Jeff Sessions

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, May 25, 2006, at 10 a.m., to mark up an original bill entitled ``The Flood Insurance Reform and Modernization Act of 2006.''

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate Committee on Commerce Science and Transportation be authorized to meet on Thursday, May 25, 2006, at 10 a.m. on S. 2686, the Communications, Consumers' Choice, and Broadband Deployment Act of 2006. This is the second hearing on this act.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, May 25 at 10 a.m. The purpose of this hearing is to receive testimony regarding the outlook for growth of coal fired electric generation and whether sufficient supplies of coal will be available to supply electric generators on a timely basis both in the near term and in the future.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, May 25, 2006, at 9:30 a.m. to hold a hearing on A Status Report on United Nations Reform.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to hold an off-the-floor markup during the session on Thursday, May 25, 2006, to consider the nominations of R. David Paulison to be Under Secretary for Federal Emergency Management, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and Lurita Alexis Doan to be Administrator, U.S. General Services Administration.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Indian Affairs be authorized to meet on Thursday, May 25, 2006, at 9:30 a.m. in Room 485 of the Russell Senate Office Building to conduct an oversight hearing on Indian Education.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet to conduct a markup on Thursday, May 25, 2006, at 9:30 a.m in the Dirksen Senate Office Building Room 226. The agenda will be provided when it becomes available. Tentative Agenda I. Nominations: Sandra Segal Ikuta, to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit; Kenneth L. Wainstein, to be an Assistant Attorney General; Erik C. Peterson, to be U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Wisconsin; Charles P. Rosenberg, to be U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. II. Bills: S. 2453--National Security Surveillance Act of 2006 [Specter], S. 2455--Terrorist Surveillance Act of 2006 [DeWine, Graham], S. 2468--A bill to provide standing for civil actions for declaratory and injunctive relief to persons who refrain from electronic communications through fear of being subject to warrantless electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes, and for other purposes [Schumer], S. 2039--Prosecutors and Defenders Incentive Act of 2005 [Durbin, Specter, DeWine, Leahy, Kennedy, Feinstein, Feingold, Schumer, Biden] and S. 2560--Office of National Drug Control Policy Reauthorization Act of 2006 [Specter, Biden, Hatch, Grassley]. III. Matters: S.J. Res. 12, Flag Desecration resolution [Hatch, Feinstein, Brownback, Coburn, Cornyn, DeWine, Graham, Grassley, Kyl, Sessions, Specter].

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, May 25, 2006, for a joint hearing with the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs to hold a hearing titled ``VA Data Privacy Breach: Twenty-Six Million People Deserve Answers''. The meeting will take place in room 342 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building at 10 a.m.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Special Committee on Aging be authorized to meet Thursday, May 25, 2006 from 10.m.-12 p.m. in Dirksen G50 for the purpose of conducting a hearing.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate Committee of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Property Rights be authorized to meet on Thursday, May 25, 2006 at 1 p.m. to conduct a hearing on ``The Consequences of Legalized Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia'' in Room 226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. The witness list will be provided when it becomes available. Panel I: Members of Congress TBA. Panel II: Julie McMurchie, Portland, OR; Hendrick Reitsema, Eck en Wiel, The Netherlands; Jonathan Imbody, Senior Policy Analyst, Christian Medical Association, Ashburn, VA. Panel III: Wesley Smith, Senior Fellow, Discovery Institute, Castro Valley, CA; Kathryn Tucker, Director of Legal Affairs, Compassion and Choices, Adjunct Professor of Law, University of Washington School of Law, Seattle, WA; Rita Marker, Executive Director, International Taskforce on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, Steubenville, OH; Ann Jackson, Executive Director, Oregon Hospice Association, Portland, OR; Diane Coleman, President, Not Dead Yet, Forest Park, IL.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs' Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, and International Security be authorized to meet on Thursday, May 25, 2006, at 2:30 p.m. for a field hearing regarding ``Congress' Role in Federal Financial Management: Is It Efficient, Accountable, and Transparent in the Way It Appropriates Funds?''

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet on Thursday, May 25, 2006, at 10 a.m. for a joint hearing with the Committee on Veterans' Affairs titled, ``VA Data Privacy Breach: Twenty-Six Million People Deserve Answers.''

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Chair. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, what is the time agreement at this point? How much time do I have remaining on this issue?

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I am very interested in and supportive of the concept embodied in the Hutchison amendment. A few weeks ago Senator Specter and I met with President Uribe in Colombia and with officials of the Dominican Republic. President Uribe and the Dominican Republic said they didn't understand this controversy. They have a good guest worker program. Both of them apparently had a guest worker program with Spain and Canada. Under those programs, the workers would sign up. I am not sure whether it was with the Colombian Government or the Canadian Government. They would be given a visa to work for so many months with the clear understanding that they would be able to come home to their families when they finished work and be able to sign up for the next year unless something significant changed. They were both very happy about that. To my knowledge, we have really nothing like that in our legislation in the main part of the bill. I ask Senator Hutchison, is this something similar to what you are proposing? If so, you definitely have support from those two countries.

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Chair.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Colorado for the concern he has expressed in a heartfelt way. I believe all of us have the potential of reaching an agreement on comprehensive legislation that we could actually support. I would think the Senator would agree with me that good enforcement and a good workplace enforcement system would be critical. According to an article in yesterday's paper, Mr. T.J. Bonner, who heads the Border Patrol union and has always been correct fundamentally, I believe, on these issues, is very dubious that even the House plan is sufficiently effective on enforcement in the workplace. The next thing we would want to do is to figure out some way to treat the people who are here illegally in a fair way. Most of them would want to stay here. Most of them have been here for over 5 years. We need to develop a system to allow people to stay here in a legal way, to come out from the shadows. I think that is a worthwhile goal, and I support that goal. But they do not need to be given every single benefit that we provide to people who come to our country legally, people who have waited in line to have their shot to come to our country. We should not give them every single benefit that a person gets who comes here legally. So we have to worry about that. What happens when we give them a complete amnesty package is they are put on a guaranteed path to citizenship and then they automatically become eligible for these programs, with huge costs. They didn't ask for that when they came to our country. That was not why they came here. They came just to work and make some extra money and, for whatever reason, they stayed. We have to think this through. We cannot be operating on simple feelings alone, but we should analyze it in a fair and objective way and even consider what they want. A lot of them don't want to stay and become permanent residents. Then, finally, we ought to develop a system of immigration that provides more incentives. Why shouldn't a young high school valedictorian in, say, Peru, Brazil, Colombia, or the Dominican Republic, who already has learned to speak English, has had some college, have an advantage of coming into our country over someone who is elderly and would have a guaranteed right under the bill to come in under the parents provision, as Senator Allard suggested? That is what gets us in trouble. We have to think about this. It has real financial consequences. I reiterate what the Heritage Foundation found. They found that without any change in the current law, 9.5 million individuals would enter the country as legal permanent residents over 10 years. CBO acknowledges that 11 million illegal immigrants currently are residing in the United States and over 10 years will be given legal permanent residence as a result of the bill, and an additional 7.8 million new legal immigrants will come into the country under this bill. Not only do we provide legal status for that large group of people here illegally, we start a new system that allows very substantial increases in legal immigration. According to the Congressional Budget Office numbers, over 28 million individuals, therefore, will obtain legal permanent residence over the next 10 years if S. 2611 passes, which is three times the current level that would occur under current law. People say this is just a bill to take care of people and to confront some issues we have to confront, work on the border, and deal with the future flow of immigration. It increases it, according to him, three times in the next 10 years. That is almost 30 million people. That is about 10 percent of the existing population of the United States of America. Mr. Rector of the Heritage Foundation estimates that the real number would be higher. That is just an estimate. And I note, it does not account for people who come here illegally. If we give amnesty for the second time, we are going to have a lot of people believing if they can just get here illegally, somehow they also will be allowed to stay in the country eventually. So we are going to have a substantial number of illegal people. Remember, they are entitled, once they get on this automatic path to citizenship, to bring in their parents, presumably elderly parents, and presumably they will seek, as they have a right to, health care in America which could be $30 billion per year, and they have the option, although it does have to come in under the caps, of also bringing brothers and sisters into the country. I thank the Chair and reserve the remainder of our time.

Mr. SESSIONS. That would be correct. I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for his courtesy.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Colorado. He is a senior member of the Budget Committee. He is capable and does, in fact, help us monitor spending in this body. I am pleased that he shares my view, and I hope our colleagues will listen to the discussions we have that indicate that this bill, indeed, is a tremendous budget buster. There is very little doubt about that in any fashion whatsoever. The Congressional Budget Office has concluded that it busts the budget in the first 10 years. And they conclude, without much analysis at all, frankly, because the numbers are so much worse in the second 10 years, that it clearly will break the budget in the next 10 years. They generally do their studies on a 10-year basis. This is a matter that is tremendously important. It is one of the reasons the legislation before us today is considered such an important matter. It has importance beyond immigration. It has great importance toward the financial stability of this Nation in the future, our ability to make ends meet and not spend more than we take in. You have heard it said, and I have talked to some fine economists and they have it in their minds--well, let's say not a lot of them because most of the economists we have heard testify here have the view that I share. But a lot of people seem to think if we just bring in more people, that will then raise revenues and that will then help us balance the Social Security default we are in. That is one of the myths that are out there. It is a very powerful myth, and it is an appealing myth. First of all, these kinds of pieces of legislation tend to get worse rather than better. I just point out that the Congressional Budget Office study they gave us a few days ago--we have a response to it today to update it. It adds 4 million more people to their estimate in the amnesty section of the bill than they estimated a few days ago. That is a 33-percent increase, a third more than they estimated. These numbers are hard to estimate. We know that in 1986, they predicted that a little over 2 million would be eligible for that amnesty, and 3 million showed up, a 33-percent increase. These are the kinds of numbers we are dealing with. Further, I note, very troublingly, that until we got the initial report from CBO on May 16, nobody had presented a cost estimate on this piece of legislation, and nobody really has today. In fact, the CBO score just goes out 10 years. They don't attempt to deal with the second 10 years, which is where the extraordinary growth in costs to our Government will occur. So I challenge my colleagues. We will hear some talk, but I would like to really see how any increase in revenue the Government might have would have an ability to overcome the huge costs in the future. I think it will be, in 20 years, clear that this amnesty bill--if it goes in like it is today--will add more in costs and will absolutely not help us pay for Social Security, and it will absolutely leave us in a weaker fiscal condition than we are today. Mr. President, how much time have I used? And I ask to be notified at 12 minutes.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, just to drive home these numbers, according to the Congressional Budget Office report under the refundable tax credit--and these are primarily the earned income tax credit provisions--the Joint Tax Committee estimates that the bill would increase outlays for refundable tax credits by $29.4 billion, the largest direct spending effect in the bill over the first 10 years. That is a really huge number. For the earned income tax credit, I have an amendment that will try to reduce that number. But ultimately it is going to be a cost because as a person becomes a citizen, they will be entitled to it. I personally am of the belief that this amount of money is not necessary to be provided to people who transfer from illegal to legal status prior to citizenship, and I will offer an amendment. They weren't getting it before and they don't need to get it now. So I wanted to mention that point. I would recall what Robert Rector said in a press conference yesterday. He referred to S. 2611 as a ``fiscal catastrophe.'' This is a man who, I submit, knows more about welfare and health care benefits in America than probably anybody; he is certainly one of the top few in this country. Mr. President, I see the distinguished Senator from Nebraska. I will yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, that is what we are talking about. This is not a technical matter. I don't believe any study is going to show that these numbers are fundamentally incorrect. I don't believe any numbers will show that the approval of this bill will not be a net cost to the Treasury of the United States. One of the reasons that is sadly so is because so many of the people who are here illegally do not have a high school education. That means they have less opportunity to succeed than if they had come here with higher abilities and skills and were in areas in our country where we really needed them. That could make them be more successful. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor and yield back whatever time is remaining.

Mr. SESSIONS. One of the problems is that people come into the country and they feel bound. If they come illegally, as they come today oftentimes, they don't feel free to go back and forth. Then there is pressure on them to try to bring their family. Whereas if they had a card such as you propose and they could come and go and leave their family at home and just work for so many months like so many Americans do, they work in different cities and towns all over America and come back home to their families, wouldn't that be a positive offering for people who wanted to come work and not a demeaning thing?

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Any of these guest workers that at some point decide they wish to become a citizen or become a permanent resident wouldn't be prohibited from applying under that provision of the bill that we would pass that would allow them to get in that track, correct?