Jeff Sessions

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I will not be voting for the bill. I am frustrated that we have gone through now 8 years of domination by the majority leader in the Senate, denying votes on even simple amendments as part of the entire funding of the discretionary accounts of the United States of America. There is over $1 trillion in spending, not one amendment, refusing to bring up the bills individually as they should have been, refusing to pass the bill by September 30 when the fiscal year ends, and appropriations should be done before that date to fund the next fiscal year. So what do we do? Well, they didn't want to vote because an election was coming up. They didn't want to vote the previous year when an election was coming up, I guess 18 months later, so there is always some excuse. But the fundamental thing that has occurred in this Senate is the majority leader, through the device of filling the tree, places himself in control, places himself in a position to block amendments to any bill. That is what he has done, to a degree that has never before been done in the U.S. Senate. Chairman Mikulski says she looks forward to getting on a better path next year under Republican leadership, so we will have a more regular process. Maybe the Republicans will allow the minority Democratic Party next time to have rights that have been denied us for all of these years. This is a fact. People can spin it any way they want to. I have been here for 18 years, and I know what is happening. We have demolished the collegiality in the Senate. It has caused the kind of frustration and tension that has resulted in these failures to pass bills. So what do they do? They cobble the entire funding of the United States together in one omnibus bill, bring it up at the last minute, and say, If you don't agree to vote it out without getting any amendments, we will accuse you of shutting the government down. We will accuse you of shutting the government down. It is all your fault. For some reason, our friends in the media seem to think that is true. And if anybody has the gumption to stand up and object to this abusive process, they are shutting the government down. What planet are we on? Don't we know what really has happened? So I have an amendment and I wanted to offer it to this bill. It would simply say that Congress is going to fund the United States government; we are going to fund the entire discretionary account in this country, but we are not going to provide money to allow the President of the United States to execute an unlawful, illegal amnesty. He has already established a building across the river in Crystal City, and they have ads out to hire 1,000 people, salaries up to $150,000. And they are going to process people who are here unlawfully, give them a photo ID, a Social Security number, and a work authorization, and allow them to participate in Social Security and Medicare. They will allow them, if their incomes are low--and statistics tell us their incomes are lower--they are entitled to child tax credits of $1,000 per child and they are entitled to the earned income tax credit. Combined, according to the recent article by David Frum in ``The Atlantic'', that is almost $5,000 if you are a working person with a family of four earning up to $40,000 a year--you will be entitled to a direct check. A tax credit is not a tax deduction. It is a direct check from the Treasury for an average of nearly $5,000. It is a stunning situation that should not be happening. So I just wanted to have an amendment that funds the government, allows the country to go forward, but just say to the President: Mr. President, we don't authorize any funding for this project. It can easily be done. It has been done hundreds of times. In fact, that is why Guantanamo prison in Guantanamo, Cuba, where the terrorists are being held--that is why it has not been closed, because Congress has told the President, who wants to close it, we are not going to allow you to spend a dime to close that prison. It has been successful. Because Presidents can't spend money not authorized by Congress, not appropriated by Congress. He cannot spend that money. It is wrong. It is actually a criminal offense to spend money. The Antideficiency Act says that anyone who pretends to represent the U.S. Government and spends money not appropriated by the Congress of the United States--not authorized by the Congress to be spent--violates a law, because the Congress has the power of the purse. We don't have to fund everything the President asks for. We don't have to fund programs we think are bad, that are unworthy of funding. What is Congress for? Otherwise, it is a rubberstamp that cannot make an independent judgment. We absolutely have a duty, a responsibility to not fund a program that violates the law, violates the Constitution; to allow the President to eviscerate and fail to enforce huge chunks of our immigration law and, at the same time, allow him to create an entirely new scheme of immigration law. So the President's Executive amnesty say: I am not going to enforce the law with regard to 5 million people. And not only that, the law says if a person is here unlawfully, they can't work; and the law says if a person is a businessperson, they can't hire somebody who is here unlawfully--I am not going to enforce that, either. In fact, I am going to go even further. I am going to get an office in Crystal City and I am going to bring in 1,000 people and we are going to give the people who are here unlawfully, as defined by the American people through their Congress--I am going to give them a certificate, a photo ID that says they are here lawfully. And I am going to say despite the fact that a person is not supposed to work here if they are here unlawfully, I am going to give them the right to work. And, by the way, they are not entitled to Social Security or Medicare, and I am going to give that to them, too. By the way, when they filed their tax return using that Social Security number, if their income falls in this range--up to $40,000--they can get a tax credit and a child tax credit. And for people making, say--a typical family making $40,000 and with 2 children will not owe any income tax. They are not going to owe any income tax. What they are going to do is file their return and wait for their $5,000 check from Uncle Sam. At this time I am on the Budget Committee, ranking Republican, and I can tell you: we are going broke. The last thing we need to do is put Social Security and Medicare in a worse condition. The last thing we need the country to do is for our Treasury Department to be sending out billions of dollars in tax credits to people who have come to the country unlawfully. We have to borrow money. Do we not know? We borrow money every day in huge amounts to keep this government afloat, and all this is going to do is add more. I am not happy about it. I don't think the American people are happy about it. Poll after poll, election after election--in November people said they were going to come to Washington and do better. People who have been complicit in this kind of activity are not going to be here next year, many of them. I think Congress needs to listen to the American people. What is wrong with what they are telling us? What is wrong with them saying we want a lawful system of immigration? We don't care what Big Business wants. We don't care what the special activist groups want. We want a lawful system of immigration that is fairly applied and we can be proud of and that serves our interests; that helps my child, my husband, and me have a job. We would like to see wages rise. We expect the people in Congress to look after us, not people who violate our laws. Let me share some further thoughts that I believe are important. A lot of people are ignoring this. They don't want to hear about it. They don't believe it. They have taken the view they are going to dismiss it. I want my colleagues to be aware of this, and I intend to continue to press this issue: The U.S. Department of Commerce informs us that ``today's typical 18- to 34-year-old earns about $2,000 less per year, (adjusted for inflation), than their counterpart in 1980.'' It is a painful and a sharp decline for young Americans. What has happened to the labor markets since 1980? Data from the U.S. Census Bureau offers this insight: From 1930 to 1950, the foreign-born population of the United States declined from 14.2 million to 10.3 million . . . [but] Since 1970, the foreign-born population of the United States has increased rapidly due to large-scale immigration. Let me just stop here and say America has been generous in this immigration policy. We have the largest number of people entering our country on a lawful immigrant status than any country in the world by far. What I want us to do is to understand that we need to ask ourselves how many people the United States can absorb without damaging the wages and job prospects of unemployed, underemployed Americans. The U.S. Census Bureau statistics report that in 1980, the foreign- born population stood at 14.1 million. But from 1980 through 2013, the immigrant population tripled from 14 million to more than 41 million. The large increase in the size of the immigrant population is the direct product of policies in Washington, creating both an expanded lawful system and an expanded unlawful system. Legal immigration during the 1980s averaged around 600,000 people a year. But since 1990 through today, it has averaged about 1 million annually--meaning the annual rate almost doubled. The sustained large- scale flow of legal immigration--overwhelmingly, this group are lower- wage and lower-skilled--has placed a substantial downward pressure on wages. I don't think there is any doubt about that. Some try to ignore it and talk around it, but I think the facts are clear. We have right now a very slack labor market with more jobseekers than jobs. The White House has itself estimated that there are three unemployed Americans today for each one job opening. We don't have a shortage of workers. We have a shortage of jobs. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that in the construction industry there are seven unemployed persons for each available job opening. This is huge. Some in the construction industry said they need more foreign workers, even as these statistics shows large numbers of unemployed American construction workers. This large-scale immigration flow, paired with the forces of globalization and automation and robotics, has made it ever more difficult for American workers to earn a wage that can actually support a family. Consider this report just published in The New York Times. Working, in America, is in decline. The share of prime-age men--those 25 to 54 years old--who are not working has more than tripled since the late 1960s, to 16 percent. More recently, since the turn of the century, the share of women without paying jobs has been rising, too. The United States, which had one of the highest employment rates among developed nations as recently as 2000, has fallen toward the bottom of the list. Continuing the quote from the New York Times-- At the same time, it has become harder for men to find higher-paying jobs. Foreign competition and technological advances have eliminated many of the jobs in which high school graduates . . . once could earn $40 an hour, or more. That is what the New York Times is telling us. It is not just a recent development. It is a development of some years. Since the end of the 1960s--the timeframe identified by the article, during this period we have seen this decline in employment--the share of the U.S. population that is foreign born increased from less than 5 percent to more than 13 percent. As a total number, the size of the foreign-born population has quadrupled over the last four decades. Due to current Washington policy, these figures are only going to rise. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service estimates that the foreign-born population could reach as high as 58 million within a decade based on recent trends. Again, let's be frank and talk honestly. Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom recently said it is not wrong to talk about this. Our Nation needs to talk about the wages of its people, the financial status of its people, and it is all right and proper to ask the question of whether immigration can impact that in an adverse way. I just want to say I am not being anti-immigrant. There are many good people who want to come be a part of America. I am not denying that. What I am saying is that we are hurting, not helping, those who come to America when we bring in more people than there are jobs. We also don't have jobs for those who are American-born. Now we are bringing in millions more. We need to ask ourselves honestly: Is this a good policy for the Republic which we are supposed to serve? Only an adjustment in policy, I suggest, will change this trajectory--just as policy has changed early in the 20th century to allow labor markets to be tightened and wages go up. This is an issue that affects all residents, our foreign born who are here wanting to work and the U.S. born. Among those most affected by the size of these large immigrant flows are the new immigrants themselves who want to get a good job that pays a good salary. By continuing to admit these large numbers over such a sustained period of time, many immigrants themselves are unable to find jobs. For instance, less than half of the immigrants who entered California since 2010 are participating in the labor force. They are not finding jobs. There are not enough jobs for them. Half the entire number of immigrants who entered California since 2010 are not working. In Los Angeles, where 4 in 10 residents are immigrants, one-third of those who recently arrived are living in poverty. We have an obligation to those whom we lawfully admit not to create a circumstance where, by admitting continuing to admit many more, we are diminishing their job prospects. A sound immigration policy must serve the needs of people who are lawfully here and who are native-born. That has to be the primary focus of what we are doing. This discussion has to be had. We can't ignore this. We can't make like we can absorb an unlimited number of workers; we don't have jobs for the workers we have. Immigrants and native-born workers are also competing with a large flow of temporary guest workers. Temporary guest workers are brought into the United States from abroad for the explicit purpose of taking a job, not on a path to green card and citizenship. They come just to work for a limited period of time. Each year the United States admits roughly 700,000 guest workers. They fill jobs that otherwise might go to people here. Of those 700,000 guest workers, roughly about 10 percent are in agricultural work. A lot of people think the guest workers are working on a farm somewhere. That is not so. Only about 10 percent are. Ninety percent take jobs in almost every industry in America, from good-paying construction jobs to coveted positions at technology firms in Silicon Valley. The pressures on the middle-class are great. We have a large flow of permanent immigration and temporary workers. The elimination of many good-paying jobs at factories and plants due to advances in robotics, the shedding of manufacturing jobs due to overseas competition, a sluggish and overregulated economy that is growing too slow to keep pace with the population growth and the high costs of energy, health care, income and household goods. Policymakers in Washington need to be reducing the burdens on working families, not making their lives more difficult--but that is exactly what we have been doing. Professor George Borjas--an top expert on these matters who has worked on them for decades--estimates that high immigration flows from 1980 to 2000 reduced the wages of lower skilled American workers by 7.4 percent--about $260 per month--as a direct result of the size and flow of immigration from 1980 to 2000. I don't think it is defensible for colleagues to say it will help wages to bring in more people. That's why the Congressional Budget office said the Senate immigration bill, rejected by the House, would have reduced wages for the next dozen years. Professor Borjas estimates a current net loss of $402 billion for American workers who compete with foreign labor. Mr. President, $402 billion. Furthermore, as documented for the Center for Immigration Studies, relying exclusively on government data, all net employment gains among the working-age since the year 2000 have gone to immigrant workers--net gains. This remarkable trend occurred even as the number of working-age native-born Americans increased by nearly 17 million. So the 17 million is a dramatic figure. There is not a decline in native workers, as some businesses try to say. Oh, we have a demographic decline. We have to deal with it. The figures show we are still growing in the working- ages, a nearly 17 million increase in the age group since 2000. Here are a few more statistics. There are not temporary trends but prolonged trends. Nearly one in four Americans in their prime working years--25 to 54--is not working. This includes 10 million American men and 18 million American women. Real, median weekly earnings are lower today than in the year 2000. Median family income is down $4,000 since November of 2007. Our wages and earnings for families have declined dramatically--$4,000 is almost 350 a month. So it is in this context that we must consider the economic fallout from the President's unconstitutional Executive amnesty. In plain violation of law and the express will of the American people, the President has ordered 5 million work permits to be issued to those illegally here. Those illegal workers will now be able to compete for any job in America. They can now compete for jobs with the power company, the county commission, city hall, working at construction companies--good-paying jobs for which they are not now eligible to compete. The President's order will give illegal immigrants unfettered access to compete for any job in America. If they are not hired at city hall because the mayor thinks he should not hire someone who entered the country illegally, they can file a lawsuit and demand to be hired. They have been given lawful status ordered by the President of the Unite States, an ID card with a Social Security number and a worker authorization. They will be participating in Social Security and Medicare, weakening those programs which are already in deep financial trouble. So this illegal amnesty is part of a broader immigration vision from the President, legislation he endlessly champions, a bill written behind closed doors with billionaire activists and open-borders enthusiasts and immigration lobbyists. This legislation surges immigration levels every year. That is his vision. After four decades of record immigration, the President's bill, supported unanimously by Senate Democrats, stopped in the Republican House, tripled the issuance of permanent residency cards over 10 years. In the next 10 years, had that bill passed, it would have tripled the number of people given permanent legal status in America. The Center For Immigration Studies explains that this legislation would, in a mere 6 years from today, increase the percentage of the U.S. population born abroad to a level never before reached in American history. And by 2033 nearly one in six residents, under this plan, would be foreign-born. This is a dramatic and historic change in our immigration policy. Unsurprisingly, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected that the results of such legislation would be lower wages, higher unemployment, and reduced per capita GNP. All of this begs a simple question: Who is looking out for Americans? Who is looking out for their interests, fighting to help them get a better job and better pay, or working to help their communities climb out of poverty? Who is looking out for their interests? The immigration debate in our Nation's Capital is always centered, it seems to me, on the needs of illegal immigrants, foreign workers, or large employers. Is it not time, after decades of open immigration, that we focus on what we can do to help Americans? Is not time to focus on how we can grow their wages and improve their job prospects? We have seen declining wages and higher unemployment. Is it not the sensible and rational thing to just slow down a little bit, allow wages to begin to rise some, assimilation to occur more effectively, and help those who are already here today, including foreign immigrants who have come to America, who are struggling to rise into the middle class? Will this not help them be more successful, more prosperous, and flourish better in America? The American people have begged and pleaded for a lawful system of immigration that serves the national interest--not special interests. But the politicians have refused, refused, refused. This summer alone the White House met 20 times, it was reported, with business executives, amnesty lobbyists, and immigration activists to craft their executive orders legalize people who are here unlawfully. They have been meeting for years with those groups. They have spent $1.5 billion, according to one independent group, to promote their rejected amnesty legislation since 2007. But you know who was not invited into that room? You were not invited into that room. You, the American citizen, were not there. Do you not get a say in these secret meetings? We just had a meeting 2 days ago with sheriffs from all over America. They said: Do not allow this unlawful amnesty to occur. They weren't invited to these secret meetings either. So the super-elites in Washington and on Wall Street dream of a world without borders, a paradise, I guess, where little things like law and rules and national boundaries are not a problem. Do not get in the way of their wild chimera, their vision. The only challenge these great global citizens face are these pesky people called the voters who cling to the old-fashioned idea of a nation as a home and a border as something real and worth protecting. These elites, you see, know better. If you are worried about your jobs or wages; if you are concerned that the pace of immigration into your community is too fast and too large; if you feel as though your needs are not being considered, well, you are just a nativist, you see. You are selfish. So when an election happens and the people rebel against this open- borders agenda, there is really one thing for these wise elites to do: They just impose their own law. How Congress answers this challenge will shape the future of this Republic. Will we defend and protect the people who sent us here, their laws duly passed, their Constitution, and their communities, or do we once again abandon them, give them lip service but no real action? I pose that question to the body. I suggest there is no purpose to our being here if it is not to serve and protect and defend the loyal people who sent us here on their behalf. It is time for us to get busy. I am deeply disappointed that the majority leader is blocking an amendment that would deal with this matter. In the Senate, a Senator from any State should be able to have an amendment that deals with the crises of our time. We are being blocked once again. It denies accountability. It is wrong. It is improper. The American people are tired of it. And those who facilitate this conduct in the future will hear that message clearly from the American people. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank Senator McCaskill for her comments. We are talking about a Senator's Senator, a man who reads the language of the legislation and knows how to legislate. I came here 18 years ago and have served on the Armed Services Committee that entire time, and my admiration and respect for Carl Levin has grown every year. It has grown because it is deserved. He is a remarkable leader. He never showboats and always wants to do the right thing. He serves his country first, and he runs a committee that is, in my mind, the best-run committee--according to the ideals of the Republic of which we are a part--that exists in either House today. It just works the way it is supposed to. His subcommittees work. We have amendments in subcommittees that are disputed. If you don't like the result, you bring it to the full committee, and the full committee meets, and if it takes 2 full days, it takes 2 full days; everybody gets to bring up their amendments. Senator Levin is always brilliantly able to solve differences through proper wording of the committee's legislation. As Claire suggested, he has an extraordinary lawyer's ability to get the right words and make the bill say what the committee wants it to say. I think that is special, and I am pleased to have been a part of it. The Armed Services Committee authorizes one-half of the discretionary budget of the United States. It impacts the lives of men and women in harm's way right now. We need to get it right. It involves a lot of money and a lot of responsibility. It is a well-run committee that sets an example for what we ought to see more of in the Senate. There is a fairness about his work. Somehow we have always passed an authorization bill, and somehow it is almost always unanimous or very close to unanimous. There may be one or two issues that maybe should not have been tacked on to the bill that causes someone not to vote for it, but when it is over, normally every Member--Republican and Democrat--is satisfied with the ability to have their voice heard and their ideas put into the bill, if possible. But if you lose in subcommittee and you lose on the floor and you have had your say in both places, it kind of makes you feel like, what more can I do? If the rest of the bill is OK, I will try to support it. These markups take time because we are dealing with a large portion of federal funding. Finally, I would like to say how much I appreciated his wisdom he shared with us as we dealt with the nuclear option--the so-called nuclear option that changed the rules of the Senate. Senator Levin, who is a lawyer's lawyer, said something that was very profound, and it was reflected again in his remarks today, and that is, if a majority can change the rules, there are no rules. If a majority can change the rules of the Senate at a given moment to overcome objections from the minority, then there are virtually no minority rights--you have a pure majoritarian body. I think that is what Carl was sharing with us in his brilliant speech that all of us ought to read. I thank our chairman for the leadership he has given and for the courtesy he has shown to me and all our Members. I wish him great success in his future endeavors, and I hope he will continue to contribute his wisdom to the body politic. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

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

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business. THE PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. tribute to departing senators Tom Coburn

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I would like to make some remarks about Senator Coburn. Tom Coburn is one of the more remarkable Senators who have served in this body--certainly since I have been here. He is a man with absolute courage, conviction, and dedication to make this country better. He didn't come here to go through the job and go through the motions; he came here to invest his great skills and his great intellectual ability and to pour his drive and effort into making America a better place. It is very special. It is unusual. I have not seen anything like it, as I said, since I have been here. I always had great reluctance to disagree or oppose anything Tom offered. They were not always perfect, but basically I opposed them so seldom because I agreed with him time and time again. I always hated to vote no because I knew he had studied the issue, understood it, and was doing what he believed was right. His whole philosophy and approach to government, had it been more effectively followed by other Members of this body, would have led us to a better country. To support what he said, I think in a way, was supporting high ideals for America. I want to say I am going to miss him. People have no idea how many times he has stopped or altered bad legislation to make it better and less problematic and more principled. He believes that ours is a constitutionally limited government. He didn't just believe that, he acted on it and has acted on it consistently. I understand, and I have no doubt of this--we don't need to run a test--but I understand and have no doubt that he has offered more amendments since I have been in the Senate than any other Senator. They have been amendments to stop waste, fraud, and abuse, to make the government more efficient, leaner, to consolidate multiple programs that should be consolidated for efficiency. He has worked across the aisle on a host of issues. He has sought bipartisan support for matters that are small and large. It is remarkable. I have to say that we are going to lose someone who is of great value. He would easily have been reelected had he run again. I remember him saying one time--and this is his philosophy--if you want to be reelected, don't worry about being reelected, just do the right thing, and you won't have any difficulties. He never had any difficulties in his election, because people trusted him. They knew every day, night and day, long hours, whatever, he was working to advance the common interest of our country. They trusted that he was not seduced, bought out, compromised by the powers that be in Washington, DC, and he remained true to those who sent him here. I would say this: Part of the strength he has--as a matter of fact, maybe the greatest part of his strength he has is his faith. He is intelligent, sophisticated, knowledgeable, a scientist, a doctor, but a man of simple Christian faith which impacts his life as much as anybody in this body. He understands the true meaning of life, and he gives himself to others in a most remarkable way. Thank you and colleagues for the opportunity for me to share these remarks. We are going to miss our friend Tom Coburn, who is going to object to those bills that require a lot of effort to make them better or stop some that are so bad they cannot be passed. A lot of us are going to have to pick up the slack. Maybe Tom would say, ``What are you doing down here, Jeff, wasting time talking about me when you ought to be studying this bill and finding some of the bogus spending that is in it? You should be spending your time fixing it.'' But every now and then I think we should stop and recognize an extraordinary life and an extraordinary Senator. I wanted to share these remarks. I thank the Chair and yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I wish to share a few remarks as we mark the end of the long tenure of Senator Jay Rockefeller and his service to his country and to the Senate. He has served in the Senate for 30 years. He served two terms as Governor of West Virginia, and served as Secretary of State, and in the House of Delegates. He came to the State of West Virginia as a young VISTA volunteer. I have heard him tell the story about that, how he really wanted to participate and reach out and help others. He came to West Virginia as a young man and stayed. He worked with people in a small mining community. His heart was right to try to be helpful. He came from a prestigious family, but he wanted to help others. He has been a remarkable Member of the Senate for now 30 years. He has a brilliant mind, capable of grasping all sorts of thoughts, but he also has the ability to delight in little things. One of those is sports. He has a tremendous capacity to have in that brain of his sports trivia. He likes the Atlanta Braves. He knows Southeastern Conference football. I have been pleased to be able to chat with him on occasion on the floor. It just goes to show a lot of times people don't realize that we get along pretty well in this body personally. We may disagree on issues, but we care about one another. Jay Rockefeller has always been nice to me. He has always been a friend. He has always been courteous. He has always been collegial to me, and I have appreciated that over the years. So I wish to thank him for his service to his country, his commitment to others, and I wish him Godspeed in his further endeavors. I thank the Chair, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I wish to share a few thoughts about the service in the Senate of our good friend and colleague Saxby Chambliss. Saxby is one of the best liked and most respected Senators in this body. Every Member knows him. Every Member likes him. Every Member respects him. I truly share that view. And on matters particularly related to national security, intelligence issues, and terrorism, I consistently want to know what Saxby has to say about it. He has done a whole lot of things in this Senate. He has been a participant and a contributor on many issues. He worked really hard to try to create a bipartisan solution to our debt crisis. That didn't quite develop, but it was a positive part of the discussion this Senate went through. What I really want to say is that as Chairman or Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and having been a longtime Member of the House Intelligence Committee, and here in the Senate, he has become the go-to person with regard to the sensitive issues relating to the security of our country. I consistently have looked to him because I trust his judgment, trust his integrity, and trust his wisdom to help sort through all the political news articles and debates and hot issues, and to distill down to the bottom of what is important, what we should be focused on, and what the right thing is for America. Truly, he has been a remarkable Senator. We are going to miss Saxby. I am going to miss Saxby, as so many of us will. He is the son of an Episcopalian minister. He is a man of faith. He has a delightful wife, Julianne. My wife is a good judge of character and she thinks Julianne hung the Moon, and that is so true. They are a great family and great partners. Saxby has given so much to the Senate. Georgia has produced some great Senators, particularly Senators known for their commitment to national security and the defense of America: Richard Russell, for whom the Russell Senate Office Building is named; Sam Nunn, who was so long a leader in the Congress with regard to national defense. Saxby Chambliss is in that category. That is the kind of Senator he has been--from defending America to helping his colleagues sift through difficult issues and make good, wise decisions. It has been a great pleasure for me to serve with him. I wish him every success in his future endeavors and look forward to seeing him back in this area many times. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I would also just say that we will be losing a good friend, Mark Begich. Mark and I served on the Armed Services Committee together for a number of years. We were very active. I was Ranking Member and he was Chairman of the Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, dealing with missile defense, which Alaska was deeply involved with as a state. Mark was an expert on those issues. We dealt with nuclear issues and outer space and satellite issues. That was a particularly good time together. I believe every committee--every decision we reached--was a bipartisan decision that came out of committee. We supported the Subcommittee report that was made a part of the Armed Services bill and then became law. For the most part I think not too many changes were made in it. I think a lot of people may not appreciate that Senators do get along. We do work together on issues important to the country, such as space and military space necessities that are so valuable to our men and women as they are in harm's way, to be able to produce a missile defense system that ensures that this country is not vulnerable to attack by a missile from an adversary. That system is up, standing, and operating today. It was great to work with Mark in establishing it. He is a delightful person to work with, always with a positive attitude. I know he will be successful in whatever future endeavors he undertakes. He was mayor of Anchorage. Anybody who has been a mayor has learned some things and has had to deal with constituents face-to-face. He loved actually meeting his constituents and talking with them. I wish Mark every success in his future endeavors and would like to express my appreciation to him for the courtesies he has shown me and the effort we made together to improve the defense of the United States. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I voted to confirm Virginia Lodge and Ron Walter to be members of the Board of the Tennessee Valley Authority. I believe that these nominees are qualified and have demonstrated the characteristics that will enable them to fulfill their duties in supporting the mission of the TVA. According to the TVA Act, the Board sets the broad strategies and goals of the Tennessee Valley Authority. Given the many changes facing our electricity system, those strategies for TVA--one of the Nation's biggest utilities--are critical. As technology changes the future of energy production and energy use, the administration is busy unleashing costly regulations that risk damaging our economy for little environmental gain. Navigating these crosscurrents, TVA's Board must strive to keep electricity costs low through prudential and nonideological decisionmaking. They must continue the work of TVA's current management to cut costs without impacting service. Only through demanding decisions based on data and through questioning assumptions will they successfully lead TVA through today's challenges. Also of importance is TVA's continued maintenance and eventual completion of the Bellefonte nuclear power plant. In the 1970s, TVA made plans to build a large number of nuclear reactors, but it abandoned those plans after completing several plants while others-- including two units at Bellefonte--were only partially completed. TVA continues to maintain its assets at Bellefonte, where it has invested $6 billion. I know that these nominees will examine the cost to complete Bellefonte and the baseload demand forecasts for TVA to best determine when the plant should be completed. I believe the nominees have demonstrated the ability to serve effectively and I look forward to their service on the Board and to working with them for the betterment of the region in the years to come.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank Senator Carper for those good remarks, and I think they reflect the quality and the character Mark Pryor has displayed as a Member of this Senate. I have been asked: Who are some of your favorite people across the aisle, Democratic people whom you respect and like? Mark Pryor has always been at the top of that list. We have both served as attorneys general of our States. We have a number of things to talk about. I have been able to commiserate with him over Arkansas football in recent years. We kind of keep up with those things a lot. I just would wish to say something that I basically said at the National Prayer Breakfast several years ago. Senator Pryor and I were cochairmen, and I was able to say, with great confidence, that Mark Pryor is one of the best people I have ever served with in the Senate. He is a man of faith and integrity, and his ego is under control--not always so around this place, and it makes it run better. He is collegial, willing to work with people across the aisle, work within his own party, and not one who has had difficulty making decisions. He has done what he thought was right year after year here in this great Senate. We had the opportunity to lead the Senate Prayer Breakfast and then the National Prayer Breakfast twice, and it was a special time. Mark really did a great job and spent a great deal of time meeting with people from all over the world. I think the depth of his faith is quite obvious. To Mark I wish to say that you are special to me. Your service in the Senate has been very special. You have always done what you thought was right for your State and done so in a way that is so pleasant and collegial to work with. I know you will have some great adventures ahead. It looks even like the Razorbacks are coming back. They may give Alabama and Auburn a real hard time next year--who knows. Hope springs eternal. They did pretty well at the end of this year, I have to say. A monster may be arising in Arkansas--who knows. We do have a great Senate, with less than 2,000 people having served in this body. We have people of talent and ability throughout, but there are people over the period of years that touch you as the genuine article, people whom you respect and admire, and, Mark, you are one of those. God bless you and Godspeed. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, it has already started. There is being readied today a building in Crystal City, VA, to house the announced 1,000 workers who will be hired to process the unlawful Executive amnesty the President has said he intends to execute. The President is already moving forward. He is rushing to impose his immigration views before the Congress can contain it or restrain it; before the American people fully understand what is happening; and to make it so it can't be stopped. The President's Executive orders violate the laws of Congress--the laws that Congress has passed--in order to implement laws he wishes Congress had passed but which Congress has refused to pass. It refused in 2006, 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2014. The American people, through their congressional representatives, have considered these kinds of proposals, they evaluated them, the American people expressed their views on them, and Congress said no. The people have been clear on this issue. For decades they have pleaded, demanded, really, that this Congress create an immigration system that is lawful; that we end the lawlessness, that it be principled, that it serve the national interest, and that it serves their interest and not the special interests. But Congress and political leaders have refused to do so. It is unfortunate to a degree I don't think I have seen on any other issue. Perhaps no other issue defines the gap between the elites in this country and middle Americans who go to work every day, who support our country, pay our taxes, and fight our wars. Our people want our laws that are on the books now enforced. If new laws are needed, they want us to pass new laws to end this lawlessness. But this President rejects the will of the people. His policies nullify the laws we have. His policies, shockingly, direct Federal agents to ignore their oaths and not enforce the laws, which creates the lawlessness that stains our legal system in our country today and is causing so much angst out there. People are not opposed to immigration. People are frustrated that their government refuses to create a lawful system that will work and serve them. What I want to say to my colleagues is that the President has gone even farther than that. He has gone farther than just saying: I am not going to enforce the laws, which he, as a President, the Chief Executive Officer, is required to do. He is required to execute the laws of the United States faithfully, which he is absolutely failing to do. But he is moving forward with his immigration agenda, rejected by Congress and the American people, and he is moving forward in a lot of different ways. This was an issue in the campaign. The people heard about it just a few weeks ago and they cast their ballots. There are nine new Senators elected to this Senate, and not one of them said they supported President Obama's scheme. Not one of them. They steadfastly opposed it. So in this lameduck Congress, the attempt is being made to move this new lawless agenda forward out of fear that it might not be so popularly received next year. Is Congress hopeless, helpless, ineffectual? Is it not able to stop this? Absolutely not. Congress has the power to control what the President does. It has the power to control what he spends money on. The President, the executive branch, cannot spend one dime that has not been approved by the U.S. Congress. He can't spend more on roads, highways, schools, defense, education, or health care that Congress has not appropriated and not approved. So Congress has a responsibility and a duty here. Congress should fund no program, should allow no Presidential expenditure to be spent on programs it deems are unworthy. It absolutely has a responsibility to ensure this President spends no money to execute policies that are plainly in violation of existing law. This Congress has a constitutional duty, no matter what Members may feel about the substance of the issue. I have opinions on that. I oppose the President's substantive position. But as a matter of law, separation of powers, and constitutional duty, this Congress should stop the expenditure of Federal funds for projects that Congress has rejected and are not worthy of funding. Congress has deliberated these issues. This is not something it has not considered before. It has rejected this policy. The special interests have spent, according to one independent group, $1.5 billion to try to ram through Congress an immigration plan the American people reject and that Congress has refused to pass. The President hasn't given up, and these special interests haven't given up, despite the election and despite the wishes of the American people. They want their policies and they are going to ram them through this Congress, if they possibly can, no matter what the people think. That is a threat to representative democracy. It is a threat to the laws of this country. And the Congress needs to say no. Let us be specific now. People may think: Well, you may not expend money if you don't prosecute somebody. So how are we going to complain about that, Senator Sessions? Well, let us look at this. This is from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, which is charged with processing the applications of people who wish to enter the country lawfully. Broadcast on Monday, December 1--just this week--at 11:52. Subject: Today's email news. USCIS is taking steps to open a new operational center in Crystal City, a neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia, to accommodate about 1,000 full-time, permanent Federal and contract employees in a variety of positions and grade levels. The initial workload will include cases filed as a result of the executive actions on immigration announced on November 20, 2014. Many job opportunities at the operational center will be announced in the coming days and please continue to monitor USAJOBS if you are interested. This is just days from now. Now let's put this little chart up. This briefly continues on what they published. This is right off their email. Current vacancies include: Special Assistant GS-12. Boy, a lot of people in the country would like to be a GS-12. Arlington, Virginia, today. Special Assistant GS-15, Arlington, Virginia. Today. Chief of Staff GS-15, Arlington, Virginia. Today. It goes on, today, today, today, today. They are rushing this through. They are determined to get this done before the American people can find out what is happening, to raise their voice, to communicate with their Members of Congress and the Senate and stop it. This is not good for this country. You may say: Well, Jeff, surely the President hasn't overreached in these matters. But Congress has stated you cannot enter the country unlawfully. That is a fundamental principle of our immigration law that has been on the books for many years. If you enter unlawfully, you are not entitled to work in America. And if you enter unlawfully and attempt to work and someone hires you and knows that you are illegally here, the employer is subject to criminal penalties and other penalties. That is the basic law. It has been on the books for years. The President is just wiping that off the books, colleagues. Are we going to accept this? Are we going to allow the President to just wipe out duly passed laws to create an entirely new system of immigration that Congress refused to establish? Our laws are on the books today. He has no power to reduce and erase those laws. How serious is this? Last night former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich--Ph.D. in history, a student of American government, author of quite a number of books--made some dramatic statements about the meaning of this Presidential action, and we should hear it, colleagues. This is the former Speaker of the House, a student of American history and government. This is what he says about what is happening today. We cannot be oblivious to this, because what happens today will set trends and policies for tomorrow. He said: Obama funding new staff and offices without congressional approval is step toward kingship or dictatorship. He must be stopped now. How much clearer can it be than that? He goes on to say, in another tweet here: Congress should only approve very short spending bill to set up fight in January on Obama unconstitutional power grab. No long term CR. Here is the third one from last night: Our entire constitutional structure is at stake. The new Obama power grab is the greatest threat to freedom since King George Third. Those are quotes from Newt Gingrich. I am telling you, this is not a little bitty matter, and we have to fully understand the nature of what is happening here. Congress refused to pass what the President is enacting right now by Executive order and he has no power to do it. He should not be doing it. He may well be stopped by lawsuits in years to come, but Congress has the power to stop it now. We don't have to allow money to be spent in Arlington, Crystal City, VA, to hire 1,000 people to process these applications. Now, how are things going in our immigration system today? I wish I could report better circumstances than we have. The situation was grave even before this action. On May 20, last year, National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council president, representing thousands of USCIS workers, issued a statement. Colleagues, we need to know what has happened. It is unbelievable. This is a person directly engaged with the people who do the work every day, the law officers who go out there and try to adjudicate these immigration cases. USCIS adjudications officers are pressured to rubber stamp applications instead of conducting diligent case review and investigation. The culture at USCIS encourages all applications to be approved, discouraging proper investigation into red flags and discouraging the denial of any applications. USCIS has been turned into an ``approval machine.'' This is an absolute abdication of the responsibility the Congress and the American people have given to the President as the Chief Executive Officer and given all the way down to the lowest USCIS officer. They are not to be a rubberstamp machine. They are not to be an approval machine. They are to serve the interests of the American people. They are to evaluate applications and do so carefully and fairly and consistently. They are to investigate red flags. What is he talking about when he says red flags? He is talking about threats, criminals, terrorists. Even Secretary Johnson, Secretary of Homeland Security, testifying a few days ago, acknowledged that of these 4 million or 5 million people who are going to be applying for legal status in America through the President's program, there is no way their applications are going to be evaluated. If they say they came to the country in 1999, nobody is going to check on that. They are not going to see if they graduated from some school or had some job somewhere and investigate it. They are simply going to act on the paperwork they have been given. And in many cases--in the bill that President Obama supported earlier last year-- there would not be any face-to-face meetings. They wouldn't even go into an office and actually see the person. It would all be submitted by email and documents, which is highly risky, as the experts told us. They need to see the person because they may not be the person they say they are. They could just submit paperwork, get citizenship status, and nobody would have any idea whether they are worthy of being in the United States. The situation is graver than a lot of people think. It is our duty to legitimately represent the people in our country who believe this system is supposed to work. They sent us here. We say we have an immigration law in America. Well, good. And then we end up here. It is not so good. It is not working at all. What are we supposed to do? We are sorry, constituents. We are sorry you voted for us. I know we told you we wanted to do stuff to make this system better and we are going to end all this, but we will worry about that tomorrow--and we are going to do something. For 40 years Congress and Presidents have been promising to fix this system. The problem is, the special interests have won every time. The special interests have blocked the kind of reforms that create a system that we know will serve our national interests, will be fair to immigrants who apply, and help the American people live better lives. To make a couple of more points. October 28 of this year, Mr. Kenneth Palinkas, the president of the association of 12,000 officers--issued this statement: We are still the world's rubber stamp for entry into the United States--regardless of the ramifications of the constant violations to the Immigration and Nationality Act. Whether it's the failure to uphold the public charge law, the abuse of our asylum procedures, the admission of Islamist radicals, or visas for health risks, the taxpayers are being fleeced and public safety is being endangered on a daily basis. That is what Mr. Palinkas said. Has anybody ever called him to testify and to lay out these dangers? Certainly not the U.S. Senate. President Obama has his secret meetings with businesses and activist groups--people with their big money and their contributions. He met with them all summer. Did he meet with Mr. Palinkas? No. Did he meet with the head of the ICE officers association? No. Mr. Palinkas pleaded and asked to be admitted so he could lay out the problems they face on a daily basis, and it was rejected. Mr. Palinkas goes on to say: I write today to warn the general public that this situation is about to get exponentially worse--and more dangerous. America dodged a bullet when the Senate immigration package S. 744 was blocked by the House. That legislation would have been a financial security catastrophe. But news reports have leaked information to the public of a USCIS management contract bid for a ``surge'' printing of 34 million green cards and employment authorization documents to be provided to foreign nationals, a bid that predicts the Administration's promised executive amnesty. Think about what this officer is telling us. It is true. He goes on to say: That is why this statement is intended for the public: If you care about your immigration security and your neighborhood security, you must act now to ensure that Congress stops this unilateral amnesty. Let your voice be heard and spread the word to your neighbors. We who serve in our nation's immigration agencies are pleading for your help--don't let this happen. Express your concern to your Senators and Congressmen before it is too late. That was October 28 of this year. He also issued this statement on May 20 of last year: USCIS officers who identify illegal aliens that, in accordance with law should be placed into immigration removal proceedings before a federal judge, are prevented from exercising their authority and responsibility to issue Notices to Appear. It goes on to say: The attitude of USCIS management--These are the political appointees, appointed by the President to execute his views of immigration. The attitude of USCIS management is not that the Agency serves the American public or the laws of the United States, or public safety and national security, but instead that the agency serves illegal aliens and the attorneys which represent them. What a statement. Who is the government supposed to represent? We represent the people of the United States who are lawfully here. While we believe in treating all people with respect, we are concerned that this agency tasked with such a vital security mission is too greatly influenced by special interest groups. Boy, that is the truth. We had in one day Microsoft--a great company--demanding that more workers be allowed to come into the country so that they can work, in the same week they announced laying off 18,000. In September of this year, Mr. Palinkas issued this statement: Many millions come legally to the U.S. through our wide open immigration policy every year--whether as temporary visitors, lifetime immigrants, refugees, asylum-seekers, foreign students, or recipients of our ``visa waiver program'' which allows people to come and go freely. Yet our government cannot effectively track these foreign visitors and immigrants. And those who defraud authorities will face no consequences at all in most cases. Our caseworkers cannot even do in-person interviews for people seeking citizenship, they cannot enforce restrictions on welfare use, and they even lack the basic office space to properly function. Applications for entry are rubber-stamped, the result of grading agents by speed rather than discretion. We've become a clearinghouse for the world. Now that is the truth and anybody who knows what is going on in our system knows it. The President's action will beget even more lawlessness in the future. It is a statement to the world: No matter what the law says, you come to America, you get to stay. You will not be deported. This is a recipe for disaster. It cannot work. What we need in this country, and can achieve if Congress and the President will act, is to create a lawful system and enforce the law. We need to make it a system that we can be proud of and that is fairly applied. We need a system that ends the ability of people to defraud our country and come in unlawfully, and to serve the interest of working Americans. That is what it is all about: Are we serving their interest, or are we listening to special interests--political groups and activist groups, politicians who think they gain political advantage, and certain businesses who want more, cheaper labor? Don't we represent the vast majority of the people? Isn't there a national interest--an interest of the American people? Somebody needs to defend that interest. It has been lost in this process. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, in a few moments Senators in this Chamber will cast one of the most important votes they will ever cast in the Senate. With this vote, Senators will make a simple but vital decision. It is a decision that will steer the future course of our country and our Congress--and particularly the Senate. With this vote, Senators will decide whether their allegiance is to President Obama and his agenda, Majority Leader Reid and the open borders lobby, or whether their allegiance is to the American worker, the constitutional order, the American people, and this Nation's sovereign laws. The choice could not be more clear. Do we as a Nation have the right to control our borders? Do we? That is the question every Senator will be answering today. President Obama has announced to the entire world that he will implement a sweeping unilateral Executive amnesty--only after the midterm elections, not before, as he promised, because there is concern among his Members that it wouldn't be politically popular. This amnesty by Executive order will give work permits--contrary to law--and Social Security numbers--contrary to law--to as many as 5 to 6 million people, the White House tells us, to people who are here illegally, illegally entered the United States, illegally overstayed their visas or defrauded U.S. immigration authorities. With a casual stroke of a pen, the President is preparing to nullify the immigration laws of the United States. He is preparing to wipe away the lawful protections which every American worker in this country is entitled to. He is preparing to assume for himself--himself alone--the absolute power to decide who can enter our country, who can work in our country, who can live in our country by the millions, regardless of what the law says, what the citizenry says, and what the Constitution says. These immigration rules--who can come, work, and live in the country--are the bedrock of any Nation's immigration laws and sovereignty. The President has already erased much of these rules-- erased them. And his planned Executive action would remove much of what remains of them. It would establish for people all over the world the principle that if you can get into America, you can stay in America, and work in America. Let's consider the current state of immigration enforcement. Immigration officers already tell us--people who do this every day-- that they have been barred from fulfilling their oaths to follow the law. They filed a lawsuit claiming they were required to violate their oath. The president of the ICE officers' council warned: ``ICE agents''--Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers--``are now prohibited from arresting illegal aliens solely on the charges of illegal entry or visa overstay--the two most frequently violated sections of immigration law.'' The policies of this administration represent an open invitation to millions who enter the United States on visas each year. People come lawfully on visas for certain periods of time. It encourages them to unlawfully overstay. And why not? If no one is going to deport you, why would you return if you choose not to return to your home country? And what about the border? We know from the substantial influx of illegal immigrants from Central America that all you have to do is show up at the border, demand entry, and you will likely be released into the United States. You may be asked to return for some sort of hearing in the future. But people are not tracked as to where they will go and not one of those people will be looked for if they fail to show up. That is not happening anywhere in the system. Consider this recent report from the Associated Press: ``As of early September, only 319 of the more than 59,000 immigrants who were caught traveling with their families have been returned to Central America.'' That means that more than 99 percent of those apprehended with their families have so far been allowed to stay. That is in addition to the tens of thousands who have entered without their families and who have been promptly released also into the United States on some sort of bond or promise to show up for court, and many adults from Central America who have been released as well. As President Obama's former ICE Director, John Sandweg, explained: ``If you are a run-of-the-mill immigrant here illegally, your odds of getting deported are near zero.'' And who picks up the tab? Local school districts, local police departments, local taxpayers. No nation can have a policy where people can simply show up at the border and demand to be released into the country, especially since the policy is never to seek to apprehend persons who don't show up so they can be deported. But that is what is happening right now under the policies of this administration. It simply is. The American people need to understand that. They need to know more fully how serious this situation is. The American people are beginning to understand that these policies represent in truth a collapse of immigration enforcement. What about our asylum system? Here is what the House Judiciary Committee reports on asylum, which is when we accept people from around the globe who are subjected to serious oppression. Asylum approval rates overall have increased dramatically in recent years. The vast majority of aliens who affirmatively seek asylum are now successful in their claims. At the same time, an internal Department of Homeland Security report shows that at least 70 percent of asylum cases contain proven or possible fraud. Seventy percent contain proven or possible fraud. Still they are being approved overwhelmingly for entry, and once approved for asylum, they are entitled to all social welfare benefits. What about our visa screening process, the people who come on visas? Here is what Kenneth Palinkas had to say on that. Mr. Palinkas is the president of the National Citizenship and Immigration Services Council, representing 12,000 immigration caseworkers and adjudications officers at the USCIS. Here is just a fraction of his dramatic report delineating and detailing the problems they are facing today. USCIS adjudications officers are pressured to rubber stamp applications instead of conducting diligent case reviews and investigations. The culture at USCIS encourages all applications to be approved, discouraging proper investigation into red flags and discouraging the denial of any application. USCIS has been turned into an ``approval machine.'' This is the man who represents the officers doing this everyday, and what he says is true. He goes on to say in this letter: ``The attitude of USCIS management is not that the Agency serves the American public or the laws of the United States, or public safety and national security, but instead that the Agency serves the illegal aliens and the attorneys which represent them.'' Surely this cannot be what is happening in our legal system. He goes on to say this: Large swaths of the Immigration and Nationality Act are not effectively enforced for illegal immigrants and visa holders, including laws regarding public charges as well as many other provisions, as USCIS lacks the resources to adequately screen and scrutinize legal immigrants and non-immigrants seeking status adjustment. There is also insufficient screening and monitoring of student visas. So the contention that this administration is deporting record numbers of illegal aliens is plainly false. Removals have dropped dramatically. Now consider what will happen to our system if the President goes through with his plan that he has announced after the election to provide unilateral Executive amnesty by Executive order to illegal workers and visa violators here today. What immigration law will be left after that? The government is not enforcing the law with respect to visa overstays, illegal entry, illegal work, asylum fraud, document fraud, workplace fraud, and on and on and on. We ignore immigration law for young people, for older people who came with younger people, for the parents of older people who came as younger people, for people with relatives, for people traveling alone, for people traveling with families, for people who entered before a certain date, for people who entered after a certain date, people who entered through an airport or seaport, for people who do show up in court, for people who don't show up in court. We have made a million excuses for not enforcing the law. And when millions more enter illegally asking for their amnesty in the future, asking for their amnesty now that others got before them, will the President print work permits for them, too? What moral basis will remain to deny future unlawful immigrants work authorizations, jobs, and amnesty in the future? I am sure this will make the activists, the politicians and certain billionaire executives who enjoy dinner parties at the White House, very happy that the President is doing these things. But what about what is good for America? What about what is in the interest of the American people? America is not an oligarchy. The masters of the universe don't get to meet at the White House and decide how to run this country. When the American people learned what was in the Senate amnesty and guest worker bill that doubled the number of guest workers for which every single Senate Democrat voted, the people said no, no, no, and the House stopped the plan. But now the same groups that wrote this bill are working with the White House to extract the same benefits by Executive fiat, by Executive order. They had at least 20 secret meetings in July and August alone with the White House to plan this strategy. These measures, we are informed, would include a massive expansion in the admission of new foreign workers, including more workers for information technology giants who are laying off Americans, in fact, more than they are hiring. We learned from Rutgers Professor Hal Salzman that two-thirds of all new IT jobs are now already being filled by foreign guest workers. Can you imagine that? We are turning out thousands of IT graduates, but two-thirds of the jobs are being filled by foreign workers, and wages are falling. Americans wish to see record immigration levels--these high lawful levels of immigration that we have--reduced, not increased, by actually a 3-to-1 margin. But the proposal they are pushing and advocating would double the number of lawful workers while not dealing effectively with the unlawful flow. Yet Senate Democrats are colluding with the White House to support the surge of these numbers. Studies show wage declines among all wage earners since 2009. There is a wage decline among all American workers. Wages have fallen since 2009, but the declines on a percentage basis are the greatest for our lower income workers. The people having the hardest time getting by have received the biggest percentage drop. Does this not concern our leaders? Has no one paid any attention to this fact? So far our Senate Democratic Caucus has enabled the administration's lawless scheme every step of the way. Not one Senate Democrat has supported the House plan that would stop this Executive amnesty. The House-passed legislation would stop it. It is waiting on the floor of the Senate to be called up for a vote. Not one Member of the Democratic leadership has even demanded that Mr. Reid bring it up for a vote. Not one has pledged to stay here in Washington every day until this Executive amnesty is stopped. But it is not too late. We are going to have a vote soon. Where is the courage? Where is the independence that Senators should show? Where is the willingness to stand up to the political class, the lobbyists, the party bosses, the elite set in the Nation's Capital, and to stand by the side of the American people--indeed, to defend the institutional powers of Congress which alone has the power to make law, not the President. He cannot make law. He cannot give someone the right to work in America when the law says they are not able to work if they entered the country unlawfully. Until that happens, I have to say that every Senate Democrat is the President's partner in this scheme as surely as if they wrote the Executive orders themselves and as surely as if they were sitting right next to the interest groups huddling with White House aides to craft these orders. So I have a message today for all the special interests, the globalist elites, the activists, and the cynical, vote-counting political plotters who are meeting in secret at the White House, and the message is this: You don't get to sit in a room and rewrite the laws of the United States of America. No, sir. Congress writes the laws. You may not be used to people telling you no, but I am telling you no today. It is critical that our Senate Democrats be willing to say no today when we vote. I also have a message for the American people: You have been right from the beginning. You have justly demanded that our borders be controlled, our laws enforced, and that at long last immigration policy serve the needs of our own people first. For this virtuous and legitimate demand, you have been demeaned, even scorned by the governing class, the cosmopolitan elites. They know so much. They want you to believe that your concerns are somehow illegitimate, that you are wrong for being worried about your jobs or your schools or your hospitals or your communities or your national security. These elite citizens of the world speak often of their concern about people living in poverty overseas. Yet they turn a blind eye to the poverty and suffering in their own country. They don't want you to speak up either. They don't want you to be heard. They don't want you to feel you have a voice. But you do have a voice, American people, and your message is being heard. I am delivering that message to the Senate today. This is a moment of choosing for every Senator. Where will history record that you stood in the face of the President's promise to unlawfully nullify immigration law in America? There will be a motion made soon that will allow the Senate to block the President's planned Executive amnesty. This is simply to pass the legislation the House has already passed. This is a commonsense Senate action. If you believe we are a sovereign nation with a right to control our borders--and don't we have that right?--then you must vote yes. Let's bring it up before this unlawful Executive order for amnesty occurs. If you go along with the idea that America is an oligarchy run by a group of special interests meeting at the White House to rewrite the immigration laws of America, then vote no. The Nation is watching today. This is an issue of extreme importance for the American people and for the rule of law. Will you at long last break from your majority leader, Democratic colleagues, or will you once again surrender your vote to Mr. Reid and the groups meeting in secret at the White House to thereby enable their lawless actions? In its almost 2 years of existence--this Congress that has been in existence here going on 2 years now has failed to pass a single appropriations bill on time, and now we are facing another CR. Pass everything--one vote to fund the entire government and not a single amendment is being allowed. This Senate has violated the laws that limited spending that we voted for and spent more than allowed. It has blocked amendments to such a degree that the entire heritage of free debate and free rights to amend laws has been violated and damaged substantially in this Senate. If we leave town without having passed a bill to block this Executive amnesty, then it will be a permanent stain on the Senate, the constitutional order, and this entire Democratic caucus. I know the pressure is to stay hitched and stay in line, but Senate Democrats do have the power to vote differently. Senator Manchin voted differently last time, and others can also. It is time to stand up and be counted for the working people in this country and enact legislation in their interest. I thank the Presiding Officer and yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

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

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, it brings me no pleasure to make the remarks I feel compelled to make today. I think it is important for us to understand how we, the Senate of the United States, are operating. The Senate--the legislative body heralded by the late Senator Robert C. Byrd as the second great senate in history, the first being the Roman Senate--is being eroded beyond recognition by the tactics utilized by Senate Majority Leader Reid and those who support him in that process. Today is Constitution Day. It was Senator Byrd who moved legislation to declare today Constitution Day. Under that Constitution, there are two bodies in the Congress, the House and the Senate, and the Senate has always been known as the body where great debates are held, with an open ability to amend and discuss, and the great issues of the day are laid out. That is what we are about. But the Senate has changed dramatically since I have been in the Senate, some 18 years, and not for the better--not for the better of the American people. It might be good for politicians, but it is not good for the American people and it is not good for the public interest, in my view. As has been happening time and again, we are once again today, at nigh on the eleventh hour, being asked to vote for a spending bill before we recess. We have to recess, you see. Why? So Senators can go home to campaign, but we are being paid, whether we are here or back home or vacationing or whatever. Why don't we stay a few days longer if necessary? Oh, no. We have to get out of Washington and go back home and campaign. This continuing resolution, covering a massive amount of spending that no Member can fully comprehend at this late hour and nobody can meaningfully analyze, scrutinize or investigate--once again, we are being asked to fund the entire government of the United States in one catch-all bill, with no opportunity for a single amendment. There is no way to improve the legislation or to engage in meaningful consideration of our financial status. Aren't we facing a crisis financially? Hasn't the Congressional Budget Office told us we are on an unsustainable financial path? Yes. Are we going to discuss that at all? No. We are going to bring up this bill, vote it through, and go home and campaign. This denies the American people the opportunity to know what is being passed and to analyze and hold their elected representatives accountable for their actions. So the American people can't comprehend or study what is behind this massive bill either. Once again, as a tactic, this bill is being rushed through under the threat of a government shutdown. Without a funding mechanism, the government would shut down October 1 if we don't pass an appropriations bill to fund it because the Government of the United States cannot operate and spend a dime Congress hasn't appropriated. That is a fundamental constitutional power. Yes, there is a problem out there. How did it happen that we are getting toward the end of the session and nothing has been done? I will talk about that. Why is this happening? Is it because we don't have time? No, it is not because we don't have time. The reality--and I will say this, and I have not been contradicted on it by any Member of this Senate, to my knowledge. It is not a lack of time. We haven't done anything this week or last week, and we have next week and the next week if need be. We can vote 20 times a day. It doesn't take a lot of time to vote. People can have their ideas to improve legislation and bring them up and argue for them and get an up-or-down vote, yes or no. So why is this happening? The purpose is to protect Members from having to cast votes that their constituents might disagree with, to protect them from being placed on record one way or the other on important issues facing the Nation. That is the problem. It is politics first, sad to say. It just is. We have not voted on a single appropriations bill in the Senate this year, not one. Not 1 of the 12 appropriations bills that are required to fund our government each year has come before the Senate. Committees are being bypassed, secret deals rule the day, and millions of Americans are thereby robbed of their ability to observe and participate in the legislative process. They are denied the ability to write their Senators and say: I hear you have an amendment coming up on thus and so. Vote for it or vote against it. That is all being eliminated in this process. It has been so long since we followed the regular order, I think it is necessary for me to share with the people and our colleagues what is supposed to happen and what is not happening. Each year Congress is supposed to pass a budget resolution which outlines the spending goals and limits for the upcoming year. Then, based on the spending levels contained in the budget resolution, the individual authorization committees are to report out authorization bills. For example, they are to review the Defense Department. We don't do that anymore. They are to review the Defense Department. We normally do a Defense authorization bill--but it hasn't been done this year--to authorize certain spending and policy changes, utilizing the expertise of the members of the committees to shape where the spending is supposed to go, laying out priorities, setting and making decisions about what we can afford and what we can't afford, evaluating whether programs are effective, to serve the citizens of the United States. Isn't that what we are supposed to do? This is the way we eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse. This is the way we stop it. After the authorization committees do their work, the Appropriations Committee actually is the one to fund the government. The subcommittees of the Appropriations Committee are tasked with producing appropriations bills for each area of the budget, which are to be individually brought to the floor of the Senate, debated, and amended on the floor in the light of day before the American people. Each year the Senate is supposed to consider individually 12 appropriations bills. This gives each Member and their constituents a chance to review and analyze every line of the bill and to offer suggestions for saving money, improving efficiency, and better serving taxpayers--which we are failing to do and we need to do. We don't have a dime to waste, and we are wasting money regularly throughout our government, as anybody who has studied it knows. Under the tenure of Senator Reid, the budgeting process has been dismantled. We have only passed one budget in the last 5 years, although the Budget Act says we should pass a budget by April 15 every year. Our committees stand idle, and the floor is one run not for the high purpose of legislative debate but frankly as an extension of a Democratic political campaign committee. So the Senate has ceased consideration of appropriations bills altogether, relying more and more on autopilot resolutions and catch- all continuing resolutions and omnibus spending packages. When I first came to the Senate, almost every single Senate spending bill was debated. It was brought to the floor. A Senator was embarrassed if they didn't bring every bill to the floor. Sometimes they had two or three that couldn't be completed. They would be completed at the end and passed as an omnibus bill, and people would complain. Now none of them are passed--zero. We go year by year without debating a single stand-alone spending bill on the Senate floor. So a Senator has to ask, what are we here for? One of the worst tactics the majority leader has used to suppress Senators' rights and block open debate is a technique called filling the tree. Under that tactic he uses his majority rights to keep Senators from offering amendments as representatives of their States and the American people. Senator, a bill is coming on the floor, and you can't stand and give an amendment? Right, you cannot. He fills the amendment tree, we can't file another amendment, and he refuses to allow amendments to occur. His majority, having written the bill with President Obama--they move the legislation, and there is no real ability to challenge it. It is not the way the Senate was supposed to be set up. The Senate was always to be set up to allow individual Senators and the minority rights to be able to influence legislation and to highlight what is in it. Blocking amendments prevents this body from working its will, prohibits legislation from being improved, and protects Senators from being held accountable by the voters on the great issues of the day. I don't think there is any doubt about that. And that is the reason it is being done. But we can do things the right way. It absolutely can be done. Members ought to be able to offer amendments. It just turns into a real debate, and people get to push for the agendas they believe in and advocate for their position. Who knows, 10 years from today an agenda not popular today will be popular then. That is the way we are supposed to do it. Senators being prohibited from offering amendments keeps the Senate from being a critical sounding board for the issues of the day. Our majority leader has used this tactic, filling the tree, 90 times during his tenure. To put this in perspective, the 6 previous majority leaders filled the tree only 49 times, all total. Mr. Reid has filled the tree on 40 more occasions than all 6 previous majority leaders. This stops amendments from being voted on, from being offered, and that is what is happening. The majority leader has shut down one of the most important functions that Senators exercise to defend and advance the interests of their constituents. It doesn't stop there. The Senate is supposed to be Washington's cooling saucer. That is why on many important and controversial matters 60 votes are required to adopt a measure or to confirm a nominee, and, importantly, to change the rules of the Senate requires a two-thirds vote to move such a question towards final passage. That is, a two-thirds vote is required to change the rules of the Senate. Thus the two-thirds vote threshold is critical because it ensures the rules have meaning, they have power, they apply, and in years to come will not be likely changed, and protect minority rights in the Senate. The rules will apply when parties are in power and when they are out of power. To change Senate rules requires a broad consensus across the body. This protects the rights of individual Senators to be heard on the issues of the day. It is a key component of the Senate's heritage of discussion and debate and openness. Yet Mr. Reid, in an exercise of brute political force, last year changed the Senate rules by a simple majority vote. He ignored the counsel of the Senate Parliamentarian who ruled his tactic was contrary to the rules of the Senate. The Parliamentarian is our preeminent protector of Senate practices, and over the years different Parliamentarians have done a good job. In one stroke the majority leader changed the nature of this august body, perhaps forever. So today the Democratic Senators who empower Mr. Reid and the Senators who give him power and support him are not even allowed to consider important legislation either, effectively. Republicans or Democrats cannot offer amendments. They cannot even fully debate the issues. Huge bills are rushed through in the waning hours of a session. Systematically the rights of Senators to provide equal representation to each State are being dismantled. But it gets worse still. As we know, President Obama has promised that after the midterms he would issue executive amnesty to 5 to 6 million people--immigrants who are unlawfully here, unlawfully entering the United States. This Executive order, Presidential order--fiat-- amnesty--would include work permits for millions of illegal workers along with photo IDs and Social Security numbers, and it would include more guest workers. So businesses can bring in even more guest workers at a time of high unemployment and falling wages. The President and the immigration lobbyists and business groups and activist groups are meeting secretly in the White House trying to implement through executive action the same disastrous, wrong policies that were rejected by Congress through the House of Representatives. The House said no to this. Once the public learned what was in the Senate amnesty and guest worker bill, they declared, no, no, no, and the House heard it. So the President is now conspiring to go around the Congress. What did Mr. Reid say? His duty is to represent the Congress, and we are a coequal branch with the executive branch and the executive branch doesn't have the power to change the immigration law that is in a law, in effect. The United States law says you cannot work in the United States--flat out, you cannot be hired if you are in the country illegally. The President doesn't have any power to change that. The President can come back to the Senate and advocate it and see if he can pass that. But the Senate hasn't changed the law. You shouldn't be able to work in America if you are not lawfully here. Taking a job from a lawful immigrant? This is fundamentally wrong. What does Mr. Reid say about this? Does he defend the prerogative of Congress, the Senate? No, he doesn't. Instead, he has told the President to ``go real big'' and bypass Congress. Do the biggest amnesty you can do. Majority Leader Reid has blocked this Senate from considering the House-passed legislation that is sitting at the desk in this Senate that would stop the President from doing this. He would use legitimate congressional power to deny funding to execute any such bogus, unlawful amnesty plan. The Constitution and the American people's interests are at stake here. But Mr. Reid is determined completely to ensure this executive amnesty happens anyway, and he is determined to do whatever he can to see that it does happen. The principles that govern our political system, separation of powers, and public debate are not important here at this time. But, colleagues, I would note that we have to recognize Mr. Reid does not operate all on his own. He operates with the support and empowerment of a Democratic Caucus that allows this to occur. We saw this vividly when I made a motion some weeks ago that would allow us to take action to stop the executive amnesty. I moved that we strike his filling the tree, remove it, clear the amendment tree, and allow new amendments to be brought up to stop executive amnesty. That would have been to bar the executive action, and every Senate Democrat voted with Mr. Reid--except the Senator from West Virginia, Mr. Manchin--that would enable the President to go forward with his unlawful amnesty decree. It is unbelievable. The posture we are in is the House has passed a bill that would stop the President from going forward, clearly. It has already passed the House of Representatives. It is sitting on our desk and the majority leader will not allow it to be brought up. Why? He has the votes. Why doesn't he bring it up and vote it down? The reason is he wants to protect his Members. He believes in this policy. He is advocating this policy. But he thinks if he brings it up for a vote, his Members might find out that the people back home are not happy. More than three-fourths of the American people believe the President is exceeding his authority if he goes forward with this executive amnesty. So why can't we have a vote on it? Because of politics. Protect our Members. They don't need to take tough votes. Let's get out of Washington and go home and play politics in our home State. Nobody in the Senate Democratic Congress has spoken up to support the House bill. Some pretend or hope the President won't do it. What does that mean? Nothing. But a vote means something. So let's vote. You are either for it or not. Every Member who supports Mr. Reid--and we will have another vote on this--is as much a supporter of President Obama's unlawful amnesty as if they were sitting in a room helping him sign the order. This is the time. It is either stop now or it may never be stopped. We need to vote on it. People need to be held accountable. Every American needs to know where their Senator stands on the President's unlawful assumption of power to violate plain law of the United States to carry out a political agenda he has that the American people reject. It is that simple. It is about power and it is about politics and it is not about what is best for America. All of us owe our constituents a full, open, and deliberative process where the great issues of the day are debated with their scrutiny and the people's scrutiny. We receive their input with our rights respected, our responsibilities honored, and our Senate strengthened in the process and respected in the process. The democratic process is messy sometimes, sometimes contentious, and often difficult, but it is precisely this legislative tug of war, this back-and-forth, which forges a national consensus. People have to stick their necks out and say what they believe on important issues facing America. It is a process our Founders utilized, men of the Enlightenment they were, to find what truth is. Truth, they believe and I believe, is an objective reality. Words have meaning. Principles are valid. Things are true and things are false. Their theory was you have a full and open, robust debate and everybody says more through that process. It is the best way for you to tell what the truth is, and based on what the truth is you can make a good judgment for what is best for America. It is the same theory we use in jury trials: cross-examination of witnesses, bring in evidence, 12 good men and women judge the evidence in an attempt to find what the truth is. Some of this crowd today, this post-modern group, they don't even believe in truth, if you want to know the truth. While secret deals may appear to keep the trains running on time, they also keep them running too often in the wrong direction. Only through a renewed, open legislative process carried out in the full light of day can we clean up this government, forge a real national consensus, confront the difficult choices we face, achieve accountability in Washington, allow our Senators and Congressmen to be there on the front lines and sink or swim on how they perform. We are not guaranteed office. The American people don't work for us, we work for them, and to act as we have in the past returns power thereby to the everyday citizen. It is time for us to restore once again the great Senate of the United States. I thank the Chair and yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, yesterday I cast votes against the nominations of Stephen Burns and Jeffrey Baran to be Commissioners on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. I hope I am wrong in my conclusion. The NRC is an incredibly important body at this time in the history of civilian nuclear generation. While low natural gas prices puts economic strain on our fleet of nuclear generators, the NRC has to carefully evaluate the costs and benefits that its regulations provide. In the past the NRC has had talented scientists and nuclear experts compose the Commission. But for these two vacancies the President has nominated lawyers with legal and policy experience. Neither Stephen Burns nor Jeffrey Baran has the technical experience, I believe, that will enable them to effectively serve on the NRC. Moreover, Stephen Burns--during his service with the NRC as General Counsel--authored several important legal memoranda that enabled then- NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko to improperly undermine the licensing of Yucca Mountain resulting in severe criticism by a Federal court. He also provided a legal opinion that improperly advised Chairman Jaczko that he, alone, could use emergency powers to conduct the business of the Commission in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster. This was not a close question, in my opinion. Mr. Burns should not have issued such an opinion. While Mr. Burns is familiar with the Commission's procedures, he has no technical nuclear power experience and I am not convinced that he will resist interpreting the law with a political bent. For Mr. Baran--a House Committee staffer who has worked for many years for an opponent of Yucca Mountain--there is not evidence that he can impartially consider highly political Commission decisions. This critically important Commission must be led by persons who are able to be competent and independent persons of strength. Reluctantly, I have concluded that I must oppose the nominations.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I wish today to honor a courageous young Alabamian Gabe Griffin. Gabe is a 9-year-old boy who lives with his family in Shelby County, AL. Right now, Gabe lives like any other child, but that is expected to change soon. Without a cure, Gabe's doctors expect him to be in a wheelchair by the time he is 12 years old and lose his life around the age of 20. Gabe suffers from a fatal genetic mutation called Duchenne muscular dystrophy, DMD, which is caused by an absence of dystrophin, a protein that helps keep the body's muscles intact. The onset of this fatal disorder occurs during early childhood and causes generalized weakness and muscle wasting that increases over time. While medical advances have led to some very promising clinical trials, to date there is no cure and no one has survived. DMD affects approximately 1 in every 3,500 boys, which adds up to about 15,000 boys in America. Symptoms usually appear in male children before age 6, and progressive proximal muscle weakness associated with a loss of muscle mass is observed first. This weakness eventually spreads to the arms, neck, and other areas, and most patients are wheelchair dependent by the age of 12. Gabe can currently walk, breathe, and feed himself like any other child. Since his diagnosis, his family has been relentlessly striving to raise awareness and increase research funding for DMD. They play an active role in the fight against this devastating disease and are tireless in their efforts to find a cure. Recently, a cross-country bicycle ride to raise awareness of DMD was completed. Wes Bates, a student at Indiana University; Michael Staley, chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Bachus; and their support team rode 3,300 miles from Astoria, OR, on June 28 to Mobile, AL, on August 14. They worked to educate people across America about DMD, and the funds they raised will be used to raise awareness and advance current research. Through his struggle, Gabe has continued to bring happiness and light to those around him. He is a wonderful and courageous boy. It is my honor to recognize Gabe Griffin and his family for their incredible efforts to defeat Duchenne muscular disorder. It is my hope that with their continued efforts, Gabe may live to see the cure of DMD.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Presiding Officer and appreciate the opportunity to share some thoughts on an important subject tonight. Earlier this week I spoke about the President's promise that he would issue an Executive amnesty, a grant of amnesty to 5 or 6 million people by some form of Executive order with his own pen. The planned amnesty would include work permits, photo ID's, and Social Security numbers for millions of people who illegally entered the U.S., illegally overstayed their visas, or defrauded U.S. immigration authorities. The Senate Democratic Conference has supported and enabled the President's actions and blocked--so far--every effort to stop it. Not even one of our Democratic colleagues has backed the House legislation that would stop this Executive amnesty or demanded that Senator Reid bring it up for a vote at least. Every Senate Democrat is therefore the President's partner in his planned lawless acts. Plainly the President must execute the law that was passed by Congress, and the law does not allow for unlawful immigrants to work in the U.S. It doesn't allow for many other things they are suggesting the President may plan to do by Executive order. Tonight I would like to talk about the influence of special interests on our nation's immigration laws and how it is creating unwise and unlawful policies. How did we get to the point where elected officials, activist groups, the ACLU, and global CEOs are openly working to deny American workers the immigration protections to which they are legally entitled? How did we get to the point where the Democratic Party is prepared to nullify and wipe away the immigration laws of the United States of America? And we are at that point, colleagues. Just yesterday Majority Leader Reid wrote in a tweet something that was shocking. He said: Since House Republicans have failed to act on immigration, I know the President will. When he does, I hope he goes real big. That is the majority leader of the Senate. He intends to do nothing in the Senate to stop the President's actions. But colleagues, we know better. This body is not run by one man. We don't have a dictator in the great Senate. Every Member has a vote. And the only way Senator Reid could do such a thing to block this Senate from voting in a way that would stop the President's Executive actions is to not support him in his plan. Every Senator needs to stand up and represent their constituents, not big business, not the ACLU, not activist groups, not political interests but the American interests, the workers' interests. That is what we need to expect from them, and we don't have but a few weeks, it looks like, to get it done. Let this sink in for a moment. The majority leader of the Senate is bragging that he knows the President will circumvent Congress to issue Executive amnesty to millions, and he is encouraging the President to ensure this amnesty includes as many people as possible. And the White House has acknowledged that 5 to 6 million is the number they are looking at. Has one Senate Democrat stepped forward to reject Mr. Reid's statement? Has one Senate Democrat stepped forward to say: I support the legislation passed by the House of Representatives that would secure the border and block this Executive amnesty? Have they ever said they support that? Have they ever said: I will do everything in my power to see that the House legislation gets a vote in the Senate so the American people can know what is going on? No. All we hear is silence. In effect, the entire Senate Democratic Congress has surrendered the jobs, wages, and livelihoods of their constituents to a group of special interests meeting in secret at the White House--what Congress has refused to pass and the American people have rejected. They are plotting at the White House--maybe even more so today--to move forward with Executive action anyway, no matter what the people think, no matter what Congress, the people's House, votes on. Politico reports that ``White House officials conducted more than 20 meetings in July and August with legal experts, immigration advocates and business leaders to gather ideas on what should be included in the order.'' Now that is a quote from Politico. Twenty meetings with legal experts, immigration advocates, and business leaders to gather ideas on what should be included in the President's order. So who are these so- called expert advocates and business leaders? They are not the law enforcement officers; they are not our ICE officers; they are not our Border Patrol officers; they are not the American working man and woman; they are not unemployed Americans. They weren't in the room. You can be sure of that. Their opinions weren't sought. No, White House officials are meeting with the world's most powerful corporate immigration lobbyists and activists who think Border Patrol is for the little people. We know better. The administration is meeting with the elite, the cosmopolitan set who scorn and mock the concerns of everyday Americans who are concerned about their schools, jobs, wages, communities, and hospitals. These great and powerful citizens of the world, we know, don't care much about old fashioned things like national boundaries, national sovereignty, immigration control, let alone the constitutional separation of powers or even the consistent and even-handed enforcement of plain law, passed by the elected representatives of the American people in due fashion. Well, don't you get it? They believe they are always supposed to get whatever it is they want. They are used to that. They spend hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact, one report says they have spent $1.5 billion since 2007 trying to pass their desired immigration bill--$1.5 billion. They think whatever they want is good for America. They tried and tried and tried to pass the bill through Congress, but the American people said: No, no, no. So they decided to just go to the President. They decide to go to President Obama, and we will insist that he implement these measures through Executive fiat. And Senate Democrats have apparently said: Well, that is just a wonderful idea. We support that. Just do it. Go big. But, Mr. President, wait a little bit. Wait until after the election. We don't want the voters to hold us accountable for what you are doing. We want to pretend we in the Senate have nothing to do with it. One of the groups that has joined the chorus of special interests demanding Executive action on immigration is FWD.us, run by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. He just turned 30, and I understand he is worth about $28 billion. Mr. Zuckerberg has been very busy recently. One of his fellow billionaires, Mr. Carlos Slim--maybe the world's richest man--invited Mr. Zuckerberg down to Mexico City to give a speech. What did Mr. Zuckerberg promote in his speech? Well, this is a report of it. I guess I will first note that young Mr. Zuckerberg maybe doesn't know there is a deep American tradition--a tradition in most developed nations--that you don't go to a foreign capital to criticize your own government. I suppose he doesn't know about that. They probably didn't teach him about that when he was at one of the elite schools he attended. This is what he said in Mexico City: We have a strange immigration policy for a nation of immigrants. And it's a policy unfit for today's world. Well, the ``masters of the universe'' are very fond of open borders as long as these open borders don't extend to their gated compounds and fenced-off estates. I have another article from late last fall that was printed in Business Insider about Mr. Zuckerberg's actions. The headline is ``Mark Zuckerberg Just Spent More Than $30 Million Buying 4 Neighboring Houses For Privacy.'' The article says: Mark Zuckerberg just made an unusual purchase. Well, four purchases. Facebook's billionaire founder bought four homes surrounding his current home near Palo Alto, Mercury News Reports. The houses cost him more than $30 million, including one 2,600 square-foot home that cost $14 million. (His own home is twice as large at 5,000 square-feet and cost half as much.) Larry Page made a similar move a few years ago so he could build a 6,000-square-foot mansion. But Zuckerberg's reason is different. He doesn't want to live in excess, he just wants a little privacy. That is a world the average American doesn't live in. So Mr. Zuckerberg, who has become the top spokesman for expanding the admission of foreign workers, championed the Senate immigration bill for which all of our Democratic colleagues voted. One of the things the bill did was double the supply of low-wage foreign workers brought into the United States for companies such as Facebook. We have been told for a long time--and most of us have heard this repeatedly--that there is a shortage of STEM and IT workers. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. This has been the central selling point of these massive demands for increases in foreign worker programs across the board--programs that bring in workers for every sector in the U.S. economy. But we know otherwise from the nation's leading academics, people who studied this issue and are professionals in it. I have a recent op-ed here from USA TODAY which reports that there is actually not a shortage but a surplus of Americans who have been trained in the STEM and IT fields and that this is why wages have not increased since 1999. If you have a shortage of workers in a field such as information technology or science and mathematics, wages go up, do they not? If wages are not up and are basically down since 1999, I think the case for our free-market friends is pretty clear--we don't have a shortage. So rich high-tech companies are using the H-1B visa program to keep wages down and to hire less expensive workers from abroad. Indeed, the same companies demanding more guest workers are laying off American workers in droves. I would like to read some excerpts from that op-ed published in USA TODAY. The article was recently co-authored by five of the nation's experts on labor markets and the guest worker program. I think it tells a story that has not been refuted. We have partisans and advocates who have been claiming there is a shortage in these fields, but the experts say no. And since they have been speaking out on this issue, we have seen no real data that would dispute what they say in this article dated July 27, 2014. Headline: ``Bill Gates' tech worker fantasy.'' Subheadline: ``Silicon Valley has created an imaginary staffing shortage.'' Business executives and politicians endlessly complain that there is a ``shortage'' of qualified Americans and that the U.S. must admit more high-skilled guest workers to fill jobs in STEM fields: science, technology, engineering and math. This claim is echoed by everyone from President Obama and Rupert Murdoch to Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates. Yet within the past month, two odd things occurred: Census reported that only one in four STEM degree holders is in a STEM job, and Microsoft announced plans to downsize its workforce by 18,000 jobs. The five writers of this article--referring to themselves--go on to say: None of us have been able to find any credible efforts to support the IT industry's assertions of labor shortages. The article was written by Ron Hira, Paula Stephan, Hal Salzman, Michael Teitelbaum, who has recently written a book on this subject, and Norm Matloff. These are labor economic experts who have studied these issues for years. Many of them have testified before Congress. They say: None of us have been able to find any credible evidence to support the IT industry's assertions of labor shortages. What a statement that is. They go on to write--they all signed this article together--that: If a shortage did exist, wages would be rising as companies try to attract scarce workers. Instead, legislation that expanded visas for IT personnel during the 1990s has kept average wages flat over the past 16 years. Indeed, guest workers have become the predominant source of new hires in these fields. The `predominate source of new hires' in information technology fields is coming through guest worker programs from abroad. They go on to say: Those supporting even greater expansion seem to have forgotten about the hundreds and thousands of American high- tech workers who are being shortchanged--by wages stuck at 1998 levels, by diminished career prospects and by repeated rounds of layoffs. They go on to say: There is an ample supply of American workers who are willing and qualified to fill high-skill jobs in this country. The only real disagreement is whether the supply is two or three times larger than the demand. There is no doubt we have a surplus of IT workers. The question is whether the supply is two or three times as big as the number of job openings. They go on to say: Unfortunately, companies are exploiting the large existing flow of guest workers to deny American workers access to STEM careers and middle-class security that should come with them. Imagine, then, how many more Americans would be frozen out of the middle class if politicians and tech moguls succeeded in doubling or tripling the flow of guest workers into STEM occupations. That is exactly what the bill before this Senate--the bill the House of Representatives rejected--would have done. It would have doubled the number of guest workers coming into America just to take jobs--coming in for the very purpose of taking a job that we need Americans to be taking. The article goes on: Another major, yet often overlooked, provision in the pending legislation-- That is the bill President Obama is pushing for, the Gang of 8 bill would grant automatic green cards to any foreign student who earns a graduate degree in a STEM field, based on assertions that foreign graduates of U.S. universities are routinely being forced to leave. Such claims are incompatible with the evidence that such graduates have many paths to stay and work, and indeed the ``stay rates'' for visiting international students are very high and have shown no sign of decline. The most recent study finds that 92 percent of Chinese Ph.D. students stay in America to work after graduation. So that just meant we have thousands and thousands of students graduating from schools and being sent home. That is not accurate, according to the experts who study the data. The article continues: The tech industry's promotion of expanded temporary visas (such as the H-1B) and green cards is driven by a desire for cheap, young and immobile labor. It is well documented that loopholes enable firms to legally pay H-1Bs below their market value and to continue the widespread age discrimination acknowledged by many in the tech industry. I talked to a gentleman whom I knew a little bit who worked at a computer company. He is well into his forties, maybe close to 50. I asked him what kind of security there is. He said, Well, in the tech industry these companies go and fall. I said, What happens if you were to lose your job? He said, At my age, it would be very difficult. That was a poignant moment for me. This man, with a family, raising children, doing the right thing, is worried at his age whether he can get a job, when the majority of people being hired in these fields are H-1B guest workers. The USA Today op-ed concludes by saying: IT industry leaders have spent lavishly on lobbying to promote their STEM shortage claims among legislators. The only problem is that the evidence contradicts their self- interested claims. I think this is a dramatic article. It is an article by undisputed experts in their field. To my knowledge no one has disputed it. The false, tech world fantasy claims, the USA Today op-ed referred to, is an imaginary shortage, not a real shortage. So I would pose a question to Mr. Zuckerberg, who is a brilliant man with so many fabulous qualities, and I respect that. But I read in the news that Facebook, his company, is now worth more than $200 billion. Is that not enough money to hire American workers for a change? Your company now employs roughly 7,000 people. Let's say you want to expand your workforce 10 percent or hire another 700 workers. Are you claiming you can't find 700 Americans who would take these jobs if you paid a good wage and decent benefits? Let me just say one more thing: Facebook has 7,000 workers. Microsoft just laid off 18,000. Why doesn't Mr. Zuckerberg call his friend Mr. Gates and say: Look, I have to hire a few hundred people; do you have any resumes you can send over here? Maybe I will not have to take somebody from a foreign country for a job an unemployed U.S. citizen might take. It is a serious matter. I want to continue to talk about this. There is this myth that we have surging employment in the high-tech industry. According to a recent Reuters report, U.S. employers announced 50,000 layoffs in August of 2013, up 34 percent from the previous month, then up 57 percent through August 2012. As Byron York reported, Hewlett-Packard, a high-tech company, laid off 29,000 employees in 2012--29,000. In August of 2013, Cisco announced plans to lay off 4,000 workers in addition to the 8,000 cut in the last 2 years, and Cisco was right in the White House this summer with a group of other companies demanding more workers from abroad. Cisco was signing a letter with a bunch of other companies; United Technologies has announced 3,000 layoffs this year; American Express cut 5,400 jobs; Procter and Gamble announced 5,700 jobs cut in 2012; T- Mobile announced plans to lay off 2,250 employees in 2012. The shortage is not there. The experts tell us and the plain facts, if we look around, indicate that. But instead FWD.us and other immigration lobbyists are working with the White House to extract Executive orders from the President that provide them with the same financial benefits that were included in the Senate bill that was rejected by the House of Representatives. One proposal would increase by as much as 800,000 the number of foreign workers admitted for the explicit purpose of taking jobs in the United States. This is an article that talks about that. It is a matter of importance. The Associated Press article, the title of it: ``Obama Weighs Broader Move on Legal Immigration.'' President Barack Obama is considering key changes in the nation's immigration system requested by tech, industry and powerful interest groups-- Not by the American people was he being requested to do this, not by the national interests but by powerful special interest groups that are referred to here. It goes on to say: After recent White House meetings, top officials have compiled specific recommendations from business groups and other advocates. ``Other advocates.'' Who are they? We know the ACLU has been there. We know La Raza has been meeting there on a regular basis. It goes on. The article says: One of the more popular requests is a change in the way green cards are counted that would essentially free up some 800,000 additional visas the first year, advocates say. Other requests would extend work permits to the spouses of all temporary H-1B skilled workers who have not been able to work. But how about the fact that a single mom might like that job? An unemployed single mom or a single mom who has a job prospect that would pay $3 more than the job she is now working while trying to raise a family? Or an unemployed father? Maybe they would like those jobs first. So these actions fall on the heels of previous Executive action in which the President already acted unilaterally earlier this year to grant companies an additional 100,000 guest workers. He has already done that. In just the first year of this order, we added 100,000 guest workers by providing work authorizations to the foreign spouses of temporary guest workers. So he would increase the supply of guest workers by approximately 30,000 each year thereafter--this at a time when we have 58 million working-age Americans who are not working. Since 2009 the number of adults has increased by 13 million, while the number of people actually working has decreased by 7 million. Median household income has dropped $2,300 since 2009. According to the National Employment Law Project, wages are down across all occupations. According to a CBS report titled ``Why American workers feel increasingly poor": Real median hourly wages have declined across low, middle and high income levels from 2009 to 2013, the study found. No matter if workers were in the lowest bracket ($8.84 to $10.85 an hour) or the highest ($31.40 to $86.34) median hourly wages declined when you take into account the impact of inflation. It goes on: Across all occupations, real median hourly wages slipped 3.4 percent since 2009. While even better-paid workers saw median hourly earnings erode, the worst hit segments were at the bottom-- The people who got hurt the most were at the bottom-- with declines in their wages of more than 4 percent. We have business CEOs, lobbyists, activists, immigration groups, and clever politicians who are able to demand that we have to have more workers in America even when we have a decline in wages and a decline in jobs. But what does the President do? His administration issues an Executive order to provide foreign spouses--the citizens of other countries, not American citizens--with 100,000 jobs in the United States, precious jobs that many Americans would love to have. How many American spouses struggling to support their families would benefit from one of those jobs? How many single moms would benefit from a chance to earn a better paycheck? Our Senate Democratic friends talk about paycheck fairness repeatedly. Yet they are supporting policies that take jobs and wages directly from American women by the millions. Immigration policy is supposed to serve the national interest and the people of the United States, not the interests of a few activist CEOs and the politicians who are catering to them. We have had 40 years of mass immigration combined with falling wages, a shrinking workplace, and exploding welfare rolls. We know that, don't we, friends and colleagues? It is time for a shift in emphasis. It is time to get our own people back to work and our communities out of poverty and our schools back on their feet. Harvard professor Dr. George Borjas--probably the leading academic in this entire area and has been for many years--estimates that our current immigration rate results in an annual loss of more than $400 billion in wages for Americans competing with immigrant labor. Between 2000 and today the government issued nearly 30 million visas to temporary foreign workers and permanent immigrants, largely lower skilled and lower wage. A recent Reuters poll showed that Americans wish to see record immigration reduced, not increased, by a huge 3-to-1 margin, as the Gang of 8 bill would have done. Another poll from pollster Kellyanne Conway recently showed that 80 percent of Americans think companies should hire from among the existing unemployed rather than bringing in new workers from abroad to fill these jobs. Yet Senate Democrats have unanimously supported legislation to double the annual supply of labor brought into the United States. Some people think this is agricultural work. Not so. The increase in immigration under that bill would be more than 90 percent nonagricultural work. These jobs are going to be taken by anyone. So what about the good, decent and patriotic citizens of our country who fight our wars, who obey our laws, who follow our rules, and want a better future for their children? Should their needs not come first? As the National Review explained, ``we are a nation with an economy-- not an economy with a nation.'' We cannot put the parochial demands of a few powerful CEOs ahead of an entire nation's hopes, dreams, and aspirations. The basic social contract is that citizens agree to follow the law, pay their taxes, devote their love and loyalty to their country, and in exchange the nation commits to preserve and protect and serve their interests, safeguard their freedom, and return to them in kind their first allegiance of loyalty. The job of elected officials is to answer to the people who sent them to Washington, not to scorn them, not to demean them, not to mock them, not to sell their jobs and dreams to the highest bidder. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, it is appropriate that the Senate take note on occasion of those who ably and honestly serve the country and their fellow man. Our government has many who do so every day. The Reverend Joseph Day was born in rural Dixons Mill, AL, being one of eight children. He grew up in Toulminville, near Mobile, AL, and was a contemporary of baseball great Hank Aaron. They played baseball together and both attended the Greater Morningstar Missionary Baptist Church. He started work as a U.S. government civilian employee at Brookley Air Force Base in Mobile. When Brookley closed, Day transferred to what is now Robins Air Force Base, in Warner Robins, GA, retiring after 40 years of service. After returning to Mobile, he then spent 17 years working for Volkert, Inc., in Mobile. He was passionate about helping others. He served as executive director of the Macon, GA chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and while in Macon was called to preach. Returning to Mobile, he founded the House of Joshua Christian Center Church where he pastored until his death. His influence is demonstrated in the remarkable fact that the Day family has produced several Christian ministers. He was an activist and a leader in the causes he believed in. In 1991, he stood for 7 hours before bulldozers to save a spring fed lake. In the end, the Mobile City Council voted to save the lake and named it Day Lake in his honor. His wife of 65 years, Ruby Nell James Day, predeceased him. She was a wonderful and beloved woman and a member of the respected James family of Mobile. Reverend Day's funeral service was a true celebration of a remarkable life well-lived. Speakers at the service included former Mobile Mayor Sam Jones, State Representative James Busky, State Senator Vivian Figures, and City Councilman Fred Richardson. I was also honored to speak. Several prominent pastors from Mobile conducted the service. They were: Ronald McCree, pastor--Greater Morning Star Baptist Church (Eulogy); Clinton Johnson, pastor--New Shiloh Baptist Church (Officiating); Fleet Bell, pastor--Rock of Faith Baptist Church (Song); Darlett-Lucy Gulley, pastor--New Life Methodist Church (Prayer of Comfort); Minister Ronald Suggs, Greater Morning Star Baptist Church (Old Testament Reading); and Minister Gregory Palmer, Sr., Greater Morning Star Baptist Church (New Testament Reading). These pastors have earned the respect of the community over many years for their faith and service to others. I came to know and respect Reverend Day's son, Eric, when I hired him as the law enforcement coordinator for the U.S. attorney's office in Mobile, where he still works. He reflects the integrity and faith of his father. I am also proud that Eric's wonderful wife Valerie Day has served as my field representative since I was elected to the Senate almost 18 years ago. This Nation must continue to produce leaders like Reverend Day who, in turn, produce families of energy, drive, faith and service. It is they who provide the vision and faith, and the service, that are the qualities that make America exceptional.

Mr. SESSIONS

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