Alan Simpson

Mr. SIMPSON

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. President, I certainly will not take 10 minutes. I want to add my voice to the bipartisan chorus of support for S. 1028, the Health Insurance Reform Act. I am proud to say I was an early supporter of this one. I signed on as a cosponsor back on July 17, 1995, just 4 days after it was introduced by Senator Kassebaum. I commend her and I commend Senator Kennedy for their determined efforts to advance this legislation through the Senate in the politically charged atmosphere of an election year. She has created a bill that deserves the support of Republicans and Democrats alike. The provisions of this bill have been well covered--portability, guaranteeing availability and renewability of coverage, preexisting medical conditions, and maintaining continuous health coverage, making it easier for small employers to voluntarily form purchasing cooperatives--and would bring about changes that a vast majority of us agree upon. Even President Clinton, in a dramatic departure from his earlier proposal for a Government-run health care system, has now embraced health insurance reforms that are remarkably similar to those which President George Bush proposed back in 1992. Whatever one might be attempted to say about the irony of all of that, it clearly indicates that we now have a unique opportunity to correct the problems that pose the most serious threat to the health coverage of millions of Americans. Though each of us can think of various ways in which we would like to expand upon the pending legislation, the reality is that the bipartisan appeal of the bill will be lost if we go too far in amending. I intend to be very cautious about amendments that are offered for the Senate's consideration, even in cases where I might support the amendment on its merits. I say this because I would rather pass legislation that actually becomes law, even if it is not as far reaching and perfect as I would like it to be, than to make a legal statement with legislation that ends up in the great scrap heap of unfinished business--and there will be plenty of that in this session of Congress, things that stood on principle and could not get into law because you did not have the votes to get them into law. Unfinished business--that stack. When I hold town meetings in Wyoming--I do not know how many of us still do that; I do--the message I always come away with is that people are thirsty for action. They are not interested in excuses or rhetoric or political maneuvers from either party. No matter how clever or imaginative we are in explaining ourselves, they just do not buy it. They have had a bellyful of petty partisan squabbles. What they long for is to see a Congress identify areas of agreement, as Senators Kassebaum and Kennedy have done with this legislation, and then act in the best interests of the American people, without agonizing who will win or who will lose, who will be the top dog, who will be the underdog when it is finished, or politically, how to simply portray Members of the other party in the worst possible light. The pending bill would allow us to do something beneficial, I think, for millions of Americans who are at most risk of losing their health coverage. The General Accounting Office reports as many as 21 million Americans would benefit if preexisting-condition exclusions are waived for people who maintain continuous health coverage, and, furthermore, another 4 million would no longer experience job lock if portability of health insurance is insured. I believe it is time to move forward, adopt these protections to the extent that more sweeping measures are needed to make health insurance more affordable, more accessible. I will help with that. I surely agree that there is much more we can do. I worked with Senators Chafee and Breaux on issues of a bipartisan nature. I think that is very important. Let us consider those items separately that might serve to bring this down and view them at another time in such a way that we do not jeopardize the enactment of the pending bill. I think what we need, sometimes, is an old-fashioned trait known as self-restraint. Perhaps we could even adopt self-restraint as the theme for the next several hours as we consider the bill. It would surely be an appropriate manner in which to recognize Senator Kassebaum's tremendous leadership on this issue, and to preserve a thoughtful bill that will provide important health insurance protections to millions of Americans. Finally, I note the senior Senator from North Dakota is not on the floor. I hope he will have an opportunity to address my remarks. I admire him. He is a friend. We have worked together. He has come forward and said that we should put aside our agendas, put aside our own causes, work in harmony and concert. I hear that, yet I also hear each and almost every day my good friend from North Dakota stirring up some issue in some way, usually with a partisan twist. I think that if we are going to do that, just note the pending business of the Senate on the calendar. The pending business of the Senate is the illegal immigration bill. It is not moving simply because the Senator from North Dakota wishes to place an amendment on it with regard to the balanced budget and Social Security. I am not speaking in a partisan way. I have been here before. I remember my dear friend Senator John Heinz placed amendments on illegal immigration bills. Even my ranking member has done such heinous activity from time to time, the Senator from Massachusetts. I have seen him do that. I am not talking about partisanship. If we are going to do this--we have a bill that is stalled right now. We will see how long it will stall out. There are three amendments ready to be voted upon. Where it is all held up, that bill is held up for a single particular reason: Because of the Senator from North Dakota, because of an eternal amendment that he has with regard to Social Security, saying that no balanced budget can ever be done, and we do not do anything with Social Security, which is an extraordinary thing in itself because Social Security is going broke. The people that are telling us it is going broke are the trustees, the stewards of the system, who are saying the system will go broke in the year 2020. So how do you keep ducking it, unless you are just carrying water for the AARP and the Committee for the Preservation of Social Security and Medicare and other 800-pound gorillas in that particular Social Security debate. So I hope that we will proceed. I say to my friend from North Dakota--my friend and sometimes adversary--heed thine own advice. I will be waiting. Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN addressed the Chair.

Mr. SIMPSON

Mr. SIMPSON. I will yield for a question.

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. President, I just want to speak for a few moments on this issue of Social Security and balanced budgets. I have the greatest respect for Senator Fritz Hollings and my colleague Senator Kent Conrad, who sits there, and his friend and mine Byron Dorgan. They are a very remarkable duo from North Dakota, and they have been working hard on this issue a good long while, and so has my old friend Senator Hollings. If we are going to debate this issue of Social Security, we are going to have to deal with reality. The reality has come to me and should come to everyone in this Chamber simply by studying the work of the entitlements commission, the Bipartisan Entitlements Commission, where Senator Bob Kerrey and Senator John Danforth of Missouri sat for a year and presented to 32 Americans, including many of us in this Chamber, what is going to happen to Social Security. There is no way to duck it. There is no way to finesse it. There is no way to demagog it. That is no way to go. Because if you are going to talk about something that is worth $360 billion and leave it ``off the table'' in a fashion that no one in this body is supposed to touch it or say a word about Social Security while the senior citizens groups beat your head in and my head in and not allow us to even touch a system and keep telling us, and warning us, ``Oh yes, it will need to be corrected'' and, ``Oh yes, we have a way to tell you how to do that''--and their solutions always have to do with raising the payroll tax, ladies and gentlemen, and guess who pays the payroll tax? Not the senior citizens. Now, if we are going to deal with this issue, then I am going to begin to come to the floor each and every time we come to this issue of Social Security and balanced budgets concepts and begin to get one singular thing across. Hear it. There is no Social Security trust fund, ladies and gentlemen. There is no Social Security trust fund. None. And the reason there is none is because, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Congress put this package together, they said that if there is any surplus in the Social Security system it will be invested in the securities of the United States Government, secured by the full faith and credit of the United States. And every shred of this surplus--and it is big and it is going to get a lot bigger--every shred of it is invested in the securities of the United States Government in a series of IOU's. You know that and I know that. But, better yet, the trustees know that. And who is this group of people telling us about this? They are called the trustees of the Social Security system, three of whom are in the President's Cabinet: Robert Rubin, Donna Shalala, and Robert Reich; one Republican, one Democrat, and the Commissioner of Social Security. And they are the stewards of Social Security. There are no other designated stewards of it. In the trustees little booklet of their annual review which is about that thick, and I hope you will read it, it says that in the year 2029, without doing something for Social Security, it will go broke. It will be out of business. But, more important, in the year 2012, when the payments coming in will not cover the payments going out, you are going to start cashing in the bonds. And then you begin to use up the interest. And between the year 2012 and the year 2029, it is history. So, every time we hear this old saw, I want to be right here too and tell the American people, just as the trustees would if they were here--I will speak for them--that there is no Social Security trust fund. It is a floating pile of IOU's. You know it and I know it. So, when we come here to this Chamber to talk about cooperation, coordination, subjugating our own obsessions or our own agenda's to the body work of this then let us talk about that fact every time. I have been through this plenty of times in this Chamber. I do not keep score of how many times I may have come to the floor on any issue. But I can tell my colleagues I do know how many times some people have come to the floor on this singular issue--time after time after time; and fully knowing that there is no trust fund. We were just involved in a bill, talking about a rather interesting issue called illegal immigration reform. Several years ago--and I have done this too long, remember for 17 years--my dearest friend, Senator John Heinz, proposed an amendment on--guess what? Social Security. What was it that time? Listen to this one. I said to John Heinz, my old friend--and remember, we put together a package that said that the COLA would always be paid out, but if the inflation was ever 3 percent or less that we would not increase the COLA. If it was less than 3 percent we would not give a COLA on Social Security.'' It was that year at 1.5 percent or something, or perhaps 2. And we came to the floor and Senator Heinz, who really was spectacular--in fact--if he were here today we would not be in the health care conundrum we are in. He was that good. He could have led us out of that. I said, ``John, you know it will pass. All you have to do is mention Social Security or a COLA and you know it will pass--or if you mention veterans, you know it will pass.'' We have all been there. We are all bright people. We know this. So, there it was. An impasse. And finally he removed it from the immigration bill, placed it on another one, and so it is much like this one. We all know what this is. There is not a soul in this building, a soul in this city, a soul who follows this, like Bob Kerrey and Jack Danforth did, who does not know that there is no Social Security trust fund--zero--zip--nothing. To hear it continued to be bandied about is an extraordinary adventure in fantasy.

Mr. SIMPSON

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. President, I hope that all Members will read the amendment. I know sometimes we forget to do that from time to time, it is perhaps one of our failings. It is a very simple amendment. It is described as ``parity.'' I think the Senator from New Mexico and the Senator from Minnesota have covered it very well. The important thing that you want to hear regarding it is about the rule of its construction. It is just one construction because people say that it is going to be tremendously costly; or that this is going to ``open the doors'' or that this is the first step toward incurring tremendous cost. But what the amendment says is this: Nothing in [the subsection previous] shall be construed as prohibiting an employee health benefit plan, or a health plan issuer offering a group plan, or an individual health plan from requiring preadmission screening prior to the authorization of services covered under the plan or from applying other limitations that restrict coverage for mental health services to those services that are medically necessary. I think that is a very important thing. That is a very critical part of this. Let me just tell you that about 4 years ago a most beautiful girl in our family, the niece of my wife--my wife's twin sister's daughter, whom we had watched grow and mature from her birth--left our midst. She was a dancer; she was an artist; she was a poet; she was a guitarist; she was a singer; she was the rainbow of life. We did not get or understand the signals in time, and the signals were very clear as we all look back now out of sheer guilt and anguish. She was tough minded, independent, loving, strong, and forceful. She would come into your kitchen and just cook up a batch and leave the stuff in the sink, and family would say, ``Why doesn't Susan clean up afterwards?'' And then, ``Why doesn't Susan work? How old will she be before she ever works?'' She began to withdraw, and then she went into some religious and almost cultish activities, and she had a child. And that is a beautiful child. I know that child. That is the wonderful part of it now--because Susan is gone. And after years of reaching out to us in her way and us not hearing and us not knowing, she one day decisively purchased a pistol and a few hours later purchased the ammunition and went to an isolated field, removed her shoes, sat in a the crouched position in Bowling Green, KY, and blew her chest away. That is what sometimes happens to these people, and we think, ``well, but they should have tried to do something for themselves. We thought we were doing something for her. We thought she was finally doing it for herself. She was taking medication, and it was working. But then something, something unknown, entered her mind and her life and she decided not to take the medication --knowing what would happen if she did not--and then her tragic plan of ultimate rejection came to pass. There is a group of humans--a particular vulnerable group in society that the mental health workers and professionals tell us about who now are in their 37th to their 45th year, who somewhere along the line were perhaps those involved in the early experimentation with drugs, yes. Yes, of course, but that penalty should not be something visited upon them forever. So I say there is not a soul in this Chamber that has not been grievously affected in some way by these things. It is time for healing. It is time for understanding more than anything. It is time to minister. It is time to love and to be compassionate and time to learn so much more about these tragic things. For these are the people who you know and see every day, and they are making it, and they never did before, but they are now. If we can put this in this bill in this way with this language, I think it would be a tremendous benefit to them-- and they are our first charge--and to the rest of us in society. I thank the Chair.

Mr. SIMPSON. I yield the floor. Mrs. KASSEBAUM addressed the Chair.

Mr. SIMPSON

Mr. SIMPSON. This Senator, I am advised and wanted to be absolutely certain, does control the floor, and I can yield to the Senator from Nevada, and at the end of that time I intend to yield to the Senator from Wisconsin, Senator Feingold, and to Senator Grassley, because we are doing an immigration bill. We are not doing Social Security. We are not doing balanced budgets this morning.

Mr. SIMPSON. Yes. But after the objection, then there is no yielding of any measure to the Senator from North Dakota. He does not then take the floor.

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. President, what is the status of the situation on the floor at the present time? Objection is sustained and not----

Mr. SIMPSON. I have the floor, Mr. President.

Mr. SIMPSON. You recognized me. I intended to yield to Senator Bryan.

Mr. SIMPSON. I hold the floor. I believe that is the case.

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Arizona. I only want to say that it has been a great joy to work with him on the Committee on Immigration. He is a remarkable contributing member, brings a vigor and intelligence and skill to the committee, to the subcommittee, and to the full committee. There could not be a finer new Member of the body participating in the measure, and it will be a great personal satisfaction for me that he will continue on with this issue. I certainly hope, also, that it might be in the capacity as chairman of the Subcommittee on Immigration. I know that Senator Kennedy will work with whoever my successor will be, and I think we will find certainly a great deal of pleasure in working with Senator Kyl. I thank him very much for all that he has done. I yield to Senator Bryan of Nevada since the business of the floor is the immigration bill and since I hold the floor.

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. President, I do thank my friend and colleague from Utah. It is a great pleasure always to work with Senator Orrin Hatch. We have done that, now, for 17\1/2\ years together. There is not a person I enjoy more--his spirit, energy, and background as a pugilist, which has certainly helped him. Would that I had studied pugilism as he had in my youth, because he gives as good as he gets. He is a wonderful friend, and I thank him. As we proceed to these next 2 days, this issue is such a marvelous issue, filled simply with emotion, fear, guilt, and racism, and it is a political loser. It has never pushed me up a peg in political life, but somebody has to do this particular work, and the Senator has given me the ability and the leeway to go forward with it as your subcommittee chairman. I am deeply appreciative of it. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SIMPSON. Those are subjects that the Senator from North Dakota would like to address.

Mr. SIMPSON

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. President, I just reflect that Senator Kennedy and I are ready to go forward with this measure. It is an issue that is very topical and must be addressed--the issue of illegal immigration, the issue of legal immigration. Both bills are here. One is at the desk and one is being processed. I want to assure all that immigration reform is not a partisan issue. It never has been and it never will be. It cannot be. I just hope that before we go on with these maneuvers, we recognize that I do not think anyone, especially in an election year, would want to be known as the person that took this bill down and left it down. It is an issue that, as I say, is not going to resolve itself. It is a Federal issue, not a State issue. We either resolve it, or we will have proposition 187's in every State of the Union. From me, I have buried my dead many times before with regard to both legal and illegal immigration, and life will go on if you bury it one more time. Thank you. Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair.

Mr. SIMPSON

Mr. SIMPSON. I withhold.

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

Mr. SIMPSON

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. President, may I just ask my friend from North Dakota? I think the Chair could easily have determined that in recognizing the Senator from North Dakota, it was for the point of parliamentary inquiry. That was all that the Senator from North Dakota was seeking. If he was recognized, which he was, then certainly it was on the point of a parliamentary inquiry. I think that is perhaps the confusion.

Mr. SIMPSON. There is not anything to object to.

Mr. SIMPSON. No; I did not propose a unanimous-consent request. I simply yielded the floor to the Senator from Nevada. Several Senators addressed the Chair.

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. President, I hope that all of us understand what the situation is--I do anyway--and that is that the Senator from North Dakota feels very strongly about an issue which he proposed yesterday that had to do with a balanced budget amendment and Social Security and offsets and that type of thing, a rather consistent theme by the Senator from North Dakota that he talked about. There is also a proposal--I am not leadership. I am not representing leadership. What we are trying to do is go forward with an immigration bill. There will be many extraneous amendments on this bill, I feel quite certain. All I am trying to do is to get to the hour of 2:15, after which time the Senator from North Dakota may do anything that he desires to do with regard to the issue. At this time I yield the floor for purposes of an opening statement by Senator Bryan of Nevada.

Mr. SIMPSON

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. President, I want to thank the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Hatch, for his superb work in this area. I have not always agreed with my good friend from Utah with regard to immigration issues, legal and illegal. And I say, too, to his fine staff after some early misunderstandings, they have certainly been excellent to work with. I appreciate that. To Senator Strom Thurmond who was chairman when I started this rather unique work, always helpful, always supportive, always there; to my old friend companion and colleague from Massachusetts, Senator Kennedy, who served as chairman of the committee when I came here in 1979, who then served as the ranking member, then as chairman, then as ranking member, and it certainly is much more fun having him as ranking member than as chairman! I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience and have the greatest regard personally for him. We have worked together on these issues doggedly and persistently for 17 years. It is a case of, in some ways, new players on an old field of battle. During my 17\1/2\ years in the Senate, I have literally spent weeks on the floor of this historic Chamber debating immigration reform legislation. Whether it was legislation to provide legalization for long-term illegals or to prohibit the knowing employment of undocumented workers, legislation I sponsored and which this body debated in the mid-eighties, or whether it was legislation Senator Kennedy and I sponsored to increase immigration by nearly 40 percent in 1990, it has always been a terribly difficult issue for all the Members of this body. We know that no matter how we vote on immigration issues, we are going to assuredly upset and create anguish among segments of our constituencies. But immigration policy is a critically important national issue, and Congress must deal with it. It is not for the States to deal with. Immigration accounts for 40 percent, or more, of our population growth, which pleases some and distresses others. Immigrants come here and work hard and they work cheap, which pleases some and distresses others. Immigrants bring cultural diversity, which pleases some and distresses others. And that is the nature of the immigration policy debate. Powerful, powerful forces tear at the country. There are some members of our society who believe immigration is an unalloyed good. They consider it maybe something like good luck; you simply cannot have too much. Other segments of the population believe that immigration should be severely restricted, if not eliminated altogether. They see America changing in ways that they particularly--to them--do not wish to see. I deeply believe that immigration is good, it is good for America, but I firmly believe that this is not an eternally inevitable result. It depends upon those of us in the Congress and in the other branches of Government to make it work. Immigration policy must be designed and administered to promote the national interest or it may not have that effect. So Congress created the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform in the 1990 act. The Commission was chaired by that remarkable woman, Barbara Jordan, a powerfully articulate and splendid woman of such great good common sense and civility and intelligence. That Commission is composed of a truly impressive group of immigration experts. Lawrence Fuchs, who was the executive director of the Select Commission on Immigration when I started in this field, along with Senator Kennedy, Senator Mathias, Senator DeConcini on that select commission. The other names are people who are deeply respected in the United States: Michael Teitelbaum, Richard Estrada, Robert Charles Hill, Nelson Merced, Harold Ezell, Warren Leiden, and Bruce Morrison, a former Congressman. That Commission had labored for more than 4 years, holding a very large number of hearings and consultations around the United States of America, and issuing two reports--two reports--one on controlling illegal immigration and one on reforming legal immigration. I have heard some people in the debate and in the country say, ``Where did all of these disturbing ideas come from? Where did this issue come from, this discussion about the preference system and this one about chain migration?'' and about a verification system, as if it were all some scheme that was presented by some of the fringe elements of American society. Each and every one of the proposals in each and every one of the bills presented has come from or out of the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy or the Jordan Commission. They are not disturbing, they are not sinister; they are real. They come from a group of people that I have just described who I think you could surely say are very mainstream Americans. They are from both sides of the issue. The Commission labored and found that--and I quote--``a properly regulated system of legal immigration is in the national interest of the United States.'' The Commission also noted, however, that there are negative impacts. It proposed a reduction--a reduction--in the total level of immigration. That is who is suggesting the reduction. The Jordan Commission strongly recommended that the family immigration visas go to those who are of the highest priority in order to promote a strong and intact ``nuclear family.'' A ``nuclear family''--would that we could have a better description than ``nuclear family''--but it is the one we think of as the tight-knit family; the spouse and minor children. Surely we want to be certain that we unite those people, but that we also have measures adopted to ensure that family reunification does not create financial burdens on the taxpayers of this country. I thoroughly support those findings and recommendations. I have tried to follow them very carefully and very honestly in the legislation that I have sponsored. Regarding the issue of control of illegal immigration, the Commission reported--and I quote: The credibility of immigration policy can be measured by a simple yardstick; people who should get in, do get in--people who should not get in, are kept out--and people who are judged deportable are required to leave. That seems pretty sensible, pretty darn clear, actually. Pretty Jordan-like, I think. Mr. President, I am pleased to report that the committee bill will measure up very well by that standard, by that yardstick. S. 1664 will provide additional enforcement personnel and detention facilities. It will authorize a series of pilot projects on systems to verify eligibility to be employed and to receive public assistance. It will also make improvements in both birth certificates and drivers licenses in order to reduce fraud. The bill will provide additional incentives, additional investigative authority, and heavier penalties for document fraud and alien smuggling. It will streamline exclusion and deportation procedures. It will establish special procedures to expedite the removal of criminal aliens. There are additional enforcement-related provisions. It is a good illegal immigration control bill. I urge my colleagues to support it. The committee has also reported a legal immigration reform bill which, I regret to say, does not carry out the major recommendations of the Commission on Immigration Reform chaired by Barbara Jordan and does very little to address the problems and weaknesses in our present legal immigration policy. There might have been some great expectations of that at one time. I am reminded of a story of my good friend Senator Howell Heflin, who is certainly wont to tell a story or two from time to time, especially the ``No-tie'' Hawkins variety stories and others that I am sure we have all heard from time to time and that we never tire of. At least I do not. So one has to give credit when you have heard and retell a good story, but you only do that once. The second time you just do not say anything. And the third time you claim it for yourself. So the story is that this attractive elderly couple, both of whose spouses had passed away, were on a long airline flight together, very long. They were sitting there enjoying visiting with each other. They were in their late seventies. They talked about their children and grandchildren and their interests and things that excited and spurred them both on to a full life. And they had dinner, and they visited some more. And after a highly convivial evening and long flight, they landed. The lady reached over and patted the gentleman on the knee and said, ``You know, it has been wonderful. You remind me of my third husband.'' And he said, ``How many have you had?'' She replied sweetly, ``Two.'' You can think about that one when you get home. But that is called great expectations. That is what was there with regard to legal immigration reform, at least in accordance with what Barbara Jordan and her commission had reported to us. Yet what we have here is something that will not solve our problems with regard to legal immigration. These are the most vexing and the most troubling results. These deficiencies are the ones that give rise to proposition 187, ladies and gentlemen. These are the omissions that will see proposition 187's come to life in every single State in the Union unless we ``do something'' at the Federal level. We are doing very little in the area of legal immigration and badly need changes there. Then you want to observe the various proposals passed either incrementally or on immigration reform measures which allow States to deny or impose charges for elementary and secondary public education for illegal alien students. These will also be part of a very vexatious debate. Do we continue to give support to the illegal community and deny it to the American citizen community? That will be a good test. If you want to be sure that we provide various things to mothers who are here illegally, then where is the money coming from that offsets that? Who is paying for that? If you want to relieve in a compassionate way a sponsor from having to pay for the person they bring over here and we sometimes say we cannot do that--heavens no, for the fellow cannot afford that. But, you see, ladies and gentlemen, you have to remember that you cannot bring an immigrant legally to the United States unless the sponsor agrees, and also the immigrant, that they will not become ``a public charge.'' That has been on our books since 1882--1882. This bill, these bills, tighten that singular requirement in an excellent way. We do say now that the affidavit of support has teeth and, indeed it does. That is a very excellent step. What we find in at least half a dozen or more States of our Union --and yet we just cannot say that is for six States alone to deal with; or that we do not need to do a national bill; no, that would be a true flight from reality. In half a dozen or more States, current high levels of immigration are perceived as causing, rightly or wrongly, some very serious social and governmental problems. Do they take more out than they put in? Do they leave more in than they take out? Well, it depends on what side you are on. Do they pull their share? Do they really take the jobs Americans do not want, or with millions lesser employed in the United States, and having done a welfare reform bill, will there not be many people looking for work-- all questions that will never go away, ever. We are informed that in the California public school system subjects are taught in 100 different foreign languages. California must construct a new school building every day to keep up with immigrant student enrollment. It is not only illegal immigration, which is about 300,000 entries a year, but also our historically high level of legal immigration, about 1 million a year in the current years, that have given credence and impetus to the widespread view that immigration is out of control--perhaps even more tragically, beyond our control. I do sincerely believe that if Congress fails to act to address these very real and reasonable concerns of the American people, there is a very strong possibility--and we have all been warned about this by the select commission, and by the Jordan Commission--we will lose our traditionally generous immigration policy. The American people will demand a halt to all immigration. They will not stand still for the Congress-knows-best approach, as some would have us take this route on this burning issue. For these and other reasons, I will, at an appropriate time, offer an amendment to provide a modest, temporary reduction in legal immigration. It matters not one whit to me what the vote is on that, but we will vote on that issue. It will attempt to reduce immigration to a level approximately 10 percent below current level and hold it at that level for 5 years--a breathing space, if you will. For the first time in more than 50 years, there will be no increase in legal immigration over a 5-year period. At the end of the 5 years, the numbers and the priority system will return to exactly what they are under the present law--no change, back to business as usual. During this 5-year breathing space, the visas will go first to the closest of family members of citizens of the United States of America. They will go first to citizens. Then they will go to the closest family members of permanent resident aliens, and then to other immigrants. Any that remain will fall down logically to the lowest priority of family immigrants. We can expect many amendments and several days of debate and much disagreement, but despite the emotion, fear, guilt, and racism that is involved in the immigration issue, we have always-- historically, at least--had a good, clean, honest, civil debate on immigration in this body. I trust it will be no different this week. Republicans will disagree among themselves, I can assure you. Democrats will disagree among themselves, I assure you. I will have serious disagreements with my friend Ted Kennedy, and my friend, Senator Spencer Abraham of Michigan, who is a fine addition to this body and adds greatly to the debate of this issue. This is not and never should be and never has been a partisan issue. Anyone taking it to that level is making a serious mistake. You will find that in the rollcall votes. There is no partisanship involved in immigration reform. I want to commend the new members of the Judiciary Committee and the subcommittee of both parties, Senators Kyl, Feinstein, Abraham, DeWine, Feingold, and Thompson. They bring a special vigor, intelligence, energy, and passion to the game. I like that. Just a couple of things, and then we will go forward and proceed with our work. I want everyone to be aware of the usual fare that will be presented as the menu is spread before the Senate in this debate. First, the Statue of Liberty--that will always be a rather thorough, impressive, rich debate, but we are not talking about the Statue of Liberty, because the words of Emma Lazarus, do not say on the base, ``Send us everybody you have, legally or illegally.'' That is not what it says. We hear that. I hope the American people can hear that one and remember that we are seeing in this country groups of people who are in enclaves where they never learn or speak any other language. They are in New York, they are in San Francisco, they are in Los Angeles. We read about those things daily. That will not be improved by doing nothing. Then we will hear--this is always a rich tapestry in itself--that we are all children and grandchildren of immigrants. We will all hear that. I can tell my story and everybody in this Chamber can tell theirs. We are not talking about that. We are not talking about populating a country and settling the West. We are talking about people in the United States who are brooding about illegals in their midst and show it in every poll, and then show it at the polls. We had a man running for the Presidency of the United States who, perhaps if he were in the race, would pick up 17 to 20 percent of the vote based on a lashing out about immigration or a move toward xenophobia, just as has happened in Germany, with a person receiving 17 to 20 percent of the vote, or in France, with another man with such views garnering 17 percent to 20 percent of the vote. Those things are out there. There is no question about them being out there. My grandfather came here from Holland. His parents died at the age of 6. He was orphaned. He was a ragamuffin in the streets of Chicago with a tin cup, as far as I can find. Every one of us can tell that kind of story. Then he went to work as a clerk for the railroad, and he went west. Horace Greeley was right, ``Go West, young man.'' He did. He not only ended up working on the railroad, he ended up running and owning a coal mine in a little town named Kooi, WY--named after him. He was, in every sense, an American success. He died a very happy man after giving birth to my mother, and assuring the wonderful heritage I have. We can all tell those stories, and we can go on to the Irish relatives, the German relatives. All of us can tell these stories--the stories of persecution, the stories of horror, the stories of pogroms. Those are real. Those are stories of inspiration of which we can take--I think we shall call ``judicial notice.'' One other thing we should take judicial notice of, we are the most generous country on Earth. I have heard the phrase, ``why, why would we turn inward? What are we doing?'' What is American about that? Mr. President, we take more refugees in than all the rest of the world combined. We take in more immigrants than all of the rest of the world combined--combined. All immigrants, refugees, the whole spectrum. Then we will see on the menu, passionate words about some national ID card, which has never escaped the menu, as far as I have ever known in my 17 years here. Some have played that card with a better look at a poker hand than any I can remember. I remember particularly a Congressman from California who was certainly vigorous in his pursuit of his feelings and the depth of his internalization of that. We have never talked about a national ID card in the entire time I have been working on this issue. I have put it in every single bill, that there would not be a national ID card, under no circumstances. Yet, I still hear it bandied about. In fact, one group of worthies has even spread a curious little packet about which describes the Smith-Simpson bar code tattoo, which is certainly a grisly looking thing. But that chap must, I think, keep his day job, for he has wasted a lot of energy to try to put that kind of tilt on what we are trying to do. We all know why employer sanctions did not work in the 1986 bill. Employer sanctions did not work because so many engaged into a cottage industry of making phony documents. We have employer sanctions but we did not want to put the burden on the employer. So we said, whatever document you are shown, the employer, cannot be responsible for the validity of it. So they just took them. I always love to explain my own here because it costs 100 bucks. We picked it up on the streets of Los Angeles. Alan Kooi Simpson, Turlock, CA, a very distinguished person of less than hirsute appearance reflected here on the card. And here is my phony Social Security card. I do not know what other poor soul shares the same number with me--maybe none. But that is why nothing worked. That is why, in this bill, something will work. I think we will keep those provisions--I hope so--because we are not talking about national tattoos. We are not talking about Nazi Germany. We are not talking about an error-filled national data base. We are not talking about a mess of an administration in some other agency of the Government. We are talking about ``doing something'' about illegal immigration. And the oddest thing to me is that the people who seem to really want to do something to illegal, undocumented people--other than thumb screws or the rack--as I often hear them speak, have failed to realize that the one thing you can do that does work and is humane is a more secure counterfeit-resistant card, or verification, or something like a telephone verification, where you slide it through some kind of electronic device, some type of computer link, or similar process. All of that can be studied under this bill in the form of pilot programs. I will try to make an amendment that those pilot programs not simply be authorized, but that six or seven of them be required to be looked at, and then ``of course'' a vote before they would ever go into effect. We cannot get there without this. You cannot do something with illegal immigration and moan and whine and shriek about it day and night and not do something appropriate with some kind of counterfeit- resistant, tamper-resistant card, and also doing something with imposters who use the card and those who are gaming the system. That, I hope, will become a very clear fact of this debate. And then I hope we do not hear too much about the ``slippery slope,'' because I have not seen any editorials about the fact that when you go to drop your bags at the airport, somebody asks you for a picture ID. It is not even an agent of anybody, I would guess, except the airline. But I have not seen any editorials that that is the first step, the first slide down the slippery slope toward a national ID. So it is with the American public--at least in airline travel. I do not know what it is on the bus lines, but I have a hunch that not many people here ride the bus lines. Maybe they do, but I wonder if they ask that there. If they do or if they do not, is that the first step? Is that the slippery slope toward a national ID? I think people choose to hear only what they will with regard to that. Finally, we will hear about placing the burden on the employers. Why the argument, ``Are we doing this to the employers of America? How can we do this and make them the watchdogs of America and make them do the work of a failed Federal Government?'' Fascinating. Without employers, we would have no ability to administer the Internal Revenue resources, because the employer gathers up the withholding tax. I have not seen any editorials on that as to the burden on employers. And now it is curious to me that I also saw an editorial the other day that said that what will happen if the bill is passed is that the American employers will find out they will have to ask somebody whether they are authorized to work. I tell you, that editorial writer has to have drilling rock instead of brain, because that one is on the books already. Since the 1986 bill, you have had to present to the employer the fact that you had an I-9, which is a one-page form authorizing you to work in the United States of America. It has been on the books now for 9 years. Did anybody miss that? I think not. So you are going to find that that is exactly what employers already have been doing. We are trying to say--and I hope we can get this in; we will see--that if we go to a pilot program and the Attorney General finds that it is accurate and it works, and it is reliable, you will then not need to do the I-9. Skip it right there. Throw it out. But employers are the core of anything we can do with regard to immigration. We are trying to lessen the burden on employers. The occupant of the chair cited to me a case of an employer in Alaska several years ago who asked the person in front of him for additional documents and therefore was charged with discrimination. We have corrected that completely. Not only that, we do not let them ask for 29 different documents. We have it down to six. And we say there has to be an intent to discriminate before you get nailed for it simply by asking someone for an additional document. And remember--I hope you can hear this in the clatter of the debate--that whatever we do in the way of the identifier, or more secure system, or whatever it is, will be used only twice in the course of human life--when you get a job, or when you go on some kind of public assistance, period. Whatever we have will not be carried on the person, will not be used for law enforcement, will not be any part of any other nefarious Big Brother scheme. That gets lost in the process along with so much that gets lost in the process. What we are trying to do is relieve the burden on employers. We think we can do that. Then we do something with birth certificates. I hope we can retain that. I think we have a good amendment which will offset the cost of that so we do not make that an unfunded mandate, because the birth certificate is the breeder document of the first order. You get the birth certificate and, with that, you go on to get the driver's license, Social Security card. You can check the obituary columns and find out the death and go get the birth certificate. These things must be corrected. Legal immigration reform is certainly not the most popular cause that I have been involved in in my 17\1/2\ years, yet I have often been involved in such causes. What we are trying to do there is simply stop the phenomenon of chain migration. Chain migration is rather simple as you define it. There is a preference system. Remember that if you are a U.S. citizen, you can bring in your spouse and minor children, and they are not any part of a quota system. Yet they are computed in the entire scope of how many come to the United States. And then you can bring in adult, unmarried children. And also adult, married children. And then we have minor children and spouses of permanent resident aliens. Then we have brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens. What we are saying is let us take in the spouses and minor children first, and not let somebody bring in on a single-person petition 30, 40, 50, 60, or 70 relatives--all from one U.S. citizen. That is called ``chain migration.'' I commend the Jordan Commission report to those of you who wish to read about that phenomenon, and see whether you would ``join in'' in doing something about that. As I say, it is not a partisan issue. None of these tough ones will be partisan issues. I am sure the Democrats will caucus, and the Republicans will caucus, and we will pound each other around, and at the end of it we will realize that it is the Nation's business, and that it is always very difficult. But one thing I want to make very clear. I note that since I will be exiting the Chamber at the end of this year, some will speak of this as ``Simpson's swan song.'' This bird has never looked like a swan-- neither me nor the legislation. It is about a corollary of legislative activity that my friend from Massachusetts has learned well through the years. Any time you look obsessed about a piece of legislation, you are history. I can tell you that. Yet we have come further in these two bills than we have in 10 years. There are people on my side in this one who, if I had said those things 10 years ago, or 5, they would have run me out of town on a rail. So we have some good things there. But I can assure you of this: Win, lose, or draw, up or down, I did not come here simply to have my name attached to immigration legislation. That is about the biggest political loser in the history of man. It never helped me get a single vote in three races for the U.S. Senate. In fact, people said, ``What are you doing? What are you up to? Forget it. It does not affect us.'' But it does fall upon those of us from the smaller States and districts, from areas such as Senator McCarran of Nevada, and Representative Walters of the 16th District of Pennsylvania, or Senator Simpson, and Mazzoli of Kentucky. The Kennedys of this body cannot handle this issue; the Feinsteins of this body cannot handle this issue; the Wilsons--when he was here--cannot handle this issue because their constituents will not allow them to do it. Yet this is one issue, one burning issue, that will not go away. So be assured that your angular, western representative will not be chagrined in any sense with whatever this eventually looks like. But we are surely going to have a good debate. We are going to throw it all in there, get it mashed around. And if I come up with a vote of 92 to 8 on the losing side, that is fine with me. But we are going to have a vote, and we are going to have a debate. We are going to talk about things that the American public is talking about. And that is, ``What are you going to do about illegal immigration so that our social systems are not overwhelmed?'' And answer their question, ``You told us the first duty of a sovereign nation was to control its borders, and you did not do it. Why? You told us that you would do things in the national interest, and you did not do it. Why?'' And also watch what they do for themselves. People from States that do not have any real tough immigration problems at all are thinking about proposition 187 type laws. And that is disturbing. So I hope that we pay careful attention, have a good, rich debate, and not think of swans but maybe of turkeys, or of eagles, because there is a little of each of them in all of this. There are some soaring like-eagle parts in this. And there are some things that do not match any kind of other bird activity. But this is one that will not go away. It seems to me it is best that we address it while we are all here and in a knowledgeable, civil way, and I look forward to the debate. I look forward particularly to working with newer members of the committee, the subcommittee, and with my friend, Ted Kennedy. I think it was either Henry James or William James who said, ``To do a thing be at it.'' And we are at it. It is an election year. But anyone who wants to use this one for pure partisan political advantage is making a most serious mistake, it is much bigger than that. I thank the Chair. Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair.

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. President, I submit to the desk Simpson amendment No. 1 and ask that it be stated.

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. SIMPSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.