Judd Gregg

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from Tennessee 5 minutes.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I appreciate the very concise and accurate summation of this amendment, its purposes, and how it would affect spending by the Senator from Tennessee. I do think it is appropriate to respond even a little further on this issue. The purpose of this amendment is to basically give the people who are defending us on our borders--the border security agents, the Customs agents, the Coast Guard--the tools they need to do their job right, which includes the airplanes, the unmanned vehicles, the boats, the cars, and the helicopters. That is clearly a critical element of our national defense in the fight in the war on terrorism. It has to be done. It has to be done now. For example, the Senator from Tennessee noted that the one unmanned vehicle on the southwest border crashed--it is fairly ironic it would crash this week, but it crashed this week--so we now have none. We need to replace that. We not only need to replace it, we have to add about three or four more. It costs money, and this amendment would accomplish that. We know that has to be done if we are going to get the borders under control. With the proper capital support, with the proper technical support, and with the proper number of people on the border, we can bring the border under control. We are on a path to do that. We added 1,500 agents. We are going to add another 1,500 agents this year. We are adding them as fast as we can hire them. But the problem is hiring is a little difficult because they are high-quality people, and we get about 40,000 applicants for every 1,500 we can hire, so it takes a while to ramp up. But with this capital support, we will have to accomplish that, and we will have the border under control, in the near term. But this argument coming from the other side: Well, you should not pay for this initiative, is just plain wrong. We are a country which, if we are going to remain strong and vibrant, has to be fiscally responsible and set priorities. Now, it was my priority, quite honestly my personal priority, that we pay for this by taking out of the emergency request that came up from the Defense Department a number of items which really are not clearly emergencies. They go more to the core operation of the Defense Department, but I think they were put in the emergency because they thought it was maybe a way to pick up those dollars and not have to worry about them in their basic underlying budget. I suggested the modernity initiative, which is about $3.5 billion and would essentially have paid for this initiative in the Border Patrol, be taken out and replaced by the Border Patrol needs which are an emergency. They are an emergency. The planes are not flying. The UAV crashed. We do not have enough boats. The cars aren't running. The facilities are not there. It is an emergency. The Defense modernity is something we need to do, but it should be done and built out over the basic defense budget. There are a couple of other items in this emergency supplemental that also fall into that category, such as the V-22 Osprey purchase. But I went to the people who understand defense spending around here, and I said: How should we pay for this? I went to Senator Stevens. My staff talked to Senator Warner's staff, Senator Cochran. And they said they would rather pay for it the way the amendment has been structured with basically an unidentified across-the-board cut--it is not going to even be across the board but an unidentified reduction to the overall number, giving the Defense Department the flexibility to find those dollars within the $530 billion they will spend, $2 billion. So to come down here and allege that these funds are going to come out of the needs of the people who are on the front lines in Iraq or Afghanistan is pure poppycock, pure. And to make that representation is hyperbole and waving a red flag, which is totally inappropriate to this debate because if they read the amendment and they recognize how the amendment was structured, they would know that would never happen. They do know it would never happen. They are down here just trying to get attention for their position and make an excuse for why they are not willing to pay for their proposal. The fact that it will not happen is because when you line up Senator Stevens and Senator Warner and Senator Cochran on one side, and you put the folks who are saying the opposite on the other side, I tend to come down on the side of those three Senators as knowing more about what we are going to do and what we need in defense than necessarily the critics of this amendment. These are the people who have stood by our Defense Department for not only this year but for generations. When the defense was being cut, savaged basically under the Clinton administration, when it was basically being hollowed out under a Democratic Congress in the early 1990s, it was people like Senator Stevens and Senator Warner who stood on this floor and tried to stop it. It is those folks who have built the Defense Department back up so our soldiers have what they need so we have a strong national defense. They came to me and said: We would like to see your amendment done this way rather than the way you proposed. And I said: OK. You are the experts. I am perfectly willing to follow your suggestion. So this argument that is being thrown out on the other side is a straw dog. The issue is, as Senator Alexander has framed it, a question of whether we are going to set priorities, whether, when we say we are going to do something about the Border Patrol needs, Coast Guard needs, Customs needs in the area of capital assets--such as planes and helicopters, unmanned vehicles--we are going to do that, and whether we are going to prioritize so that goes to the top of the list or close to the top of the list of our national priorities, and so it is paid for and is not put into debt. So the choice, as Senator Alexander has reflected, is: Are you going to pay for it or aren't you going to pay for it? Are you going to be a big spender or are you going to be somebody who is fiscally responsible? The amendment I have put forward is a fiscally responsible amendment which will have no negative impact on any soldier who is in the field or on our operational capabilities in Afghanistan or Iraq. That representation clearly is inappropriate and wrong. I take a little bit of umbrage at it. I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of our time.

Mr. GREGG. The Senator is absolutely correct. We have attempted in the past to get these capital funds for the Border Patrol without paying for it, and the language has been dropped as it worked its way through the process. This is a priority we should be willing to pay for. As responsible governors of the purse of the American people, we should pay for it rather than just put it on the debt.

Mr. GREGG. I reserve the remainder of the time.

Mr. GREGG. I suggest the absence of a quorum and ask unanimous consent that the time be applied to both sides equally.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. GREGG

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

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, we are now on the supplemental appropriations bill. One of the issues raised in the supplemental appropriations bill, of course, is national defense. The purpose of this bill is primarily to fund efforts to fight terrorism and especially to make sure that our troops in Iraq and in Afghanistan have what they need in order to effectively fight terrorism. A big part, however, of national defense is clearly border security--being sure that we know who comes into this country, know what their purposes are when they come into this country, and whether they are coming into this country for the purpose of visiting us or maybe participating in our economy or for the purpose of doing us harm. Unfortunately, we have for a number of years experienced borders which are very porous. That is a function of our history--where we have always believed in open borders, especially with our neighbors to the north and to the south. That has been one of our great attitudes as a nation--that we are an inviting nation, and we have always felt strongly that we should have reasonably open borders. But in the post-9/11 world--and especially in light of the dramatic number of people who have been coming into our country illegally--we can no longer tolerate that approach, unfortunately. We need to put more aggressive effort into making sure that we know who is coming over the borders and limiting those folks coming over our borders to people who want to come in here legally and who do not want to do us harm. As a result of that, we have undertaken for the last couple of years an aggressive effort to significantly increase the number and the effort of our Border Patrol agencies--Customs, Border Patrol, Coast Guard, and ICE. In fact, over the last 1\1/2\ years we have dramatically increased funding for all of these different agencies. This chart lists those types of increases in those prior supplementals and in the last appropriations bill relative to border security. We increased Border Patrol agents by 1,500. That is a lot. That is an increase of over 10 percent in agents, an increase in detention officers by 650 officers, investigators, and detention beds--again, by almost 10 percent. This is a significant ramping up of the number of, for lack of a better word, boots on the ground on our border--especially on our southern border. That is exactly what we needed to do. In fact, as we move into the outyears, the administration--the President specifically--has made a strong commitment to try to continue this increase in our border security. This chart reflects how many agents we intend to add every year so that we can make sure we have the necessary personnel on the border in order to make sure that we can limit dramatically--in fact, basically stop--illegal immigration into this country, especially along the southern border. The reason we have added 1,500 agents so far--and we intend to add another 1,500 or 2,000--and the reason we are not adding more every year is because the infrastructure can't handle any more, to be honest with you. We can't train more, and we actually can't find more agents. In many instances, people who qualify--I have forgotten the numbers. I think it is something like 30,000 or 40,000 applications that we have to go through in order to get down to 1,500 agents. It is actually hard to become a Border Patrol agent from a percentage standpoint of the number of people applying for the job versus the number of people who actually end up getting the job. It is harder to become a Border Patrol agent than it is to get into Harvard. That is because Border Patrol agents require special skills. They are talented people. And the type of folks we want to draw into this responsibility are people who have to have a tremendous amount of ability and expertise, and they are very hard to find. But they are good people, and we are adding to them dramatically. We intend to get the Border Patrol up to 20,000 agents and an increase of detention beds of another 10,000. We will be literally able to control the southern border. We will no longer have this issue of people coming cross the southern border in waves illegally. Literally, we can stop that. We can do it, and we intend to do it. There is no issue about this. We intend to do this. However, we have found in ramping up the number of Border Patrol agents they have run into a fairly significant problem. As an aside, I note that the only reason we have been able to increase these Border Patrol agents so dramatically is because Senator Cochran, as chairman of the full Appropriations Committee, has allowed the subcommittee, which I chair--the Homeland Security Subcommittee-- to get special allocations in order to fund those. It has really been out of his courtesy, his energy, and the support of Senator Frist in this effort that we have been successful in basically increasing these numbers. We are on this path of basically being able to have enough boots on the ground in the Border Patrol area and Customs area and ICE area in order to adequately control the border. What we found going through this process of expanding dramatically Border Patrol agents and Customs and ICE agents is that the infrastructure to support these people isn't there. They are driving old cars. For the most part they are flying helicopters which are 20 years over their useful life. Customs is actually flying airplanes that are 20, 30, or 40 years over their useful life. In fact, just recently the Customs agency was forced to basically ground all its Customs planes for a brief period of time, and the P-3 fleet, which is 40 years old, because these types of cracks developed in their wings. They obviously couldn't fly them. So they had to repair all of them--or not all but those that had this potential type of stress. We have a very old fleet of aircraft. They are not able to do the job. Equally important, in the technology area where we really should be more aggressive and where we really have the capability of having a huge impact along the border through surveillance capabilities--not necessarily require people, but it can be done by electronics such as unmanned aerial vehicles--we only have one flying the border. Regrettably, that one crashed today. It is ironic that we have this amendment on the floor. The one UAV we have actually crashed. So we don't really have unmanned aerial surveillance. This is in the Arizona area. We think actually we should not only have one but that we should have a fair number of UAVs on the border. The situation with the purchase and buildup of UAVs is that if we are to stay with the present budget projections, we wouldn't have the full compliment that we would need for 4 or 5 years. The amendment I offer today is an amendment to try to address the capital needs of border security in the Customs account, in the Coast Guard account, in the Border Patrol account, and in the ICE account-- the capital operational needs, not the people on the ground but the capital needs which are deemed to be in an emergency distress situation. Why is this justifiable on this bill? Because this bill is about defense, especially relative to terrorism. Yet fighting the war in Iraq is critical to this war on terrorism, and fighting the war in Afghanistan is critical to the war on terrorism, but I think equally important is making sure that our borders are secure. That is as big an issue as we have today in the area of fighting the war on terrorism. We can't be effective on that issue unless we have the resources and the people in order to take care of securing the border. We are moving toward getting the people, and we are bringing them on line as fast as we can in the context of our capability to hire new people. But what we do not have is the resources to be able to support these folks. This amendment will essentially accomplish that. It will add money for airplanes, and specifically to try to address the issue of flying all of these P-3s that are so old. The vast majority of this money will be for aircraft--over $700 million of it. It will add money for purchasing more UAVs so we can get these UAVs in the air sooner rather than later. It cost about $30 million to put one of these up, to put the electronics behind it and the command center behind it. It will add money for purposes of construction so that as we add these new Border Patrol agents and these other new agents in these other departments, they will have the physical facilities to be able to handle their day- to-day operational needs. It will add cars and SUVs, which are so critical, especially in some of these harsh frontier-type environments which they face along the border. It adds helicopters. Almost all the helicopters they are flying today are 20 years over their useful life. We replace those. In the area of the Coast Guard, it will put in the water the type of boats they need in order to chase down the boats that are basically being used for illegal transportation of people into this country. And it will also assist the Coast Guard in advancing their aircraft capability in that area. All of this is critical to putting in place the infrastructure to make sure that as we put the people on the ground, they have the assets necessary in order to effectively control the borders. It is an emergency. These facilities are either not there today, such as in the case of UAVs, or they are not working well today, such as in the case of the P-3s, or they simply have not been ungraded to the point of being effective as we move forward with this larger basically human commitment on the ground, such as in the case of headquarters and facilities for these folks to work out of, helicopters to move them around, and automobiles to move them around, or fast craft for the Coast Guard to use to get out there and do their job. It needs to be stressed that this amendment is completely paid for. It is paid for within the context of the President's initial presentation. The President sent up here initially a $92 billion proposal for emergency spending for the purposes of fighting the war on terror and addressing the issue of Katrina. Of that $92 billion, approximately $69 billion was specifically for fighting the war. We have basically reallocated within that $69 billion money to pay for this initiative. I feel very strongly, as do the cosponsors of this bill--and I will get to who the cosponsors are of this bill because it is important--that this issue be addressed sooner rather than later; that we give our Border Patrol agents the tools they need, Customs the tools they need, the Coast Guard the tools they need, in order to secure the border. This will be a major step forward in making sure we accomplish this goal. The goal is to make sure, at least on the southern border, that we know who is coming across the border, that we can control that border, and we do it in the near term rather than waiting for the long term. It is a fully paid-for amendment, keeping the proposal the President sent up here, keeping the integrity of that proposal, relative to the top line number which was about $92.5 billion. So this amendment is done in that context. It does not take money from the additions that came out of committee. I happen to believe those additions were inappropriate. I am hopeful they will all fall by the wayside except for the avian flu one which is a legitimate emergency, and that when this bill is completed, either in the Senate or in the conference, it will be back to the original number prepared by the President. I suppose I could have gone into the additional funding and taken it right out of that, but that would not be a legitimate approach. I am trying to make sure this offset is legitimate to the initial number which was $92 billion. This amendment is cosponsored by myself, by the majority leader, Senator Frist, who has been a tremendous advocate for this type of initiative, and by the senior Senator on the Democratic side, Senator Byrd, who also happens to be the ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations and the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Homeland Security. I very much appreciate Senator Byrd's cosponsorship and obviously greatly appreciate Senator Frist's cosponsorship. Again, I stress none of this would be able to be accomplished had it not been for the efforts which were well beyond what one might have expected from the Senator from Mississippi who a year and a half ago-- after the administration regrettably sent up a budget which was woefully short because they allocated incorrectly for homeland security--he came forward and gave us an allocation which allowed us to put in place the people on the ground, the extra 1,500 border people, the extra beds which we are now trying to give to the backup facilities with what I would call a capital funding initiative for emergency capital needs of the Border Patrol. It was the Senator from Mississippi, the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, who was able to get us on this path to a constructive and appropriate approach for addressing the border issue. I believe the amendment is at the desk and I ask it be reported.

Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. GREGG. I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I hereby submit to the Senate the budget scorekeeping report prepared by the Congressional Budget Office under section 308(b) and in aid of section 311 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, as amended. This report meets the requirements for Senate scorekeeping of section 5 of S. Con. Res. 32, the first concurrent resolution on the budget for 1986. This report shows the effects of congressional action on the 2006 budget through April 4, 2006. The estimates of budget authority, outlays, and revenues are consistent with the technical and economic assumptions of the 2006 concurrent resolution on the budget, H. Con. Res. 95. Pursuant to section 402 of that resolution, provisions designated as emergency requirements are exempt from enforcement of the budget resolution. As a result, the attached report excludes these amounts. The estimates show that current level spending is under the budget resolution by $11.785 billion in budget authority and by $4.226 billion in outlays in 2006. Current level for revenues is $17.288 billion above the budget resolution in 2006. This is my first report for the second session of the 109th Congress. I ask unanimous consent that the accompanying letter and material be printed in the Record.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I would just suggest that since the Senator from Georgia is here and the Senator from Louisiana is here and I am here and I know the Senator from Vermont is here, since he is the floor leader, he would probably want to proceed. Do you have a statement you are proceeding with, I presume?

Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Vermont be recognized for as much time as he may desire and then the Senator from Georgia be recognized for 15 minutes, the Senator from Louisiana for 15 minutes, and then I be recognized for 15 minutes, and that will get us to approximately the 45 minutes the Senator was talking about.

Mr. GREGG. That sounds reasonable to me.

Mr. GREGG. I yield the floor. I thank the Senator from Vermont and the Senator from Massachusetts.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, obviously the issue before the Senate is a critical issue--how we maintain the atmosphere of this Nation, which is basically the essence of our definition of a culture, which is that we are a society which invites people from around the world to participate in our society. It was the reason we went with the motto, E pluribus unum: from many, one. How we maintain that atmosphere, that way of life which has given us so much energy as a nation, that has given so many people the opportunity to pursue the American dream, is what this debate is all about. Whatever we do, we do not want to, in my opinion, chill that great tradition which is the engine for our strength as a nation. People come here seeking a better life, and as a result they energize society to be even more productive, successful, and stronger. We are, as has been mentioned by most of the speakers today, most all of us immigrants. Certainly everyone in the Senate since the departure of the great Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell falls into that category. The issue, in my opinion, breaks into two obvious parts. The first is how you secure the border. The second is how you deal with the fact there is a large number of people in this country who are here illegally today and that there is a large number of people who wish to come to this country for the purposes of earning a living, and that they will come into this country however they can--and if it is illegal, they will come here illegally--and how we would change that atmosphere. On the first issue, which has been discussed and which is the purpose of the bill before the Senate, the bill filed by the Senate majority leader, this is very resolvable. We can secure our borders. That has been said by everyone. And we should. We must. We cannot as a culture survive if we do not have borders which are secure, if we do not know who is coming into the country, if we do not know who is coming here. If we have large numbers of people who are coming into this Nation illegally, it undermines us as a nation of laws. There is no question but this can be resolved. It does not take a lot of new law to do that, to be very honest. We can pretty well control who is coming into this country. I want to get into the specifics of how we do that because I have the good fortune to chair the subcommittee which has jurisdiction over the borders in the appropriations area. I will talk about what we need there. Before I do that, I also want to address this issue of amnesty and guest worker and how we deal with the folks who are here and who are here illegally. Let's assume for the moment we are able to secure the southern border, which I think we can. It might take 2 or 3 years, but I am absolutely sure we can do that, so that the vast majority of the people coming across our southern borders will come across in some manner which is legal, for a purpose which is not to harm us. That is a little more difficult to do on the northern border. We do not have the human wave coming across the northern border. The northern border is probably more of a terrorist threat to us, actually, in many ways, but it does not have the human wave issue that we see on the southern border. The question becomes, how do you deal with the folks who are already here illegally? There is this term, we cannot give them amnesty; amnesty is wrong. Well, as a practical matter, they already have amnesty. Our system is not able to deal with these individuals unless they become criminals, unless they commit an act which violates our law in an open way, commit a felony, do something that is clearly a transgression to our society. But if they are here working, as most of them are, trying to support themselves or their families or their families back home, for all intents and purposes they already have amnesty because we are not doing anything about it and we do not have the capacity to do anything about it. That is a straw dog, to be very honest, this argument of amnesty. The bigger question, more fundamental question, is how do you set up a system which allows these people to come out from behind the bushes where they have to hide, so they are not taken advantage of, so they can be even more productive in their role here in the United States, and do it in a way that does not basically affront our sensibilities as a nation of laws, and especially address the issue of citizenship. There are a lot of ways to do that. There are a lot of ideas being put forward to do that. I happen to think the essence of the question is how you deal with the issue of citizenship. If you are here illegally, getting citizenship should be probably not attainable, but certainly there should be a way to allow you to still participate in our society so you do not have to hide. That assumes, however, you have effectively set up a border enforcement mechanism which works because, as the point was made by the Senator from Louisiana, you cannot move to any sort of effort to try to redress or address the issue of people who are here illegally unless you have more control of the borders because you simply will create an incentive for more people to come in illegally. But let's remember that if we were able to solve the problem of the people who are here illegally and who are working and who seek nothing more than to be working, if we were able to give them some sort of status that would allow them to participate as workers in this country in a public way, so they were able to participate in systems such as paying into the health care system, paying into retirement systems, I think we might actually be moving toward a more constructive result than what we have today, which is essentially a large number of people who we know are here and we just turn our eyes to the fact they are here illegally. They are going to continue to stay here and work here. We certainly are not going to remove them because we have no way to remove 10, 11 million people, however many people there are, except for those people who commit criminal acts. So I think the debate is misfocused in some ways when the word ``amnesty'' becomes the hot button nomenclature versus the more substantive question: What you do with people who are already here and basically have the capacity to be here, and they already have amnesty, for all intents and purposes, because we are not going to do anything about them so long as they act legally in the context of their jobs because we do not have the capacity to remove 11 million people, and our society would not be able to absorb it. But getting into the issue I wish to talk about today, which is the specifics of the Border Patrol question and how you upgrade the Border Patrol, the bill before us authorizes an additional 1,400 Border Patrol agents over the next few years and authorizes more beds for detention. It authorizes more technology for the purposes of guarding the border. That is all well and good. I strongly support those authorization efforts. But the bottom line is, the rubber does not meet the road with the authorization bill. The rubber meets the road with when we spend the money, which is with the appropriations bill. The problem we have, very simply, is we are not committing resources in this area to the level we need to accomplish what is already on the books in the way of obtaining security along the border. Security along the border basically breaks down to three basic components: First, how many agents, how many feet on the ground do you have down there? Second, how many beds do you have, so when you find people who are coming across illegally, you can actually control where they are going, so you are not basically catching and releasing but you can actually hold these people and send them back? And third, what technologies are necessary in order to, first, monitor the border, and secondly, evaluate people who are coming into our country as to whether they are coming here to participate in our society in a positive way or whether they are coming here to do us harm? In all four of those categories--three categories with a couple subcategories--we simply have not been able to put the resources in that are necessary to get where we want to go. This does not mean we have not tried. In fact, in the last 2 years, we have increased the number of Border Patrol agents by 1,500. That is almost 1,300 more than the administration asked for. We added over 2,000 beds to detention. We have significantly increased the funding for the surveillance and technology area, especially in the area of US-VISIT, which is the program which is essentially going to try to, through technology, be able to evaluate people as they come into the country legally and know whether they are people whom we want to have visit us or whether they are people who may be here to do us harm. But that has not generated the results we need. I wish to go through a few statistics which are, unfortunately, rather stark but should be talked about because you are not going to get resolution around here unless you talk about them. The first is the issue of border agents. We have been increasing the number of our border agents rather significantly over the last couple years, as I just mentioned, but we also know we need to increase them even further in order to hit what is the goal. With 20,000 agents on the border, we can accomplish what we need to do relative to boots on the ground. That means we have to increase--by 1,500, 2,000, 2,000 in each of the next few years--the number of agents we put on the ground, the number of agents in the system. The problem is very simple: One is a dollar issue, which should be able to be resolved but, secondly, it is an issue of being able to hire. It takes 30,000 applications, approximately, in order to hire 1,000 agents. It is very difficult to find the people we need--it is that simple--because of the language requirements and because of the educational requirements and because of the demands of the job. So it is not only an issue of money, it is an issue of hiring up. And that is a big problem for us. A second problem we have is that the technology situation is dire, especially in the area of aircraft, where we are essentially functioning with a fleet of aircraft which has long outlived its purposes. The average life of the P-3s we have in the air should be 20 years, but the average life of the P-3s that are actually flying is 40 years. I want to show you a picture of the problem we have with the P-3s, which basically is the backbone of our air surveillance. This is a crack in the bathtub fitting of a P-3. As a result, last year, we had 11,000 hours of P-3 flight, but this year alone we have had to reduce the P-3 flights by over 1,000 hours because we have had to retrofit these planes. Why? Because they are 40 years old or older, and they should have flown for 20 years. We have the same problem in our helicopter fleet, where the average life is supposed to be 15 years for our helicopters. We are flying helicopters which have average lives of 30 years. The same is true of our Beech King air fleet, where the average life is supposed to be 20 years, and they are well over 30 years. These are problems of resources which need to be addressed. I will talk in a second as to how they should be addressed. The third issue in the area of surveillance--we have heard about the Predator, which is the unarmed, in this case, air surveillance system along the border. This is a great breakthrough for us. We do not have to build a fence along the southern border. Building a fence would be the exact wrong message to send, in my opinion. There are certain sections where there are heavily populated communities where you are going to have to have some fencing, but the vast majority of the border does not require fencing, should not have fencing. It is the wrong image for us as a nation. And with technology, we can do a lot. One of the keys to technology is the Predator. But we only have one Predator. We need 18 in order to effectively do the border. So, again, it is an issue of resources, putting resources in this area. In the area of beds, we know the States are absorbing a huge amount of the costs of basically taking care of the illegal aliens who have been arrested. We know we do not yet have the beds necessary to be able to even hold the non-Mexican arrests, which are the people we are most concerned about from a terrorist standpoint. We need to add a lot of new beds. We need to be creative about this--not just having physical buildings; we need to figure out ways to use swing beds. We need to figure out ways to use closed military facilities, maybe tents, tent capabilities. But we need to put more resources in this area, although this Congress has attempted to do it by adding over 2,000 beds in the last few years. So we have serious resource issues. Well, how do we address this issue? There will be a supplemental coming through here in a few days-- in a week--which is the supplemental to fight the war on terror. Now, it seems to me that probably one of the core elements of fighting the war on terror is making sure your borders are secure. I would hope within the limit of that supplemental we would be able to fund the capital needs or at least make the first downpayment on the major capital needs I have just outlined in the border areas, specifically: the aircraft, replace those P-3 aircraft, buy more Predators, replace the helicopters, make sure the cars these agents drive can go out in the field day after day and still work well so we can move the agents out into the field, make the capital investments in the buildings necessary in order to take care of these people. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 2 additional minutes.

Mr. GREGG. Madam President, I understand that the Senator from Georgia and the Senator from Louisiana wish to speak. I also wish to speak, and I see the Democratic floor leader is here. I spoke with the Senator from Massachusetts, and he said he wasn't speaking at this time. I was wondering if we could maybe get a time agreement so that we can get an order, if that is all right with the Democratic floor manager.

Mr. GREGG. That is something we should do now. It is something we should do in the context of national defense, and it should be done as part of the supplemental. The bigger problem we have is that when the Homeland Security bill hits this floor, we are going to have to figure out a way to pay for this. The administration has proposed we increase fees on air transportation. Well, air transportation fees do not necessarily line up with Border Patrol needs. In fact, the Border Patrol needs are not affected by air transportation fees. Air transportation fees fund things such as TSA. So it is unlikely that fee is going to occur. But if we do not do it, we are going to have a $1.6 billion hole in the Homeland Security budget. We cannot afford that. We need those extra dollars. So we will have to come up with a way to do that. I am making my commitment to do that. But the reason I wanted to speak today was to make it clear we can, with additional resources, accomplish the first step to border security and to good immigration policy, which is border security, which allows us to know who is coming into this country. It is a very doable thing. All it takes is resources. I believe we should have, as a Congress, the wherewithal and the willingness to commit those resources.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I rise to praise and thank Secretary Card who, for the last 5\1/2\ years, served as Chief of Staff for the President of the United States. Those of us from New Hampshire, such as the Senator in the Chair, know Andy Card well. Long before he became Chief of Staff, before he became Secretary of Transportation, before he even went into the White House with the first President Bush, he was an individual who had a fair amount of presence in New Hampshire. He started out in Massachusetts in the State legislature. There, with a small band of Republican members of that body in the 1970s, those of us who were in government in New Hampshire had a chance to meet him on occasion as a neighbor and fellow legislator and member of the government. Then, in 1987, I believe it was, he came to New Hampshire and basically took up residence on a cot in a rundown building that we used as the headquarters for the George H. Bush campaign for President. He was the field director, the campaign manager under Governor Sununu and under my father, Governor Gregg. He, at that time, created a tremendous amount of goodwill amongst those who had a chance to work with him. He was an extraordinarily highly capable individual who got his job done, did it without ego but did it very effectively. That approach, which grew with experience both as a Deputy Chief of Staff with the first President Bush and then as Transportation Secretary, and now as Chief of Staff since the beginning of this administration--that approach of a quiet, confident, unassuming but extraordinarily effective individual has been really his modus operandi. He has really set a standard, I believe, to which Chiefs of Staff will be held as we go forward from administration to administration. The job of Chief of Staff is one of the most difficult jobs there is in Washington, obviously. It is a high-intensity position requiring workdays that often run into 20 hours. It requires that you know all the issues, that you know who the players are, that you put out the fires, that you communicate effectively, that you be courteous to people who may not be so courteous to you, and that you deal effectively with getting the President of the United States the information he needs in order to do his job. Andy Card, as I said, set a standard which will be one which I think Chiefs of Staff to come will try to equal. He is always fair. He is always open. He is low key, unassuming, extraordinarily effective but firm when he had to be on issues and with people relative to carrying out the policy of the President. As he said today at the ceremony at the White House, he always recognized the fact that he was a staffer. He was not an elected official as a Chief of Staff, but he was a staffer who worked for the President of the United States and that his job was to carry forward the policies of the President. He did that extraordinarily well. His wife, of course, has been with him all these years and put up with the thousands of hours he has not been at home since he has done this job--his wife Kathleene. As she has ministered to people who attend their church and others, she has certainly been a soulmate and person of strength for Andy Card. We bid him a sort of a bittersweet farewell in that I know he will be missed in that position, but he has certainly earned the right to move on to take some time for himself and his family, to be able to get up in the morning and be able to enjoy the day without having to know that he will be rushing off for a 20-hour day at the White House. I suspect he will be returning to New England. We look forward to having him back. I know he will spend a fair amount of time in Massachusetts and a fair amount of time in Maine, and I am sure he is going to stop on his way between Massachusetts and Maine to take advantage of New Hampshire's ``no sales tax'' climate. He is a special person, and the country has been well served by having him. His successor, Josh Bolten, I have had the good fortune of dealing with also for a number of years but especially in the last few years as Director of OMB. In my role as chairman of the Budget Committee, he is obviously the person I have had the most contact with in the administration. Interestingly enough, he brings a lot of the same characteristics to the job Andy Card does. He is low key, he is bright, has a great sense of humor, and he understands that his job is to carry forward the mission of and purposes of the President. He is a person you can talk to, who enjoys listening, will reach out, and does reach out for and has reached out as Director of OMB to Members of the Senate to hear their thoughts and ideas as to how we should proceed. He has tremendous respect, I believe, on both sides of the aisle in the way he has led the OMB, and he will create a seamless transition in the White House as he moves over to the chief of staff job. We are fortunate to have people such as this--people such as Andy Card and Josh Bolten who are willing to take on the obligation of public service and serve in positions such as Chief of Staff for the President, jobs which are extraordinarily intense and involve tremendous sacrifice relative to family. But without good people such as this willing to do them, the Nation would be much less. We thank Andy Card for his service. We wish him and Kathleene good luck and good fortune as they move forward, and we welcome Josh Bolten to the job. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to proceed as in morning business for 10 minutes.

Mr. GREGG

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

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, are we in morning business?

Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent to proceed for 15 minutes in morning business.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, we are about to begin this week a very significant discussion, debate, and, hopefully, passage of some legislation to address what is one of the crucial public policy issues we have as a country, which is the question of how we handle immigration. We are, obviously, a nation which has been built on immigrants. Every one of us in this country, except for Native Americans, comes from a family that came from somewhere else and immigrated to this country. It is a part of our heritage of which we are most proud, the fact we have been able to assimilate cultures from around the world and bring them to the United States and create America. We should take pride in something that sets an example for the rest of the world to show that people can gather and can live together and can be productive and can produce a nation founded on democracy, freedom, liberty, individual rights, and heritage--heritage which has built a matrix of strength for us as a nation as we bring together peoples from different cultures and we form an America. E Pluribus Unum, the line above the Presiding Officer of the Senate, says it so well: From many, one. We are, therefore, a nation which needs to have an immigration policy which understands that, which, first and foremost, appreciates and continues to reward the idea that there are people from around this world who wish to come to America to participate in this country and to make us a more productive place in which to raise their children and to assist us as a nation in being stronger economically, socially, and from a standpoint of inner strength we obtain from having so many different people participate in our country. We always want to be that beacon, that light upon the hill that draws the world to us. As long as people want to come to America, we know we are doing something right, and we should take great pride in it. We continue to be a place where people want to come and, as a result, we do have issues of how we deal with immigration. But most importantly, as we move down this road, we have to recognize it is critical that we not do anything which tarnishes or chills or in any way undermines that great tradition of America, which is that we reach out our arms to people who wish to come here and be productive and participate in our way of life. However, unfortunately, over the last few decades, and especially in an accelerated way as we moved through the nineties and moved into this first decade of 2000, we have seen that a large number of people are coming into our Nation illegally. They are not following the course which is available to become an American citizen legally--to immigrate here, to take advantage of our system, and to build on the opportunities that are here but to do it legally. That has become a problem for us. It is a problem, obviously, from the standpoint that it violates our laws. It is also a problem for us in the post-9/11 world where we need to know who is coming into this Nation because of the threat of terrorist acts against us. For the most part, these people who come to our country have come here for purposes which are good and decent. They want to have a better life. They want to be able to earn a better living. They want to be able to give their families more than they had in the nation they left. That is a well-intentioned purpose. But they have still come here illegally, and we need to address the issue of how we deal with that situation. This question has been divided into basically two functions. First is how we physically control the borders of our Nation and make sure those borders are reasonably secure so that we have a decent idea of who is coming across those borders and why they are coming into our Nation. The second question is how we deal with people who have come here to work, to perform tasks which are available to them, people who may already be here illegally, but people who still want to come here and do it in a way that is within the law. And that, of course, involves the debate over a guest worker program. On the first issue, I have had a fair amount of interest and involvement because I chair the subcommittee that has jurisdiction over this question, the Subcommittee on Homeland Security. The question of whether our borders are secure is something which, since I have taken over as chairman of this subcommittee, has been all consuming over the last 2 years I have had the good fortune of chairing this subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee. It is pretty obvious to any American that our borders are not secure, that we do not know who is coming in. We certainly don't know who is leaving. We don't know what is coming in, and we don't know, to a large degree, what is going out. But on the issue of movement of people, we are attempting to address that question. We have over the last 2 years significantly increased the resources going into border security. We have increased the number of Border Patrol agents by almost 2,000. We have increased the number of beds which are available--what is known as detention beds--also by a significant number. We have increased resources flowing in to the border security area, especially in the area of technology capability, trying to set up a system called US-VISIT which will allow us to effectively track who is coming into our country on a real-time basis through using fingerprints and our databases on fingerprints. We have made progress, but we are nowhere near solving the problem. I wanted to talk briefly about that specific issue and then a little bit about the bigger issue of the guest worker program and how you become an American citizen. As the Judiciary Committee wrestles with this problem of border security, it is important that we do it the right way, that we think about it in terms of what is going to get the best results versus what is going to get the best press releases. To begin with, we do not need a wall across our southern border. We don't need it from the standpoint of being able to know who is coming across the border, we don't need it from the standpoint of being good neighbors, and we do not need it from the standpoint of presenting the national culture. Doing that would be the exact opposite of what we should do as a Nation. There may be sections, clearly, where some sort of fencing or wall will be necessary, sections where the commingling of the border is so close that it is very difficult to control that section without some sort of a definable event which forces people who wish to come across the border through a controlled point, but to run a wall the length of the border as has been suggested by some of our colleagues, especially in the other body, is just anathema to the concept of what America stands for. We want to continue to be a society which says we are open, that we are a place where people are encouraged to come, and that we are a place that reaches out to people who wish to be productive and come here to be productive citizens. Furthermore, it would cost a huge amount of money, and it would accomplish very little. So much more could be accomplished through other means, such as the addition of a fairly significant but not dramatic increase in the number of border agents, if we went up to, say, 20,000--we are now at about 13,000--and with the addition of a fairly significant but not a dramatic amount of new detention beds and some creative approach to detention capability such as using former military bases and the facilities that might be available through transient housing. Maybe we could use some of those trailers we have sitting down there in Arkansas which are not being used. But through creative detention capability, we could add the necessary additional beds, and there are not that many needed compared to the overall numbers, with creative approaches using technology, of which we have an unlimited source of ingenuity in this Nation. In fact, every day, it seems as if somebody comes to my office with a new idea as to how to create a monitoring system or some form of monitoring system through the use of unmanned vehicles, through the use of satellite technology, through the use of sensors, which would not cost that much. With the creative use of just adding physical capital assistance such as new cars, new helicopters, new planes for Customs, such as new capacity for the Coast Guard, we could, without a great deal of incremental increase compared to the expending which we do in other parts of this government, effectively monitor and manage certainly the southern border. As a result, we would know who was coming into this country across that southern border, which is where most of the illegal immigration occurs. Would we solve the northern border issues? Probably not. That is a little different puzzle. The northern border does not have the huge illegal immigration issue, but it does have an equally severe, maybe even more severe opportunity for terrorists, people who wish to do us harm, to cross. There are other approaches which need to be taken there. But as to the southern border, it is totally possible, reasonable, and should be done to manage that border effectively with the addition of some significant resources, but not dramatic increases. I suggested a year and a half ago that if we increased the capital resources available to the Border Patrol and the Customs Agencies by about $1.2 billion, we could essentially buy out almost all the major capital needs they need in order to manage the border--all the housing, all the airplanes, all the cars, all the unmanned vehicle monitors, all the technology for detection capability we would need. That is a lot of money by New Hampshire standards, but in the context of a $1.8 trillion budget, it is certainly a manageable sum. So far, that suggestion has been stiff-armed by the administration and basically limited as a result of politics here on the floor of the Senate. In addition to that capital need, which, as I mentioned, is about $1.2 billion, there is the need to add new agents, and there is the need to increase our capability on the operational side. But again, the dollars necessary to do that are not dramatic, not dramatic at all-- probably in the range of $2 billion of additional funding per year. That is a lot of money, again, by New Hampshire standards, but in the context of overall national defense where we are spending $440 billion plus $90 billion on the war on terrorism, for a total of over $500 billion, an additional $2 billion to secure our southern borders in the context of personnel increases is not dramatic and is doable. The point is, it would accomplish our goal, which is to secure the southern borders. I have asked for that to be done. Unfortunately, that has not been done--well, that is incorrect. It was proposed by the administration to increase the commitment of the number of Border Patrol agents. They gave that commitment in their budget submission, but they took it away because they tied it to creating a fee, which would increase the airline user fee, and the practical result of that would be the money which was supposed to be used to add these additional agents would never be realized. But it should be done, it can be done, and if a fee is necessary to do it, it should be done on a fee basis, but a fee that has no relationship to the actual usage. An airline fee does not impact southern border protection. The airline fee impacts the TSA, and it needs support. It has gone through 2 years of freeze and should be increased in our commitment there, and this fee maybe should be used to do that. But if we are going to have a fee, it should be border related, if that is the way it is going to be done. In any event, it should be done. We should spend those dollars to accomplish this. The bill that is working its way through the Judiciary Committee has a commitment to these types of efforts, but it is an authorizing bill. It doesn't have to find the money. I have to find the money as an appropriator, and right now the money isn't there. So the ability to accomplish those good intentions isn't there. Also, the bill that is coming through the authorizing committee creates a number of mandates. It says: This shall be done by Border Patrol, this shall be done by Customs, this shall be done by the Coast Guard. I am not sure it addresses the Coast Guard, but it has a number of mandates for Border Patrol and Immigration, and the practical effect of that is that it is artificially directing and redirecting flows of revenues and resources, and it may actually, as a result of those mandates, end up undermining our ability to effectively address the border. As the bill comes to the floor, which I hope will be this week, we can discuss that, and I am sure we can deal with those kinds of issues. But the bottom line is simply this: We can accomplish security on the southern border. We can know to a large extent who is coming in and out of this country. We can limit dramatically--I mean dramatically; down to a trickle for all intents and purposes--the number of people who get into this country illegally across our southern border by the application of resources which, in the relative context of national defense, are quite small and in the relative context of the overall national budget are extraordinarily small. If we have to pay for them, we should pay for them through some sort of a border security fee. It can be done. Why hasn't it been done? Because border security has been a stepchild around here to national defense for a long time. I find that unacceptable myself. If we are going to have a defense budget which spends $440 billion, up from $289 billion just 5 years ago, on top of which we are spending $90 billion a year to fight a war, one has to ask: What is the core defense budget for? It is not to fight the war, obviously, because we have to spend the next exceptional amount of money on top of it to fight the war, so it is obviously for strategic defense, for personnel, for operations, and it is needed, I guess, for the most part. But if that is the need of critical priority, clearly protecting our southern border is an equal need of national defense. Maybe we should roll the border security effort into the Defense Department and then we would get the resources for it, although I think that would be a bad policy decision, but at least we would get resources. In any event, in the context of what is important from the standpoint of national security, I can't think of anything--well, there are a lot of things. I think it has to rank right up there at the top, knowing who is coming in and out of this country, when it is our country that is at risk. We know these people want to attack us on our soil, so it is absolutely critical that we have the necessary resources to protect our borders, to know who is coming in and out of our country so we can protect ourselves from people who might cause us harm. It is also critical that, as a culture, we control this. We cannot survive as a culture if we have a massive amount of people coming into this country illegally. It just doesn't work. People who want to come to this country--and we do want to maintain a very open approach to encourage people to come into this country--have to know that if they follow the rules and if they come here legally, they are going to be able to get in line under the rules and legally and get a shot at American citizenship and participating in the American dream. So it is critical that we get our southern border under control, and it is critical that we get our northern border under control. It is critical, we can do it, and we should do it. We should have done it long ago, and we can do it now, and we should make that commitment to those types of resources. As this bill moves forward, I intend to make those points and try to get people to look at this in the context of a doable event rather than in the context of simply a press release event. Secondly, on the issue of immigration itself, it is also obvious that we have to have a workable guest worker program. We have to have something that says to people: If you want to come here and work and better your family, there is a way we can work that out. We can make that happen. That takes the pressure off of illegal immigration. As we secure the border, it is clear that some sort of effective guest worker program is necessary. As part of that overall immigration effort, there is one little slice, though, which I believe we need to address. It is a small slice. Today there is a lottery program where you can essentially send in your name and you are put into a lottery, and you have to be from a country which is deemed underprivileged, I believe; there is some sort of categorization. But if your name is pulled out of a hat, you can get on the path to American citizenship. Fifty thousand names are pulled out of the hat every year, just as a lottery. At one time, this may have made sense, but it doesn't make sense today. It is very obvious today that just pulling people's names out of hats to put them on the path to citizenship in America is not fair to those people who are waiting in line and who have a reason and who have followed the process and have a purpose, and it is not fair to our Nation. How do we know we want somebody whose name is drawn out of a hat to be an American citizen? What benefit is that to us, other than that the person happened to be lucky? Thus, if we are going to keep this lottery program, I believe we should change it over to a lottery program which essentially says: If you want to participate in this lottery, you have to have some unique talents or skills which America needs, such as a master's degree or a doctorate in some sort of science or mathematical capability or maybe some foreign language capability, something that America has a use for. So I think we should convert this lottery to that type of an approach. I note that my time is about to expire and that we have both assistant leaders on the Senate floor, so something big must be happening. Therefore, I will continue this discussion as we move forward on the debate of immigration. But I do believe it is critical to understand that resolving the border issue is a very doable event. There is no complication to this, it is not subtle. It is simply a question of resources, and we can accomplish it with the right amount of resources placed in the right place. We don't need new laws to do it. I yield the floor.

Mr. GREGG

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, we have a series of amendments we wish to agree to at this time. I ask unanimous consent that the following amendments be considered and agreed to en bloc, and that the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table: Dodd amendment No. 3111, Hutchison amendment No. 3110, Kohl amendment No. 3057, Feinstein amendment No. 3067, Clinton amendment No. 3147, Salazar amendment No. 3089.