Byron Dorgan

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent the Senator from Iowa be recognized. I believe the Senator from Alabama wishes to be recognized. I am happy to proceed following those two.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I expected my colleague from Arizona would speak on the estate tax. He, in fact, spoke about the subject which we will now spend the next 30 minutes on, on this side, the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act. He raises some questions, and my expectation is that debate and discussion about this proposal will promote some rather aggressive discussion in the Senate. That is fine. It is nice at this point that after all these many years we are debating this issue. I will give a little bit of the history as vice chairman of the Committee on Indian Affairs. That committee is the committee that brought this legislation to the Senate. The action was bipartisan. We have decided this is a worthy piece of legislation. I support it. The committee supports it. That is the basis on which it is in the Senate now. I don't know the history nearly as well as my colleagues, Senator Akaka and Senator Inouye, but let me describe a little of the history, if I might. I know a bit of this because I represent a State in which we have numerous Indian tribes. Those are the first Americans. Those are the folks who were there before my ancestors showed up. They owned the land. They farmed along the Missouri River. I understand something about Indian tribes, tribal governments and self-determination. I understand that because I work in that area a lot with the Indian tribes from my State. Let me describe the issue of aboriginal and indigenous peoples in the United States, and especially in Hawaii, from the small amount of history that I know. Again, the rich history here will be better recited by my colleagues, Senator Inouye and Senator Akaka. January 16, 1893--that is a long, long time ago--the United States Minister John Stevens, who served, then, as Ambassador to the court of Queen Liliuokalani, directed a marine company onboard the USS Boston to arrest and detain the queen. This is the queen that served the indigenous people in Hawaii. She was arrested. She was placed under arrest for 9 months at the palace. That event was engineered and orchestrated by the Committee of Public Safety which I understand consisted of Hawaii's non-native Hawaii businessmen, with the approval of Minister Stevens. So we have a people in Hawaii who were the first Hawaiians, the indigenous people to Hawaii, who had a government, who had a structure. The head of that government was summarily arrested and a new government was created in Hawaii. That new government apparently was a government that would meet at the pleasure of those who engineered the arrest of the queen. Today, after many decades raising questions, should there not be an opportunity for Native Hawaiians, very much as there has been an opportunity in our country in what is called the lower 48 for Indian tribes to seek reorganization, to seek reorganization--there should be some opportunity along the way for there to be a Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act. The reason this is a ``reorganization'' is because that government existed. This is not the creation of a new government. This is a government that previously existed, but many decades ago was essentially dissolved or destroyed as a governing unit by the actions I previously described. My colleagues have come to the Congress from the State of Hawaii and have asked that a bill authorizing the reorganization of a Native Hawaiian governing entity that could negotiate agreements with the United States and the State of Hawaii to address a good number of issues relating to self-determination and self-governance of the Native Hawaiians be brought to the Senate and be considered and debated. That is the basis on which it is here today. Upon introduction last year by my colleagues from Hawaii, this bill was referred to the Committee on Indian Affairs. We held a hearing on the bill, received testimony that demonstrated broad bipartisan support, strong support for this bill in Hawaii and also in Indian country around America. We heard from Governor Lingle from the State of Hawaii about the importance of this bill to the people and to the economy of Hawaii. We heard from Native Hawaiians about the significance of this bill on all aspects of Native Hawaiian life. We heard from the National Congress of American Indians about its long-standing support for Native Hawaiians to be formally afforded the right to self-determination. This bill does not by itself do that. It establishes the process for a reorganization in order to create that structure. There has been back and forth between interested parties on this bill. There are some who have concerns and questions about it. Significant efforts, I know, have been spent by my two colleagues, Senator Akaka and Senator Inouye, to address concerns relating to jurisdiction, claims and gaming issues. I believe these concerns in almost all cases have been adequately resolved. Even more importantly, I believe the Members of the Senate, finally, deserve the opportunity, and my two colleagues from Hawaii deserve the opportunity, to have this legislation before the Senate open for discussion and open for debate. Senator Akaka requested floor time for this bill 1 year ago. His request was not granted because we were compelled to address other imminent concerns relating to hurricane relief and other matters at that time that were urgent. Bills on this issue have been introduced since the 106th Congress. None have received time for floor debate. Fairness, I believe, now requires this Congress to offer this bill in the Senate for full debate. Let me finally say this. I know of no two Members of the Senate who have worked harder, with greater determination to advance the cause in their State that has broad bipartisan support in their State on behalf of Native Hawaiians, a right that is already afforded to many other aboriginal and indigenous peoples around the United States that has not been afforded to those Native Hawaiians. I know of no one in this Senate who has worked harder for an important issue of passion in their hearts than Senator Akaka and Senator Inouye. I am very pleased that the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs was able to pass this legislation and bring it to the Senate today. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Kansas, Senator Brownback. Mr. President, we come on a Monday to the floor of the Senate to discuss public policy and important issues. And today the majority leader has brought to us a proposed constitutional amendment. It is the first of what I believe will be two constitutional amendments that will be considered by the Senate for the next 7 or 10 days. That is not unusual. In fact, I had someone go back and check to see how many proposed amendments to the United States Constitution have been offered here on the floor of the Senate or in the U.S. House, or at least offered in bill forms. I discovered that in recent Congresses that there were I believe something like 76 proposed amendments to the Constitution. In another year, there were 67 proposed amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution has not been amended except for the first 10 amendments which were the Bill of Rights. Outside of the Bill of Rights, the Constitution has been amended 17 times in nearly 220 years--17 times in more than two centuries. The reason for that is most people believe that we ought to amend the Constitution only rarely, and then only when it is urgently necessary and only when it is the last resort. We have had a lot of different proposals to change the Constitution. There was a proposal to change the Constitution to provide that the Presidents of the United States for one term shall come from the North and then shall be succeeded by a President who comes from the South. That was a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Fortunately, for our country, not many of these ideas over all of these many, many years have been adopted by the U.S. Congress and by State legislatures, which is required in order to amend the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution for this country was written by 55 white men. It was in a room in Philadelphia. In that room in Philadelphia, if you go to visit today, you will see the chair that George Washington sat in at the front of the room. George Washington chaired the Constitutional Convention. You will see where Ben Franklin sat, where Madison sat, where Mason sat. Those 55 men wrote a Constitution in a hot Philadelphia summer period and presented it then to the country. It was really a quite remarkable Constitution. It begins: ``We the People.'' In the writing of the Constitution, they created a framework for this new kind of government which has become over the last two centuries the most successful democracy or representative government in the history of humankind. We have lived only a blink of that history. And, yet, during that period this is the most successful democracy on the face of the Earth. Two-hundred years after the writing of the Constitution, there was a celebration in that same room. I was one of the fortunate ones to go to that celebration representing one of the 55. These 55 people were men and women and minorities. It wasn't 55 men as existed in that room when they wrote the Constitution. The 55 people who celebrated in that room the 200th birthday of the Constitution--it was really quite a remarkable event. I sat in that room thinking about the history, thinking about George Washington sitting at the front in that chair with the piece of wood that is decorated as the sun on the back of that chair. I thought to myself: What a remarkable thing it was for me, coming from a town of 300 people, from ranching and wheat country in southwestern North Dakota, from a high school with a senior class of nine students, and here I am sitting in the room where George Washington presided over the writing of the Constitution for this new country of ours. I tell that story only because it is important for us to understand the circumstances of amending the Constitution. Today, we have on the floor of the Senate a proposal to amend the Constitution with a constitutional amendment that would prohibit gay marriage. Next week, we will have a constitutional amendment that would prevent desecrating the American flag or give the States the ability to prevent flag desecration. On the issue of gay marriage, I voted as a Member of the U.S. Senate for a 1996 act called the Defense of Marriage Act. I did that because it creates for Federal law a definition of what marriage is. It defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, husband and wife. That is Federal law. I supported that. I was happy to support that. That is what I believe. I don't believe we should be altering the U.S. Constitution. I don't believe we should be amending the basic framework of our democracy on this subject. The current law, the Defense of Marriage Act, which the Federal Government passed in 1996, still stands today. I see no reason to amend the U.S. Constitution. This past week in my State an organization called Focus on the Family ran a newspaper advertisement taking up the large part of a page in daily newspapers. It says: Senator Dorgan does not believe that a child needs both a father and a mother. They also ran the same language in radio ads in my State. Now this organization--I am not familiar with them--must think there are 9 commandments. There are actually 10 commandments. This must be an organization that has forgotten the commandment that says: Thou shall not bear false witness. My hope is they might go back and review that. There is nothing in my record that suggests I don't care whether a child has a mother and a father. This is a legitimate discussion we are having about a constitutional amendment. The issue of gay marriage is an important and legitimate issue to discuss. But one would think it is also worthy of organizations on both sides to be truthful in that discussion. That, regrettably, at least in this case that I have cited, has not been the case. This issue of amending the U.S. Constitution is clearly before the Senate because it is an even-numbered year. The even-numbered year is one in which the late Claude Pepper used to say the American people have the miracle of grabbing the American steering wheel and deciding which direction they want to nudge our great country. It is, after all, the American people who are in charge and the American people who will make decisions about the direction of our country. This is an even-numbered year. We understand why this issue is before the Senate. It is about an election this fall. I am not saying it is an unimportant issue; I am saying that the notion of having to amend the basic framework of our government, amending the Constitution, that is a political debate aimed at this fall, not this week. But let me talk just for a moment not about the issue of gay marriage. We have addressed that. I supported addressing it in the Defense of Marriage Act. I voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, voted for a definition that a marriage is between a husband and wife, a man and woman. That has already been done. So let me talk about what we could be doing today and tomorrow and in the next week and a half or 2 weeks instead of the agenda given us by the majority leader. There are some people pretty dispirited about this Congress. Because the polling says this Congress is not very well thought of, we conclude the American people are kind of dispirited about the agenda, about what we are doing. We have a lot of trouble. We have federal debt up to our neck, and there is more to come. The President is offering us budgets with the largest deficit proposals in history--this from a President who described himself as a conservative. But that is not what his budgets are about. We have the highest trade debt in annual deficits in the history of this country, dangerous trade deficits, $702 billion last year. Add the increase to the national debt from a budget standpoint to the trade debt, and we are $1.4 trillion out of balance. Let me say that again: We are out of balance $1.4 trillion in a year. Does anyone seem to care about that? Is there the urgency to deal with that as we have for constitutional amendments? I don't think so. Fiscal policy, trade policy, foreign policy--we have serious foreign policy issues and problems. Health care: add up the challenges we face and ask yourself: What are we doing about these challenges? Do we have these issues on the floor of the Senate? Not that I can see. It won't be very long--in fact, it is happening now--that we have people who are now paying for prescription drug coverage, a monthly premium, but who no longer get prescription drug coverage because of what has been legislatively defined as a doughnut hole. In other words, they lose coverage for a significant period of time, but they should still pay the premiums. Maybe we should have that on the floor of the Senate and fix that. We could fix that easily. There is a study that shows we could fix that by simply removing the perverse provision in that act that prohibits the Federal Government from negotiating lower drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry. We could fix that so-called doughnut hole, or fix the problem of people having no health care prescription drug coverage through Medicare at the same time they are required every month to pay premiums. Would that be an advisable thing to do? I think it would. We are going to also be debating the death tax. I heard on the opening portion of the Senate that the death tax is going to be repealed. It may be a surprise to those who are still alive, but there is no death tax. There is no death tax. The term ``death tax'' is a creation of a pollster who took this nugget of a creation, took it to a political party and said: I have something really interesting, and it polls off the charts. Tell people there is a death tax and come out for its repeal. There is no death tax. There is a tax on inherited wealth. When the husband or wife dies, the other spouse owns everything with no tax consequences at all. There is a 100-percent exemption. So for the first spouse there must be a universal exemption. In addition to that, there is now a $2 million exemption on an estate for one spouse. In addition to that, the majority party says it is urgent that we get rid of the so-called death tax, the bulk of which would help those who are the wealthiest Americans. So if Donald Trump--just to use a name because he likes having his name used on everything--if Donald Trump were to die, God forbid, at some point when he dies, a substantial portion of his estate will have been created through the appreciation of his assets--and has not been taxed. The same would be true of most of the richest Americans. The second richest American is Warren Buffett, quite a remarkable man from Omaha, NE. He is really special. He says: Look, if there is a class war going on, my class is winning--speaking of the wealthiest. He doesn't believe there should be a provision brought to the Senate to get rid of the estate tax. He does not believe that is fair. He does not believe it is the right thing to do. But we are up to our necks in debt, we have massive fiscal policy budget deficits, the highest trade deficits in history, and what is the priority? The majority party, we were told this afternoon, the priority is we have to get to the Senate a provision to provide very significant tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Unbelievable. Someone from the outside would look at that and ask: Is this a joke? Are you really serious as legislators? No wonder people take a look at this Congress and say: What are you thinking about? What on Earth do you have on your minds? I talk about the dispirited feelings people have about this Congress. The polls are pretty clear. But I also think there is a great reservoir of hope in this country. So let me talk a little bit about the hope, the hope that maybe we can address things in the coming months that really matter to the people of this country in a way that really affects their future. I am not suggesting that which we will discuss here does not matter. I am just saying there are a whole series of things that confront us that are challenging, difficult issues. A woman called me during my last campaign. During the campaign she was in a hospital. A friend of hers called me on her behalf. Her friend said: She is in her nineties. She has been a friend of yours and a supporter of yours. You have never met her, she never met you, but she always liked what you have done. Would you call her in the hospital? I said, of course I would. I called the hospital and talked to this woman. She had elected to die. She had been on kidney dialysis. She said: I have lived a great life, but I decided I just don't want to continue with the kidney dialysis, so I will die here. I will be here a couple more weeks, maybe a week, and eventually--I have made this decision, I am at peace with it. I have had a great life. She said--this is about 3 weeks before the election--she said to me: Byron, before I came to the hospital, however, when I made this decision, I put up all the yard signs, put up yard signs on both sides of my property with your name on it, and then I voted absentee. She said: By the way, if there is some technical requirement that you be alive on election day, don't tell people that I am not alive. This woman had a great spirit about wanting to be involved, even at the end of her life, wanting to be involved in this country's political system. John F. Kennedy used to say that every mother kind of hopes her child might grow up to be President as long as they don't have to be active in politics. But politics is an honorable profession. It is the way we make decisions in America. All the American people ask of this Senate, all they ask of policymakers and decisionmakers is to focus on things that matter most. What is ahead of us? What do we do about it? We need, in this political system, to justify the faith the American people have always had in this system. That faith is shaken now, but we need to take action to justify that faith. What do we stand for? What needs to be done? What is required to be done? What things are required to be done to put our country back on track? There was a great little book written by Robert Fulghum, ``All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten.'' Some may have read that book, ``All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten.'' Play fair, follow the rules, don't hit, wash hands, flush--the book went on and on. ``All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten,'' I was thinking about that with respect to all we really need to know in the Senate, about the concern of the American citizens, about their future. Let me describe our agenda more simply. Perhaps if I were to write a book like that, not so much kindergarten but all we really need to know, let me describe what I think we ought to be doing. First of all, we ought to pay our bills. You cannot spend money you don't have on things you don't need. We are choking on debt in this country. Especially this Congress and at the White House, pay our bills. Take care of our kids. That has to do with education and health care and much more. Honor our parents, Medicare, Social Security, and other issues. Reward work. Clean up our mess. I guess that is the environment. Defend freedom. Let me talk a little bit about a couple of these areas, all we really need to know. What about the issue of paying our bills? We have one more chapter of the same, tired book brought to the Senate. Instead of paying our bills, this chapter says we collect $20-$30 billion a year from the tax on inherited wealth. Let's not worry about the fact we are choking on debt. Let's just get rid of that tax in a way that benefits the wealthiest Americans. We have already had a vote on the proposition of whether the transfer of a family farm or other family business ought to be taxed with an estate tax. I offered that amendment twice. Twice. And on January 1, 2003, the transfer of all family farms and all family businesses to lineal descendants or the kids who want to run them would have been permanently exempt, 3 years ago. We already had that vote, so don't raise that issue. Incidentally, the majority voted against that--twice. We had that vote and made that decision, regrettably. The question is: Pay our bills. Are we going to do that? Are we going to keep finding ways to provide emergency appropriations for the monthly costs in Iraq and Afghanistan and other related issues and pay for none of it? The only people we ask to deal with that issue are the soldiers we send to Afghanistan and Iraq. We don't ask the American people to believe we ought to pay for it. We have been asked to provide roughly $440 billion in emergency funding, every dollar of which is borrowed from future generations. Pay our bills. What about our kids and grandkids? Are they the ones who will pay the bills? Is that responsible? All we really need to know is the lesson, pay our bills. How about taking care of our kids? Health care, education, poverty. We have a lot of things to work on there. We have all of these issues with respect to kids without health care, these issues about adequately funding education in this country. Is there anything more important to anyone than their children? Is there anyone here who believes they don't want to do everything they can to leave a country or leave a world that is better for their children than it was for them? Whatever is in second place to the kids is a long ways behind. Can we manifest an agenda in the Senate that puts children first, that takes care of our children and doesn't have them pay debts we don't have the courage to pay? Can we decide their education is of the utmost importance? Can we decide there is no child that ought to show up at a hospital or a doctor's office whose medical care is a function of how much money their parents have in their pocketbook? Can we make those decisions? Yes, pay our bills and take care of our kids. How about those for two short lessons? How about honor our parents? Medicare and Social Security. In the last century, people are living much longer. We went, in 100 years, from an average life expectancy of 48 years to 78 years now. Think of that. We added 30 years to the average life expectancy in this country in one century. That is pretty unbelievable. Now, that has caused some strains on Social Security and Medicare. That is not surprising. That is called success. All of the strains in Medicare and Social Security are born of success. People are living longer, better, and healthier lives. What is the solution to that? Some say the solution to that is to privatize Social Security, take it apart. The President led an effort last year--he ran a lot of gas through Air Force One--he went all over America saying we ought to privatize Social Security. It wasn't the first time for him. He did that in 1978, when he ran for Congress in Texas. In 1978, he said Social Security would be broke in 10 years. He was wrong then. He was wrong last year. Now at least we don't have that discussion in front of us. It does require us, from time to time, to make adjustments in Social Security or Medicare but not under the guise of taking it apart because you never liked it. How about fair prices for prescription drugs? Maybe honoring our parents would be deciding that whether you are on Social Security or Medicare or not quite at that age, that you shouldn't have to pay the highest price in the world for prescription drugs. Maybe changing the law so that we would allow people to reimport FDA-approved drugs from other countries at a fraction of the price would be honoring our parents. Standing up for Medicare and standing up for Social Security and the values they have brought to our country, maybe that is honoring our parents. How about rewarding work? Paying our bills, taking care of our kids, honoring our parents, how about rewarding work? This Congress four times has said we want to continue providing tax cuts to companies that close their American manufacturing plants and ship the jobs overseas. That is perverse, but that is exactly what has happened in the Senate. Four times I have offered an amendment to say let's shut down the tax break that says to an American businessman or woman: Close your American factory, fire your workers, and move the jobs overseas, you get a big, fat $1.2 billion-a-year tax break. And we can't close it. We have lost nearly 3 million jobs in the last 4 or 5 years, shipped overseas. Alan Blinder, a respected former Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve Board, a mainstream economist, says all U.S. manufacturing jobs, some 14 million, are at risk to outsourcing. But more than that, we have a total of 42 to 56 million jobs, including service jobs, that are susceptible to being outsourced to other countries--China, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and others--and even those who do not leave our country in search of 33 cents-an-hour labor by kids or others who don't have rights, even those who don't leave will see a lesser standard of living or depressed wages because they will be in competition with people in other parts of the world who will work for far less. So the question for our workers is: Who is going to stand up for them? Does it matter that we fought for a century for the things that matter to them--the right to organize, the right to work in a safe work plant, child labor laws, a minimum wage, decent health care, decent retirement programs? Does it matter to them that we now have a circumstance where we say to American companies: Here is the green light to search for cheap labor elsewhere. You can get rid of all the things that are troublesome to you. How about cleaning up our mess? Would that be a value that would make some sense? Dare we talk about the environment, about our mess with respect to energy? We suck 84 million barrels a day out of this Earth. We put straws in the Earth called drilling rigs. We suck 84 million barrels a day out of the Earth of oil, and we in this little country of the United States use one-fourth of it. Twenty-one million barrels a day of that oil comes from Saudi Arabia and Iraq and Kuwait, Venezuela and other areas of the world that are troubled. Does it make sense for us to be that dependent on those troubled areas of the world? Should we care about the environmental consequences of energy? Should we care about the dependence on energy, all of those issues? The answer is: Yes, clean up our mess. What about defend freedom? There are a lot of ways to defend freedom. We have troops in harm's way today that defend our freedom. They don't ask questions. They put on a uniform and go. Part of defending freedom is also keeping our promise to veterans. Those who come home, those who come home losing an leg or arm and go through the system at Bethesda or Walter Reed, they are still soldiers, but then, ultimately, when they are released, what happens is they become veterans. Is the money made available by this Chamber to provide for veterans health care sufficient? Will we continue to be a billion and a half dollars short because we have other priorities? Defending freedom is a lot of things. It is about honoring soldiers, especially honoring soldiers. It is about keeping our promise to veterans. Defending freedom is not about wiretapping the American people. Defending freedom is a lot of things. It is important. It also has to be part of any agenda that we describe. There are a lot of freedoms that I am proud are a part of our political system--women's rights, workers rights, civil rights. The decision of this Congress to decide what we want to work on is one that will be evaluated by the American people. What do they want us to work on? I said when I started, I don't suggest that the issue of gay marriage is an irrelevant issue or unimportant. I do suggest that we have dealt with that issue in the Defense of Marriage Act. We did it in 1996. I also believe the reason it is on the floor today, relative to all the other things that I have described, all the other things that we should be tackling--paying our bills, taking care of our kids, honoring our parents, rewarding work, cleaning up our mess, defending freedom, all of those issues--the reason this issue is on the floor is about November. That will be true for some long while now. The American people will have a chance to evaluate that. Interestingly enough, when that Constitution says, ``We the people,'' it means the power of one. For the American people, it comes down to the power of one, one person casting one vote on one day. All of the power, all of the political power in America exists right there. They have the chance to describe what they want for this country, what their hopes and dreams are. There is a town square still, and in that town square there needs to be a discussion, a conversation in America about the glue that keeps this country together. What is this country? What kind of glue exists that keeps Americans together as Americans, talking in the town square about how to shape the country, how to preserve and protect it? What we have done and where we have been is extraordinary. This country was born of the blood of patriots, not people given to be worried about themselves. They gave everything of themselves. This country survived a Civil War. We beat back the forces of Nazism and imperial soldiers of Japan. We survived the depression. We learned how to fly airplanes. We left the ground and flew around the world. We built rockets. We walked on the moon. We cured smallpox and polio. We created the telephone and television and computer. What we have done is breathtaking and quite extraordinary. We did that because our country has always been interested in the challenge, in what is ahead, what is around the corner. Thomas Wolfe, in his book ``You Can't Go Home Again,'' talked about the American people being filled with an almost quenchless hope, an indestructible belief, a boundless optimism that somehow, some way, something good was about to happen. That still exists in the soul of this country. Something good is about to happen. My hope is that those of us who work in this body will not be so quick to believe that that something good is the need to amend the Constitution this week, next week, next month, and the month after. Not too long ago in a congressional session, we had something like 63 different proposals filed to amend the basic framework of our democracy. We have amended it 17 times in 200 years, one of which was to prohibit alcohol. That got repealed. We have amended the Constitution rarely. Yet we have people who come routinely to the floor of the Senate to say: Change the Constitution. I see very few people here who look like George Washington or Franklin or Mason or Madison or Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was not at the Constitutional Convention. He was abroad at the time. By suggesting I don't see people who look like them, I don't suggest that people here aren't good-looking people. I am saying go back and read what they did, understand what they constructed. Understand what exists in the Constitution and why. Understand what the first 10 amendments intended to be for this country. Then ask yourself how prepared are you to decide we should add several more amendments to the Constitution, maybe two this week and next week? How about three or four more? There are others filed. Is the Constitution a rough draft? Is the work of Franklin and Madison and Mason and Washington a rough draft for those who believe that the mood of the moment is to continue to amend and amend? I know there are those who think this is similar to passing a law. It is not. It is whatever the emotion of the moment is ought to persuade us to do that. That is not the case either. A couple weeks ago, I was in Philadelphia and there is a place called the Constitutional Center. All 55 men who wrote the Constitution are memorialized in statue in a room, and they are life size, made to their exact measurements. It is pretty remarkable to walk among them and then to think about what they created. They were an extraordinary group. I doubt very much whether such a group exists today. Perhaps it was divine providence that gave us at that moment that talent to create that Constitution that has created this country. I have been fairly well criticized for a long while for not being willing or anxious to amend the U.S. States Constitution unless it was the last resort, the only resort to respond to something that urgent. I have not found that in most cases and have in most cases opposed those who wish to amend the Constitution. I don't intend to cast aspersions on those who believe this is an important issue. I believe strongly this is the wrong issue to be on the floor of the Senate today. I believe strongly there are so many other issues that we ought to be dealing with today. But having said all that, we will, in one way or another, decide as the Senate about these two constitutional amendments and about the question of whether our country should continue to have a tax on inherited wealth. We will get through this. My hope is that at least some of the suggestions I have made about paying our bills, about taking care of our kids, honoring our parents, cleaning up our mess and doing the things that defend freedom and honor work, maybe those are the things we might get to soon. I hope so. In that case, I think the American people could take some hope and believe that Congress has sunk its teeth into that which matters a great deal to our future. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 4095 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. DORGAN. If the Senator wishes to speak, proceed. My understanding was we were going to yield back the time.

Mr. DORGAN. Of course.

Mr. DORGAN. I move to reconsider the vote and to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, this is a very simple amendment. The legislation that has come to the floor of the Senate dealing with immigration is legislation that not only describes how we might deal with 11 million to 12 million people who are here illegally in this country, it also says in addition that we need to bring more people into the country who now live outside of our country. I have on other occasions come to the floor of the Senate and said that I don't think it makes a great deal of sense to have what is called a guest worker program which brings additional millions of people into the country who now live outside of America. Why don't I think that is a good thing to do? Because I think the American workers are under a great deal of stress. They see in this country that there are substantial numbers of jobs being outsourced to China, outsourced to Indonesia, Bangladesh, and other countries. And as jobs are being outsourced in search of cheaper labor and American workers are having trouble hanging on to their jobs or finding jobs or continuing to keep their jobs, even as that is the case, we now see a desire to import jobs--cheap labor--through the back door. That is what this guest worker program is. This guest worker program, by the way, is a program which purchases the support of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Export good American jobs overseas; import cheap labor through the back door. That is what this is all about. I offered an amendment to strip the guest worker program out. I lost. I understand that. I didn't prevail. Many Senators here voted in a way that says we need more people to come into this country who normally would be illegal, but we will simply describe them as legal under a guest worker program. Well, when we had the vote on my amendment to strip the guest worker program, the Washington Post the next day observed that many of my colleagues many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle came to the floor intending to vote for my amendment but then switched their vote out of deference to the President who just the evening before had expressed support for a guest worker program. I understand the Senate has made a decision about this, but I suggest with this amendment that at least with the guest worker program, the guest worker proposal, that we have a sunset after 5 years. The sunset provision which I offer with this amendment would give Congress a chance to examine the impact of the so-called guest workers--or low- wage replacement workers, as I would call them--what impact they will have on U.S. jobs and wages. It ought not be in debate. I quoted a Harvard professor who did a study that shows the impact of these illegal immigrants, or in this case legal, low wage immigrants who now live outside of our country whom this bill will allow to come into our country. We now know the impact it will have on American workers. It drives down American wages. It makes it more difficult for American workers. We know that is the case. Title IV of the bill, which is the guest worker title, calls on the Census Bureau to prepare a study of the impact of guest workers on U.S. jobs and wages. I suggest that not just gather dust. I suggest a study be done and Congress take a good look at the impact and, at the 5-year mark, there will have been 1 million guest workers coming into our country. I suggest the underlying bill be changed at this 5-year point to sunset the guest worker provision so Congress can take a look at it and see what this has done to American workers. I heard all of this discussion in this Chamber now for 2 weeks about immigration: immigration, immigrants, illegal immigrants, legal immigrants--all about immigration. Where is the discussion about the American worker? Alan Blinder, former Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, a mainstream economist, says this. He says here is what the American worker faces. He says there are between 42 million and 56 million American jobs that are subject to outsourcing by America's corporations; 42 million to 56 million American jobs potentially could be sent to China or Indonesia or elsewhere in search of cheaper wages. He says, in his article in Foreign Affairs, not all of those jobs will be outsourced. He understands that. But all of the workers in jobs in that category that are subject to outsourcing are going to be competing against people who live elsewhere, who will accept much, much lower wages, and therefore it puts downward pressure on wages. That is a fact. Let me describe some of the things that we have decided to sunset so we can take a new look at it. After 5 years, if we sunset the guest worker program to evaluate what impact it has had on American workers, we would be sunsetting it as we have done with provisions in the farm bill, the energy bill, the PATRIOT Act, the bankruptcy reform bill, the intelligence reform bill, the Trade Promotion Authority Act. Sunset it and take a look in 4 years, 5 years, 6 years; take a new look. I propose with this amendment we sunset the so-called guest worker provision. Let me say again I understand those who have put this legislation together say this legislation has to hang together. If you come to the floor of the Senate and you pull a loose thread, it is like a cheap suit: If you pull a loose thread, the arm falls off and the whole thing collapses. That is always the work of the people who bring something to the floor: It can't be changed. If it is changed, it destroys the compromise. Shame on those who want to change it. I am pulling a loose thread here and the arm is not going to fall out. I am saying maybe just once we would have somebody on the floor of the Senate talking about the plight of the American worker. Who are they competing against? What is happening to their wages? I will tell you what is happening. On average, wages decreased $1,700 a year because of back-door immigration, cheap labor through the back door while they export good jobs through the front door. Send the jobs to China and bring in cheap labor through the back door--that is what the construct is. That is what is happening and there is no discussion about what is happening to the American worker. I understand we have an immigration problem. My feeling is you ought to address it, the first step, with securing America's borders. When you have done that, the second step then is to thoughtfully understand what you need to do with all of those who are here illegally. But there ought not be a third step. If 11 or 12 million people who have come here illegally, if this Congress decides they are legal, why is it we need 400,000 or 200,000 of the people who live outside of our country, who are not here, to come as guest workers, above the H-2A, H-2B, and all the other legal mechanisms by which people can come to this country? My understanding is the numbers last year show this: 1.1 million people tried to come into this country and were stopped, prevented, most on the southern border; 1.1 million people were stopped at the southern border and turned back. Close to three-quarters of a million, in most cases through the southern border, got to this country illegally and became a part of the 11 or 12 million people here illegally. And 175,000 people came to the southern border and came into this country legally because there are many ways in which to do that. That is the process by which we deal with the immigration issue. We have a lot of people who want to come in. We stop some, don't stop many, and now the proposition is we should tighten up the border, we should allow guest workers, and we should provide legal status for 11 or 12 million who are here. I believe we ought to tighten the border, but we ought to do it in a way that makes sense, in a way that really is something that will work. I was here in 1986. All of the discussion we hear now we heard in 1986. None of it worked. I also believe we ought to deal sensibly with the 11 or 12 million people who are already here. I don't support those who say round them up and throw them out. It is not something we should do or can do. We can't do that, frankly. But I don't understand for a minute why we decide that it is not enough; we should also suggest there are others who do not yet live in this country, don't come to this country, who have not been here, who live elsewhere, who should be invited in as guest workers. It seems to me the underlying proposition of this bill is to make guest workers out of 11 or 12 million people. We need more? At a time when the American worker is under such siege by competition from companies that decide they want to access 33-cent-an-hour labor in China and take American jobs and shift them to China and then, by the way, the jobs they don't ship overseas they want to replace with low wage workers coming through the back door? Just once I would like to hear some discussion about the plight of the American worker. I understand immigration is an important issue. I don't denigrate those who come to the floor who have spent a great deal of time responding to it. My colleague from Arizona is on the floor. He likely will speak against my amendment. I am great friends with him. I have great respect for him. We just have a disagreement on this, as I do with my friend from Pennsylvania. All I ask is this. We have a very serious problem with jobs in this country, jobs for American workers, people at the bottom of the economic ladder who are struggling, trying to figure out, How do I make enough money to provide for my family? How do I make a salary that is worthy? How do I provide for my family's health care when they are stripping health care benefits? How do I have a pension when they are stripping pension benefits away? How do I keep my job when they are sending my job to China and Indonesia and Bangladesh? How do I do that? At the same time this Senate is talking about issues other than the plight of the American worker. I just wish we could have a mix and a balance of discussions about both. Yes, immigration is important. Yes, we ought to be sensitive in how we deal with it and thoughtful in how we deal with it. But we also ought to understand our first obligation, our first opportunity here in this Chamber is to speak up and stand up for the plight and the interests of the American workers who are having a pretty tough time. This amendment is very simple. I suggest that we sunset this guestworker program after 5 years. A million guest workers will have been allowed in after 5 years. All of us know it will be far more than a million, but a million under the 200,000 a year will have been allowed in after 5 years. Let's stop, let's take stock, let's evaluate and understand what the consequences are of this for the American workers. Let's do that. If we do it for the farm bill, the energy bill, the PATRIOT Act, the bankruptcy bill, the intelligence bill, the trade promotion bill, why would we not do it here? Stop and take stock on behalf of American workers and evaluate what has all of this meant? What has been the consequence for American families at the bottom of the economic ladder, struggling to make a living? I hope my colleagues will support sunsetting this legislation, the guest worker provision of this legislation, at the end of 5 years so the Senate can take a new look and evaluate what the consequences have been. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, obviously the opposition has more time. If they are prepared to yield, I will just make some observations for a couple of minutes. Let me say that I always find it difficult to disagree with my friend. And I sort of have the code here in the Senate over the years. If they say you are respected, that means they think they are going to beat you by 5 votes. If they say you are articulate, they think they are going to beat you by 10 votes. If they say you are passionate, they think they are going to clobber you by 20 votes. I understand the language here a little bit. Let me say this: What if this were a proposal for guest Senators. There wouldn't be one vote for it, would there? But there are no guest Senators. No one here is going to have their job threatened by all of this. This is about guest workers. My colleague says we can't shut down the border, that there is going to be illegal immigration. Let us be real about this. So the proposition of being real is, let us label those who are going to be illegal ``legal.'' That is the way to deal with this. If we can't shut down the border, they are going to come across anyway, so let us call them ``legal.'' They won't have to call them ``illegal.'' I don't understand that at all. There are 11 million to 12 million people who are here illegally who this bill is going to say we will give a legal approach to, or an approach to establish legality, and that is not enough. That is not enough. We want to bring more through the book door? I don't think so. I am not the only one who cares about American workers. I tell you, very few are talking about the impact on American workers. That ought not be some theory. We understand the impact on American workers, those who are struggling to make ends meet, to get a decent salary, to have health care, to have retirement programs and care for their kids. They are wondering about their jobs. The good jobs are being shipped out the front door and the other jobs are being replaced through the back door. I ask the question: What is happening to the American worker? Take a good look. I ask all my colleagues to take a good look at what is happening to the American worker today in this country. Alan Binder, a former Vice Chair of the Fed, a mainstream economist, said there are 42 million to 56 million American jobs subject to outsourcing. Not all will go, but all of them are eligible to go and will be competing against people who work elsewhere for 33 cents an hour. That is a fact. That is not being discussed in this discussion about immigration. What is the impact on the American worker? And what excuse do we have for adding an additional 11 million to 12 million people and making them legal by this to say we need more, those who live outside this country called guest workers, to come in? One excuse we are told is we can't keep them out anyway, so let us call them ``legal.'' I don't think that is the way to deal with this. I don't support that. This is baby step in the right direction, not a big step. At least with this guest worker program, let's sunset it after 5 years, take a look at what it means to the American worker, what it means to this country, what it means to wages and jobs for the American worker. Let's do that after 5 years. This is a baby step. Let's vote for this baby step in the right direction. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, if I might inquire, I thought you were intending to yield back the time. That was the proposition under which I decided to speak. I said that if the other side was prepared to yield back the time, then I will use my time.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, normally the Member who offered the amendment would close. That was my assumption, to close the debate on my amendment.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me point out that to the 11 million to 12 million people who have come to this country illegally, this sunset issue has nothing to do with those folks. They are here. I have not come to the floor suggesting that we interrupt the bill with respect to their plans for these folks. I have said in addition to the 11 million to 12 million, the suggestion that we need to bring in more who now live outside the country makes no sense to me. Even as jobs are moving out the front door of this country--nearly 4 million of them have gone in the last 5 years--you can hardly make a strong case that we ought to bring jobs in the back door, and particularly low-wage jobs. I know that there are not many of us here who spend our days trying to figure out how you get a job at the bottom of the economic ladder, or how do you make ends meet on a minimum wage that hasn't been raised for nearly 9 years, or how you provide for your family at the bottom of the economic ladder and have health care being stripped away and no retirement program. Not many of us experience that. But that is what a lot of American workers are experiencing every single day. This provision deals only with the issue of the extra guest workers who do not now live here but who this bill says we should bring here because we need them to be here to do those jobs. The fact is these jobs ought to go to people in this country who are struggling at the bottom of the economic ladder. We ought to be fair to those American workers. I am not anti-immigrant. That is not my point. We have a lot of them in this country, and they enrich and nourish this country. But first and foremost our responsibility is to stand up for the American workers who are struggling. If Members do not believe they are struggling, look at the data. Look at what is happening in their lives. Look at the jobs that are gone. Go to Shenzhen, China, and look at the American jobs that now exist there. They are paid 33 cents an hour, 7 days a week, 12 to 14 hours a day. If American workers were asked to compete with that, they can't. My point is very simple. Let's stand up for the American worker. Let's sunset this guest worker provision. Let's do the right thing.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, today my colleague Senator Snowe and I are introducing the Internet Freedom Preservation Act. Internet freedom, known as net neutrality, is one of the most important issues facing us as the telecommunications landscape continues to change, and frankly, how this issue is resolved could determine whether our Nation continues to be a world leader in the area of innovation and technology. Consumers, businesses, and the very marketplace of ideas have benefited from the historically open nature of the Internet. From the largest of corporations to the person working alone in a garage, all have had the ability to offer their content, services, and applications over the Internet and to reach consumers, because of this open structure of the Internet and the existence of net neutrality nondiscrimination rules. I think it is important to point the wide variety of groups that have called for the preservation of strong net neutrality protections: groups as diverse as Consumers Union, AARP, Microsoft, Amazon, Gun Owners of America, and the National Religious Broadcasters, and over 150 organizations or companies so far have weighed in on this important issue. The Internet, and the broadband network operators that bring the Internet to businesses and consumers, have enabled even the most rural town in my State of North Dakota to be connected to the rest of the world, and this connection has brought economic opportunities, and advances in health and education that could otherwise not have been possible. Now, however, the open nature of the Internet is at risk. It is at risk because of actions by the Federal Communications Commission, and because of the lack of competition in the broadband market. Non-discrimination rules that existed for years on broadband providers have been removed, leaving only the marketplace to act as a check. The problem is, however, that the broadband marketplace is highly concentrated--98 percent of consumers get their broadband from either cable modem or DSL, and up to 50 percent of consumers can only get their broadband from one broadband provider. Thus, the situation is not a marketplace of players on an equal footing. Broadband network operators have substantial market power and the incentive to use it. There have been public statements by some of their CEOs that have made clear that they intend to use that leverage to exact payments from content providers and to operate as gatekeepers. These broadband network operators have become more than just the pipe that carries content, services, and applications to a consumer; they now are in the business of these content, services and applications as well. Thus, they have the leverage, and the incentive to favor their own services over competition. Until now the Internet has been driven by consumers and innovators, which have in turn, encouraged broadband deployment. Consumers pay for their Internet connection, and expect that they can go anywhere they lawfully want to on the Internet. But without maintaining the longstanding nondiscrimination rules that have been in place for decades, the Internet could go from being driven by consumers and innovators to bring dictated by network operators. What will be the impact on the next great application or service over the Internet if the very first thing the next start-up has to do is work out an agreement with the broadband provider? What will be the impact on consumers if their choices are artificially limited by their broadband providers as to what VOIP or video service they can get? I agree that broadband network operators are investing millions of dollars in building the next generation of infrastructure, and I commend them for that. Under our bill they will still be able to be compensated for their investments, as they are now, by charging for their broadband connections. But they should not be able to put up additional tolls on the Internet, or erect barricades to competition that will change the nature of the Internet as we know it. Our bill will preserve the freedom and the openness of the Internet that we have come to take for granted, but that is now at risk. I ask my colleagues to support this legislation that I introduce today with Senator Snowe.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, today my colleague Senator Snowe and I are introducing the Internet Freedom Preservation Act. Internet freedom, known as net neutrality, is one of the most important issues facing us as the telecommunications landscape continues to change, and frankly, how this issue is resolved could determine whether our Nation continues to be a world leader in the area of innovation and technology. Consumers, businesses, and the very marketplace of ideas have benefited from the historically open nature of the Internet. From the largest of corporations to the person working alone in a garage, all have had the ability to offer their content, services, and applications over the Internet and to reach consumers, because of this open structure of the Internet and the existence of net neutrality nondiscrimination rules. I think it is important to point the wide variety of groups that have called for the preservation of strong net neutrality protections: groups as diverse as Consumers Union, AARP, Microsoft, Amazon, Gun Owners of America, and the National Religious Broadcasters, and over 150 organizations or companies so far have weighed in on this important issue. The Internet, and the broadband network operators that bring the Internet to businesses and consumers, have enabled even the most rural town in my State of North Dakota to be connected to the rest of the world, and this connection has brought economic opportunities, and advances in health and education that could otherwise not have been possible. Now, however, the open nature of the Internet is at risk. It is at risk because of actions by the Federal Communications Commission, and because of the lack of competition in the broadband market. Non-discrimination rules that existed for years on broadband providers have been removed, leaving only the marketplace to act as a check. The problem is, however, that the broadband marketplace is highly concentrated--98 percent of consumers get their broadband from either cable modem or DSL, and up to 50 percent of consumers can only get their broadband from one broadband provider. Thus, the situation is not a marketplace of players on an equal footing. Broadband network operators have substantial market power and the incentive to use it. There have been public statements by some of their CEOs that have made clear that they intend to use that leverage to exact payments from content providers and to operate as gatekeepers. These broadband network operators have become more than just the pipe that carries content, services, and applications to a consumer; they now are in the business of these content, services and applications as well. Thus, they have the leverage, and the incentive to favor their own services over competition. Until now the Internet has been driven by consumers and innovators, which have in turn, encouraged broadband deployment. Consumers pay for their Internet connection, and expect that they can go anywhere they lawfully want to on the Internet. But without maintaining the longstanding nondiscrimination rules that have been in place for decades, the Internet could go from being driven by consumers and innovators to bring dictated by network operators. What will be the impact on the next great application or service over the Internet if the very first thing the next start-up has to do is work out an agreement with the broadband provider? What will be the impact on consumers if their choices are artificially limited by their broadband providers as to what VOIP or video service they can get? I agree that broadband network operators are investing millions of dollars in building the next generation of infrastructure, and I commend them for that. Under our bill they will still be able to be compensated for their investments, as they are now, by charging for their broadband connections. But they should not be able to put up additional tolls on the Internet, or erect barricades to competition that will change the nature of the Internet as we know it. Our bill will preserve the freedom and the openness of the Internet that we have come to take for granted, but that is now at risk. I ask my colleagues to support this legislation that I introduce today with Senator Snowe.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the discussion this morning is once again on a subject called guest workers. I don't happen to think we ought to have a guest worker provision in this legislation. The discussion now is, if it exists in the legislation, what are the conditions under which guest workers can petition for citizenship, and so on and so forth. I hope we are not done with the question of whether there should be so-called guest workers or, as some call it, future flow, the soft- sounding words. They could call it tourism for all that matters. What this is about is grafting onto this bill to deal with the question of illegal immigrants coming into this country--because we have quotas, and those who come in illegally are a pretty serious problem, the 11 million or 12 million people we think are here illegally--this is grafting onto this bill that deals with illegal immigration a proposal that people who live outside this country and have not come to this country before now are to come into this country as so-called guest workers or future flow. What are those people going to do? They are going to come into this country and they are going to work. It is as if the 11 million or 12 million are not enough, we need more. The original proposition by the President was an unlimited number. The original proposition in the bill brought to the floor of the Senate was 400,000 a year, plus a 20-percent escalator. I tried to knock that out, and my amendment got clobbered, so I was unsuccessful. My colleague from New Mexico took the 400,000 down to 200,000. Actually, the substitute bill took it down to 325,000, then down to 200,000. However you calculate it, we are talking about millions of people who do not live in this country, who live outside of this country, who will come into this country for the purpose of taking jobs. Here is the strategy. The strategy in the country these days, and it is a strategy embraced on the floor of this Chamber, is to export good jobs and import cheap labor. I don't hear any discussion on the floor of this Senate about American workers--none. You can go to the newspapers and see a discussion. You can see the headlines about American workers who are losing their jobs because their employers are moving the jobs to China or Bangladesh or Indonesia or Sri Lanka; and yes, some of those Americans are finding other jobs, and the headlines also tell us those jobs pay less than the jobs we used to have. We lost 3 million to 4 million jobs in just the last 4 or 5 years. Alan Blinder, a very respectable mainstream economist, former Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, has just written a piece and said this: This issue of exporting American jobs even as there is this urge to import cheap labor--he said this about exporting American jobs--he said there are 42 to 54 million American jobs subject to offshoring. He said 41 to 54 million American jobs are subject to being moved out of this country in search of cheaper labor--at 33 cents an hour in China, perhaps Indonesia, Sri Lanka, wherever they would move to. He said that not all of the 40 million to 50 million jobs will leave this country by employers, not all will be moved out of this country by employers, but even those who stay are subject to the competition of lower wages abroad. Therefore, there will be lower wages, less health care, less benefits, and less retirement benefits. That future for the American worker on one side, and on the other side we have this urge to import cheap labor. Where does that urge come from? My understanding is the price the Chamber of Commerce requires to support this bill is that there be additional guest workers attached to it. What is the purpose of that? That is the purpose of bringing in the back door folks who are willing to assume the bottom-end jobs. The President and others say these are jobs the American people will not take. I don't think that is the case at all. They may not want to take them at current wages, at the bottom of the economic scale. We haven't changed the minimum wage for nearly 9 years. This Congress will not change the minimum wage. The President doesn't support it. If we change the minimum wage and perhaps pay what the jobs are worth at the lower economic level, at the bottom of the economic ladder, perhaps then we wouldn't need to import cheap labor. This is about importing cheap labor on the back side. That is what guest workers is all about. I know they call it ``future flow'' and guest workers. It is not about making 11 million to 12 million people legal who are already here illegally. But more needs to be done. Allowing people who would normally be illegal and stamping them as ``legal'' is kind of a ``let's pretend'' approach. I understand the Senate has already voted on my amendment, and I lost pretty handily, as a matter of fact. But I think there is more to do on this. The bill is still open for amendment. For example, we have a so- called guest worker provision which says let's pretend that illegal immigration is legal immigration. Should we have that provision that lasts forever and is permanent, or should we sunset it after a few years and have a real honest study by people who might evaluate how many Americans are losing their jobs as a result of this back door, cheap labor coming as replacement workers? How many Americans are losing their jobs? I see very little discussion on the floor of this Senate in this debate about immigration which, after all, is all about jobs, among other things. I see very little discussion and Members standing up on the floor of the Senate saying: Let us wonder what this means to American workers. What does it mean to the steel worker? What does it mean to the punch press operator, to the fabricator or how about the farmer? What does it mean to manufacturing? Very few people are talking about American workers. It is all about immigration and how many additional guest workers we can bring into this country under this piece of legislation. My understanding is that we will be on this bill for another week. That will give us time to revisit this so-called guest worker provision and see if we can write a piece of legislation--yes--which deals sensitively, without diminishing the dignity and worth of others who have been here some long while. Some have been here for 25 years. Some immigrants came here many years ago. They have children and grandchildren here. I don't want to, in any way, diminish their worth or their dignity or their value. We should deal with them in a way that is sensitive. I don't think this Senate should jump on the notion advanced by business interests and the Chamber and others that we don't have enough cheap labor in this country, and we need to bring more through the back door as we are exporting good jobs abroad. You talk about a recipe for economic trouble ahead, probably not for the people who wear blue suits in the morning and wear neckties all day and have jobs such as Senators and Congressmen. I do not know of anybody in this Chamber who has lost a job because their job was outsourced. Nobody here has lost their job because their job has been outsourced. It is other folks--folks working on the manufacturing line someplace, and they are called up one day and are told: You know what, our entire company is leaving. We are going to China because you can produce an Etch A Sketch in China for much less money. But the jobs have gone to China. Etch A Sketch is one example of hundreds of examples of jobs that go to China. Those are the folks who pay the price. Those are the folks who have the burden of this sort of new economy. The ``world is flat'' economy-- move American jobs to China. The other folks who stay here, the folks who work at the bottom rung of the economic ladder, struggling to advance and pay their bills and take care of their families, they are now told: By the way, we also need to not just export jobs, but we need to import cheap labor. I think is a recipe for disaster for this country. I don't think it works. Our country became a great country and a world economic power because we built a burgeoning middle class, and that middle class had good jobs that paid well. There is no social program in this country as important as the good job that pays well, which allows people to work and take care of their families. There is no social program as important as that. These good jobs are shrinking away. You can go through the entire list, industry after industry, telling workers: We are going to move your job elsewhere, and we are going to shrink the jobs that remain here to $8 or $10 an hour. And by the way, what we would like to do is bring people through the back door whom we might be able to employ for $6 or $7 an hour. That is the construct which is occurring throughout the country today, and I think it is fundamentally wrong. My hope is we continue these discussions about guest workers. We will have other opportunities to offer amendments. I will have some, and perhaps we can get back to where we should be and that is dealing with the central question of our country's border; protect us first against terrorism; and, second, to enforce the quotas we have that allow people to come into this country legally. We have quotas with which we accomplish that. Seal this country's border so we have border protection and an orderly flow of people in and out of this country; and, second, enforce standards against employers that routinely and knowingly hire illegal workers. I was here when we passed Simpson-Mazzoli. In fact, I went back and reread some of the debate on the floor of the Senate and House. What was said was we are fixing immigration. Back then, there really was amnesty. Amnesty was given to a good number of millions of illegal immigrants. We said to employers: Don't you dare hire illegal workers. If people come into this country illegally to take Americans' jobs, don't you dare hire them. If you do, you will be subject to fines and penalties that are significant. Guess what. There has been no enforcement at all. Last year, one company was subject to enforcement action in the entire United States of America; the year before, three companies in the entire United States. The message implies Katy bar the door; hire illegals if you like; pay substandard wages because they are illegal; don't worry, nobody is going to look; nobody is going to fine you; and nobody is going to enforce the law. That is why this entire thing has failed. Twenty years later, we have the same language. You can change the names and it is the same language--going to get tough, going to fix this issue. The fact is, if we don't decide, first, to secure our borders and, second, to have real sanctions against those who want to hire illegal immigrants for substandard wages, this will not work. All we are doing is playing let's pretend. We play that often around here. It is not going to work. What we ought to do is stare truth in the eye on this issue and decide that we are going to do what is necessary to evaluate what the immigration issue is, how to fix it and go about the business of doing it. Instead, there is all this energy to see not only how we deal with the immigration issue but how we add a new guest worker program to bring people into this country who otherwise would be illegal and how do we bring new people into this country to take the jobs that American workers need. That doesn't make much sense to me, and it is not a proposition that I can support. I yield the floor.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I would like to explain my reasons for my vote on the Vitter amendment No. 3963. It is estimated that there are currently around 12 million illegal immigrants in this country. And I do not support the proposition that everyone of those 12 million illegal immigrants currently in the United States should be given the right to a green card and eventual citizenship. However, there are certain cases where illegal immigrants have been here for a very long time--in some cases, for decades. Some of these people have families here and deep ties to their local communities. The Vitter amendment would have made no exception for such cases at all. And I do think that we need some flexibility for humanitarian reasons. For this reason, I voted against the Vitter amendment. But I would like to emphasize that I am not in favor of a broad, blanket amnesty for illegal immigrants. Amendment No. 4018

Mr. DORGAN

Mr. DORGAN. The Senator is absolutely correct. It seems to me this is not at issue, the question of what this means to American workers. It just is not.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, is the Senator asking an inquiry at this point? I did not hear the inquiry.

Mr. DORGAN. I will be laying the amendment down in just about a minute. I am reviewing one piece of it. I will be laying the amendment down in about a minute.

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I will do that, but I will not do it at the moment. I want to perfect the amendment and begin discussions, see how many on my side and perhaps your side wish to speak on it before we would make an agreement with respect to the time.

Mr. DORGAN. I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.