Jeff Sessions

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on May 17, 2006, at 2:30 p.m. to hold a closed Business Meeting.

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 Wednesday, May 17, 2006, at 2:30 p.m. to hold a hearing on Nominations.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry be authorized to conduct a full committee hearing during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 17, 2006 at 10;30 a.m. in SR-328A, Russell Senate Office Building. The purpose of this hearing will be to review the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Utilities Service Broadband Program.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. I yield such time as Senator Vitter uses.

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Senator from Arizona. There is no more harder working, no more knowledgeable Senator in this Senate on the issues involving the border than he. I thank him for his eloquent remarks. I am pleased to yield such time as he may consume to Senator Cornyn of Texas who, like myself, is one of the most knowledgeable people in this Senate who has been engaged in this debate from the beginning and whose advice and recommendations I have valued throughout. So I will yield to Senator Cornyn for such time as he may choose to use.

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, we are at a point where everybody in this body--and overwhelmingly, the American people--wants to see a lawful system of immigration in America. We can all disagree about what to do about the people who have come here illegally already. There are a lot of ideas about that. We can disagree about what our policy should be in the future, but we pretty well have been unified on that point. The 370 miles of fencing that we are talking about, plus barriers for vehicle traffic in a larger amount, has the support of Secretary of Homeland Security Chertoff and the administration. They believe it is a good expenditure, and they are prepared to help find the money to fund it because it will save money in the long run. It is a one-time expenditure and will be a multiplier of the effectiveness of every single Border Patrol agent. As we have heard from Senators Cornyn and Kyl, who have visited the border on a regular basis, we have borders that run right through the middle of towns and communities. How could we possibly put enough agents at every corner, every street to guard it? We need to do better and we can do better. I am amused by my colleague from Illinois, Senator Durbin, saying there is going to be 1,000 miles of fencing. I had originally offered in committee 700 miles. That is what the House passed. We have now come in and listened to the administration and proposed a modest figure of 370 total, counting portions of the fence already built in San Diego, and those being refurbished in Arizona. The House is at 700. So the argument that it is going to be a fence across the whole border or the argument that we are going to build 1,000 miles of fence is not very plausible. Frankly, if the Senate is at 370 and the House is at 700, we are not likely to come out with a compromise at 1,000. What kind of argument is that? Then we heard the argument that it is going to bankrupt America. We spend over $800 billion a year. We can't find a billion dollars to fix this problem? We certainly can. They ask: Will it work? I say let them go to San Diego. Let them go there and talk to the people on both sides of the border where the whole county showed a 56-percent reduction in crime, and on both sides of that fence the economy is booming. It is safe and secure. The smugglers and dope dealers are gone, and things are much better off. It is a positive development. Why are we having opposition to it? Senator Kyl came close to the truth when he said: Whenever anything gets proposed--I am paraphrasing--that might actually work, we get an objection to it. What about a good identifier card? They say something like that makes sense, but every time we get close to having a good biometric identifier card that would actually work, we get all kinds of objections. There is no doubt that some people believe in open borders. There are people who do not want to see this immigration system become a lawful system. I will repeat, we are a nation of immigrants. We are going to increase the number of immigrants. I will support increasing the number of lawful immigrants into our country by a reasonable amount, not three to five times the current level that is in this bill today, even after we reduced the numbers last night. Three to five times is way out of the range of what should be accepted. But we are going to increase immigration. We are not against immigration. I reject that. We want to travel across the border, particularly our Mexican border. It is a very busy place. Senators Kyl and Cornyn are familiar with that border, and they wouldn't support anything that would back that up. I am confident we are on the right track. We have checked with a series of contractors and looked at the numbers. The best estimate we get is that the kind of premier fence we are talking about would be at most $3.2 million per mile, and that would, at 296 miles of new fencing cost approximately $940 million, not $14 billion. Where did that come from? That is not so. It will probably cost around a billion dollars. Remember, as Senator Cornyn reminded us, 1.1 million people are being arrested each day at that border, 1.1 million. How much does it cost to detain and process those people and deport them and move them out of the country or release them or catch and release, in which they then abscond and don't show up to be deported? Is it not better to reduce the number of arrests by creating an effective system that prevents crossing the border rather than all the expense of detecting and apprehending and deporting? We have had some good discussion. We have talked about these issues in a number of ways. With regard to the San Diego fence, according to the FBI crime index, crime in that county dropped 56.3 percent between 1989 and 2000, after the fence was erected. Vehicle drive-throughs in the region have fallen between 6 to 10 per day before the construction of the border infrastructure to only 4 drive-throughs in 2004 for the year. And those occurred only where the secondary fence is incomplete. According to the numbers provided by the San Diego sector of the Border Patrol, in February of 2004, apprehensions decreased from 531,609. The American people need to hear this as well as Senators. In 2004, the apprehensions on the San Diego, CA, sector of the border only were 532,689 apprehensions. How expensive is that? Those figures were in 1993. And in 2003, after the fence was built, it dropped to 111,000 across that whole sector. So the idea that the fence had no impact and everybody went around it is not true. It sent a message that we were serious about creating a border that works, and it reduced by four-fifths the numbers of arrests. How much money did that save? How much time did that save? And it left the Border Patrol officers available to do a lot of different things. In 1993, authorities at the San Diego border apprehended over 58,000 pounds of marijuana coming across the border from Mexico. In 2003, after the fence, the tide of drugs was reduced and only 36,000 pounds of marijuana were apprehended, and cocaine smuggling decreased from 1,200 pounds to 150 pounds. That is some of the progress that was made. This is a narrow amendment, concentrating on the most important 800, 500, or 350 miles of fencing, with 500 miles of barriers. It is focused and it is what the Department of Homeland Security says they need. It is reasonable in cost. It will save money considerably over the long run. It is a one-time expenditure, but it can save us from having thousands of permanent investigators, permanent prison bed spaces, and things of that nature. The key to it is to change the perception and the reality of how we are doing business. Let me conclude with that thought. It is important for this country to make clear to our own citizens and to the world that a lawful system is going to be created, that this is no longer any open border. Once that happens, and once that is absolutely clear, we are going to have fewer people attempt to come in. It is that simple. How do you do it? Well, the President's call out to the National Guard is one signal that things have changed. Business as usual is over. Utilizing fencing is important. Increasing bed spaces and increasing agents along the border are important. All those things can help us reach a tipping point, a magic point on the seesaw or the balance scale. When it tips, it is going to tip so that people will find out it makes more sense to apply to come here legally, according to our laws, rather than coming in illegally. It will add to the workplace enforcement on top of that, and you will become serious about immigration. We can do this. It is not hopeless or impossible. For a reasonable cost, we can tip the scales from illegality to legality. That is what the American people are asking us to do. A vote for this amendment is a step in that direction. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, on the Vitter amendment, I thank Senator Vitter for his amendment. Yesterday, Senator Dorgan offered an amendment to remove the guest worker program in its entirety, and I supported that because I believed it was flawed. Eventually, last night, we came back with an amendment that pretty much fixed it, that whole guest worker program, which I thought was good. I think Senator Vitter's amendment points out and allows us to focus on the fact that this amnesty provision in the bill or regularization provision in the bill--whatever the fair way to describe it is--also has serious flaws. By supporting this amendment, it would be my intention to say let's make it better because I do believe we are not going to reject the people who are here and try to eject all of those people who have come illegally. We need to treat them in a decent and fair and caring way. But also the rule of law is important. I think we ought not to develop a procedure that essentially provides every benefit to someone who came illegally that we would provide to those who come legally. So I will be supporting the amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. I would, briefly. I think it sort of confirms what you are saying. We had a subcommittee hearing on this, and the second professor, Dr. Barry Chiswick, the head and research professor at the Department of Economics at the University of Illinois in Chicago, said: [T]here is a competition in the labor market. And the large increase in low-skilled immigration that we've seen over the last 20 years has had a substantial negative effect on the employment and earning opportunities of low-skilled Americans. . . . [The] large increase in low-skilled immigration has had the effect of decreasing the wages and employment opportunities of low-skilled workers who are currently resident in the United States. Does that comport with the theme of the remarks of the Senator?

Mr. SESSIONS. Here is Professor Harry Holzer at the same committee hearing, three out of five witnesses, most of them pro-immigration witnesses. He is an associate dean and professor of public policy at Georgetown. He says: Now, absent the immigrants, employers might need to raise those wages and improve those conditions of work to entice native born workers into those [construction, agriculture, janitorial, food preparation . . . ] jobs. I believe when immigrants are illegal they do more to undercut the level of wages of native born workers. So I think he also would agree with the Senator from North Dakota.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I would just ask for 5 minutes in support of Senator Dorgan's amendment.

Mr. SESSIONS. I am for it. I know Senator Dorgan's time is limited. I would ask for maybe 3 minutes.

Mr. SESSIONS. I will try to wrap up briefly. Mr. President, I believe this section of the bill as drafted is flawed. It goes further than the drafters and the American people or the President would want it to go. I am not sure how we can fix it at this point. I think the way to concentrate everybody's mind and get it fixed would be for the Dorgan amendment to pass. Let's start over and talk about how we are going to handle this. My staff has looked at these numbers and tried to be as objective as they possibly can to see just what this would allow to occur in America if it were to pass, and I am confident that it includes more than people would think. First of all, it is absolutely not true that this is a temporary worker program. It is called guest worker, which sounds like ``temporary worker,'' but it is not. A person will come into our country under this program--325,000 the first year. Their employer can apply, the day they get here, the first year, for a green card. A green card gives them permanent residence in the United States, unless they get convicted of a felony or something. They get permanent residence. Within 5 years, they can apply for citizenship. So there is nothing temporary about this so-called guest worker program. The President mentioned this morning a couple times, I understand--I heard it a bit, one clip on TV--that he favored a temporary worker program. This is not a temporary worker program. Second, the numbers are extraordinary. Some of you who have been listening to me today are pretty good mathematicians. It is 325,000 the first year. But if that number is reached, automatically it kicks up 20 percent. The next year, if that number is reached, it is 20 percent; the next year, 20 percent; the next year, 20 percent. Those are pretty big numbers. In fact, if it were to stay at that 60 percent level, the numbers would be extraordinary. If you took the congressional resource number, that when a person comes in under this provision as a guest worker and they get a green card and are able to bring in their family, they have calculated 1.2 family members they would bring in for each guest worker. And if you add up those numbers of what we can reasonably expect over a 20-year period, it would be 133 million people. I don't think we will be at 20 percent every year. There are some factors that would show that is not the case. But that is what the bill authorizes, 20 percent automatically, if the caps are reached each year. If it went up at about 10 percent a year, you would still have a very significant increase in just this one program. When you talk about 100 million people, you are talking about one- third of the current population of the United States being admitted under a low-skill worker program, called a guest worker program, that does not require high-skill abilities. We need to completely redo it. I believe that; I really do. I urge my colleagues to think seriously about this, what we are voting for. I know the motive and I know the desire to do the right thing. We are a nation of immigrants. We are going to allow immigration in the future to continue. When we do, we will increase legal immigration into this country, and I will support that. But the rate of increase provided for in this provision is unjustifiable and, therefore, I support the Dorgan amendment. I yield back the remainder of my time to the Senator from North Dakota.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I would like a brief few minutes.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. SESSIONS. I have the opportunity to serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee. We had one hearing that dealt with these issues and dealt with some of the issues the Senator has been talking about specifically. Professor Richard Freeman--and these were pretty pro- immigration panels, but I think they all agree with Senator Dorgan-- Richard Freeman holds the Herbert Asherman Chair, professor of economics at Harvard University. This was his quote just a few weeks ago at a hearing: One of the concerns when immigrants come in that way, they may take some jobs from some Americans and drive down the wages of some Americans and, obviously, if there is a large number of immigrants coming in and if they are coming in at a bad economic time, that's likely to happen. Is that consistent with the Senator's views and that of Professor Samuelson?

Mr. SESSIONS

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I would like to thank my colleague from North Dakota, Senator Dorgan, for his comments. I happened to be in South America a few weeks ago, and I noticed in the State Department news clips that there was a poll taken in Nicaragua, and it said that 60 percent of the people of Nicaragua would move to the United States if they could. Then I asked the Ambassador of Peru about it, and he said: Well, that is interesting. We did a poll down here just a couple of months ago and it was 70 percent. So I think Senator Dorgan has raised an important point, and that point is this: The United States must decide how many people and what skill sets we need in our country to strengthen our country. We simply cannot allow everybody in the world to individually decide they would like to come here and then to grant that request. It simply is not possible. I think what we would see in the months to come and the years to come is that more and more people would choose to come here, and as word got out if this bill were to pass in its present form, that they would decide to come here. The numbers could grow to exceed a level that most people think not possible today. I had a press conference this morning, and we dealt with the question of the numbers of people that would be allowed into our country if this legislation were to pass. The numbers are staggering. Also at that press conference was Mr. Robert Rector, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, the man who did the basic research on the welfare reform bill, one of the more respected individuals in Washington in terms of numbers and public policy. He stated at that press conference that this legislation is some of the most important legislation ever to come before Congress, and he compared it as rivaling in significance to Social Security and Medicare. That is what he said this morning. So we have to think seriously about the legislation that is before us. Yes, we want to treat fairly and justly those people already in the country--even those who are here illegally--and figure out a way to do that right, and that is very significant. We also want to work hard on the border and to make sure we have a legal system that works in this country, and we have been doing some work on that. I don't think we are there yet. This bill does not get us there, but we can talk about it and perhaps make some progress. I would say there is a deeper issue that is part of S. 2611 that has not been discussed publicly until this morning, and that is how many people might be admitted under this bill. My staff, Cindy Hayden and her Judiciary team, have been working for a week to try to figure out just how many people could be admitted. Right now, under current law, this country would admit 19 million new residents over 20 years. Under the legislation that is proposed today, over a 20 year period, we would admit a minimum of 78 million people--four times the number admitted under current law. In fact, as this chart shows, the number of people we admit could be as high as 217 people. If the base numbers in this bill grew at the maximum acceleration factors automatically built into the bill, acceleration factors that kick in not with regard to Congress or with regard to the Department of Labor making any certification of need but simply because people show up and apply to come into our country, they could actually hit 217 million people. That is a stunning number. That is two-thirds of the present population of the United States of America. I don't think it is going to hit 217 million, but I do think it is going to exceed 78 million. Mr. Rector ran his numbers, and they came out very similar to ours. His top number for people admitted over 20 years was 200 million instead of 217 million. Based on his judgment about what might actually happen, he thinks that the number will be 103 million people over 20 years, five times the current rate of immigration into our country today. Based on this finding, that would mean that 20 years from today, 25 percent of the people in this country will not be native born citizens. That is a huge thing. What does that mean to jobs and employment and wages? We haven't thought that through. What have we done to make sure that the people who come here are welcomed and can be met, affirmed and raised in the traditions of America which have created the land of opportunity that attracts people here? What about those people who came into our country legally or those who may be given amnesty under this bill? They are out working at a little above minimum wage and then, boom, every year, larger and larger numbers of people come in, keeping them down at the minimum wage level, not allowing them to build up their salaries. Those are all problems that we have not thought through in a significant way, but they are big problems. These are huge problems. But there is momentum to pass something. What we hear in the Senate is we need to pass something, to send some sort of signal, I guess, politically or otherwise, that we care. We have to do this. We need to think. This Senate is supposed to carefully and thoughtfully consider legislation before we pass it. I am going to talk a good bit about it as time goes on throughout this debate. There are so many important things contained in the legislation, so much experiment, unthought-out policies that could be detrimental to our future, that we must discuss them in an effective way. I guess it was about 3 weeks ago when the bill was previously on the floor and they tried to ram this thing through here. The Democratic leader would not even allow an amendment and they almost passed it. Some of us had to battle and push back. Senator Frist, the majority leader, finally said we can't operate under this procedure. We are not going to deny our Members the right to have an amendment in the Senate on a piece of legislation that may be as important as Medicare and Social Security. For heaven's sake, that was the scheme of things. Now we are supposed to move a 600 page piece of legislation through here, with an agreement that only 20 amendments are guaranteed to get a vote, and then we will pass the bill at the end of the week. I don't think we can really fix it by the end of this week, frankly. I don't think there is enough knowledge in the Senate about what is in the legislation to make it possible for us to reach an agreement on how to fix this. When we had this issue blowup recently--I guess that is the word you would call it--and they tried to move this through and Senator Reid said we would not have any amendments and it was pulled down, I raised the point at that time that we did not fully comprehend the importance of what is in it. We need to study the bill. We need to study the policy behind the bill. Around the country, I called for hearings in the Judiciary Committee, a national discussion on what would be the appropriate way to handle the people who are here illegally. We are going to handle them in a nice and fair and generous way. What about the people who want to come in the future? What are we going to do about them? We can discuss that. Trust me, that is much larger in this piece of legislation. The people who are allowed under this bill to come here in the future dwarf the 11 million who are here now. We need to have a national dialog, but we have not had it. We ended up having one hearing, about 2 hours long, maybe a little more. I think three or four Senators came in and out during the hearing. I was there. We had five economists. They made some important points, although not in depth because of the shortage of time. They noted that the bill as written emphasizes low-skilled workers, and all of them agreed that a low-skilled worker--over half of those now coming in do not have a high school education--cost the economy more than they bring in. All the economists agreed on that. A low-skill worker is not a net benefit for America at this point. They questioned chain migration. They suggested we should question more about the skill sets of people who want to come here. They discussed the fact that there is strong evidence that workers' wages, middle-class and low-end-skill wages today are depressed by larger numbers of immigrants who come in who are willing to work for less. Why would we think the law of supply and demand worked for every other component of our American economy but doesn't work for labor? How silly is that? Those are some of the things we discussed in the one hearing we had in the Judiciary Committee. Friday, I came down to the Senate floor. I made a speech just this past Friday, detailing 15 loopholes in the base bill. Each of those loopholes is very significant and raises important questions we need to address. I will point out briefly what some of those are. Under the bill on the floor today, illegal aliens with felonies or three misdemeanors can get amnesty. That is not what the American people want or what we should want. Illegal aliens who have previously filed fraudulent asylum applications, prohibited by law from getting amnesty or citizenship today, can get amnesty and are put on a path to citizenship. There is no continuous work requirement. They say the people are here to work, but the bill doesn't require continuous work in any significant way. They allow evidence that can be produced to prove you have been in the country or been working that is very dubious and will clearly lead to fraud. The bill says you must accept just and reasonable inferences as evidence and that you can have documents from day labor centers and that an alien can file his or her ``sworn declaration,'' and they must be accepted as evidence that the alien satisfies the work requirement. I pointed out that the bill is fundamentally unfair because it benefits only those who broke the law and not those who followed it and got their work visas to come to the United States or those who left the country when their visa expired as they were supposed to. Another loophole was that the annual numerical cap is not a cap at all. If it is met each year, it automatically goes up 20 percent without any thought going into that, or discussion. Furthermore, in-state tuition will be made available to illegal aliens, reversing carefully considered and fully debated law that we passed a number of years ago in the Congress. These are mostly enforcement loopholes. They deal with amnesty provisions and the enforcement provisions of the bill. They are part of this 614-page bill. But until today, no one has discussed publicly what S. 2611 would do about future immigration or how significant that could be. So we will be discussing that during the course of this debate. I am going to talk about it. I will not be able to complete those remarks tonight, but we will be talking about it the rest of the week, and I think we will see a national discussion begin as a result of the efforts of my staff, and that of the Heritage Foundation, independently, to conclude what the numbers will be. Who and how many people will be admitted on the path to citizenship under this bill? I think we in the Senate, unfortunately, are blissfully ignorant of the scope and impact of the legislation. I think most Members of the Senate still believe that the bill language that says ``guest workers'' is language that means temporary workers when the truth is that virtually all those who will qualify in the future under this bill are not temporary in any way but will be able to stay permanently in this country and will be placed on a direct path to citizenship. That is a fact. On April 19, when we were trying to decide how to handle all these monumental issues, I wrote to the Judiciary Committee and asked to have hearings on the full impact of this bill which is now before the Senate. I asked a number of questions--see if you don't think these are fair questions to ask about a piece of legislation of this significance. I asked: What is the estimated numerical impact of each of the proposed immigration programs? Wouldn't you like to know that? What is the numerical impact? How many will come in? No. 2, how does the future chain migration of family members impact the total immigration numbers on the proposal? We don't know that number. As a matter of fact, in all the numbers we have worked on, we have not tried to calculate it. Next, what will be the legislation's estimated fiscal impact on the Federal budget, as well as State and local governments' budgets? How much will it impact the Treasury of the United States, the taxpayers? Does anybody know that? The answer is no. Next, how will entitlement programs such as Medicaid, TANF--welfare-- and food stamps be affected? Do we need to know that? Sure. What level of immigration in the future is in our best national, economic, social, and cultural interests? What is the interest of the United States? What do we need as a country? What would be good for us? We believe in immigration, we want immigration to continue. I think we might even probably agree that we should increase the number of people who come legally into our country. But what level is correct? Have we discussed that? Have you heard any debate about that? I next asked what categories of immigrants should compose the overall level of annual immigration. What categories? So I said we need to have a national discussion. We had one hearing. We had a group of professors for about 2 hours to discuss the general economic principles relating to immigration. It just was not satisfactory. We did not examine in any way the specific provisions of this 600-page piece of legislation. I sent another letter on April 28 asking our Judiciary Committee to hold five hearings and focus comprehensively on the effects of the proposed legislation. That did not occur. There have never been any hearings on the specifics of this bill. Therefore, as we have gone through it, my staff and I, trying to figure out the numerical impacts of the bill, we came up with some significant numbers. I will not go into the full detail of that tonight. I will talk more about it tomorrow. I will point out again that these are the charts which show the 20- year impact of 2611. These numbers can be calculated based on the provisions of the bill, but it takes a lot of time and effort. We have charts that go down each provision to calculate what the minimum numbers admitted would be and what the maximum numbers admitted would be. Under this piece of legislation today, if the caps, the upper limits on the immigration numbers that automatically go upward if they are ever met, don't go up at all and people bring in their families, their spouses and children who then become citizens, at a minimum 78.7 million people would be admitted over 20 years. That is four times the 18.9 million that the current law allows for today. Who has discussed the impact of that? And absolutely it is going to be more, in my view, than 78.7 million, for any number of reasons I will discuss. In fact, if all the top quotas were hit, that number would hit 217 million, according to our calculations. The Heritage Foundation calculated the number to be about 200 million, I believe. Though that is the top number, Mr. Rector says a careful, conservative analysis of the legislation would lead him to believe that over 100 million people would actually come into America on a path to citizenship in 20 years. That is his best judgment. If somebody doesn't agree, I would like hear about it. One hundred million is five times the number that now can come into our country. It has not been discussed until today. Nobody has really discussed it but us today, that I know of. It is time to talk about that, wouldn't you think? Did anybody even know this was in the legislation? They would have passed this bill without an amendment just a few weeks ago. That was the plan around here, to move it on to conference. They say: Let's just get it out of here. Don't worry about what is in it, Sessions. Don't bother to read it, it is 614 pages. You know you will find something you don't like. That is kind of the talk going on around here. We decided to read it. My staff actually came away stunned by the breadth and the size and scope of this legislation. We need to talk about it more. I will have a few amendments. I am not going to try to file too many amendments. But we will talk about it as time goes. I urge my colleagues to not say to yourself: Well, we need to pass something or I think I will vote for this bill, and maybe they will fix it in conference. This is a piece of legislation that is extremely important to the people of this country of the United States. It is extremely important for our future as a Nation. Mr. Rector said it is a matter of huge importance to our Nation. We need to think about it. If it is not the piece of legislation you thought it was, if it provides amnesty when they said it didn't, if you thought the workers were temporary and guest workers when they are permanent and on the route to citizenship, and you had no idea the number was going to be 100 million new people in the country permanently on the path to citizenship, five times the current number, then I ask you to vote no. Let us back up here. Let us fix this bill or let us not pass this bill. I thank the Chair. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I want to share some thoughts about the immigration legislation that we will be dealing with next week. The bill before us is a massive piece of legislation--over 600 pages, as I recall, and deals with a number of extremely important issues. Little, if any, thought has been given, and certainly no debate and discussion or seeking of economic and scientific information to help us decide what our future immigration policies should be. I have studied that legislation in some depth. I am a member of the Judiciary Committee, and have some fine lawyers on my staff. We have been digging into it, and have become more and more troubled as we studied what the legislation actually means and says. It does not do what it purports to do, which is to create a guest worker or temporary working policy for America. It has a number of other problems with it that I think deserve the most serious consideration. Few, if any, issues that we face in this Senate have greater long- term consequences for our country than immigration. That is a fact. Why are the American people so interested in this? Why have they expressed such concern about it? Because it is very important. We are responsible for them, and we have an obligation to them to think about this very carefully. Unfortunately, we have not done so. It is an idea that we have to do something. Yes, we need to do something. Let us all agree on that. I have suggested that we should first proceed, as the House of Representatives did in a bipartisan, substantial majority vote decided, to deal with enforcement first, and establish some credibility with the American people that we can and will enforce whatever laws we have. To pass a new law and enforce it no better than the one that we have enforced in the past is no good. That is the biggest frustration out there with anyone in our country who believes in law and order, policy and fairness and decency. You don't allow people to break in line ahead of others. How much more basic can it be than that? That is what we learned in elementary school. That is what we follow as adults in this country, but that is not what we are doing at the border. We all know the system is broken. It has made a mockery of the law, and it is a terrible challenge for us, but one that we need to confront. We decided in the Senate, and the President believes, we can't fix the law enforcement system first--we need to fix the entire scheme of immigration. We have not had enough serious hearings on the fundamentals of what we are doing. I have asked for five hearings in the Senate on the Judiciary Committee on the economic and social implication of immigration. We were given one. It was a very valuable hearing but not enough, in my view. Certainly, I do not think the average Senator is fully engaged and aware of the serious concerns this legislation raises. I will take a few minutes to go back over what I called in a speech a few weeks ago loopholes in the legislation. Some of that speech was based on the original Kennedy-McCain bill. I made that speech right after a compromise, the so-called Hagel-Martinez bill, hit the Senate. I will go back over these fundamental problems with the legislation. It indicates the weaknesses that exist today under the bill which will be in the Senate beginning next week. As we go forward into the week, I will be discussing, and perhaps others will as well, deeper flaws in the legislation that deal with the fundamental guiding principles of this legislation: What should we be doing? How many people should be allowed into this country? What skill sets should they bring? How should those decisions be made? How can we create a system which is enforceable, which will work to allow the country to decide what is in its best interests with regard to those who come here? They say we are not supposed to talk too much next week. We are just supposed to come to the floor, offer amendments and maybe ask for 30 minutes of debate. We can have 20 amendments, and we will talk for just 30 minutes on those amendments on each side. We have been told: Don't talk too much, Senator, because we have to move this bill and get it off our plate. They do not want to talk about it too much because people back home might find out what is actually in the bill. That is the honest truth. On both sides, Republican leadership and Democratic leadership want to move something through. But ``something'' is not good enough. We ought to do the right thing. Now I will talk about some of the flaws that continue to exist in this bill. I begin with loophole No. 1, illegal aliens. People here illegally are going to be part of this mass amnesty. We have discussed amnesty and whether the provisions in this bill are amnesty. I have to say I spent 30 minutes in the Senate going back to the immigration laws passed in 1986, and everyone admitted 1986 was amnesty when they passed it. They promised they would enforce the law in the future. They got the amnesty, and they didn't enforce the law. In 1986, they said there would be 1.5 million people claiming amnesty, yet over 3 million people claimed amnesty. They claimed we would have lawful immigration in the future, and now we have 11 million people here illegally. Why should the American people not have some doubts about the promises of Congress and the President to carry out a legal system that will work? Let me point out a few of the things we are dealing with. ``Blacks Law Dictionary,'' which is the premiere dictionary that virtually every lawyer in America has on his desk, has a definition in its section on amnesty, and it is defined as the 1986 Immigration Act. It is included as one of the definitions of what amnesty is. What I suggest, essentially this current bill is probably less tight, less enforceable than the 1986 act. If amnesty has any meaning, this bill is amnesty. I don't want to get into any more debate about it, but I do not back down on the fundamental concept that the legislation before the Senate today is basically an amnesty for the people who came here illegally in violation of our law. They have to do a few things, they have to take some steps, but in no way will they be denied the fundamental things they sought when they came here illegally. We are a generous nation. We know we have a real problem. We are not intending in any way to make all of these people who have come illegally leave the country. We will have to work through this in some generous and humane way to make sure we treat this sensitively and justly, but it is a difficult problem when we reward people who violate the law, for their very violation of that law. It is not a principle that should be lightly traversed. Now here are just some of the loopholes. Loophole No. 1: Illegal aliens with felonies or three or more misdemeanors will not be barred from getting amnesty under the Immigration and Nationality Act. Different crimes make different aliens inadmissible and deportable or ineligible for benefits. As written in this bill, on page 347, it only requires an alien to show they are not inadmissible to qualify for the amnesty. However, some felonies make an alien inadmissible under the act and others do not. The Kyl-Cornyn amendment that we will deal with next week that was blocked by the other side previously was designed to fix this loophole. Senator Reid refused to allow these amendments to be voted on when the bill came up before because he did not want to have his Members recorded as voting for anything. I am not sure too many on our side want to have any votes, either, but it was clear that the Democratic leader was intent on moving this bill forward without any votes or as few votes as possible so we would not have to deal with some of these issues. This was a hot issue. We tried to get a vote on it, and we could not get a vote. So the Kyl-Cornyn amendment which was blocked was designed to fix this loophole. It will keep aliens with felony convictions or three misdemeanors from being eligible for amnesty. Why do we want to give amnesty to felons? The United States ought to decide who it wants to be part of its citizenry. Since we cannot accept everyone in the world who would like to come here, why in the world would we not want to say: If you have a felony conviction, you are not one of them. We will invite someone who is honest and decent who will contribute positively to our country's growth, development, and culture. We could not even get a vote on this to fix it. We have to make this change. Hopefully, we will get a vote on it this week to fix it. I believe we will have a vote in favor of not allowing felons to be given amnesty, but I am not sure, given the mood of the Senate today. Loophole No. 2: Aliens previously barred from receiving immigration benefits for life because they filed frivolous asylum applications will be able to receive amnesty. This is an interesting reversal of existing law. If you come in and make some bogus claim that you are entitled to asylum, you can still get amnesty. We have had a lot of problems with people coming from a country, where maybe they were arrested for a legitimate crime and fled to the United States, saying they are being persecuted back home, and they want asylum. After looking into their claim, we find out it is bogus and they were actually an armed robber in their home country. We barred them from being able to get an application for any benefits under the immigration laws. It is a form of saying: We are not going to tolerate that. This bill reverses that. Under INA section 208(d)6, if the Attorney General of the United States determines an alien knowingly filed a frivolous asylum application, he is to be permanently ineligible for any benefits under the INA. This bill would change that. On page 345, it says: Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the secretary shall adjust an alien who meets the requirements for amnesty. No provision of the bill states that the alien is ineligible for amnesty if they previously committed immigration fraud by filing a frivolous asylum application. The bill gives benefits to aliens previously barred from all immigration benefits. We give amnesty to them. If we want to keep those who have committed immigration fraud in the past from getting amnesty, we have to change that. We need to change that by closing this loophole. Why did they put that in there? Who wrote this bill, I keep asking. I am sure the sponsors of the bill do not know the implications of all of these provisions. I don't know who put this together. Loophole No. 3: All aliens who are subject to a final order of removal who fail to leave pursuant to a voluntary departure agreement, or who are subject to the reinstatement of a final order of removal because they illegally reentered after being once removed from the United States are eligible for amnesty. Pages 358 to 359 of the bill clearly state that certain grounds of inadmissibility in the act will not apply to aliens who apply for amnesty under the bill. The current inadmissibility provisions that are waived include aliens with final orders of removal for document fraud. If you file a false claim to the Government as an American citizen, that is a felony. These charges are providing false documents, offenses that are felony offenses. I repeat, the current inadmissibility provisions that are waived under this bill that will be in the Senate this week include aliens with final orders of removal for document fraud. They have been apprehended, caught, found to be here as a result of making false claims to the Government, failed to attend removal proceedings, were allowed to be out on bail, asked to come to court and answer the charges, and did not show up. They violated a court order to show up. They did not attend their removal proceedings. We call them absconders. And aliens who already have final orders of removal and many other categories are exempted. This means aliens who have already received their day in court, they have had their cases fully tried and have failed to depart the United States unlawfully, will now be rewarded for not leaving. They will qualify for amnesty. They will be able to become citizens of the United States. This will include many of the 37,000 Chinese nationals China has refused to take back whom we have ordered deported. If we want to enforce the laws against illegal aliens who already had their day in court, this loophole must be closed. Loophole No. 4: Aliens who illegally entered multiple times, which is a felony, qualify for amnesty. The first time you come into the country illegally, it is a misdemeanor. If you are apprehended and deported and you come back the second time, it is a felony. Aliens who have illegally entered multiple times--that is, chargeable with felonies--are eligible for amnesty. The bill, on pages 12-23, requires that the illegal alien be continuously present in the United States since 2001 to qualify for amnesty. However, the bill allows the alien to have left the United States for ``brief, casual, and innocent departures.'' Let us remind ourselves that criminal laws are being broken each time an illegal alien crosses the border of the United States. Title 8, section 1325, of the United States Code says that illegal entry into the United States is a misdemeanor the first time and a felony thereafter. I don't think multiple illegal felonies are casual, brief, or innocent. It rewards those who have not followed the law. Loophole No. 5: The bill allows aliens who have persecuted anyone--a persecutor on account of race, religion, national membership in a particular social group, or political opinion--to get amnesty. It fails to make persecutors ineligible for amnesty. I would have thought this was an oversight until we noticed that on page 375--there are a lot of pages in this bill, over 600--line 22 makes these heinous acts bar aliens here between 2 and 5 years from amnesty. The same bar is left out for the 8.8 million aliens who have been here for more than 5 years. This can only be interpreted by any court as an intentional decision that Congress has made to allow persecutors who have been in the country more than 5 years to be able to stay here. I do not think we want to do that. Let's close that loophole. We are told that people who come here come here to work, and for many that is certainly true. And many are fine, decent, good workers. Loophole No. 6, however, is that there is no continuous work requirement for this amnesty. We have been told that you have to earn your citizenship, earn your amnesty by working. But there is no real requirement for that. To be eligible to adjust from illegal to legal status under the bill, the alien must simply have been ``physically present in the United States on or before the date that is 5 years before April 5, 2006,'' and have been employed ``in the aggregate'' for ``at least 3 years during the 5-year period ending on April 5, 2006,'' and employed for ``at least 6 years after the date of enactment'' of this bill. But it does not say--on pages 346, 347--that the alien must be employed continuously or that the requirement of employment be full- time employment. The bill will be interpreted to allow the alien to be eligible if they have been employed in the United States either full time, part time, seasonally, or self-employed. It also allows the time of employment to be shortened if the alien is in attendance at a school or is under 20 years of age. The employment requirement under the language as written is as broad as possible. Essentially, any alien who worked in the United States for 3 out of 5 years at any time prior to April 5, 2006, will fulfill these requirements. This is not any kind of rigorous standard. It is designed to let everybody qualify. It is so broad that if the Immigration Service were to try to go to court and challenge it, almost any alien would be able to meet and defeat the challenge and be able to have a judge--who is required to enforce the law as we write it--not enforce that law. Loophole No. 7: The bill tells the Department of Homeland Security to accept ``just and reasonable inferences'' from day labor centers and the alien's ``sworn declaration'' as evidence that the alien has met the amnesty's work requirement. Under the bill, the alien would meet the ``burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence''--that is all the burden is, a preponderance of the evidence--``that [he] has satisfied the [work] requirements'' if the alien can demonstrate employment ``as a matter of just and reasonable inference.'' An alien can present ``conclusive evidence'' of employment in the United States by presenting documents from Social Security, the Internal Revenue Service, employers, or a ``union or day labor center.'' The bill then states: [I]t is the intent of Congress that the [work] requirement . . . be interpreted and implemented in a manner that recognizes and takes into account the difficulties encountered by aliens in obtaining evidence of employment due to the undocumented status of the alien. What does that mean? It means it is unenforceable, if you want to know the truth. I was a prosecutor for 15 years, a Federal prosecutor. How are you going to enforce the language? What kind of prosecutor is going to go to court when the Congress has basically said: ``It is our policy that anything goes. Any documents they present, any inference that is raised would be sufficient to allow this to occur?'' Then it goes on to say that even if the lax standards I mentioned cannot be met, in order to make sure everybody meets the standard of being allowed to work here, it allows them to self-submit affidavits, ``sworn declarations for each period of employment.'' The invitation for fraud cannot be clearer. Congress is telling the Department of Homeland Security to take the illegal aliens' word for it, to accept pretty much anything as proof of work. These provisions are all contained on pages 349 and 350. If we want to make sure the fraud that occurred in the 1986 amnesty does not occur again in the 2006 amnesty, these loopholes have to be closed. Why do we have these standards? Because politicians want to say that everybody here are workers, and we are not going to give amnesty to people who are not workers. OK. That sounds good. But when you read the bill, it does not require that. There is no way this can be enforced. And the authors of the legislation know it. They know it cannot be enforced. That is why they wrote it the way they wrote it, to let everybody qualify. So it is not true that this is a bill that requires earned amnesty by work. It does not. Loophole 8: The bill benefits only those who broke the law and not those who followed it and got work visas to come to the United States or those who left when their visas expired. I want you to understand this, colleagues. It is important to point out the unfairness that is inherent in the bill. Page 346 lays out the requirement that you must have been ``not legally present in the United States on April 5, 2001.'' So to qualify for the benefits here, you had to be illegally present in the United States on April 5, 2001. Illegal presence allows people to qualify for the amnesty and the pathway to citizenship that the amnesty provides. The bill goes on to define ``not . . . legally present'' to include visa overstays--an ``alien who has violated any conditions of his or her visa''--making sure that illegal alien visa overstays qualify for amnesty. So if you were here legally on April 5, 2001, meaning you followed the rules, and you got a work visa to come here, you will not get any benefits from this amnesty. If you had a visa in 2001, but it expired before April 5, and you, therefore, followed the law and left the United States before April 5, you will not get the benefit of this amnesty. This amnesty benefits you only if you did not leave the United States, as the visa required, and you stayed here illegally or you came here illegally. Another loophole, No. 9, deals with this guest worker concept. The bill's future flow ``guest worker'' program in title IV of the legislation leaves no illegal alien behind. It is not limited to the people outside the United States who want to come here to work in the future, but includes illegal aliens currently present in the United States who do not qualify for the amnesty programs in title VI, including aliens here for less than 2 years. Now, we are told if you have been here for less than 2 years--you came since we started talking about this legislation in 2004--that you do not qualify for the benefits of the program, and have to go home. That has been part of the mantra. You have heard that debate: If you have been here for less than 2 years--and the reason for that is, We are giving notice to people around the world who might want to come here: Don't rush into our country while we are considering this amnesty, to take advantage of it, because if you come in after we started discussing it, then you are not going to get the benefits of it--a fairly legitimate approach to things, I would suggest. And we are told the legislation does that. But it does not do that, I have to tell you. Under the language, you can qualify for the new H-2C program to work as a low-skilled, permanent immigrant even if you are unlawfully present in the United States today. The bill specifically says: In determining the alien's admissibility as an H-2C nonimmigrant . . . paragraphs (5), (6)(A), 7, (9)(B), and (9)(C) of section 212(a) may be waived for conduct that occurred before the effective date. . . . By waiving these grounds of inadmissibility, the new H-2C program is specifically intended, I submit, to apply to, No. 1, absconders--those are people who were apprehended, ordered to leave the country or ordered to come to court, and they have skipped and did not leave and did not come to court; 400,000 of those we are trying to find this very day to deport them to enforce the law--No. 2, it applies to illegal aliens who were in removal proceedings and signed a voluntary departure agreement but violated that agreement and did not leave, and, No. 3, it applies illegal aliens who were already removed from the United States but who illegally reentered. The bill covers everybody. No illegal alien will be left behind. No illegal alien will have to go home--not this 2-year group, as has been said. So once again, the rhetoric about the legislation does not match the reality. Loophole No. 10: The annual numerical cap on this program is completely artificial. The bill's sponsors say that the new H-2C guest worker program is limited to 325,000 people and their families per year. However, the cap has a built-in automatic escalator. If the 325,000 limit per year--the cap on the number who can come here legally--is reached, the cap automatically adjusts itself to make more room, by adding an additional 20 percent, which is 65,000 more visas the first year. So if somewhere in the year the cap limits are being met by people who want to come here, that very year the cap goes up by 20 percent. And then, the next year, automatically the cap will not be 325,000, it will be that number increased by 20-percent. And if that cap number is met, it goes up that year 20 percent. And the next year, that additional 20-percent increase will be the cap. It is an utterly escalating cap, without any thought whatsoever as to how many people this country needs in our workplace or otherwise in the Nation. They can be readily assimilated and made a part of this glorious and wonderful country. What kind of language is that? We calculate if this cap is reached each year, the number of people allowed under this one program to enter this country legally, 10 years from passage--hold your hat--would be 2,012,314. I am not kidding. That is an automatic provision in the act. We have given no thought, no serious evaluation, whatsoever, to how many people ought to be brought into this country. And even if the cap never increases and stays at the 325,000 per year, we will have a minimum of 1,950,000--almost 2 million--low- skilled workers who are permanent immigrants in the first 6 years of the program, which is the length of an H-2C visa if the individual does not file for a green card. In 10 years, we will have immigrated 3,250,000 low-skilled workers and their families. Understand, each and every one of these 3 million people who would enter under this provision alone--and there are others where the impact is large--all of these workers will be eligible for green cards. What does that mean? A green card means you are a permanent resident. They say these are temporary workers and guest workers. Within the first year, they can obtain a green card if their employer requests it. After 4 years, if their employer doesn't and they don't have an employer, they can self-petition for a green card. This is a big change in our policy since immigrants under this provision were supposed to be workers and it allows them to petition for a greencard even thought they are not working for anybody. They can self-petition under this bill. That is a big change. This is pretty thunderous in its impact. Loophole No. 11, a new H-2C guest worker does not have to prove they are essential to the economy to come to the United States or to stay or to apply for a green card once they are here. Nothing about the H-2C ``temporary guest worker program'' is temporary. They can say it is temporary until they are blue in the face, and it is just not so. That is why we need to be talking about this legislation. To be eligible for an H-2C visa, an alien merely has to establish that they are ``capable of performing the labor or services'' they have an intent to perform in the United States. So page 250 of the bill only makes them prove they are capable of performing a labor they have an intent to perform when they come here, and they have received a job offer from an employer who has complied with the requirements. To stay in the United States once they enter, the H-2C holder simply cannot be ``unemployed for 60 or more consecutive days.'' If they are unemployed for that period of time, they are supposed to leave. Such a requirement, of course, is absolutely and utterly unenforceable. Who is going to be checking on this? They will say: It is not enforceable. If a guest worker is out of work for 60 days, 2 months, it is obvious that the economy does not depend on them. The fact that H-2C status only terminates after 60 consecutive days of unemployment means an alien is still essential to the economy and able to stay in the United States if they are working for as little as 1 or 2 days every 2 months. That is what it means. If somebody has to try to enforce this law, that is the kind of thing they would be dealing with when they go to court. More importantly, no Government entity is going to spend their time searching over the country to determine if aliens have been out of work for 55 or 65 consecutive days, because the bill allows the alien worker to move from employer to employer and then, as noted on page 263, specifically exempts employers from having to notify the Department of Homeland Security when the alien is fired or voluntarily quits. This will ensure that the Government will never have the information it needs to enforce the 60-day requirement. Employers are not required to notify. If they bring in somebody, they certify they need them to work, they have them work for 6 months, they no longer need them and lay them off, there is no requirement that they notify the Department of Homeland Security or Labor or Commerce that they are no longer needed. The bill contains, more importantly, no economic trigger enabling us to send workers home when the economy dips. This has been a matter of some dispute. I hear it asked by Senators. I have been asked several times. Some have stated publicly to the contrary. We have read the bill. This is what the bill says about the economy. What if we go into a recession and have brought in these 3 million workers. Now we have 40 million workers in the next 3 or 4 years, 5 years, 8 years, and we go into a recession. They are temporary workers. What is the deal? They go home? Do we not use those workers? We don't need them any longer and they have to go home? No, there is no trigger that reduces the number of workers here if the economy goes into recession. It is not in this legislation. There is an automatic increase every year, as I noted, if the applicants reach that level. It can go up to as much as 3 million a year, but there is no way to reduce it unless we pass a bill in Congress. More importantly, once the H-2C worker is in the United States, they will be here permanently. On day one, when the alien begins to work in the United States, their employer can sponsor them for a green card. If they come here under this program, the employer can sponsor them for a green card that first day. That means 5 years later, they can be a citizen entitled to all the benefits. As a green card holder, they are entitled to bring their wife and children immediately. Five years later, they can become a citizen. Five years later, the wife can become a citizen. Do you know what the wife can do then? She can bring her children in as a green card holder. He can bring in his brothers and sisters, and she can bring in her brothers and sisters, once they become a citizen under the chain migration rules. It has tremendous implications for us. Those are matters that are very important. I have a couple more points. I see my distinguished colleague from West Virginia. I think I can wrap up in about 3 or 4 minutes, if that is OK with him. I would also say, I am honored to have worked with Senator Byrd, the senior Senator from West Virginia, former Democratic leader and majority leader of the Senate, on a realistic approach to immigration. I asked, are we able to enforce our borders, are we able to do things together. We had Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Senator Byrd of West Virginia, both Democrats. We worked together. We presented some very good proposals. Not enough of them have been accepted and made part of this legislation, unfortunately. But there is a genuine bipartisan concern here that we are moving too fast and getting the cart before the horse in a lot of different ways. Loophole No. 12, a work requirement for a blue card can be satisfied in a matter of hours, under the AgJOBS portion that was added in committee with about 30 minutes of debate. Under the AgJOBS component of this substitute bill, illegal alien agricultural workers who worked 150 workdays in agriculture over the last 2 years will receive a blue card allowing them to live and work permanently in the United States. Let's get that straight. We keep talking about the guest worker program, the seasonal worker program. Why we don't have that in the bill, I can't understand. Almost every provision puts people on the route to permanent citizenship. So under the AgJOBS portion that was adopted in committee without debate, agricultural workers who have worked 150 workdays--that is not a full day--over the last 2 years, less than half time, will receive a blue card, and that will allow them to live and work permanently in the United States. However, because current law defines an agricultural workday as 1 hour of work per day--that definition is reinstated in the bill on page 397--an alien who has worked for as little as 150 hours in agriculture over the last 2 years will qualify for a blue card. Loophole No. 13: Once an illegal alien worker receives a blue card, the blue card never expires. Blue cards, the new category of cards given to aliens who are amnestied under the AgJOBS provision of this bill, never expire. The blue card holder can choose to pursue a green card, legal permanent resident status, by working for more hours in agriculture, but that is not a requirement to stay in the United States. Page 399 specifically states: An alien in blue card status shall be provided an employment authorized endorsement or other appropriate work permit, in the same manner as an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence. This means that once the illegal alien has a blue card, he or she can live in the United States and work in any job permanently. They can adjust to a green card status and move on the path of citizenship, bringing in their aging parents and have them receive the great benefits of health care in America. Loophole No. 14, free legal counsel: The AgJOBS amendment goes as far as to provide free legal counsel to illegal aliens who want to receive amnesty, page 421. In a paragraph entitled ``eligibility for legal services,'' the bill lays out that recipients of funds under the Legal Services Corporation Act can ``provide legal assistance directly related to an application for adjustment of status under this section.'' So not only will AgJOBS give amnesty to 1.5 million illegal aliens, it would have the American taxpayer pay the legal bills for filling out the applications of those 1 million illegal aliens. Finally, I will mention loophole No. 15. There are a lot of other provisions that concern me. I will only mention 15. It deals with the DREAM Act. The bill makes in-State tuition and other higher education benefits available to illegal aliens. Current law, some years ago, was passed to deal with a perceived abuse in the system. So the current law that is in effect today says: [A]n alien who is not lawfully present in the United States shall not be eligible on the basis of residence within a State (or a political subdivision) for any posteducation benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit (in no less an amount, duration, and scope) without regard to whether the citizen or national is such a resident. The DREAM Act portion of this bill, page 503 through 520, eliminates this provision and will allows a benefit to those who came here illegally even when all United States citizens are not afforded those same privileges. The bill goes further making other types of higher education assistance available through the illegal aliens that receive amnesty under the bill, student loans, Federal work study programs and Federal services to access this assistance. One of the first things you want to do if you want to reduce illegal immigration is not provide benefits to people who come illegally. How much more commonsensical can it get than that? You don't provide inducements, generous social benefits that we would like to provide to more people in the country but can't, to people who come here illegally. That does not make sense and it is not a principled position. I will conclude by saying, I urge my colleagues, with the greatest sincerity, to look at this legislation and to think about these loopholes I have mentioned. While they are very real and evidence an intent by whoever drafted the legislation to go far beyond what they are publicly saying the bill does, read it carefully and make sure that you feel comfortable supporting it. When amendments come up, we will fix some of these things, although there will not be sufficient time in the debate or sufficient amendments allowed to fix all the problems. They need to vote for those amendments to make the bill better. More importantly, we have continued to study the legislation. My concerns have deepened that we have an unprincipled, not well thought out policy for future immigration that increases legal immigration to an extraordinary degree, far beyond what those people think is part of this legislation. It is permanent and it allows those who are outside our Nation to decide when they come. It is similar to an entitlement. If you are a veteran, you walk up and you get your entitled benefit. If 10 times as many people showed up for that benefit as we expected, all of them get that benefit--American citizens, veterans. That is an entitlement. In this legislation, we basically create an entitlement to let people who are noncitizens of the country decide how many are going to come in, without this Nation making those decisions. Canada has a point system. They limit immigration, and they review it based on what their needs are. The more the immigrant has qualities and education and training that meet what they need, the better chance they have of entering. If you don't have qualifications and abilities that are relevant to Canada's needs, you don't get in. Our bill does none of that. I urge my colleagues to be more focused on the actual wording of the legislation. I thank the Senator from West Virginia for showing leadership and recognizing that we need to do better in this legislation on immigration. I suspect that the Senator from West Virginia might talk about Mother's Day. I have had the honor to be in the chair--and I see Senator Isakson--when Senator Byrd in previous years has spoken about his mother on Mother's Day. I think we are all in for a treat. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

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

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, first, let me acknowledge the work of Chairman Cochran, Senator Shelby, and the Appropriations Committee in crafting this bill. I would also like to commend Dr. Coburn, Senator McCain, Senator Ensign, and so many a number of my colleagues who have been out on the floor discussing the need for fiscal restraint. As much good as there is in this bill, and it is mostly good, I will be voting against it. We must stop the practice of using emergency spending designations to meet needs that can be met in the normal budget process. This supplemental has some important provisions in it related to the war on terror and the Hurricane Katrina recovery. For example, in relation to the war on terror, $10.2 billion is allocated for the Department of Defense's military personnel; $39 billion is allocated for operation and maintenance accounts in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom; $15 billion for procurement for various accounts; and $8 billion for various other defense-related expenses. Other war related expenditures: $82 million for the FBI operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, $5 million for the DEA's Intelligence Program, and $4 million for ATF's costs in Iraq. These are all important programs that should be funded to help fight terrorists abroad. The bill provides needed funds for Hurricane Katrina. It provides $2 billion for border security, fully offset, which was included in Senator Gregg's amendment. That being said, there are a number of items in this bill that do not belong in an emergency supplemental appropriations bill. Many of these are very important projects that have merit. Many of these programs are worthy of Federal funding, and, when the regular appropriations season gets underway, I will work to see if there is a way we can fund them. But the question before us today is not whether they have merit because undoubtably most do. The question is not even whether they should receive Federal funding. Here is the question we must ask with respect to each of the needs that are being funded in this bill: Are they emergencies? The Senate version of the appropriations supplemental bill is $106.49 billion, over $14 billion more than the President's request of $92.22 billion. Because these are designated as ``emergency funds,'' they are not factored into the budget. As far as Washington is concerned, they ``don't count.'' But they do count. There is no magic pot of money that can be tapped for emergency needs. This is straight deficit spending. There are times when emergency spending is justified, but if we abuse it, we might as well not even have a budget. What is emergency spending? The emergency appropriations process is set up to be an exception to the normal appropriations cycle so that money can be spent for unexpected occurrences that come up throughout the year, such as additional war costs or unexpected disasters. This money is not factored into the regular budget. The other body exercised fiscal restraint when they took up the supplemental bill and actually managed to bring the bill's top line number down from the Presidents's request to $91.95 billion. However, during the Senate markup, the bill expanded rapidly. According to the National Journal, money was added at a rate of more than $80 million per minute during the 2-hour markup. Of course, it is not important how fast the money was added or how much is in the bill. The only things that matter are: Are these meritorious programs? Are they Federal responsibilities? Are they emergencies? Senator Gregg, a distinguished member of the Appropriations Committee and my chairman on the Budget Committee, wrote a piece in the Wall Street Journal on April 18 entitled ``The Safety Valve Has Become a Fire Hose.'' The piece gives an excellent explanation of the problem with abusing the emergency spending process. While Senator Gregg and I disagree with regard to 2-year budgeting, we have no disagreement on the proposal he outlines in his article, which is 1-year budgeting, which means, let's live under the budget we have now and have a sequester if we exceed it. In the piece, Senator Gregg states: there are two sets of books, and [only] one is subject to the budget controls. Adding superfluous spending to the emergency supplemental is a way to cheat the system and get around having to actually pay for the money we spend. Here are a few of the most egregious provisions in the bill: First, some of the funds in this bill are spent as far out as fiscal year 2010 and beyond. Money being spent 5 years from now is not an emergency, and can be allocated and paid for through the regular budget process each year. If we need money to start these projects, we can give money for the first year. But all other money should be subject to the oversight of an authorizing committee and the regular budget process. Secondly, $594 million allocated for the Federal Highway Administration to go to projects on ``the current FHWA ER backlog table,'' which lists storms back to 1999. Our budget specifically outlines the criteria for emergency spending. It is as follows: (A) necessary, essential, or vital (not merely useful or beneficial); (B) sudden, quickly coming into being, and not building up over time; (C) an urgent, pressing, and compelling need requiring immediate action; (D) subject to paragraph (2), unforeseen, unpredictable, and unanticipated; and (E) not permanent, temporary in nature. If funds are in fact needed to meet needs from a hurricane in 1999 or an ice storm in 2001, that should have been reasonably foreseen in 2005, when we were drawing up this year's budget. The backlogged highway repairs for these storms could have been paid for through the regular appropriations process or the $286 billion transportation bill that passed last year. Emergency supplementals are for unanticipated costs, not costs anticipated 5 years ago. Emergency spending should be an exception to the appropriations process--not the rule. There are ways to pay for emergencies, and there are ways to pay for past emergencies. The items on this chart that predate the last fiscal year are not emergencies and should not be treated as such in the appropriations process. They should be paid for, just like the relief efforts on all other past emergencies. According to National Taxpayers Union President John Berthoud, since 1996 the Federal Government has spent over $450 billion under the ``emergency'' designation--an extra $1,500 for every person in America. Nearly all of our 50 States maintain emergency, contingency, reserve, or ``rainy day'' funds to help cover unanticipated spending needs. This would not only help to smooth out spikes in deficit spending but also help to prevent politicians from taking advantage of urgent situations to grow other Government programs. We need to better prepare for these type expenses, like our States do. The President in the Statement of Administration Policy on this bill drew a clear line in the sand. Let me read from the SAP: However, the Senate reported bill substantially exceeds the President's request, primarily for items that are unrelated to the GWOT and hurricane response. The Administration is seriously concerned with the overall funding level and the numerous unrequested items included in the Senate bill that are unrelated to the war or emergency hurricane relief needs. The final version of the legislation must remain focused on addressing urgent national priorities while maintaining fiscal discipline. Accordingly, if the President is ultimately presented a bill that provides more than $92.2 billion, exclusive of funding for the President's plan to address pandemic influenza, he will veto the bill. The statement could not be clearer. The day after he sent up the SAP, I sent a letter to the President, which was signed by 35 other Senators, committing to sustain any veto of this bill which violates the principles outlined in the SAP. I have every confidence that our congressional leadership and our President, and their ability, working with the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee, can find a way to make a good bill fit within the numbers outlined by the President. This supplemental debate highlights a larger issue. We need budget process reform. We need a line-item veto. Senator Frist's bill, S. 2381, Provides that rescissions packages submitted by the President shall be treated with fast-track authority. But this bill is just the beginning. We need to reform Congressional Budget Office scoring in the following ways: Dynamic scoring. Senator Ensign's bill, S. 287, addresses this issue. Changes in tax law will be scored to take into account real-life effects on the economy. Tax/spending parity. CBO scores should treat tax expirations and spending expirations the same. Long-term scoring. We should require CBO scores to have more detailed estimates for long-term costs of authorizations and direct spending. Database of authorizations. We should require CBO to produce a database with a comprehensive catalog of all authorized spending, user- friendly, searchable and sortable by expiration date and category, and total authorized amounts, appropriated amounts. Database should be available online, searchable, sortable, and provide overall total amounts. We also ought to move to a 2-year budget. Senator Domenici has been spearheading this issue. His bill, S. 877, is an excellent bill. Under his bill, all budgeting and appropriating occurs in first year of a Congress. The second session focuses on oversight. Database for Federal grantees. We should require the creation of a database of Federal grantees so taxpayers can log on and find out who is spending their money and how. Government shutdown protection. This provision would provide that if appropriations bills are not enacted by the beginning of the fiscal year, programs continue at previous year's level. Spending firewall. We should create four firewalled categories of Federal spending: defense, international, domestic, and homeland, which would be binding and in the budget. This would ensure that security needs would be met and could not be raided during the appropriations process to pay for social spending. Pay-go for emergency spending. Automatic across-the-board reduction in spending for emergencies. Provide that emergency spending automatically triggers an across-the-board rescission in all spending. Senator Gregg mentioned a program like this in his Wall Street Journal piece. Mutiyear caps. We should provide that 302(a) discretionary caps carry over for the life of a budget resolution, including the ability for the Appropriations Committee to issue 302(b) suballocations. Currently, if we have no budget, we have a top-line discretionary cap but no way to enforce it. We should provide a mechanism for the Appropriations chairman to issue suballocations in the event that a budget is not passed. Commission on Accountability and Review of Federal Agencies. Senator Brownback's bill, S. 1155, takes the concept of BRAC and applies it to wasteful domestic spending programs. Efficencies. We should allow up to 2 percent of any Department to be transferred to pay down the national debt if efficiencies are found. The current system requires bureaucrats to be inefficient. We give them a big pot of money and say: You must spend this. We should encourage, not discourage, frugality. Entitlement commission. We should provide for a commission to review entitlements, provide recommendations for reform, and provide fast- track consideration for reform proposals. Earmark reform. Finally, we need to finish the process we started on the lobbying reform package, which is earmark reform. Senators McCain and Lott have led on this important issue. I look forward to consideration of budget process reform later this year.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I am concerned about the increase in gasoline prices. They are indicative of other increases in natural gas and diesel fuel. It is an important national issue. A family that may have been paying $150 for a month for fuel, $200 a month, may be paying $50, $75 dollars more a month than they were several years ago. It is real money out of real working Americans' pockets. It is an issue we need to confront. We have talked about it on the floor for many years. Unfortunately, we have not done enough to confront the problem and deal with it in a way that actually makes a difference. We did recently pass an energy bill that is better than most people realize, that did a lot of good things. For example, it took us from zero preliminary applications for a nuclear powerplant to now 18. Since last fall, we have had 18 or 19 applications which would reduce the demand for natural gas that we are using so much now to generate electricity. But we failed in a number of important issues. It is surprising to me, but the strength of the economy and the increase in productivity of our workforce is such that we haven't seen a surge in inflation across the board as a result of these increasing energy prices. But it could happen. It could begin to happen and could affect our economy adversely. We went through the last spike without serious consequences. But when you absorb this much extra cost, it does have some impact. Unfortunately, what I have been hearing on the floor is a lot of politics, a lot of blame game from people who oftentimes are the very ones who have blocked key decisions that we should have made that would have made our energy situation far better. I see my colleague from Idaho. Few people--as a matter of fact, virtually no Senators--have steeped themselves in energy issues more than he. When he speaks on this issue, we should listen. He has historical perspective and knowledge of the issues. I compliment him and will follow up on some of the things he said. There is some bipartisan work going on. I am part of the energy security caucus that believes we should treat energy as a national security issue and even take steps that might in the short run seem not to be economically as wise but in the long run will be wise and help our economy. I care about this. I believe we should work in a bipartisan way. I want to push back a little bit and talk about how we got in this fix and what it is going to take to get out of it. A few months ago this bipartisan group and others were invited to the White House. We met with President Bush. He passionately argued and excited all of us, Republicans and Democrats, about his vision for ethanol and hydrogen and biodiesel. It was a good give-and-take session. He heard everybody's ideas. He is moving forward in many different ways. It is good to have the President engaged personally in these issues. He has a lot of things on his plate, but I am glad he has chosen--and has for several months now--to personally push the development of better energy supplies. How did we get here? A number of things are important to note. I just saw a report about the world economy. The world economy is growing at a great rate, 4 or 5 percent internationally. This is so much better than the downturn that they suffered several years ago. I was recently in Peru and the Dominican Republic. Their growth rate has exceeded ours, although we have had the highest growth rate of any industrialized nation in the world, higher than any single European Nation, at least of the larger economies in Europe. But the Dominican Republic has exceeded our growth--9 percent growth. You know about China and India's sustained growth, and they are using more oil and gas in all these areas, and we are using more as a result of that economy. It has increased demand, and we do have political instability around the world. We have had problems in Nigeria and problems with Venezuela. The lines are still open there, but that is an area which causes some problem. There is concern and speculation that we could have a shutoff from any number of areas in the Middle East. So those are things which have curtailed supply while demand has been increased. I wish to talk about some of the key votes we have cast in the Senate--votes that are very important. I have to say that in the votes I will be talking about, my Democratic colleagues provided the bulk of the votes that blocked decisions that should have been made, some of which I think go beyond the pale. I have said that for years. Let's talk about ANWR. We have heard that discussed time and time again. It was passed one time. President Clinton vetoed it. We came within a vote or two of passing it several times since. Ninety percent of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle voted against opening up ANWR to exploration. The ANWR region of Alaska is so large, it is as large as the State of South Carolina. The area they want to drill in, propose to drill in, where they have identified huge reserves of oil and gas, is the size of Dulles Airport. That is how small it is. With directional drilling and the scientific skills we have developed, we have a proven track record that oil can be produced safely in these kinds of regions. It is beyond my comprehension that we would deny our Nation these large amounts of oil in the ANWR region. I will show you what we would have to move CAFE standards to, which is the mileage standards for automobiles, to equal the impact of the ANWR oil and gas. You would have to raise CAFE standards to 39 miles per gallon for cars and 29 miles for light trucks. The amount of oil there is equivalent to the energy that would be generated by a 3.7 million-acre wind farm. It would be the size of the entire States of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined. That is how much energy we are talking about. Or solar energy from 448,000 acres of solar panels. A fifth of America's domestic oil could be produced out of ANWR by 2025. We should have done this 10 years ago. It should be flowing today. We should hold companies and producers accountable and make sure there will be no spills. We are producing oil and gas so much safer than we ever have. We are not having a problem, frankly, anywhere with oil and gas spills. I will say one more thing about this issue. It is very offensive to me when you say to those of us who have advocated ANWR drilling and other areas, like in the gulf: Oh, you are for the oil companies. You are doing this for the oil companies. Let me make one thing clear. My proposal to drill in ANWR and the gulf and other areas is for the American people. Now, the oil companies which own oil interests around the world--sometimes I think they don't have enough interest in finding new reserves. They have their reserves. They will sell it at whatever the market price is. If the supply is low and demand is high, they will charge every dime they can charge. That is what they have always done, and that is what they will always do. But when we deny our people the ability to produce oil and gas in our own country and keep that money at home--it has been estimated by union groups that support this drilling that 600,000 jobs would be created in America. Why would we not do that? Why would we send our money off to a foreign nation that is hostile to our interests, perhaps, and let them spend it and create jobs in their nation? You tell me why. This is not a political issue. It has always been about accessibility of oil and gas for the American people. It is not for the oil companies, it is for the American people, to keep our wealth at home. You may say: We care about the environment. Do you care about Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela where they are drilling perhaps thousands of wells or the Persian Gulf--aren't those nice areas for the environment? What about the hundreds and thousands of wells in the Gulf of Mexico off of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas? We have to get real here. Ninety percent of the votes cast to block the drilling in ANWR came from our Democratic colleagues. They are the very ones in this Chamber right now who are complaining and blaming President Bush because we don't have enough oil and gas and the price is going up. Let's just say that is what it is. That is a plain fact. Now, Senator Larry Craig really talked about something I know a good bit about, just because of my location. I live in Mobile, on the Gulf of Mexico. This past weekend, I visited my brother-in-law, who has a house on Fort Morgan, out toward the peninsula there on Mobile Bay. Right off of his pier, in the bay, is a producing oil well. Friday, we got up early and went fishing; it was the first day of snapper season. We didn't catch any snapper. We caught some redfish. Where did we go? We went out a few miles into the gulf and fished around the oil well. There were four boats fishing around that oil well. We caught four nice redfish. We threw them back. That is where people fish. It provides good structures for fish. Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, and Alabama are providing the Nation a tremendous amount of production. Twenty percent of that production was lost as a result of Hurricane Katrina. They have shut off the valves, so if the rigs are damaged, the shutoff valve doesn't allow oil and gas to spill. Many of the rigs' valves are still shut off. They are not connected. But oil is not being spilled. My point is that we lost 20 percent of our offshore production, and we have a 5-percent problem still as a result of Katrina's damage to refineries. The Senator from Mississippi knows that so well. So just those factors right there make a demand for oil and gas to exceed the supply. When that happens, the people who have the supplies can manipulate the price and can charge whatever they think they can get. That is what is happening. It has impacted us adversely. That is the way the world works. I am not prepared to try to fix the prices on this. I am willing to look at what has happened and ask tough questions of the oil companies, like: Do you really have enough interest in exploring new reservoirs and finding new reserves and bringing that on line? Maybe you do not have enough interest. Maybe you are happy to not confront the environmentalists or the Democratic obstructionists and sit on what you have, and if the price goes up, charge it. We are not getting enough production, in my view. A big part of the problem is political; it is Congress. Let me show you a couple of things. ANWR is a big deal. I read off how much ANWR has. If I am not mistaken, ANWR is less than a half billion barrels of oil. The Gulf of Mexico, according to our best estimates, has about 3.65 billion barrels of oil, but they are under moratorium; we cannot drill there. This is a pocketbook issue, not a political issue. Whole regions of the gulf are not available for drilling today. What is happening? Fidel Castro in Cuba is partnering with China and is moving forward with plans that could allow him to drill within 50 miles of Florida, off the Florida coast. He can drill, but we cannot. He can take the money and fund his adventures around South and Central America and complain against the United States. And we are going to buy oil from him? Is that who we pay? And the Chinese company that produces it--is that what people would like to see? This is reality. That is all I am saying. It is not a pleasant thought. It is unfortunate. I suggest that if we had moved forward out there, we may not be seeing such activities now. I will show you another chart. This shows what Secretary of the Interior Norton said about Hurricane Katrina, one of the most powerful hurricanes ever to hit the United States: Despite such intense winds and powerful waves offshore, we experienced no significant spills from any offshore well on the outer continental shelf. See these dots on the chart? They represent oil platforms. There are hundreds and hundreds of them there, and we are getting a tremendous amount of oil and gas from them. It is important to the American economy. If we weren't buying it there, who would we be paying for it? Iran, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria? So we have been getting it here in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Look over at this area of the gulf, where 3.65 billion barrels of reserve is expected to be, and there is a moratorium on that; we cannot drill out there. Why? Because somebody in Florida believes it might impact their coastline adversely. But we have had no impact, and they are drilling a mile off of our shores, in our bay, in little Mobile Bay right here, up in the bay, where there are wells. And there are wells off of the Texas and Louisiana coasts by the hundreds. We are not having oil spills. Do you think you would not see it on television if there were a spill? They would have it on the front pages, whether it was significant or not. We are just not seeing that. They have learned to do this in such a safe way that we have been able to avoid any significant spills. So, as Senator Craig noted, right here on the chart there is a little lease area--some area we can drill in--and we are working on that now. Some are trying to block that. I want to repeat that the votes we have cast on the floor that deal with that issue have fundamentally involved party-line votes on so many of these issues--although not totally. Our Presiding Officer cares about this issue. He is from Florida, and I admire him so much. We just disagree on this issue. I fish around these rigs. I am not so much worried about it. I would like my Florida friends to get more comfortable with the wells, and they would be less concerned about them. So these wells are there, and we have an opportunity to drill a tremendous amount of them, and then that natural wealth will be returned again and again in our own economy so that we can keep it in our Nation instead of sending it to nations around the world, many of which are hostile to our political interests or to our national security interests. It is important. That is why we have a national security caucus, because we are concerned about the transfer of American wealth to nations whose interests are not harmonious with ours. It is a big deal. I point out a story I told a year or so ago on the floor. My hometown of Mobile produces natural gas offshore, and there is a pipeline there. Our friends in Florida down in Tampa and other places on the beach have nice houses and they have to keep them cool. So they took our natural gas that we produce and put a pipeline all the way to Florida so they could generate electricity to cool their fine houses on the beach where they can have their mint juleps out there in the breeze. It is such a beautiful area down there. I think they ought to start asking themselves: Would it hurt if we had some wells out in this area of the country? Would it help the American economy? Wouldn't it make us a healthier, stronger nation? I think so. So we had some debates about this last year with the Energy bill and a modest proposal came up. I will conclude with this, because I am pushing back a little bit at some of my colleagues who are screaming about the high price of oil and gas. Somebody came out with a proposal to survey the Atlantic Coast where we haven't surveyed to see if there is oil and gas out there. The religious crowd, the anti-oil production religious crowd opposed that. They opposed even doing a survey. Seventy percent of the votes against that amendment were provided by my colleagues on the other side. I assure you, a good percentage of those who voted against even surveying our coastline to see if there is any more oil and gas available, if we ever decided to drill, are some of the same ones who are yelling the loudest about high oil prices. I thank the Chair for this time. We need to move away from politics. We need to think through this issue carefully and see what we can do to improve the method of production, to improve conservation, and to deal with the scientific breakthroughs and accelerate those so we can confront the problems we face and reduce these high oil and gas prices. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, let me say the bill that came out of the committee, the Kennedy-McCain bill, was substituted there over the Specter bill. It lurched the bill even further toward amnesty than we already were heading. When it came up for a vote yesterday, it needed 60 votes to proceed. It got 60 votes against it--only 39 to proceed. It was defeated overwhelmingly. Then they hatched a compromise among Members who already supported the Kennedy bill and they claimed they were producing a compromise that could be supported. But people who should have been involved in that compromise, who worked so hard on this, such as Senator Kyl, Senator Cornyn, Senator Feinstein, Senator Dorgan, Senator Nelson, and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who is here--I am not aware they were involved in it. So they bring that up now and expect us to support it. Ninety-five percent of what was in the bill rejected yesterday is in this one and there is no substantial change in matters of amnesty. In fact, with regard to green cards, it increases significantly the number that would be granted over the bill we rejected yesterday. It is an unprincipled approach, in my view, and not a well thought out plan. With regard to this question, who will say on the floor of this Senate that the enforcement provisions will be carried out and we will actually have enforcement on the border? That is why the Presiding Officer, Senator Isakson, had a perfectly important amendment. That was not allowed to be voted on. It would at least have taken a strong step toward ensuring that whatever we passed becomes law. Finally, when asked what the cost was, nobody knew until last night and we find that the cost of this bill is $29 billion over 5 years. Nobody had even thought about it. That clearly is a budget-busting matter. This bill is a dead horse, in my view. It should be rejected because amendments have not been allowed, and it should be rejected most importantly because it does not do what it purports to do. I yield.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank Senator Leahy, ranking member on the Judiciary Committee. I have received just this afternoon in my office some disturbing news in the form of correspondence from the Congressional Budget Office. It suggests a number of areas where the amendment we are talking about here today, No. 3424, the immigration so-called compromise, violates our budget and the rules of the Senate. Let me read from the correspondence we have received. This is something, as you know, Mr. President, as a member of the Judiciary Committee, that we never discussed at all. It is not a matter we spent any time at all discussing as we moved forward with legislation which ultimately cleared that committee and came to the floor--legislation which I thought was not good legislation and which I opposed, and so did the Senator from Texas, who just relinquished the Chair. We didn't discuss the financial impact of the legislation before us. One of the things our rules of the Senate require is that if a bill is on the floor that is in violation of a budget we have adopted, it is subject to a budget point of order. I am not going to make that budget point of order now because I am sure someone here would want to move to waive that budget point of order, but I am giving the heads up to those who are supporting this bill that it is a budget buster. We have not yet begun to figure out how much this legislation will cost. I will be quoting from the Congressional Budget Office, which is the authoritative department to determine these matters. They have given us a preliminary report. Let me read from the correspondence they have given and which I have just received. CBO has estimated the cost of some--but not all--of the provisions of the proposed Hagel-Martinez amendment to the immigration bill. The version we are working with is labeled O:/MDM/MDM06671 and was provided to us this morning. One reason they got this this morning was that this so-called compromise which was hatched yesterday was not even printed until 10 o'clock last night. We have been talking about these problems for weeks and we produced the bill that came out of committee--I don't know what name to put on it; the Specter-Kennedy-McCain amendment, the bill that came out of committee--and it was crushed on the floor of the Senate, with 60 people refusing to move to a final up-or-down vote on it, 60 to 39. We have now the compromise desperately put together by people--well meaning, no doubt, but none of whom bring any particular experience, knowledge to the problem facing us. And I assure you, if in the 5 days of markup in Judiciary Committee we didn't discuss the actual cost of this program, I am sure, as they worked feverishly into the night last night, they didn't consider it either. They had no idea. But this was a political discussion about how to put a bill together that politically might pass around here regardless of the details of it. Frankly, we are going to have to deal with the specifics of illegal immigration. It is too important to treat it at a superficial level. There are bills which, when we come up to a recess, the leader has to push, and you always try to do those things, and people make compromises, and they pass. But this is not a normal bill at all. The American people care about it, and we owe them some things. I don't think there are any Senators here who haven't been back to their States and made some commitments and stated some principles that they thought are critical to a good immigration bill, and I want them to be aware of what we are talking about. The bill number which the Congressional Budget Office referenced is the pending amendment, No. 3424, to the Frist motion to commit. Let me continue now with what we received from the Congressional Budget Office: The figures in this e-mail do NOT include costs associated with the conditional nonimmigrant provisions, which we are still working on. They also do NOT include revenue losses and outlays for the Earned Income Tax Credit, which we will be getting from the Joint Tax Committee and which results largely from the conditional non-immigrant provisions. Those revenue losses and Earned Income Tax Credit outlays may be significant. I will talk about the average salary of most of the workers who are here illegally today and those workers who will be regularized, placed on permanent resident status, given a green card, and placed on a pathway to citizenship. As you look at those salaries, you will see that they fall in the classic earned income tax credit range. I have had occasion for some time to wrestle with the earned income tax credit. A lot of people oppose it entirely. You file your tax return, and if you don't owe any taxes and you have a lower income, you get a tax rebate from the Government. You don't pay taxes; they give you an average rebate. I submit that salaries for these workers are going to be pretty close to the average recipient of the earned income tax credit benefit. The average recipient gets $2,400 a year by way of a tax credit. Persons who are working here illegally today are not currently getting the earned income tax credit, but if we regularize them and make them permanent residents, they will. That will cost us a lot of money. The Congressional Budget Office is saying they haven't considered those numbers yet in the cost of this bill, but they are real and significant, as I say they, indeed, are. They go on to say this: With those important caveats, estimated outlays are about $2 billion for the first 5 years--2007-2011--and $12 billion for the first 10 years--2007-2016. The final figures will be bigger than those. Most of those costs are for Medicaid and Food Stamp programs. They say those are not the final figures. The final figures will be bigger. It didn't include the earned income tax credit. They go on to say this: Outlays in the succeeding 10 years will be greater. The bill would impose mandates on State and local governments with costs that would exceed the threshold established in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act in at least 1 of the first 5 years after they would take effect. I ask unanimous consent that this message from the Congressional Budget Office be printed in the Record so that my colleagues can begin to look at it and begin to understand that we have a budget problem with this bill, among other things.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I agree with much of what Senator Craig said--particularly about the ineffectiveness at the border. Let's be real frank and honest about the bill we have today. The reason we are in trouble today, the reason we are not going to be able to pass this legislation is that the bill is a failure. It is a colossal failure. It is a dead horse. It has been lying out in the sun, and people have been having to look at it, and they are now able to smell it. A few amendments and a compromise is not going to revive this. It doesn't do what we want it to do. It has a huge surge in immigration. The compromise is 95 percent of what was in the bill we just rejected this morning by a 60-vote margin--95 percent of it. And the others were supposed to make some big difference, but part of the changes in the bill increase the number of people who would come into the country, and there is not any restraint on the legislation. So the underlying bill that came out of committee was bad from the beginning. Let me tell you what happened. We debated the bill. We spent 5 days in markup, and 4 of those days basically were on border control issues. We debated individual words. Then, all of a sudden, on the last day, when the majority leader said we had to have the bill out, about noon we got around to the amnesty for the 11 million people and what we were going to do about future immigration policies. And without any amendments--maybe no more than one or two--they were adopted in toto, without any real discussion, no expert testimony, no full understanding of the comprehensiveness of it. We just rushed it through. We passed this bill last Monday at about 6 or 7 o'clock at night. It hit the floor on Tuesday or Wednesday. The bill was not even printed until Wednesday night. We were devoting Wednesday all day to the bill, and it had not even been printed. I ask my colleagues this: Should you not know how much the bill costs? Is anybody here prepared to stand up and say what this bill would cost, the compromise bill, if we pass it? How much will it cost? Does anybody know? I made inquiry today and got back a letter from CBO that said it is clearly in violation of the Budget Act. Now, they said that was just a part of the cost; it was much more than that. They were still trying to run the numbers. So within minutes, I got this e-mail from the Congressional Budget Office. It has a score on it. It says that CBO and Joint Tax estimate that direct spending outlays under this bill would total about $8 billion for the first 5 years. That is clearly in violation of the Budget Act. What about revenues? Joint Tax and CBO--our two agencies we depend on to tell us what the cost and impact of the legislation will be-- estimate that the legislation would result in an on-budget revenue loss of $5 billion from 2007 to 2011 and $2 billion over the 2007-to-2016 period, largely because of lower tax payments by businesses. Here is discretionary spending. Assuming the appropriation of a necessary sum, CBO estimates that outlays for those purposes would total at least $16 billion from 2007 to 2011 and more than $30 billion over 2007 to 2016. And they are in a governmental mandate. The bill would impose mandates on State and local governments with costs that would exceed the threshold established by the Unfunded Mandates Act and at least 1 of the first 5 years after they take effect, totaling $29 billion over 5 years. Well, why am I saying that? First of all, that is a lot of money. We have Social Security in trouble, Medicaid in trouble, and we are going to add $29 billion more to our costs? What is really troubling is that it is symptomatic of the lack of thought and serious evaluation that went into writing this bill to begin with. It is not a good piece of legislation. It has good intentions. It desires to do the right thing. Unfortunately, as I have studied it, having been on the Judiciary Committee, I have come to believe it cannot be amended. And we are going to have three amendments that are going to somehow fix this bill? It fundamentally needs to be reviewed. I really think so. I will repeat that I am optimistic about our ability to make this work. I am optimistic that, with just a commitment of will and some resources, we can create secure borders and increase the number of people who come into our country legally. We can deal humanely and fairly with the 11 million to 12 million--or maybe even 20 million-- illegals who are here. We don't have to give them every single benefit we give to those who follow the law, but we can allow most to stay and work and live here, if that is what they have been doing and if that is possible. We can work out all those things. We can deal with those issues in an effective way. But this legislation doesn't do it, and it is too late to fix it. We need to have some real hearings, get the best minds in America to tell us about this problem, and work out legislation that is not amnesty, that doesn't cost $27 billion, that creates a lawful system on our borders so people can enter and exit easily with biometric identifiers if they are lawful and those who try to come in unlawfully get apprehended. That can be done. This bill doesn't do it. The compromise legislation doesn't do it. It needs to be voted down. I yield the floor.

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