Jeff Sessions

Mr. SESSIONS

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I wish to take this opportunity to discuss the matter I alluded to earlier that is a very real concern of mine, which is that the budget that is before us sets us on a direction we should not go. It is a major policy document. It states to the whole Nation how our Democratic colleagues, who now have the majority in the body and who passed this budget out of committee by a single vote majority or a party-line vote, as budgets have been over the last several years--that is not particularly unusual because there is a very real difference in how we approach taxing and spending in America between the parties that are represented in this body. It has been great to see Senator Conrad and Senator Gregg work on these issues. They have done a great job of representing their principal points of view and they have shared their own ideas and battled it out with respect and collegiality. They are very capable leaders of our Budget Committee. Amendment No. 466 I wish to talk about this subject, and I call up an amendment to S. Con. Res. 21 at this time, and I send it to the desk.

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I will talk more later, but perhaps the most important thing about this budget--with the points of order that are set in it and the fact that it is increasing spending rather than reducing spending--it is going to block the extension of extremely popular tax reductions that have been in place for a number of years. Then the taxes will go up on families. It will go up for children. For children, the tax credit will go down from $1,000 to $500. The capital gains rate--which actually raises revenues when it is cut--will go up. Other taxes will go back up, such as for dividend income. That is not the right direction for America. This is not our heritage. We need to contain the growth of spending and not go back to higher taxes. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS. I will close with one more point. A number of years ago, I understood this when the Republicans did what I considered a budget gimmick of several billion dollars. I began to count up how that added up. This year this budget has about $18 billion in spending over the President's budget, 2 billion of which is a gimmick. I believe it is going to amount to advance funding and will be spent. I believe, without dispute, it is $18 billion over the President's budget. Somebody might say: This is a large economy. What is $18 billion? That is what I used to hear. I made up a chart that I call ``Every Billion Counts.'' A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it is real money. Look at this chart. They say: Well, we only jumped the President by $18 billion. This is in the discretionary accounts. This is the discretionary budget. They jump it just $18 billion in 2008. But what happens to that $18 billion? It goes into the baseline of our Government spending. It goes into the baseline of our Government spending. So next year, if you try to remove that $18 billion, you know what they will say. They will descend on us in the halls, they will descend on us in this body and say: You are slashing the budget. You are cutting the budget. You can never cut the budget. So it goes into the baseline. Let's say we just continue at that rate. Let's say next year, they just do another $18 billion. It is not $18 billion going to the debt to our children and grandchildren for them to carry throughout their lifetime; it is $36 billion because you have already got an $18 billion increase from the previous year and then have $18 billion on top of that. The next year, it is $36 billion plus $18 billion, which is $54 billion. The next year, it is $54 billion plus $18 billion, which is $72 billion. If you carry it out 10 years, it is $180 billion extra that year. Then, if you add all that up, what do you come up with? An increase in spending, on that pattern alone, of $986 billion. That, I would say to my colleagues, is the kind of indifference to a billion here and a billion there that gets us surging in our spending. Finally, in our Budget Committee hearing, I asked the committee staff what the Consumer Price Index is, what the inflation rate is. They told us it is a little over 2 percent. Well, what do we know? We know this budget is going to increase spending in the non-defense discretionary account over 6 percent--three times the cost of living. They say: Well, a big part of this surge in spending is the war. But we have had a war for the last 4 years, and spending has not gone up a whole lot this year as compared to the last couple years in terms of the war. But what we do know is the non-defense discretionary spending in a time of war ought to be at least contained somewhat. Shouldn't we at least try to keep it to the cost of living? Yet we are going to come in with a budget about three times that amount, maybe more than three times the cost of living in terms of a percentage increase in non- defense spending. So those are some concerns I have. I believe we are on the road to taxing and spending. I think this budget demonstrates where our colleagues are heading in the Senate. I am going to resist it because we are moving to a point where we will not be able to--Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak 1 additional minute.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, budgets are defining things. They tell the country what direction we would like to go, where we intend to take the country, what kind of policies on taxing and spending we have. There are not many ways to hide it. There are ways to attempt to hide it, but when one looks at budgets carefully and studies them, they can begin to see what the priorities are of the majority party, the party that has an obligation to present a budget, as the Republicans did for a number of years and now the Democrats do. It reveals something about their priorities, their direction, where they want to go. I believe this Nation is a nation conceived in liberty. We believe in entrepreneurship. We believe in freedom. We believe in a smaller government and a more vibrant private sector. That is not like many of our European allies. They are high-tax, high-regulation, high-welfare states. We have many of those qualities and characteristics but not nearly so much as they. We made a conscious decision. That is not our heritage. That is not the way we go. I am proud to say our Nation has had a far greater growth rate consistently over the years than the Europeans. Our unemployment rate is well below the Europeans. They continue to struggle. They have government unions striking all the time. They are trying to make the government fix everything for them. When the government does everything, then everything that is important is decided by a bunch of politicians. We are not capable of running this economy. We are not capable of running an automobile business, running a farm or any other kind of business. That is not what we are capable of doing. We let the private sector do those things and let them compete and let them see who can produce the best widget at the lowest price with the least defects. That is our heritage. I resist the idea that we can continue to increase regulations, increase taxes, increase spending and make the Government bigger and bigger and bigger and the individual smaller and smaller and smaller. Because when we take from one to give to the Government for the benefit of another, we diminish the freedom of the first. We strengthen the Government, and we diminish the moral autonomy of the person who received the benefit. This is a matter of deep importance philosophically for us. We ought to think it through at the beginning. Where are we today? When President Bush took office--there is no need to rehash everything--the Nasdaq stock bubble had already burst. When he took office, the Nasdaq had lost half its value. When he took office, the last month of the calendar year, this country had negative growth in GDP. The first quarter President Bush inherited a negative growth GDP. He inherited from his predecessor an economy in serious trouble. There is no doubt about that. On top of that, we had 9/11, 9 months later. So the entire Nation was in a state of shock. He had to make some major decisions. Was he going to start a tax-and-spend jobs program to try to jump start the economy? He made a commitment consistent with our American heritage to reduce taxes and to allow the private sector to recapture itself, restabilize itself and grow. It has worked to an extraordinary degree. It is something of which we should be proud. We have cut taxes and now revenue is beginning to surge. We had the 2003 tax cuts, the 2001 tax cuts. In 2004, when the economy began to hit its stride, we had an increase in revenue to the Treasury of 5.5 percent. That is a pretty good number. But the next year, 2005, it hit a 14.6-percent increase in revenue. Then the next year it was almost 12 percent, 11.6. This year they are projecting, based on the first few months of the year, a 9.3-percent increase in revenue. What I am talking about is not statistics. It is not some survey. I am talking about actual dollars going into the Federal till. Is anybody paying taxes if they are not making money? Are they voluntarily sending more money to Washington than they ought to send? No, they are not doing that. The economy is doing well. People are making money. They are working more. They are getting higher wages. They are doing more overtime. Corporations are making profits instead of having losses. They are paying taxes. When someone sells stock or an item, it has appreciated in value, and he pays capital gains on it. Those are the things that are working because we have the economy moving. I believe President Bush made a historic, tough decision. We passed that first tax cut in this body by a tie vote. We had to bring in the Vice President to break the tie. That side over there that now has the majority opposed it with every strength in their being. The same was true with the next one in 2003. I will offer a critical amendment on taxes as this debate goes along. I wish to continue the general trend of my remarks and the dangers that I fear are exhibited here. When we pass a budget, we pretend to pass a 5-year budget. We pass one every year. So what does that mean? If you pass a budget every year and every year you pass a new 5-year budget, it means the only budget year that counts is the one you pass that year. Our colleagues think that spending as a percentage of the gross domestic product might go down in future years. I hope it would. It should, based on the strength of our economy. What about the budget that counts? What about the budget that counts, the one that we are enacting as a part of this process for 2008? I will show my colleagues what this budget does in terms of spending. In terms of spending, it is going up, actual spending over the last decade. This budget for 2008 before us today, and which we are being asked to ratify, has the highest percentage of GDP being captured by the Federal Government, by the Federal tax gendarmes of anything we have had in a decade. This budget, the one we are passing, the one that counts, ups it. There is no doubt about it. We can talk about future years, and we hope they will be better. How much time remains?

Mr. SESSIONS. I don't think I made it clear, and I think maybe the Senator misspoke because I may have earlier. This eliminating the point of order would only be eliminating points of order that are related-- that could be raised against existing tax relief. Not any new tax cuts. These points of order--I did not seek to change it in that regard.

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, our colleagues tell us this budget does not raise taxes, and in a sense that is a legitimate position for them to take, but in reality, I suggest it is not. I would note the budget we have before us now assumes--assumes, see--$916 billion in additional revenue over the next 5 years. Where do you get $916 billion? It is about a half a trillion more than the President assumed. What could generate $916 billion in additional revenue except a tax increase? The revenue levels in this budget mirror those numbers prepared by the Congressional Budget Office as part of its budget baseline. The Congressional Budget Office's baseline assumes that President Bush's tax cuts will expire as scheduled under current law, resulting in $916 billion in tax increases. Why does CBO assume they will expire and will not be extended as we have for nearly a decade? Well, that is what accountants do. There is nothing in the law that requires them to be extended, so CBO makes an accounting decision that they assume they will not be extended. The lower rates will not be extended. That means the rates will immediately jump up in a series of important taxes that affect the middle class in America. But Members of the Senate don't have to assume that. In fact, we ought to assume they are extended, because they are working. They are producing more revenue, economic growth, low unemployment. Alabama's unemployment, my home State, hit 3.3 percent last fall. Isn't that fabulous? We had the lowest drop in unemployment rate on a percentage basis of any State in the Nation in the last several years. Simply put, the Democratic budget is raising taxes by $916 billion by deciding not to extend the existing tax cuts. Tax rates will then go up and they will receive more money. The $916 billion in tax increases would become the largest tax increase ever, dwarfing President Clinton's record $241 billion tax increase in 1993. But our colleagues don't want to admit that today. They didn't want to admit that in committee when we voted on it last week. They want to have it both ways, if you want to know the truth. They want to spend and not take credit for raising taxes. So now the Democrats say their budget includes a reserve fund that would somehow allow for extensions of existing tax credits without increases in taxes. But this reserve fund is a mere vapor. It is without any substance. It has no funding in it that would allow for tax cuts--it does not allow for the extension of these tax cuts that are in place now and have been in place for years. They would not be acceptable under this reserve fund because they would increase the deficit, of course. That is what CBO will say. It does not contain any money to pay for the extension. In fact, the Joint Committee on Taxation scores all tax legislation statically, which I disagree with, but that is what they do. It nearly always overestimates the amount of lost revenue whenever you cut taxes, rather than scoring the cost to the Treasury dynamically, which would recognize that many tax cuts actually increase growth and taxable activity, and thus increase Federal revenue. Good tax reductions will seldom fully pay for the full cost they incur in the short run, but usually they do help the economy do better than otherwise would be the case, and bring in more revenues. So it is not a full dollar-for-dollar cost like CBO scores. Thus, spending would have to be reduced substantially to allow under some pay-go idea any tax relief, including even extending the existing tax rates. Let me ask: When did our colleagues ever execute any spending reductions? They have talked about it. They attacked President Bush mercilessly for spending, spending, spending, they said. President Bush was a reckless spender. He caused all this great deficit. He inherited an economy sinking into recession. He inherited a war and a 9/11 attack. He had to work from those facts and work out of those facts. So they have attacked him mercilessly for his tax reduction policies, which I noted a little earlier increased revenues significantly in recent years. But I will say this: Under the plan of this budget, under the points of order, one cannot continue those tax reductions without reducing spending the amount that CBO says they cost the Treasury. Now, how are we going to do that? In fact, I will ask, when have our Democratic colleagues ever proposed reducing spending? Look at this budget that is presented this year. It contains virtually no spending cuts, $18 billion in discretionary spending increases, and not one dime saved in the entitlement program. No reform whatsoever in the massive entitlements which now make up over 60 percent of spending in this Government. Our colleagues are not facing up to that. Thus, I would say to my colleagues with confidence that the plan is clear, their tactics are chosen, and they will say they are not for raising taxes today by this budget. They say this budget does not raise taxes. But I say clearly that is only half true; not much true at all. Because this budget assumes--``assumes'' $916 billion in new revenue, new tax revenue. It assumes we are going to receive $916 billion in new revenue, and where can we figure that? Well, those are the numbers that come from CBO's estimate, that is the Congressional Budget Office which estimates these things--that is what CBO estimates will occur if the existing tax rates are not extended, but allowed to jump back up again to a higher rate. Second, they have created four new budget points of order against extending the current tax rates. This means that extending low tax rates will require not 50 votes but 60 votes, a supermajority to do that. As I noted when we passed these tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, the votes were razor thin. Now that we have a Democratic majority--not only that, now they have changed the vote total necessary to extend these tax cuts to 60. How are we going to get 60 votes? Well, under these tactics and under the budget points of order fine print contained in the budget, these lower tax rates that are in existence today cannot be extended without ``paying for'' them. How do you pay for them? By cutting spending by the amount CBO scores the loss in revenue. This means reducing spending. The thought that our Democratic majority plans to reduce spending, even though they talked about it this fall in the campaign like they had an intention to do so, the thought that they would have plans to actually contain waste and fraud and reduce spending is really to step through the looking glass, I have to tell you. How can I say that? Oh, you are just being critical, Sessions. You are just being critical. Let's look at the budget to see what it says. The budget completely ignores President Bush's request to terminate or reduce funding for 141 programs that would save $12 billion in 2008 alone. It doesn't touch any of those programs. Here is the Chief Executive of the Government of the United States. He recognizes that some of the programs simply don't work well. Out of the 1,000 in existence, he recommended a modest 141 be substantially reduced or terminated. It would save $12 billion in 1 year. Over 5 years, that is $60 billion. What do we see in this budget? Nothing. Zero. What about the entitlement programs? We are now at $1.5 trillion, $1.6 trillion in entitlements, which is about $900-some-odd billion in discretionary spending. The biggest amount of the budget now is in entitlement, or mandatory spending. We all know that. Did our colleagues propose any steps to contain the growth at over 6 percent a year automatically of mandatory entitlement spending? No. Zero. No cuts in that. No reductions. Well, there was a little reduction, but they used that to go around and spend it on some other entitlement program. So the net was no reduction in the growth of entitlements, not one step toward making the entitlement programs more solid. What else? We have to keep this between us all. It is a little bit of a secret. But let me tell you what the budget does. It doesn't cut spending. This budget increases spending by $18 billion in the discretionary account above what President Bush asked for, the man who was being accused by Democratic candidates last year of being a reckless spender. It increases spending. So you tell me, colleagues, what we are dealing with. I would suggest that elections have consequences; that despite protestations of frugality and criticisms of Bush spending, our Democratic friends have produced a budget that will result in a $916 billion tax increase and $986 billion spending increase, just as I pointed out, with the $18 billion spending increase over President Bush's proposals, as I mentioned earlier. It adds up over a period of time, goes into the baseline, and surges spending. That is why you have to have restraint and show toughness and responsibility. I will just say that the leopard has not changed its spots. When we look at it, as a budget, what does it do to our sustained effort to keep our economy vibrant, keep our taxes low, and the growth going and reducing unemployment? I submit that what we have done in the budget is that we have loosed forces that inevitably will put us at a point in time down the road, 1, 2, 3 years, when these tax extensions can't even be carried out. When they can't be extended anymore, these lower tax rates are going to have to go up because we are not going to have a cut in spending. My colleagues are not going to cut spending. They are going to increase spending. They are not going to cut spending. How are we going to pay for these tax cuts? How can we pay to extend the existing rates? They are going to continue spending. What is going to happen is the tax man is going to get deeper and deeper into the pockets of working American citizens. It includes the marriage penalty, it includes the dividend tax, the capital gains tax, and the child tax credit, and others. So that is the big deal we are dealing with. I started thinking about this, and I decided what this is, in my own little mind. The way I figure it out, here is the Budget Committee, our Democratic Budget Committee. They passed a budget. The budget, in my mind, amounts to a torpedo heading toward our vibrant, free economy. Our Democratic colleagues say: We haven't sunk the ship. We haven't hit the ship. But the torpedo has already been loosed. It is going to hit the ship because that is what the budget does. Anyway, I just tell you that the mechanism is at work, and I don't know how we can stop it if we pass this budget. I do have a solution to it, however, and I will talk about that in just a minute. This is not an academic debate. We are talking about real dollars for real Americans if these tax cuts expire, the lower rates that we have today, and they go back up. The lowest income families in America who pay taxes, those earning less than $15,000 per year, whose tax rates are covered by this temporary extension, will see their tax rates increase 33 percent. I think the $1,000 current per-child tax credit is one of the best things this Congress ever did, and I campaigned on it in 1994. The $500-per-child credit worked so good and was so popular that we added another $500 per child as part of the budget reconciliation process. That is coming to an end. It needs to be extended. So it is going to drop from $1,000 to $500. The standard deduction for married couples will be cut by $1,700 per year. That is $140 a month for a family. 45 million working families with two children, if those tax reductions are not extended, will pay $3,000 more in taxes per year, which is equivalent to a 5-percent pay cut. And 15 million seniors will see their taxes increase. This is reality, and I am not going to go quietly on it. We need to fight this with all the strength that we have. The four new points of order that are in this budget make it almost impossible to extend the existing tax cuts, and they are the trouble here. We need to confront those. I have offered an amendment that will deal with it, and I called it up on the floor just a minute ago, but let me mention the four points of order that are included in this budget that make it dead certain, if we continue with those points of order, that we are not going to be able to maintain the current tax rates and that we will see a substantial tax increase on all Americans. The so-called pay-go rule, which states in part that the Senate cannot consider any revenue legislation that would increase the on- budget deficit in the current fiscal or budget year, the five fiscal years following the current fiscal year, or the 5 years after that-- that is the pay-go rule. Basically, it means you either have to raise taxes to pay for tax extensions or you have to cut spending, and we are not likely to do the latter. No. 2, a point of order against any legislation that increases long- term deficits. Well, Joint Tax has already scored these tax reductions as costing the Treasury money. Even though money to the Treasury is going up after we reduce taxes, they scored it as costing the Treasury. Therefore, that point of order would be sustained. What does a point of order mean? It means that you can object to extending one of these tax cuts, and it would not take a 50-vote majority to extend the tax cut, or 51. It would take 60, a supermajority, because we create a point of order that allows for a larger vote to be required. No. 3, there is the so-called save-Social-Security-first point of order. This point of order prevents any new tax relief or extension of existing tax relief that would worsen the budget deficit until the President has submitted and the Congress has enacted a bill that would ensure the long-term solvency of Social Security. The President tried to do that a couple of years ago. He received not a single vote of support in this body. They wouldn't even discuss it. They said it was dead on arrival. Senator Gregg asked that we have in this budget some plans to begin to reform our entitlement programs, including Social Security. What did our colleagues do in the budget? Zero. Now they are going to say: You can't extend your tax cuts, you can't extend the current lower rates of taxes until you fix Social Security. Not only that, it says until the President has submitted, and the Congress has enacted, a bill to fix Social Security. I certainly think we should do that, but I have to tell you, in my view, I think that is unlikely to occur no matter who is President, no matter how this Congress is made up. We need to do it, and I support it, and I am disappointed we haven't taken any steps whatsoever in this budget to get there. Finally, there is a point of order against any reconciliation action that would increase the deficit. Reconciliation has been the mechanism that Republicans have used to provide tax relief to the American people. That is how we got it through, by a 50-vote majority, as part of the budget reconciliation process. These were narrow votes. We barely got 51 votes. Under this proposal, under this budget, it is going to require 60 votes. So if this budget goes through, the four points of order will practically guarantee that all of President Bush's tax cuts will expire. Out the window will go the marriage penalty relief, this penalty that we impose on people who marry--how dumb is that, to tax marriage? That is not a smart thing for the Nation to do. We eliminated most of that, but that will go out the window if we can't extend that tax reduction, along with the $1,000-per-child tax credit, the adoption tax credit, and the estate tax repeal, along with the capital gains reduction. When we cut capital gains taxes, we didn't lose $5 billion in revenue as CBO said; revenues went up $133 billion. It also will eliminate the dividend tax deduction. So the 10-percent tax bracket will disappear and marginal rates will increase. So each of these points of order require 60 votes, and it means that we are facing a problem of a serious nature. We will be drifting more toward the social European model of higher taxes, higher spending, and higher regulation. I do not believe that is what the American people want. I know there is an idea that through better enforcement against tax fraud we can make up some of this money and that we will increase tax revenue by $100 billion. I wish that could be done. I will support reasonable steps and fair steps to enhance enforcement of our tax laws. But I have to tell you, I met last week with a group of county commissioners from my State, and their No. 1 complaint was that there is some sort of Federal law that has been passed to make them withhold taxes when they pay anybody they deal with so we can close some loophole. And they contend, I don't know how correctly, but they contend it costs more to effectuate the Government's plan than it saves the Government in taxes. The IRS Commissioner, however, testified before Congress that only $35 billion could be expected to be saved through enhanced enforcement over 5 years. I am a former Federal prosecutor, a U.S. attorney. I prosecuted a number of tax fraud cases. I try to pay my taxes. I do the best I can, and I tell you, I think most Americans do. When somebody cheats, they need to be chased down and they need to be prosecuted. It is not right for a rich person to cheat on his taxes while the average Joe is working hard and paying his taxes. So I support that. I am just telling you, there is not a pot of gold out there, as much as we would like to believe there is. Our colleagues, in writing their budget, just assumed we would get it. They made their budget balance by assuming that we would bring in $100 billion out of tax enforcement. It begins to look like smoke and mirrors, really. The Commissioner says $35 billion is the most we can get. Senator Grassley, former chairman of the Finance Committee, says we can't get that much money. It is not as easy as people say. To prevent the largest tax increase in history from occurring, just from not having our existing tax rates extended, I am offering an amendment today that would not only exclude any extension of the expiring tax relief from those four new budget points of order but any budget point of order that would threaten that. If my amendment is agreed to, it would therefore take 50 votes to extend the President's current tax breaks that we have passed here in the body and not 60. If we do not do that, the tax collector is going to be jumping back into your pocket. He is going to be taking a lot bigger chunk out of what you make every week. We have to look at the realities of it. I would say once again, the way this budget is constructed, based on the increased spending our Democratic colleagues propose, we have through this budget loosed a torpedo. How long it takes to hit the ship I don't know--1, 2, 3 years--but it is on the way and it is going to get there and it is inevitable. The bullet has already been launched. I thank my colleagues on the Budget Committee who worked hard-- Senator Conrad and Senator Judd Gregg. They are both extremely capable. These arguments I am making deal a great deal with philosophy and direction, how we see our Government, how big we want it to be, how much we want it to take from the private sector and the wealth that great private sector generates--how much of it we want it to take. I am very troubled that we are headed down the wrong road, that we are going to increase taxes on middle America, on corporate America, and the net result will be this surging economy may be damaged and, in the long run, we may not receive any tax revenue at all. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, am I recognized under the agreement for 1 minute?

Mr. SESSIONS. That is correct also. I suggest this is an odd thing we are doing. This is an executive branch appointment. That is what has been contemplated since the founding of the Republic, and that is what we have done since the founding of the Republic. I was a U.S. Attorney for 12 years. It was always considered an oddity, if some vacancy occurred and the confirmation did not occur within the required time, that a Federal judge would be involved in appointing an executive branch appointment. But that is what the statute was. It worked to some degree, and we went on with it over the years. But it was never a thoughtful, principled approach to how the executive branch of the Government should be operated because I am not aware of any other appointment in the executive branch of Government for which if it is not filled in a timely basis, the Senate--a coequal branch--can up and fill that appointment, nominate and fill it; nor am I aware of any other office in the entire Government where a Federal judge would fill it if the Senate did not act properly or the President did not nominate and follow through properly. I want to say I think Senator Kyl's solution to this problem is thoughtful. The more I considered it, the more I believed he was on the right track. Truthfully, if our colleagues who are concerned about the difficulty in the statute would pay attention to what he has said, you would want to support the Kyl amendment because it goes beyond President Bush. He has less than 2 years left in his term. There will be another President, and this law could be in effect for hundreds of years. So what is the right, principled approach to the appointment of U.S. attorneys? The right approach is that it should be done by the executive branch because it is an executive branch function. I was the attorney general of Alabama. The court did not appoint me. I was elected by the people in a political race. Most attorneys general are elected in political races around the country. Prosecutors are accountable to policies. They are responsible for effectively utilizing limited resources to effect appropriate and just policies of the United States. Presidents and the people of States who elect them elect them to execute certain policies. They usually understand that and make commitments to that as a political candidate, or the President asks if they will support his policies before he appoints them. Now, I want to say this very clearly. Every U.S. attorney who is worth 2 cents understands they did get their office through some sort of political process. Confirmation in the Senate is a political process. A lot of the talk we have had about U.S. attorneys has been more politics than substance in the last few days. It is a political process. But what is absolutely critical is that U.S. attorneys remember the oath they took. That oath is to faithfully enforce the law, whether it involves a Republican, a Democrat, a rich person, or a poor person; that no matter what their station in life, they treat everyone fairly and objectively. They must comply with that. They have been given the chance to do the job, like any attorney general is who runs and gets elected. But their oath, their responsibility, their duty is to do it correctly. You get pressure all the time. They say: Well, somebody tried to pressure a U.S. attorney. It should not happen from Congress, in my view. I do not believe that. I would not call a prosecutor to suggest that I know more than they know about a case that is before them. But sometimes newspapers write editorials: You are not prosecuting this case. Sometimes local mayors and politicians say: You should not be investigating this case. You are under pressure all the time. If a person is not strong and is not committed to integrity and the right principles and doing the right thing, they are going to be a sorry U.S. attorney. That is the bottom line. It is not a job for the cringing or the weak, I will tell you. I had to make some tough calls. In one case where I prosecuted against two judges, I remember one of the legal aid lawyers who testified on my behalf--his client did--he told me during the trial: Jeff, if these guys are acquitted, both of us are going to have to go to Alaska. It is tough business. You have to do what you think is right and proceed with the case. Now, if Senator Kyl's amendment is not accepted, I have an amendment I think would help. I hope Senator Feinstein would not be maybe even opposed to it, although I am not sure she is comfortable with it at this point. But I would point out to my colleagues and ask them to consider this amendment as an appropriate step. My amendment would make a very limited modification to the underlying Feinstein bill, if it moves forward without the Kyl amendment, to ensure that only qualified candidates will be appointed by judges to serve as interim U.S. attorneys. The amendment allows district judges, under this statute, if it becomes law, to appoint only those individuals who are qualified and have proper background checks and security clearances. Under my amendment, a district court can only appoint an interim attorney if they are a current DOJ, Department of Justice, employee or a Federal law enforcement officer, employee, who is already authorized by law or by a Government agency to engage in or supervise the prevention, detection, investigation, or prosecution of any violation of Federal criminal law. This effectively places the same limitations in effect to which the Department of Justice adheres when making interim appointments on district judges. According to the Department of Justice, in addition to the full field investigation, background check conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation--when you are appointed to be U.S. attorney, they conduct a full field investigation by the FBI to see if you have any skeletons in your closet, to see if you are worthy of the office and if you can be trusted. That is done for every interim U.S. attorney, too. Further, the Department of Justice reviews matters under the jurisdiction of the Department's Office of the Inspector General, Office of Professional Responsibility, and the General Counsel's Office at the Executive Office for United States Attorneys to see if this Department of Justice employee has problems, to see if there are complaints, deficiencies, ethical complaints about the person. That can also keep them from being appointed. So even if the candidate is a qualified DOJ employee or Federal law enforcement officer, a district court would not be allowed to appoint them if the court learns they are under investigation or have been disciplined by the DOJ or other Federal agencies such as the inspector general or the Office of Professional Responsibility. Finally, the amendment requires a district judge to confidentially inform the Department of Justice, the Attorney General, of the identity of the person they expect to name 7 days before the appointment so these checks can be made. I think this has two saving graces. It will eliminate some examples we have had of judges appointing people who should not have been appointed, who were not qualified to examine the cases in the office because those cases required security clearances, as all grand jury testimony does, for that matter. They did not have those security clearances. That is important. Also, since the prosecution of criminal cases is an executive branch function, the appointment being from the Department of Justice would at least be making it an appointment from the executive branch of the United States. Both of those, I think, are healthy policies. I join with Senator Kyl in saying, let's do this thing right, if we are going to do it. It is going to be there maybe for 100 or more years. Let's set a policy that would be principled and consistent with the separation of powers that has served us so well and we can be proud of, and not focusing on this specific set of events that led us to these ideas. Mr. President, I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS. Federal judges I have practiced before had philosophical views. Some of them have been pretty activist Federal judges. Some of them think there are too many gun prosecutions in Federal court, too many drug prosecutions, maybe too many immigration prosecutions. They could, under that power, appoint someone who would not follow the policies of the President who was elected to set prosecutorial policy; is that not correct?

Mr. SESSIONS. The Feinstein legislation would have the judge make that appointment.

Mr. SESSIONS. We have people pointing out a flaw in the current bill that we did pass, that the Senator acknowledges is there, and I acknowledge is there. People cite potential abuses from the system. But as the Senator was speaking yesterday on his amendment, a hypothetical came to mind. He has been in the Senate a long time. He is one of the great lawyers in the Senate. He has been on the Judiciary Committee for many years. Let's assume this hypothetical: A President of the United States believes strongly that the Federal gun laws should be enforced, that the Federal immigration laws should be enforced, that the Federal death penalty should be enforced. He or she nominates a person who shares those general philosophies to be U.S. attorney. Under the Feinstein amendment, if this Senate were a liberal Democratic Senate that didn't share those views and did not confirm that U.S. attorney within 120 days, it would then fall to a district judge in some district to make that appointment. Would the Senator agree with that?

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, this is a friendly amendment to the Feinstein amendment. It would simply eliminate the difficulty that has occurred over the years when Federal judges, given the power of appointment, have appointed individuals who do not have security clearances and aren't able to function in the office, aren't able to participate in sensitive cases. I would note that in recent years, U.S. attorneys have been given substantial responsibility against terrorism. In every U.S. Attorney's Office today, there are the most highly secure telephones. They are wired into the most serious terrorism situations that might occur, and they become a coordinating officer in many instances. This would eliminate the danger of a judge appointing someone not qualified to participate as an effective member of that team because they lack the security clearance. It would require appointing someone with law enforcement experience and security clearance. This is a technical amendment. I ask my colleagues to support it.

Mr. SESSIONS. This is a technical but important amendment that guarantees that any appointee to the office of U.S. attorney, a critical component in our law enforcement and terrorism matters, will have the required security clearance. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, if the Kyl amendment is not approved, my amendment would require interim U.S. attorney appointments made by a district court have appropriate and proper background checks. That is, whoever the judge appoints would have background checks and security clearances in order to maintain efficient operation of the office during this transition period. The Feinstein bill that reverts to the previous process does not allow for that to happen, and we do know that in the past judges have nominated candidates who have serious difficulties. In 1987, an interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia, who was not a Department of Justice employee, did not have a background investigation, and was appointed by a district judge, started demanding to find out everything that was going on in the files related to a prosecution of prominent public officials. The First Assistant U.S. attorney there, a career person, was taken aback by this. The judge appointed interim U.S. Attorney didn't have security clearance to see the files, yet he had been appointed by the judge. So they had to remove the files from the office. Not everybody can go in and see an investigatory file or see grand jury transcripts. Those are, by law, available only to law enforcement officers who meet certain security clearances. There was another example where the chief district judge in South Dakota told the Department of Justice he wanted to appoint an individual who did not have any Federal prosecutorial experience, had not undergone a background check, and did not have the necessary security clearances. The Department of Justice strongly objected. It goes against the policy of the Department of Justice and the efficiency and effectiveness of the nominee. The Department of Justice appointed a different candidate, under an existing law, and the Federal judge executed the oath of office for this appointee and copies of the Attorney General's order were sent out to the district court. Ten days later, the Department of Justice received a fax indicating that the chief district judge had decided to appoint the earlier unacceptable candidate as U.S. attorney. They had two of them appointed. So I think we can fix that problem. That turned out to be an unpleasant mess, if you want to know the truth, and we can do better about that. I see Senator Kennedy is here, so I won't go on at length about this, except to say if we go back to the previous system that had been in effect for many years, it has been effective but we will face the same serious problems I just mentioned. Also, as a matter of principle, it is inconsistent with the responsibilities we give to the President of the United States to appoint these officers and to give it to a separate branch of Government that is not given the constitutional authority to make those appointments. But I think we can fix it. We can do better. We can fix this. I think the Kyl amendment represents the appropriate principled approach to it. However, if the Kyl amendment does not succeed, I would suggest my amendment, which makes for a limited modification to Senator Feinstein's amendment by ensuring that only qualified people be named, people who meet the requirements, people who have a security clearance as part of the executive branch of the Government, who may be picked by a judge, whoever they choose, but they at least would be qualified through security clearances and professional background to be a U.S. attorney. Maybe that would be a compromise that would help eliminate some of the practical difficulties, even if it does not eliminate the philosophical difficulties of having appointments made by a different branch of Government. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I call up my amendment at this time.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank Senator Kyl for his work and thoughtfulness on this subject. A situation that has always caused enemies is when judges--the judicial branch--appoint officials of the executive branch. In particular, a judge is supposed to be a neutral arbiter for the contest going on before him. If he appoints the coach or the quarterback of one of the teams it seems as though he may not be facilitating a fair trial. It creates a perception that I believe is not healthy. Some judges have actually refused to appoint a U.S. attorney. They didn't think they should be taking sides in lawsuits that would come before them or stating to the world that they were, in effect, choosing and validating the integrity and their support for one of the advocates who appears before them. That is pretty basic to our system. But we have had a different procedure for appointing interim attorneys for many years. It has been discussed over time as being unwise, but nothing ever happened until the PATRIOT Act reauthorization. Then, when we finally changed the procedure for interim appointments, I think we didn't do it well. We fixed the problem but left a big loophole that does need to be worked on. On balance, the Kyl amendment is preferable to going back to the old system, and I support it. I also note there has been a lot of talk about politics and the Department of Justice. I served as a U.S. attorney for 12 years. I served as an assistant U.S. attorney for 2\1/2\ years. I came to know and love and respect that office. It is a very great and important office. To be able to go into a court of the United States of America and to stand before that jury and that judge and all the parties who are there and the court says: Is the United States ready? And you say: The United States is ready, Your Honor--to speak for the United States of America, to represent the United States of America in court is a high honor and a tremendous responsibility. My impression, my entire experience was that when faced with difficult choices, if I called the people in Washington and sought their advice or help or insight into how to handle a difficult matter, they were very respectful of my decisionmaking process. They would provide support and advice, and they usually deferred to the decision of the prosecutor. They have strict regulations that require cases to be reviewed at various levels in the Department before an indictment can be returned because the U.S. attorney is not a free agent. They are not entitled to indict anyone they choose without any review within the Department of Justice, any oversight at all. A lot of us thought sometimes there was too much of that, but it was mainly a bureaucratic headache you had to go through with some cases. The U.S. attorney is appointed by the President. Presidents who take office routinely replace U.S. attorneys who were there and appoint people they believe are able and who will execute their approaches, their policies of law enforcement and litigation. That is what a Presidential election entails. When we elect a President, we understand they are going to appoint U.S. attorneys who will be responsible for their effort, and if they refuse to prosecute immigration cases, for whatever reason they might decide, and the United States public knows about this, what recourse do they have? They can vote against the President if he appoints somebody who won't enforce the law, gun prosecutions, or any other kind of prosecutions. That is an accountability of sorts. But to have a judge who has a lifetime appointment make these appointments and who has no accountability to the public is not healthy. I believe it undermines accountability. I guess I had the occasion to be fired. They have been talking about a lot of people being fired. When President Bush took over from President Reagan--I had been appointed a U.S. attorney by President Reagan--even though I had been a Republican and was supported by a Republican President, he wanted everybody to resign so he could replace all the U.S. attorneys. This was a perfectly logical decision for him to have made. As a matter of fact, I remember it being discussed, although not acted on, at the midterm of President Reagan's Administration whether U.S. attorneys should be asked to resign after 4 years and bring in new blood. They chose not to do that. When President Bush took office, many U.S. attorneys did not stay on. Over a period of weeks and months, they submitted their resignations, and he appointed new U.S. attorneys, many excellent U.S. attorneys. I asked that I be allowed to stay on, and after some time, they said: You can stay on. So I stayed for 12 years. There were a handful of U.S. attorneys who stayed during that period--I mean literally half a dozen or fewer who stayed 12 years. I say that to say these appointments are appointments of the President. The U.S. attorneys have to be responsible, if Presidential elections mean anything at all, in executing the policies the President sets forth with regard to criminal cases or civil cases, for that matter. That is what he does. We have this sense in which an appointment of a U.S. attorney is both political and nonpolitical. Let me tell my colleagues how it works. This is very important. Most U.S. attorneys are recommended to the President or known to the President to have certain abilities. People make recommendations. If it is a Republican President, they tend to appoint Republican U.S. attorneys. If it is a Democratic President, they tend to appoint Democratic U.S. attorneys. Local Congressmen and Senators--particularly Senators, since we are in the confirmation process--make these recommendations to the President. He listens to them and gives great weight to the recommendations. So most of the people who are appointed have some sort of political heritage or background, but when you take that oath, when a person becomes a U.S. attorney and they are asked to evaluate the merits of an existing case before them as to whether a person should be charged, as to what kind of plea bargain should be entered into in the course of a prosecution, they should follow the law, they should follow their personal integrity and do the right thing regardless of any politics, regardless of whether that defendant or the person involved in a civil lawsuit is a Republican, a Democrat, rich or poor, whatever. They have taken an oath to enforce the laws fairly against everyone. I took it seriously. It was an important oath to me. I don't think I have ever done anything of which I am more proud than serving as a U.S. attorney. I believe I fulfilled that oath as God gave me the ability to do so, and I made some tough calls. I handled cases against people I knew-- friends. I felt it was my duty, and I did my duty as best I could. I am convinced that most U.S. attorneys do the same. The appointment process has a political component, as everyone in this body knows, because I submit to my colleagues and to anyone who is listening, there has not been a U.S. attorney appointed who doesn't have some sort of Senate recommendation to it. In fact, they have to get our approval to move the nomination through the Senate. That is a political process. So some of these e-mails which are being talked about I think are not so unusual at that level, where they are talking about appointments. Are we appointing people who are loyal to President Clinton or are we appointing people who are loyal to the administration of President Bush, who wants his administration to succeed and wants his priorities to succeed? That is how appointments are made. But once you take that position, nobody in the Department of Justice, for corrupt or ill intent, should ever try to influence a legitimate, proper decision of a grand jury or a U.S. attorney with any improper motive because of politics. That is a tradition which most of the public may not know but is deeply understood throughout the Department of Justice. Years ago, assistant U.S. attorneys would resign when Presidents were not reelected. The whole office would resign. As a matter of fact, when I came on in 1980, several offices still had that tradition, and in several offices, when the new U.S. attorney walked in, there was nobody there. They thought that was the right thing to do--to turn it over and let the new President and new U.S. attorney hire whom he or she wanted to run the office. That has ended, I think correctly. Now in every U.S. Attorney's Office, there is a deep cadre of experienced career prosecutors. The U.S. Attorney's Office is much larger today. They have grown in size, and they have a deep cadre of professional assistants, many of whom are appointed by different political parties of different Presidents, different Attorneys General, and selected by different U.S. attorneys. Everybody, if they are doing their job correctly--and I am convinced that most do, overwhelmingly they do--they make decisions on cases based on the merits. If someone in the office tries to upset that or if some U.S. attorney tries to squash or cover up a case that should be prosecuted or a U.S. attorney tries to prosecute someone and there is not a legitimate basis for it, there are Federal agents involved in these prosecutions, assistant U.S. attorneys, people talk about these things, and it comes to the surface. Really, it is very difficult for anybody to not do what is right. I am not saying it can't be done, but I am just emphasizing that U.S. attorneys have a responsibility to do what is right. Their assistants are raised in that concept, they are trained in that concept, and if some political shenanigans are attempted, those assistants will usually push back and can appeal to the Department of Justice in Washington or state their claims. That is just the way it is. What about this deal of President Bush firing 8 of U.S. attorneys? Let me say it this way: The President was in midterm. He had been reelected. Apparently, there was a discussion as to whether U.S. attorneys should be kept or replaced. Somebody said: Why don't we replace them all? He said: No, that is not a good idea. We ought to evaluate them and see which ones we want to keep and which ones we want to replace. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, in my view, Presidents and Attorneys General have a greater responsibility than they have exercised to ensure that U.S. attorneys are carrying out aggressively the policies they set forth. It is mainly a question of policy. They made that decision. They battled it down and came out with eight U.S. attorneys whom they wanted to replace out of 93 U.S. attorneys. That is not a holocaust of U.S. attorneys. When I was U.S. attorney and President Clinton was elected President, he sent out a notice that everybody would resign almost immediately. In the past, President Carter, President Reagan, and President Bush gave people 6 months or more notice to get their affairs in order and trundle on off in a nice fashion, give you an opportunity to find another job. But President Clinton sent out a notice immediately: You are out of there. It caused an uproar, and then they backed off and said: OK, take your time; we respect you more than that. We will let you take some time before you are out of here, but you are out of here. I have seen that twice. I saw it when President Bush took over from President Reagan and when President Clinton took over from President Bush. I wish to talk about this question of how you fill a vacancy in the U.S. Department of Justice, a U.S. attorney position. I always thought it odd that the court makes that appointment under certain circumstances. Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, in a Judiciary Committee hearing on February 6, said: Allowing the district court to appoint U.S. attorneys would deprive the Attorney General of the authority to appoint his chief law enforcement officials in the field when a vacancy occurs, assigning it instead to another branch of Government. The President is elected to do this. He is the chief law enforcement officer. He sets the prosecutorial policy, not the courts. McNulty further testified: Some district courts recognize the conflicts inherent in the appointment of an interim United States attorney who would then have matters before that court--not to mention the oddity of one branch of government appointing the officers of another branch of government--and they have simply refused to exercise the appointment authority. Some judges felt so strongly that this is an unhealthy way of doing business, that they should appoint the prosecutor who is going to be appearing before them trying to convict somebody, yet they are supposed to be a neutral arbiter of the facts and the law, that they wouldn't make the appointment. McNulty pointed out: Other district courts ignored the inherent conflict and sought to appoint as interim United States attorneys wholly unacceptable candidates who lacked the required clearances or appropriate qualifications. You have to have a secret clearance to be a U.S. attorney. This is very serious business, who gets appointed U.S. attorney in these matters. Let's say there was a U.S. attorney who had a meeting with the judge--and I have had these judges who like to tell you what the policy should be. They like to tell you, you are prosecuting too many drug cases; you are prosecuting too many gun cases. We are the judges; we think you, prosecutor, you work for us, basically you are prosecuting too many immigration cases. You need to do other kinds of things more fitting for the Federal Court, Mr. Prosecutor. Well, who is the prosecutor working for? Is he working for that judge or is he working, in effect, to set forth the policy of the person duly elected President of the United States and thereby empowered to appoint him and thereby to set those policies? So you have to tell the judge, you know, I like you, Judge, and I appreciate all that. I know you, but that is not our policy. We believe we should prosecute gun cases. We think there is too much violence in America, and drugs and gangs are out there killing people and doing all these things, and our policy is to prosecute drug cases. What about immigration cases? Nobody else will prosecute an immigration case. One U.S. attorney had a lax record because she did not prosecute those cases to the level of other similar districts and was criticized for it by a lot of people. Let's say there was a vacancy, and under S. 214 the Senate majority now refused to confirm a Bush appointment to that district and the judge appoints somebody who agrees with him who wouldn't prosecute immigration cases or gun cases or drug cases, and they could be in there permanently. This idea that the Executive Branch, or President, can abuse the system is as true and possible as the idea that a judge can abuse the system. If the President does it, at least we in this Congress have a vote, and the American people have a right to vote on a President. So there is accountability at least in this system that is not in the Judicial branch of government. Paul McNulty, the Deputy Attorney General, said this: The Department of Justice is aware of no other agency where Federal judges, members of a separate branch of government, appoint the interim staff of an agency. I would ask my colleagues here to name one where the Federal judges fill a vacancy somewhere in the Government. In addition to the constitutional separation of powers that is of concern with this approach, McNulty says: At a minimum, it gives rise to an appearance of potential conflict that undermines the performance or perceived performance of both the executive and judicial branches. Tough cases come up before courts and they are litigated before judges with great intensity. There is a lawyer for the defendant and there is a lawyer for the Government, the prosecutor, and imagine now that the judge has appointed the prosecutor. It creates some unease, I submit, and it is not a little bitty matter. I am talking about a matter that will linger for 100 years. I am not talking about the immediate media flack we are having now, that we are digging into and seeing whether everybody can figure out exactly what happened, and get a complete story of how the eight U.S. attorneys were asked to move on. We will get into that. That will all happen. I don't know exactly what happened there, but I am saying that, as a matter of policy, the appointments of executive branch officers should be maintained, so far as possible, by the executive branch. I will say one more thing. I do support the Kyl amendment. I think that is a principled approach. I think the PATRIOT Act language we passed was not carefully thought through and did leave a loophole that could allow the President to avoid confirmation process, and I think that is not healthy. I believe the Kyl amendment, consistent with the separation of powers, will confront and deal with that problem. I will say this, regardless of how my colleagues might vote on that, I do believe we ought to consider an amendment I have offered. Amendment No. 460

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I am pleased to introduce today the Emergency and Disaster Assistance Fraud Penalty Enhancement Act of 2007. The bill creates a specific crime of fraud in connection with major disasters or emergency benefits and increases the penalties currently available for such acts. I am happy my good friends and colleagues, Senators Landrieu, Vitter, Cornyn, and Grassley have joined me in this important effort. I commend them for their leadership on this issue and look forward to working with them to pass this important piece of legislation. As a former Federal prosecutor myself for 12 years on the gulf coast of Alabama, and one who has been involved in prosecuting fraud in the aftermath of hurricanes, I can tell you that it goes on, unfortunately, and there are some weaknesses in our laws that we can fix. The ideas in my bill have received strong congressional support. In fact, the House of Representatives passed this same bill last Congress, H.R. 4356. Last March, the House Judiciary Committee approved the Emergency and Disaster Assistance Fraud Penalty Enhancement Act because both Democrats and Republicans wanted to move as quickly as possible against disaster assistance fraud. The committee submitted a report expressing its favor for the bill and recommended it be passed without amendment. Last June, the Department of Justice sent a letter to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee in strong support of the bill, noting that it would ``provide important prosecutorial tools in the government's efforts to combat fraud associated with natural disasters and other emergencies.'' The goal of my bill is to protect the real victims of disasters such as Hurricane Katrina by specifically making it a crime, under the existing fraud chapter of title 18, USC chapter 47, to fraudulently obtain emergency disaster funds. After an emergency or disaster, such as the recent tornadoes that devastated the city of Enterprise in my home State, we should do everything we can to make sure 100 percent of the relief funds gets into the hands of real victims. Taxpayers should not sustain a financial loss at the hands of scam artists, and these wrongdoers should not profit from exploiting the victims of horrific events. Common sense requires that those who deceive the government and obtain emergency disaster funds by fraud be subject to criminal punishment. I want to share some thoughts about the scope of the problem. Hurricane Katrina produced one of the most extraordinary displays of loss, pain, and suffering, and of scams and schemes that we have ever seen. The scope of the fraud and the audacity of the schemers was astonishing. One of the most heinous examples is a woman who tried to collect Federal benefits by claiming she watched her two daughters drown in the rising New Orleans waters. In truth, she did not even have children and she was living in Illinois at the time of the hurricane. Her outrageous claims are an affront to the many people who actually did lose loved ones in that terrible storm. Another example of blatant and widespread fraud after Katrina include, in Texas, a hotel owner who submitted bills for phantom victims who never stayed at his hotel. Across the gulf coast, roughly 1,100 prison inmates collected more than $10 million in rental and disaster relief assistance by claiming they were displaced by the storm. People in jail were being sent checks. You say: How can that happen? Well, they are trying to get money out to people in a hurry. I think they could do a better job, frankly. I think FEMA could do a better job in analyzing these claims. But the truth is, in the rush to make sure that people who have lost everything have money to find a room to stay in so they are not out on the streets, it does require them to take more risk than normally would be the case. People who take advantage of that to defraud the taxpayers and to rip off the system ought to go to jail for it. In California, a couple posed as Red Cross workers and fraudulently obtained donations, saying they were working for the Red Cross. Also, in California, 75 workers at a Red Cross call center were charged in a scheme to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Red Cross. One individual received 26 Federal disaster relief payments by using 13 different Social Security numbers. In my home State of Alabama, FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, paid $2,748 to an individual who listed a P.O. box as his damaged property. As of January 3, the Hurricane Katrina Fraud Task Force has charged 525 individuals in 445 indictments brought in 35 judicial districts around the country. These numbers continue to grow every day. The Justice Department is aggressively prosecuting these crooks, but they have asked us for this additional tool. They have asked us to pass this legislation so that the Federal statute adequately addresses and deters fraud in connection with emergency disaster assistance. The fact is, some people think in a disaster they can run in and make any kind of bogus claim they desire--that money will be given to them and people will be too busy to check. And if they do, nothing is ever going to happen to them. We need to completely reverse that mentality. We need to create a mindset on the part of everybody that these disaster relief funds are sacred; that they are for the benefit of people who have suffered loss, and only people who have suffered loss should gain benefit of it. We need to make it clear that those who steal that money are going to be prosecuted more vigorously and punished more severely than somebody who commits some other kind of crime because I think it is worse to steal from the generosity of the American people who intended to help those in need. The total price tag for the fraud committed after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita is not yet known, but the Government Accountability Office investigators have testified that it will, at the very least, be in the billions of dollars. I am not talking about millions. This is the GAO saying it will be, at the very least, in the billions of dollars. Now I have seen people, I have been down to Bayou La Batre and Coden and areas in my home area of Alabama who were devastated by this storm, and it is heartbreaking to see people who have lost everything. The day after the storm, my wife and I were there. The Salvation Army showed up and it was the only group there providing meals. There was a long line, and we walked down the line and just talked to the people about what had happened to them. Repeatedly, we were told: Senator, all I have is what is on my back. Now we want to help people like that, but we don't want to help people who are somewhere unaffected in Illinois or somewhere in jail claiming they deserve displaced housing money. So it is an insult to the victims of these natural disasters and an insult to the ultimate victim in this fraud, the American taxpayer. Natural disasters and emergency situations often create an opportunity for unscrupulous individuals to take advantage of both the immediate victims of the disaster or emergency, as well as those who offer financial and other assistance to the victims. The American people are extremely generous in responding to disasters, but they should not be expected to tolerate the fraud of those who deceitfully exploit their generosity. In addition to creating a new Federal crime that specifically prohibits fraud in connection with any emergency or disaster benefit-- including Federal assistance or private charitable contributions--my bill would also update the current mail and wire fraud statutes found in chapter 63 of title 18--title 18 sections 1341, 1343. Those are the bread-and-butter criminal statutes for most frauds. My bill, though, changes the Federal mail and wire fraud statutes by adding emergency or disaster benefits fraud to the 30-year maximum penalties that are currently reserved for cases involving fraud against banks or financial institutions. My bill is timely. Just this month we have seen tornadoes that killed at least 20 people in the Southeast and Midwest and damaged or destroyed hundreds of homes from Minnesota to the gulf coast. I recently toured many of the areas hit by the storms, and I was shocked by the devastation. The loss of eight Alabama schoolchildren at Enterprise High School was especially heartbreaking. I had the opportunity to be with President Bush on the second day I was there. He came down and met with the families of those eight young people who were killed. He spent almost an hour with them--almost 10 minutes a person. It was a moving experience to be a part of that. I talked with each one of those families and felt the pain and loss they suffered. Of course, money is not an answer to their pain. But I would say this: People do want to help. If people take advantage and steal from those who want to help families like that, who are in pain and loss, it is a despicable crime, to me. The President has declared Enterprise and several other Alabama localities Federal disaster areas, including Millers Ferry, AL, in my home county, where one individual was killed. I knew him and his family, and saw the people there who I knew who suffered a total loss of their homes, caused by this incredibly powerful tornado. Being declared a disaster area means victims will be eligible to receive Federal financial aid. It is my responsibility to make sure the money goes to the right people and is not scammed off by criminals posing as victims. I know my colleagues share my deep sympathy for the families who lost loved ones and suffered injuries last week, but it is simply not enough to have sympathy. We must ensure the full resources of the Federal Government are quickly deployed to the affected States, and we must ensure these resources are protected and distributed only to real victims, not individuals seeking to take advantage of the disaster. It is disheartening that there was so much fraud associated with the relief following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, but it is not surprising. I have been there in the aftermath of hurricanes as a prosecutor. I have seen such fraud and abuse firsthand. Our resources are not unlimited, and it is critical that we ensure that every relief dollar goes to legitimate victims. It is important we give prosecutors the tools they need to protect legitimate victims and to protect American taxpayers. By passing this legislation, the Senate will send a strong signal that exploiting the kindness of the American people in times of crisis is a serious crime that will be treated with appropriate severity. We will not tolerate criminals stealing from the pockets of disaster victims. A vote for this bill is a vote to ensure that victims and the generous members of the American public are not preyed upon by criminals attempting to profit from these disasters and emergencies. I think it is a reasonable piece of legislation. We worked hard, on a bipartisan basis, with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Department of Justice. Senator Leahy has indicated he will bring the bill up in the Judiciary Committee this week. We are looking forward to an analysis of it. We will be glad to listen to any suggestions for improvements that may be made, and I think it is a piece of legislation we should move forward with.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I am pleased to introduce today the Emergency and Disaster Assistance Fraud Penalty Enhancement Act of 2007. The bill creates a specific crime of fraud in connection with major disasters or emergency benefits and increases the penalties currently available for such acts. I am happy my good friends and colleagues, Senators Landrieu, Vitter, Cornyn, and Grassley have joined me in this important effort. I commend them for their leadership on this issue and look forward to working with them to pass this important piece of legislation. As a former Federal prosecutor myself for 12 years on the gulf coast of Alabama, and one who has been involved in prosecuting fraud in the aftermath of hurricanes, I can tell you that it goes on, unfortunately, and there are some weaknesses in our laws that we can fix. The ideas in my bill have received strong congressional support. In fact, the House of Representatives passed this same bill last Congress, H.R. 4356. Last March, the House Judiciary Committee approved the Emergency and Disaster Assistance Fraud Penalty Enhancement Act because both Democrats and Republicans wanted to move as quickly as possible against disaster assistance fraud. The committee submitted a report expressing its favor for the bill and recommended it be passed without amendment. Last June, the Department of Justice sent a letter to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee in strong support of the bill, noting that it would ``provide important prosecutorial tools in the government's efforts to combat fraud associated with natural disasters and other emergencies.'' The goal of my bill is to protect the real victims of disasters such as Hurricane Katrina by specifically making it a crime, under the existing fraud chapter of title 18, USC chapter 47, to fraudulently obtain emergency disaster funds. After an emergency or disaster, such as the recent tornadoes that devastated the city of Enterprise in my home State, we should do everything we can to make sure 100 percent of the relief funds gets into the hands of real victims. Taxpayers should not sustain a financial loss at the hands of scam artists, and these wrongdoers should not profit from exploiting the victims of horrific events. Common sense requires that those who deceive the government and obtain emergency disaster funds by fraud be subject to criminal punishment. I want to share some thoughts about the scope of the problem. Hurricane Katrina produced one of the most extraordinary displays of loss, pain, and suffering, and of scams and schemes that we have ever seen. The scope of the fraud and the audacity of the schemers was astonishing. One of the most heinous examples is a woman who tried to collect Federal benefits by claiming she watched her two daughters drown in the rising New Orleans waters. In truth, she did not even have children and she was living in Illinois at the time of the hurricane. Her outrageous claims are an affront to the many people who actually did lose loved ones in that terrible storm. Another example of blatant and widespread fraud after Katrina include, in Texas, a hotel owner who submitted bills for phantom victims who never stayed at his hotel. Across the gulf coast, roughly 1,100 prison inmates collected more than $10 million in rental and disaster relief assistance by claiming they were displaced by the storm. People in jail were being sent checks. You say: How can that happen? Well, they are trying to get money out to people in a hurry. I think they could do a better job, frankly. I think FEMA could do a better job in analyzing these claims. But the truth is, in the rush to make sure that people who have lost everything have money to find a room to stay in so they are not out on the streets, it does require them to take more risk than normally would be the case. People who take advantage of that to defraud the taxpayers and to rip off the system ought to go to jail for it. In California, a couple posed as Red Cross workers and fraudulently obtained donations, saying they were working for the Red Cross. Also, in California, 75 workers at a Red Cross call center were charged in a scheme to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Red Cross. One individual received 26 Federal disaster relief payments by using 13 different Social Security numbers. In my home State of Alabama, FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, paid $2,748 to an individual who listed a P.O. box as his damaged property. As of January 3, the Hurricane Katrina Fraud Task Force has charged 525 individuals in 445 indictments brought in 35 judicial districts around the country. These numbers continue to grow every day. The Justice Department is aggressively prosecuting these crooks, but they have asked us for this additional tool. They have asked us to pass this legislation so that the Federal statute adequately addresses and deters fraud in connection with emergency disaster assistance. The fact is, some people think in a disaster they can run in and make any kind of bogus claim they desire--that money will be given to them and people will be too busy to check. And if they do, nothing is ever going to happen to them. We need to completely reverse that mentality. We need to create a mindset on the part of everybody that these disaster relief funds are sacred; that they are for the benefit of people who have suffered loss, and only people who have suffered loss should gain benefit of it. We need to make it clear that those who steal that money are going to be prosecuted more vigorously and punished more severely than somebody who commits some other kind of crime because I think it is worse to steal from the generosity of the American people who intended to help those in need. The total price tag for the fraud committed after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita is not yet known, but the Government Accountability Office investigators have testified that it will, at the very least, be in the billions of dollars. I am not talking about millions. This is the GAO saying it will be, at the very least, in the billions of dollars. Now I have seen people, I have been down to Bayou La Batre and Coden and areas in my home area of Alabama who were devastated by this storm, and it is heartbreaking to see people who have lost everything. The day after the storm, my wife and I were there. The Salvation Army showed up and it was the only group there providing meals. There was a long line, and we walked down the line and just talked to the people about what had happened to them. Repeatedly, we were told: Senator, all I have is what is on my back. Now we want to help people like that, but we don't want to help people who are somewhere unaffected in Illinois or somewhere in jail claiming they deserve displaced housing money. So it is an insult to the victims of these natural disasters and an insult to the ultimate victim in this fraud, the American taxpayer. Natural disasters and emergency situations often create an opportunity for unscrupulous individuals to take advantage of both the immediate victims of the disaster or emergency, as well as those who offer financial and other assistance to the victims. The American people are extremely generous in responding to disasters, but they should not be expected to tolerate the fraud of those who deceitfully exploit their generosity. In addition to creating a new Federal crime that specifically prohibits fraud in connection with any emergency or disaster benefit-- including Federal assistance or private charitable contributions--my bill would also update the current mail and wire fraud statutes found in chapter 63 of title 18--title 18 sections 1341, 1343. Those are the bread-and-butter criminal statutes for most frauds. My bill, though, changes the Federal mail and wire fraud statutes by adding emergency or disaster benefits fraud to the 30-year maximum penalties that are currently reserved for cases involving fraud against banks or financial institutions. My bill is timely. Just this month we have seen tornadoes that killed at least 20 people in the Southeast and Midwest and damaged or destroyed hundreds of homes from Minnesota to the gulf coast. I recently toured many of the areas hit by the storms, and I was shocked by the devastation. The loss of eight Alabama schoolchildren at Enterprise High School was especially heartbreaking. I had the opportunity to be with President Bush on the second day I was there. He came down and met with the families of those eight young people who were killed. He spent almost an hour with them--almost 10 minutes a person. It was a moving experience to be a part of that. I talked with each one of those families and felt the pain and loss they suffered. Of course, money is not an answer to their pain. But I would say this: People do want to help. If people take advantage and steal from those who want to help families like that, who are in pain and loss, it is a despicable crime, to me. The President has declared Enterprise and several other Alabama localities Federal disaster areas, including Millers Ferry, AL, in my home county, where one individual was killed. I knew him and his family, and saw the people there who I knew who suffered a total loss of their homes, caused by this incredibly powerful tornado. Being declared a disaster area means victims will be eligible to receive Federal financial aid. It is my responsibility to make sure the money goes to the right people and is not scammed off by criminals posing as victims. I know my colleagues share my deep sympathy for the families who lost loved ones and suffered injuries last week, but it is simply not enough to have sympathy. We must ensure the full resources of the Federal Government are quickly deployed to the affected States, and we must ensure these resources are protected and distributed only to real victims, not individuals seeking to take advantage of the disaster. It is disheartening that there was so much fraud associated with the relief following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, but it is not surprising. I have been there in the aftermath of hurricanes as a prosecutor. I have seen such fraud and abuse firsthand. Our resources are not unlimited, and it is critical that we ensure that every relief dollar goes to legitimate victims. It is important we give prosecutors the tools they need to protect legitimate victims and to protect American taxpayers. By passing this legislation, the Senate will send a strong signal that exploiting the kindness of the American people in times of crisis is a serious crime that will be treated with appropriate severity. We will not tolerate criminals stealing from the pockets of disaster victims. A vote for this bill is a vote to ensure that victims and the generous members of the American public are not preyed upon by criminals attempting to profit from these disasters and emergencies. I think it is a reasonable piece of legislation. We worked hard, on a bipartisan basis, with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Department of Justice. Senator Leahy has indicated he will bring the bill up in the Judiciary Committee this week. We are looking forward to an analysis of it. We will be glad to listen to any suggestions for improvements that may be made, and I think it is a piece of legislation we should move forward with.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank Senator Grassley for his remarks and would share his concerns that we have to be intellectually honest about the numbers with which we are dealing. We are not going to be able to have the kind of revenue collection enhancement that some have suggested is possible. I wish it were so. I pay my taxes. Most people pay their taxes. It is not right for people to cheat on their taxes. It cheats all of us when that occurs. From experience, we know that we can't get that big of an enhancement, at least that is what the experts tell us. We cannot get the enhancement from collections that some have suggested that we can. They will use monies projected to be collected--that is, they will say we are going to collect a lot more to justify spending--and then when the revenue doesn't come in, all we have done is increase the debt. So that is a problem and I am pleased Senator Grassley has raised it and we might as well deal with it openly. (The remarks of Mr. Sessions pertaining to the introduction of S. 863 are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')