Jeff Sessions

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. I would be pleased to yield to the Senator from Louisiana.

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Senator from Louisiana for his comments, and I thank Senator Portman for providing some good language to improve our situation. I truly believe what happened Monday afternoon heralded deep trouble. There was deep trouble the week before when a dramatic reversal of enforcement ideas came about to throw money at this problem come Friday. That is what happened, and the process has been shut down essentially since then.

Mr. SESSIONS. I will yield to the Senator from Wisconsin.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, one more thing. First, I agree with Senator Johnson. I offered an amendment on the earned-income tax credit in committee--and four of the Gang of 8 Members are on the committee-- and they all voted that down, as I recall, even though they promised there would be no welfare benefit for those in the country illegally who would be given provisional status under this legislation. So that was a breach of one of the key promises they made when the bill was moved forward. As a result, we know the earned-income tax credit is not a tax deduction; it is a direct check from the U.S. Treasury to people based on a lower income. It is a welfare-type payment. It is not a tax deduction-type situation. So that was a disappointment in committee, that the group's promises were violated, and they have been blocked again on the floor. There is one more thing I want to say. I don't appreciate the idea expressed that no matter what would happen, Members on this side would not vote for the bill. That is not true. We need, and need badly, an immigration bill that would improve the immigration system of America, put us on a sound course for the future, would provide compassionate status for people who are here illegally and put them in a situation where they do not have to be deported. And I would support that and have said that for years, actually, and have said that through this process. But let me tell you what the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Association wrote to the Senate just 2 days ago, June 24: The . . . immigration bill, if passed, will exacerbate USCIS concerns about threats to national security and public safety. They go on to say: It will further expose the USCIS agency as inept with an already proposed massive increase in case flow that the agency is ill prepared to handle. They go on to say this about the bill: It was deliberately designed to undermine the integrity of our lawful immigration system. They go on to say: This bill should be opposed and reforms should be offered based on consultation with the USCIS adjudicators who actually have to implement it. Nobody asked them. They met in secret with the special interests, big business interests, the La Raza interests, the agriculture interests, the Immigration Lawyers Association, but they didn't have any of the officers there. I wrote and asked them to meet with them. They still refused to meet with them because they didn't want to hear that. On June 24, 2013, ICE's union association wrote us and said: I urge you to vote no as this bill fails to address the problems which have led to the nation's broken immigration system and in fact will only serve to worsen current immigration problems. They go on to say: Instead of empowering ICE agents to enforce the law, this legislation empowers political appointees to further violate the law and unilaterally stop law enforcement. This at a time like no other in our nation's history, in which political appointees throughout the federal government have proven to Congress their propensity for the lawless abuse of authority. There is no doubt that, if passed, public safety will be endangered and massive amounts of future illegal immigration--especially visa overstays--is ensured. So all this talk about the greatest bill ever, it is not so. This bill is much weaker than the bill that was voted down in 2007. It was on the way to defeat last week, until they had a desperate claim to throw 20,000 agents at the border and spend a bunch of money without any thought about how it would work. I am concerned about this. I think a lot is at stake. We know how the situation got here. We know what happened. They voted cloture Monday and the majority leader filled the tree. He, therefore, has complete control over any amendments. The last time in 2007, there were 47 amendments voted on. This time, nine have been voted on. Even with the 35 Senator Grassley proposed, that would be less than last time. We know what has happened. The Corker-Hoeven amendment was able to rescue a bill that was in deep trouble, and now it looks like we are moving on to final vote, without the ability to have amendments, because the majority will not agree to allow an open process, as was promised, and allow a number of amendments that were offered. Senator Leahy said a lot of amendments were offered in committee. Why couldn't they have been offered on the floor? Why couldn't we have voted for amendments on the floor? The majority doesn't get to pick and choose what amendments they are going to allow to come up. We are either going to have an open amendment process or we are not, and it looks like we are not. I thank the Chair and would yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, reserving the right to object.

Mr. SESSIONS. Would the majority leader agree to 30 minutes for me before we close up?

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the majority leader. He is always courteous.

Mr. SESSIONS

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I would like to express my appreciation to Senator Chambliss. This is one of the least-discussed but more important parts of our bill, ag provisions. He has delineated weakness after weakness in this process. The idea is he had to strengthen the bill. I hope the people who have heard it would draw a number of conclusions. First, there are great weaknesses in the bill. Second, Senator Chambliss fully understands, though he has worked on this--I know last time we had a bill here--at great length and contributed in great detail to it. I think the third thing we ought to understand is this is a complex regime we are trying to set up. I am not sure the government can ever accomplish a setup of as complex a regime as the effort that has been made to create in this legislation. I thank Senator Chambliss for his positive contributions, for his work. I know he has been a constructive advocate with Members on the other side, trying to improve the legislation. I thank him for sharing in depth the difficult and confusing parts of this law. There are a lot of things we need to understand before we move to final cloture vote on this legislation. It is late. I hope people will pay attention. We need to understand accurately what is happening. I have been an advocate. I am sure in the times we are here, sometimes we have to respond at a moment's notice and we make a statement that is not entirely accurate. But I do believe the sponsors of the bill who came to us and claimed they had the toughest bill in history and that it was going to solve our problems had an obligation to be more accurate than they have been. Sometimes they make mistakes. Some of the disagreements make a difference in whether the legislation is good legislation or whether it is bad legislation. It is just important. I would like to point out a few things that have been talked about a lot today. One was recently one of our Gang of 8, Senator Menendez, made reference to the border security and the officers who have written a letter complaining about this legislation and suggested, somehow, that maybe it was before the border enforcement had been improved--promised to be improved, at least. But I think it evidences a misunderstanding of how our system works. This is a letter from the National Citizenship and Immigration Services. These are not the Border Patrol agents, these are not the ICE agents, these are the people who process the claims for citizenship and they try every day to do the right thing and treat people fairly and equally and ensure that people wait in line and wait their turn. They are not supportive of this legislation. They represent 12,000 USCIS employees, adjudication officers, and staff. This is the statement they issued: The amended 1,200 page Corker-Hoeven immigration bill-- Not something previously, but the last bill we moved forward today-- if passed, will exacerbate USCIS concerns about threats to national and public safety. These officers try every day to review these applications for visas and entry permits. They try to identify terrorists and not let them come in. They turn down people who don't qualify. They said this bill will exacerbate threats to national security and public safety. They go on to say: It will further expose the USCIS agency as inept with an already proposed massive increase in case flow that the agency is ill prepared to handle. In other words, they are not able to handle the flow they have now and this is going to provoke a disastrous flow that will make them all look inept. They are correctly afraid people will say they let terrorists and criminals in the country, and they had no way possible to process these matters. They go on to make a strong statement. These are people who serve our country and who are not allowed to participate in drafting the legislation. The proposal goes out of its way to provide legalization for criminal offenders while making it more difficult for Adjudications Officers to identify threats to the nation's security in our ongoing war against terrorism. It was deliberately designed to undermine the integrity of our lawful immigration system. I don't think our people deliberately wanted to have the system fail, but the people who have been writing this, if they wanted to make it tougher and tighter, would have written it a lot differently than it is now. It leaves these officers exposed and unable to fulfill their requirements to identify and block people who should not be admitted to the United States, and that was a very strong statement. It represents deep feelings by those officers. They go on to say: This bill should be opposed and the reforms should be offered based on consultation with USCIS adjudicators who actually have to implement it. Hopefully, lawmakers will read the bill before their votes. I say put a cork in it. That is what they say to us, and that was on Monday. Here is another statement from the ICE officers, these officers, headed by Chris Crane, their association union president. Chris Crane is a former marine. He is so articulate and concerned about this legislation. He has raised it time and again. The ICE officers have filed a lawsuit against Secretary Napolitano because they say she has blocked their ability to do their duty and placed them in a position where the supervisory directions to not enforce the law deny them the right to fulfill their oath to enforce the law. They filed a lawsuit in Federal court attacking this. I have never heard of this. This whole association, which consists of thousands of officers, filed a lawsuit against Secretary Napolitano and their supervisor. They voted no confidence in John Morton, their supervisor, 2 years ago, and he just retired a few days ago. An independent survey of government morale factors found that ICE virtually had the lowest morale rating out of 179 government agencies. Two years ago I asked Secretary Napolitano: Would you meet with these officers? She refused to say so. I asked her again earlier this year. She has not met with them. Nobody wants to listen to the people who are required to enforce the law. Who are the ICE officers? The ICE officers are the people who deal with interior enforcement and deportations. They identify people who are here illegally, and they deport them and go through the mechanism. They have relationships with prisons where they go by the prison and pick up somebody who is illegally in the country and who has committed a crime. They are the ones who get them deported. They arrest people-- or at least supposedly they used to when they had jobs. They interfaced with local police. They have been undermined in every way by this administration and kept from doing their job. That is a fact. That is why the morale is down, and that is why they have sued the government. That is why they oppose this bill. They were never listened to. It cannot be the policy of the United States of America that if someone gets past the border of the United States, they are never going to be deported. It cannot be the policy that the only thing that counts is having a Border Patrol, but if they can get through, they are home free. There are not that many. I think there are 12,000 of these officers. There are not nearly enough to do the job already. They are getting no strength or support at all in this legislation. I would note further that under the Congressional Budget Office analysis of this bill, which comports with what I have been saying for months, we are going to have a big increase in the amount of visa overstays. They are not going to be caught at the border. They are going to come in on a visa and never return. If we don't have ICE officers engaged in the effort, we will never be able to deport them. We say, well, we are going to give legal status to everybody who is here. Let's say we give legal status to everybody who is here. What about the future? The people who are given legal status here will be given a Social Security card. They will be given a legal document that allows them to be in the country. ICE is not going to deport them. But what about those who come in the future? We are going to have no mechanism so they can be deported? That is one of the biggest flaws in this legislation. I was a Federal prosecutor. I know about law enforcement. I did it for 15 years. If we don't help and have them engaged and utilize their ability, and treat them like second-class officers or citizens, we are not going to get the kind of legality the legislation promises--nowhere close. It is flawed. It should not pass. These officers tell us that correctly. So the ICE officers are right. They said to us on June 24: I urge you to vote no as this bill fails to address the problems which have led to the nation's broken immigration system and in fact will only serve to worsen current immigration problems. It will worsen current immigration problems. That is their word. They go on to say: Instead of empowering ICE agents to enforce the law, this legislation empowers political appointees to further violate the law and unilaterally stop enforcement. This at a time like no other in our nation's history, in which political appointees throughout the federal government have proven to Congress their propensity for the lawless abuse of authority. There is no doubt that, if passed, public safety will be endangered and massive amounts of future illegal immigration--especially visa overstays--is ensured. They go on to say: Abuses by political appointees, who currently pick and choose laws enacted by Congress will or will not be enforced, will escalate with their increased discretion and authority provided by this bill. They say: A vote against this bill is not a vote against immigration reform which we all seek, it's a vote against bad legislation and the special interests that wrote it; it's a vote to start this process anew and create reforms that truly fix the nation's broken immigration system. How much clearer can it be? They are correct about this. Chris Crane is an American patriot and his team is courageous. They have had to stand in there against an administration that issued this directive that basically required them not to follow plain law. What does this bill do? He indicated it right there. He said it gives even more discretion to the Secretary so she can issue even more directives undermining the law. In fact, basically what the bill does is give more legal authority to the Secretary to do what she has been doing now, which is fundamentally, in many ways, contrary to law. The Federal judge who is hearing this lawsuit the ICE officers filed explicitly stated at one of the hearings that the Secretary is not above the law, and that is certainly correct. She has been acting above the law by directing them not to comply with the law. We are not saying we want the ICE officers to go out and round up everybody. Remember, if this bill passes, everybody will be given legal status--the ones who are supposed to be given legal status--and others will need to be identified. If they are not legally here, they will need to be deported. In the future, people who come in violation of the law will need to be deported also. The Gang of 8 proposal adds four times more guest workers to our economy than a 2007 plan offered. It offers four times more guest workers than were offered by the 2007 bill that failed here--that comprehensive plan. This is at a time when 21 million Americans cannot find full-time employment. Imagine that. We have a much higher unemployment rate today than we had in 2007 before the bubble burst and we had the recession. We had virtually full employment in those days. Now we have high unemployment, which is a deep problem with employment in America today, and I don't think it is going to rapidly get better. For the last quarter of last year, growth of GDP was only .4 percent. The first quarter of this year has been revised down dramatically today to 1.8 percent. That means over half a year our growth is only 1.1 percent. That will not create jobs. It is not creating jobs. It is not enough to pull down unemployment in any way. This bill is going to bring in huge amounts of new workers to take the few jobs being created. The bill also dramatically boasts permanent legal immigration. The permanent legal flow of immigration will increase substantially. Overall, it is conservatively estimated that the bill would legalize more than 30 million people--mostly lower skilled legal immigrants--over the next decade. It will be three times the current rate, and that is something I said originally. I asked Senator Schumer, the Gang of 8 leader, at the committee: How many people will be legalized under your bill? Well, we won't say. I said again: How many? You offered a bill; you want us to vote for it. Can't you tell us how many people would be admitted? He refused to say. I said, 30 million over 10 years. The current legal flow would be 10 million over 10 years. CBO came out with their report last week: 30 million in the first 10 years. Who was right about that? I mean, this is a big increase. Yes, it includes the people who are here illegally, but the annual flow is at least 50 percent higher than the current 1 million, according to the Los Angeles Times. I think that number comports with what we are able to calculate. So we are talking about a 50-percent increase in the annual flow of immigrants into the country with more coming in under chain migration. All of them will be able to work. All of them will be competing for jobs in the workplace at a time we are not producing many jobs. What does the Congressional Budget Office say? I said for weeks this flow of labor had no other reasonable impact than to pull down wages of American workers. What did CBO say? CBO said the same thing. Last week the Congressional Budget Office in their study used this chart--I didn't make this chart. This is one of the few charts CBO put in their report, and it deals with the question of wages. ``The average wage would be lower than under the current law over the first dozen years.'' This shows in 2025 coming back to catch up. But, still, if the bill hadn't passed, we would have had more increased wages, and we would have had a different picture altogether. So it is going to be a serious impact on working Americans. Professor Borjas from Harvard talked about this. He has written papers about this. He has written books on the subject. He is, I am sure, the most authoritative person. He is an immigrant himself--not his parents; he is an immigrant. He says also that wages are adversely impacted, particularly in lower skilled workers. So Professor Borjas basically said there is benefit to low-income workers. Who gets it? The companies that hire the most low-income workers because those companies will be able to hire more people at lower wages. Who will lose, he said, in this process? The many more people who are workers. That is who is going to lose. We can't bring in large increases in labor at a time of high unemployment and not expect labor rates to go down. Is the free market crowd not aware of that? Are our Democratic colleagues who talk about protecting the worker not aware of that? How can that be denied? Professor Borjas said it. The Atlanta Federal Reserve economists found a substantial reduction of the value of working people in the Atlanta region as a result of the current flow of immigration. They detect a clear reduction in wages as a result of the current flow of immigration, and this flow is much bigger. We are talking about not only a 50-percent increase in the legal flow of immigration every year, meaning 15 million over 10 years as opposed to 10 million. In addition to that, we are talking about the 11 million who would be given amnesty and legal status. Then there is an additional 4.5 million people who can't come in right now because there is a limit of how many each year--a cap. Those are going to be accelerated. Then we have a guest worker program. Senator Chambliss talked about the agriculture industry. There are all kinds of guest worker programs. The guest worker programs will double the number of workers who come in. They come for one reason, and that is to take a job. They will double. So this is a huge impact on our wages in America. This country is not creating enough jobs to sustain that. That hurts the 11 million who are going to be given legal status. That hurts the immigrants who come here legally and have legal status already. That hurts poor people all over America, particularly because so many of these workers are competing for the lower wage jobs. According to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and Professor Borjas, the group who will suffer the most are African-American males. This is really a matter not to be disputed. One in three high school dropouts doesn't have a job. One in two African-American teenagers is unemployed. Twenty-one million Americans who want a full-time job cannot find one. In the city of Detroit, one in three households is on food stamps. In Washington, DC, one in three children lives in poverty. Senator Menendez, I think, confuses total wage growth with average wage growth. Remember, more workers will increase the total wages, so if we bring in 1 million people, yes, more wages will be paid, but the average wage would be lower. If a person is a worker, what does that person want to hear? They want to hear somebody say: Oh, the economy is going to have more wages. Isn't that great. But I am going to have less because 30 million people-plus will be here added to the workforce and everybody gets less and I am supposed to be thankful about that. I am supposed to write my Congressman and say: Oh, great, thank you for passing a bill that increases total wages in America. Give me a break. How about this: They say that GNP is up. Senator Menendez said that. He said GNP will increase. We are hearing that repeatedly: GNP will increase. Well, of course, just like total wages will increase when we have 30 million, 40 million people added to the economy, GNP is going to increase some if we add large numbers of people to the economy. That is the total of goods and services produced in America. But what about the average person and their share of the economy? Will it go up or will it go down? Look at this chart. It comes right out of the CBO score, right out of their book. This is 2013 and this is 2029. This is, I guess, 2032 where the lines cross. How many years? Well, over 29 years or 26 years. This bill, S. 744, would reduce per capital GNP by 0.7 percent in 2023, out here, and it stays below the line it would have been on had the bill not passed. This is below what would have happened if the bill had not passed. Passing the bill pulls down GNP per capita, making each worker in America less able to have a full share of the wealth of America. That is what that means. It is not right. We have had people just blindly coming down here for days now and asserting boldly, without any serious economic data to back it up-- except in 2033. This is out to 2033. They have had years way out there where they try to claim improvement. We need to be worried about our people now. We have people unemployed now, looking for jobs right now. We should be helping them. So this is important. Finally, I will show my colleagues one more chart we need to focus on. This is one of the most stunning charts I have seen. I was shocked when my staff told me about it. It was part of the Congressional Budget Office analysis and debt projections for our economy for the next 10 years. They do that every year. They do updates every year. So in the early part of this year, they did a projection of employment for the next 10 years, and they projected what kind of job creation we would have over the next 10 years. Our CBO does it every year. It is not a new report, it is something they do normally. This is what they concluded: For the next 5 years, 2015 through 2018, while we are coming out of the recovery from the recession, they project we would create 171,000 jobs a month. That is really not enough to reduce unemployment significantly. We ought to be creating 200,000, 250,000, 300,000, to begin to pull down unemployment. But that is what they predicted. But look at this: This is the second 5 years of their 10-year window. They project only 75,000 jobs a month. So our staff called them. They said: Tell me about this. CBO said: We are glad you called. We are glad you called because we have given a lot of thought to this. We have studied projections and data and the case for projections for slower growth in this period of time for mature economies. This is what we come up with as the best projection, using private sector information and other data, including Department of Labor Statistics. Well, from 2019 through 2023, we will be bringing in 75,000 jobs a month, with this bill. How can that not increase unemployment in America? How can that not create a glut of workers that pulls down wages and creates more unemployment? I just don't see how we can possibly justify this large flow of workers without adversely impacting the salaries of American workers. I am not talking about the 11 million who would be legalized. I am not talking about those people because that is part of the agenda we have, to be a part of any long-term settlement of our immigration problem. I am saying in the future the annual flow, the monthly flow, will be more than we will be creating jobs here. That is a pretty stunning figure. Mr. Peter Kirsanow, who serves on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and used to be on the Labor Relations Board, I believe, writes that this bill would have ``profound and substantial costs to American workers.'' He was participating in the hearings of the Civil Rights Commission. He said every witness there said that. Professor Borjas at Harvard, the leading expert in this area, has found that from 1960 through 2012, immigration has cost native-born workers an average of $402 billion in lost wages, while firms using workers such as this gained income. He goes on to say the impact of increased immigration from 1980 to 2000 resulted in a 3-percent decrease in wages for average native workers and an 8-percent decrease for high school dropouts. This is 8 percent. That means a lot of money. He goes on to say: ``Immigration has its largest negative impact on the wage of native workers who lack a high school diploma''--a group that makes up, in recent decades, a shrinking share of the workforce. These workers are among the poorest of Americans. He goes on to say: ``The children of these workers make up a disproportionate number of children in poverty.'' He concludes that, based upon census data, when we have an increase of workers in a specific field of 10 percent, we can have the employment rate fall. A 10-percent increase in supplied workers from immigration levels reduced the employment rate for African Americans by 5.9 percent. That is already. My point is I don't see how anyone can say that anything like over the next decade, we are not going to see lower wages, more unemployment, and lower per capita GNP. Frankly, I think Borjas's analysis is probably stronger on that subject than CBO's. We know this: The Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta has done similar studies. These studies show things such as the average worker's pay being reduced by $1,500 a year, which is $120 a month. My colleagues continue to insist that their promise is correct, that this bill would not provide welfare to those who are given legal status. But the facts show it is not correct. I just have to rebut that. I questioned that at the beginning. We now know their promise is not correct. Immediate access to once legalized individuals--they will first have immediate access to State and local benefits. Senator Rubio even proposed an amendment to the bill that would have eliminated that, but it was never voted on. So the bill we will be voting on does not change that at all. He knew that was contrary to the promises made. Immediate access that will be given to those who are given this RPI provisional status to free earned-income tax credits is in the bill. I offered an amendment in committee to fix that. In other words, the earned-income tax credit, if a person makes below a certain salary and they are working and they have a family, they get a big check, sometimes $2,000, $3,000, from the Federal Government. It is not a tax deduction. It is not a credit against future taxes. It is a direct payment to that individual in the form of a subsidy and a welfare payment and that is the way the CBO scores it--as a direct payment, just like any other payment of welfare to the individual because that is what it is. They will get that immediately. I offered an amendment in committee. I do think--I think I incorrectly said earlier that the Gang of 8 Members voted against it. I do believe Senator Graham and Senator Flake voted for my amendment in committee, but it failed in committee. That amendment, to be offered tonight by Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, has been blocked and will not be voted on. So if this bill passes, there will be welfare payments immediately to all 11 million who qualify, and large numbers of these individuals will qualify because they are low-skilled. Over half do not have a high school diploma, and they will be in that wage rate that qualifies for this welfare payment. Also, within 5 years, 2 to 3 million illegal immigrants who are given legal status will become green card holders and/or citizens and become eligible for all Federal benefits. So a big chunk of them--2 to 3 million--will be put on a pathway to citizenship in 5 years and certainly legal status in 5 years.

Mr. SESSIONS. I ask unanimous consent, Mr. President, for an additional 2 minutes and I will wrap up.

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Presiding Officer for his courtesy. So those will get the welfare within 5 years. That is where we are. I appreciate the work that a lot of people have put into this legislation. People have worked hard on it. They have a vision they want to accomplish. We do need to fix our broken immigration system. But this legislation does not do it. It does not come close to doing it. It should not become law, and we should make sure it does not become law. I urge my colleagues tomorrow to vote no. That does not mean we will never do anything. That is, of course, silly. We need to come back with a more realistic piece of legislation--legislation that asks seriously how many workers this economy can accommodate. Do we have a system that deals with visa overstays? This bill weakens dramatically the entry- exit visa system under current law that has never been implemented but should have been implemented years ago. It undermines the requirements in current law that would make that system work. Therefore, it will not work. It is weaker than the current law. We should be following current law. In addition, we need to strengthen, as Senator Portman advocated, the E-Verify system at the workplace. That is not done. As Senator Chambliss pointed out, there are so many complexities in these guest worker programs, so many loopholes and difficulties that we do not even know about. We need to simplify that system. A guest worker system that brings a person here to work for 3 years with their family, where they can reup for another 3 years and maybe another 3 years--they are then going to be asked to leave this country if they no longer have a job, if we hit a recession? That is not going to happen. That is an impractical system. A good guest worker system should allow workers to come to America-- only those who intend to work for the season they intend to work, and then they should return home. They should maintain their residence in the foreign country, and then they work here as guest workers. That is what a guest worker program should be. This bill allows people to come with their families, to put down roots and become established, and then it is impractical and unkind and unrealistic that we would, 10 years from now, say go home. We are going to have huge visa overstays, as CBO predicts, because that is the way it is going to work. I thank the Presiding Officer for giving me an opportunity tonight to share a few of my concerns, as we move to a big vote tomorrow on cloture. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I think we should get a little perspective, at least as I see it, on the Corker-Hoeven-Schumer substitute that was voted on earlier, and we will vote on again. I think this is what happened. It became clear last week that the Gang of 8 bill was nowhere close to doing what it promised to do on enforcement. The flaws were too dramatic to hide and the CBO found it would only reduce illegal immigration by 25 percent after they had promised dramatic changes in it. And I pointed out that it had holes all through it, like Swiss cheese, and the CBO essentially confirmed that. The bill was in trouble. Support for the gang's proposal began to fall, and the mood changed from over confidence among the supporters to even panic. The gang knew action had to be taken or things could be lost, so they got--they went to Senators Corker and Hoeven with this idea that they would just add 20,000 Border Patrol agents to our current agents on the border and 700 miles of fencing. Both of those projects they had steadfastly rejected, even rejecting the Cornyn amendment to add 5,000 agents. One of the Members of the Senate said it was dumb to do any fencing, and they opposed the fence. Well, these provisions of new enforcement were contrary to what the supporters had been saying for weeks. They promised America their bill was the toughest ever, driving those messages into homes all over America with TV advertisements; with Senator Rubio; big business; Mr. Zucherberg pretending he is a conservative advocate; running ads telling us all what we ought to know and do about this bill. The goal, I have to say, was to provide some sort of cover to get wavering Democrats and Republicans to sign on to this new bill that is going to add 20,000 agents. Well, why would they be willing to make such a dramatic, unceremonious retreat on a position they had taken for months? First, they were desperate. Something needed to be done. Secondly, they know that the promises made in this substitute bill to build fences and to add 20,000 agents will never occur. It is not going to happen. So they are really not worried about that. It is a kabuki dance, a bob-and- weave, a rope-a-dope. Everybody in the Senate knows how this process is working. The staff know it, and I think probably most of the media understand it. These promised actions are not going to happen in the future. The interests who push this bill have never wanted to end the illegality. I have been fighting on this for years. Every time we get close to fixing E-Verify, every time we get--in fact, we had debates, and I had to hold up bills to keep E-Verify from expiring. Forces were out there trying to kill E-Verify for years, and I held up legislation to insist that at least we keep it alive. We weren't able to strengthen it, which it needed desperately. That is the workplace situation, E-Verify is, where when a person applies for a job they run a quick computer check on a person's Social Security number to determine whether they have a lawful Social Security number. It identifies a lot of people who are illegally here and should not be taking jobs. So those forces have never wanted a lawful system, and they objected to things that occurred. So their interests and the interests of those who met in secret to cobble this bill together have always favored more immigration, legal immigration, and it seems to me quite a bit of indifference to illegal. These are the forces that have voiced support for but blocked the creation of real border security fencing over the years. They have voiced support for E-Verify with a blocked extension of it and strengthening of it. They have voiced support for an entry-exit visa system that works in all land, sea, and airports; indeed, we have passed bills to do that--biometric land, sea, and airports. This bill reduces that requirement through just entry-exit visa systems at air and seaports and not on land, and it is not biometric. That is a critical difference because now 40 percent of the people here illegally come on visas and overstay, and we have no idea who is leaving the country. We clock them in on entry, but we don't clock them out when they leave. So we don't know if anybody has overstayed. That is the situation we are in. I see my friend, Senator Vitter, and I want him to have time to talk. I know he is due to be talking now. I would say one more thing as he prepares to deliver his remarks. We were promised, when the bill passed, that the economy would be better, wages would improve, and GDP would be up, and unemployment wouldn't be adversely affected. The CBO report said unemployment will go up, and I have a chart they put out in their own report showing that. They say wages will go down over the next decade, and they say unemployment will go up. They say gross domestic product will increase some as a result of the situation of more people, but per capita, per person, GDP declines for 21 years. So we need to know--at this time of high unemployment, slow growth, low-wage growth, we need to be very cautious about allowing millions of new workers to enter this economy at this time. We want to have immigration, but we want to have it at a rate that serves the national interests and increasing it dramatically is not appropriate. I thank the Chair.

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I support Senator Vitter's motion. There are multiple points of order that could be raised against this legislation. They have declared a number of the spending programs emergencies; if you designate an appropriation as an emergency, it does not count against the budget, but it is real spending all the same. Normally, we would expect that border enforcement and hiring of officers would not be an emergency; neither would other aspects of what we are doing here be considered an emergency. We were told by the sponsors of the legislation repeatedly that this bill will be paid for and it will be paid for by fees and fines contributed by those who are here illegally as part of their payment to get citizenship and legal status. Well, that comes nowhere close to funding the legislation. This chart I have in the Chamber gives us some--I will get to it in a second. But this chart gives an indication of where we stand with regard to budget implications of the legislation. So the fines and penalties and fees that are a part of this maybe bring in $6 or $7 billion. They said there was enough to pay for the bill. The bill originally started out at $6 billion, then it went to $8 billion, and then, with the Corker-Hoeven amendment, it jumped to $46 billion. There are no additional fees on the illegal aliens. When they met with the support group, the Gang of 8 met with the real group who has been driving the bill--this coalition of special interests. They went to them and said: We need to raise some more money. And they said: Well, you cannot put any more fines on the people here illegally. So they said: Yes, ma'am. We will not put any more fines on them. We will put more fees on legal immigrants in the future. So they raised fees on legal immigrants but did not raise fees on the people who are here illegally who originally they said were going to pay for the entire bill. So that is important for us to fully understand. The money is simply not there. I will note parenthetically that the 2007 immigration bill--that was on the floor and we debated and eventually failed--that bill would have raised as much as $8,000 per illegal individual. This bill only raises $2,000, and it is to be paid over 10 years. This is not a burdensome payment if you are going to say they pay a fine--as the sponsors of the legislation did--to become permanent residents and put them on a path to citizenship. So it is about $17 a month. I calculated it out roughly. That is not a big fine. You are allowed to work. You get a Social Security card, an ability to apply for any job in America on an equal status with anybody else who has been unemployed and looking for work, their children looking for work and need a job. Somebody who was just a few days before illegally here now has full power under this legislation, if it were passed, to take that job. So the idea that $17 a month is somehow going to be breaking the bank is not accurate. The problem fundamentally with this situation is that it double counts billions of dollars. We need to understand how this process works, this double counting. It was part of the 2,000-plus page ObamaCare health care legislation. This thing is over a thousand pages--1,200 pages--and things get lost in it. What is lost fundamentally in it--and the supporters of it ought to be more candid about this--is that to make their argument that the bill is going to bring in more money than goes out, they have to double count Social Security and Medicare money. They just do. Senator Corker has made that argument. Basically, we have this money coming in. In one of the conventions of accounting that our budget team uses-- the Congressional Budget Office--it calculates all the money coming into the government, all the money going out of the government, regardless of whether or not there is a trust fund. Another form of accounting accounts for the trust funds and accounts for general revenue. General revenue is on-budget. Off-budget is the Social Security trust fund and some other funds. So look at this chart. I think it gives a picture of where we are. This is the true cost of this immigration bill. I am the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee. We wrestle with these numbers all the time. Under this, they claim they have a unified budget surplus of $197 billion. That is the accounting method where all the money coming in is counted against all the money going out. But if you remove the Social Security surplus, that is $211 billion. If you remove the Medicare surplus, that is $56 billion, showing, instead of having a surplus, we have a $70 billion deficit. You say: Well, CBO said different. No, CBO did not. CBO, in its report, explicitly shows that the on- budget accounting is negative, that it adds to the debt. It counts a surplus in Medicare and Social Security. Now, how could they do that? Well, these individuals--many of them do not have a Social Security Number and are not paying Social Security and Medicare taxes--the withholding of FICA on our paychecks. They are not paying that. Once legalized, they will pay that. There will be new money coming into the Treasury. These sponsors of the bill, so desperate to promote their bill and say it is paid for, say that Social Security payment, that FICA payment, is now available for them to spend over here on all the things they want to spend the money on; therefore, it has created a surplus. But it ignores something very important: that each one of those individuals who have paid into Medicare, paid into Social Security, are going to draw out Medicare and Social Security. It is their money. It is their retirement money. You cannot put the money up for their retirement and spend it the same day and expect it to be there. This is how this country is going broke. This is how they handled President Obama's ObamaCare. They double counted the money. Well, you say that is not accurate. Let me read the letter I got from the Congressional Budget Office Director the night before we voted, December 23. I voted against it. The ObamaCare legislation passed on Christmas Eve. They finally got the 60th vote before Senator Brown from Massachusetts could be installed. This is what the CBO said at the time: [T]he savings to the [Medicare] trust fund under PPACA-- That is the ObamaCare-- would be received by the government only once, so they cannot be set aside to pay for future Medicare spending and, at the same time, pay for current spending on other parts of the legislation. . . . To describe the full amount of [Medicare] trust fund savings as both improving the government's ability to pay future Medicare benefits and financing new spending outside of Medicare would essentially double-count a large share of those savings and thus overstate the improvement in the government's fiscal position. If that were a private business that sent out a solicitation to buy its stock and they said, we are on a good basis, we are making so much profit--and they are counting as their profit the money going into their employees' pension plan--I think they would be in big trouble, do you not? Because it is not their money, it is money committed to the employees' pension. You cannot claim it as profit and say, invest in my company, I am making a big profit, counting the money that is in the employees' retirement money. Well, this is what we have been doing. The Senator from South Carolina used to say: We have been raiding trust funds. If we were in private business, we would be in jail. I think there is too much truth to that, frankly. So this is undisputedly real. But because there is a score, a unified budget score, the method that says all money comes in and all money goes out, you have a surplus, you can count this as a surplus. Why is that? Well, because most of the people who will be legalized under this bill, those individuals are in a situation where they are younger, maybe 35. So they will pay into Medicare for a number of years, and Medicare for a number of years will see a surplus in their account. But after they reach retirement age and start retiring, the money is going to be drawn out. In fact, right now the amount of money paid into Social Security and Medicare by American workers is not enough to cover the cost of their retirement. That is why both of those accounts are in serious trouble. We have got to do something about it. We need to be making it stronger, not weaker. This makes it weaker. You are taking the money that should have been going to fund the retirement accounts of the people who were previously illegal who are now legal and spending it on something else. Senator Vitter is exactly right, there are multiple bases for making a budget point of order against this bill. I believe the motion to waive the budget point of order was a motion to waive all of them, so this will be the only one we will get to vote on. So there are others who could have been raised also. So what about this argument that wages are supposed to be improved by the bill? We were told that and told that repeatedly. This is what the CBO report says, ``CBO estimates that S. 744 would cause the unemployment rate to increase slightly between 2014 and 2020.'' So this is a fact. So at a time of high unemployment, lower wages, we are passing legislation that will increase unemployment, make more people unable to find work. This is a chart that was in the CBO report, not my chart. I did not make this chart; it is in their report. It points out the average wage would be lower than under current law over the first dozen years. So we are asked to vote for a bill that CBO says would make the average wage of American working people lower for a dozen years. I do not see how that is rational, frankly. We have seen since 1999 the wages of American workers have been decreasing as compared to the inflation index. The amount of money they are making is falling compared to inflation. That is a tragic thing. It has been continuous. I thought it might be temporary, but it has been continuing steadily. One expert, Professor Borjas at Harvard, attributed 40 percent of that to immigration already. This bill will dramatically increase the flow of immigration. So I am worried. This is a chart that has down here 2021, 2023, before it hits the line back where it was. Then you say, well, then it is improving. Not so. Not so. If the bill had not been passed, we would have had some increase all along. The lines would have been much higher. I do not know how many years it would take for this ever to get back to where it would have been if the bill did not pass. That is what the CBO says. It is not that inconsistent with common sense, that at a time of high unemployment and you bring in millions of workers, it is going to pull down wages. If you bring more coal into America, you bring more iron into America, more cotton into America, the price of those products falls. It is supply and demand. You bring more labor in, you are going to have a lower wage rate, which David Frum has written is what the bill was designed for to begin with, pull down wages. We need to think about this. I dispute this idea that there is no impact on wages by this immigration law. This is what will happen in the next 10 years: We are going to legalize 11 million people. About half of those are not working effectively in the real job force; maybe they are doing part-time work; maybe their family is taking care of them; maybe they are working in a restaurant or lawn care companies off the books. All of a sudden they are going to be given legal status. They will be able to apply for any job: truckdrivers, forklift operators, coal miners, steelworkers, work for the county commission, city council, State of Alabama. They can apply for all of those jobs. So you are going to see a large increase in the supply of labor available for jobs for which they were not eligible previously. Second, what about the normal legal flow? We now admit about 1 million people a year into America. That is the most generous admission rate of any Nation in the world. It is pretty significant, very significant. We have been absorbing that. I think we can continue at that rate. However, this bill, in addition to the 1 million I just mentioned, will increase by at least 50 percent the number of immigrants who come into the country every year hereafter, which is pretty significant. In addition, there is another 4.5 million who are waiting to come into America. They have been tentatively approved, but there are limits on how many can come each year. So they are waiting their time. They call it a ``backlog.'' They are just waiting their time. That is 4.5 million. They have been accelerated. Let's think this through. Under the current law, we were on track to admit 10 million people as immigrants into America. By immigrants, I mean people who want to stay here, get legal permanent residence and become citizens. We are on track for 10 million if you follow current law. Under this bill, we will admit, over the next 10 years to lawful status in America, the 15 million I mentioned, the 11 million plus the 4.5. Then we are going to increase by 50 percent the annual admission rate from 1 million to 1.5, meaning 15 million over 10, which means 30 million. So the number of people who will be given permanent legal status in America over the next 10 years will be 30 million, not 10 if the law had been properly applied. There is another category. Those are people we refer to generally as guest workers. Guest workers come not to become immigrants, not to stay in the country permanently, but come to work in an area where they can find a job. It is supposed to be in an area where there are not workers to do the work. That is the theory, at least. How will that be impacted by this new legislation? It is going to be double. So the number of guest workers, which is very large now, is going to double under this legislation. I would say, first of all, it is common sense that the average wage is going to fall. It is common sense that unemployment will go up. It is common sense that it is going to be harder for Americans in this time of high unemployment and falling wages to get a decent job with health care and retirement benefits. It just is. People can spin and they can quote Grover Norquist and those kinds of things to say otherwise, but Professor Borjas at Harvard says differently, a Federal Reserve economist in Atlanta says differently, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights said they had hearings and every witness acknowledged it would be bad for American workers, particularly lower income workers, particularly for African-American and Hispanic workers who are already here. They will get hammered the most under this dramatic increase in workers. They say it will increase GNP. Well, it will. You legalize 30 million, you are going to have a larger economy and it will be bigger. But the question is, per person, per capita, will America's productivity increase? Will our GDP increase? Well, what did CBO find? This is their chart. It shows that it dropped. This is the baseline today. If we pass the bill, the per- capita GNP of the United States of America of each citizen drops. That does not make us wealthier as a Nation, as a person. So what if the economy grows a little bit but everyone has less because you have got more people? That is what they say: S. 744 would reduce per capita by 0.7 percent in 2023. That is 2023. This is about 16 years they chart that it will be lower than it would have been if the bill never passes. So why would we want to pass legislation that clearly reduces the per capita wealth of America, our growth of GNP? I do not think that makes good sense. I am concerned about it. Nobody wants to talk about it, they just want to pretend there is no limit to the number of workers who can be brought in and that that will not have a societal impact on America. Let's take a look at a few things here. This is the Washington Post from 2 weeks ago when we got the job report dealing with the jobs for the month of May. It was considered to be fairly positive. It was about our normal average increase during the recovery period from the recession. But it is still not much. Not so good. Unemployment went up, even though we created, they said, 175,000 jobs. That sounded good. We created 175,000. But you have to create about that many jobs each month to stay level, because we have more people coming into the workforce each month. Look at what they said in the article: The bulk of the job gains in May were in the service industry, which added about 57,000 jobs last month. Still, roughly half of those were temporary positions, suggesting that businesses remain uncertain of consumer demand. They go on to note: Missing from the picture were production jobs in industries such as construction and manufacturing. . . . Meanwhile, manufacturing shed 8,000 workers. . . . Manufacturing jobs went down by 8,000. The increase was in service industries. The increase in half of those were part-time or temporary, not full-time, permanent jobs. Anybody who says we are in great shape with regard to job creation is not telling the truth. An article in today's Wall Street Journal, ``Some Unemployed Keep Losing Ground,'' states that ``nearly 12 million Americans were unemployed in May, down from a peak of more than 15 million. . . . '' At one point a few years ago, we had 15 million Americans working. We now have 12 million Americans working. The percentage of Americans in the workforce continues to fall. It is the lowest since the 1970s when women were entering the workforce. That is why the percentage went up, but now we are down to that level again. People are not finding work. The idea that we can bring in millions of workers well above the current rate and that this is somehow going to create jobs is hard for me to accept. The article states: ``At 175,000 jobs per month, we're years away,'' said Adam Looney, a Brookings economist, from where we need to be in unemployment rate. The real reason is economic growth has not increased much. It goes on to cite some very sad numbers that show the danger for people who have been unemployed for longer periods of time. It does appear, unfortunately, that somebody who is older or somebody who has not found a job for quite a number of months finds it even harder to find a job in the future. This is the Wall Street Journal, and they support immigration aggressively, but this is their story. The article talked about Mr. Ken Gray. Ken Gray has experienced that frustration firsthand. In January of 2011, Mr. Gray's wife died after a battle with ovarian cancer; three months later, he was laid off from his job as an account manager at AT&T, where he had worked for more than 20 years. Still grieving from the loss of his wife, Mr. Gray says he was slow to turn his full attention to his job search. By the time he did, the Chicago resident was long-term unemployed, and he has struggled to get prospective employers even to respond to his applications. ``You just feel so discouraged,'' Mr. Gray said. ``You ask yourself what's the sense of sending a resume if you don't hear anything.'' Now 59 years old, Mr. Gray been living off his dwindling savings since his unemployment benefits expired last year. He says he remains determined to find work. But long-term job seekers are twice as likely to leave the labor market as to find jobs, and many experts worry that many of them will never return to work. That could create a class of permanently unemployed workers and leave lasting scars on the economy. ``Once people reach a point where they no longer consider themselves employable . . . it is very difficult to pull them back,'' says Joe Carbone, president of WorkPlace, a Connecticut workforce-development agency. . . . ``We are losing thousands of people a day. This is like an epidemic.'' I don't think we can pretend this isn't reality. I think the CBO numbers probably understate the problem. Professor Borjas' studies would indicate that and others would indicate that. Another example is from the New York Times, May 20, 1 month ago, written by Jessica Glazer: The men began arriving last Wednesday, first a trickle, then dozens. By Friday there were hundreds of them, along with a few women. They set up their tents and mattresses on the sidewalk in Long Island City, Queens, unpacked their Coronas and cards-- and settled in to wait for as long as five days and nights for a slender chance at a union job as an elevator mechanic. On Monday morning. . . . Those in line--there were more than 800 by sun-up Monday--were hoping for a chance at job security, higher salaries and other benefits. Andres Loaiza, 25, had his eye on a position that includes minimal physical labor. . . . Every 18 to 20 months, the union accepts 750 applications for the 150 to 200 spots in its four-year apprenticeship program. . . . While they waited, the hopefuls lined the sidewalk along 36th Street. . . . The union had rented six port-a-potties and hired a 24- hour security guard. . . . Overnight, they brushed their teeth with bottles of water; tucked into their sleeping bags, folding chairs or cars; and tried to get some rest. On Saturday a light drizzle fell. Gerry Dubatowka, 20, whose father is in Local 3, waited for his shot. He is studying electrical technology at Orange County Community College, but said he would rather work with his hands than be in school. ``I just want to do whatever, wherever I got to start,'' said Mr. Dubatowka. ``I want steady work all the time.'' For millions of Americans, this is what they want. They want a job with a retirement benefit, a health care benefit, and a steady job. We are not creating enough of them. That is the problem. Continuing: After Sunday's drenching rain, Monday morning dawned gray. A few arguments erupted as people tried to cut the line. . . . At 9 a.m. Monday, the door opened. The first man in line disappeared inside and emerged moments later with a wide smile across his face. ``Yay! No. 1!'' one man yelled when he stepped onto the sidewalk. ``Good luck, big guy!'' said another. This is the problem we are facing. I would share with my colleagues, at the rate of immigration in the future, we will have well over 100,000 new immigrants a month enter the country who are looking for jobs. We will have more than that enter, but we will probably have about 100,000-or-so-plus a month looking for jobs. What does our Congressional Budget Office say about our future economic growth pattern? The CBO each year, as part of the budget process, lays out a 10-year projection of economic growth for America. They project all kinds of things. They are not perfect, but they use the best data available from the Labor Department, academic studies, private business analysis, and they project how many people would be employed. They are projecting for America's economy what I think a large majority of other economists and private sector people are predicting; that is, a new normal, where growth has not increased as fast as it has during boom times in the past. You have heard that phrase, ``a new normal.'' This is a new normal, and that is what we are facing. They predict, in the second 5 years of our 10-year budget window, we will increase jobs in America by 75,000 a month, well below the amount of people immigrating to America to get jobs under this bill. Should we invite people to come who are not likely to have a job? Should we invite more people to come than we will have jobs for when they will make the new immigrants who arrive before them unable to have a good job? Shall we bring in more immigrants than we can absorb, causing wages to decline for American citizens, making it harder for American citizens to find work? Do we take those people who are not finding jobs and do we then place them on the welfare rolls and put them on a government subsistence program when they have been independent and able to prosper previously in the private sector? What is the right thing for America, colleagues? I think we have to think about that. These numbers from CBO show there will be adverse impacts on the economy, wages, and unemployment at a time when we need to be doing just the opposite. We need to be creating jobs, putting people to work. We simply have to give first priority to those to whom we owe our allegiance, the people who fought our wars, paid our taxes, and kept the country going when they were able to work. I raise that point. People don't like to talk about it, but I do believe it is honest and true. A good immigration policy should be focused on a number of things. It should be focused first on the national interests, the interests of the American working people, whether they are lawful immigrants and not yet citizens or whether they are lawfully here as citizens. We owe our obligation first to that cohort of people. They are loyal to our country, and we owe them our loyalty first. Then we bring in people at the rate we think we can absorb that is healthy for America. Maybe 1 million people a year is about the right rate. If that is where we are, I can accept that. To have it increased by 50 percent, to have the guest worker program doubled on top of allowing early entrants and legality to 15 million, that is a trend that I think is dangerous for America. My position is this, let's be prudent, friends and colleagues. Let's be cautious. Let's not be increasing the legal flow by 50 percent at a time of high unemployment when it looks as if we are not going to be able to create enough jobs for those people who would be coming here. We surely don't need to be doubling, it seems to me, the guest worker program at a time when we have high unemployment. This is where we are. I believe that needs to be considered. I think the American people who are out here watching what is going on in the Congress need to be asking their Senators and their Members of Congress who will be taking up these issues soon: Are you thinking about us? Whom are you thinking about? Are you thinking politics or are you thinking about me? Who is thinking about me? You meet in secret with the Chamber of Commerce. You meet in secret with La Raza, you meet with the politicians, you meet with the meat packers group, and the immigration lawyers association, but you don't meet with the law enforcement officers who have told us this bill will not work. You don't have representatives from the heart and soul of America in there. Nobody is expressing what kind of impact will be felt by them. This is what my concern is and one of my many concerns as we wrestle with legislation. We can deal compassionately with the people who have been here for a long time, and I will support that. I believe we need a system that ends the lawlessness and a system that serves the national interests of American citizens. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor. The Senator from Oklahoma.

Mr. SESSIONS

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, under the rule, I believe I am allowed to use the time of Senator Grassley.

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, the vote we will be having later this afternoon is not on a Corker-Hoeven amendment, as I think most Senators may have thought when they left town Thursday and Friday. In fact, Thursday night we were told the Hoeven-Corker amendment would be filed and, presumably, we would then be debating that amendment. As we went into the night, every hour being told it would soon be filed, it turned out it wasn't filed until almost noon Friday, and it wasn't filed as the Corker-Hoeven amendment dealing with Border Patrol officers and fencing and some other issues, it was filed as a complete substitute to the whole bill. This vote this afternoon will give Majority Leader Reid procedural control of the debate. It is his motion to shut off debate on a 1,200- page substitute--200 pages more than the bill we were looking at last week and that no one has read. Our Senators haven't had a chance to read the bill to see how the merged language falls throughout the legislation and to see what other changes may have been made over the weekend. I was here. We have been trying to get through this, but it is not easy. I am sure my colleagues haven't been able to do so. The majority leader has filed cloture and is blocking any further amendments from being in order unless he personally approves them. That is the parliamentary situation we are in today. We are in a situation in which the majority leader will approve, personally, any and all amendments that get voted on. So he has once again created a situation where Senators have to play ``Mother May I'' to get a vote on an amendment they feel is important. This is not how the Senate should be run. A duly elected Senator from any State in America should be able to come to the floor and get an amendment voted on without having to have the personal approval of the majority leader. This trend has accelerated in recent years where it is truly damaging the whole role of the Senate, and we need more attention to that issue. This is exactly what happened with ObamaCare. The majority rushed through a complex bill so there would be no time to digest what was in it. Just yesterday, on one of the Sunday programs, Bob Woodward, the famed writer who dealt with the Nixon scandal and other issues over the years, said this: When you pass complicated legislation and no one has really read the bill, the outcome is absurd. I think that is too true, unfortunately. Senator Reid has said many times we have to pass this bill by July 4. Why is that? Is that his decision to make? Is it the other Senators' decisions to make? So to accomplish that goal, he has filed cloture immediately on this new substitute bill. He filed cloture as soon as it was filed to shut off debate. That is the effect of what we are doing. Why is there such urgency to pass legislation of this importance by Friday? I am not aware that we have any big business after the July 4th recess. We could stay here through the July 4th recess, for that matter. As Bill Kristol, the writer and commentator, noted yesterday on one of the programs: There's no urgency. Can we at least let people read it for a week? The last thing Republicans should do is be enablers in the majority plan to rush through the bill before people know what is in it. Why should we enable that? If this bill is so good, what is the harm of letting the Senators and the American public have a while to digest what is in it? Why not commit to open and extensive debate? We have an obligation to read a bill before we pass it. If Senators have not read the 1,200-page substitute bill, they shouldn't vote to cut off debate. They should vote against that. Let me say what the problem is here. This is a new technique. Senator Lamar Alexander said some time ago, that the truth is the Senate doesn't do comprehensive well. I think that was a very serious comment after the failure of this last bill and after ObamaCare and its massive power and overreach. So what has happened? What has happened is Senators got together, as they did with ObamaCare, basically in secret, they wrote a 1,200-page bill in this case, and they did talking points. The talking points in a big bill like this--and particularly this one--have had political consultants, pollsters, all kinds of people organizing this campaign to drive this legislation through the Senate. They have had a response to every criticism; they have had spin in every different way. They are running TV advertisements right now, I suppose, still promoting this legislation as something it is not. The talking points are designed to be very popular. The talking points are designed to be very much in accord with most people's views about what good legislation is. Indeed, I liked most of the talking points myself. I would vote for legislation that did most of that, for sure--if it did what it said. That is what is sold because nobody can articulate and explain the details of it, and people's eyes glaze over when you talk about it and people don't understand it fully. So they promote the bill as if it is the talking points, when the talking points do not comply with what is in this legislation. That is why we have an obligation to study it, read it, and vote on the bill, and not the talking points. A few weeks ago, former Attorney General and Reagan's close friend, Ed Meese, wrote a letter to the editors of the Wall Street Journal and said: On legislation as important as this, lawmakers must take the time to read the bill, not rely on others' characterizations of what it says. We can't afford to have Congress ``pass the bill to find out what's in it.'' So at this point in the legislative process, a ``yes'' vote on cloture tonight means Senator Reid will have gained complete control of the process. No amendments will be voted on he does not approve. His goal is to drive the train to passage by this Friday. Public policy, public interest is beside the point. So the vote this afternoon is to proceed again to the altered substitute--the entire substitute--of the Gang of 8 legislation, and the flawed framework of this bill remains immediate amnesty, which will never be revoked. That will occur within weeks, with no enforcement measure ever effectively having to occur. In reality, it will not have to occur. According to the June 7 Rasmussen Report, the American people want enforcement first by a 4-to-1 margin. The Gang of 8 initially promised their bill would be enforcement first, but that is not what the bill said. Today, no one disputes that it is amnesty first. In fact, the lead sponsor of the bill, Senator Schumer, on ``Meet the Press'' conceded this point shortly after the bill was filed, saying: . . . first, people will be legalized. . . . Then, we will make sure the border is secure. ``Then, we will make sure the border is secure.'' This is important because this is what happened in 1986, and Senator Grassley is so clear about that. He voted for the 1986 bill, and he saw the enforcement never occur. Under the substitute, illegal immigrants can still receive amnesty-- not when the border is actually secure but when Secretary Napolitano tells the Congress she is starting to secure the border. So it occurs when Secretary Napolitano--who is now not enforcing our laws--tells Congress she is starting to secure the border. Within 6 months of enactment, Secretary Napolitano need only submit to Congress her views on a comprehensive southern border strategy and southern border fencing strategy and give notice that she has begun implementing her plans. At that point--which will likely occur earlier, as Secretary Napolitano indicated during her testimony before the Judiciary Committee--she may begin processing applications for and then granting legal status, granting amnesty, and granting work and travel permits. She will grant Social Security account numbers, the ability to obtain driver's licensing, and many Federal and State public benefits, all without a single border security or enforcement action having been taken. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be notified after 20 minutes. How much time has been consumed at this point?

Mr. SESSIONS. I didn't understand it. I am sorry. Was there a UC on the Senator taking the floor? If so, I will certainly yield and wrap up.

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I will conclude by 5 till and yield to the Senator at that time. I think that will get us on the right track. I know there were discussions, and I was told earlier that would be the time that I would have. Then I was told they want you to come earlier, and I didn't realize the Senator was in on part of that agreement. So that is perfectly all right, and I will accommodate the representations we have been given. Madam President, Senators have been talking a good bit about the enforcement that would occur under the substitute that has been offered, but the substitute does not change the fact that no reduction in illegal immigration is ever required. In the beginning, proponents touted the bill's requirements that the Secretary achieve and maintain 90 percent effectiveness in apprehending illegal border crossers. We don't hear so much about that anymore. That is because all that the bill requires now is that the Secretary submit a plan for achieving and maintaining that rate, not that it actually be achieved. Even if this was a real requirement, it wouldn't matter because it does not account for those who evade detection at the border. During her testimony before the Judiciary Committee, Secretary Napolitano all but acknowledged the effective rate is meaningless because by definition Homeland Security has no idea how many border crossings go completely undetected. So it is not subject to real enforcement. I appreciate my colleagues, Senator Corker and Senator Hoeven, and those who have set forth their goals to produce legislation that would be good for America. I appreciate the vision that has been stated. But having been involved in this now for quite a number of years--not because I desire to, but because I felt an obligation to do so, having been a Federal prosecutor for almost 15 years--I want to see the system actually work. I am aware this bill is an authorization bill. It may authorize Border Patrol officers. It may even authorize fencing. But until Congress appropriates the money over a period of a decade, the way it is set up, it will never happen. I am confident all the promises made in the legislation underlying and in the additions that have been made to it, it will not be accomplished in their entirety; and under this legislation we will be sure to have a vast increase in illegal entry under the entry-exit visa system, as the Congressional Budget Office has stated, and we will still have illegal entrants from the border. Madam President, I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of the time that is reserved for Senator Grassley.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, the Senator will acknowledge that his amendment was filed Friday afternoon, at a time when probably 90 percent of our Senators had left town. It was not his 200-page amendment or just his interests; all kinds of special interests and Senators' interests have been added to the bill. It was filed as part of the overall bill. So the Senator would acknowledge that the replacement that we would be voting cloture on tonight is 1,200 pages, a little less than 200 pages more than the bill was on Friday morning?

Mr. SESSIONS. Yes.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I am going to talk about what the amendment does. The Senator has not seen quite as much--although he is an experienced and very able addition to this Senate but has not, perhaps, seen how over decades promises about enforcement at the border are not fulfilled, and that is important. I will go through the amendment the Senator has offered, and make some comments about why I think it does not do what my colleague believes it does, why we should not pass this, and why we absolutely should not move forward on the substitute which is basically the bill that has been put out by the Gang of 8, which fails in a whole host of ways. I would also be concerned--and I will ask the Senator, does he believe that Senators who have concerns about the bill should be given the right to have amendments voted on in an up-or-down way as long as reasonably necessary, to be able to offer amendments to fix the legislation?

Mr. SESSIONS. I appreciate the Senator saying that, but it is not going to happen because when we have cloture tonight, Senator Reid is going to be in complete control of the voting process. Amendments will be at his pleasure. There will be the amendments he is willing to vote on, and the ones he doesn't approve of will not be up for a vote. So that is where we are, and that is a fact. We are going to have other cloture motions, and the goal will be to drive this bill to passage by or before Friday. There will be far less votes than the last time the immigration bill came up. The last time the big immigration bill came up, there were 45 or so amendments that we voted on. So far we have had nine votes on amendments. There were discussions Wednesday and Thursday night that we would have another 16 amendments. I was advocating for more amendments to be brought up. I thought we had an agreement to do that, and we were moving that way until this great amendment--the grand amendment that fixes things--came up. I will point out a few things I think are troubling with the legislation, and we can then go to Senator Corker for his remarks. I just want to make my points now. First of all, Senator Corker said there is a trigger, and that trigger is 10 years from now. It has to do with whether individuals are going to get permanent legal status in 10 years. What if it turns out the Congress has not appropriated money to complete the fencing as promised? What if it turns out Congress has not funded the Border Patrol agents they promised? Are we are going to end up saying to these people: You don't get your status. They are going to say: What's the problem? We did everything we were told to do, and Congress didn't do it. Give us our green cards. People are going to say: We cannot deny people their green cards. These are people who have been here for 10 years, not to mention the time they have already been here and probably had children born in this country who are citizens. This is not a practical or realistic guarantee this will ever happen. Based on my experience, I don't believe we are going to add 20,000 agents. We probably don't need that many, although we do need more agents and better effectiveness at the border. The impact of the trigger is the legal status and the Social Security card. The right to work anywhere in America is given within 2 months of the passage of the legislation. They are making promises 10 years down the road that I am saying are not likely to ever happen. In fact, I don't think it will happen in the way it was said. The Secretary has the power to reallocate personnel under this bill, and it gives her broad power to do that. She will say she has done what is required--or the next Secretary will say that--and I am concerned about that. As far as the costs, Senator Schumer and the Judiciary Committee promised that the bill was paid for by the fees, the punishment, and the fines--and I will talk about that at some length later--from the people who entered the country illegally. They claim they will have as much as $8 billion, and maybe that is so. I am not sure. They would not say how many people would be legalized. I asked that question twice to Senator Schumer. He refused to say how many people would be given green card status in the next 10 years in America. Maybe he doesn't want us to know. If he doesn't know, that is a big gap for somebody who is writing a 1,000-page bill and doesn't know how many people are going to be legalized. This is what he said: What we are simply doing is making sure all the expenses in the bill are fully funded by the income the bill brings in. This is to make sure this bill does not incur any costs on the taxpayers to make it revenue neutral. He said: It provides startup costs to implement the bill repaid by fees that come back later. So what we are basically doing is setting up two pots of money that have startup money, and it is repaid. Both the companies pay when they get new workers, and the immigrants who get RPI status pay in terms of their fines as they go through the process. That is what we were told in their talking points. This is their poll-tested talking points when they were drafting the original version before Senator Corker was involved. Now it is $46 billion. Where is the money coming from? Well, they say the bill creates more revenue. The Congressional Budget Office--our budget accounting firm--said before Senator Corker's bill raised the cost from $8 billion to $46 billion, it would increase the on-budget deficit by $14 billion, and then it would reduce the off-budget deficit by $211 billion. So isn't that good news? It improved our off-budget deficit. What is the off-budget deficit? The off-budget deficit is the Social Security withholding the newly legalized persons will pay when they get their Social Security cards. So they will be paying withholding on their checks that maybe they were not paying before, and they score that as increased revenue, and it certainly is increased revenue. One form of our accounting will show that as an increased revenue, and that money in that form of accounting, unified-budget accounting, allows us to think we can spend it for anything we want. Wait a minute. What is the reality? The person is paying their Social Security and Medicare withholding, and it doesn't go to the U.S. Treasury. It goes to the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. It is not available simultaneously to be used to pay for a new bill. This is how this country has been going broke. The same thing happened during ObamaCare. The night before the vote, December 23--we voted on Christmas Eve to pass that bill--I got Mr. Elmendorf to say: You can't simultaneously strengthen Social Security and Medicare with this new money and pay for something else with it. He used this phrase: It is double counting the money. That is where they are coming up with the money here. So the Social Security and Medicare payroll withholding that people will pay when they are legalized and given a Social Security card is their retirement. We have to have that money to pay for their retirement when they get ready to withdraw Medicare and Social Security. We cannot spend it now and pretend we have free money. The CBO score from just last week shows that is the situation. I am just not happy about the counting of money in that form.

Mr. SESSIONS. I want to make sure whose time is being used, but go ahead.