Phil Gramm

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Are we, in this bill, not setting out in detail, in fact in 753 pages of detail, how we are going to spend every penny of this $500 billion to $700 billion?

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, the point I make is that we have set out in detail how we are going to take $500 billion to $700 billion out of the pockets of blue-collar workers. Let me remind my colleagues that 73 percent of this money will be collected from people and families who earn less than $50,000 a year, and people who make less than $10,000 a year will see their Federal taxes rise by 41 percent as a result of this cigarette tax. That is set out in detail in the 753 pages of this bill. The 753 pages of this bill set out in detail how we are going to undertake the largest expenditure of taxpayer money since we initiated in the Great Society the year Lyndon Johnson became President, and each and every part is set out in here. My answer to the question is we shouldn't. We shouldn't be setting these fees. The assertion is we are setting everything else. We are setting an excise tax equivalent. We are setting the expenditure in minute detail for everything else. The legal fees will arise from this settlement, which will be adopted by Congress and signed by the President. So, if we are doing all of those things, why shouldn't we set fees? Obviously, we should.

Mr. GRAMM. I would be happy to yield.

Mr. GRAMM. I would say the argument is even stronger than that. The whole purpose of this 753 pages is to abrogate all of those court settlements. The whole purpose of this bill, the whole purpose of this 753 pages, is to interfere with each and every one of those court decisions. That is the whole purpose. So if we are going to set out how we are going to collect the money, if we are going to set out how we are going to spend the money, should we not set out how we are going to spend the money that relates to the portion of the settlement that will go to attorneys' fees? The second statement is we are abrogating contracts. Do we not have in this bill an arbitration panel that is supposed to set these legal fees? The answer is yes. We do. In fact, this bill sets out in some detail an arbitration panel that is going to set legal fees. So the argument that by setting out in law what the maximum legal fee is we are abrogating the contract, that is a house we passed 15 miles down the road in this bill, because this bill sets up an arbitration panel to set the fees. All the Senator from North Carolina is doing is saying, having decided that we are going to have fees set, let's let Members of the Senate stand up and cast a vote on this issue. Let's not hide behind some arbitration panel, which will be made up exclusively, I assume, of lawyers to make this decision. What is really the issue here? The issue here boils down to this: We understand that when we are looking at a payment, which has been estimated--and I think correctly--at roughly $4 billion to attorneys, given the billing records on the cases that have been tried, that comes--there are about 45,454 hours--what this really comes down to is about $88,000 an hour as a potential payment. Does anybody believe we would pass an appropriation bill paying some $88,000 an hour? Well, maybe some believe it. Maybe we would. But I think that you would be kind of embarrassed if you went back home and it became known that you were going to pay somebody more for working 3 hours than we pay the President of the United States for the entire year. I don't think so. Why do we have this kind of money in this bill? Because we are spending somebody else's money. Because as a prominent Democrat politician in my State said of this whole tobacco issue, ``We won the lottery. We won the lottery.'' All the Senator from North Carolina is doing is saying we are going to set the fee at five times the normal fee that is set. It seems to me that is imminently reasonable. As a matter of principle, if we were debating what our rules should be in this debate, my view is the States have settled these lawsuits and those settlements ought to stand. I believe that the Federal Government ought to be looking at Federal interests and letting the States settle these issues. If that were the case, then I think setting this arbitrary cap would make no sense. But the point is that is not what we are debating. We are debating this great big, thick bill that goes back in and changes the settlement which sets out the amount of money that is going to be paid, which pays a payment to the States that is not directly related to what they settled for, which sets out in detail how we are going to spend this almost unbelievable amount of money, even for Washington, DC. The idea that we would do all these things and then we would suddenly get squeamish when it comes down to guaranteeing that we are not going to pay plaintiffs' attorneys $88,000 an hour, I think if we are suddenly going to become immodest about what we are doing in this bill, if shame is suddenly going to enter into our thinking, it is a little bit late at this point. So I agree that this whole exercise has us doing things we ought not to be doing. But this is not my bill. I perfectly well understand this is not the bill of the Senator from Tennessee. His sentiments on the bill are the same as mine. I hope we can improve it. I hope we can find something we can all be for. But I wanted to make my point, that to say we shouldn't be setting this fee when we are setting everything else doesn't make any sense. To say we shouldn't be abrogating contracts when the bill specifically abrogates contracts, it just does it through this arbitration board, which we shouldn't hide behind. I think the choice is clear, and I am for the amendment.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, first of all, I always welcome Senator Kennedy giving me lectures about supply and demand. I wish I believed in my heart that he believed in supply and demand. Secondly, one of the purposes of the bill is to add teeth to the provision about hiring Americans first. This is done by imposing a $25,000 fine on people who displace American workers in order to hire H-1B workers, or people who violate the law that prohibits hiring these workers at less than the current wage rate. Obviously, we are talking about very talented people when we are talking about people coming in for salary of $75,000. I have to admit that I am somewhat struck by the paradox. Only last week, we were debating an effort I had undertaken to make people who come to America, come with their sleeves rolled up, rather than their hand held out to get food stamps; and last week the Senate voted to give them food stamps for 7 years. When the Senator from Michigan says, we should let very talented people come and not let them work for less than Americans, and if they can bring talent that will make American products more competitive and help create American jobs, we should let them come in and work in limited numbers, under strict requirements. I think one might be confused to hear that we are perfectly willing to let people come here and go on welfare; it is when they want to come and go to work that we have an objection. Well, I do not. I go back to the point that the companies who are hiring these people are not companies that are in decline. I know the Senator feels this concern in his heart, and I have no doubt about the sincerity of his position. If these were companies in decline and they were trying to drive down their wage base by simply hiring people with standard skills to displace Americans, I would be siding with Senator Kennedy. But what is happening here is companies that are using this program are our most innovative companies. They are the companies that have the most talented workers that they can hire in our country. They are our fastest growing companies. They are companies that are creating jobs now, and they are laying the technological foundations that will create hundreds, thousands, and ultimately millions of jobs in the future. They want to reach out in the world and pick the most talented, the best and the brightest, to come to America on a temporary basis and help us develop the technology that will create jobs--good jobs, high- paying jobs, $75,000-a-year jobs--for our own workers. So I strongly support the provision offered by the Senator from Michigan. I do believe that the amendments offered by the Senator from Massachusetts are well intended, but I think they are wrongheaded in the sense that, in the name of protecting jobs, we are keeping out a very small number of very select people who are working at labs at Harvard University, or working in Silicon Valley, or working in research institutes all over the country to create technology that puts millions of our people to work. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, I thank our dear colleague for yielding. I congratulate him on this bill, the American Competitiveness Act. Over the years, we have wisely attracted the best and brightest to America. We have recognized that having talented people come to our country to work has not only not displaced American workers, but it has created an intellectual base that has help create millions of jobs. I want to congratulate Senator Abraham for this bill. I think it is vitally important, and I am proud to be a supporter of the bill. I think it is interesting to note that the companies most strongly supporting Senator Abraham's bill are America's fastest growing companies. These are the companies that are creating most of the new jobs in America. Especially those companies that are in high-tech areas and research areas that are primarily responsible for generating the new products, the new know-how and the new technology that will create jobs now and in the 21st century. I understand that Senator Kennedy will be offering two amendments. Although they have not technically been offered yet, I know enough about the amendments to know that I am opposed to them. Senator Kennedy is trying to preserve the jobs of the 1950s. Senator Abraham is trying to create jobs now and in the 21st century. Senator Kennedy believes that if we can keep new, talented people out of America, as a contributory factor to the intellectual base of our country, we can induce innovative businesses to hire more Americans. Senator Abraham understands that we need an intellectual base to help us create the products and the technology that will create thousands and ultimately millions of new jobs. In these two amendments that will be offered, we really have a debate between the past and the future. The past deals with the idea that we can somehow protect jobs by keeping talented people out of the country. The future is a recognition that America has literally drained the brain talent of the world by bringing talented people to America, and, in the process, talented people here have found more opportunity, more freedom, than any other people who have lived. They have created an economic system that is unrivaled throughout the world. The first amendment Senator Kennedy will offer states that if a company brings in an H-1B visa worker, and later has to lay someone off, the company is in violation of the law. The problem is that in dealing with innovative companies, people are hired based on creating new products and based on success of their research. To force a company to guarantee that it will not, in the next 6 months, have to lay anyone off is to ask them to guarantee the success of their research. As we know from the experience of Europe, which is still trying to follow the policies of the 1950s that are built into the Kennedy amendments, if a company does not have the right to lay people off when a project fails, it can not take the risk to hire the very people who make it possible for it to succeed. The second amendment deals with giving the Labor Department the ability to make a final judgment and to second-guess an employer as to whether or not a person who is a resident of the United States could have been found to do the work. I simply want to remind my colleagues that the existing law states that a company can not bring in an H-1B worker from outside and pay them less than either the prevailing wage or the actual wage. So it is not a case of bringing in people who will work for less. Also, the bill offered by Senator Abraham strengthens current law by providing a $25,000 fine and a 2-year debarment from the program for those who willfully violate the law. So the question is: If there are talented people who can come to our universities, to our research labs, to our high-tech companies bringing with them human capital that can help us create technology and products that will put millions of our own people to work, why not ask them to come to America, instead of inducing American companies to invest abroad in order to employ them in their country? It seems to me that the most revealing thing about this whole debate is the companies that use this H-1B program are the companies that have the fastest growing employment base of American citizens. We are not talking about companies that are experiencing declining employment trying to bring in technical people from abroad. It is companies in Silicon Valley that want to bring in people with special expertise. This will allow these companies, through the application of their genius to practical business problems, to hire hundreds and ultimately thousands more people. If Senator Kennedy's amendments were valid, the companies that use this program would be companies where employment is declining. But the plain truth, as is evident to anyone who looks at the data, is that the companies using these programs are companies that are creating the largest number of jobs in America. So if Microsoft--assuming the Government doesn't put them out of business by trying to limit technology--can put hundreds of thousands of Americans to work by bringing someone to this country who has special expertise, why not let them do it. Especially when this bill strengthens the law by imposing a $25,000 fine on companies that violate procedures aimed at dealing with the legitimate problems raised by Senator Kennedy and others---that people will be brought here who will work for less and therefore undercut the wage base of American workers. So I hope these two amendments will be defeated. I think it is very revealing that our high-tech industries say they would rather not have the bill if the Kennedy amendments are adopted. That suggests to me that the purpose of the amendments are to kill the bill.

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, I ask the Senator from Michigan to yield me an additional 5 minutes.

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, would the distinguished chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee yield me 5 minutes to speak on behalf of his bill and against the Kennedy amendments?

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. So we required that you have real people filing a real lawsuit. We also required that if you are going to file a lawsuit, you have to say specifically what the company did wrong. We further established a procedure whereby you did not have to go through this lengthy and expensive discovery process while the court was considering whether there was even enough merit in the case to proceed further with it. We also eliminated the ability to go after the people that had deep pockets, even though they had no real, substantive liability. Finally, where it was clear that the lawsuit was frivolous, we gave the judge the responsibility to require that the people who filed the lawsuit paid the legal expenses of those who found themselves pulled into court. It was a good bill, and it is beginning to have an impact. Our problem is that in trying to circumvent it, the same people filing the same lawsuits started to move into State court. So we have written a bill that tries to set uniform national standards. It applies only to class-action suits. It applies only to stocks that are traded nationally. It is eminently reasonable. It is clearly within the purview of the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution. This is a bill that needs to be passed. I thank everybody who has been involved in it for their leadership. We will have a series of amendments. We voted on every one of them in committee. Every one of these amendments is aimed at killing the bill by undercutting the basic premise of the bill, which is when you are dealing with nationally traded securities, you need national standards. So I hope our colleagues will join us in the process of defeating these amendments and approving the bill. I thank the Chair.

Mr. GRAMM. Madam President, I often find myself having to speak at length in the Chamber when I do not have the votes. On this bill, I am in the happy position that we have the votes. We are going to win. We are going to defeat all of the amendments, because we have a good bill, and we have a very broad base of support. So I have often found that when you have the votes, it is best not to speak at length. However, as the author of the legislation, I wanted to say just a couple of things. First, I thank Chairman D'Amato for his leadership. I want people to know that without his principal leadership on this bill, we would not be here. He was instrumental in helping us pull the coalition together. He set a time schedule on bringing the bill before the full committee, and I thank him for his leadership. I believe this legislation will benefit the country. I think we will create jobs, growth, and opportunity from enactment of the bill, and I think that Chairman D'Amato is due a lion's share of the credit. I thank Senator Dodd. I don't think anybody in the Senate has a better, more cooperative ranking member than I do as chairman of the Securities Subcommittee. I thank Senator Dodd for his leadership. The bottom line on this bill is that in 1995 we sought to act to deal with the problem of economic piracy through the courts. We had found ourselves in a position where lawsuits were being filed against companies if their stock price went up, if their stock price went down, if their stock price did not change. New, emerging companies were the special targets of these lawsuits. These are the companies that had great technical ideas but did not have a whole bevy of lawyers on their payroll, and they were finding themselves basically being extorted, as people filed lawsuits that often were just boilerplate documents. These suits were so boilerplate that at times the name of the company being sued was confused in the documents filed in the court. And so we stepped in to try to do something about it, and we passed a bill called the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, Public Law 104-67. That legislation basically did five things. No. 1, it said that you had to have a client; that you could not have a lawyer who filed a bunch of motions representing nobody in reality and just collecting a whole bunch of money. The legislation said that there had to be genuine clients, and the client that stood the most to gain could be the lead client and had the privilege to choose the lawyer, and the lawyer had to be accountable to the people who were filing the lawsuit. You all heard the statement that our chairman quoted, about the bragging of the lead lawyer in this area. Are my 3 minutes up?

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, the Senator is not going to speak on behalf of my amendment; he just wants to speak on the bill itself.

Mr. GRAMM. Let me repeat my request. Since the Senator is not going to engage in the debate before us, but has relevant comments about the bill before us, and we hope, obviously another motion, infinite number of motions are in order, but we hope this will settle the order, I make a unanimous consent request that the Senator have 5 minutes.

Mr. GRAMM. I would like 5 additional minutes, then, as well.

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

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

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I yield the Senator from Alabama 3 minutes.

Mr. GRAMM. I voted no, I would like the Senator to be aware of that.

Mr. GRAMM. I did. And I voted no.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from New Mexico.

Mr. GRAMM. How much time do I have?

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I think Senator Lugar put his finger on the situation when he said that the President would veto the agriculture research bill and crop insurance if the bill didn't contain $818 million worth of new food stamps adding 250,000 people to the food stamp rolls. I believe that is piracy. I do not believe the President would veto this bill. Further, I am confident that we would override his veto, and I think it is imperative that we start standing up and defending the major actions we take, and welfare is one of those actions. This bill is going to effectively raise the level of spending in the Federal Government by $1.86 billion, because we are going to pay for four entitlement programs in this bill, and we are going to free up $1.86 billion to be spent on discretionary spending. I intend to oppose the bill. I hope my colleagues will vote for this motion. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I send a motion to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration. I will have it read.

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

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I rise today in opposition to the pending conference report. At 2:15, I will be recognized to offer a motion to recommit. What I would like to do in my limited time today is sort of outline how a good bill goes bad through the legislative process. We passed, in the Senate, a bill funding ag research. The House passed a bill funding ag research. These were not controversial matters, although the method of funding the Senate bill was to some degree controversial. But what happened is when the two Houses met, a simple bill to fund ag research for $517 million suddenly became a $1.9 billion program. Three brand new mandatory, or entitlement, programs-- depending on which term you prefer--were created, and suddenly we are voting in a conference report which is technically unamendable on provisions that were never voted in either House of Congress. One of my predecessors, Lyndon Johnson, used to say, ``I deeply resent a deal that I'm not part of.'' And I understand how these things happen, but I simply want to talk about the problems with this bill and focus on the big problem with the bill, which is related to overturning welfare reform. Going back to where we started, we had an ag research bill in the House, we had an ag research bill in the Senate. We went to conference, and we ended up with a bill that funds crop insurance, which was in neither original bill, and not only funds it but, for the first time ever, makes it a mandatory program which Congress will not vote on again, funding will be automatic over the next 5 years as a result of this program. The original bill had no hint of food stamps in it. The issue was never debated. I do not believe that a similar provision, if brought to the floor of the Senate under our rules for full debate, could have possibly passed. And, yet, in a simple bill on ag research, we now have $818 million of funding for food stamps. All of these food stamps go to immigrants who have come to the country and who now have legal status. We had, through the welfare reform bill, eliminated these benefits in a bill which passed both Houses of Congress overwhelmingly and, by the way, is, in terms of the public's mind, the most popular bill that we have passed in the last 3 years. This bill, in a provision that was voted on in neither House of Congress, overturns a substantial portion of our welfare reform bill and gives $818 million of food stamps to immigrants. The bill also sets up a brand new funding mechanism for the Fund for Rural America and provides a $100 million entitlement, which spends out very slowly, but it ultimately spends out every penny of $100 million. So we now have four entitlement programs in a simple bill that set out to fund ag research. And every program that becomes an entitlement, since we are under a spending cap on discretionary spending--every penny that would have been spent on these programs is now free to spend on other programs. So, in addition to creating four new entitlement programs, we have, in this bill, broken our commitment to limit the growth of discretionary spending, because we have taken discretionary programs and funded them as entitlements, so that now new spending can occur in the discretionary area. The biggest problem with the bill is it puts a great big neon sign on the border of the United States of America, and the neon sign says: ``Come to America and get welfare. We have a welfare office on every corner.'' That is the biggest problem with this bill. I remind my colleagues that when a Member of the minority tried to reduce the level of immigration, I helped lead the effort to kill limiting legal immigration. I believe in legal immigration. I do not believe America is full. I don't want to tear down the Statue of Liberty. The story of the immigrant is the story of America, and I don't think that story is finished telling. I believe that we need to let people with a new vision and new energy come to America as long as they don't violate our laws and they come legally, but I want them to come with their sleeves rolled up ready to go to work, rather than with their hands held out going on welfare. I will offer a motion to recommit with instructions at 2:15 p.m. That is a very simple motion. All it says is one little provision in this bill, which I think is a relatively minor cost, because we are scoring the bill over 5 years, but it is clearly the most destructive element in this bill, and that is we have an element in this bill that says that no matter how far in the future you come to America, if you come 75 or 100 years from now, under the provisions of this bill, if you come as a refugee, you can get food stamps for 7 years. That is a new provision of law in place in this conference report. It is a provision where we are moving in exactly the opposite direction of the welfare reform bill, and we now make it permanent law that anyone who comes to America in the future as a refugee can be guaranteed they are going to be able to apply for and get almost immediately 7 years of food stamps. Now, look, my concern is adverse selection. My concern is that we are going to be attracting people to come to America to go on welfare. I think it is a destructive policy to have active enticements to draw people to America for the purpose of going on welfare rather than for the purpose of going to work. I don't have any doubt that this provision will affect the decision of people to come to America to try to live off the fruits of someone else's labor. There are millions of people who go to bed every night dreaming the American dream. They want to come to America. They want to share what we have shared. Many Members of the Senate are Members whose grandfathers and grandmothers or great grandfathers and great grandmothers came to America looking for opportunity. I don't believe that process should end. But I think it is suicidal for a nation to set up procedures that attract people to come to its shores, not with a dream of opportunity, not with a dream of achievement, but with a dream of benefiting from the fruits of someone else's labor. My wife's grandfather came to this country from Korea. He didn't know the language. He didn't know a single soul here. He certainly did not come here looking for welfare or food stamps. He came here looking for opportunity and freedom, and he found both. From the period of the Civil War to the turn of the century, we had 20 million people come to America, most of them desperately poor. But they came here with willing hands and willing hearts, they rolled up their sleeves, and they built a great nation in the process. My strong objection to the provisions in this bill really boils down to a series of things: Should we be creating four new permanent, mandatory entitlement programs? I say no. And secondly, should we be changing the law to say to people all over the world, ``Come to America and we will give you 7 years of food stamps"? I want people to come to America, but I want them to come to work.