Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Bioterrorism and Public Health Preparedness, be authorized to hold a hearing during the session of the Senate on Thursday, July 14th at 10 a.m. in SD-430.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and the Indian Affairs Committee be authorized to hold a joint hearing during the session of the Senate on Thursday, July 14, 2005 at 2:30 p.m. in SD-430.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I raise a point of order under section 302(f) of the Congressional Budget Act that the amendment offered by Senator Shelby provides spending in excess of the subcommittee's 302(b) allocation.

Mr. GREGG. Thank you. Amendment No. 1217

Mr. GREGG. I believe we are ready to vote.

Mr. GREGG. I appreciate the courtesy of the Presiding Officer and the Senate. Amendment No. 1219 To Amendment No. 1124

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, we are about to begin a series of votes. There will be five votes. Many of these votes are on proposals to spend money above the allocations which we have in this budget. That is unfortunate and I think probably not good fiscal discipline or appropriate action. I do think, however, it is important to look at the underlying bill as to its substance and its implications because I believe, through a bipartisan effort on the Appropriations Committee, working closely with the Senator from West Virginia and other members of the committee, we have been able to put together a bill which responds to many of the concerns that our Senate colleagues and the American people have. I think if you ask the American people what they most fear relative to terrorist acts in the United States, it is terrorists who get their hands on a weapon of mass destruction. We know if biological or chemical weapons were used or, God forbid, a nuclear device was used in any of our major cities, the damage would be overwhelming. We know from his own testimony that it is Osama bin Laden's intention and the intention of his organizations to obtain those types of weapons and to try to use them against western cultures. Why? Because they are willing to kill people indiscriminately to make their political points. They are people without regard for human life, and they are people who act outside the boundaries of any norm of civilization. I think if you talk to most Americans, they will tell you they are concerned about our borders. The fact is they read every day in the papers and they see on the streets situations which reflect the fact that people are coming into our country unaccounted for, that we have approximately 3 million people every year who are entering this country illegally, that we have somewhere between 8 million and 16 million people who are in this country illegally, that of the 300 to 500 million people who come across our borders legally, we do not have any idea who most of these people are and what their purposes are. The vast majority of those people coming into this country legally are coming here to take advantage of America's good lifestyle or our business climate or to visit us and see our Nation, which we appreciate. But a very small percentage, unfortunately, come here with ill intent. And the American people rightly ask, Why is the Federal Government unable to control our borders? Of course, there is a history to this. We are a nation that has always honored the openness of our borders. I remember growing up in New Hampshire, as does the Presiding Officer. We took great pride as a nation in the fact that people in the northern tier could travel into Canada and people from Canada could travel into the United States at will. They did, and they still try to. They still do, to a large degree. People along our northern border in the New England region shop in Canada for their groceries. They get their haircuts in Canada. They take their boats up across the Canadian border and go fishing. And the same goes the other way. It used to be historically, until the Canadian dollar got a little weak, that the No. 1 tourist in New England was a Canadian coming down to take advantage of our coastlines or our mountains and enjoy the summer weather. So this relationship has built up over literally hundreds of years. But now we have to be more vigilant. We know that, and especially along our southern border, where not only are there people coming across the border who are coming here to seek jobs, but there are people coming across the border who wish us ill will. This bill has attempted to address this issue. We have done it in an aggressive way. As I said, there are 3 million people coming across our border illegally, as this chart shows. Of that group, unfortunately, a large number are not Mexicans. This is the biggest change we are seeing. For the most part, we know most people coming across our border who are of Mexican lineage are seeking jobs. They are seeking a better lifestyle. They are trying to improve their quality of life. We now also see a large number of people coming across the Mexican border illegally who are not Mexicans, almost 100,000 a year. This is a serious problem for us because we do not know what countries they come from, and we know some of the countries they come from have a history of producing individuals who wish us ill will. So what we did in this bill is we radically increased the number of Border Patrol agents. We are trying to expand our capacity as quickly as we can in putting feet on the ground on the border. That is what we have done here. We have added 1,000 new agents in this bill. We added 500 in the supplemental. That is 1,500 new agents. That is actually more than the Border Patrol has the capability to train--about 200 or 300 more--but we are putting pressure on them to accomplish that. We also have increased training facilities so next year we will hopefully be able to add 2,000 or 2,500, and the following year 2,500, and the following year 2,500. Our goal is to increase the number of Border Patrol agents by 10,000 people over the next 4 or 5 years. But we have to ramp up to it. This year we are making an aggressive step in that direction with 1,500. In addition, we have added over 4,100 detention beds because we know when a Border Patrol agent catches someone who is in this country illegally that, unfortunately, they are having to let a lot of people go or send them out on their personal recognizance. That is not acceptable. So we added 2,200 beds in this bill. We added 1,900 beds in the supplemental. We are ramping up our capacity to hold people here who may be a danger to us. This bill is focused on threat. That is the purpose of this bill. It realigns our efforts as a Senate to focus the Homeland Security effort on what are the priority threats, the No. 1 threat being weapons of mass destruction. The No. 2 threat is the fact that our borders are so porous.

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

Mr. GREGG

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

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Senate stand in recess until 4 o'clock.

Mr. GREGG

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

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

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be agreed to.

Mr. GREGG. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GREGG. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 1201

Mr. GREGG. I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 1155, as Modified

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask for the regular order with respect to McCain amendment No. 1151.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask for the regular order with respect to amendment No. 1075. It is Senator Voinovich's amendment.

Mr. GREGG. I appreciate the commitment of Senator Ensign and Senator McCain on the issue of border security. They have been aggressive in their commitment and have done a lot of constructive work. I will leave it to the Senate to decide how to handle this amendment. I make these points for the purpose of fair disclosure. First off, the amendment takes about $360 million out of the first responder program and moves it over to the Border Patrol for the purpose of hiring 1,000 new border agents. That means first responder money would go from $1.9 billion to $1.4 billion. In addition, the money that will be moved would be money that would go out under threat. In other words, there are two pools of first responder money. There is the money that is distributed on the basis of threat, and there is the money that is distributed on the basis of formula. Now, the language of the amendment says ``may.'' I respect the decision of the authors of this amendment to use the term ``may'' because that will leave it up to the Homeland Security agency to make the decision as to where the money should go, whether it should stay in the area of first responders or whether it should be moved over to the Border Patrol. That is probably good policy in many ways. The second thing I think that needs to be noted, however, is the reason we arrived at the number 1,000 that we funded--myself and Senator Byrd--in this bill for new Border Patrol is because when you combine that number with the supplemental, where there were 500 new Border Patrol agents added, you are up to 1,500 Border Patrol agents, and we know, through efforts of our staff and requests of the Department, that because of the facilities' restrictions--we moved most of the training from South Carolina over to New Mexico--we can only train probably about 1,300 agents a year right now. Now, this bill has money in it to get those facilities up to a position where they can do a much more robust effort in the area of training. In fact, my hope is next year we can train upwards of 2,500 when we expand these facilities. But right now they have, basically, limits on the number of people they can train. So it is not clear these additional Border Patrol agents would be able to be trained should we want to bring them on line. We do want to bring them on line; it is just a question when we can bring them on line. So that is a concern I think Members should know about. In addition, the physical effort of hiring Border Patrol agents has become a problem for the Border Patrol. One of the reasons they were not able to hire up to the 2,000, which was originally requested a few years ago, was because they could not find qualified people to meet the enlistment rolls. We are not sure whether they are going to be able to find 1,500 new Border Patrol people. We hope they will. It will put a lot of pressure on them to try to find 2,500 new people, which is what this number will be if this amendment is adopted. But, again, this is an issue of policy. I think the body has the right to make a decision on this issue. I do not intend to make any points of order against it. I will leave it to the majority of the body to decide where they want to have this money spent and how they want to set the policy on this issue when the amendment comes up for a vote. I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be agreed to.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, it appears we will be able to begin voting here around 6:30, just for Members' edification. The first vote will be on the point of order relative to the amendment of Senator Dodd, followed hopefully with a second amendment dealing with one of the amendments of Senator Akaka. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, we are in the process of trying to reach an understanding on votes. It is not clear what that understanding will be, but we do intend to have votes this evening, maybe as many as five. In addition, I understand the Senator from Nevada wishes to be recognized on an amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG

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

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I thank the Chair.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there now be a period for the transaction of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.