Phil Gramm

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, there is a growing concern in our country about the rise of fuel prices, the rise of gasoline prices. Obviously, the President shares this concern. We have committee hearings underway. We have studies. We have investigations. We all know that there is only one thing we can do that is going to bring down gasoline prices immediately. In fact, we have the capacity, by acting now, to bring down the cost of filling up the gas tank on your car, on your van, on your truck. We can save you about $1 a fill- up by repealing the 4.3-cent-a-gallon tax on gasoline that was adopted in 1993. That gasoline tax increase did not go to build new highways; it went to general revenue. What we would like to do today is repeal that gasoline tax. We would like to repeal that tax on highway gasoline, on highway diesel fuel, on railroad diesel fuel, on inland waterway diesel fuel, on aviation gasoline, on noncommercial jet fuel, and on commercial jet fuel. We would like to repeal that 4.3-cent-a-gallon tax on each of those fuels, do it today and have that repeal in effect until the end of the year, giving us an opportunity to write a budget and to institute a permanent repeal as part of that new budget. It would be our goal today to pay for this loss of revenue by cutting the overhead and travel budget of the Energy Department and by selling a very small part of the spectrum, something that the President has supported at a level of $38 billion of sales, something that the Congress is on record in favor of. On a $19 billion sale, we would have roughly a $2 billion sale as part of this package. If you want to bring down the price of gasoline at the pump, if you want, by Friday morning, to have every filling station in America going out, opening for business, bringing down their posted price by 4.3 cents a gallon, saving every motorist in America about $1 when they fill up their tank, there is only one thing we can do, and that is repeal this tax on gasoline. I hope we can do it today. I hope the House can act quickly, that the President will sign it, that we can grant relief. What a great thing it would be to do it on tax freedom day, when the average American family has worked from January 1 until today just to pay taxes. For the first time this year, they are working for themselves. Today would be an excellent day to repeal this tax, to give relief to motorists and, in the process, let working families keep more of what they earn. Mr. DOLE addressed the Chair.

Mr. GRAMM

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

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. My point is that this is something that helps everybody, and 23 percent of the benefits of repealing this gasoline tax accrue to people who make $20,000 or less. Let us help them today and then we can debate whether something else helps or hurts tomorrow. Mr. DOLE addressed the Chair.

Mr. GRAMM. I do not control the floor.

Mr. GRAMM

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

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, today is a very special day for Texans this year because as of today, May 2, working men and women in Texas are for the first time in 1996 working for themselves. To this point in 1996, every single day from January 1 until today, every penny earned by the average working family in my State has gone to government, and only beginning today are the working families of Texas working for themselves and for their families. Let me share these numbers with my colleagues because I think they are very revealing of a fundamental problem in America. By the estimates of the U.S. census the average family of four in Texas today earns $42,570. This year that average Texas family will pay $9,522 in Federal taxes, payroll taxes, and income taxes being taken out of their pocket and being brought to Washington and spent. They will also pay $4,781 in State and local taxes. In total, the average family of four in Texas this year will pay $14,303 in taxes out of an income of $42,570. If in 1950, someone had predicted that the day would come when working families in Texas would be sending $1 out of every $3 they earn to government, no one in 1950 would have believed that could be possible. I remind my colleagues that in 1950 the average family in America with two children sent $1 out of every $50 it earned to Washington, DC. Today the average family in America is sending $1 out of every $4 it earns to Washington, DC. And the sad, and to a certain degree, untold story is that, even if we do not start a single new government program during the next 20 years but simply pay for the government we have already committed to, the average family in America will send $1 out of every $3 to Washington within 20 years, and $1 out of every $2 in 30 years. That is a future that, at least standing here today, it is hard for me to imagine. But I think the sobering lesson is who could have imagined in 1950, when the average family in America with two children was sending $1 out of every $50 to Washington, DC, that today, 46 years later, the average family in America would be sending $1 out of every $4 it earns to Washington, DC. I will leave it to each American to try to answer the question as to whether they are getting their money's worth from our government, whether, if they got to keep more of what they earned, they could do a better job spending it on their own family and investing it in their own future, than the government is now doing. I believe that the answer that most Americans would give is that, if they got to keep more of their own money to invest in their own children, that they could make a sounder investment both for themselves and for their children than their Government is now making. Texas is a blessed State in many ways. But one of the ways we are blessed is that our tax burden at the State and local level is lower than the national average. So it will be on May 7 that the average American family will work for itself for the first time in 1996. But today is the first day of 1996 that working families in Texas will be working for themselves. From this point on during the year of 1996 they will be able to keep what they earn to invest in their future and their family. I believe it is a national crisis that the average working family in Texas has worked from January 1 until May 2 simply to pay tribute to government. I do not believe the government we are giving them is worth what they are paying for it. I think we need to dramatically revise government spending, and cut it. I think we need to let working families keep more of what they earn. There is one institution in America that is more effective and more important than any other. And that institution is the family. It is the institution that provides cohesion to our society, it is the institution that passes on our values and our traditions to our children, and yet it is the one institution that we consistently starve of the resources they need to do this job. So I just simply wanted to join the people of my State in celebrating the fact that as of today they are working for themselves. For the last 3 years the tax burden on the average Texas family and the average American family has risen, and risen at an alarming rate. I believe this trend has to stop, and I am dedicated to the principle that we need less government and more freedom, that government is too big, too powerful, too expensive, and spends too much of the money of working families, and as a result they have the opportunity to invest too little of what they earn. I want to see this changed, and I think the real debate that we face here in Washington, a debate that is very seldom defined here on the floor of the Senate, is a choice between unlimited government and unlimited opportunity. And we have to choose. I want to make it clear on the first day of this year that Texans have worked for themselves that I choose opportunity because I know that if the average working family in America could represent itself in the U.S. Senate for one day and could cast a vote as to whether we need more government, or whether we need more freedom in America, they would cast their vote in favor of less government and more freedom. I yield the floor. Mr. DORGAN addressed the Chair.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. No, I understand the amendment perfectly.

Mr. GRAMM. Would the Senator, if he wants to change the provision, change it to say that immigrants are not eligible for welfare or public assistance until they become citizens?

Mr. GRAMM. Reclaiming my time, Mr. President. Let me just make a point on the deeming issue. The only point I wanted to make is this. We have had a half a dozen votes on it. The outcome has been the same each time, and each time we have had a new amendment we have had some new sob story where we picked out a little blue-eyed girl 3 years old or younger or something. I am just saying I would like to settle the issue. I think the Senate has decided on the deeming issue, and I think the decision that we have made is you ought not to be able to come to America as an immigrant to go on welfare. We are having to go about that in different ways through different bills. My point is I do not know what the seventh or eighth or ninth amendment is going to do. I hope we will defeat these amendments decisively and get on with passing a bill that the American public wants. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM. I object to amendments I am not participating in today.

Mr. GRAMM. I do not think so today.

Mr. GRAMM. Let me respond by saying that I believe that when we are talking about people coming to America, that is a great deal. I do not think we have to second-guess it by saying that we are going to try to see that after so many years you can get welfare. I personally believe that until a person becomes a citizen, they ought not to be eligible for welfare. I am for a stronger provision than the Senate has adopted. I do not think immigrants should be eligible for welfare until they become citizens and, therefore, under the Constitution must be treated like everybody else, because under the Constitution there can be no differentiation between how they are treated as a natural-born American or nationalized. There is only one difference, and that is you cannot become President. But here is the point. I think that ought to be the provision. That is not even what we are talking about here. We are talking about something much less, and that is the deeming provision. The point I am making is this: The point I am making is this. We have voted on this thing a half a dozen times. I wish we could come up with every story or manipulation or hardship that we could get, put it all into one and vote on it and settle it. That is all I wish to do.

Mr. GRAMM. I am happy to yield.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I had not intended to speak on this subject, but we have now had about a half dozen amendments on this deeming issue. It seems to me that the Senate has spoken on this issue. Far be it from me to say that our colleagues are infringing on our patience, but it seems to me this is a very clear issue. The American people have very strong opinions about it. We have voted on it. I do not see what we gain by going over and over and over again plowing this same ground, or in this case dragging this dead cat which smells rank back across the table. Here is the issue. When people come to America, they get the greatest worldly gift you can get. They have an opportunity to become Americans. I am very proud of the fact that I stood up on the floor of the Senate and fought an effort that was trying to slam the door on people who come to this country legally. I believe in immigration. I do not want to tear down the Statue of Liberty. I believe new Americans bring new vision and new energy, and America would not be America without immigrants. But when people come to America, they come with sponsors, and these sponsors guarantee to the American taxpayer that the immigrant is not going to become a ward of the State. If you want to know how lousy the current program is, in the last 10 years when we have had millions of immigrants come to America legally, how many people do you think have been deported because they have become wards of the State? In 10 years with millions of legal immigrants, we have had, I understand, 13 people that have been deported. Obviously, the current system is not working. What the bill of the distinguished Senator from Wyoming says is simply this: When you sign that pledge that you are going to take care of these people until they can take care of themselves, we expect you to live up to your promise. We expect you to use your energy and your assets to see that the person you have sponsored does not become a burden on the taxpayers. So what the bill does, in essence, is count the sponsor's income and the sponsor's assets as yours for the purpose of your applying for welfare. It seems to me that we do not have anything to apologize about in giving people the greatest worldly gift you can get, and that is becoming an American. I do not think we ought to have any deviations, period, from this whole deeming issue. If you come to America, you have a sponsor. They say they are going to take care of you. If things go wrong, we ought to go back on their assets. But this idea that there ought to be some magic things that we are going to exempt--and we have seen all of these real tear-jerkers about, you know, in this particular case, or that particular case--this is a principle where I do not think there ought to be any particular cases. If people want to come to America, let them come to America, but let them come with their sleeves rolled up ready to go to work. Do not let them come with their hand out. If you want to live off the fruits of somebody else's labor, go somewhere else; do not come to America. But if you want to come here and build your dream and build the American dream and work and struggle and succeed as the grandparents of most of the Members, the parents of most of the Members of this body did, welcome. We have too few people who want to come and work and build their dream. But I think we pretty well settled this whole deeming issue. I think we ought to get on with it. This is now a good bill. We have spoken. I think we are at the point where people are ready to vote. I think after a half dozen votes on this issue that, ``Well, you are exempt from deeming if you are going to church to say a prayer and you trip and you break your back''--I mean, I think we have established the principle. I do not think we have to go on plowing this ground over and over again. The American people want people to come to work. They do not want people to come to go on welfare. We have a provision in the welfare bill that is even stronger than the deeming provision in this bill. Maybe we could have a vote that says under any circumstances except divine intervention that we stay with the provisions. We could vote on it and be through with it.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, we are talking basically today about crime, though I heard Senator Gorton speak on another subject, and obviously an important one. He mentioned Pericles of Athens and, I would only add, O that the Lord would send us a Pericles now that we really need one. But we are here today basically talking about crime, and I want to touch on three issues. I want to express frustration about two of them. For the last 6 years, as we have debated crime bills, I have offered two amendments that have passed the Senate with overwhelming votes. They both relate to mandatory minimum sentencing. The first amendment addresses the same issue the President addressed this morning in Florida, and that is the problem we have with children and drugs. The amendment I have offered recognizes the fact that there is a drug pusher almost literally standing at the doorway of every junior high school in America. In addition, increasingly drug pushers use children to deliver the drug and to take the cash, because it is at that point of transaction, where the exchange between money and drugs actually occurs, that you have the strongest possibility of prosecution. And so, what is increasingly happening in our country is not only are drug pushers exploiting our children by selling drugs outside the doorway--and sometimes inside the doorway--of what would seem to be every junior high school in America, but increasingly our children are being used in drug conspiracies to actually transfer the drug and take the money. Recognizing this incredible tragedy, I have repeatedly offered an amendment to require 10 years in prison without parole for selling drugs to a minor or for using a minor in drug trafficking or a drug conspiracy. Two years ago I strengthened that amendment to add life imprisonment without parole on a repeat offense. The thing I think would be most stunning for people to know is that while we have adopted my amendment on minimum mandatory sentencing for selling drugs to children or using our children in drug sales, every time we have debated a crime bill this decade, that amendment has been adopted, and yet it has never become the law of the land. In fact, in President Clinton's so-called crime bill, in 1994, Congress overturned minimum mandatory sentencing for drug felons and, by giving discretion to judges, in essence, guaranteed that the minimum sentencing provisions we had, were largely eliminated. This spring and summer we are going to debate crime again. I want to put my colleagues on notice. I am going to offer this amendment again: 10 years in prison without parole for selling drugs to a minor or using a minor in drug trafficking; life imprisonment without parole on the second offense. I am not going to stop until, this year, we make that amendment the law of the land. The second provision, which I have offered now for the better part of a decade--and it normally gets an overwhelming majority in the Senate, but it never becomes law--is 10 years in prison without parole for possessing a firearm during the commission of a violent crime or a drug felony; 20 years for discharging the firearm; life imprisonment without parole for killing somebody, and, in aggravated cases, the death penalty. That provision has consistently been adopted, but what always happens is in the conference committee, where we work out the differences between the Senate bill and the House bill, it ends up being dropped. I do not intend to see that happen this year. We have proven in the District of Columbia and all over the planet that gun control does not work. But if we add 10 years in prison without parole for simply possessing a firearm during a violent crime or drug felony, in addition to the penalty for the violent crime and drug felony, if we add 20 years for discharging the firearm, if we had the death penalty for killing somebody, we could begin to do something about gun violence in America. I am ready. The Senate has been ready, at least in terms of the public votes we cast. But in the private votes, in conference committee, this provision, year after year after year, has been dropped. It is time for that to stop. Finally, I want to put prisoners to work in America. It seems that every year somebody offers an amendment--normally, our dear colleague from North Carolina, Senator Helms--to ban trade with some country that uses prison labor, and every year I wonder why we cannot use prison labor. We have 1.1 million people in prison in America, yet we have three Federal statutes, all arising out of the Depression era, that criminalize prison labor in America: the Hawes-Cooper Act, the Sumners- Ashurst Act, and the Walsh-Healey Public Contracting Act. Each effectively limits our ability to have people work in prison to produce goods for sale. One bill says it is a felony if you produce something in prison and send it across State lines; another bill limits the transport of such goods; another limits the use of prison labor in regard to Federal contracts. Converted into English, what that says it that it is illegal to make prisoners work. I do not understand that. I want to repeal these three statutes. I want to turn our prisons into industrial parks. I want to make prisoners work 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, and I want to make them go to school at night. We spent $22,000 a year last year to keep somebody in the Federal penitentiary. If we stop building prisons like Holiday Inns, if we make prisoners work, I believe we could cut that cost by 50 percent in 5 years, and cut it by three-quarters in 10 years, and I think that ought to be our objective. So I think it is time to stop talking about the crime problem and start doing something about it. I remind my colleagues that last year in the Commerce, State, Justice appropriations bill, the committee adopted an amendment that I authored that would repeal these three laws. But guess what happened? It was not in the final version of the bill. The same thing that has happened on minimum mandatory sentencing for selling drugs to children, the same thing that has happened on minimum mandatory sentencing for gun violence. We cast votes in the Senate--in public everybody says, ``Great,'' they are really serious about this problem--and then some of our most senior Members meet in the dark, dingy corners of some room here in this magnificent building and these great proposals die. I believe the time has come for that to stop. I think these are three changes that need to be made, and I intend to continue to fight for them. It is our Republican agenda. I want to make it happen. I thank our colleague from Georgia for his great leadership, and I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I think we are ready to vote on this side. We thoroughly debated this issue. In fact, we debated it all day. This, in reality, is the same amendment we voted on before. It simply does the same thing in a different way. This amendment, in our opinion, is wrongheaded and wronghearted. It needs to be defeated. I hope we can maintain the 80 votes we had before. I hope everyone who voted against the previous amendment will vote exactly the same way they did for exactly the same reason. I yield the floor. Mr. FEINGOLD addressed the Chair.

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

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, I rise in opposition to the pending amendment. There is something in American folklore that induces us to believe that America has become a great and powerful country because brilliant and talented people came to live here. There is something in the folklore of each of our families that leads us to believe that we are unique. We all have these stories in the history of our families, of how our grandfathers came here as poor immigrants who did not speak the language. I love to tell the story of my wife's family. My wife's grandfather came to America as an indentured laborer, where he signed a contract to come to America with a sugar plantation where he agreed to work a number of years to pay off that contract. And, when he had worked off that contract, he looked in a picture book and picked out the picture of a young girl and said, ``That's the one I want.'' And he tore that picture out of the book and sent for her to come to America to be his wife. His son became the first Asian American ever to be an officer of a sugar company in the history of Hawaii. And his granddaughter--my wife--became Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission which, among other commodities and commodity futures, regulates the market for cane sugar in the United States of America. I could have told much the same story about Spence Abraham, and about his grandfather coming to this country, and about my own grandfather, who came from Germany. But the point is, each of us in our own family has a folklore that basically tells a story, and the story is partly true but it is not totally true. Folklore holds that America became a great country because of us; that America is a great and powerful country because these brilliant people from Lebanon and from Korea and from Germany and from everywhere in the world came to live here and their innate genius made America the richest, freest and happiest country in the world. And because we believe that, we believe that America became great because we were unique and this miracle only worked for us, but it is not going to work for other people; that is, if people come here and they look different than we do or they sound different than we do or if their customs are different than ours or if their native clothing is different than ours, somehow they are different where we were unique and made America great by our coming, they are ``different'' and it will not work on them. That is a myth, and this amendment is based fundamentally on a belief in that myth. America is not a great and powerful country because the most brilliant and talented people in the world came to live here. America is a great and powerful country because it was here that ordinary people like you and me have had more opportunity and more freedom than any other people who have ever lived on the face of the Earth. And, with that opportunity and with that freedom, ordinary people like us have been able to do extraordinary things. While it is somehow not so reassuring about ourselves to say it, it is very reassuring about our country to know it. Most of us would be peasants in almost any other country in the world. We are extraordinary only because our country is extraordinary. Now, with the best of intentions, this amendment says that we have immigrants coming to America and by getting here and getting a foothold and getting a job and building a life, that they are reaching out as each of us would do if we came from somewhere else, and they are trying to bring their mama and their daddy and their sisters and brothers and their cousins and their aunts to America. So what? Let me just take that one point and develop it for a moment, if I may. Of all immigrant groups in America, to the best of my ability to ascertain, the identifiable group that uses things like the fifth preference in the immigration laws, the people who are the most focused on their extended family, the people, as immigrants to America, who have reached out the most to try to bring their families to America, are people who are from the Indian subcontinent. Probably more than any other immigrants, at least if one looks at the use of things like the fifth preference--and I am not an expert in this area, but a fifth preference is a preference where you are trying to bring somebody in who is not, by the conventional definition, that close kin--this is a group that has used this provision of law that this amendment tries to reduce. Let us look at a subsample of this group--Indian Americans. No. 1, of all identifiable ethnic groups in America, Indian Americans have the highest per capita income. Some people might find that shocking. The average Indian American in this country makes more money than does the average Episcopalian--which, if you break down by religious groups, is the highest income group in America. The average Indian American makes substantially more money than the average American who traces his or her lineage back to Great Britain. Madam President, 50 percent of all motels in America are owned by Indian Americans. In fact, 80 percent of them have the same family name. If you go to a hotel and you see an Indian American working there, and the chances are you are going to, and you want to guess at his name or her name, say, ``Mr. or Mrs. Patel,'' and you are going to be right 80 percent of the time. Now, this is not the same family, but it is a very common name. The point being, why in the world are we trying to keep out of America an ethnic group that has the highest per capita income and the highest average education level in the country? It struck me as I was walking over here for this debate, I was talking to my youngest legislative assistant, named Rohit Kumar, Indian American, honor graduate from Duke University, that his family story is a perfect example of why we ought to crush this amendment. Let me just tell his family story. His father and mother came to this country in 1972. They did not come on any kind of family preference. They were original immigrants. They both became medical doctors. They then started the process of bringing their family to America. They brought their brother. He became a doctor. In fact, he is an oncologist in northern California. He brought his wife, who became an interior designer. They brought their nephew, who is a computer engineer. And they brought their father. My point is, and I am a conservative as many of you know, but if we add up the combined Federal income tax that was paid 10 days ago by the people who came to America as a result of this first Kumar who came in 1972, this little family probably paid, at a minimum, $500,000 in taxes. Our problem in America is we do not have enough Kumars, working hard and succeeding. We need more. Why do we want to stop this process? We want to stop it because somehow we believe that people are changing America instead of America changing people. We could have had this debate in the early 1900's. In fact, my guess is if we went back somewhere, we would find we did have the debate, because in the years between 1901 and 1910, we had, on average, 10.4 immigrants come to America each year for every 1,000 Americans. From 1911 to 1920, we had 5.7 immigrants per year per 1,000 Americans; from 1921 to 1930, we had 3.5. Today, even though the number of immigrants in 1995 was just 2.8 per 1,000 Americans, some would have us believe we are just being flooded, we are being overrun by these people who become doctors and engineers and pay all these taxes, and I could mention win Nobel Prizes. I could read the list of foreign-born Americans who have won the Nobel Prize, except the list is too long. I could read down the list of people who have become historic names in the scientific history of our country, names that we now think about and the world thinks about as American names, including Ronald Coase, who won the Nobel Prize in 1991 in economics, and Franco Modigliani, who won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1985. As a graduate student, I had no idea that they were foreign born. The point is, the list goes on and on, full of people who have come here, who have caught fire, who have unleashed creative genius that has made America the greatest country in the world, and they may have brought their mothers. Great. May it never end. Could America be America without immigrants? I know there are people who say, ``Well, they're taking our jobs.'' I want to make just one point about that. Go out in Washington today, go to a shoe store where they are repairing shoes, go to a laundry, go into a restaurant, in the kitchen of a restaurant, go any place in America where people are getting their hands dirty, and do you know what they are going to discover? They talk funny. People who work for a living in America often talk with distinct foreign accents. Do you know why? Because we have a welfare system that rewards our own citizens for not working. A lady in Washington, DC, with one child on welfare, if she qualifies for the four big programs, earns what $21,000 of income would be required to buy. I do not think it is fair to say because people come to America and they are willing to work, when some Americans are not, that they are taking jobs away. I think that is our problem; that is not their problem. I know how to fix that. The way to fix it is to reform welfare and, at least on my side of the aisle, there is unanimity we ought to do that. Let me also say that there is a provision in the bill--and I am a strong supporter of the underlying bill--that changes law, a change that is needed, and I congratulate our distinguished colleague, Senator Simpson, for his leadership in this. He and I worked on this together on the welfare bill. It is part of this bill, and it is vitally important. We change the law to say that you cannot come to America as an immigrant and go on welfare. We have room in America for people who come with their sleeves rolled up, ready to go to work. But we do not have room for people who come with their hand out. Let us remember that when people come to America legally and go to work, and with their energy and with the sweat of their brow they build their life, they build the future of our country. A final point that I want to address is this whole question about the changing nature of immigration. There is something in each of us that leads us to believe that we are the unique Americans, that somehow we made the country what it is, that somehow it was because American immigration in the early days was basically drawn first from northern Europe and then from southern Europe that it made us somehow unique. I think it was the system that made America, and we might have had this debate in the year of 1900 when the immigration patterns of the country had shifted to southern Europe and eastern Europe. I am sure at the turn of the century there were those in corporate boardrooms who were wondering what was going to happen in America with the changing makeup of the country when they, as people from British stock who had come to the country on the Mayflower or in some historic voyage, had to share their America with Americans who had come from Germany or from Italy or with Americans who had come from all over the world who were of the Jewish faith. I do not doubt somebody in 1900, and maybe a lot of people, worried about it. But look what happened. Did those of us who came from other places prove less worthy of being Americans than the colonists? Did we find ourselves less worthy successors of the original revolution? I do not think so. I believe we have room for people who want to come and work because America could not be America without immigrants. The story that is uniquely American is the story of people coming to America to build their dream and to build the American dream. I have absolutely no fear that by people coming to America legally and to work--no one should come to America to go on welfare--that America's future is going to be diminished by that process. I believe their new vision, their new energy will transform our country, as it has always transformed it, and we will all be richer for it. The bill before us tries to stop illegal immigration. We have an obligation to control the borders of our country. I am proud of the fact that in my year as chairman of Commerce, State, Justice Appropriations Subcommittee, we began the process to double the size of the Border Patrol and we enhanced the strength of that action in this bill. We deny people who come to America illegally welfare benefits, and we deny those benefits to people who come here legally. We do not want people coming to America to go on welfare. But I do not believe we have a problem today in America with people who have come to this country and succeeded and who want to bring their brother or their cousin or their mother here. When you look at the people who are doing that, you find that they are the ones who are enriching our country. A final point, and I will yield the floor. It has struck me as I have come to know ethnic Americans that many ethnic groups fight an unending and losing battle to try to preserve their identity in America. It is a losing battle because what happens is that young people who grow up in this country become Americans. There is no way that can ever be changed. Any differences that concern us very quickly vanish in this country with great opportunity, where people are judged on their individual merit. What we are talking about today is trying to stop illegal immigration, which is what we should do, but we should not back away from our commitment to letting people come to America to build their dream and ours. We should not close the door on people who want to bring their relatives to America as long as their relatives come to work, as long as they continue to achieve the amazing success that immigrants have achieved in America. There are a lot of things we ought to worry about before we go to bed every night. We ought to worry about the deficit. We ought to worry about the tax burden. We ought to worry about the regulatory burden. We ought to even worry about the weather. But as long as we preserve a system which lets ordinary people achieve extraordinary things, we do not have to worry that our country is somehow going to be diminished when an immigrant has gotten here, succeeded, and put down roots and then wants to bring a sister or mother to America. If that is all you have to worry about, you do not have a problem in the world. Let me assure you, I do not worry about it. I do not want to tear down the Statue of Liberty. There is room in America for people who want to work. I remember, as a closing thought, 3 years ago I was chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and we had a big event where we invited our supporters from all over the country. I do not know whether it just happened to be the letter I sent out that time or what, but for some remarkable reason, about 80 percent of the people who came to this particular event were first-generation Americans. As a result, they all talked funny. So we were about a day into the meeting and this sweet little lady from Florida stood up in the midst of this meeting and with all sincerity said to me, ``Senator Gramm, why do all the people here talk funny?'' Boy, there was a collective gulp that you could have heard 100 miles away. So I thought for a minute, and in one of the better answers that I have given in my political life I said, ``Ma'am, 'cause this is America.'' If we ever get to the point where we do not have a few citizens who talk funny, if we ever get to the point where we do not have a new infusion of energy and a new spark to the American dream, then the American dream is going to start to fade and it is going the start to die. It is not going to fade and it is not going to die on my watch in the U.S. Senate. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. GRAMM. I am glad to.

Mr. GRAMM. I thank the Senator very much. Mr. SIMPSON addressed the Chair.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I rise to introduce legislation to remove an onerous and, I believe, unintended regulatory burden from independent oil and gas producers. The Crude Oil Transportation Fairness Act of 1996 would exempt oil and gas producers who do not transport crude oil themselves from the registration and fee requirements of the Hazardous Materials Transportation Act. Those who actually transport crude oil would continue to register and pay fees as under current law. Also, the bill removes the Secretary of Transportation's unilateral authority under current law to raise these fees on transporters. My colleague from Texas, Senator Hutchison, has joined me in introducing this legislation. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record, and that letters of support from the Independent Petroleum Association of America and the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association also appear in the Record.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I rise to introduce legislation to remove an onerous and, I believe, unintended regulatory burden from independent oil and gas producers. The Crude Oil Transportation Fairness Act of 1996 would exempt oil and gas producers who do not transport crude oil themselves from the registration and fee requirements of the Hazardous Materials Transportation Act. Those who actually transport crude oil would continue to register and pay fees as under current law. Also, the bill removes the Secretary of Transportation's unilateral authority under current law to raise these fees on transporters. My colleague from Texas, Senator Hutchison, has joined me in introducing this legislation. I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record, and that letters of support from the Independent Petroleum Association of America and the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association also appear in the Record.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I want to thank our colleague from Georgia for leading this effort. We are always looking for good news in our war on violent crime and the threat that it poses to our families. This morning I want to share some good news. This good news is based on hard facts presented in a major study done by the National Center for Policy Analysis, which is located in my State. I think that when you listen to the numbers, they speak as loudly and as clearly as a clap of thunder. Five years ago, Texans finally had enough of violent crime, so we launched the largest prison building program in the history of the United States of America. Over a 4-year period, we expanded the size of the Texas prison system from a 49,000 criminal capacity to a 150,000 criminal capacity. In terms of our population, Texas started out having a per capita violent criminal incarceration rate that was roughly equal to the national average. Four years later, we have the highest criminal incarceration rate of any State in the Union. I believe that this is a direct result of building new prisons, putting people in jail, and beginning to approach what we call ``truth in sentencing,'' so that when somebody is sentenced to prison for 10 years, they actually, honest to God, serve 10 years in prison. We have seen the following things happen in Texas in terms of expected punishment for committing major crimes. Over the 6-year period between 1988 and 1994, the expected punishment in Texas for murder rose by 360 percent. For rape, the expected punishment rose by 266 percent; for larceny, 167 percent; for aggravated assault, the expected punishment rose by 360 percent. For burglary, the expected punishment rose by 299 percent; for robbery, 220 percent; and for motor vehicle theft, 222 percent. In other words, we built prisons, we got tough, we sent people to prisons, and we extended the amount of time criminals actually spend in prison. What happened? Well, what happened is that the overall crime rate in Texas has fallen by 30-percent since 1988. Let me repeat that. We increased the number of prison beds. We more than doubled the expected punishment for crimes ranging from murder to car theft, we increased the number of people in prison, and the crime rate fell by 30 percent. Let me put that in more meaningful terms: As compared to 5 years ago when we started building prisons and putting violent criminals in prison in Texas--as compared to 1991--the 30-percent lower crime rate we have today means that in this year alone, 1,140 people in Texas who, at the crime rate of 5 years ago would have been murdered in my State, will not be murdered. It means that in 1996, 450,000 less serious crimes will be committed than would have been committed had we not tripled the capacity of our prisons. The lesson is very clear. We have a small number of violent predator criminals who commit a huge percentage of our violent crimes. When you are willing to put them in jail and keep them there, the crime rate falls. The time has come for us to get serious at the Federal level. We have three major statutes that criminalize prison labor. We are one of the few countries in the world which cannot make people in prison work to produce something that can be sold in order to help pay for the cost of incarceration. Three depression-years laws make it a crime to require prisoners work, make it a crime to sell what they produce, and make it a crime to transport what is produced. In other words, we can require taxpayers to work in order to pay for building and maintaining prisons, but we cannot make prisoners work in order to do the same. We should repeal those three statutes. We should turn our Federal prisons into industrial parks. We should cut the cost of prison construction by stopping the building of prisons like Holiday Inns. We need to put people in jail for violent crimes. We need to have sentences of 10 years in prison without parole for possessing a firearm during the commission of a violent crime or drug felony, 20 years for discharging it, and the death penalty for killing one of our neighbors. If we do those things, we can end this wave of violence. We are allowing our fellow citizens to be brutalized by violent criminals because we will not do something about it. In Texas, we have shown that you can do something about it and I would like us to follow that lead at the Federal level. I commend the National Center for Policy Analysis for conducting this study which was released in January of this year. Every Member of Congress should read this study and I would be happy to supply it to anyone who is interested in doing so. Mr. President, I thank you for listening. Let me now yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Michigan [Mr. Abraham].

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I want to talk about the bill that is before the Senate and the amendment that Senator Dole will offer on behalf of himself and others. I will also cosponsor that amendment. I want to try to explain why it is essential that we have measures which will promote efficiency and cost savings if we are going to adopt this bill. Let me say that making insurance portable and permanent is something that I support. But I think that, if we are going to be honest with ourselves, it is very hard to do this with a straight face, which is what has been done in virtually every speech that has been given on the floor of the Senate this morning. We are talking about 25 million Americans who are going to benefit from this bill. This is a number that has been established independently of the Senate. We all rejoice in it--25 million beneficiaries of this bill, which is supposedly just a technical amendment. Yet I would point out to my colleagues, if you look through this bill, it does not appropriate one penny. It does not provide one cent. Now ask yourself, how are 25 million people going to benefit from this bill, through greater availability of health insurance and lower prices, if the Government and the Congress which passes this bill are not providing one single penny? Is it somehow magic that through Government edict we can bestow billions of dollars of benefits on our fellow citizens at no cost and no dislocation whatsoever? The answer to that is clearly no. I would like to begin by making a prediction. That prediction is, if we adopt this bill as it is written, at the end of the first full year of its implementation, the cost of individual private health insurance policies will rise by a minimum of 10 percent. I also believe that this is a conservative estimate. I believe that group policy rates will go up because we are going to produce, through this effort, several undesirable effects. I want to go through them to be absolutely sure that anybody who really wants to understand can do so, and because I think they make the argument for medical savings accounts and other reforms to try to offset the basic cost increase that is going to result from this bill as it is currently written. First of all, this bill guarantees that if a person wants private health insurance, they can get it. There may be a delay in the availability of benefits, depending on where the person works and when they have private health insurance, but under this bill, anybody who wants private health insurance at any time, under some circumstances, can get it. Furthermore, when someone comes into a group plan, no matter what the state of their health, they cannot be charged more than any other member of that group and if somebody leaves a private employer, they must be offered an individual insurance policy. What is the result of this going to be? It seems to me there are going to be positive as well as negative results. The entire debate so far has been about the positive result: 21 million people that do not have private health insurance will be able to get it, because we are saying by law that insurance companies must sell it to them. An estimated 4 million people who are locked into their job because they fear the loss of their health insurance if they move will benefit since they will be guaranteed the issuance of health insurance when they change jobs. These are the positive impacts of the proposed changes. But it is generally true, in the real world we live in, that not all impacts of dramatic changes are positive; let me outline some of the negative impacts. No. 1, we are going to end up, by guaranteeing availability, distorting health coverage. Young, healthy people, knowing that they are going to be able to qualify for private health insurance in some form--either through a group or as individuals--are going to have a greater incentive to not obtain the coverage that they have today. Why do young workers who are basically healthy buy private health insurance right now? Some might buy it because they are risk averse. But many buy it because they want to guarantee that in the future, when they may not be as healthy, they will have locked in their coverage. What this produces is a balanced distribution of people who are buying private health insurance--many people who are young and healthy and who are very modest users of health care as well as many people who are older and less healthy and who are heavy users of health care are all buying insurance. Since many young people buy private health insurance in order to lock in guaranteed health coverage in the future, to the degree that we mandate that insurance companies sell people health insurance no matter what the state of their health is, we eliminate one of the primary reasons that young people buy private health insurance. So the first negative impact of this bill is the creation of a new incentive for young people not to buy private health insurance. Under this bill we also have some rather extreme provisions. Before I mention one of them, let me say that I understand, when you are talking about health care, that it is hard to have a rational debate because you are talking about sick people who we can all empathize with. But I think it is important that we understand what we are doing if we are going to have a real debate in the Senate because, after all, that is our job--to understand what the implications are and to try to see that we make a rational decision. Under this bill, not only will young people with guaranteed ability at a later point to buy private health insurance have an incentive not to buy it today, but in designating a series of health benefits for which there is no waiting period, we create a special class of people who will buy health insurance when they know they are going to need it, such as in a pregnancy, and then cancel the policy after they receive the benefit--only to buy another policy when they are ready to use the benefit again. It is very difficult to quantify this, but anyone who read the article in the April 5 issue of the Wall Street Journal knows this is happening in States which have done exactly what we are proposing to do. So the first negative impact of this bill is that it eliminates one of the prime incentives for young, healthy people to buy private health insurance, and the second negative impact is that it distorts the risk pool in the process. The third thing it is going to do, which is part of the positive impact, is that the 21 million people who are sick today and as a result of being high risk have opted not to pay the going market rate-- or in some cases they simply have not been able to afford health insurance--the positive thing for them will be that they will now be able to buy health insurance. The fact that they will opt for coverage, while younger healthier people, knowing they can get it later, will opt not to get the coverage, however, will further distort the risk pool of insurance. What this will mean is that in America there will be more young, healthy people who do not opt for health insurance than we have today, and there will be more older, less healthy people who do. Given the inherent cost of changing the mix of people who are buying private health insurance, the inevitable result of this is going to be that you drive up the cost of insurance premiums. This is not just something that is theoretical, I know we have some study which says that costs are going to go up by some minuscule amount. I do not believe, however, that anybody who has looked at the experience of States like Washington could possibly believe this. I think what we are really looking at in this bill, independent of any other changes, is younger, healthier people dropping out and older, sicker people opting in. The net result of these shifts is going to be a substantial increase in insurance rates for those who have bought health insurance, for those who, in many cases, bought it when they were young and healthy in order to have a guarantee of insurability. The net result of this bill is going to be rising insurance costs. Now, this bill, in fact, anticipates this result and sets up a series of powers to help the States try to deal with these potential impacts. At some later point I am going to debate and possibly offer an amendment dealing with a provision on page 40 that gives the Secretary of Health and Human Services the power to disallow a State program to deal with rising costs unless it implements a mechanism to spread the risk and to limit rate increases. I do not think we ought to be dictating to the States what they can and cannot do in order to deal with a problem that this bill is going to cause. We have before us a bill that is going to help people, 25 million of them, and for these individuals it is going to be a godsend. But another 100 million people, who already have private health insurance and who are going to see their rates go up, are going to be losers from this reform. We are going to change behavior by inducing younger people to not buy into the system, and as a result rates will be raised. We are also going to bring sicker people into the system, and the final result is going to be a spike in insurance rates--just as has happened all over the country in States with similar programs. We have now some 29 States that have gone about this in a different way by creating risk pools to help people who have a preexisting condition get health insurance. We are, in essence, going to kill that off this approach by mandating that the insurance policy be sold in the way we dictate at the Federal level. There is a way to get the advantages to the 25 million people who will benefit from the bill and offset the cost to the 100 million who will lose from it. The way to do that is with fundamental reform which, it seems to me, can take two basic approaches. No. 1 is with medical savings accounts as will be offered by the majority leader. The idea behind the medical savings account is to change the Tax Code to allow an individual or a family to choose a high deductible insurance policy instead of a low deductible policy, and to put the savings from the resulting lower premiums into an account which is designated solely for the purpose of paying the policy's deductible. At the end of the year, if they do not spend that money on the deductible, they can roll it over for their retirement or take it out as income and pay taxes on it. What that means is that for routine type care they are spending their own money. Medical savings accounts empower the individual consumer to be cost conscious and provide a mechanism that will save the concept of fee-for-service medicine so those who do not want to be members of an HMO or a prepaid system can opt to stay in fee-for-service medicine and yet have incentives to be cost conscious. If we adopt the amendment of the distinguished majority leader, we will fundamentally change the health care market, and those savings will offset several times over the cost that is involved in driving up insurance rates for 100 million Americans to help the 25 million who will be beneficiaries of this program. A second reform, which is not contained in the Dole amendment, deals with medical liability. We have some estimates which indicate that 20 percent of the cost of medical care in America comes from expenditures that are aimed at keeping people out of the courthouse instead of keeping people out of the hospital and out of the grave. If we are going to make the changes envisioned in this bill, which in essence transfers costs to the people who have private health insurance--by raising their premiums--from people who do not have health insurance today, the way to offset that burden on people who have in essence done what we wanted them to do--bought private health insurance--is by allowing for medical savings accounts and dealing with medical liability. If we do not make these two changes, my fear is that 2 years from today, insurance rates, especially on individual policies outside of group plans--because under this bill we guarantee the availability of a policy to somebody who leaves their group plan--I am concerned that without medical savings accounts or without medical liability reform, we are going to see insurance rates spike and we are going to see States try to hold them down with rationing mechanisms and price controls. I think they are going to fail, as they are failing in Washington State today, and I think we are going to be right here 2 years from now debating a health care bill again, and the demand will be made to do something about exploding costs. Yet we will have produced these exploding costs with this bill. We have it in our power to help 25 million people and yet not hurt another 100 million people in order to pay for it. The way to do that is with a medical savings accounts and medical liability reform. In and of itself, this bill simply transfers income and assets from one group of Americans to another, and in the whole you have 25 million winners but you have 100 million losers. With reform, we can see that virtually every American family wins. If all we are doing is simply shifting risk, we are not dealing with the fundamental health care problem in America. So I hope my colleagues will vote for the Dole amendment. I think it is very important. I totally reject the idea that this is a simple bill and that we ought not to load it up with other items. If we do not have fundamental savings, this bill is going to cause insurance rates to explode, and we are going to be right back here 2 years from now debating socialized medicine again. I have debated that once, I am not eager to do it again, but if it is required, I certainly will. I yield the floor.