current law also provides that if INS is in hot pursuit, they can go onto the open field. Finally, current law also says if you are within 25 miles of the border, this provision does not apply; INS can go onto the property. So I urge my colleagues--we are just a few minutes away from the scheduled vote--I urge them to support the position of the Judiciary Committee, a 12 to 5 vote. Support current law. Support the employees and employers. Keep in mind the position of the INS who sees no reason for any change in law. I would also ask my colleagues to keep in mind the position of the American Farm Bureau. I also talked about this issue. I already read the names on the other letter that I talked about, a letter dated March 13, 1996, to all the members of the Judiciary Committee--American Farm Bureau, Agricultural Affiliates, American Association of Nurserymen. It goes on and on and on with basically a page of names. Their position is to keep the current State of the law and to oppose the Simpson amendment. I thank the Chair. Mr. SIMPSON addressed the Chair.

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, let me first compliment my colleague and friend from Florida for his very fine statement, particularly in regard to his recitation of the unfunded mandates that are in this bill. I have several of the same concerns that he does. We have an employer verification system here that is going to cost money. It is going to cost money for employers. It is going to cost money for States and local communities. I have other serious concerns about this employer verification system as well. My colleague from Michigan, Senator Abraham, will be offering later in this debate an amendment dealing with that employer verification problem that is in the bill. My friend from Florida has also pointed out another, I think, very important problem, a huge unfunded mandate; that is, the birth certificate changes that are required in this bill. I think it is going to come as a shock, when we get into this debate, to my colleagues and to the American people to find that under the terms of this bill the birth certificates that every American has are still going to be valid after the bill passes. They just will not be able to use them much for anything. You are going to have to go back to the place where the birth took place and get a new birth certificate if you want to get a passport or if you want to use it for other official business. It is just going to be absolutely a total nightmare. Now is not the time to get into this in detail, but I will be offering an amendment at the appropriate time to strike that provision because it would be very, very ironic that a U.S. Congress that has put itself on the block and said finally we are going to heed what local elected officials are telling us, finally we are going to listen, finally we passed this unfunded mandate bill saying we are not going to do this anymore, or at least, if we do, we are going to recognize that we are doing it and admit that we are doing it--it would be the height of irony if this Congress which said that would pass such a huge unfunded mandate that my colleague from Florida has pointed out is absolutely huge. Imagine telling everybody in this country that your birth certificate is still valid technically but you just cannot use it for much of anything. Imagine the cost to the counties, or whatever local jurisdiction you have in your home State that issues birth certificates, when people start flocking back and going home to get these new birth certificates issued to qualify. The only way they qualify is if some Federal bureaucrat in Washington, DC, says, ``Well, yes, that is OK. That type of format is OK. The paper is OK. The format is OK. The information is OK. Yes, you can use that type of birth certificate.'' A huge unfunded mandate that is absolutely crazy. I think when my colleagues look at this issue and we get into the debate about the cost of this, people are going to really be shocked. Let me turn, if I could, Mr. President, to what I understand is the pending business; that is, the Simpson amendment that deals with open field searches. Let me just bring my colleagues up to date, or kind of capsulize exactly where we are on this issue. This issue was looked at by the Judiciary Committee. In fact, by a vote of 12 to 5, Senator Simpson's position was rejected. The position that he has taken and the position that this amendment would take would be to reverse--let me say that again--reverse a very delicate compromise that was reached in 1986 in the Simpson-Mazzoli bill in regard to open field searches. Let me go back and review very quickly some of the history behind this. In 1984, the U.S. Supreme Court said that a search warrant was not required for open field searches but in its opinion invited Congress to look at the issue and to take action in this regard. In 1986, some 2 years later, when we looked at this whole issue of illegal immigration, Congress did speak, and it was an integral part of that compromise. A very delicate compromise was worked out when I was in the House of Representatives. Senator Simpson was the leader here in the Senate. That compromise provided that, for an open field search, a search warrant would, in fact, be required. So, if we accept the Simpson amendment, it really is a rejection of a compromise that was made in 1986. The bill, Mr. President, as it currently stands on the Senate floor with the vote by the Judiciary Committee--a 12 to 5 vote to reject the Simpson position on open field searches--the current bill is the status quo. The current bill is where the law is today. I want to emphasize that. Let me talk a little bit about the merits of this issue. The current law is that the INS has to get permission to conduct a search in an open field involving agricultural workers. That is the same situation that exists today if the INS wants to go into a restaurant or wants to go into some other building and conduct a search. If they want to conduct a search, under current law, they can get permission, which oftentimes is granted; but if they cannot get permission, then current law treats all employers and all employees equally in this regard. The INS has to go in and get a search warrant, if they do not get permission. That is true whether they are dealing with a building or whether they are dealing with work that is taking place on a farm or a ranch. To change this, as the Simpson amendment would do--first of all, there is no compelling reason to do it. In fact, there is no reason to do it at all. In fact, there is no reason to do it at all, if you ask the INS. They are the ones enforcing it. They are the ones who have the duty imposed by Congress to get the search warrant. What the INS says is we do not need to change the law. They are not here asking for the change. We do not need the change in the law is what the INS says. They are the ones who in a sense we have been restricting. Second, a change in the law, which adoption of the Simpson amendment would be, puts a burden on farmers, and, yes, on ranchers. I do not have to remind anyone in this body who has a farmer or a rancher in their State--and that includes every State I guess--how time sensitive the harvest of any crop is. I experienced this in my home county. My family ran a seed business for many years. And when it came time to harvest the wheat, they harvested the wheat. You had a fine window in there to get it done. If you did not do it at the time to do it, you might lose the crop. It might rain; you might have problems. The same is true for any perishable crop--tremendous disruption of going in and conducting these searches without a search warrant. That is one of the compelling reasons that this was such an important part of the compromise that was reached in 1986 in the Simpson-Mazzoli bill. In addition to the burden that this amendment would place on employers, equally important, and maybe even more important, is the burden it is going to place on employees. Open fields. Let us think of the real world. Let us think of the real world. INS would drive by and look at this open field. Where are they going to go? It is not unreasonable to think that there is certainly a distinct possibility, however well intentioned people who work at INS are, that they are going to go where they see people look a little different than the vast majority of Americans, or at least the vast majority of people in most parts of the country, that they are going to go where maybe someone's skin is a little browner. They are going to go where they have some suspicions. I think that is wrong. I think they should be held to the same standard they have been held to for the last decade under the Simpson- Mazzoli compromise, and that is they have to get a search warrant. It is not too burdensome. Again, I think it is important that all employers be treated equally and all employees be treated equally. The situation has to be dealt with in the same sense, and that is true of the status quo, and that will be changed if the Simpson amendment today is adopted. What was the background of this? What led to people looking at this and saying, ``Hey, there is a problem.'' It is my understanding that before the 1986 act was passed, 15 percent of the illegal immigration problem in the work force was in agriculture and yet 75 percent of all searches, all the raids occurred in agriculture. That is no coincidence. They went where it was easier. They went where they could see into the open fields. I would submit they sometimes may have gone where somebody's skin was brown or somebody looked a little different, looking at that as a good prospect. I think it is wrong to change that law. We are going to hear the argument in the Chamber that the only law enforcement agency that is required to have a search warrant in an open field situation is the INS. Yes, that is technically true. To state that is to state the obvious, but it is also looking at it from a very simplistic point of view. Those of us who have been involved in law enforcement know that searches by law enforcement agencies that are looking at what we consider to be crimes historically--rape, murder, theft--they are not just going and looking at fields and walking into those fields because they see who is working there. That just is not the way it works. There is a normal progression of the research that has to be done, the evidence that has to be presented, even if the plain view doctrine to go onto a field does in fact apply, which I think it does. That is frankly the argument that proponents might make, comparing apples and oranges--just a totally different situation. Senator Hatch received a letter on March 13, and this letter is signed by a number of groups in this country that oppose the Simpson position. Let me read the names of these groups and then let me take a brief excerpt from the letter itself. Groups that oppose this amendment include the American Farm Bureau Federation, Agricultural Affiliates, American Association of Nurserymen, American Sheep Industry Association, California Farm Bureau Federation, Florida Strawberry Growers Association, Florida Fruit and Vegetable Association, Illinois Specialty Growers Association, Michigan Farm Bureau, National Cattlemen's Beef Association, National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, Northern Christmas Trees and Nursery, Northwest Horticultural Council, Society of American Florists, Sun-Maid Growers of California, Texas Produce Association, United Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Association, Ventura County Agricultural Association, Virginia State Horticultural Society, Wasco County Fruit Produce League, Washington Growers Clearinghouse, Western Growers Association, Wisconsin Christmas Tree Producers' Association, and Wisconsin Nursery Association. Let me point out that this letter, dated March 13, obviously did not have to do with this specific amendment. What it did have to do with is the same identical subject. Let me quote from this letter. This letter was signed by the groups that I just read. This is paragraph 2. S. 269 also proposes to repeal the open agricultural field search warrant requirement enacted as part of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. This provision requires Immigration and Naturalization Service to obtain the permission of the property owner prior to entering the property searching for illegal aliens, or to obtain a search warrant. This is the same procedure required of INS searching for illegal aliens in any other workplace, such as factories, restaurants, and retail establishments enclosed by buildings or other structures. This provision of current law affords growers the same protections from warrantless searches and unreasonable disruption of business activity enjoyed by any other businesses with walls and doors. The fourth paragraph reads in part as follows, again the same letter signed by the same groups: Prior to enactment of the open agricultural field search warrant requirement, INS was accused in several instances of unlawful detention of America's citizens and legal permanent resident aliens, damage to crops and property, violations of property rights, and injuries to agricultural workers fleeing INS searches. We believe the requirement that INS obtain either property owner permission or a search warrant prior to conducting a search for illegal aliens has fostered cooperation between INS and growers, and has reduced property damage, crop losses and farmworker injuries. Again I would point out in light of this statement that I just read, that is INS' position in the sense that they are not asking for a change in the law. Let me also cite, if I could, Mr. President, a letter from the American Farm Bureau Federation--actually not a letter but a statement that was put out. I have no date on this but it was within the last month. Let me just read a portion of this: Farm Bureau has been very active in lobbying Capitol Hill to seek retention of the open-field search warrant provision enacted as part of the 1986 Immigration Reform bill. The provision of S. 269 repealing the open-field search warrant requirement has received no examination in public hearings, despite the fact that it reverses policy adopted by clear majorities of both Houses of Congress during the 1986 reform debate. Continuing the quote now: Congress enacted the so-called open-field search warrant requirement as a part of the 1986 immigration reform bill in response to concerns among the agriculture community that farmers were treated differently by Immigration and Naturalization Service as a result of the nature of their business; that it is conducted outdoors rather than indoors and it thus had been more vulnerable to abusive searches. That is a partial quote from the letter. Let me also point out what the INS can do today, again under the current status of the law, again under the 1986 compromise, the Simpson-Mazzoli compromise. They can go in property in hot pursuit. They can do that today. We do not need to change the law today to do that. They can do that hot pursuit. Further, they do not need a search warrant if the land is located within 25 miles of the border. So, again, two of the problems, or what you might think would be serious problems, have been dealt with and were dealt with in 1986. Finally, of course, to again restate the obvious, if permission is granted, consent is given, they can go on right now. So let me state I think this is an important issue. The Simpson amendment changes the status quo. I see my friend is on the floor and may at this point or later want to respond. But I think the status quo is correct. The Judiciary Committee voted by a 12-to-5 vote to keep the status quo. The INS does not see a reason to change the law, and therefore I ask my colleagues to vote against the Simpson amendment.

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. I thank my friend and colleague from Georgia for putting this time together this morning. Mr. President, I want to talk this morning about the question of guns and criminals who use guns. We have debates--and often they are very contentious debates--about a lot of issues concerning crime. We talk on this floor about contentious issues, such as the Brady bill and assault weapons. And these are important issues. They are important. I happen to favor these bills. But I think we need to recognize what really is important, and we need to step back a little bit and talk about what really makes a difference when we talk about what we do to deal with the crime problem. These two issues--the Brady bill and assault weapons--are highly contentious. Second, frankly, they, at best, only have a marginal impact on the problem. Third, they tend to attract somewhat overblown rhetoric, frankly, on both sides of the issue. I think both sides of the Brady bill debate and both sides of the assault weapon debate overemphasize what the importance of this debate is. I am, frankly, puzzled that we cannot seem to move forward on more effective proposals that everyone ought to favor--proposals that will really make a difference. These proposals that I am talking about may not be very exciting, but they are real, they work, they make a difference, they make a difference out on the street. Mr. President, we all agree that we, as a society, ought to do more to protect our citizens from armed career criminals. There are predators out there--predators, Mr. President--who are repeat violent criminals who use a gun while committing a crime. We, as a society, have to make a strong, effective response to this threat. Mr. President, in this area, as in all areas of national concern, we really need to be asking the following questions: One, what works? What really makes a difference? Two, what level of Government should do this particular job? In the area of gun crimes, we have a pretty good answer. We have an answer that is based on experience and based on history. Now, we all know that there is some controversy over whether general restrictions on gun ownership would help to reduce crime. But there is no controversy over whether taking guns away from felons would reduce crime. Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative--I think everyone gets that, everyone understands it, and there should not be any controversy about it. If you take guns out of the hands of felons, you are going to reduce crime. When it comes to felons, Mr. President, unilateral disarmament of the thugs is simply the best policy. Let us disarm the people who hurt people. Although we can quibble about statistics, the facts are that the vast majority of crimes in this country today, the vast majority of violent crimes, the vast majority of crimes that hurt people are committed by a small number of the criminals. One estimate is that 70 percent of all violent crime in this country is committed by less than 6 percent of the criminals, which is a relatively small number of people. And so what I say that we need to do, Mr. President, is to target the violent career criminals, particularly those who use a gun to commit a felony--target them, convict them, get them off the street, lock them up, and keep them locked up. Mr. President, we have actually tried this, and we know it works. One of the most successful crime fighting initiatives of recent years was known as Project Triggerlock. This project was wildly successful precisely because it addressed a problem squarely head on, and it placed the resources where they were most needed. Let me talk for a moment and share with you the story about Project Triggerlock. The U.S. Justice Department began Project Triggerlock in May 1991. The program targeted for prosecution in Federal court armed, violent, repeat offenders. Under Project Triggerlock, U.S. attorneys throughout the country turned to their local, State prosecutors and said this: ``If you catch a felon, and you catch that felon with a gun, and if you want us to, the U.S. attorneys, we, the Federal prosecutors, will take over the prosecution for you. We will prosecute this individual under Federal law--Federal law that many, many times, in regard to violent repeat offenders who use a gun in the commission of a felony, is tougher than State law. We will prosecute this individual. We will convict this individual, and we will hit this person with a stiff Federal mandatory sentence. And then we will lock him up in a Federal prison at no cost to the State or local community. Basically, we will deep-six this guy, get him out of society. We will take the cost of prosecution and then we will pay to house him for 10, 15, 20 years while he is out of society.'' That is the type of assistance to local communities that makes a difference. That is what Project Triggerlock did. Triggerlock was an assault on the very worst criminals in America. Mr. President, it worked. Listen to these figures. This program took 15,000--15,000--criminals off the streets in an 18-month period of time. Triggerlock caused a dramatic increase in Federal firearms prosecutions. In the first 12 months of Triggerlock, the program initiated firearms prosecutions against 6,454 defendants. It worked. Now, incredibly, Mr. President--incredibly--the Clinton Justice Department has chosen to deemphasize Project Triggerlock. They tell us they still have it; they just do not talk about it. Apparently, they do not even keep the statistics on it. They do not make it a priority. Mr. President, Project Triggerlock was the most effective Federal program in recent history for targeting and removing armed career criminals. But the Clinton administration Justice Department, today, acts like Triggerlock simply does not exist. While the Clinton Justice Department says that Triggerlock remains important, the facts, the statistics do not bear this out. They, apparently, no longer keep records on these prosecutions--and, I guess, for very good reason. If you look at the records kept in Federal courts--go to the Federal courts to get your statistics, here is what you learn: Since the advent of the Clinton administration we have seen a substantial decrease in the prosecution for weapons and firearms offenses. That is a shocking fact. We also see a substantial decrease in actual convictions for these firearm related offenses in Federal court. Let us look at the numbers. In 1992, there were 4,501 prosecutions of gun criminal charges for these crimes. In 1993, the number of prosecutions dropped slightly to 4,348. But in 1994, the number plunged all the way down to 3,695. We should have been seeing an increase. Instead, we started going the wrong way. That is a 19-percent drop in weapons and firearms prosecutions in the Federal courts during the Clinton administration--a 19-percent drop. Mr. President, who in this country can believe that this is justified? Who in this country believes that the threat of gun criminals to the society is less than it was 2 years ago? Clearly, it is not. Mr. President, the number of total convictions for firearm-related prosecutions in Federal court has dropped as well. Again, let me go back to 1992. In 1992, 3,837 of these defendants were convicted. In 1993, there was a drop, a drop to 3,814. But in 1994, we see a more severe drop--down to 3,345. Again, instead of going up in prosecutions, which is what you would have expected, we see the trend lines going down. Mr. President, that is going in exactly the wrong direction. Last year, I introduced a crime bill that would have restored Project Triggerlock. It would have required a U.S. attorney in every jurisdiction in this country to make a monthly report to the Attorney General in Washington on the number of arrests, the prosecutions and convictions that they had achieved in the previous month on gun-related defenses. The Attorney General under my bill should then report semiannually to the Congress on the work of these prosecutors. Then we would know the information would be available. It is like anything else. When you start counting, when you start publicizing the results, you start holding people accountable, and people then respond. Let me say that there are a lot of U.S. prosecutors who are doing a good job in this area who on their own are emphasizing the prosecution of people with guns. But it should not just be left up to every U.S. attorney in the country to decide one way or the other. This should be a national policy. It should be a national policy that is driven by the Attorney General and driven by the President of the United States. Quite frankly, nothing short of that, in my opinion, is acceptable. The truth is that, like all prosecutors, U.S. attorneys have limited resources. So like all prosecutors, U.S. attorneys have to exercise discretion about whom to prosecute. We know that. We all recognize that Congress can and should not dictate to prosecutors whom they should prosecute. But it is clear that we as a Congress, that we as a Senate, should go on record with the following proposition. There is nothing more important in fighting crime than getting armed career criminals off the streets. Mr. President, I think the Project Triggerlock is a very important way to keep the focus on the prosecution of gun crimes. Getting gun criminals off the streets is a major national priority. I believe that we should behave accordingly. This is no time to turn our backs on a proven, promising mainstream anticrime initiative; an anticrime initiative that is not controversial, an anticrime initiative that would not tie up 5 minutes of debate on the Senate floor in regard to whether or not we should do it. Everyone understands that we need to do this. What we need is the will from the executive branch to really reinstitute Project Triggerlock and make it work. Mr. President, families who are living in crime-threatened communities need to know that we are going to do what it takes to get guns off their streets. We are going to go after the armed career criminals. We are going to prosecute them, we are going to convict them, we are going to lock them up, and we are going to keep them locked up. Mr. President, in conclusion, this is why we have a Government in the first place--to protect the innocent, to keep ordinary citizens safe from violent predatory criminals. I think Government needs to do a much better job at this very fundamental task, and it is inherently the fundamental task of the Government. That is why targeting the armed career criminal is such a major component of our national policy. The Clinton administration, I believe, should reverse its opposition to Project Triggerlock, and should do so immediately. I thank my colleague from Georgia for the time. I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I would like to say a few words in support of the pending legislation. Our distinguished colleagues, the Senator from Kansas and the Senator from Massachusetts, I believe, have crafted a sensible piece of legislation that really represents the broadest possible consensus on health reform that we can achieve at this point. Back in 1994 when I was a candidate for the U.S. Senate, the President was trying to get Congress to enact a health reform bill. That was a health reform bill that went substantially further than the national consensus on health care would allow. For better or for worse, the American people made a decision. They made a decision and determined that they would not support a bill that threatened a large expansion of Federal involvement in health care. They made the decision that that simply was not good. During that debate when I was running for the Senate, I said that the failure to enact the President's plan did not mean that we would have to give up on health care reform. And we should not. In fact, what we should do, as I said at the time we should do, is to try to get a consensus, that there were things that we could agree on, there were things that Democrats and Republicans could agree on, liberals and conservatives. We ought to agree on those things. We ought to put that into legislation, and we ought to pass it. I think what we have in front of us today is just that. It is that bipartisan consensus. It is a consensus of what we can agree on. There was, going back 2 years ago, a broad agreement on several aspects of this health care reform--disagreement on some areas but agreement on others. One of the areas where there clearly was agreement was on the problem of portability, or the challenge of portability or the need for portability. Basically, there was agreement on the issue of letting people who have preexisting conditions get health insurance. That was very important. Let small businesses form purchasing pools so their employees could get a better price for health insurance. There was and is agreement on that. These are basic mainstream principles. I am happy to say that they are embodied in the legislation that we have before us today. The Kassebaum-Kennedy legislation would create major positive changes in the health insurance market, and it would do so without imposing new mandates on employers or creating new Government bureaucracies. It would give workers the flexibility to change jobs without losing their health insurance coverage. It would protect families from losing their health insurance if a family member loses his or her job. Mr. President, according to the General Accounting Office, the bill would provide health care security to 25 million additional Americans. This is genuinely a far-reaching health reform that I believe does in fact preserve the bipartisan support it is receiving in the Chamber. I am glad today to be able to add my voice in support of this legislation. Let me, if I could, turn very, very briefly to another issue, and I had intended to speak and still intend to speak sometime today or tomorrow or early next week at length on this, but I wish to take a minute right now to call my colleagues' attention to this and also the American people. Next week is National Organ Donor Awareness Week. I again will speak at length about this in the future. But the basic facts are that we lose people every day in this country, 7, 8, 9, 10 people, people who medical science, medical capabilities could save, but we lose these people, their families lose them, because they are on a waiting list, a waiting list to get an organ donor transplant. They die because, frankly, there simply are not enough organ donations made in this country every day. The reason that there are not enough is very simple. It is that too many families, when faced with life's most horrible tragedy, and that is the loss of a loved one, do not really know what to do when they are asked whether or not they will donate their loved one's organ or organs. I encourage my colleagues and families across the country to talk about this issue because I am convinced that the vast majority of American people are caring, loving people who want to help other people when they can and who, if they think about this for any period of time at all, will conclude that if, heaven forbid, something traumatic would happen to them and they would be killed, they would want their organs to be donated to somebody else, so somebody else could see, so somebody else could live, so somebody else could carry on a productive life. As I said, I will speak more about this at length later. I see my colleague from North Dakota is present and ready to speak. I am not going to hold him up at this point. But I just again call my colleagues' attention to this. National Organ Donor Awareness Week is next week. It is one of the rare times in public office or in public debate in this country where, when we talk about an issue, we can help solve it. It does not cost any money to do it. It is just a question of getting people to be more aware of the tragedy that occurs every single day to someone who could be saved, when someone who could remain with their family and be productive and live a good life dies because other individuals, not knowing really what to do, make a decision not to allow their loved one's organs to be donated. So, Mr. President, I appreciate the Chair's indulgence and my colleagues' indulgence, and I will today or tomorrow be talking further at length about this important issue. I thank the Chair.

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. I probably have 6, 7, or 8 minutes.

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, let me conclude my general comments about this bill today. I think America's greatness has been created, generation after generation, by driven self-selected individuals who came here as legal immigrants. We can think of names such as Albert Einstein, from Ohio, someone like George Olah who came here from Budapest in 1957 and taught at Case-Western Reserve, and won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1994. The original bills as introduced actually said to people like Einstein and Olah, ``Get lost, you can come to the U.S., but only if you jump through a whole bunch of bureaucratic hoops from the State Department and the Labor Department.'' A lot of these provisions were, in fact, changed in committee. Mr. President, I think we really do not need to be making it any harder for these talented, energetic people to come and help us build our great country. In fact, Mr. President, we became the richest, most powerful nation in the history of the world by doing exactly the opposite--by encouraging them to come. No, Mr. President, America's immigration problem is not the high- quality researchers and professors wading the Rio Grande in the dead of night or scrambling over a fence to avoid the Border Patrol. We should and can crack down on illegal immigration. That is a law enforcement issue. We should not allow that effort to serve as a Trojan horse for other measures--measures that would hurt America's future by rejecting the very finest and most noble traditions of America's past. To reverse course on immigration, as some might recommend, is to say that America from now on will define itself as a country that is fearful of change, afraid of competition, and convinced that her best days are past. That is not the attitude that made America the greatest country the world has ever seen. An America that thinks itself as weak and threatened is not the America that I see. It is not the America that we Americans believe in. It is not the America that a dirt poor Irishman named Dennis DeWine saw--saw in his dream as he left County Galway 150 years ago to escape the potato famine in Ireland. We do not know a lot about my great-great-grandfather. All we know for sure is that he came over to America from Galway. It is pretty clear, though, that Dennis DeWine came here with guts and with ambition, but probably with very little else. He took a chance on America, and America took a chance on him because America back then thought big thoughts about itself and what great riches lay in the ambition--in the ambition of people who are willing to take risks. That is the kind of America we need to be, not a closed America that views itself as a finished product but an America that is open to new people, new ideas, and open to the future. Mr. President, I began this speech by talking about how Ronald Reagan expressed better than any other political figure of our era the truest sense of what America stands for. I think it would be appropriate for me to conclude these remarks about America's immigration policy and about America's identity with another great story, one that President Reagan recounted more than once in his Presidency. In fact, he found it so moving that he even included it in his farewell address 9 days before he left the White House. Here is the way Ronald Reagan told the story. I have been reflecting on what the past 8 years have meant, and mean, and the image that comes to mind, like a refrain, is a nautical one--a small story about a big ship and a refugee and a sailor. It was back in the early 1980's at the height of the boat people, and a sailor was hard at work on the Carrier Midway which was then patrolling the South China Sea. The sailor, like most American servicemen, was young, smart, and fiercely observant. The crew spied on the horizon a leaky little boat, and crammed inside were refugees from Indochina hoping--hoping to get to America. The Midway sent a small launch out to bring them to the ship and to safety. And as the refugees made their way through the choppy seas, one of them spied the sailor on deck. He stood up and called out to him. He yelled, ``Hello, American sailor. Hello, freedom man''--a small moment with a big meaning, a moment a sailor could not get out of his mind. Neither could I, because that is what it is to be an American. Mr. President, as we debate this bill, I think we will need to remind ourselves that that still is what it means to be an American. It always was, and let us pray that it always will be. Even at the very beginning of our history, back when we were a very small country, we were always a country with a very big meaning, a country whose future was unlimited, a country that believed in people and believed in their capacity to make the world a better place. What a legacy, what an awesome responsibility, a responsibility for our generation and for every generation. I, along with some of my other colleagues, will be working to make sure that our immigration reform bill remains true to this legacy and true to the values that made America a beacon for all humanity. Mr. President, I will conclude these remarks at this point, and again thank my colleague from Wyoming for his courtesy and for his work not only on this bill, but on this issue now for well over a decade.

Mr. DeWINE. This bill would require every local county to redo its entire birth certificate system in a new federally mandated format. The Federal Government will be telling Greene County, OH, everything to do with the certificate right down to what kind of paper to use. And the bill goes even further. Not only does it deal with birth certificates, it also deals with driver's licenses, and here is what the bill says. Let me quote. Each State's driver's license and identification document shall be in a form consistent with requirements set forth in regulations promulgated by the Secretary of Transportation. It continues. Neither the Social Security Administration nor the passport office or any other Federal agency or any State or local government agency may accept for any evidentiary purpose a State driver's license or identification document in a form other than the form described in paragraph (3). That means every State will have to issue federally mandated driver's licenses. It is my opinion this whole section of the bill, section 118, should be deleted. Now, I understand what my friend from Wyoming is trying to accomplish here. And it is a laudable goal. I understand what other proponents are trying to accomplish. Most States would have no problem I think with an attempt to improve their driver's license. In fact, in my home State of Ohio we have come up in the last several years with a process that was put in place when I was Lieutenant Governor, with a brand new driver's license system, so when your license comes up for its normal renewal you have what we believe at least is a tamperproof driver's license. I understand, and I think most States want to move in that direction, most States are in fact moving in that direction, but to mandate this from Washington with the tremendous costs, and not just the costs but the unbelievable disruption and inconvenience I think is just a serious mistake. There is some great irony that this Congress, which has very legitimately and correctly been so concerned about turning power back to the States, should in this case be saying not only are we not turning power back to the States, we are taking power; we are taking a basic ministerial function of government, issuing a birth certificate, a basic function of State government and county government, local government, and saying, ``We are going to tell you how to do it, and if you don't do it our way, you can't use that document even for State purposes.'' To me that is just wrong. It is taking us in the wrong direction. Mr. President, this Congress has revived this great tradition, American tradition of State and local and individual freedom as enshrined in the 10th amendment. To impose this huge new burden on individuals and on local communities will surely violate that principle. In fact, if we can think back that far, 15, 16 months ago, one of the first bills passed by this Congress was legislation to try to limit unfunded mandates. If this provision is not an unfunded mandate, I do not know what is. It is going to cost the States a lot of money to comply. And it is going to cost taxpayers, both through what it has cost the States, but also through what it is going to cost them in getting new birth certificates, new drivers' licenses. According to the Congressional Budget Office, these mandates would impose direct costs on States, direct costs on States and local communities of between $80 million to $200 million. Those of us who used to work at State and local government know that $80 to $200 million is an awful lot of money. It is real money. Finally, leaving decisions regarding what features these documents should contain to Federal bureaucrats--and that is what this bill does, not to Congress but to Federal bureaucrats--I believe is unwise and potentially dangerous. Under the current language of this bill, as we consider it today, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Transportation could develop standards even more intrusive and even more costly than those spelled out in the original legislation, because, really, the way the bill is written today, they have more freedom, more flexibility--the bureaucrats do. I do not believe the setting of standards like these should be left to the Federal bureaucracy with nothing more than a requirement that they consult with outside groups. The bill does not provide for any congressional review of the standards, nor does it impose any limit on what HHS and DOT can mandate. The provision is ill-conceived and contrary to any reasonable concern for our liberties. I will urge it be deleted. Let me turn now to another area of concern. That has to do with the issue of asylum. The bill, as written, says something to people who want to apply for asylum in America, and says it, really, for the first time in our history. I want to emphasize this. For the first time in our history, this is what we will be saying to people who apply for asylum: You must now apply for asylum within a set period of time. That may sound reasonable. First of all, it is contrary to what we have done previously in the long history of this country. And, I think, on closer examination, as we go through this, it will become clear why this seemingly innocent provision will inevitably lead to some very, very great hardships for some of the most abused people in the world. It says that an asylum seeker must apply within 1 year of arriving in this country or else get a special exception from some bureaucrat for ``good cause.'' You get an exception for good cause. What constitutes good cause for an exception is, again, up to the Federal bureaucracy to define. I think this is a terrible solution. It is a solution for a problem that does not exist. I will talk about this in a moment. But, if we had been on the floor a few years ago, no one could say there was not a problem with the processing of asylums, with the number of applications for asylum, because there was. But, frankly, changes have been made in the system, changes which have corrected the problem. There is not a massive influx of asylum seekers into America and there is already a reasonable judicial process to determine which applicants are worthy of admission. Only about 20 percent of asylum seekers get in, one of five gets in anyway, through this normal, regular process. The system, frankly, is not broken, and trying to fix it could and would, in my opinion, do serious harm to people who are trying to escape oppression, torture, and even death in their native lands. If you talk, as I have, to people in the asylum community, people who deal with these issues and who deal with these people every day, they will tell you that some of the most heart-wrenching cases involve people who are so emotionally scarred by torture that it takes them more than a year to come forward and seek asylum. Under the original bill, aliens seeking asylum would have been required to file for such asylum within 30 days of arriving in the United States. Along with Senators Kennedy, Feingold, Abraham and others, I worked to defeat this provision during our work in the committee. We were able to do that and to change it and to extend it to 1 year. This 1-year provision still causes problems. Let me talk about that. First, since the Immigration and Naturalization Service imposed new asylum application regulations in late 1994, the flagrant abuses of the asylum process have been substantially reduced already. Second, it turns out that it is the people most deserving of asylum status, those under threat of retaliation, those suffering physical or mental disability, especially when abused resulting from torture, who would most be hurt by the imposition of any filing deadline. The committee did make the change. It made the change to strike the 30-day provision by a vote of 16 to 1. But I believe we do need to go further and we need to restore the bill and the law to the status quo. The committee passed an amendment by the distinguished Senator from Colorado [Mr. Brown]. Senator Brown's language is currently in the bill, and I believe, as I said, it is far better than the original 30- day limit. But I do remain convinced the arguments that were so simple and compelling against the 30-day time limit are equally compelling against the provision as it stands now. Let me talk about that. First, because the asylum system works, and works pretty well--I do not think there is any dispute about that--we simply do not need a time limit for asylum seekers. As I stated, we acknowledged several years ago the asylum system was in fact broken and there were serious problems. Under the old system, people could get a work authorization simply by applying for asylum. That is what they did, and that was the hole. This opportunity became a magnet, even for those who had absolutely no realistic claim for asylum. But the INS changed this. When the INS changed its rules in late 1994, it stopped automatically awarding work permits for those filing for asylum, and it got rid of a great deal of the problem. The INS then began to require an adjudication of the asylum claim before it awarded work authorizations. It also, at the same time, began resolving asylum claims within 180 days. The results are significant. According to the INS, in 1994, before the new rules were put in place, 123,000 people claimed asylum. In 1995, after the new rules were established, only 53,000 people even applied for asylum. Instantly you went from 123,000 who applied one year, the next year down to 53,000; that is a 57 percent decline in just 1 year. Also, the INS reports it is now completing 84 percent of the new cases within 60 days of filing and 98 percent, virtually all new cases, within 180 days of filing. Maybe that is why the administration, the INS, opposed any time limit on filing. The new system works. It is not broken. It does not need to be fixed. The new system works, and the new deadlines would--and here I quote the INS Commissioner. Here is what she says. The new proposal would ``divert resources from adjudicating the merits of asylum applications to adjudication of the timeliness of filing.'' So what the INS is saying is that we fixed this problem, it is working, do not give us another mandate. Do not shift us over here, so we have to have separate adjudications about the timeliness and then go over and adjudicate the merits. Let us proceed the way we are doing today. It is working. Point No. 2, why we really should not have this time limit. This, to me, is the most compelling, because the facts are the most worthy cases for asylum would be excluded if we impose a deadline. Among those excluded would be cases of victims of politically motivated torture and rape, the very people who need more time to apply, the very people who deadlines would hurt the most. These are the people who have suffered a great trauma that prevents them from coming forward. These are the people who fear that coming forward for asylum would threaten their families and friends in their home countries. These are the two types of people, Mr. President, for whom time is important. Time can cure the personal trauma and culture shock that prevents them from seeking asylum. Time can allow conditions to change back home. A time limit--any time limit--will place these people at risk. Let us talk now about some real people. One man, whose name is Gabriel, had a father who was chairman of a social democratic party in Nigeria. His father was arrested many times. His half-brother was executed for opposing the military regime. Gabriel participated in a student demonstration. He was arrested and imprisoned back home for 8 months. He was tortured by guards who carved the initials of the ruling general into his stomach and then sprayed pepper on the wounds. They whipped him, and they forced him to drink his own urine. Gabriel fled to the United States and, understandably, he was terrified that if he applied for asylum, he would be sent back to Nigeria where he could be murdered. He only applied for asylum after he was arrested by the INS, 5 years after coming to America. Let me give another example--and the list goes on. Another man was a member of his country's government in exile, elected in a democratic election that was later annulled. When the military took over his country, many of the members of the government were tortured and imprisoned. This particular man fled his country and came to the United States where he sought the United Nations' help in restoring democracy at home. He sought residence in other countries, and he was concerned that application for asylum in this country would be used for propaganda purposes by the military at his home country. Fifteen months after arriving in the United States, he did seek asylum. Although he was highly educated, although he was proficient in the English language, it took this man over 2 months to file that application. He was finally granted asylum in the United States, but to this day, he has asked that his name, that his home country and the fact that he sought asylum be held in the strictest confidence. He is still fearful. A third example. Another man was a political dissident against the regime in Zaire. He published an article about the slaughter of students who had demonstrated against the regime, and that was one of the political offenses that ultimately landed this man in jail. In prison, the guards beat him, the guards raped him. When he came to the United States, he was simply unable to talk about his story. His Christian beliefs did not permit him to use the words necessary to describe the terrible tortures he had undergone. It was only after many meetings with legal representatives that he was finally able to tell his story. He finally applied for asylum over a year after entering the United States. Those are just three examples, Mr. President. There really is practically no end to these examples, practically no end to worthy cases that would be foreclosed should we decide to apply deadlines. I know proponents of a time limit will argue that the bill does contain an escape clause, and it does on paper, the good-cause provision. But I think it is significant to point out that under this good-cause provision, the burden is on the applicant to show good cause. And the question of what constitutes good cause is really another problem with the bill. In the report language, it says good cause ``could include''--note that, Mr. President, not ``must'' or ``should'' but ``could'' include-- ``circumstances that changed after the applicant entered the United States''--I am quoting now--``or physical or mental disability, or threats of retribution against the applicant's relatives or other extenuating circumstances.'' The report, as written, would allow the issuance of Federal regulations that might exclude the very type of applicants that the committee specifically intended to include. I believe that we should reject the time limit outright. We are not really talking about mere legalisms here. I think what is at stake is a fundamental reassertion of a truly basic, bedrock value of America: the opportunity to apply for asylum, the opportunity to use this country as a refuge. I think it is important to note, as I did a moment ago, that there is not a problem. The INS has already taken care of this problem. What this bill does is create a problem--not for us, but what it will do is create a problem for people who are among the most abused, who have suffered the most and who seek freedom in this country. I am reminded in this context of another story that President Reagan used to tell. He said, ``Some years ago, two friends of mine were talking with a Cuban refugee who had escaped from Castro. In the midst of the tale of horrible experiences, one friend turned to the other and said, `We don't know how lucky we are.' One Cuban stopped and said, `How lucky you are? How lucky you are? I have someplace to escape to.' '' At this point, as he told the story, President Reagan looked out at America and drew his conclusion, and this is what he said: ``Let's keep it that way.'' Mr. President, let us keep it that way. Let us keep the light on over the door of America for some people who very desperately need that light, who need that hope. Let me turn to another issue, and that is amendments that we may see on the floor concerning family. I want to turn now to some other provisions in the original bill that we managed to alter and change in committee but that may come up on the floor as amendments. One of the most important of these issues had to do with the meaning of family. The original bill fundamentally changed the definition of a nuclear family. The original bill said to U.S. citizens that they could continue to bring their children to America but only--this is to U.S. citizens now, said to U.S. citizens--they could continue to bring their children to America but only if the children are under 21, and they could only bring their parents to America if the parents are over 65 and the majority of their children live in America. The original bill even went so far as to say that if a child was a minor but that child was married, that child could not come to this country either. You could not bring that minor child to the country if he or she decided to get married. Mr. President, in a time when everyone agrees that the fundamental problem in America is a family breakdown--I do not think anyone on the floor disagrees with that--I think it is senseless to change the law to help break up families. In the committee I kind of related this to my own life and my own experience and pretended for a moment with my family situation, if I was a new citizen in this country, if I had come from another country and was a naturalized citizen. Frankly, Mr. President, in my situation I have trouble saying that my 4-year-old daughter Anna--or Anna who is going to in 2 days become 4 years old--is a central part of my nuclear family, but my 28-year-old son Patrick is not; he is now part of my extended family; my 27-year-old daughter, Jill, she is not part of my nuclear family anymore, she is part of my extended family. That is what the bill had originally said. Finally, the bill also originally said--I cannot understand this either--that Mike DeWine, as an only child I could bring my parents into the country if they are over 65, but my wife Frances DeWine could not bring her parents into the country because she is one of six. She, as one of six, she could not bring her parents into the country--only if a majority of her siblings actually lived in the United States and were citizens in the United States. Again, it does not make any sense. I think we are going to end up revisiting this issue. I think it is going to come back up. Mr. President, at a time when Congress has acted to rein in public assistance programs, I do not believe we should deprive people the most basic support structure there is, their immediate family. It just does not make sense. Mr. President, we took these family limitation provisions out of the bill in committee. I hope that we will be able to sustain this on the floor and we will not change this. Let me turn finally to one more issue, that has to do with the linkage of this bill. I believe it was a mistake in the original bill to combine the issues of legal and illegal immigration. For my colleagues watching on TV or on the floor who are not on the committee, we separated this in committee. What you have before you are two separate, distinct bills. I think it should stay that way because the issue of illegal immigration is decidedly distinct from the issue of legal immigration. I think that the biggest mistake of the original bill was to combine the issues of legal and illegal immigration. Illegal immigrants are lawbreakers. That is the fact. Frankly, Mr. President, no society can exist that allows disrespect for the law. On the other hand, legal immigrants are people who follow the law. They are an ambitious and gutsy group. They are people who have defined themselves by the fact they have been willing to come here, play by the rules, build a future, and take chances. To lump them in, Mr. President, legal immigrants, with people who violate the law is wrong. We simply should not do it. Historically Congress has treated legal immigration and illegal immigration separately. Father Hesburgh in his 1981 report indicated that Congress should control illegal immigration, while leaving the door open to legal immigration. Congress has in fact done this over the years and kept the issue separate. In 1986 Congress dealt with illegal immigration. In 1990 Congress dealt with legal immigration. In fact, Mr. President, the very immigration bill that is before us today started its legislative career as a piece of legislation separate from the bill covering legal immigration. It was only late in the subcommittee markup that the bills became joined. These issues, Mr. President, have been treated separately for many years. They have been treated separately for one simple reason--they present different issues. They are different. To treat them together is to invite repetition of numerous totally false stereotypes. The combining of the bills leads, I think, to the merging of the thought process into a great deal of confusion. Let me give an example. Say, for example, that aliens are more likely than native-born Americans to be on welfare and food stamps or Medicaid. But the fact is, Mr. President, this generalization is not true about legal immigrants. The statement I just made is wrong in regard to legal immigrants. If you separate out the legal immigrants, you find when you are talking about legal immigrants that they are no more likely than native-born Americans to be applicants of social welfare services. In fact, legal immigrants who become naturalized citizens are less likely--let me repeat--less likely to go on public assistance than native-born Americans. That is what the facts are. Now, a recent study, Mr. President, points to the same fact. It found that foreign-born individuals were 10 to 20 percent more likely than native-born Americans to need social services. That is an alarming statistic, if you just stop there. But if you go further, and if you exclude refugees from the total, the foreign-born individuals are considerably less likely to do so than native-born citizens. Again, the point I made a moment ago. Let us turn, Mr. President, to another dangerous stereotype frequently asserted. That is, that one-half of our illegal immigration problem stems from people who first came here legally. Let me repeat it. Let me repeat this. The statement is made that one-half of our illegal immigration problem stems from people who first came here legally. Well, that is true. That is a true statement. But it is only true as far as it goes. In fact, Mr. President, it is a very misleading statement. What the people who say this are talking about is not legal immigrants who stay here and somehow become illegal; they are talking instead about students and tourists who had the right to visit America legally. They never were legal immigrants in the classic sense. They had the legal right to be here, but they were not legal immigrants. These are students, tourists who come here legally, and then who stay and do not leave when they are supposed to leave. That is a huge problem in this country. But it is not a problem of legal immigrants. These people who are creating this problem were never legal immigrants. By definition, Mr. President, legal immigrants are people who are allowed to stay. Legal immigrants by definition are here legally. They are not the problem. Mr. President, this is also an important source of confusion on the question of whether immigration is rising rapidly. Some people claim, for example, that legal immigration is skyrocketing. They base their contention on INS numbers that include as legal immigrants illegal immigrants who are made legal by the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. Mr. President, if you take the total number of legal immigrants and subtract those that were illegal before the 1986 act, you find that legal immigration has been holding at fairly constant levels. That is what the facts are. Let me just give an example, Mr. President. In the 1990's, we have had about 2.8 immigrants for every 1,000 Americans. Is that a lot? Well, we could judge for ourselves. The first two decades of the century, to make a comparison, the rates were 10.4 per 1,000 and 5.7 per 1,000. Mr. President, I do not think knowing what we know now, that it would have been wise to say in 1910 that there were too many immigrants coming into America. It was precisely that generation of immigrants at the turn of the century that coincided with America's transition from the periphery of world events to the status of a global superpower. Mr. President, let me stop. I have almost concluded, but let me stop at this point to yield to my friend, Senator Simpson from Wyoming.

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, let me first state that I want to congratulate my colleague from Wyoming, as well as my colleague from Massachusetts, for not just the work they have done on this bill, but, frankly, for the work they have done over the years on this very tough, very contentious, very difficult, but very important issue of immigration. I have heard my colleague from Wyoming say on several occasions, as we have debated this bill in committee, that this is not really a bill or an issue that anyone gets a lot out of politically, and certainly not someone from the State of Wyoming. I certainly concur in that and understand that. I want to congratulate him for really doing the tough work of the U.S. Senate--work that began in the 1980's with the previous bill and continues on today. It is work that is many times not rewarded politically, certainly not appreciated many times, and is many times very controversial. I congratulate him for that. This has been a contentious bill. We have had contentious debate in committee. The Senator from Wyoming and I have agreed on some issues and disagreed on other issues. I imagine that agreement and disagreement is probably going to continue on the floor today, tomorrow, and maybe for the rest of the week. Let me state that I do appreciate very much his tremendous work, as well as the work of Senator Kennedy and, frankly, the work of all of the members of the subcommittee, some of whom have been involved in this task now for well over a decade. Mr. President, we are here on the floor today to discuss a fundamental issue, a fundamental issue affecting the future of our country. Unlike most bills that come before Congress, this immigration bill really gets to the question of our national identity. Unlike most bills, this bill really speaks to who we are as a people, who we are as a nation. Quite frankly, also unlike most bills we deal with, the impact of this bill is going to be felt in 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, and 30 years, because when you make a determination of who comes into this country and who does not come into this country, the consequences are profound, they are everlasting, and we have seen that, frankly, throughout the long history of our country. Mr. President, in the darkest days of the cold war, back when Brezhnev was still ruling what was then known as the Soviet Union, Ronald Reagan gave a historic address to the British Parliament. It was in that famous speech in June 1982 that President Reagan predicted, ``The march of freedom and democracy will leave Marxism and Leninism on the ash heap of history.'' Many of us remember how controversial that statement was at the time. Some in this country considered it unnecessarily provocative, and thought that it would inflame our enemies for really no good purpose. Mr. President, it may have been provocative, but it was absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, prophetic. It was true. In that speech, Ronald Reagan was trying to unify the West. He wanted to unify the forces of freedom for what he knew, as others did not, would be the climactic days of the struggle against communism. In the last resort, what President Reagan appealed to in that speech was really our sense of identity, who we were, who we are. This is what he said: Let us ask ourselves: What kind of a people do we think we are? And let us answer: Free people, worthy of freedom and determined not only to remain so, but to help others gain their freedom, as well. Ronald Reagan expressed, better than any political leader of my lifetime, a sense of what America really is--``the city on a hill, the land, the country of the future.'' When Ronald Reagan was a boy growing up in Illinois, he could still find Civil War veterans to talk to. In our time, over a century after the death of Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan reminded us that America was still the last best hope of Earth. We must never, never forget this, Mr. President. To turn our backs on this legacy--this legacy of hope, optimism, openness to the future--would be more than a mistake in policy. It would, I believe, Mr. President, truly be a diminution of who we are as a people. That is what I believe this immigration debate is all about. It is the same question Ronald Reagan asked to the British Parliament: ``What kind of people do we think we are?'' Mr. President, America's immigration policy defines who we are. It defines who gets into this country and who does not get in. In the process, it says a lot about our national values. Mr. President, we have been working on this bill in the Senate Judiciary Committee for a number of weeks. I believe we made some progress in revising the bill to reflect what I believe are the basic American values. First, the committee split the portions of the bill dealing with illegal immigration. An amendment was offered by Senator Abraham, myself, Senator Kennedy, Senator Feingold, and others, to split the bill. The committee did, in fact, split the bill. It divided the bill into those sections dealing with the treatment of persons who are in the United States illegally from those provisions that cover legal immigration. I support this split because I believe that the problem of illegal immigration is substantially different from the issues raised by our legal immigration policy. And, therefore, these two issues, in my opinion, should be treated separately. They are distinct. I intend later on to say more about this important issue. Mr. President, in considering the illegal immigration bill, I voted for tough penalties for those who violate our immigration laws, and I voted to expedite the deportation of those violators. I am also proud to say that I sponsored an amendment to block the imposition of unreasonable time limits on persons seeking asylum from repressive and often life-threatening foreign regimes. Our amendment sought to restore the status quo. Today, immigration authorities cannot enter farm property without a search warrant. The bill before the committee would have changed that and would have allowed them to enter property--to enter a farm--without that search warrant. I sponsored an amendment to make sure they did not get that evasive new power. Further, Mr. President, I cosponsored an amendment with Senators Abraham and Feingold that would have removed from the bill a provision that establishes a national employment verification system and a national standards for birth certificates and driver's licenses. I believe that these provisions are unduly intrusive. And, quite frankly, I believe they are unworkable. I further believe they would cost taxpayers millions and millions and millions of dollars. Again, Mr. President, I intend to say a great deal more about this later on. Let me turn to the legal immigration bill. On the legal immigration bill, with Senators Abraham and Kennedy, I cosponsored an amendment to allow legal immigrants to bring their families to join them here in the United States. The bill, as originally written, tried to change the law allowing U.S. citizens to bring their families to America. The bill would have permitted, as written, U.S. citizens to bring in only their spouses, minor children, and in rare cases their parents. Under that provision, as the bill was written before the amendment--I bring this up because I am sure this issue is going to come back again--a U.S. citizen under that provision of the bill as written would have been permitted to bring some children in but not others. I believe that is bad national policy. It undermines the family structure. And, frankly, in the history of civilization there has never been a stronger support structure than the family. I also supported amendments that would continue to allow universities and businesses to bring in the best and the brightest to enrich our country. I intend to return to that issue as well later. Mr. President, in all of our deliberations in the Judiciary Committee, I have stressed one key fact about America--the fact that throughout our national history, throughout our history, the effect of immigration on this country has been positive. Immigration has helped form the basis for our prosperity and our national strength. It has made our country and the world a better place. I tried to approach these difficult issues keeping in mind that a fair, controlled but open immigration policy is in our national interest. I believe we have made the first significant steps in this bill in the committee, in the amendment process, toward that goal. Mr. President, even though we managed to improve the bill in a number of ways, I still have some problems with the present bill. In the name of protecting our borders, this bill would impose serious burdens on law-abiding American citizens, and it would move America away from its extremely valuable centuries-old tradition of openness to new people and new ideas. Let me now go through the bill and lay out some of the particular concerns I have about the bill as it is currently before us today. First, let me start with the very contentious issue of verification-- the verification of employment. To begin with, the bill would create a massive time-consuming and error-prone bureaucracy. As originally written, the bill called for a process under which every employer would have to contact the Immigration and Naturalization Service and Social Security Administration to verify the citizenship of every prospective employee. My colleague from Ohio, Congressman Steve Chabot, called this 1-800-BIG-BROTHER. I think he is right. We did succeed in taking that provision out of the bill, or at least taking part of it out of the bill. But the long-term plan remains the same. In fact, the bill now contains a provision calling for numerous entitlement programs to do the very same thing. I have had some experience in dealing with this kind of extremely large computerized database. My experience is from my time as Lieutenant Governor in Ohio when we were dealing with the criminal record system database. I contend that what I have learned from trying to improve, correct, and refine the criminal database is very applicable and very relevant to this whole discussion about our attempt to create a database for employees and employers. When I was Lieutenant Governor, I was responsible for improving Ohio's criminal database so that the police could have ready access to a suspect's full criminal record history. When I started on this project, I was shocked to discover that in the State of Ohio--these figures are true in most States--only about 5 percent of the files, 5 percent of the computer information you got in a printout when you talked about a suspect, it put a suspect's name in and only about 5 percent of the information was accurate in regard to important facts--5 percent. In criminal records, we are dealing with a database that we all know is important, that the people know is important, that we take a great deal of care in maintaining, and that is limited to the relatively small number of citizens who are actually criminals. In fact, when we deal with the criminal record system, we know that literally life and death decisions are being made based on the accuracy of that criminal record system, and we have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to bring it up to date, to make it more accurate, and yet we still know that it is highly error prone. We still know the accuracy level is very, very low. Mr. President, I shudder to think what the inaccuracy rate will be in a database big enough to include every single citizen and noncitizen residing in this country. I shudder to think of what the accuracy or the inaccuracy level will be when we are dealing with a database where life and death decisions are not actually being made but, rather, where employment decisions are being made. The database will be unreliable. It would be time consuming, and it would be expensive. In fact, the only way to make a database more reliable is frankly to make it more intrusive, and that clearly is what will happen. Once the pilot projects are running and we determine how inaccurate that information is, once the complaints start coming in from prospective employees and from employers who are dialing the 1-800 number, or putting the information in and we find out how inaccurate that is, there will be pressure to change it. And the pressure will be to make it, frankly, more intrusive--more information, more accurate. I believe that it would clearly lay the groundwork for a national system within 3 years. Let me turn, if I can, Mr. President, to my second concern about this bill. That concerns the national standards for birth certificates and drivers' licenses. Yes, you have heard me correctly. In this Congress where we have talked about returning power to the States, returning authority to the States, this bill calls for national, federally imposed and federally enforced standards for birth certificates and drivers' licenses. Here is what the bill says as written, as it is on the floor today. Section 118. Improvements in Identification-Related Documents. (a) Birth certificates. 1. Limitation on Acceptance. (A) No Federal agency, including but not limited to the Social Security Administration and the Department of State-- Listen to this: and no State agency that issues driver's licenses or identification documents, may accept for any official purpose a copy of a birth certificate, as defined in subparagraph (5), unless it is issued by a State or local government registrar and it conforms to standards described in subparagraph (B). Continuing the quote: (B) The standards described in this subparagraph are those set forth in regulations promulgated by the Secretary of Health and Human Services, after consultation with the Association of Public Health Statistics and Information Systems, and shall include but not be limited to. (i) certification by the agency issuing the birth certificate, and. (ii) use of safety paper, the seal of the issuing agency, and other features designed to limit tampering, counterfeiting, and use by impostors. Mr. President, I am going to talk about this later, but I think it is important to pause for a moment and look at what this section does because it does in fact tell each State in the country, each local jurisdiction what it has to do in regard to issuing birth certificates. It in essence says for the 270 million people in this country the birth certificate you have is valid; you just cannot use it for anything. It is valid, it is OK, but if you want to take a trip and you want to get a passport, you have to go back to wherever you were born and have them issue a new birth certificate that complies with these national standards. Think about it. Think about what impact this is going to have on the local communities, the cost it is going to have. Think about the inconvenience this is going to bring up for every American who uses a birth certificate to do practically anything--getting a driver's license, for example. And look at the language again. Not just no Federal agency may accept for any official purpose a copy of a birth certificate unless it fits this requirement but then the language goes on further and says no State agency. So here we have the Federal Government saying to 50 States, no State agency shall be allowed to accept a birth certificate unless it fits the standards as prescribed by a bureaucrat in Washington, DC. Tenth amendment? Unbelievable, absolutely unbelievable. There are clear constitutional law problems in regard to this. Senator Thompson, who is on the committee, raised these issues in the committee and it is clear that this section has some very major constitutional law problems. Here is in essence what this means. The Federal Government will tell every citizen that his or her birth certificate is no longer good enough for any of the major purposes for which it is used--not good enough for traveling, not good enough for getting married, not good enough for going to school, not good enough for getting a driver's license. How about constituent problems? We are all going to have to hire more caseworkers back in our home States when this goes into effect just to answer the phone and listen to people complain about this. How many people every year turn 16 and get their driver's license? How many people every year want to travel overseas, want to get a passport? Try telling them that birth certificate you got stuck in the drawer back home you used 5 years ago for something else, ``Yes, it is still OK, you cannot use it, you have to go get a new one.'' Absolutely unbelievable. (Mr. CRAIG assumed the chair.)

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, my amendment provides $11.8 million for local governments for the development of criminal justice identification systems and their linking to FBI databases. Specifically, this amendment allows the FBI to grant funds to local communities, in consultation with the States, to upgrade their criminal identification systems. Through this funding, law enforcement agencies could develop their criminal histories, and DNA, fingerprint, and ballistics identification systems, and hook them up to the FBI national databases. It would also allow local law enforcement to contribute identification materials to the database in Washington. This proposal is strongly supported by the FBI and State and local law enforcement agencies and governments. While the FBI's fingerprint and criminal histories systems are not yet complete, State and local governments need these funds now to take necessary steps to prepare their criminal records for connection to the national database. This language was also passed by the Senate in June, 1995, as part of S. 735, the Senate's antiterrorism measure, and in October, 1995, as part of H.R. 2076, the Commerce, Justice, State and the Judiciary Appropriations. I want to thank Senator McConnell for his tremendous efforts in securing passage of this amendment. I also want to express my appreciation to Senator Hatfield and Senator Gregg for accepting this amendment. Regional Educational Laboratories

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, S. 1581 would reinstate the license for a 49.5 megawatt hydroelectric project in Ohio, which was originally issued on September 27, 1989, and extend the deadline for construction until September 24, 1999. The licensee for this project is the City of Orrville. The original license was stayed and held in abeyance until 1992, due to administrative and judicial challenges to FERC's decision to issue licenses for 16 projects in the upper Ohio River basin. In 1992, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld FERC's licensing decision. Due to the delay caused by the litigation and difficulty securing adequate funding for the project, the city surrendered its license in June, 1993 and sought other sources of power to meet its immediate energy needs. This bill would reinstate the license and extend the construction deadline for this project. In a letter dated February 9, 1996, FERC chair, Elizabeth Moler, stated that she did not have any specific objections to legislation reinstating the license and extending the construction deadline for Pike Island Project No. 3218.

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, S. 1581 would reinstate the license for a 49.5 megawatt hydroelectric project in Ohio, which was originally issued on September 27, 1989, and extend the deadline for construction until September 24, 1999. The licensee for this project is the City of Orrville. The original license was stayed and held in abeyance until 1992, due to administrative and judicial challenges to FERC's decision to issue licenses for 16 projects in the upper Ohio River basin. In 1992, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld FERC's licensing decision. Due to the delay caused by the litigation and difficulty securing adequate funding for the project, the city surrendered its license in June, 1993 and sought other sources of power to meet its immediate energy needs. This bill would reinstate the license and extend the construction deadline for this project. In a letter dated February 9, 1996, FERC chair, Elizabeth Moler, stated that she did not have any specific objections to legislation reinstating the license and extending the construction deadline for Pike Island Project No. 3218.

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, next month, March 1996, is National Eye Donor Month. The purpose of National Eye Donor Month is to alert individual Americans to a terrific opportunity each one of us has to make a real difference in someone else's life. Many Americans do not realize that they have it in their power to give someone else the ability to see, but it is true; each one of us does. If we declare now that after our passing, we want our eyes to be donated to an eye bank, then these eyes can become someone else's gift of sight. What a great opportunity. Indeed, what a great responsibility, one that all of us and our families should take very seriously. According to the most recent statistics, over 6,000 Americans are waiting for corneal transplants--6,000 today awaiting an operation that can restore the gift of sight. These Americans could have this operation today if only there were enough donated eyes available. The purpose of National Eye Donor Month is simply to remind all Americans that we can make those corneas available. Every year thousands of Americans donate their eyes to eye banks. In 1994, over 95,000 eyes were donated and over 43,000 transplants were actually performed. Mr. President, these numbers need some explaining. Those figures seem to reflect a pretty substantial disparity, but there is a good reason for it--a very strict screening process that keeps out those who test positive for HIV, those who have hepatitis, and those with unhealthy cells on their corneas. Those are just a few of the reasons why many corneas are unsuitable for transplantation. But the corneas from these donors are, in fact, actually used for a good purpose. They are used in other very important ways. They are used for research in surgical training and other medical education. It is because of this screening process I have just described that eye transplant operations have such an incredible success rate--better than a 90-percent success. This screening process and this rate of success, however, require a greater number of donations. If we could increase the number of eyes donated to eye banks, we could take care of the 6,668 patients who are still waiting for corneal transplants today as well as the 40,000-odd people who join their ranks every single year. As I said, this kind of surgery really does work. In the 35 years since the founding of the Eye Bank Association of America, EBAA member eye banks have made possible over half a million corneal transplants. There simply are not enough eye donors. The only solution is public education--making the American people aware of what we can do to help. That is what National Eye Donor Month is all about. In March 1996, let us recommit ourselves as a nation to giving the gift of sight to some of our fellow citizens who stand in need. Let me conclude on a personal note. In August 1993, our 22-year-old daughter Becky was killed. My wife and I and our children had never discussed the issue of organ donation, and when Fran and I were at the hospital and were asked to donate Becky's eyes, we said ``yes.'' We said ``yes'' because we knew that is what our daughter would have wanted us to do. Becky was a loving and caring person. She cared very deeply about other people. I encourage all families to discuss with their family members this very important issue because by donating the eyes of a loved one or making arrangements that your own eyes can be donated, some good can come out of what to us was life's most horrible tragedy. Again I call the Members' attention to National Eye Donor Month, which is March of this year, and ask that we all renew our dedication to increasing the number of donations, the number of eyes that are available so that more people could see. Thank you very much, Mr. President. Mr. BOND addressed the Chair.

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, today I introduce legislation that would make America's railroad crossings a lot safer. According to the National Safety Council, over the past 4 years an average of 522 people have been killed each year in train-vehicle collisions. Last year, 37 of these deaths occurred in my own State of Ohio. Almost 50 percent of these accidents occur at crossings that are already equipped with active warning devices. Simply adding more warning devices, therefore, is not a complete solution to this problem. Some of these railroad crossings are just too dangerous. They are life threatening. They are not needed, and they ought to be closed. We all know, however, that people get accustomed to taking certain routes. And communities get used to certain traffic patterns. That's why it's sometimes difficult for localities to close these crossings, even when it's clear on safety grounds that a particular crossing must be closed. Clearly, the local communities need some help. That's the purpose of my legislation. Currently, the Federal Government pays 90 percent of the cost of closing a rail-highway grade crossing. But other grade crossing safety projects--such as traffic signs, guardrails, and traffic lights--are eligible for 100 percent Federal funding. The bill I am introducing today will make grade crossing closure projects eligible for that same 100-percent Federal funding. This will remove the current incentive against closure projects. If the safest thing to do is close a crossing, localities should have an incentive to do that. This bill does not involve new Federal money. The money for this bill is already allocated for crossing safety purposes--and all we are trying to do is deploy that money in the most rational and effective way. My bill will also provide up to $7,500 to a local highway authority for each crossing closed. Furthermore, the railroad that is operating the crossing will match this money. That means up to $15,000 for a local community--just to close a crossing. Obviously, this is just the beginning of a many-pronged assault on a major safety problem. We can't close every single crossing that might be dangerous. So we want to make certain that the remaining railroad crossings are as safe as possible. Last summer, I brought together Federal and State officials to see whether changes could be made to speed the process for dealing with unsafe railroad crossings. Previously, the installation of safety lights and gates followed a linear process--one step had to be completed before another was allowed to begin. we created a new, streamlined process that allows officials to identify hazardous crossings and to implement expedited safety measures. We eliminated the waiting periods between design, funding, and construction. The safety installation process used to take up to 2 years--but with this new, streamlined process, we are hoping it will only take about 12 months. This new process is being tried on 31 different sites throughout the State of Ohio. It is a very promising approach, and if it works in Ohio, it deserves to be extended all over America. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, today I introduce legislation that would make America's railroad crossings a lot safer. According to the National Safety Council, over the past 4 years an average of 522 people have been killed each year in train-vehicle collisions. Last year, 37 of these deaths occurred in my own State of Ohio. Almost 50 percent of these accidents occur at crossings that are already equipped with active warning devices. Simply adding more warning devices, therefore, is not a complete solution to this problem. Some of these railroad crossings are just too dangerous. They are life threatening. They are not needed, and they ought to be closed. We all know, however, that people get accustomed to taking certain routes. And communities get used to certain traffic patterns. That's why it's sometimes difficult for localities to close these crossings, even when it's clear on safety grounds that a particular crossing must be closed. Clearly, the local communities need some help. That's the purpose of my legislation. Currently, the Federal Government pays 90 percent of the cost of closing a rail-highway grade crossing. But other grade crossing safety projects--such as traffic signs, guardrails, and traffic lights--are eligible for 100 percent Federal funding. The bill I am introducing today will make grade crossing closure projects eligible for that same 100-percent Federal funding. This will remove the current incentive against closure projects. If the safest thing to do is close a crossing, localities should have an incentive to do that. This bill does not involve new Federal money. The money for this bill is already allocated for crossing safety purposes--and all we are trying to do is deploy that money in the most rational and effective way. My bill will also provide up to $7,500 to a local highway authority for each crossing closed. Furthermore, the railroad that is operating the crossing will match this money. That means up to $15,000 for a local community--just to close a crossing. Obviously, this is just the beginning of a many-pronged assault on a major safety problem. We can't close every single crossing that might be dangerous. So we want to make certain that the remaining railroad crossings are as safe as possible. Last summer, I brought together Federal and State officials to see whether changes could be made to speed the process for dealing with unsafe railroad crossings. Previously, the installation of safety lights and gates followed a linear process--one step had to be completed before another was allowed to begin. we created a new, streamlined process that allows officials to identify hazardous crossings and to implement expedited safety measures. We eliminated the waiting periods between design, funding, and construction. The safety installation process used to take up to 2 years--but with this new, streamlined process, we are hoping it will only take about 12 months. This new process is being tried on 31 different sites throughout the State of Ohio. It is a very promising approach, and if it works in Ohio, it deserves to be extended all over America. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed for 10 minutes.

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, in the last several weeks we have seen much activity surrounding the Browns' move to Baltimore. The State of Maryland has filed an antitrust lawsuit against the NFL. The city of Cleveland sued the Browns. The city of Cleveland also sued the city of Baltimore. Who knows, there may be more lawsuits coming. My bill does one very important thing: It gets the American taxpayer out of the middle of all this. Whatever the economic factors that cause teams to go and to come, whatever the circumstances that lead city to sue city, teams to sue teams, and the league to sue teams and individuals, the American taxpayer should be left out of it. The taxpayers' burden is high enough. It is wrong to make the taxpayers pay. My bill does not seek to manage the NFL team relocation process. It does not intend to have more regulation of the NFL. But it does say that the Federal Government will not help them leave and that the Federal taxpayers will not subsidize these moves. Mr. President, I considered naming my bill after our beloved ``Dawgs'' and the hard-core Browns fans who are represented in this particular ad. You see in the ad the ``Big Dawg,'' who is certainly famous in Cleveland, around the country, a great fan looking at this empty stadium after the last home game. I considered naming my bill after the Dawgs, and the Dawgs, of course, is, in this case, spelled d- a-w-g-s. In this case, the Dawgs would stand for ``don't allow welfare for greedy sports owners.'' While that title would express very accurately the deepest feelings of the people of Ohio, I have decided on a title that would tell all Americans why they should support this particular bill. I have called the bill the Team Relocation Taxpayer Protection Act. The bill is called the Team Relocation Taxpayer Protection Act. If you are a taxpayer and you think we have better things to spend Federal money on than corporate greed, you should support this bill. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the full text of this bill, the Dawgs bill, the Team Relocation Taxpayer Protection Act, be printed in the Record.

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce, along with my distinguished colleague from Ohio, Senator John Glenn, legislation that will get U.S. taxpayers out of the business of subsidizing NFL franchise moves. It is clear by now that these franchise moves have a very substantial impact not only on communities, on the economy, but also, frankly, on the future of professional sports. Mr. President, I have already on this floor in days past addressed at length the question of the proposed move of the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore. I believe, as do many Ohioans--indeed, as do many Americans--that this move is simply wrong. I have discussed on this floor the great tradition of the Browns, the love the people of Cleveland and the people of Ohio have for the Browns. Candidly, whether you care about the Browns or do not, whether you are a sports fan or not a sports fan, you and every taxpayer are paying for this move--every taxpayer in the entire country. Whether you live in Cleveland, OH, or Los Angeles, CA, the Federal Government is reaching into your pocket to pay for this move. I believe the taxpayers will be shocked to know this, and they should be. The sports fan who have followed all the back and forth of this move, very few of them are aware today as I speak from the Senate floor that the Federal Government, is subsidizing this purported move by $36 million--$36 million of taxpayers' money. That provides the occasion and the rational and the public policy reason for the legislation Senator Glenn and I are introducing today. Quite frankly, I can see no moral justification for taxpayers, for the people of Cleveland or anywhere else to reward a sports team with public money to assist that team in breaking its word and deserting the community. I believe that to do this is unconscionable and is simply wrong. Let me put it in real terms. To force a family in Parma, OH, or Euclid, or in Cleveland, or in Columbus, OH, to take there tax dollars, to send them to Washington and to have Washington turn around and subsidize Baltimore, MD, to steal the team from the Browns and to do it with $36 million in Federal taxpayers' money makes absolutely no sense. I believe that we must stop the insanity. We must act to get the Government out of this subsidy business. Mr. President, today, more and more public money is being used to support professional football franchises. Communities are making significant public investments to lure and keep NFL teams in there area. In each one of these cases, in return for the public investment, teams are agreeing to stay in the community for a specifically defined period of time. There is a deal made. The local community will offer financial incentives, will support the team, and in return the owner agrees to stay in that community during the term of the lease. It is fairly simple. Unfortunately, however, some franchises are breaking their part of the deal by seeking to relocate before the term of the deal has expired, before the lease is over. That is why I am introducing legislation that will get the Federal taxpayer out of the business of subsidizing this particular kind of relocation. The enactment of this bill will result, frankly, in less Government involvement in professional sports, not more. Under the current system, when a city or State wants to raise funds to build a stadium and thereby secure a professional team, it authorizes a governmental entity such as a stadium authority to issue bonds. In other words, to sell the debt to anyone who wants to buy the debt. The stadium authority can then use the proceeds to build the stadium and the people who have invested pay no tax on the interest they earn--tax- free bonds. The tax exemption allows the stadium authority to pay lower interest rates and thus keep more money for itself. They can build the stadium at less of a cost--in this particular case in Baltimore it is $36 million less cost. That is the difference between issuing the bonds, building the stadium with taxable bonds versus building that stadium with nontaxable bonds. Mr. President, because the bondholder does not pay Federal tax on interest, the interest amounts to a Federal subsidy for stadium authority bondholders. For example, in the case of the Browns move, this subsidy is worth, as I have stated, $36 million to the Browns. The legislation that Senator Glenn and I are introducing today will prohibit the use of these Federal subsidies in bond deals associated with the relocation of an NFL team, when that team breaks an existing deal with the community that has supported the team. In short, new Federal subsidies under this bill cannot be used to help a team violate an existing commitment where that commitment includes public money. The bill's criteria are straightforward. There are five separate criteria and each one of these has to be met before our bill applies: First, if the franchise is currently in a public facility; second, if the proposed relocation will be to a new public facility; third, if fan support in the current location, the current team's local area--in this case, Cleveland--has been at least 75 percent of stadium capacity in the preceding season; fourth, if the current lease with the public entity has not expired--in other words, they are breaking the lease; and fifth, if asked, voters in the current jurisdiction have approved the use of further tax dollars to improve the current facility or to build a new one. If all five of these criteria apply, then our bill provides as follows: No expenditure of Federal funds including grants, awards, loans, guarantees, tax credits, exemptions, allowances or any use of Federal tax-exempt financing may be used to benefit the franchise seeking to relocate. In short, Mr. President, if you own a football team and you want to break your lease and the local community has done everything it can to support the team, you can do it; Congress will not stop you, not under this bill, but--but--the Federal taxpayers will not help you do it. They will not encourage you with a subsidy to do it. The Federal taxpayers will not subsidize your breach of faith. That is the message that the bill will send to NFL owners. If you want to go build your own stadium, you can do that, too, but the Federal taxpayers will not help you do it. If you want to rely only on State, local dollars, not Federal dollars, you can do that, too, but Federal taxpayers simply will not help you do it. If you want to break a deal in the community and the community you are leaving has done everything it can to keep its part of the bargain, then the Federal taxpayer will not get involved. Mr. President, it is important to discuss this issue in the context of everything else that is occurring today and this past year in Washington. In the Senate, we have been consumed with decisions on Federal spending. How can we slow the rate of growth of spending? What Federal budget should we pass? How can we balance the Federal budget? We are making very tough decisions on health care for poor people, welfare reform, Medicare, Medicaid, the education of our youth. I do not need to tell anyone in this Chamber that these are very difficult decisions, but here is an easy decision. As I stated earlier, in just this case, the case of the Browns purported move to Baltimore, it is estimated that the Federal tax subsidy is $36 million. That is over and above any local taxpayer subsidy--$36 million of Federal tax money, $36 million that will benefit one professional sports franchise. The American people want to know what we mean by corporate welfare. This, Mr. President, is corporate welfare. This is what we mean. Paying the Browns $36 million of Federal money is, simply, morally wrong. For me, the question is, under our serious budget constraints, what in the world justifies taking $36 million from taxpayers, including the ones in Cleveland whose trust with the Browns has been broken, to pay for this move? Absolutely nothing justifies it. Mr. President, I have spoken at length regarding the impact of sports franchise relocation on the communities that love their teams. I have mentioned the pride that the people of Cleveland, the people of all of Ohio have in the Browns. I have discussed the unbroken bonds of affection that stretch from the days after the Second World War, when the Browns started playing in Cleveland, to today's fans who, frankly, still cannot believe that the Browns are trying to leave town. I will not replow that field here except to say simply this: Loyalty counts. Loyalty is not transferable. The Cleveland story is very important precisely because the Browns are the heart and soul of Cleveland and because the people of Cleveland have done all they can to save the Browns. The Cleveland situation is, Mr. President, the worst-case scenario. If the Browns can leave Cleveland, any team can leave any town any time. This was an ad that was paid for by Browns fans that appeared in USA Today. I think it pretty much summarizes the situation. If this can happen in Cleveland, Mr. President, this can happen to any team, to any sports fans in the country. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 4 minutes.

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, in the last several weeks we have seen much activity surrounding the Browns' move to Baltimore. The State of Maryland has filed an antitrust lawsuit against the NFL. The city of Cleveland sued the Browns. The city of Cleveland also sued the city of Baltimore. Who knows, there may be more lawsuits coming. My bill does one very important thing: It gets the American taxpayer out of the middle of all this. Whatever the economic factors that cause teams to go and to come, whatever the circumstances that lead city to sue city, teams to sue teams, and the league to sue teams and individuals, the American taxpayer should be left out of it. The taxpayers' burden is high enough. It is wrong to make the taxpayers pay. My bill does not seek to manage the NFL team relocation process. It does not intend to have more regulation of the NFL. But it does say that the Federal Government will not help them leave and that the Federal taxpayers will not subsidize these moves. Mr. President, I considered naming my bill after our beloved ``Dawgs'' and the hard-core Browns fans who are represented in this particular ad. You see in the ad the ``Big Dawg,'' who is certainly famous in Cleveland, around the country, a great fan looking at this empty stadium after the last home game. I considered naming my bill after the Dawgs, and the Dawgs, of course, is, in this case, spelled d- a-w-g-s. In this case, the Dawgs would stand for ``don't allow welfare for greedy sports owners.'' While that title would express very accurately the deepest feelings of the people of Ohio, I have decided on a title that would tell all Americans why they should support this particular bill. I have called the bill the Team Relocation Taxpayer Protection Act. The bill is called the Team Relocation Taxpayer Protection Act. If you are a taxpayer and you think we have better things to spend Federal money on than corporate greed, you should support this bill. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the full text of this bill, the Dawgs bill, the Team Relocation Taxpayer Protection Act, be printed in the Record.

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I rise today to introduce, along with my distinguished colleague from Ohio, Senator John Glenn, legislation that will get U.S. taxpayers out of the business of subsidizing NFL franchise moves. It is clear by now that these franchise moves have a very substantial impact not only on communities, on the economy, but also, frankly, on the future of professional sports. Mr. President, I have already on this floor in days past addressed at length the question of the proposed move of the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore. I believe, as do many Ohioans--indeed, as do many Americans--that this move is simply wrong. I have discussed on this floor the great tradition of the Browns, the love the people of Cleveland and the people of Ohio have for the Browns. Candidly, whether you care about the Browns or do not, whether you are a sports fan or not a sports fan, you and every taxpayer are paying for this move--every taxpayer in the entire country. Whether you live in Cleveland, OH, or Los Angeles, CA, the Federal Government is reaching into your pocket to pay for this move. I believe the taxpayers will be shocked to know this, and they should be. The sports fan who have followed all the back and forth of this move, very few of them are aware today as I speak from the Senate floor that the Federal Government, is subsidizing this purported move by $36 million--$36 million of taxpayers' money. That provides the occasion and the rational and the public policy reason for the legislation Senator Glenn and I are introducing today. Quite frankly, I can see no moral justification for taxpayers, for the people of Cleveland or anywhere else to reward a sports team with public money to assist that team in breaking its word and deserting the community. I believe that to do this is unconscionable and is simply wrong. Let me put it in real terms. To force a family in Parma, OH, or Euclid, or in Cleveland, or in Columbus, OH, to take there tax dollars, to send them to Washington and to have Washington turn around and subsidize Baltimore, MD, to steal the team from the Browns and to do it with $36 million in Federal taxpayers' money makes absolutely no sense. I believe that we must stop the insanity. We must act to get the Government out of this subsidy business. Mr. President, today, more and more public money is being used to support professional football franchises. Communities are making significant public investments to lure and keep NFL teams in there area. In each one of these cases, in return for the public investment, teams are agreeing to stay in the community for a specifically defined period of time. There is a deal made. The local community will offer financial incentives, will support the team, and in return the owner agrees to stay in that community during the term of the lease. It is fairly simple. Unfortunately, however, some franchises are breaking their part of the deal by seeking to relocate before the term of the deal has expired, before the lease is over. That is why I am introducing legislation that will get the Federal taxpayer out of the business of subsidizing this particular kind of relocation. The enactment of this bill will result, frankly, in less Government involvement in professional sports, not more. Under the current system, when a city or State wants to raise funds to build a stadium and thereby secure a professional team, it authorizes a governmental entity such as a stadium authority to issue bonds. In other words, to sell the debt to anyone who wants to buy the debt. The stadium authority can then use the proceeds to build the stadium and the people who have invested pay no tax on the interest they earn--tax- free bonds. The tax exemption allows the stadium authority to pay lower interest rates and thus keep more money for itself. They can build the stadium at less of a cost--in this particular case in Baltimore it is $36 million less cost. That is the difference between issuing the bonds, building the stadium with taxable bonds versus building that stadium with nontaxable bonds. Mr. President, because the bondholder does not pay Federal tax on interest, the interest amounts to a Federal subsidy for stadium authority bondholders. For example, in the case of the Browns move, this subsidy is worth, as I have stated, $36 million to the Browns. The legislation that Senator Glenn and I are introducing today will prohibit the use of these Federal subsidies in bond deals associated with the relocation of an NFL team, when that team breaks an existing deal with the community that has supported the team. In short, new Federal subsidies under this bill cannot be used to help a team violate an existing commitment where that commitment includes public money. The bill's criteria are straightforward. There are five separate criteria and each one of these has to be met before our bill applies: First, if the franchise is currently in a public facility; second, if the proposed relocation will be to a new public facility; third, if fan support in the current location, the current team's local area--in this case, Cleveland--has been at least 75 percent of stadium capacity in the preceding season; fourth, if the current lease with the public entity has not expired--in other words, they are breaking the lease; and fifth, if asked, voters in the current jurisdiction have approved the use of further tax dollars to improve the current facility or to build a new one. If all five of these criteria apply, then our bill provides as follows: No expenditure of Federal funds including grants, awards, loans, guarantees, tax credits, exemptions, allowances or any use of Federal tax-exempt financing may be used to benefit the franchise seeking to relocate. In short, Mr. President, if you own a football team and you want to break your lease and the local community has done everything it can to support the team, you can do it; Congress will not stop you, not under this bill, but--but--the Federal taxpayers will not help you do it. They will not encourage you with a subsidy to do it. The Federal taxpayers will not subsidize your breach of faith. That is the message that the bill will send to NFL owners. If you want to go build your own stadium, you can do that, too, but the Federal taxpayers will not help you do it. If you want to rely only on State, local dollars, not Federal dollars, you can do that, too, but Federal taxpayers simply will not help you do it. If you want to break a deal in the community and the community you are leaving has done everything it can to keep its part of the bargain, then the Federal taxpayer will not get involved. Mr. President, it is important to discuss this issue in the context of everything else that is occurring today and this past year in Washington. In the Senate, we have been consumed with decisions on Federal spending. How can we slow the rate of growth of spending? What Federal budget should we pass? How can we balance the Federal budget? We are making very tough decisions on health care for poor people, welfare reform, Medicare, Medicaid, the education of our youth. I do not need to tell anyone in this Chamber that these are very difficult decisions, but here is an easy decision. As I stated earlier, in just this case, the case of the Browns purported move to Baltimore, it is estimated that the Federal tax subsidy is $36 million. That is over and above any local taxpayer subsidy--$36 million of Federal tax money, $36 million that will benefit one professional sports franchise. The American people want to know what we mean by corporate welfare. This, Mr. President, is corporate welfare. This is what we mean. Paying the Browns $36 million of Federal money is, simply, morally wrong. For me, the question is, under our serious budget constraints, what in the world justifies taking $36 million from taxpayers, including the ones in Cleveland whose trust with the Browns has been broken, to pay for this move? Absolutely nothing justifies it. Mr. President, I have spoken at length regarding the impact of sports franchise relocation on the communities that love their teams. I have mentioned the pride that the people of Cleveland, the people of all of Ohio have in the Browns. I have discussed the unbroken bonds of affection that stretch from the days after the Second World War, when the Browns started playing in Cleveland, to today's fans who, frankly, still cannot believe that the Browns are trying to leave town. I will not replow that field here except to say simply this: Loyalty counts. Loyalty is not transferable. The Cleveland story is very important precisely because the Browns are the heart and soul of Cleveland and because the people of Cleveland have done all they can to save the Browns. The Cleveland situation is, Mr. President, the worst-case scenario. If the Browns can leave Cleveland, any team can leave any town any time. This was an ad that was paid for by Browns fans that appeared in USA Today. I think it pretty much summarizes the situation. If this can happen in Cleveland, Mr. President, this can happen to any team, to any sports fans in the country. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for an additional 4 minutes.

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, let us consider another example, a 15- month-old baby girl born with short bowel syndrome. The teenage parents can find child care an overwhelming prospect. Under Medicaid today that infant would almost inevitably be sent to an institution. What if nursing services could instead be provided for that baby at home along with training and support for the young parents? That little girl could grow up with parents in a more stable home environment, and live the sort of life that children are meant to live. And again, Mr. President, it would cost less. Here is another example. If today an 85-year-old woman has osteoperosis, cancer, psoriasis, she would likely end up in a nursing home. But what if the States could instead establish full health programs that include monthly nursing visits and weekly physical therapy? She could be mobile, hopefully keep her condition from deteriorating, and stay at home. Another example: As we all know, under the current Medicaid system many, many poor children get ordinary care in emergency rooms. That is where they go for that type of care. But that really is not the place for building long-term doctor-patient relationships. Let us give States the flexibility, and they will develop their own managed care plans for the poor. So these children could go to their own primary care physicians where the doctors will know them, their names, and their medical history. That will certainly ensure better health care. But some may say, but cannot States really do all of these things now? Well, in any one of these scenarios a State could go hat in hand to Washington and maybe, just maybe, get permission, get a waiver, to help their citizens in these alternative innovative, and, yes, responsive ways. But States do not have the ability to address these local situations in their own communities without permission from Washington. That is the law today. They have to go to Washington hat in hand. They have to beg for permission to do it. Why should we have a system in which we must waive the rules in order to simply do what is right? We instead free States so that they could respond compassionately to their poor, and in the long run provide them with better care while cutting the inefficient and duplicative cost of Medicaid. So, Mr. President, I believe it is a mistake to look only at the money side of the Medicaid question. The President proposes to cut the rate of growth of Federal contributions but make no structural changes--let me repeat, make no structural changes--and require States to make up the monetary difference. It does not increase State flexibility, and it ties the hands of Governors and State legislators so that States are left paying more toward Medicaid but given an insufficient voice in determining how those funds are spent. Mr. President, it will take more than this to achieve what I am sure both President Clinton and I ultimately want, and what we all want for the poor of this Nation: Better affordable health care for the poor. Unfortunately, the President's proposal has shifted the debate away from substantive Medicaid reforms to simply a numbers debate. It must be reiterated again and again that we are not just debating how large or small the Federal contribution to Medicaid should be. To characterize the debate in this way emphasizes a fundamental misunderstanding of Medicaid, and a fundamental misunderstanding of what this debate is all about. We cannot sit down to the negotiating table to simply split the differences on the Federal contribution level and call it a day. We cannot just sit down and say Republicans are at this figure, Democrats are at this figure, let us split the difference and all go away happily. That is not going to solve the problem. And in fact, Mr. President, as I think I have outlined to demonstrate this afternoon, that may be the worst of all possible worlds. If we end up splitting the difference between the two sides but yet make no change in policy and keep the policy the way it is today, it simply will not work. The States cannot make it work. We will be dealing the States a hand that they simply cannot play. And the people who are going to suffer are not just going to be the Governors, the State legislatures, and the taxpayers of each State. The people who are going to suffer are the poor who depend on Medicaid for their health care. That is who is going to suffer. Mr. President, to approach it in this simplistic way, to make this just a numbers debate, would be, I believe, to take the easy way out and leave unaddressed the problems currently facing Medicaid today--the inefficiencies, the exorbitant costs. Given the flexibility, States could begin to address. In fact, to split the difference and call it a day would leave the States with a devastating bill to meet these legal obligations. As I stated earlier, my State of Ohio would have to spend 40 percent of its total budget on Medicaid--40 percent. Ohio already devotes 30 percent of its budget to Medicaid today, and this increase would come in just the first 10 years. That is huge, and this percentage will continue to grow. Mr. President, in conclusion, let me say that States will be forced to pull money away from other programs if this path is followed. Which State programs would we have our Governors cut? Education? Public health and safety? I think not. This runaway proposal would squeeze out all else, and it simply cannot be tolerated. Mr. President, the only solution would be bankruptcy for the States or increase State taxes to raise money to pay for the ever-increasing legal obligations of the States under Medicaid. This would certainly be one back-door way of increasing taxes that I do not think anyone in this Chamber would approve of. We cannot reduce the Federal contribution to Medicaid while at the same time keep the costly, inefficient, and counterproductive requirements of Medicaid and then simply walk away. We cannot walk away from the 18-year-old accident victim, nor walk away from the 15-month-old infant of the overwhelmed teenage parents. We cannot walk away from an 85-year-old woman with osteoporosis and cancer. Mr. President, we do not believe in simply abandoning people. Any Medicaid Program that comes out of these negotiations that we negotiate or vote for should not do that either. I thank the Chair. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DeWINE

Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.