Marco Rubio

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I appreciate this opportunity and I will be brief. My colleagues have already stated what this entails and the details of it. I think that is important. I got involved in this issue earlier this year after spending the better part of my first 2 years in the Senate thinking about this issue because, frankly, not just from being from Florida but living in south Florida I am surrounded by the reality of it every single day. When I started this effort, I became deeply convinced this is something that needed to be fixed and needed to be dealt with, but from the very beginning, the early days of my involvement, I made clear border security was an essential component of it. This is not against anybody. Border security is not an anti-anyone effort. That is not what it is. We understand that America is a special country. It is so special that people want to come from all over the world and they do. One million people a year come here legally, every single year. We also understand it is so special, unique, some people are willing to risk their lives to come here illegally. As compassionate people, we understand that reality and our heart breaks at the stories of what people are having to go through to come. But we also understand the United States of America is a sovereign country. Every single sovereign country on the planet, every single one, tries to or does control its borders and who comes into the country and who leaves. Every country in the world does that. The United States of America should not be any different. At the end of the day, that is what this issue is about. It is that we have a sovereign right to protect our border and we have a crisis on the southern border of the United States. For many different reasons, people have chosen to cross that border illegally, consistently, for the 20 or 30 years, and the results are obvious to all of us. That is why border security is such an important part of this bill and this measure. When we introduced our bill, the bill said basically the Department of Homeland Security would be given some money, and they would get to decide what the border security plan looked like. Many people in the public and many of our colleagues were unhappy with that proposal. They raised valid concerns that we were turning over border security and deciding what the plan would be to people who claim it is already secure. What this amendment does is it takes that back and it says that we, instead, we in the Senate, will decide what that plan is after we get input from border agents and others about what will work. What this amendment reflects is what we know will work. We know that adding border agents, doubling the size of the U.S. Border Patrol, that will work. We know that completing fence work will work. We know an entry-exit tracking system, since 40 percent of our illegal immigrants are those who overstay their visas, will work. We know E-Verify will work. It is something many of my colleagues in my party have asked for, for the better part of 10 years. It will work because it takes away the magnet of employment. We know these new technologies that were not available to us in 1986 or 2006 or even 5 years ago will work. What this bill says is you must do all of those things, and it is linked to legal permanent residence. In essence, someone who has violated our immigration laws cannot become a legal permanent resident in the United States until all five of those actions happen. That is the guarantee this will happen. Let me close by saying I understand the frustration. I truly do. I know these promises have been made in the past. In a moment, the Senator from Alabama whose position on this is well stated will point out these promises were also made in 1986. By the way, in 1986, I was 15 years old, and I have to tell you immigration was the last thing on my mind at that time. But here is the reality of it. The choice before us is to try to fix this or to leave it the way it is. What we have is a disaster of epic proportions. We have 10 or 11 million human beings living among us. We don't know who they are. They are working but not paying taxes. There are criminals among them. That has to be solved. A legal immigration system built on the 19th century? We need to fix this and this is our chance to fix it.

Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I wish to speak about the immigration bill as we approach the end of this week because we are obviously hearing from many people outside of the building who are concerned about this issue, and I think it is important to make a few things clear as we head into next week and what I hope will be final passage of this measure. First, let me describe how this program works because immigration is complicated. It can sometimes even be confusing. We throw around these terms here, and we assume everybody understands what they mean, so I want to explain. The way I will explain it is how this bill will work if we pass the amendment filed by Senators Hoeven and Corker, which I believe will pass and should pass with significant bipartisan support. First, let's describe the problem we have today. No. 1, we have a broken legal immigration system. We have a system of legal immigration. About 1 million people a year come here legally. But the system is broken because it is designed, for example, solely based on primarily family reunification, which, by the way, is how my parents came in 1956. The problem is that the world has changed, and as a result, because we live in a global economy where we are competing for talent and not just workforce, we need to have more of a merit-based and career-based immigration system, and this bill would move us in that direction. We have a broken legal immigration system, by the way, because it is cumbersome and complicated and bureaucratic. One really has to lawyer up to legally immigrate to the United States, especially in certain categories. If we look at the agriculture sector, there is no reliable, sustainable way for agriculture to get foreign labor. By and large, while there are Americans who will do labor in the agriculture industry, there is a significant shortage of Americans who will work in the agriculture industry. And we don't have a program for agriculture that works for people to come legally here, but the jobs are there, so people are coming illegally. So we have a broken legal immigration system, and that has to be fixed and modernized, and this bill does that. That is why we haven't heard a lot of discussion about it. The second problem we have is that our immigration laws are only as good as our ability to enforce those laws. If we want to get to the heart of the problem we are facing in terms of opposition to the bill, it is because in the past, both Republicans and Democrats have promised to enforce the immigration laws and then have refused or have been unable to do it. Part of it has just been an unwillingness, to be frank. We have talked about 1986 and 2006 and other efforts. In the past, people have been told we are going to enforce the immigration laws, and then we don't do it. As time goes on, the problem gets bigger and people say: We have been told this before, and we are not going to do it again. That really is standing in the way of more support for this measure. Another problem we have is the systems we use to enforce the law are broken. For example, on the border there are sectors that have dramatically improved, and so from that experience we have learned what works, but there are sectors that have actually gotten worse or have not improved significantly. So to say the entire southern border has been secured is not true, and we really shouldn't say that to Americans, especially those living near that border who understand that is not true. We also have a problem with visa overstays. What that means is people come into the United States legally on a tourist visa, and then when it expires they don't leave. So they came in legally--they didn't jump a fence or cross the border--but then they get here and they stay. That is a visa overstay. That is 40 percent of our problem. We don't have a system to track that. Even though it is mandated by law, we do not have a system to track that. We track people when they come in, but we don't track them when they leave in real-time, so we don't have a running tally of who has overstayed their visas, leading to 40 percent of our illegal immigration problem. The third problem we have is the magnet that brings people here. I am not saying every single person who comes here illegally is coming looking for jobs and opportunity, but I am saying the enormous majority of people who come here are coming because they believe there is a job in the United States for them so they can feed their families. That is a magnet. We have jobs and we have people willing to do those jobs, and those two things are going to meet. They are going to come. The choice we have is, do they come through a legal process that is organized and secure or do they come in a chaotic way that contributes to illegal immigration? And that is how they are coming now. So that is why in this bill we have an entry-exit tracking system but also have something called E-Verify, which simply means that employers--any business, any company, anyone who hires someone, when they hire them, they have to ask their name. The employee has to produce their identification. The employer runs that name through the Internet on a system called E-Verify, and it will confirm whether that person is legally here. If they are hired after that person says they are illegally here, we double and sometimes even triple the penalties for employers who do that. So those are important measures this bill takes. And that is the second problem we face. The third problem we face is even more fundamental. As we speak, as I stand here before my colleagues today, estimates are there are upwards of 11 million human beings living in these United States who are here illegally. They have overstayed visas, they were brought as children, they crossed the border, they are here. They don't qualify for welfare, they don't qualify for any Federal benefits, but they are here. They are here and they are working. They are working for cash. They are working under someone else's identification, but they are here. The vast majority of them have been here for longer than a decade. They are here. Let me tell my colleagues, that is not good for them because when a person doesn't have documents, they are unprotected. When a person is here illegally, that person can be exploited, and that happens. But it is also not good for the country. It is not good for this country to have that many people. We don't know who they are. They are not paying taxes. They are working, but they are not paying taxes. We have no idea--the vast majority of them are not criminals, but a handful of them are, and we don't know where they live, who they are, how long they have been here. We know very little about them. That is not good for our country either. We have to deal with that. That is my point. If we don't do anything--let's say this bill fails or let's say we pass it and the House doesn't do it or let's say we decide not to do anything at all on immigration. All of those things I just described stay in place. If we don't do anything, the border stays the way it is, we still don't have E-Verify, we still don't have an entry-exit tracking system, and we don't have any idea who the 11 million people are, and we still don't have an immigration system that works. That is what happens if we do nothing. That is why I got involved in this issue. It isn't politics, and I disagree with my colleagues who have said this is about politics. This is not about saving the Republican Party or anybody else. This is about correcting something that is hurting the United States of America. I can certainly say it is not about my personal politics because this is an issue that makes a lot of people unhappy, a lot of people who have supported me and support me now, people whom I agree with on every other issue. If you pull out a list of issues facing this country, I agree with them on every other issue, but they disagree with me on this issue, and I respect and understand why. They are frustrated because they have been told in the past that this is going to get fixed, and it hasn't, because they feel and see and know that this is the most generous country in the world on immigration, and it has been taken advantage of and they are frustrated by it. I have seen some describe opponents of immigration reform as haters and anti-Hispanic and anti-immigration. That is just not true. It is not true. These are people who are just frustrated that the laws have not been followed and they do not want to reward it. I honestly do understand that. What I would say to them is, look, I get it. I do. I do not like this either. I do not like the fact that we have 11 million people here illegally. I do not like the fact that people have ignored our laws and crossed our borders or overstayed visas. I do not like it either. But that is what we are going to get stuck with if we do not do anything about it. That is what this bill tries to do. Let me explain how it does it. First we outlined--because when we filed this bill, what was said was, Department of Homeland Security, here is $6.5 billion. Go out and design a border fence plan and a border plan. Submit it to Congress. Issue a letter of commencement. And then you can begin the process of identifying these people who are here illegally. That was our bill. Then I went around my State, sometimes the country--and my colleagues did as well--and people told us: Look, we don't trust the Department of Homeland Security. These people say the border is already secure, and you are going to tell them to design a plan? I thought that was a good point. So now we have an amendment before us by Senator Hoeven and Senator Corker that actually defines the plan. Let me describe this new plan because I think it is the most substantial border security plan we have ever had before any body of Congress. No. 1, it does not say you can, it does not say you should, it says you must have universal E-Verify for every business in America, and you have to wrap that up within 4 years. It starts with the big businesses, until it gets to ag and the small businesses. The reason why you need 3 to 4 years is because for a really small business, it is going to take them time to buy the technology to do this. That is No. 1. No. 2, it says you have to finish the entry-exit tracking system. After this bill was amended in committee, it says that eventually the 30 major international airports in this country will have it biometrically--this entry-exit tracking system. The third thing it says is that you have to deploy upwards of $3 billion in technology. This is technology that was not around in 1986. This is technology that was not around in 2006. Let me describe that technology: radar, sensors on the ground, night vision goggles, motion detectors, even unarmed drones--things that allow you to see people, and even if they get past you at the first stop on the border, you can follow them and then apprehend them a few miles down the road. This technology did not used to exist. We go further than that in the amendment. We do not just say you have to deploy this technology, we tell you where you have to deploy it. We do not even leave that to DHS. And those ideas did not come from Senators, they came from members of the Border Patrol on the frontlines. They have told us: Here is where we need this stuff. So in a level of detail unprecedented in the history of this body, we actually say: 50 goggles in this sector, 100 radar in this sector. That is the third thing this bill requires you to do. The fourth thing it requires you to do is to double the size of the Border Patrol, adding 20,000 new border agents. This is a dramatic increase in the number of people because cameras and sensors are great, but if you do not have people to actually do the apprehension, it does not work. The last thing it says is that you have to complete this fencing. That includes, where it is practical, where it is possible, getting rid of these vehicle barriers because one of the things they did with the fencing is they would put up some barrier on the road and say that is a fence. The problem is that may keep a vehicle out, but it does not keep somebody from climbing over it. We actually say that, where it is possible, where the terrain allows it--there are places where the terrain does not let you build a fence, but where the terrain allows it, you have to put a fence there. In some places the fence is doubled, especially in urban areas. It has been very successful in San Diego. These are five things we require. We do not say you can, you might-- you must. You must do these five things before anyone who has violated our immigration laws can even apply for permanent legal residency in the United States of America--10 years from now, by the way. One of the criticisms people have said is that this bill is legalization first. It is not that simple. Real legalization is permanent legalization; it is what we call a green card. You have to have a green card before you can apply to become a citizen of the United States. Under this bill, illegal immigrants cannot get a green card, cannot even apply for a green card until 10 years have passed and these five things I have just described--E-Verify, entry-exist tracking system, full technology implementation, 20,000 new border agents, finishing the fence--all five of those things have to happen. People say: Well, why are you linking the two things? Here is the answer: Because of the problems we had in the past. The only way we can make sure that a future President or a future Congress does not go back on these promises is if we tie it to something we know people want. That is why they are linked. So no one who is here illegally--they cannot apply for that permanent residency until these five things happen, and that is the trigger that is going to guarantee that this happens. Their argument is, though, legalization first because you are allowing the people who are here illegally now to stay in the meantime. Let me tell you the problem with that issue. The problem with that issue--first of all, we are talking about 11 million people who are already here. They are already here. We are not talking about 11 million new people. We are not talking about people who are outside the country who might come in in the meantime. We are talking about people who are already here. More than half of them have been here longer than a decade, so that means the chances are they have children who are U.S. citizens. They are definitely working because somehow they are eating. They do not qualify for Federal benefits because--we do not even know who they are. OK. They are already here. You have to do something about them in the meantime. You cannot build a fence and you cannot hire 20,000 border agents in 6 weeks. It takes a little bit of time. It does not take 10 years, but it takes some time to do that. So here is what we do. We say: If you are illegally here and you have been here for--you could not have come last week or even last year--if you have been here for a while and you are illegally here, you have to come forward. You are going to have to pass a national security background check. You are going to have to pass a criminal background check. You are going to have to pay a fine because you broke the law. You are going to have to start paying taxes and working. And the only thing you get--to the extent you get something, the only thing you get is you get a work permit that allows you to do three things: work, travel, and pay taxes. When you get this work permit, you do not qualify for food stamps, you do not qualify for welfare, you do not qualify for ObamaCare subsidies, you do not qualify for any of these things. People may say: Well, we are rewarding them. But I want people to think about this for a second. They are already here. They are already working. We are not going to round up and deport 11 million people, so it is basically de facto amnesty. The only thing that is going to change in their lives is they are going to start paying taxes, they are going to have to pay a fine, and we are going to know who they are. By the way, this work permit is not permanent. It expires every 6 years. So if you come forward and get this work permit, which is temporary, in 6 years you have to go back and apply for it again. If it is not renewed because you have broken a condition, you are illegally here, but now we know who you are, and you will not be able to find a job because of E-Verify. And when you go back and renew it after 6 years, you are going to have to pass another background check, pay another fine, pay another application fee, and you are going to have to prove that in the previous 6 years you have been here working and paying taxes. You are going to have to prove that, that you are self- sustaining, that you are not dependent. This whole time, you do not qualify to apply for permanent status, not to mention citizenship. After 10 years have gone by in this status--not 10 years after the passage of the bill, 10 years after you, the applicant, have been in this status--then--and only if those five things I talked about--E- Verify, entry-exit tracking system, the technology plan, the border fence, and the 20,000 new agents--only if those five things have happened, then you can apply for a green card through the green card process. That is another mistake people are making. They think, all right, 10 years is here, you made the five conditions, they are going to hand you a green card. Not true. You can apply for it. It is not awarded to you. Now, is this perfect? I do not think this problem has a perfect solution. But I can tell you, if we do not do anything--let's suppose immigration reform fails. Suppose we do nothing. We are still going to have the 11 million people here. We are still not going to know who they are. They are still not going to be paying taxes. They still will not have undergone a background check. And you will not have E-Verify. You will not have border security. You will not have the agents. You will not have the technology. You will not have the entry-exit tracking system. You will not have any of that. Life is about choices. Legislating is about choices. And the choice cannot be between what you wish things were like and this bill. The choice is between the way things are and this bill--or some alternative to it. Again, if we defeat it, then we are stuck with what we have. And what we have is a disaster. It is a disaster. I want to make clear another point. People have said: Boy, all this border security is overkill and so much stuff. Look, the United States is a special country. That is why people want to come here. A million people a year come here legally--1 million people a year. There is no other country in the world that comes close to that. Do you understand what that means? Other countries do not want people coming or people do not want to go. When is the last time you heard of a boatload of American refugees arriving on the shores of another country? People want to come here. We understand that. In fact, this country is so special that there are people who are willing to risk their lives to come here and willing to come illegally to come here. We are compassionate. Our heart breaks when we hear stories about that. But I also have to remind people that we are also a sovereign country. Every country in the world secures their border or tries to. Many of the countries that people come here from secure their border-- sometimes viciously. We are not advocating that. We have a right as a sovereign country to secure our border. We have a right to do that. While we are compassionate, no one has a right to come here illegally. So I will close by saying that I know this is a tough issue. I do. I really do. I understand that on the one side there are the human stories of people you have met. And this issue really changes when you meet somebody. It is one thing to read about 11 million people who are here illegally; it is another thing to meet one of them: a father, a mother, a son, or a daughter, someone whom you know as a human being and you know about their hopes and dreams and how much they are struggling. It is one thing to know about that. It changes your perspective. But I also understand the frustration people have--that they have heard all these promises before, that people have violated our laws, they have ignored them, and that is wrong, and we should not reward that. I do understand that. But ultimately I ran for the Senate because I wanted to make a difference. I know I could have just stayed back on this issue and come to the floor and--I am not making any criticism of anybody else, but that I could have just come to the floor and offered up what I would have done instead and be critical of efforts that others were making. That was an option for me, but I could not stand it. I could not stand to see how this problem is hurting our country and leaving it the way it is. How is this good for us? We have to do something about this. That is what we are trying to do. With this new amendment, we will do more for border security than anyone has ever tried to do before. All I would ask my colleagues and members of the public to do is to think about that. Think about it. What do you want? Do you want things to stay the way they are or do you want to try to fix it? I will just say to you, our country desperately needs to fix it. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, yesterday, I voted against passage of S. 954, the Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act of 2013, which is commonly known as the farm bill. With an overall cost of nearly $1 trillion, this legislation is more than we can afford at a time when our debt of nearly $17 trillion is growing rapidly each day. While I support some of the programs in this bill that are important to Florida and our State's important role in America's food supply, we cannot allow Washington to continue spending recklessly and condemning our children and grandchildren to a diminished future. Not only was I concerned about the cost of this legislation, but I am disappointed that ample opportunity was not provided to Senators to improve it through a more open amendment process. When the farm bill was considered last year, the Senate voted on over 70 amendments to the bill, including my RAISE Act amendment, which would have allowed workers to earn more money for a job well done without having to first clear it by union bosses. This open process was not the case this time around and prevented my colleagues and I from introducing measures to improve the bill, as well as timely measures such as my proposal to punish Internal Revenue Service employees who violate the First Amendment rights of our citizens. I remain committed to championing sound policy important to the farmers and working families that contribute to the agriculture industry's success and whose products ultimately end up at our dinner tables. It is why I am pursuing reforms in other areas that would benefit our farmers and our Nation. For example, I continue working towards national immigration reform, which would help create a guest worker visa program to ensure an adequate agriculture workforce. This reform would achieve an agricultural workers program that allows us to bring in both temporary and long-term laborers to provide our farms, dairies and other agricultural industries with the workers they need and in a way that also protects the dignity and safety of those workers.

Mr. RUBIO

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

Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I am happy to be on the floor today as we get ready to proceed to the immigration bill and start to debate it. I wish to lay out a couple of points as we move forward on this debate which I fully anticipate we will do. We need to do so as a country, actually for many of the reasons my colleague from Alabama raised, because of these problems we face with regard to our immigration system. Let's take a step back and analyze the issue a little while for the people who are tuning in for the first time or maybe people are visiting Washington and are perhaps listening to us talk about it, to provide a fundamental understanding of what we are addressing. Let's begin by saying the obvious, which is that all Americans understand immigration because it is their story, whether it is you, your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, or great-great-grandparents. One of the defining characteristics of the United States of America is that it is literally a collection of people from all over the world or descendants of people from all over the world who have come here in search of a better life. I think it is important to understand why that distinguishes us from the rest of the world and the attitudes of the rest of the world throughout history. If we look at the countries that have been organized throughout human history, the nation states, all of these countries have largely been organized because these people had a common ethnicity or a common race or they came from the same tribe or the same family clan or what-have-you. The United States is very different. The United States was actually founded on the notion that we are going to create a country that believes fundamentally in the God-given right of every single human being to go as far as their talent and work will take them. People such as myself who have been born and raised here our entire lives, sometimes we take that for granted, but we need to understand that throughout history it is a rarity. In fact, throughout history, what people have been told by their leaders is: You can only go so far in life because that is what your parents did, that is where your parents come from, so that is all you are allowed to do. But we were different, and thank God we were. What we said is, We don't care how poor you were the day you were born; it doesn't matter to us that your parents weren't well connected and well heeled; we don't even care that you are from another country. If a person wants to work hard and build a better life for him or herself, we want that person. That has been the history of the United States: a collection of go-getters from all over the world who have come here and built this extraordinary country and, as a result, the influence this country has had not just on human history but even to modern day is unbelievable culturally and economically, in terms of ensuring peace, especially in the aftermath of World War II. All of it is the result of this particular reality about who we are as a people and as a Nation. We have always had immigration, and we will always need immigration, to keep the nature and the essence of who we are as a people. But times change and the immigration system has to change with those times. In essence, the immigration system we had 100 years ago, 150 years ago--people forget this: What was the immigration system of the United States? Not so long ago, this was the immigration system in the United States: If you got here, you were allowed to stay. If you made that dangerous voyage across the Atlantic, if you found your way to this country, if you were processed through Ellis Island or somewhere else, you were allowed to stay. We can't do that anymore. We have to have a controlled immigration system, especially in the 21st century, to measure who is coming here, who they are, and why they are here. That is the way it has to work now in the 21st century. We understand that. Adding to that, by the way, is the reality that the 21st century is so different from the 20th. We are actively engaged in global competition. It wasn't so long ago, such as when my parents came in 1956, the United States was still a national economy. The people we traded with and sold with and competed against lived in this country, probably in one's own State or in one's own community. No more. Today we are actively involved in global competition for business, for clients, and for talent, so we have to understand our immigration system has to reflect these changes. The way people immigrate and who immigrates here now has to reflect the 21st century reality, which is reason No. 1 why this country needs immigration reform. All the attention is being paid to illegal immigration, and, look, that is a serious problem. I am going to talk about that in a moment. But issue No. 1, the fundamental reason we have to do immigration reform, is because we do not have a 21st-century immigration system. Our immigration system today is largely built on the idea that if you have a relative living here, it is easier for you to come than if you have a special skill or talent that you are offering to the country to contribute. We do not have a merit-based system, we have a family-based system. I say that as someone whose family came on a family-based system. My parents came here because my mom's sister claimed her in 1956. But the country is so different, the world is so different--so different from 2006, not to mention 1956--and our immigration system has to reflect that. The problem is we have a broken legal immigration system. It does not reflect the realities of the 21st century. The result is that even if we did not have a single illegal immigrant in the United States, we should be on the floor of the Senate debating immigration reform because we must modernize our legal immigration system. That, as much as anything else, is the reason my colleagues should be excited about the opportunity to have this debate, because we have to modernize our legal immigration system so it is a benefit to our country. I give this anecdote because I think it is appropriate: We are in the NBA finals--which, by the way, the Miami Heat won game 2 in a resounding fashion, and we are very happy about that. We will see what happens tonight. But imagine for a second if there was now the hottest basketball player in the county, who played at some college in the United States--6 feet 10 inches, never misses a shot, just an unbelievable player. Do you think in your wildest dreams we would ever let that person go play in Italy or Spain or some other country? There is no way in the world we are going to allow the best basketball player in the world--no matter where they were born, no matter where they came from, no matter their immigration status--there is no way in the world we are going to let a future NBA star leave the United States and go play basketball in some other country, in a European league or the Greek league or whatever. They are going to stay here. So my question to you is, If that is how we approach sports--which is important, I guess, but it is a game--shouldn't that be the way we approach our economy? Should we be deporting the best graduates at some of our universities--world-class physicists and scientists and people in technology and engineering and math? Yet that is the way functionally our immigration system works right now. I am not making this up. We have heard the testimony. We have heard the people who come into our offices. There is not a Member in this body who has not had a meeting in their office, or their staff has not, with someone from the tech community who will come to you and say: We are going to college campuses, we are making job offers to the best and brightest, and we cannot keep them here--not because they do not want to stay here, not because they are not qualified, not because we do not have a job opening, but because we cannot get them a green card or a legal status. So they are learning at our universities, at the expense of the American taxpayer, and then they are leaving the United States to compete against us. That makes no sense, nor does, by the way, the system of getting workers for agriculture, which I would argue in many respects is skilled labor. If you do not believe me, go watch some of these people in the fields as they work, doing the work they do. But American agriculture, you talk about energy security. If you want to cripple a country, cripple their food security, cripple their agricultural security. Agriculture is an important industry in most of the States of the country and certainly for the United States of America. That industry depends on a workforce, and there is a demand for labor in that workforce. The fact is, and has been for over 100 years, that the only way to fully fill all the jobs available in agriculture is through seasonal and temporary labor from abroad. There is a real demand for that labor, and there is a real supply of people who want to do that labor. Supply and demand will always meet. But because we do not have a functional legal immigration system that allows the supply of foreign workers to meet the demand of domestic jobs in agriculture, supply and demand are meeting, but they are meeting in a chaotic and broken way. That needs to be reformed, as well as a bunch of other aspects. The immigration system is very bureaucratic and complicated. In fact, our broken legal immigration system is one of the leading contributors to illegal immigration. Over 40 percent of the people in this country illegally today came legally. They did not jump a fence. They did not sneak in. They came on some sort of temporary visa and they overstayed it. One of the leading reasons they overstay is they think it is too costly, too time-consuming, and too bureaucratic to come back again legally in the future. So I guess my point is, even if we did not have a single illegal immigrant in the United States, we need to do immigration reform because we must modernize our legal immigration system, and it must reflect the 21st century. The second point I will make to you is our immigration laws are only as good as our ability to enforce them. We do not have enforcement mechanisms that work. All the attention is paid to the border, and it should be, because the border is not just an immigration issue, it is a national security issue. That means the same routes that are used to smuggle in immigrants can be used to smuggle in weapons and terrorists and other things--and drugs. So we must secure the border. That is not easy to do because there is no such thing as one border. The border is broken up into about nine different sectors. Some are doing much better than they ever have; others are not doing very well at all. We must secure the border of the United States for national security reasons as well as immigration reasons. I know it is hard to do it, and I know there have been efforts in the past that have failed, but I am telling you that I refuse to accept the idea that the most powerful country on Earth, the Nation that put a man on the Moon, is incapable of securing its own borders. Our sovereignty is at stake in terms of border security. Border security is not an anti-immigration or anti-immigrant measure, it is an important national security measure. But it is also an important defense of our sovereignty. We must protect our borders. Likewise, we have to understand that even if we protect our borders, the magnet that is bringing people to the United States is employment. So we have to create a system, which we are capable of doing in the 21st century, we must create a system that allows employers to verify that the person they are hiring is legally here; hence, all this talk of E-Verify. Last but not least, because 40 percent of the people who are here illegally entered legally, we have to have a system that tracks when visitors enter and when they leave. My colleagues will tell you that is already required by law, and it is. The problem is that the way it is required right now will never work. That is why this bill deals with that. We have to have a system so when you are visiting the United States on a temporary visa--as a tourist, on business, whatever it may be--we track you. You log in when you come in and you log in when you leave. Every hotel in America knows when their guests come in and when they leave. Every hotel in America knows that. Multiple businesses track people when they come in and when they leave. We do this every single day as a matter of routine in our lives. The Federal Government should be able to do that, and it must do that. This bill requires that they do that, and it creates a real incentive to do that, and I will talk about that in a moment. But, basically, the incentive is that the green card process, for those who are here illegally in this country--that does not start until that system is fully in place. By the way, it also does not start until E-Verify is fully in place. These are significant security measures we must undertake. When you hear people say: Well, the bill weakens the status quo and the law, the problem is that the status quo is not working. There is a reason we have 11 million people here illegally, and it is because the status quo--the current law--there is a flaw in it. There is a flaw in E-Verify. The flaw in E-Verify is that you basically show up at your employer and you show them a Social Security card. It may not be your Social Security card, but that is all you have to show them. It is happening all the time. People are either falsifying the document or borrowing someone else's, and they are using someone else's legal documentation to find a job. We have to create a new E-Verify, one that allows us to verify that the person holding that card is actually that person; otherwise, arguing in favor of the status quo is arguing in favor of continuing the fraud. We have to stop that from happening. So we have to have security elements as part of this bill--border security, E-Verify, and entry-exit tracking. The last issue--and it is the one that gets all the attention--is what to do with the people who are here illegally now. Let me begin by saying to you that I do not know anyone who is happy about the fact that we have approximately 10.5 million to 11 million human beings living in the United States illegally. I would also remind you that every one of their stories is different. I would caution people not to lump them all into one basket because they are all very different. Some came legally and overstayed, others entered illegally and have been here ever since. Some came in as very young children and did not even know they were illegal until they tried to go to college. The point is there is real diversity in that group of people. So we have three options. Option No. 1 is we can ignore it, leave it the way it is, pretend it is not there. I think if this bill fails, or efforts like it fail, that is exactly what will happen. For those who oppose amnesty, I would tell you that is de facto amnesty. De facto amnesty is having 11 million people living among you illegally. The only consequence to it is they do not have documentation. Obviously, they are working somewhere because they are providing for their families. They do not qualify for any Federal benefits. They are all around us, everywhere you look, whether you know it or not. They are here. Most have been here for longer than a decade. We can ignore it, but if we do, if we leave it in place, if we do nothing--if we do nothing--if this bill fails and we do nothing, that is de facto amnesty. The second option is we can make life miserable for them. We can basically put E-Verify in place, continue to secure the borders, and make life so tough on people that they will just leave on their own. I do not think that is a practical approach. I do not think it works. I do not think most Americans would tolerate what we would have to do in order for that to happen. I do not think most Americans would tolerate the humanitarian costs of approaching it that way. At the end of the day, I still think many will not leave anyway. They will figure out a way to survive and endure. I do not think that is a practical approach. If someone else thinks it is a practical approach, I would encourage them to come to the floor and convince me otherwise, come here and explain to us why we should try to do that. I have not heard anyone make that argument. I am not saying anyone is, which proves my point. What is the third option? The third option is to deal with it, to deal with it in a way that is reasonable and compassionate, but also in a way that is responsible and good for the country. That is what we have endeavored to do as part of this bill. So let's be clear what this bill does. First and foremost, this bill says to people who are here illegally: Come forward. We have a process for you that you are going to have to undergo if you want to be in this country legally. Here is the process: No. 1, you are going to have to undergo a background check. They are going to have to fingerprint you. You are going to have to undergo a background check for national security and for crimes. If you have committed serious crimes, you are not going to qualify for this legalization. You are going to have to pay an application fee. You are going to have to pay a fine because that is a consequence of having violated our immigration laws. When I hear the word ``amnesty'' used, it reminds me that amnesty means the forgiveness of something. We have seen amnesties all the time. I was recently in the great State of Hawaii. We had a great visit there, a personal visit. They have a box called an amnesty box. It allows you, when you get off the airplane, if you have any banned agriculture--plants, fruits, or whatever--to put it in the bucket, no questions asked. That is amnesty. Amnesty is turn it in and nothing will happen to you, no price to pay. That is not what this bill does. This bill says: Come forward, and you are going to have to undergo a background check for national security, a background check for crimes. You are going to have to pay a fine. You are going to have to pay an application fee. You are going to have to get gainfully employed and start paying taxes. You are not going to qualify for any Federal benefits--no ObamaCare, no food stamps, no welfare, nothing. That is all you are going to be able to have for 10 years, which leads me to my second point about the legalization. There is this notion out there that this is permanent legalization, that once you get this you are legal forever. Not true. This is like all other nonimmigrant visas. This is renewable. Under the program we envision in this bill, every 6 years you are going to have to come forward and reapply. Every 6 years you are going to have to come forward and undergo all the same things again--another fine, another application fee, another background check. In fact, when you go renew it the first time, you are going to have to prove you have been gainfully employed and paying taxes for the previous 6 years. The legalization that people are going to be able to get, the so- called RPI--registered provisional immigrant--the key word there is ``provisional.'' It is not permanent. There are people who are going to qualify for RPI at the beginning who, when it comes time to renew, are not going to qualify because they were not gainfully employed and paying taxes, because they committed a crime, or because they cannot pay the fine. That is going to happen. We do not think it will be prevalent, but it will happen. It is not permanent; it is provisional. The third aspect of it is that once you have been in RPI for 10 full years--after you have been in RPI for 10 full years, which means the first 6 years, and then you reapplied and qualified, and you have been in it another 4 years--then here is the only thing that happens: The only thing that happens is that you are now qualified to, you are eligible to, apply for a green card. It does not mean on the 10-year anniversary of getting RPI you show up at some office and say: I am here. Give me my green card. That is not true. You have to apply for it. You have to undergo the same green card process, with all the same checks and balances. I have filed an amendment to improve it even further. I am saying when you apply for that green card, after the 10-year period and more has expired, you are going to have to prove that you are proficient in English because I think assimilation is important. I think assimilating into American society is important. I think learning English is not just important for assimilation, it is important for economic success. You cannot flourish in our economy, you cannot flourish in our country if you are not proficient in English. We are going to require that at the green card stage. Now, what is the debate here going to be about over the next few weeks? Well, a couple things are going to have to happen. First, like any other bill, there are some technical changes that are going to have to be made, and those will be made. I think there will be improvements to the bill on other issues, such as what I have just talked about, this amendment I have making English proficiency required at the green card stage. Then I think we are going to move on and have a debate about the cost of this bill and ensuring that we truly tighten this. But look, the American people are very generous and open, especially to a process such as this, but they want to make sure it is not costing the American taxpayer. So we are going to have to make sure people are not qualifying for these Federal benefits. We have to make sure people who have violated our immigration law, one of the consequences of that is that they are not a burden on the American taxpayer. If we talk to many of these immigrant groups and the immigrations themselves, they will tell us that is not a problem. That is not what we are here for. Good. Because you are not going to qualify for those things. We are going to make that even clearer in some of the amendments Senator Hatch and others are working on. Then I think we have to get to the final point; that is, the security element of this bill. I personally believe that more than half of my colleagues on the Republican side, maybe a little more, maybe a little less, want to vote for an immigration bill. They want to modernize our legal immigration system, they want to improve our enforcement mechanisms, and they want to deal with the 11 million people who are here illegally. But they are only willing to do that if they can go back to their folks at home and say: We took steps in this bill to make sure this will never happen again; we did not repeat the mistakes of the past; this is not going to happen again. That is going to be the key to this bill passing. I think we can do that. That is in our principles, by the way. The guiding principles before this bill was unveiled talked about border security. One of the ways I think we can improve that is by not leaving the border and fence plan to chance. Let's not leave it to the Department of Homeland Security. One of the objections we have heard from opponents of the bill is we do not trust Homeland Security to come up with a plan that works. Fine. Then let's put it in the bill. Let's put the specific plan in the bill, the number of fences, the amount of technology. Let's mandate it in the bill so we are not leaving it to guesswork, so when we vote for this bill, we are voting for a specific security plan. I have heard people say we think the E-Verify portion should be improved. Let's fix it now. Let's put it in the bill. We think the entry-exit tracking system can be improved. Let's put it in the bill, so that when we vote for this bill, we are also voting for a plan. That is important. That is not unreasonable. I want Members to think about this for a second. The immigrant who is illegally here comes forward. They get legalized through this pretty difficult process. They are now here legally. They have qualified because they have met these conditions. They are now here legally. They are working. They are paying taxes. They are not in the shadows anymore. But before we can move to a green card, which is permanent residency, all we are asking for is that we ensure that this never happens again. That is not an unreasonable request. Not only do I not think that is an unreasonable request, I think that is a very responsible request, because none of us wants to be here 5 years from now or 10 years from now saying: Boy, they truly messed up in 2013; we have to do this all over again. None of us wants to be here 5 years from now facing 5 million illegal immigrants more, another wave of illegal immigration. We can get that right. We can get it right in this bill. If that happens, I believe this legislation will pass in a historic way out of this Chamber. It strengthens the chances it can pass in the House and be signed by the President. That is the opportunity we have to get something such as this right. I could go on and talk to you about the economic benefits of legal immigration reform and what that will mean for our economy. We will have plenty of time to have that conversation. Trust me when I tell you, I think we will work on it to convince you, it will be a net positive for America to have a legal immigration system that works. That is why this debate is so important. I think we can do something that is good for the country and responsible and once and for all solve this problem so we do not have to continue to deal with it, so it does not continue to hold us back, so we, a nation of immigrants, built on a heritage of legal immigration, can have a legal immigration system that works, that we can be proud of, that helps our country, that takes this issue off the table, that gets rid of de facto amnesty, that protects our sovereignty and our borders and the security of our people. That is what we have a chance to do. To the opponents of the legislation, I would say, look, I respect your views very much. I do. I think you raise very valid concerns, which we have attempted to address in this bill and which we will continue to address in this bill. I am not one of those take-it-or- leave-it-people with regard to legislation. I always think that no matter what idea I have, the more people who are exposed to it, the more input I get, the more suggestions I get, the better we can make it. Ultimately, that is what I am interested in being a part of. I am not interested in being part of passing a bill as a talking point or a messaging point, nor am I interested in the political calculations of this issue. What I am personally interested in is solving a problem that is hurting America. That is how I will close. That is why I am passionate. The reason I am passionate about this issue is because this thing is hurting America. The fact that we have 11 million people leaving here, we do not know who they are, we do not know where they are, they are not paying taxes, they are not incorporated into our economy, that is hurting America. It is bad for them, but it is very bad for our country. The fact that we cannot enforce our immigration laws because the systems we have in place do not work, that is bad for America. The fact that we have a legal immigration system that hurts our economy and hurts our future, that is bad for America. What we have today on immigration in America is bad. It does not work for anyone, unless you are a human trafficker or someone who is benefiting at the expense of cheap illegal labor. Who else is being helped by the status quo? Who else likes what we have right now? The answer is nobody. Leaving this in place is not an alternative. It is not an option. This is a problem that is hurting our country. The only way I know how to solve a problem is to get involved in trying to solve it. That is why I came here. I did not come to the Senate to sign on to a bunch of letters and give a speech once a week on the floor. I came here because I believe, I know, I know with all my heart, that what we have is a unique, exceptional, and special place. But to keep it that way requires us to take seriously, not just our constitutional charge but take seriously the opportunity we have to solve historic problems in a historic way. I think this bill done right gives us the opportunity to do that. I look forward to the opportunity to be part of it. I hope my colleagues who are openminded about it will remain openminded as we work to improve this product and give the American people something that helps our country, solves our problem, and makes us all proud. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Heitkamp.) The Senator from Virginia.

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, I would like to take this opportunity to recognize the 50th anniversary of the University of Central Florida, UCF. As a shining success story in America's higher education system, UCF has recently become the Nation's second-largest university. Not only has UCF grown in size, but also diversity, quality of education, and reputation. Today, UCF serves nearly 60,000 students, including a 39 percent minority population. I was pleased to learn the first class of medical students graduated from UCF earlier this year, those graduates were a part of a historical undertaking. The impact of UCF's medical school in the region is historic as well. UCF's College of Medicine plays a vital role in Orlando's ``Medical City'' at Lake Nona, a cluster of research institutions that will help to position Central Florida as a leader in medical care. UCF hopes for the medical school to not only increase opportunities for medical education in Florida, but to create a climate of excellence among regional research, education and medical care that will make it one of the premier institutions in the world. I would also like to mention the Institute for Simulation and Training at UCF, who has recently celebrated 30 years of Modeling and Simulation Training and is an internationally recognized research institute who has partnered with both military contractors and the Department of Defense. Congratulations to the University of Central Florida on reaching this milestone and on its many distinguished achievements in research, teaching, and public service as it celebrates its Golden Anniversary. I look forward to 50 more years of accomplishments.

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, reserving the right to object, first, I want to thank the Senator from Arizona for protecting my right to object in my absence before I made it to the floor. Just to set the record straight, I do not think that we object to moving to a budget conference; we object to moving to a budget conference and having the debt limit raised within that conference. So I would ask the Senator if she would consider adding a unanimous consent agreement and that she modify her request so that it not be in order for the Senate to consider a conference report that includes reconciliation instructions to raise the debt limit.

Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, I object.

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I too want the Senate to move to negotiate with the House on the budget. I think it is critically important. I have tremendous respect for the legislative process and our Republic at the State level, local level, and the Federal level. In fact, my colleagues are correct. Oftentimes in this place we have to vote for issues we don't like because it is a product of compromise. It may not have everything we want, but it gives us the things we need. I have certainly been on the losing end during multiple votes in this place during the time I have been here because I am in the minority both in party and sometimes in view. So I certainly understand that part of it. That is why I voted against the budget. I am glad we finally produced a budget after 1,000 days, but that budget is one that I believe is deficient. That is why I voted against the budget. Nevertheless, I believe this institution should move forward in negotiating the differences between our budget and the budget that the House has so we can finally have a budget in this country and so this country can move forward. The only thing me and my colleagues are asking for is that as part of that negotiation the issue of the debt limit not be included. I have heard here today statements made that there were X number of amendments filed and they didn't include the debt limit. I think the reason is because most of us agree that is an issue which needs to be dealt with on its own. This is not just some issue. It is an extremely consequential issue--one that needs to be debated in and of itself because it is a function not just of an annual budget. The massive debt our country faces is a function of a structural problem we have. We basically have these massive government programs that are going bankrupt, and if we don't deal with it, it will keep getting worse. I have also heard statements made here today that we can't raise the debt limit even if we wanted to because of the way it is structured. That is why I am puzzled. Why, then, the objection? Why the objection to a very simple notion? We could be in conference with the House today. We could be negotiating with the House at this very moment if all we would do is just say: Go ahead and negotiate the differences with the budget. Negotiate taxes. If there is a tax increase, I am voting against it, but negotiate that. Negotiate all of these sorts of things. But the debt limit cannot be part of it; it has to be dealt with separately. I don't understand the objection to that being in there. I would say one more thing about the amendment process, and this is a cautionary tale. The next time someone comes up to you and says, ``Don't file any more amendments; you are slowing the place down,'' maybe you should file them because if you don't file them, you will have to hold your peace forever. With that being the case, I think we need to move to negotiation with the House with the very simple language in it that it should not have a debt limit increase. I am going to move and ask for unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 33, H. Con. Res. 25; that the amendment which is at the desk, the text of S. Con. Res. 8, the budget resolution passed by the Senate, be inserted in lieu thereof; that H. Con. Res. 25, as amended, be agreed to; that the motion to reconsider be made and laid upon the table; that the Senate insist on its amendment, request a conference with the House on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses; and that the Chair be authorized to appoint conferees on the part of the Senate, all with no intervening action or debate; further, that a conference report in relation to H. Con. Res. 25 not be in order in the Senate that includes reconciliation instructions to increase the debt ceiling.

Mr. RUBIO. Well, then, we are in the same place we were before. Basically, this is senatese, but what I basically said is that I want the Senate to go into negotiations with the House. The only thing we ask is that when they come back, there not be reconciliation instructions in there that the debt limit be dealt with or increased because the debt limit is so consequential for our country that it needs to be dealt with on its own. Let me remind everybody of what we are dealing with. Let me tell my colleagues that this is a bipartisan debt. I said it yesterday, and I will repeat it today. This is a debt that grew over the last 20 or 30 years with the cooperation of both parties, unfortunately, although we have never seen anything like the last 5 years. It is a function of a structural problem in our spending programs. If we don't deal with those programs, it is going to collapse our economy within our lifetime and certainly that of our children. It is time to deal with it now. That issue should be debated on its own, not as part of a budget negotiation that deals with a 1-year spending agreement.

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, thank you. To the Senator from Arizona, for whom I have great respect, I would point out two things: The first is in his argument when stating the issue of the debt limit is a nonissue. Hence, I don't understand the objection to having language in this motion that says there will not be a raising of the debt limit. There should be a discussion of the debt limit in the context of the broader issues this country is facing. As a result, I don't understand why we can't just put it in that we are not going to raise the debt limit. I would also further say that I do respect this institution tremendously, and I do believe in regular order to the extent that we are talking about procedure. The problem is that the regular order of Washington has given us a $17 trillion debt. In fact, that is one of the reasons I ran for the Senate. I would submit to you, with all due respect to all of my colleagues who serve here, I don't think we can run up a $17 trillion debt without some bipartisan cooperation. To some extent what I am concerned about is the regular order of doing things in this city, where the debt limit has been raised consistently without any conversation about the fact that this government borrows 40 cents out of every dollar it spends. Never in the history of this country and of this Republic has a generation of leadership robbed a future generation like this generation of leadership has done. That is my concern. My concern is that I do not have trust in Washington, DC. I do not have trust--I don't care who is in charge-- that we will not recklessly, once again, raise the debt limit of the greatest country on Earth without any consideration for limiting the way we spend money in the future so that we do not bankrupt this extraordinary Nation, and the implications that could have on our children.

Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, I object.

Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, since I raised the objection today, I wanted to close my comments by accurately describing to the people at home or in the gallery or elsewhere what is happening here. Maybe some folks are wondering what this is all about. It is pretty straightforward. In fact, for over 1,000 days the Senate did not pass a budget under the leadership of the current majority, and we did complain about that because that was problematic. Ultimately, this year, they finally passed a budget--one which, quite frankly, doesn't deal with our debt and doesn't help grow our economy, but they passed a budget. The House has passed its budget. The Senate has passed a budget. The way it works is that now both sides are supposed to sit down and negotiate. What is happening is that a motion is being made to start these negotiations. Nobody here is objecting to these negotiations. That can begin today. This process they want can happen right this very moment. The only thing we are asking is that it be clear that as part of that negotiation--an increase in the debt limit not be part of it. Here is why it is so important that it not be part of it: because we have not discussed it. As the Senator from Texas pointed out, when we debated the budget we did not debate the debt limit. Let me tell you what the debt limit is. It is the credit line of the United States. It is how much money the government is allowed to borrow. This is not a trivial matter. I heard people stand here today, my fellow Senators, and say: You can raise any objection to any issue you want to stop the whole process. This is not a trivial objection. I am not asking that key lime pie be made the official pie of the United States or some ridiculous thing. This is the debt limit, something that has been called the single greatest national security problem facing the United States of America by a national security official. All we are saying is that you cannot come back from that conference with an increase in the debt limit because if that happens, it will be a 51-vote majority here to do it as a matter of routine. Frankly, the problem is that the debt limit increases have become a matter of routine, and that is how we get from $10 trillion to $16.5 trillion in such a short period of time. Ultimately, you are right. We should not treat the debt limit casually. That means we should not just casually and cavalierly say we will never raise it no matter what, no matter you do, but we also should not just casually raise it as a matter of routine, and that is the fundamental problem. The impact this is having on our economy is serious. I deeply respect this institution. One of the reasons I ran for the Senate is I thought I could make a difference because in this Senate even a minority within the minority can make a difference. Let me tell you, one day in the future I will not serve here anymore, and someday in the future my children, who today are very young, will have to deal with the consequences of the decisions we make or fail to make in my time in the Senate. If what they inherit is an economy crippled by the horrifying decisions that have been made here now and in the past, I am going to have to answer for that. I am going to have to explain to them. What did you do or what did you not do when you were in the Senate? How could you have allowed this debt to go forward? What did you do to do something about this debt issue? My answer to them cannot be, well, I followed the regular order. I played along to get along. I went ahead and acquiesced to what my colleagues wanted. That cannot be my answer. That will not be my answer. The bottom line is that we can move to conference right now, we can begin negotiating with the House this very day. All we are asking--all we are asking is that as part of that negotiation, they cannot come back here with a debt limit as part of it. The debt limit is an important issue. It should be discussed on its own as it relates to the entire economy, not simply the 1-year budget of the United States of America. That is the basis of our objection. If the majority would reconsider their position and come to the floor and offer the same motion but with language that clearly says it cannot include reconciliation instructions to raise the debt limit, we will be in conference with the House this very day. But if they fail to do that, we cannot move forward because what we cannot do is continue to routinely raise the debt limit of this country without any serious conversation about how we are going to begin to put our fiscal House in order because the impact it is having on our economy is disastrous. Our economy is not growing. There are people in America right now who are unemployed or underemployed because the debt is scaring people away from investing in our economy and in our future. If we do nothing about that, then, my colleagues, we will be the first generation of Americans to leave the next generation worse off. That has never happened in our history. I hope we can come together to prevent that from happening because I think that if we do some simple but important things for our country, including bringing our debt under control, I believe that if we do that, this new century, this 21st century, can also be an American century. My hope is that at some point today or tomorrow or the next few days we come to this floor and make a motion to go to conference with very simple and straightforward language that says the conference report cannot include reconciliation instructions to raise the debt limit. I yield the floor.

Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, reserving the right to object, I would ask the Senator from Virginia if he would consider adding--I would ask consent that the Senator modify his request that it not be in order for the Senate to consider a conference report that includes reconciliation instructions to raise the debt limit. The reason I make that is as follows: First of all, I do respect regular order tremendously. In fact, I want to take this brief opportunity to congratulate the Judiciary Committee on the lengthy process with regard to the immigration bill, which I think will help us in the process of having a better product. Obviously, also, although we disagree with the outcome because of the way it was constructed, I also disagree with the way this budget is constructed. This issue of the debt limit is an extraordinary measure. That is why I would ask the Senator from Virginia to modify his request.

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. I thank the Senator. I rise in support of these sanctions as well. Americans are perhaps tempted these days to take a step back from the problems in places in the Middle East and wonder why do we need to be active in resolving these thorny issues that often seem unsolvable. But yesterday in the Foreign Relations Committee, for example, we discussed Syrian legislation and debated how to address the growing repercussions of our policy of inaction as violence and instability spreads beyond Syria's borders. We cannot stand idly by and ignore the fallout from Syria. Americans need to remember that Iran is not just Israel's problem, it is ours as well. Iran has been sponsoring terrorism and killing Americans for decades, most recently in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran has pursued an anti-American agenda, and its foreign policy has supported tyrants. It has undermined U.S. allies, and not just in the Middle East, through its terrorist proxies such as Hezbollah and what they are doing now to defend Asad in Syria, but they have even done it in our own hemisphere. On top of these issues, Iranian leaders have denied that the Holocaust even happened. They threaten Israel's very existence. So we do need to strengthen our sanctions. We need to actually follow through with them. That is what this resolution calls on the administration to do. But we also have to ensure that our international partners do that as well. I am pleased that this resolution calls on the administration to fully implement the sanctions we have already passed and approved. These sanctions have not changed Iran's calculus. The sanctions alone are not enough because, as we have seen, Iran has added centrifuges, so they continue to enrich uranium and they get closer to a nuclear capability. Similarly, the approach of this administration to talk to Iran, trying what our European partners have attempted to do in the past, has also been unsuccessful. For more than 10 years now we and the Europeans have tried to negotiate--all with no results. Iran has only gotten closer and closer to a nuclear capability. We need a new approach. One avenue that has not been adequately explored is using perhaps our greatest weapon, what Ronald Reagan called ``the will and moral courage of free men and women.'' That means speaking out more forcefully about the human rights situation in Iran. This regime is brutally oppressive. It represses its own people. Read the 2012 State Department report. It talks about disappearances; cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment, including judicially sanctioned amputations and flogging; politically motivated violence and repression, such as beatings and rape; harsh and life-threatening conditions in detention and prison facilities. This is not even a comprehensive list of the abuses that exist in Iran. Currently, there is an American pastor in Iran, Saeed Abedini, who is serving 8 years in prison because he is a Christian and practices Christianity. Yesterday the Iranian Government disqualified two Presidential candidates. This will be a sham election in the coming months. As one State Department official put it to the Foreign Relations Committee, the Green Movement in Iran today is virtually nonexistent. Instead of denigrating the freedom fighters in Iran who have suffered from inaction and lack of support, we need to be doing everything possible in the weeks to come to speak frankly about the lack of fundamental freedoms in Iran and reject the notion that this regime is legitimate or a credible negotiating partner. We need to make clear that a crackdown against the Iranian people similar to the one that occurred in June of 2009 after a fraudulent Presidential election will have real consequences this time. We can't be everywhere. America can't be everywhere and do everything, but we can't outsource the solutions to all our problems either. Israel faces an unprecedented security environment. I saw this firsthand during my recent visit to the Middle East in February. In every direction, Israel sees uncertainty and potential instability, from an all-out civil war on its northern border in Syria, to neighbors going through delicate political transitions in the wake of the Arab spring. But even with all these changes in its neighborhood, the greatest challenge facing Israel today is the threat of a nuclear Iran. We need to stand with Israel and provide diplomatic, military, and economic support in its defense of its territory, its people, and its existence. We need to remind Tehran that the United States will not allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons, as this resolution states, and that is why I am supporting it. I urge all of my colleagues to support it as well.

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, as we heard last summer and again throughout this week's debate, government subsidies are at the heart of both our agricultural and nutritional policies here in the United States. Subsidizing food costs in the form of payments for groceries is the core of our supplemental nutrition assistance program. Insurance premiums paid by our corn and soybean growers are directly subsidized in the farm bill on the floor today. And adverse market payments, what we once called direct payments, are available to crops such as peanuts and rice if the price for those commodities fall below a certain threshold. These government subsidies are used all across our country--from Iowa to North and South Carolina; and from Missouri down through Kansas, Arkansas, and Texas. Now we have heard from several members from these and other States the many opinions about the validity or usefulness of these subsidies. And I certainly have my own opinion about how the agricultural policy in the United States should be reformed and shaped. However, today, I stand to discuss a unique program--our country's Sugar Program. For those of you who are not familiar with the program, it consists of three components--a domestic allocation component, a tariff quota component, and a loan component. Now, aside from the loan component, uniquely, the Sugar Program in the United States does not require a direct government subsidy. In fact, from 2002 to 2011, the Sugar Program in the United States cost the government zero dollars, a glaringly low amount compared to the various other commodity programs that I previously listed. There is a reason for this difference. Our Sugar Program is not an agricultural program--it is a trade program. We do not set the price of sugar in the United States artificially high by sending taxpayer money directly to that industry as we do with corn, soybeans, peanuts, or all the other various agricultural commodities here in the United States. We set the price of sugar in the United States by limiting the amount of sugar that we import from foreign countries. This distinction cannot be ignored. This distinction creates a fundamentally different set of policy decisions for my colleagues here in the Senate as we continue this important debate on our Sugar Program. Furthermore, this distinction requires acknowledgement in the sense that it changes our discussion about the Sugar Program here in the United States from how it impacts our domestic industries to how it interacts with same industries and policies in the international community. We cannot support any policy that ignores international realities at the detriment of our own domestic industries. In implementation, and by necessity, this reality means two things: One, in debating the sugar policy here in the United States, because it is inherently a trade policy, we must do so with international realities in mind, and No. 2--when viewed through this lens, does any amendment that would reform this program without consideration of these international realities make the best sense and, more importantly, set a positive precedent? I would argue it does not and would offer my colleagues, in the context of trade, the following facts: The Brazil Government, through the form of direct payments, forgiven loans and pension payments, and fuel mandates, subsidized the sugar industry in their country to a tune of $2.5 billion last year alone. Brazil controls 50 percent of all the world's sugar exports. To put that into context, Saudi Arabia controls only about 19 percent of the world's oil exports. Countries such as China, Thailand, and India, countries that the United States does not have free-trade agreements with, all subsidize their sugar industries in some form. And even in Mexico, the government owns and operates 20 percent of the country's sugar industry. These countries, regardless of whether we repeal our sugar program here in the United States, will continue to generously subsidize sugar production for their own countries. In this context, I would ask my colleagues to seriously question the appropriateness, the benefits, and more importantly the risks to American jobs, if reforms to our Sugar Program were to pass without any link to the overall international dialogue. The 142,000 jobs and the $20 billion annually that our domestic industry provides to our economy would be at risk while at no point in our discussion have we accounted for the protectionist policies that exist for the sugar industry in other countries all around the world. To be clear, I am not arguing that, as a country, we need to be trade protectionists. To the contrary, I think our country will excel in the 21st century only if we eliminate barriers to trade and increase the flow of goods all around the world. But what I am saying is that if we are going to eliminate a trade program, let us do it in the context of a trade debate. Otherwise, we will lose jobs, industries, and overall leverage to other countries without even bringing them to the table to negotiate. I would argue it would be more appropriate to address reform of our Sugar Program in the context of international trade. Very simply, we should repeal our entire Sugar Program if the largest sugar-producing countries in the world eliminated their own trade protectionist policies as well. We must ensure that we do not negotiate against ourselves in this international context by eliminating a program important to an industry in our country that is unfortunately forced to deal with these international realities. And I encourage my colleagues to consider the precedent they would set for their own industries in their own States when they consider the various amendments offered in this debate introduced to reform our Sugar Program. We must put this debate in the proper context while at the same time acknowledging the benefits of free trade to the United States and to citizens in countries all across the world.

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to speak for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, I wanted to come to the floor to follow up on the news that we have had on the IRS situation, which I know is concerning to all Americans, Democrats, Republicans, everyone. The power of government is real and the power of the IRS is very real. So anything involving an abuse of power in the IRS is going to concern Americans irrespective of their political leanings. Before I do, I just wish to comment on something that happened a few moments ago at a press conference at the White House. I have tremendous respect for the Office of the Presidency and for anyone who would hold themselves out to hold the office. So I say this with the highest respect. I think the President today in his press conference potentially made a mistake in an answer he gave. I would encourage the White House to clear it up as soon as possible. He was asked specifically if he or anyone in the White House knew about what was going on at the IRS before April 22 of this year. The President's answer was that he did not know about the inspector general's report until he read about it in the press. So I would submit to you he did not answer that question. I am not implying he did know about it. I am just encouraging the White House and those there to clear this up as soon as possible. It is kind of reminiscent of when Attorney General Holder would not answer Senator Paul's question about whether American citizens could be targeted in the homeland with a drone. That led--we all remember what it led to. It is a very simple and straightforward question. I would encourage the White House and the President to echo what Jay Carney said just a couple days ago, which is no one in the White House knew anything about it. I think it is important for the President to answer that clearly; again, not because I am implying he did know, because I think if they leave that out there, it creates questions that should not be created. I hope they will do that. It is important. I wish to bring to the attention of the Senate and the American people a compilation of stories that have emerged since the initial question emerged. They are very troubling. They extend, quite frankly, beyond the IRS, but I will begin with the IRS. Here is a report from the Washington Examiner. The headline reads: ``IRS denied tax-exempt status to pro-lifers on behalf of Planned Parenthood.'' Let me read what it says inside. It says: ``In one case, the IRS withheld approval of an application for tax exempt status for Coalition for Life of Iowa.'' In a phone call that this reporter reported he had with one of the leaders--I am sorry. One of the leaders claimed that in a phone call he had with the IRS on June 6 of 2009, ``the IRS agent `Ms. Richards' told the group to send a letter to the IRS with the entire board's signatures stating that, under perjury of the law, they do not picket/ protest or organize groups to picket or protest outside of Planned Parenthood.'' They said that ``once the IRS received this letter, this application would be approved.'' That is troubling if true. That is one report that is in the news. Here is another one. This one comes from a very respected individual in the United States. His name is Franklin Graham. He is the son of the Reverend Billy Graham. He claims the Billy Graham Evangelical Association and the family's international humanitarian organization Samaritan's Purse, the IRS notified them in September that it was conducting a ``review'' of their activities for tax year 2010. He goes on to say, by the way, that this review happened after Mr. Graham's organization published newspaper ads in North Carolina backing a State constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. That is in the news. That was from Politico. Again, I am just reporting what different outlets are reporting. This is another report that has been out there. I think I alluded to this yesterday in my speech. This talks about how the same IRS office that deliberately targeted conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status in the runup to the 2012 election released nine pending confidential applications of conservative groups to ProPublica late last year. I think this is actually ProPublica admitting that is where they got the information. This is in response to a request for the applications for 67 different nonprofits last November. So this is an admission, basically, from ProPublica, which is in this not-for-profit investigative reporting group. They are admitting the source of these leaked documents was the IRS office in Cincinnati, the leaked documents of nine conservative groups. So now it is no longer audits, it is cooperating with investigative journalists by provided them with information which is illegal to provide them, confidential tax information. That is what this report says from the organization that got the leak. This is FOX News Latino. It reports that the former President of San Antonio tea party said they received a questionnaire with over 50 questions, including inquiries into whom the group met with, where their meetings were held, who was in attendance, the subjects of internal e-mails, et cetera. This is in line with some of the other stories we have been hearing around the country. This was actually posted online. These are letters going back and forth between the Richmond tea party and the IRS. These are the actual online letters we pulled, with some information redacted for privacy. Some of the questions they were asked: Provide the following information for all events and programs you have conducted and participated in from October 22 to now. They wanted copies of handouts provided to the audience. They wanted to know if there were any speeches or forums conducted in the event or program, provide detailed contents of the speeches or forums, the names of the speakers and panels, their credentials, the names of persons from your organization and the amount of time they spent on the event or the program. Indicate the percentage of time and resources you spent on all of the events and programs in relation to your activity. It goes on and on. This is page after page of information being asked of a citizen group by the IRS. Anyone who has gotten a letter from the IRS understands it is never a pleasant circumstance, unless there is a refund check in that envelope. You go to the mailbox, open it, it says IRS, and no one likes that. Just imagine this group of everyday citizens. These are not professional political activists. They do not have entire law firms at their disposal. These are just everyday Americans who are speaking out about the principles of limited government and free enterprise. By the way, if they were speaking out in favor of big government, they still have the same right not to be harassed by the IRS. So I just want to bring the real face of this to bear, because this is not just a problem with an abuse of power in the IRS. Think about the impact this has had on the lives of everyday Americans who one day decided: I want to get involved in politics. I want to speak out. I want to say something. They get hit with a letter such as this, this kind of questionnaire, which quite frankly what happens with a lot of these people is they decide I am not going to do it. I am not going to get involved. I do not have the time for this. I do not need the hassle. Maybe that was the intent. So we went over that for a moment. Here is something that is very troubling. This is from USA Today. The USA Today headline: ``IRS approved liberal groups while Tea Party in limbo.'' Some of those groups were approved in as little as 9 months. Bus for Progress in New Jersey, a not-for-profit that uses red, white, and blue buses to drive progressive change, Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment, they got their tax-exempt status just 9 months after a pretty simple and straightforward process. Progress Florida in my own home State, similar experience. Again, this is USA Today. I think this was their cover story yesterday, where it described the difference in how tea party groups are treated, in comparison, that had words in their title such as ``progress'' or ``progressive.'' Here is one more that actually shows this kind of behavior extends beyond the Internal Revenue Service. This is from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, May 14. It talks about how public records produced by EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, in response to a lawsuit filed by CEI under the Freedom of Information Act, show a pattern of making it far more difficult for limited government groups, in particular those that argue for more freedom and less EPA, how it makes it harder for them to get access to public records. For example, green groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, Earth Justice, they had their fees waived in 75 out of 82 cases. Meanwhile, the EPA effectively or expressly denied CEI's request for fee waivers in 14 of its 15 requests--14 of its 15 requests. So that is 93 percent of the time versus basically the alternative, which is what they did to these other groups. Again, all a chain in a pattern of behavior that I think is not anything any of us ever want to see. So far I have not seen it, and I do not think we are going to, quite frankly. I suspect we will not see a single Member of Congress come to the floor of either Chamber and say this is acceptable behavior. I wish to tie in the loop, though, because this is not just about these agencies run amok. This is not just about a handful of people in the IRS's Cincinnati office or somewhere else doing something wrong. This is much deeper than that. I talked about it yesterday, I will repeat it today; that is, the sense that this administration has pursued a real culture of intimidation in the political process, including the way it ran its campaign. But I wish to take it one step further. What this should remind us of is the danger of government power. Let me stop there and remind everyone. We need government. No one here--I do not know any anarchists who serve in the U.S. Government, for the most part. All of us believe government has an important role to play in our country and the national defense. By and large, we believe there needs to be a safety net to help those who cannot help themselves, not as a way of life but to help those who have fallen to stand and try again. We think the government plays an important role in our laws. One of the things that attracts people to the United States--for example, to do business here--is that we have a legal system where property rights are going to be respected. So if one says they own a piece of property, it belongs to them. No one would necessarily dispute that. If they do, they have to go to court. There are countries in the world where the owner of the property is whoever has the bigger guns or whoever has the best connection to government. We take that for granted sometimes. So there is a role for government to play. It is a very important role. But the problem is that our Framers, the Founders of this Nation, had a deep suspicion of government no matter who was running the government. They rejected this notion that if we get very good people in government, we will have very good government. Government has a role to play. But when government's powers extend beyond its natural limits or its important limits, we start to have problems such as these emerge. I bring this to the floor because this is exactly what we have been debating in so many instances, is expanding the natural power of government beyond where it should be and allowing it to have jurisdiction and influence over areas of our life, where no matter who is in charge, Republican or Democrat, we may not like the way it turns out. We talked about the IRS for a moment. The IRS is going to be on the frontlines of enforcing the health care law. This is the same agency of government that has for the most part over the last few years, now by admission of everyone involved, been abusing power--at least some of their employees have. I don't want to besmirch the entire agency. As Senator Hatch was saying a few minutes ago, there are very good people at work all throughout government who would never participate in this sort of behavior. My point is that this is the agency that was targeting Americans because they were organizing themselves as conservatives. This is now the agency that is going to be empowered with new powers it has never had before--the power to force every American to either buy health insurance or pay a fine, buy health insurance or pay a tax. In the weeks to come, I am going to be outlining examples of why giving government more power than it should have creates situations like this--the potential for situations like this to occur. There was enormous wisdom in limiting the power of the Federal Government that our Framers had, enormous wisdom in that. That is why they specifically said: If this Constitution doesn't give the Federal Government this power, it doesn't have it. We sometimes forget that lesson from two centuries later, but we shouldn't. That is an important limit. I think we can have an honest debate about what role government should be playing in our lives and in our economy. There could be an honest debate about that because there is a role for government to play. There is an important role for government to play in our country. It can go too far, whether it is in the realm of civil liberties or economic liberties. That is what I think the debate should be focused on in the weeks to come, in addition to getting to the bottom of what has happened here, understanding clearly what has happened here. I am involved in another endeavor: immigration reform. One of the biggest impediments to immigration reform that I am facing--that we are facing--is this distrust of the Federal Government. It is the belief that they are not going to enforce the law. No matter what we pass or what we put in place, they are not going to do it. We tried this 20 or 30 years ago, and they didn't do it. That is unfortunate. I hope we can overcome that. I believe we can because the truth is that the vast majority of Americans--the vast majority of Republicans, Democrats, Independents--are willing to deal with the fact that we have 11 million people living in this country illegally so long as we can ensure that this problem never happens again in the future. They are willing to deal with that. We have to win their confidence that, in fact, the measures we are going to take are going to prevent that from happening in the future. We are struggling because people have such a distrust of the government's willingness or ability to enforce the law. You see it, even in that issue, rear its head. I think it is important to remind ourselves that even if government is run by the best people with the best of intentions, it has a tendency to do these sorts of things. You see that at every level but particularly at the Federal level where there are such enormous powers. Anytime we come here and debate giving government a new power, a new agency, a new mandate, or a new jurisdiction, we should be cognizant of the history of government power. We should be cognizant of what it has meant throughout human history. We should remember why the Framers limited that power to begin with--because they understood that power could be abused. In the weeks to come, I know that I, along with all my colleagues, want to get to the bottom of this. We want to understand from the IRS' perspective who was involved in doing this, why this happened, and, more importantly, what we can do now to make sure this never, ever happens again, what we can do now to ensure that not just in the IRS but across the government that a situation like this never happens again so that no matter what your political persuasion may be, no American ever feels afraid to speak out politically because they may wind up the target of governmental action. I yield the floor.

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Thank you. Madam President, I wanted to come to the floor to address the news of the last 4 days which I think has shocked the American people in the wake of a series of revelations made across news agencies about the role our Federal Government has played and the way it has used its power to intimidate those who they believe are not doing what they want them to do. For example, we learned last week from testimony in the House of Representatives that there were employees of the State Department who disagreed with the direction and the way the government was handling the Benghazi situation and the word that was being put out by the State Department. They disagreed with it. They didn't like it. They testified last week they were made to feel threatened, and the message was sent to them very clearly from the highest levels of the State Department that they should not be talking or saying the things they were saying. That concerned a lot of people. Unfortunately, on Friday of last week, in what I think was an attempt to bury a story--and there was no way they were going to bury this one--they put it out on Friday, which is notoriously known as the slowest news day of the week because it goes into the weekend and people forget it and move on, but this one was not easy to forget. On Friday, we learned the Internal Revenue Service had specifically targeted organizations in this country because of their political leanings and affiliation. I understand this is not something new. People have been complaining about this for a couple of years; anecdotally, from organizations across the country, people coming to us and saying: We got this weird request from the IRS asking us for all sorts of things. We started to hear that everywhere. We still, I think to some level, have confidence and hope, have the best hopes of the Federal Government and the people who work within it. As we started to hear that more and more, people became concerned. So Members of this body wrote letters inquiring of the IRS: Is this going on? Are groups being targeted because they are a tea party member or because they are a 9/12 group? Of course, the answer they gave was: No, that is just not true; that is absolutely false. We know it wasn't false. Then the IRS said: But it was just this group of employees in Cincinnati. As it turns out, that is not true either. It was widespread. It was an effort throughout the IRS to specifically target groups because they were called tea party or liberty groups or groups organized to defend the scope of government, groups that are critical of decisions being made by the government. This is chilling. This was discovered last Friday and it has only gotten worse. Every day that goes on we get more and more information in that regard. Then the revelation on Monday that the Justice Department of the United States--think about that, the chief law enforcement agency of the country--had issued this blanket search of the phone records of I think the Nation's largest reporting group, the Associated Press. I understand if they were going after a leak that endangered America and security; that is one thing. We can have a debate about that. But they went much further than that. It was a blanket request of all of these phone calls, including the switchboard. Pretty outrageous. So in the span of 4 days, there were three major revelations about the use of government power to intimidate those who are doing things the government doesn't like. These are the tactics of the Third World. These are the tactics of places that don't have the freedoms and the independence we have in this country, and it is shocking to Americans that this would come to light in the way it has. I submit to my colleagues, however, that none of this is new; that what we see emerging is a pattern: a culture of intimidation, of hardball politics that we saw both on the campaign trail and now through the apparatus of government. I don't have enough time in 10 or 15 minutes in morning business to cite them all, but I will cite a few that have already been discussed. Let me tell my colleagues about the case of a gentleman named Frank VanderSloot. He was a couple of things. Mr. VanderSloot was the national cochair of Mitt Romney's Presidential campaign. He was also a major donor to a super-PAC that was supportive of Governor Romney's campaign. In April of 2012, President Obama's reelection campaign posted on the Web a list of eight ``wealthy individuals'' with less than reputable records who were contributing to Mitt Romney. It was a series called ``Behind the curtain: A brief history of Romney donors.'' It described Mr. VanderSloot as litigious, combative, and a bitter foe for the gay rights movement. Curiously enough, within a few weeks, Mr. VanderSloot was the subject of not just one but two IRS audits, one for his personal life and one for his business. Coincidence? Maybe we should find out through an investigation. Then we get word of something else. This is even more--well, equally--outrageous. That is the case of this organization called ProPublica, which was mentioned a moment ago in relation to another discussion. I wish to get the facts exactly right about this. Basically, as it turns out, the IRS--someone in the IRS--released nine pending confidential applications of conservative groups to the so- called investigative reporting agency, this so-called not-for-profit, impartial--we can have that debate later, but I don't want to be guilty of doing to the donors of that group what the Obama campaign did to the donors of Mr. Romney. So let me just say in response, they sent out information that was confidential, that was not public, illegally. They leaked from the IRS information on nine of these groups that was then reported on by this organization, which admitted that it came from the IRS. Coincidence? It doesn't end there, by the way. This is not just limited to the IRS. This is a culture of intimidation, a willingness to play hardball politics against political opponents. Let's not forget about the case of Boeing in South Carolina. Boeing decided to relocate, as any business has a right to do. In the United States of America, a business should have the right to locate its operations in any State it wants. When Boeing decided to relocate from Washington State to South Carolina, the NLRB came after them in a complaint which they claim was on the merits, but it was very straightforward. They were going after them because the union in Washington State was upset about the move. In fact, the case was dropped, partially because of political pressure but, interestingly enough, the effort was only abandoned after they negotiated a contract deal with the union. I can be up here all day, and I intend to keep coming back to the floor and citing examples. But the point is, we have going on now a culture of hard-ball politics and intimidation, which is unacceptable and should be chilling to every Member of this body, Republican and Democrat. This is unacceptable behavior. But this is what we get when an administration is all about politics. This administration is a 365-day- a-year, year-round political campaign. Every issue is a political campaign. Leading up to the election, and even now, every issue is a wedge. Few times in the history of this country has anyone used this office to drive more wedges among the American people than this President and this administration. So, yes, this is the culture that has been created: They are bad and we are good. Our enemies are bad people. The people who disagree with us on policy are bad people. If you don't support us on gun, you don't care about children and families. If you don't support some measure against religious liberty, you are waging a war on women. On issue after issue--a deliberate attempt to divide the American people against each other for the purposes of winning an election. That is the culture that has been created, and that culture leads to this kind of behavior. Whether it was directed or not, we do not know that. I am not saying someone picked up the phone in the White House and said: Do these audits. Leak this information. I am saying when you create a culture where what is rewarded is political advantage, when you create a culture in your administration where everything is politics 24 hours, 7 days a week, when you create a culture where every issue that comes before the Congress is used to divide people against each other to see who can get the 51 percent of the next election, when you create a culture like that, it leads to this kind of behavior throughout your administration. In the days to come, we will hear more about this. We have a nominee right now to the Labor Department, who has an admirable personal story which I admire and applaud, but who has a history of using the government and his position in government to intimidate people to do what he wants them to do. I would submit to you that Mr. Perez's nomination is bad for the country in any time, but in this administration, in this political culture, after what we have learned in the last few days, even more so. I hate to single him out, but that is one of the pending nominations that is before us. The point is, my friends, this is what we are dealing with and a cautionary tale about expanding the scope and power of government. Because this same IRS that was willing to do this--this same IRS that was willing to target groups because of their political leanings, this same IRS that audited Mr. VanderSloot after he happened to appear on the Obama enemy list--this same IRS will now have unfettered power to come after every American and ensure that either you are buying insurance or you are paying them a tax--every American business. The front lines of enforcing ObamaCare fall to the IRS. That is what happens when you expand the scope and power of government. It is always sold as a noble concept. It is always offered as we are going to give government more power so they can do good things for us. But the history of mankind proves that every time government gets too much power, it almost always ends up using it in destructive ways against the personal liberties of individuals. That is why the Framers of our Constitution were so wise to impose real constitutional limits on the power of our government, because they knew from history that this was the case. That is why our Constitution says that unless government at the Federal level is specifically given a power, it does not have it. That is why it says that. That is why you see people stand up here on the floor and fight to protect the Constitution. That is why these groups were formed around the country-- everyday Americans from all walks of life; people, some of whom had never been involved in politics before, who joined the tea party movement or a 9/12 movement--because they feared the direction our country was going, and so they stood up and said: This is wrong. This is why this adherence to the Constitution. Because the Constitution was based on the simple truth that if government has too much power, it almost always ends up destructive. Our Framers knew better than to rely on ``good people'' being in government to take care of us. They understood that government's power, in order for us to have freedom and prosperity, necessarily had to be limited--not because we are antigovernment. Of course we need a government. Who provides for our national defense? Who is supposed to secure our borders? We are having this immigration debate. These are important things our government needs to do. But if you give it too much power, it leads to these abuses. This is why the Constitution was so wise to limit the power of the Federal Government to its enumerated powers and leave to the government closest to the people most of the powers. I think we should re-examine all these decisions that have been made that have expanded the scope and power of our government. I do not know how many people are aware of this, but early next year every single one of you is going to have to buy insurance, health insurance that the government says is good enough--maybe not the insurance you are getting today that you are happy with--and if you do not buy that insurance, you are going to owe the IRS some money. That is a tax to me. The same IRS that has shown a propensity to target people based on their political leanings--this is who we have empowered through ObamaCare. This is what is going on here. It is not just one scandal at the IRS. It is about a culture of hardball politics. I think in the days to come we are going to learn a lot more about it, and we are not going to like what we learn. For example, you think about some of our most precious freedoms--the First Amendment right to free speech. Think about if you are a reporter at the Associated Press. Think about if you are a source--unrelated to national security--to the Associated Press. Think about if you are a whistleblower, someone who is blowing the whistle on government activity because you work in the government and you think what the government is doing is wrong. Think about that for a second. Now, all of a sudden, what are you afraid of? I am not calling that reporter back because their phone might be tapped, my number might show up on their records, because the Justice Department has just shown they are willing to do that. Think about the chilling effect that sends up and down the government. If there is wrongdoing somewhere in the government right now, people are probably afraid to blow the whistle because they are afraid they are being surveilled by the Justice Department or that the person they are talking to is being surveilled. That is how outrageous this is. Think about people who are thinking about getting involved in the political process, contributing to a group or speaking out, donating to a campaign or a candidate, as they are allowed to do under the Constitution. They do not want to be the next VanderSloot. They do not want to be the next guy being targeted. They do not want to be the next person being smeared on a Web site. This is unacceptable. This is outrage. And every single Member of this body should be outraged by this behavior. This culture of intimidation, these hardball politics tactics we cannot stand for. I hope we will be united in condemning this and ensuring we get to the bottom of this with significant investigations and hearings from the committees in the Senate that have jurisdiction on the matter. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. I don't anticipate using it all, but I ask unanimous consent to be recognized for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. RUBIO. Are we in morning business?

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, we realized over the last 72 hours that we were all scandalized when we learned that the Internal Revenue Service of the United States and employees within the Internal Revenue Service were targeting fellow Americans and political organizations because of their political views. The feelings we have are bipartisan--I hope they are. I don't think any of us want to see an agency of government being used to target our fellow Americans because of their points of view on a political issue. This is a very serious issue. Yesterday I called for the President to ask for the resignation of the acting chief of the IRS. I asked that there be a criminal investigation launched in this matter, which Attorney General Holder has announced today. I have prepared an amendment that I think is timely and that I hope we will consider in this body that makes it a crime for an employee of the IRS to target individual taxpayers or organizations because of their political views. I stand today to ask if the chairwoman would consider consenting to allow my Rubio amendment No. 892 to be included in the unanimous consent agreement.

Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, and I will not object to the unanimous consent request because of the importance of this issue to many States in the country, let me close by saying that we need to understand what happened here over the last 72 hours and what we found out. Employees of the Internal Revenue Service made a decision that they were going to specifically target groups who had things like ``tea party'' and the word ``patriot'' in their organization, groups who looked to do things like protect the Constitution of the United States. This is outrageous. There is growing evidence that higher-ups--significant people in the IRS--knew about this and were not disclosing that to Members of Congress. Members of this body were asking the IRS directly: Are you involved in this? Is this happening? They were not giving us information we now know they had. I will not object to the unanimous consent request because of the importance of this issue, but this issue will not and cannot go away because of the importance of it.

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Mr. President, I would like to take this opportunity to recognize the events taking place in my home State of Florida commemorating five centuries of historic and cultural significance. Five hundred years ago Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon led an expedition from the island of Puerto Rico in search of new territory for Spain to claim. Ponce de Leon laid claim to the new territory they found, calling the site La Florida because of the lush floral beauty that he saw. From our beautiful sandy beaches, to our rivers and lakes, to the Everglades in South Florida, our State remains true to Ponce de Leon's first description. Ponce de Leon's landing can be considered the first step in Florida's journey to become a part of our great country. Ponce de Leon was the first European to land on what is now the continental United States. His landing predates some of the most treasured historical sites and moments in the United States, including the English landing at Jamestown, VA, and the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth, MA. It is also important to recognize the State of Florida's Native American population during these events. Native Americans inhabited territories in and around Florida prior to Ponce de Leon's arrival and continue to make a positive contribution to our State and its culture. Since its founding over five centuries ago, Florida continues to display its rich history by contributing new ideas, culture, and events to the American experience. I am proud to come from a State with a deeply rooted history, and I celebrate the State of Florida's leadership both past and present. Mr. President, colleagues, please join me in recognizing the State of Florida and its 500th anniversary.

Mr. RUBIO

Mr. RUBIO. Madam President, I wanted to speak for a few minutes here on the floor as we finish the business of this work period and we return to our home States for about a week. We will be back here on May 6. At that time, I will continue this important conversation we are having on a number of issues. But one of them is this issue of immigration, which was recently back in the news as a result of some efforts we have had here. Let's begin by describing the reality the United States faces today. First and foremost, this is a country that does not need to be convinced of the benefits of legal immigration, because virtually every single one of us, including those watching here now, the people who work in this building and across this country, are all but a generation or two removed from someone who came here from somewhere else. So we do not need to be convinced of the virtues of immigration, because we have lived them. We see them every single day. In fact, we read about them as well in terms of great innovations that have changed the American economy and made this country different from any in the history of the world. There may be some debate, but not much, about the value, the importance of legal immigration to the United States. The problem we face is we have a legal immigration system right now that is broken. It has not worked well in a very long time. Efforts to reform it over the last 20 to 30 years have failed. Let me describe what is wrong with our immigration process. No. 1, it is bureaucratic and complicated. It is very difficult to navigate the legal immigration process, the result of long backlogs and a bureaucracy that has to be dealt with. You have to lawyer up just to legally come here. That comes with its own set of problems. The second problem is the illegal immigration system, quite frankly, isn't based on the 21st century. It is actually based on the middle part of the last century and a very different economic time in our world and certainly in our country. That is why you are not going to get a lot of debate from people when you say we need to have a legal immigration system that reflects the modern era, that reflects our global economy, that reflects our knowledge- based economy. We need a legal immigration system that is good for America's economy. That means a lot of different things. For agriculture, it means the ability to find workers when they need them, and that is usually most of the time--foreign workers who come as guests and work on a temporary basis or even on a year-round basis but a way to access those workers in a legal way. It also means to continue the flow of legal immigrants to the United States through a safe but reliable and nonbureaucratic process that is cost-effective and encourages people to come here legally. It also means, by the way, that in some industries and some sectors from time to time you will need guest workers, people who are not going to stay permanently but people who fill in the gaps, particularly in times of very low unemployment when you cannot find a domestic worker to do that work. You need a legal way to be able to do all these things. Perhaps the most important initiative we need is a legal immigration system that is based on merit and on skill. Right now the legal immigration system is based on whether you know someone who lives here. If you know someone who lives here as a family member, they can bring you with them. It is this term you hear a lot about: ``chain migration.'' There is nothing inherently wrong with that. The problem is today our economy has changed, and our immigration system has to change with it. I think there is a growing consensus around the country that we need a legal immigration system that is no longer solely based on whether you know a family member who lives here but, rather, having one that is built on whether you are going to bring a special skill, talent or fill a certain void that exists in our economy today. The second problem with our legal immigration system is that our laws are not being enforced. I can tell you that in the last 9 or 10 days since we introduced a bipartisan bill that we are working on as a starting point for this debate, if there is one thing that has become abundantly clear, it is the complete lack of trust people have in the Federal Government and its ability or willingness to enforce our laws. I want you to know that of all the impediments that stand in the way of immigration reform, none looms larger than that lack of trust in the Federal Government. I would say that lack of trust in the Federal Government is pervasive across every policy, but it is especially pronounced on the issue of legal immigration. Too many people simply do not believe the Federal Government is enforcing the law or is willing to enforce the law. As a result, it is going to make efforts for immigration reform very difficult, unless we are able not just to convince people but to show people that the measures we are pursuing in immigration reform are efforts that once and for all will begin to deal with this problem effectively. The third problem we have is this reality that we have millions of human beings living in this country illegally. Some came legally and overstayed the visa. They came and they were supposed to be here for 90 days and they stayed. Others crossed the border illegally. The point is, by the way, of the people who overstayed, that is about 40 percent. In my home State of Florida it is much larger. The point is we have millions of people living in this country right now who are illegally here, people who do not have a right to be here legally. No one has the right to violate the immigration laws of the United States. On the other hand, the decisions that created that problem were made in 1985 and in 1986, when I remind people that I was in ninth grade. As a policymaker, what I now confront is this reality that we have 9, 10, 11 million human beings living in the United States in violation of our immigration laws. To add to that, most of these people have been here more than a decade. They have children who are U.S. citizens. They may even own property. They work, they are here, and they are never going to go back. We have to deal with that fundamental reality as well. With all that in mind, this is how I decided to get involved in this immigration reform debate. Let me explain. There is very little political benefit to this issue, believe me. No. 1, I would rather be on the floor debating issues such as taxes, debt, and the impediment they place on our economy and its growth. I hope we can get to those issues. This is also an important issue, and it was an issue that was going to come up. I remind Members of my party we are not the majority here. I wish we were, and we will continue to make that happen. But we are not the majority, and this issue is going to come up on the floor of the Senate with or without us. It is a legitimate problem the country faces. Therefore, I decided it was best for us to be engaged and try to come up with something that works. That is why I endeavored to get involved in this issue, and that is why I continue to be involved. As a result, I have laid out some pretty clear principles about what I think immigration reform should look like. It should modernize our system. It should create real systems for enforcement so we never have this problem again. It deals with the people who are here illegally in a way that is compassionate and humane, true to our heritage as a compassionate people but also in a way that ensures it is not fair to the people who did it right and doesn't encourage people to do this wrong in the future. Those are my principles. Based on those principles, I entered into negotiations with seven other Senators to work on a bill that begins as a starting point of this debate. I have heard criticism about that process. People say, well, it is a secret process; it is behind doors. Let me clue everybody in on something. Every bill around here is drafted at the beginning in someone's office. Most people here, when they draft a bill or an amendment to bring to the floor, they don't do it in some auditorium. They are working on it in their office with their staff. That is just the starting point. That bill has to be filed. We are not voting upon a sheet of paper. We are voting on a bill that people read and analyze. That is what this bill is. It is a starting point. It is eight Senators, four Democrats and four Republicans, who spent 2 to 3 months working on a bill that we present to our colleagues and say this is what we were able to come up with. Now it is your turn to make it better. We actually have a process to do that, and here is how this process works. I don't mean to be patronizing, but it is important to remind people of that process. Here is how that process works. You file a bill. Committees hold hearings on that bill. Then they do what they call markup. Basically, what it means, for those watching at home, is a bunch of Senators sit around and they literally vote on changing the bill. People offer ideas about how to make it better and how to change it. That is an important process. That has to happen, and it has to happen with this bill. Two weeks from today they will begin that process. I have heard my colleagues come to the floor some and express concerns about different provisions in the bill. I don't have time to rebut every point but, frankly, they raise some very valid points too. Suffice it to say, some of the concerns they have are not valid, and I think we can address that with them. Others are just disagreements, and they need to be worked out through the legislative process. Here is my encouragement to my colleagues who don't agree with the bill we have crafted. Change it. Let's work on changing it. If you believe that what we have today is broken, if you believe the status quo on immigration is chaos and a disaster, if that is what you believe, as I do, then let's solve it. The way we solve it is by working together. In essence, don't just be against it. Offer ideas to change it. For example, if you don't think the border security provisions of the bill we have drafted are strong enough or enforceable enough, offer some ideas to change them. Right now I stand on the floor of the Senate and I ask any of my colleagues who have a bill to guarantee border security to please bring it to my office. Please offer it as an amendment. I continue to extend that offer. I am looking for ideas to improve what we have drafted. Quite frankly, I think we can get it to be even better. I think those of us who worked on it would agree. If people disagree with the way we modernized the legal immigration system--let's say they think we don't bring enough high-tech workers or enough farmworkers--change it. File an amendment to change it. Here is what I would say. Unless you actually believe we don't need to do anything--and listen, if you believe that is valid, that is fine--if you believe that what we have is OK, if you believe we don't need to do anything about immigration, just leave it the way it is, then that is fine. I respect that view. I disagree with it, but I respect it. If what you think that what we have is a disaster--and I think that is most of us--then let's work on it together to change it. In essence, don't view the bill we drafted as something that is being shoved down your throat, because it is not. View it as a starting point product upon which we can build something that I hope most of us can support. If you are opposed to this bill or elements of it, try to change it. Try to improve it. That is why we have something called the amendment process. By the way, that is just in the Judiciary Committee. Beyond that, it has to come to the floor of the Senate, where I expect there to be open debate, where I expect there to be an open amendment process. If it passes here, then it has to go to the House and we have to work with them to get a product we all agree on. Here is my point. If you are going to be against anything no matter what we file or, no matter what, you just don't want to do immigration reform, then that is fine. If you believe, as I do, that our legal immigration system is broken and needs to be modernized, then let's work to change it. If you believe we need to be realistic about the fact that we have 11 million human beings in this country who are going to be here for the rest of their lives, whether we deal with them or not, and that it is not good for America to have that many people here whom we don't know, have no idea who they are, where they are, and many of them are not paying taxes, then let's work together to find a way to deal with it. If you believe our laws are not being enforced and we need to pass laws that force the administration--this one and a future one--to enforce our law, let's change it. Let's work on something that comes up with that. I am all ears. I am open-minded about that and so are my colleagues. Let's not leave it the way it is. The way it is is chaos. It is bad for our country. What we have today is not good for the United States. Our job as policymakers is not just to come and criticize, our job is to come and to make a difference. Our job is not just to come to the floor and make speeches or go back home and give speeches or do television interviews, our job is not just to poke holes, our job is to plug holes too. Our job is not just to criticize but to make better. What we have now doesn't work. It is not good for our country. We can't leave it this way. We have a chance now to truly improve it. This is not an effort to force anything down anyone's throat. This bill we have worked on is a starting point. It is not a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. It never has been. To pretend it is isn't fair. To pretend that somehow something is being crafted that is being forced down someone's throat with no options to amend it or make it better, that is not true. You know that. I have talked to almost all of my colleagues here and extended an open hand and said let's work together to make this better. I truly think we have to. Is this the most important issue America faces? No. We owe $17 trillion, and we have no idea how we are going to pay it back. We have an economy that is not growing, and we need to do something about it. This is an important issue and, by the way, it is related to that issue. There actually is a growing consensus that we have a chance to do something about it once and for all. Let's work together. Let's work together to come up with a solution that modernizes our legal immigration system so it is good for our economy, that once and for all forces the administration, this one and a future one, to enforce our immigration laws. Once and for all this will deal with the 11 million people who are here illegally in a way that is fair and compassionate but also fair to the people who did it right and also in a way to ensure this never, ever happens again. I hope when we come back in a few days we will begin to work on that together for the good of our country and the future of our great Nation. I suggest the absence of a quorum.