Jeff Sessions

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. I yield for a question.

Mr. SESSIONS. I said it is a dangerous trend and it can be addictive and it can undermine the nature of the Senate. I did not say it never happened. But to my knowledge, I would like for the Senator to list for me the number of times since 1985 the majority leader has gone before the Parliamentarian and the Presiding Officer and actually altered the rules by a vote of the Senate, overruling the Chair?

Mr. SESSIONS. How many votes? I am curious. I know it was done before. The big time that I recall, I say to Senator Merkley, was the one over Federal judges, similar to this. At the end, cooler heads prevailed, a compromise was reached, and a very significant rule of the Senate was not altered. Some of these could be technical rulings of the Chair that are not that significant, but I am interested in seeing what others the Senator might mention. I am particularly interested if there was an actual vote of the body, by the Senate.

Mr. SESSIONS. Will the Senator offer that for the record?

Mr. SESSIONS. I would like to look at that and see where we are. Senator Hatch is here now.

Mr. SESSIONS. Reclaiming the floor, Mr. President, I appreciate the Senator's sharing that. We will study them. It is absolutely a practice that can occur, but it is a very dangerous practice. The Senate is a place of a certain amount of collegiality and a certain amount of good judgment and understanding and respect for the body. Sometimes you can carry out a procedure that may be dubious but within the realm of acceptable procedures, and sometimes you can feel and understand that is a dangerous alteration of the precedents of the Senate. That is where I am afraid we are with this vote.

Mr. SESSIONS. I will yield for a question from Senator Hatch.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I will be pleased to yield to the Senator from Utah and look forward to hearing his remarks. He is a man of great expertise on this particular issue.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, today I wish to pay tribute to Dr. Barry L. Booth of Spanish Fort, AL. I have had the great fortune to work with Dr. Booth on a variety of projects in South Alabama, including the Honor Flight South Alabama program, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park, and the creation of the Alabama State Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Spanish Fort, AL. They have been remarkable successes, in great part through the leadership of Dr. Booth. Barry Booth was born and raised in humble conditions in West Virginia. He worked hard, took care of his grades, and was admitted to Auburn University. He hitchhiked to Auburn where he says he arrived with ``empty pockets.'' He enrolled in the Naval ROTC and was commissioned as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy Reserve upon his graduation from the University of Alabama, School of Dentistry in 1966 and that same year he volunteered for active duty, signed with the Marine Corps in San Diego, and in 1967 volunteered to go to Vietnam as a medical civil action patrol dental officer with the 3rd Marine Division and the U.S. Army 5th Special Forces. Dr. Booth earned a Gold Parachutist Device, the U.S. Navy Unit Commendation, and the Vietnam Service Medal, among others. He was honorably discharged in July 1969. It is clear that his patriotism has continued to grow since joining the Marine Corps. In fact, in the wake of the terrible events of September 11, 2001, Dr. Booth attempted to rejoin the Marine Corps, at age 60, and had to be officially denied. Dr. Booth has been a busy and invaluable servant to the veterans in South Alabama. He was vital to the establishment of the Honor Flight South Alabama program. Honor Flight South Alabama has brought over a thousand veterans and their companions to the memorials they earned, including the World War II Memorial, here in Washington, D.C. I have taken great pleasure in having the chance to share in the fellowship of these veterans. They are truly a remarkable breed of patriots. They endured and survived the biggest war in the history of the world, and truly deserve such a great memorial in their honor. I appreciate the considerable good work Dr. Booth, and the rest of his team, have done to bring these wonderful veterans to our Nation's Capital. Dr. Booth also helped develop the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at the USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park. Because of this memorial, many people in the Mobile region have had the opportunity to learn more about the sacrifices made by our Vietnam veterans. This memorial will serve as an important reminder of what these servicemembers endured. In addition, Dr. Booth was pivotal in the creation of the Alabama State Veterans Memorial Cemetery. In addition to his time and resources, he even donated 3 acres of family land for the now-active cemetery at Saluda Hill near Historic Blakely State Park. For 50 years before this, the State of Alabama had not had the space to bury new veterans in a State veteran's cemetery. The new cemetery provides South Alabama veterans a proper, dignified, and peaceful burial area. Lastly, Dr. Booth has contributed to a number of veteran and service organizations through his active membership. He is a member of the Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 864, the Navy League, the Military Officers Association of America, the Sons of the American Revolution, and is a life member of both American Legion Post 199 and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. For his commitment, he was named 2009 Veteran of the Year by the Mobile Bay Area Veterans Day Commission and Fairhope, Alabama's Veteran of the Year for 2011. For years I have enjoyed the kindness and warmth of Barry's friendship. He has been critical to the success of a number of projects we have worked on together. He is a true patriot, and a good man who expects nothing in return for his efforts. He simply understands what our military personnel are called upon to do for their country, he has seen it first hand, he knows the pain of loss and injury, and his loyalty to them compels him to do all he can to honor their service. I would like to thank him for his service to his fellow veterans, to the State of Alabama, and to his country.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I wish today to recognize Mr. and Mrs. John Vick of Andalusia, Alabama, and the recent opening of the John & Faye Vick Collection of Alabama & Civil War Postal History at Auburn University's Ralph Brown Draughon Library. This exhibit was unveiled on April 19th and will be on display through the month of August. Mr. Vick has had a lifelong interest in Civil War, naval, and U. S. Postal Service history. He developed his interest for these subjects while attending Auburn University, where he graduated in 1962. The items he has assembled over his lifetime represent a broad range of our country and Alabama's history, and the exhibit represents the finest items in the Vick collection. On display is a vast assortment of historic American and international postal stamps, marks, and correspondence, and includes letters from Confederate Marine Corps Lt. Edward Crenshaw of Butler County and Raphael Semmes, captain of the C.S.S. Alabama. These items, numbering in the thousands, will be invaluable to researchers for years to come. This exhibit is currently being displayed in the Special Collections and Archives Department of the Ralph Brown Draughon Library, and is a fantastic showcase of both the generosity of the Vicks and their love for Auburn University. I encourage anyone with an interest in the history of Alabama to visit the exhibition. Again, I thank John and Faye for their kind gift to Auburn University and the people of Alabama.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I would like to pay tribute today to Daniel John Meador, who was born in 1926 in Selma, AL. Mr. Meador attended the Citadel and graduated from Auburn University and the University of Alabama Law School, and received a master of laws from Harvard Law School in 1954. He served in the U.S. Army, first in artillery, then in the Judge Advocate General's Corps in Korea during that conflict. Following the war, he returned to the United States and served as a law clerk to Justice Hugo L. Black of Alabama, then on the U.S. Supreme Court. He practiced law in Birmingham, AL, for a short time before joining the faculty at the University of Virginia. In 1965- 66 he was a Fulbright lecturer in England, and from 1966 to 1970 was the dean of the University of Alabama, School of Law, departing just as I was starting law school there. In 1970, he rejoined the University of Virginia law faculty as James Monroe Professor of Law, a position he held until his retirement in 1994. At the University of Alabama, he was a true reformer who wanted the school to be one of national stature. He also was a strong and principled leader for racial progress during those difficult times of discord. We can take pride in the fact that his work paved the way for the school to be one of the very best public law schools in America. Dean Meador's major professional interest was the State and Federal appellate courts, and he was involved in numerous projects and studies designed to strengthen and improve them. From 1971 to 1975, he served on the Advisory Council for Appellate Justice and in 1977-79 he was an assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice where, at the request of Attorney General Griffin Bell, he organized a new office in the Department--the Office for Improvements in the Administration of Justice. Its mission was to identify problems in the Federal and State courts and develop solutions. In addition, he served on numerous boards and committees working to further improve the Court system in our Nation. He was a good writer. I enjoyed his novel, His Father's House, set in Marengo County, Alabama, and Germany. Few lawyers have been held in higher esteem, or have received more honors, or participated in more projects for the betterment of the profession than Dean Meador. While Alabama has perhaps produced a few lawyers better known than Dean Meador, few have given more brilliant and sustained service in so many ways to the nurturing and development of the law and the courts than he. The great American rule of law system was enriched by him throughout his life. He is best remembered by those who knew him as a masterful teacher with a passion for history, friends and family. He leaves behind his wife, Alice, brother, three children, and seven grandchildren. They have been given a great legacy indeed. Dean Daniel John Meador was a great Alabama native, one of its greatest servants of the law, and I am honored to be able to pay tribute to his many contributions to education, the law, and the courts.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I wish to recognize Lt. Gen. Willie Williams for his exceptional service to our Nation of over 39 years in the military and to congratulate him on his retirement tomorrow from the U.S. Marine Corps. General Williams has had nearly four decades of distinguished and honorable service to our Nation's defense. He joined the Marine Corps with a commission in 1974 from the Platoon Leaders Course after receiving his bachelor of arts degree in business administration from Stillman College in Tuscaloosa, AL. He started out as a supply officer with 11th Marines, an artillery regiment, but would go on to serve in numerous command and staff positions throughout his exemplary career in the Marine Corps. In the late 1980s, near the end of the Iran-Iraq war, General Williams was handpicked to lead the logistics element in the Marine air-ground task force that was a part of Operation Earnest Will, the mission to escort and protect oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. Lessons learned from that operation laid the foundation for how the corps would approach resupply into the region during the first Persian Gulf war and later during the occupation of Iraq. General Williams once said that the assignment during the Iran-Iraq war defined him as an ``operational logistician.'' He then went on to command the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit's Service Support Group followed by Brigade Service Support Group 1, both during the mid-1990s. Then, after serving a year as the commanding general of Camp Butler in Okinawa, General Williams took command of 3rd Force Service Support Group in 2001. From there, he was selected for the top job at Marine Corps Logistics Command in Albany, GA, a hub for the service's worldwide supply chain and equipment maintenance efforts. This hub helped with the logistical operation for as many as 25,000 Marines in Iraq's Anbar province at the time of his command. For his last assignment, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, then Gen. James T. Conway, called General Williams back to Washington in 2009 to become the director of Marine Corps Staff. He was appointed by President Obama and pinned on his third star, placing him among the select group of only 16 lieutenant generals in the Marine Corps. In this new capacity, General Williams was the principal assistant and advisor to the Commandant and Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps. Additionally, General Williams also maintained influential communication with his counterparts in the Army, Navy and Air Force for the crucial advancement of the Corps' point of view on matters in which all have vested interest. General Williams embodies everything that it means to be a U.S. Marine. The time he has spent in the Marine Corps has not only had a great impact on the institution, but he also helped professionally develop countless marines over his nearly 40 years of selfless service. Through his example, those marines have come to know and appreciate that only by sacrifice will the freedoms of others, with honor, courage and commitment be secured. Furthermore, General Williams has been a tremendous asset to me and my staff. He was a reliable source of information and advice in resolving a number of issues that affected Alabama. I got to know him then and to learn of his love for his home State and for her people. I will miss his guidance and leadership with the Marine Corps, but am very thankful that he will be bringing his considerable talents to Huntsville, AL. On behalf of the State of Alabama and the U.S. Senate, I congratulate Lt. General Willie J. Williams on his retirement from the U.S. Marine Corps and wish General Williams only the best as he takes off the uniform and begins a new chapter in his life of service in Huntsville.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, the bill before us, S. 744, 1,200 pages, is promoted with high ideals, but it does not do what is promises. It is fatally flawed. If passed, it will not work--not because of the goals it states to have but because it won't work. This flawed bill did not come about because of inadvertent errors that were a part of it, chance, ignorance, or mistake. The policies reflected in this piece of legislation came about as a direct result of the fact that the forces that shaped it had goals that were important to them, but these goals are not coterminous with and are not in harmony with the interests of the Nation as a whole. The real politique Gang that put it together seems fine with that. They openly reported for weeks that these interests were in meetings in some room in secret, working through this legislation and their differences. Soon, they said, the Gang of 8 would have a bill that, having been blessed by these powerful special interests they had invited to the meetings, would be delivered to the Senate floor, masters of the universe that they are, all for us to adopt without complaint and with celebration. They were so proud of this process that the eight would stick together all for one and one for all and defeat any amendment that dared to alter the delicate agreement they talked about. They would consider amendments, of course, oh, certainly. We will consider amendments, but nothing serious that impacts the fundamental agreement that we have. One would not want to disturb that delicate balance, of course, of those very sensitive forces that were in the meetings. The folks who came together only for the common good--who understood the real needs of working Americans who are out of work, who have seen their paychecks decline, who have their spouse, their husband, their wife not able to find a job, their children not able to find a job, their grandchildren not able to find a job--they weren't thinking about them. They included Mr. Richard Trumka, the top union boss; Mr. Tom Donohue, the top Chamber of Commerce boss; the agribusiness conglomerates; the activist group La Raza. Also there were the immigration lawyers association, high-tech billionaires, having delivered magnificent computers, who now desire to deliver public policy; and the meat packers. One must know, friends, that when the Gang of 8 said there was a fragile balance, a delicate agreement, they weren't talking primarily about the agreement they had among themselves as Senators. That was secondary. The agreement they were referring to was the special interest forces that were in that secret room writing that bill. Those interests, those forces, had signed in blood. The Gang of 8 then signed in blood to fight off any serious objections or ideas that would violate that agreement. Although the Gang and the cabal that had confederated and combined together to set the immigration policy for the United States of America were desperate to keep it secret, there was another dominant force involved in the legislation, and that was President Obama. His team was there every step of the way. His team, which has done more to undermine law enforcement in the immigration area than any President in history, was there every step of the way. They were surely providing much of the drafting work, the legal work, and the support to get the detail done, which the Senators, of course, didn't have time to do. They didn't have time to study all the language of the bill. We know about this because this week Ms. Munoz, President Obama's top immigration official, formally a top official in La Raza who said it was immoral for businesses to be checked as to whether they were hiring illegal workers--she couldn't keep it a secret. She made sure to reveal to the New York Times that she and President Obama were there every step of the way, writing the bill, being engaged in it. All of this was, of course, much to the discomfort of the Gang, especially the Republicans, who had been anxious to declare the bill was written by the job creators, entrepreneurs, and the Chamber of Commerce. It went to the Judiciary Committee for a markup, and a very favorable Judiciary Committee it was. Four of the Gang of 8 are on the committee. They started executing their plan. Senator Schumer on occasion would give Republican Gang members on the committee a pass. He was overheard on the mike saying to a staffer that Republicans can have a pass on this vote. They could break ranks--the Republican Gang members--and vote with the people on an issue that came up in Judiciary Committee as long as there were enough votes otherwise to kill that pesky amendment--and so it was in committee. One other important thing, the money. There would be money to run campaign-like ads all over America to promote the bill, to promote the Senators, and to protect the Senators from criticism. And who knows, maybe to provide some political contribution sometime in the future for those who vote right. The combine had it all rolling until last week on the floor of the Senate when the wheels almost came off. Senators and the American people saw that S. 744 had more holes than Swiss cheese. Clearly, the bill lacked the simple conviction that after the amnesty occurred, the lawlessness must end. There was not a conviction anywhere displayed in that legislation that the people who wrote it had a determination not to do more than provide the amnesty and actually provide a lawful system in the future to ensure that lawlessness would not be a part of our future. You can see it in hundreds of different places. For example, the metrics--the standards for enforcement at the border in the bill--were weakened. Current law had higher standards of enforcement at the border than the new bill, which promised to be so tough--toughest bill ever, those TV ads said. Tough as nails, Senator Schumer said. But it weakened the standards for enforcement at the border. The E-Verify system for the workplace, which can be effective in eliminating the hiring of illegal workers, was pushed back for five years, and a whole new system was designed instead using the one currently in existence. It can occur now. The system is 99 percent effective now. Why would we want to wait 5 years, unless we really weren't interested in seeing it happen? Interior enforcement was diminished. The ICE officers have written us and told us this will make it worse. They are diminished in their ability to enforce the law. All kinds of discretion is given that will allow lawyers to block deportations and allow politicians to avoid the carrying out of the law. The citizenship process is deeply damaged and unable to function effectively, according to the Citizenship and Immigration Services officers who process these applications. They say there is no way they can process these applications. An amendment I offered to have at least face-to-face interviews with many of the people--at least those who may pose some risk--was voted down. They are not even going to have interviews with the people who apply for legal status under this bill. The entry-exit system, which provides that an individual must be clocked in when they come into the country and clocked out with a biometrics--fingerprint--system, that system was destroyed. Current law requires a biometric entry-exit system at all land, sea, and airports. This bill weakens that dramatically, makes it utterly unenforceable by changing biometric to electronic, whatever that means, and only requiring it to be at air and seaports.

Mr. SESSIONS. I ask unanimous consent to have 1 additional minute, Mr. President.

Mr. SESSIONS. So, Mr. President, I would say this bill fails at point after point after point after point. It is not a bill that reflects a commitment to a lawful system of immigration in the future. We will admit dramatically more people than we ever have in our country's history at a time when unemployment is high. The Congressional Budget Office has told us that wages, average wages, will go down for 12 years, that the gross national product per capita will decline for 25- plus years, and that unemployment will go up. This is not the right thing for us to pass because the amnesty will occur, but the enforcement is not going to occur and the policies for future immigration are not serving the national interest. I urge my colleagues to vote no on cloture, to not let this bill pass today but require that it be subjected to more amendments and more study at a time to come when we can pass legislation that will actually work. This cannot work as it is. We should not let it go to final passage today. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I appreciate the excellent remarks from the heart of my good friend Marco Rubio. He is a great addition to the Senate. And I would say the heart of America is good. The heart of this country is good. For 30 years they have been pleading with Congress to keep a generous immigration policy afoot in America, but at the same time they have been pleading with us to end the illegality that has continued for years now. The people have pleaded with us to do something about it, and year after year after year Congress has refused, the President has refused. That is why we now have 11 million people in the country illegally. I think the heart of America is good and people are willing to deal compassionately and not try to deport 11 million people. They want to do the right thing about this, but by a 4-to-1 margin they have said they want to see this Congress do what Members of Congress have repeatedly promised and never delivered on--create a lawful system, a system we can be proud of, a system that serves the national interests. As I explained this morning, rather than working with law enforcement groups and prosecutors and considering the needs of everyday citizens, the sponsors of this bill have spent months in negotiation with special interests and lobbyists to produce a bill that will not work. That is the problem we have before us today. This will create even more lawlessness in the future. I want my colleague to hear what our Nation's immigration officers-- men and women on the frontlines--have to say about this legislation. Shouldn't we listen to them? They asked to be able to participate in these secret negotiations, and they were rebuffed. I asked that they be allowed to participate, but they were rebuffed. Let's hear what they say about the bill--the bill Senator Schumer said in committee was tough as nails, and the TV ads running have said it is the toughest bill in history, maybe the history of the world. Is that correct? Is that correct, I have to ask? I think not. This is a joint statement issued today by the councils representing Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers--the ICE officers--and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service officers, a joint statement of two associations representing these tens of thousands of officers. Shouldn't we listen to what they are saying? Please listen, colleagues. ICE officers and USCIS adjudication officers have pleaded with lawmakers not to adopt this bill. The Schumer-Rubio- Corker-Hoeven proposal will make Americans less safe, and it will ensure more illegal immigration in the future-- especially visa overstays. It provides legalization for thousands of dangerous criminals while making it more difficult for our officers to identify public safety and national security threats. The legislation was guided from the beginning by anti-enforcement special interests and, should it become law, it will have the desired effect of these groups: blocking immigration enforcement. This is an anti-public safety bill and an anti-law enforcement bill. We urge all lawmakers to oppose the final cloture vote on Thursday and to oppose the bill. We call on all Americans to pick up the phone and call their members of Congress. So who do we trust on this question of whether we have a bill that will work? Our good political Senators who work hard but haven't been out on the frontlines doing the work or the people we pay who try to do the work every day, putting their lives at risk? There is something else I would like to touch on. I think it is one of the least-discussed parts of the conversation. I am sure we will have others talk in more detail about enforcement failures of the legislation, but in many ways this could be the most important. I know our friends in the media certainly haven't given a lot of coverage to it, but I hope we will think about it more; that is, the future flow or the legal immigration part of the bill. The Congressional Budget Office tells us that the bill's large increase in mostly lower skilled legal workers will push down wages and increase unemployment. That needs to be talked about. It must be fully understood. Hundreds of people are hurting today. There was an article recently in the New York Times--I think 700 people camped out for 5 days to get a few jobs as elevator repairmen. They waited in the rain, they camped out, they waited in line hoping to get one of those jobs. There was an article involving Philadelphia about individuals who had prior convictions and wanted work. They set up an opportunity for them to apply to find a job. They expected 1,000, and 2,000 showed up. They interviewed a number of them, and the stories they gave are heartbreaking. Don't we need to consider the impact this policy could have on working Americans? It is a sensitive topic but a crucial one. Here is what David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, said recently: There are those who say you can't have a sensible debate because it's somehow wrong to express concerns about immigration. Now I think this is nonsense. Yes, of course it needs to be approached in a sensitive and rational manner, but I've always understood the concerns--the genuine concerns of hard-working people, including many in our migrant communities, who worry about uncontrolled immigration. They worry about the pressure it puts on public services, the rapid pace of change in some of our communities and of course the concerns, deeply held, that some people might be able to come and take advantage of our generosity without making a proper contribution to our country. Mr. Cameron goes on to say: It is our failure in the past to reform welfare and training that meant that we left too many of our young people in a system where they didn't have proper skills, they didn't have proper incentives to work, and instead we saw large numbers of people coming from overseas to fill vacancies in our economy. Put simply, our job is to educate and train our youth, not to rely on immigration to fill the skill gaps. Does that resonate with any of our people today? Have we thought through this as to how we should handle these matters? Let's look at our own situation right here in America. Twenty-one million Americans are unable to find full-time work. One in three without a high school diploma is unemployed. Forty-seven million Americans are on food stamps. Labor force participation is the lowest since the 1970s. The percentage of Americans actually working is lower and has been continually falling since the 1970s. It goes back to that date when women were just beginning to enter the workforce. One in three youth in our Nation's Capital is living in poverty. It appears we are in an era of a new normal--economists have been talking about this--a new normal where we see slower growth in developed economies than we normally would see. There is more robotics, and businesses are looking to contain the growth of employment. Low job creation has been the result. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that I be notified after 20 minutes.

Mr. SESSIONS. Our own Congressional Budget Office has done a 10-year economic projection, as they do every year. They did this in January, unconnected to immigration. They found in the second 5 years of our 10- year window, 2018 to 2023, we would only create 75,000 jobs. Some have said we are going to bring in workers, and that is going to create jobs. We will talk about what economists really say about that. But what does this legislation do? I think this legislation has not given thought to the plight of these unemployed Americans. Colleagues, the legislation that is before us today has four times more guest workers. These are people who come only to work. They are not just seasonal workers, they come for years at a time with their families, but they come specifically to take a job--four times more than in the 2007 bill that failed and many objected to on the grounds it would hurt workers. It also triples the grants of permanent status awarded to legal immigrants over the next decade relative to current law. That was the result of the legalization process. Experts who have looked at this and other factors have come to the same conclusion: There would be at least 30 million people who would be given legal status over the next decade, whereas normally we would give 10 million people legal status. Yet to this day the sponsors of the legislation refuse to tell us how many would come into the country. What we do know is that the plan is not a merit-based plan as promised, but it is mostly lower skilled, meaning it will hurt our poor and working-class citizens the most. We have data that shows that. This will be a hammer blow for working-class Americans. The Civil Rights Commission had hearings, and members wrote us. They said it is going to devastate poor workers. They said, We don't have a shortage of lower-skilled workers. We have a glut of lower-skilled workers. That is a direct quote from their letter. So let's compare our current situation when the legislation was introduced in 2007. Today, 5 million more Americans are unemployed than in 2007; 20 million more Americans are on food stamps; and unemployment among teenagers is 54 percent higher than in 2007. Meanwhile, median household income is 8.9 percent lower than in 1999. That is huge. Professor Borjas at Harvard, himself an immigrant who studies immigration and economics, has said a large part of that decline is driven by the large immigration flow that comes into our country. This would increase it dramatically. We want to have immigration. We are not going to stop immigration. We are going to maintain a generous immigration flow. But the people need to know this bill increases it dramatically. CBO did a report on the legislation. This is what they found: Unequivocally, the legal immigration surge in this bill will reduce average wages for a decade. There is a chart in CBO's report. I had it on the Senate floor earlier. Wages will remain lower for many years after that than if the bill had never passed. What about unemployment, the number of people out of work? According to CBO, it will increase, and per capita, GNP will be lower for the next quarter of a century. Yes, you are going to have an increase in GDP--and our colleagues are quick to say that--because of the large new group of people. But that increase per person in America doesn't occur. It reduces the per capita GNP. And these are extremely conservative estimates. Dr. Borjas in his report suggests the situation will be worse than this. To whom do we owe our allegiance? To these groups who want more people in the high-tech world, agriculture world, meatpacking, or other businesses, or to the American citizens, who work hard, pay their taxes, fight our wars, and obey our laws? Who is speaking up for their legitimate interests? So the time is long past, as Prime Minister Cameron has said, for a national discussion over illegal immigration policies. We all believe in it. No one proposes ending immigration. It is a deep part of our tradition as a nation. But a nation has not only a right but a duty to establish a responsible flow that promotes assimilation of those who come here, promotes self-sufficiency, rising wages, and helps identify people who can flourish. The last thing we want to do is to invite people to come to America to work and find out there are no jobs for them here or that they are putting Americans out of work in order to get a job. That doesn't make sense. We have not had the kind of discussion we need. The data indicates, objectively speaking, that this will be a detriment to working Americans. A great nation needs a policy that promotes its legitimate national interests, that considers the tough time workers are having today as a result of high unemployment and falling wages, a policy that rejects ideas that will pull down even further the wages of hurting workers; that could, as Senator Sanders has said, create a permanent underclass in America. It is a dangerous thing. We need to do it right. The legislation before us is a dramatic step. I urge my colleagues to reject the bill and to work on a positive reform plan that serves the national interests of all Americans--immigrant and native born. Sadly, this legislation advances the interests of those who wrote it--many of them with very special interests--at the expense of the general public. The vote we are about to have is for final passage. The promises of an open and fair process have been as hollow as the promises that this bill would be the toughest ever and will end the lawlessness in the future forever. It just will not happen. Our law officers have told us this. This legislation is amnesty first. The legality occurs first. It plainly lacks the kind of mechanisms that are necessary to create a law enforcement system that will work. There is a lack of commitment to that. You can see it throughout the bill. It is not written by people who are out there every day and who know the problems with enforcement. If it were, they would have fixed so many of these problems that are fully shown throughout the bill. Yes, more money has been promised with the recent amendment for the border, but that is in the distant future. What about the rest of the bill? The E-Verify workplace enforcement system is terribly flawed. It has been delayed. It could be put to work right now. We don't need to wait 5 years as this bill does. Why it would be delayed that long is beyond me, unless you are not very interested in getting started and making sure that half the people are legalized and others can't come in and take a job who enter illegally. The entry-exit visa system in this bill, S. 744, this 1,000-page bill, is much weaker than current law. Current law says you must have a biometric entry-exit system at sea, air, and land ports. This bill says you only have to have an electronic system at airports and seaports, making the system incomplete and unable to identify who stays and who has returned home on time. Interior enforcement is much weaker--read the passionate letters from our law enforcement officers as I read this morning, pleading with us not to pass the bill because, they say, it will hurt enforcement and weaken national security. The method of processing those given legal status will not work. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which manages this, has one big objection to this bill. They say there is no way they can accomplish what will be asked of them if this bill is passed. They say it will lead to lawlessness, and they will be unable to identify dangerous people who should not be in the country.

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Chair. I will be wrapping up. Far from having fines pay for the cost of this amnesty as the sponsors promised, this is a huge budget buster--a huge budget buster now. The ObamaCare provision that was supposed to ensure that persons who were given legal status did not get subsidized health care now provides an incentive for businesses not to hire American workers because they will have to pay the ObamaCare premiums but would hire foreign workers, the illegal workers who are now given legal status--they would be having multithousand-dollar advantages in hiring them over American workers. The legislation will not work. Let's continue to work through all these problems together. I do believe that this--our bill's sponsors are clearly correct to say we need to fix this broken system. A bill that will respond to the pleas of the American people for a lawful immigration system that serves our national interest and in which we can take pride is what I will support. How can we vote for a bill our own Congressional Budget Office says will reduce average wages in America for 12 years. We have in this group of American workers thousands, millions of immigrant workers, millions of minorities and African Americans and others at low wages. This legislation, at a time they are hurting very badly will reduce average wages for 12 years, will increase unemployment, and will reduce per capita GDP for over 25 years. This is policy we have to ask serious questions about, all this at a time of high unemployment, long-term falling wages, surging welfare and disability and dependency. It is not a healthy trend in America. We have to ask these questions. Our real focus, as Prime Minister Cameron has said, should be to work hard to train our people, our unemployed, our young people for jobs that pay a decent wage, have a health care and a retirement plan. This legislation will not end the lawlessness as our professional officers have repeatedly told us. It will not do so. It will give legality-- immunity, if you want to call it that--virtually immediately. There is a promise of enforcement in the future, but our officers say it will not happen. It is not going to happen now. I believe they are correct. I had the honor to be a Federal prosecutor for quite a long time and I know law officers and I know their difficulties and I totally agree with them. This was a letter that was written today from the ICE officer head, Mr. Chris Crane, a true patriot. He has worked so hard to do this. He said one of the problems with the bill: . . . is a failure to enforce the nation's immigration laws on the interior of the United States. It is not a border issue. It cannot and will not end as a result of increased border security. It must be resolved through increased interior enforcement. 40% of all illegal immigrants currently in the United States did not illegally cross the border, but instead entered legally with a visa and didn't leave when it expired. 40,000 border patrol agents provided in your legislation will never come into contact with these individuals. . . . Do you hear that, colleagues? These Border Patrol agents are never coming in contact with the people who are in the interior who came on visa and chose not to return. He goes on to say: Systems like E-Verify and biometric Entry/Exit--still missing from your bill--may identify millions of illegal immigrants and status violators, but ICE officers will not exist to locate and apprehend them rendering the systems useless. The majority of foreign nationals identified by these systems will remain in the United States. . . . 500,000 ICE fugitives are currently at large in the United States. ICE estimates 2 million criminal aliens at large in the United States, 900,000 criminal aliens are arrested by local police each year. They go on to note there are only 5,000 ICE officers in America. This administration sued State and local governments that try to help the ICE officers get their job done. Then the joint statement today from the ICE and USCIS Officers Association says this: ICE officers and USCIS adjudications officers have pleaded with lawmakers not to adopt this bill, but to work with us on real, effective reforms for the American people. This bill, they say, is an: . . . anti-public safety bill and an anti-law enforcement bill. We urge all lawmakers to oppose the final cloture vote today and to oppose the bill. This legislation will not end the lawlessness. I wish it were different, but those are the facts. It does not create a merit-based future flow as has been promised, and it leaves us in a very difficult position. I feel like there is no choice for us today. Let's vote no on the legislation. It is not going to end the efforts. We are going to have to continue to wrestle with this. The good news is that the House, at least initially, what I have seen in their work indicates they are giving a far more prudent approach to it. The first bill they produced--I tried to offer it as an amendment, but it did not get brought up--has an effective effort at improving interior law enforcement. That is the kind of thing we need to be doing. Then we can win the confidence of the American people, and we can move past this very difficult time in our history. I reserve the remainder of the time on this side.

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, as I have looked at the legislation-- and we have wrestled with what goes in it--I will just share with my colleagues my perspective, having been in charge of enforcing Federal laws as a U.S. attorney in the interior of the country. We need to understand a couple things. The border is very important. There has been wide open illegality at our borders for years. San Diego, a number of years ago, was having drugs, crimes, violence. They built a fence and prosperity rose on both sides of the fence. Crime went down. It just had to be done, and they have been very happy with it. That helps a lot, and it is not at all impossible for us to get our border under control today. It does not require that much more than current capacity, but what we need is an absolute commitment from the President and the Director of Homeland Security to get that done. We have lacked that. I want to move beyond just the requirements of the border. There are other areas that are critical to having a lawful system of immigration. Those include entry-exit visas, and that includes workplace enforcement. Under current law, Congress has passed--and actually there have been six laws to this effect in the last 10 years--these laws require that there be an entry-exit biometric visa system at all air, sea, and land ports. The 9/11 Commission recommended that. The 9/11 Commission--when they had a review of what had been done toward accomplishing their recommendations--they went back to it and warned that we had not completed it. It is current law. It requires a biometric entry-exit system. People who come into our country today are fingerprinted, but when they leave the country they are not checked. So we do not know--when they got their visa and they entered the country--whether they ever left. There are arguments that have been made that it would cost billions and billions of dollars. But a pilot project, which I just discovered recently--I did not know it was there--was in Atlanta and one of the other airports. In Atlanta, they did this: A person goes through the airport to depart from the United States, they go by a handheld fingerprint-reading machine--police officers have them in their cars; they can stop a drunk driver and check their fingerprints right on the side of the road--they put their finger on that, they go out of the gate, and you know whether they have departed the country. So this is a significant technological advancement. It works. In Atlanta, when they did that, they caught over 100 people on the watch list--people for whom there were felony warrants, people on the terrorist watch list. They knew, and we have a record of the people who left the country. That is critical to our system. We have almost gotten there. But there has been a failure to see it happen because some people do not want it to happen. That is not in this legislation. This bill eliminates the requirement of a biometric system, and it eliminates the requirement that we have an exit system at the border. It is only air and sea. That is a major diminishment of an absolutely critical part of our system. It is going to be even more critical. Why will it be more critical? Because we are going to have the doubling of the number of people who come to our country on visas, and we are going to have an increased problem of visa overstays. The Congressional Budget Office warned of that in their report. It is obvious. The Citizenship and Immigration Services and the ICE officers have warned of it repeatedly to us in their letters. So this has to be a part of our system. It just has to be. The fact that it is not in there indicates the people who drafted the bill had no real interest in seeing enforcement enhanced, but they actually wanted to allow the enforcement to be weakened. So that is a nonstarter. This has been in the law for over 10 years. So the ICE officers have told us: Look, 40 percent of the people now who are here illegally came by visa overstays. But that is going to increase dramatically for a lot of reasons. One of them is we are going to double the number of people who come by visas under this bill. So they have warned us that this concern about a de facto amnesty will continue because we have no people on the interior of the United States to enforce the law. You are going to 40,000 Border Patrol agents, but only 5,000 people inside the interior of the entire United States of America. This President, as part of his systematic plan to stop enforcement, has sued States and broken the 287(g) agreements with States that allow them to participate and help the ICE officers do their jobs. States cannot prosecute people. States cannot deport people. But States can, as part of their job, when a police officer arrests somebody for a crime or drunk driving--and they identify them as being illegally in the country--they can take them to the ICE officers and help them do their job. And there are agreements to do this to this effect. What has happened? This administration has eliminated those agreements and canceled the program. I helped write the program. Lots of States were participating happily in it, and they were not being forced to do anything they did not want to do, but it allowed them to be more effective in doing their job. So the problem is when you see that missing in this 1,200-page bill, but you see provision after provision after provision that focuses on other issues, focuses on issues important to special interests who helped write the bill. Then you begin to get suspicious about what is happening. That is why the ICE officers and the Citizenship and Immigration Services were so concerned about not being able to participate in the program effectively and to share their views. It is clear they did not want their views. So President Obama--although it has been maintained pretty carefully that he was not involved in writing the legislation, it appears he quite clearly was. They are not happy with the ICE officers. The ICE officers actually sued Secretary Napolitano for stopping them from enforcing the law they have sworn to enforce. They say they are being required to violate their oath and their commitment to the law by policies from politicians in the Homeland Security Department. They have written it in letter after letter after letter, openly saying the politicians in the Department are overriding the law--directing us and undermining our ability to do what we are sworn to do. They have a lawsuit pending about it. I have never heard of that, that officers would do that. Then we have the confusion over the E-Verify system. Senator Portman improved the bill dramatically with his amendment--or would have. He was not able to get it up for a vote. But the E-Verify system is in place today and it is utilized by governments and by contractors who do work for the government. I think people who want to voluntarily use it can use it. You can give a Social Security number to your boss or your employer- to-be and he runs it and checks. What they find is many illegal workers are using the same Social Security number as other people. The computer and the Social Security department catches that. That tells the employer there are six different people using this Social Security number. You should not hire this person until he has been checked out. So that is the way the E-Verify system works. It takes about 3 minutes. It has a 99-percent accuracy rate, but the forces out there have blocked the legislation for E-Verify. Even this minimum standard that is operating today, we had to fight to get an extension. I had to hold up legislation to guarantee that they would at least extend the current system because there are forces out there that put in big money that do not like this project. They do not like it. They want to end it. They are afraid it will be expanded. Any plan that pretends to be serious about workplace enforcement has to utilize the E-Verify. Well, this bill, instead of just taking the system and expanding it--which would not take much effort; computers are capable of handling the numbers--instead of just doing that, they have done it in a way that delays it for 5 years. So to me this indicates there is not an intensity of interest after the amnesty has been given. After people have been given legal status, they will be given a Social Security number. They will not be hurt by having to have their number checked. They will have a legitimate Social Security number. They will be legal. They will take any job out there. But the people who come in later, the people who did not qualify, people who otherwise were criminals and should not be getting a job and do not qualify for this provisional status, they would be identified for years under this system. It indicates a lack of seriousness in the commitment. I see Senator Grassley is here. I will wrap up by saying that creating a lawful system of immigration requires more than border enforcement. It is important but you have to have interior enforcement. You have to have workplace enforcement. You have to have entry-exit visa enforcement. This is critical. As I have been stressing, we do not talk about it enough. The bill also sets out in its 1,200 pages the future flow of workers into America. Our colleagues have said it is a merit-based system. We have a points system. Unfortunately, that is not substantially correct. It looks to us like less than 15 percent of the people enter into our country under our plan by a merit-based system. Canada does that. They are very happy with that. I think about 60 percent of their people do so. The more education you have, the more job skills you have, the more fluency you have in the language, you get more points. Under this merit-based system, it has about 15 percent of the people covered by it in a point system. The fact that your brother is here is equal to 10 points. If you have a 4-year college degree, that is only equal to 5 points. It takes a master's degree to get 10 points, equal to the family connection points. So the point system is still heavily skewed to things other than actual job skills, education level, and the ability to be productive and flourish in our society. We want to bring people to our country who are going to be able to flourish, do well, be able to find a job, and not be unemployed or the only skill they have is one that Americans are applying for in big numbers and they would take a job from an American, unemploying an American. So we have to create a system that serves the national interest and identifies the kind of workers the country needs and we can absorb as a part of the over 1 million or so people we admit each year lawfully into America. That makes sense to me. Also, the guest worker programs are exceedingly complex. There are W programs, there are E programs. There are different kinds of programs throughout this whole bill. The net result, the number of people who come not to be permanent citizens, not to be immigrants, but come as guest workers will double under this legislation. That makes it harder for the legal immigrant who is new in America trying to find work to get a job. They are having to compete with the guest workers. So those are the kinds of things we need to be thinking about as we go forward. I wish to express my appreciation to the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Chuck Grassley. He has been a student of this problem since 1986. He has shared with us his perspective on it. He has a deep conviction that if we go through this process again, it needs to be done in a way that we can be proud of a few years later, not be embarrassed about as we were after 1986. So we would create a system that allows a lawful flow to occur but stops the illegal flow in the future. That is the problem I think this legislation has, among others. Senator Grassley, thank you for your efforts. Good work. I have enjoyed working with you and Senator Leahy, who conducted a tough series of hearings. He let us have votes. We got a lot of votes in the Judiciary Committee. He asked if anybody else had another amendment when we finished. We got it done. That has not happened on the floor today. We have only had nine votes, and three of those were motions to table very important amendments that deserved more consideration than that. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, we will have a vote before much longer on the question of whether the legislation before us violates the budget. I think that is going to be established quite clearly. The chairman of the Budget Committee, Senator Murray--and I am the ranking Republican on that committee--is going to acknowledge that and the Parliamentarian will so rule that the legislation violates the budget and violates it in a number of ways, contrary to the promises made by the sponsors of the bill. The sponsors of the bill proposed a large piece of legislation and told everyone a great deal about their bill, one fact after another, and those promises and representations have been shown to be inaccurate. They are not accurate and that is unfortunate. That is why the bill is having the difficulties it is. If it simply was a bill that provided a legal status for people who had been here a long time without difficulties and it was a bill that actually fixed the border, fixed the workplace enforcement, fixed the entry-exit visa, and created an effective internal enforcement mechanism for the future, the legislation would have a good chance of having popular support. But as people find out more about it, they find all those factors are not going to be achieved effectively--in some instances even weakened from current law--and as a result the legislation is in trouble. When we get a piece of legislation that is 1,200 pages and people are unable to digest it, it boils down to talking points. So the sponsors produced a series of talking points that they said reflects what is in the legislation. One of their talking points was that the bill is not going to cost the taxpayers money; that we would fine the people who are here illegally and they will pay the cost of this bill so it would not impact the budget. We were promised that in the Senate Judiciary Committee when this legislation came up. Senator Schumer made that explicitly clear. This is a quote from him in committee, and this is what their talking point said and what their Members have been saying repeatedly: And here, what we're simply doing is making sure that all the expenses in the bill are fully funded by the income that the bill brings in. This is to make sure that this bill does not incur any cost on the taxpayers. It's to make it revenue neutral. That was the promise we had heard. People like to hear that. They were pleased to hear that. It was a positive spin for the bill. He goes on to say: Section 6 provides start-up costs to implement the bill, repaid by fees that come in later. Then he goes on to say money will be paid from companies and workers and by the immigrants who get the legal status in terms of ``their fines as they go through the process.'' That was the promise that was there. Yet now we have legislation and a score that demonstrates that is plainly not correct. First, the Congressional Budget Office analyzed the cost, and this was before we added the extra money last week or what we will vote on today. This was before they added the substitute Corker-Hoeven-Schumer amendment, and that substitute adds a lot more money. What our experts in the budget office tell us is that it would add $14 billion to the on-budget debt of the United States, but it is really more than that. Most of the individuals who will be legalized will be able to have Social Security cards and will pay FICA, Medicare, and Social Security withholdings on their paychecks every week, which will incur extra revenue for the U.S. Government. Our colleagues claim credit for the FICA money to try to justify their claims that they are within the budget and that we should not just count the on-budget score that debt increases from the CBO. But we have to know that the FICA money is money that goes to the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, and every one of the individuals whose average age now is in their thirties will eventually claim the benefit of Medicare and Social Security. They will draw out of the Medicare and Social Security trust funds the money they paid in. Statistically speaking, they will draw out a lot more than they pay in because those funds are not on a sound basis. Medicare and Social Security are on an unsound basis today. They are counting that money to pay for their bill when that money is dedicated to the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. By spending that money today, they are simply adding to the debt of the United States. They cannot claim that twice. They cannot claim that the individuals who are going to be given Social Security cards and will be on a path to receive Social Security and Medicare when they retire--that they are paying into Social Security and Medicare if their money is being spent on funding this program. That is double counting, and Mr. Elmendorf of CBO showed that. This chart shows it is really more than just the $14 billion, which is significant. This chart shows how much the deficit of the United States is impacted by this legislation. The unified budget surplus counts all the Social Security money and all the tax money in one pot. It is one way to do the accounting of the United States. It is not accurate in this case. It should not be used. It claims a $197 billion surplus. That is the Social Security and Medicare money. But if we take away the Social Security surplus this bill creates, $211 billion, and the money they pay into the Medicare trust fund, $56 billion--the net deficit is $70 billion. We have to get our minds correct. The reason this country is going broke, the reason this country is so far off a sound fiscal path, is that we continue, we persist, in using a unified budget number when that money for Social Security and Medicare is dedicated money. It is set aside to pay for something in the future. If someone sets aside money in their savings account for their retirement, they cannot spend it today and pretend they still have it for their retirement account. It is just that simple. This is a bad trend we have been in. It was not so obvious when Social Security and Medicare were bringing in a lot more money than was going out. But now that is not so, and we will soon be in deficit, and very serious deficit. So we should not in any way suggest, believe, or tell the American people that this bill is paid for. It is not paid for, and as a result it violates the Budget Act. That is the point of order that Senator Vitter has made, and we will vote on it. In addition to that, it is worse. There are 10 more budget violations in the bill: One is for new direct spending to exceed the Judiciary Committee's authorization levels over a 5-year period. Another one is a 10-year violation of spending over authorized levels in violation of the committee allocations. Another is an emergency designation to increase spending pursuant to emergency spending from the comprehensive immigration trust fund; emergency spending designation for the comprehensive reform trust fund in violation of the PAYGO Act; emergency designation in violation of a 2010 budget resolution; emergency designation for Social Security cards, in violation of the statutory PAYGO Act. This bill calls it an emergency to have funds for Social Security implementation. That is not an emergency. Another is an emergency designation for the E-Verify system. That is a system we have established and should be able to expand rapidly. That is not an emergency to expand that. That is in violation of the 2010 budget resolution. Another is an emergency designation for E-Verify in violation of the PAYGO act; emergency designation for passenger manifest information expenditures, in violation of the 2010 budget resolution; emergency designation in violation of the Statutory PAYGO Act for passenger manifest information. All of those represent violations of the Budget Act. Senator Vitter raised the one that plainly violates the flat spending limit we agreed to and are now operating under. When the response came from Senator Leahy, he moved to waive that. He moved to waive not only that, but all the other 10 violations of the Budget Act. You only raise one at a time. Senator Vitter raised one, and they moved to waive them all and eliminate this pesky complaint that their bill spends more money than the budget allows. We will be voting on that, colleagues, and this Senate has been in recent months doing well with regard to adhering to the budget limits we agreed to. We have had seven consecutive votes in which the Senate has voted not to violate the budget when a bill hit the floor that violated the budget. We sent the bill back for reform so if it comes back it has to be in harmony with the bill--seven consecutive votes. My colleagues who have been there and who believe they have a responsibility to honor the budget limitations we agreed to should not vote to waive the budget. Let's stay within the budget. Let's require the bill's sponsors to do what they promised to do, and by right they should be able to do, which is produce a bill that comes within cost without raiding the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, as they now intend to do. That is just the way it is. I wish it were not so, but it is. I will take a minute to point out that recently--last night or late yesterday--Senator Bennet, one of our most able Members of the Senate and a Member of the Gang of 8, took the floor to promote the bill and claimed that before jobs are offered, the bill ``requires an American is offered the job first.'' He went on to say: ``We are not bringing in a whole bunch of new people when there are Americans looking for work.'' We are not bringing in a whole bunch of new people when there are Americans looking for work--well, we are. The guest worker program that is in this bill, in addition to the legalization process of normal immigration, doubles the number of guest workers who will be coming to America over current law. These are not people who come to be permanent residents and immigrate to America. These are people who come to take a job and work for a certain period of time--really up to 3 years, and they can extend for 3 years. They have become permanent job takers, in many instances. He says: First of all, you have to certify an American has been offered the job first. He and other supporters claim this bill is not going to impact wages, is not going to impact jobs. They say don't worry about it--I am worried about it. First and foremost, we are going to have 1.1 million people, and many of those are not able to work in the economy fully today because they are illegally here. They will be given a legal status, a Social Security card, driver's license, and the ability to apply for any job in America. So all of a sudden we are going to have a half million people, perhaps, out there competing for jobs that Americans cannot find today because unemployment is very high. That is going to happen promptly. Then we are going to accelerate another 4.5 million people into the country, without regard to their skills, and they will be looking for jobs mostly in the lower skilled workforce area. Then, in addition to that, we add the normal flow of immigration into America. We currently welcome 1 million immigrants every year, but this is going to welcome 1.5 million a year. So, there will be an additional 500,000 workers a year in America under the normal immigration system. In addition to that, the guest worker program will double--all at a time when we are not doing well economically. Today's announcement that the government revised downward substantially the growth in the first quarter is a real problem. We are not seeing job growth. Let me just show this chart about the impact on wages and workers in America that will occur as a result of this legislation. I think probably these numbers are modest. I think it will be more dramatic than this. This is our Congressional Budget Office. They looked at the numbers, and they said: the average wage would lower over the first dozen years if this bill passes. For 12 years, if we pass this bill, the average wages of Americans will be lower than would have been the case if the bill had not passed, according to our own CBO. Somebody came and said on the floor: We won't worry about that because in 20 or 30 years they say it might be better. First of all, our problem is today. People are unemployed today, and they cannot find work today. Wages have been declining every year since 1999. Working wages of Americans have been declining relative to inflation steadily for over a decade. This bill will accelerate that. It takes us in exactly the wrong direction. Why would we do that? Then it says CBO--this is their own report and this chart is in their own report: CBO estimates that S. 744 would cause the unemployment rate to increase slightly between 2014 and 2020. So for the next 7 or 8 years we are talking about increased unemployment. This chart shows the wage situation. This is the current rate. The bill passes, wages drop, and they start going up out here, according to CBO, in year 2025. If the bill had not passed, the growth would have been higher still, but now it knocked it down dramatically. Even though it is growing, it doesn't mean it is getting back to where it would have been had the bill not been passed. People who say this bill will not impact adversely--working Americans are facing an economic reality that is unfortunate for them. Finally, they say it will make the economy stronger. You have heard that. Under this bill we will give legal status, in the next 10 years, to 30 million people; permanent legal status to 30 million people instead of 10 million people who would be given legal status in America if we followed current law. Virtually all of those will be able to work, and we would see some increase in GDP/GNP if that were to occur. However, how much increase do you get and how does it compare out per person in America? CBO said S. 744 would reduce per capita GNP by 0.7 percent in 2023. That is page 14. In fact, per capita GDP, according to their own chart that I have reproduced from their report, drops from 2017, 2021, 2025, 2029, 2030. It takes until 2030 before it starts getting back. If the bill hadn't passed, GDP per capita would hopefully be going up. This is way below what would happen, and this hurts Americans when per capita GNP is reduced. Everybody will feel that--maybe not the masters of the universe in their suites out here that are nipping off extra profits because they have lower wages. It may not impact them. They may make more money. In fact, Professor Borjas at Harvard says the people who gain the most from this immigration bill will be the people who hire the most low-wage workers because wages will go down. They will make bigger profits, but the people who will be hurt are the vastly more numerous workers whose wages will go down. This needs to be talked about. People seem to be in denial, but we have to talk about that. I ask my colleagues to consider this as they decide how to vote on this important piece of legislation. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, we just saw on the news today that the GDP for the first quarter, according to the Wall Street Journal, was revised downward dramatically from previous estimates. I am not saying there is anything wrong with their accounting, but they go back and doublecheck their numbers and add other analyses and they come up with what the growth of the economy was in the first quarter. The previously announced growth level was 2.4 percent for the first quarter, which is low. Coming out of a recession, we need to be doing better than that. But now that it was revised downward, they found there was only 1.8 percent growth in the first quarter. That is a very dangerous trend, and the article said it is evidence of a slowing growth in America. The fourth quarter of last year GDP growth was only .4 percent. If continued throughout the year, that is a very troubling number. The data shows for the last 15 quarters, almost 4 years, we have averaged only about 2 percent growth in our economy--growth in GDP. I would say to my colleagues, as we vote to bring in more and more workers at a time when jobs are not being created in any significant number, we need to be aware that this can cause severe consequences. The Atlanta Federal Reserve Economic Study, done several years ago, found the immigration flow today in the Atlanta area of the Federal Reserve had reduced the wages of American workers in that region by as much as $1,500 a year. That is $120 per month less money for an average family to take care of themselves. Unemployment and declining wages are a big reason that people are getting in trouble on their credit cards. Professor Borhaas and others have done studies on this. Another study found a $960 decline in people's annual wages, which is about $80 a month. Eighty dollars a month may not sound like a lot for a Senator, but it sounds like a lot for a working American--maybe equal to their gas bill, or part of it. I would say that as we consider our votes on the immigration bill, let's consider that this economy is not growing and is not creating large job growth. We have projections that we are not going to do so for the next decade. And I am not talking about people who will be legalized that are here, but we ought not overload the economy with a new flow that is much larger than the current flow of immigration legally. I see my colleagues are here, and I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I see Senator King from Maine here. I will only talk for a minute. I will share some thoughts later about where I see the difficulties with the immigration bill. I would say that for the vast majority of the people who will be legalized or who will be coming into the country, businesses will be under no requirement to hire Americans first. That is not accurate, and it is a cause of concern for me. Farewell Remarks I wish to share some brief remarks. I know we have a lot to do, but I was here to hear Senator Cowan's farewell remarks to us. They were delivered eloquently and effectively, with integrity and graciousness and a sense of purpose that I found impressive. I think all of us have found him impressive, getting to know him. I heard him share his background recently, how he came to this position. He does so with a constancy of purpose and clear vision for what he believes is right. He has been raised right, and he reflects those values and has done so in the Senate. It is a pleasure for me to have had the opportunity to get to know him. I would just say it must be a special thrill for him to be able to, all of a sudden, find himself, as he said so nicely, in the U.S. Senate without having to campaign, raise money, or otherwise be in that position. He served his State with skill and dedication. It is a pleasure to have served with him. I wish him Godspeed in his future endeavors. I understand the Senator from Maine is going to share with us some valuable history today. Maybe a connection between Maine and Alabama might even be mentioned. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Chair for allowing me to have the floor. Look, we were moving--Senator Grassley had a list of 16, 18 amendments Wednesday night. He was prepared to begin the voting on those Thursday, Friday, Saturday if need be, as Senator Reid had said we could work on Saturday. Monday, what happened? They had the super- amendment, they had the Corker-Hoeven amendment, and the majority decided to sit on that and not allow any amendments to occur Thursday, not allow any amendments to occur Friday, and only have a cloture vote on Monday. And that vote--I don't think our Members understood fully-- gave complete power to the majority to dominate this process, to end the idea that we would have an open, fair process. It ended with the cloture vote Monday. We were in the process to vote on a series of amendments. Senator Grassley worked and worked, and he got 35 amendments that he said we would agree to, out of the hundreds that were out there, to have votes on. Yet now they come back and say 15 or 17, and now we are going to do this, and we want this amendment and that amendment. The process, I hate to say--it is pretty obvious to me--on Monday afternoon was altered. We had gone from an open debate process, as Senator Leahy conducted in the Judiciary Committee--at the end of it, he did say: Anybody else have anything else they want to offer? And there was nothing else to offer, and he voted. The committee was not a normal committee. We had four of the Gang of 8 on it. So the vote after vote after vote, including two votes on E- Verify that would have strengthened the bill, was voted down. Votes on the earned-income tax credit--fixing and honoring the promise not to provide that welfare payment--were voted down. So I just want to say that everybody knows what happened. The Republican Members of the Gang of 8 said we would have an open process. Right after the vote Monday afternoon, they told me they were going to work for a process, but I knew then that the deal had been cooked and that this wouldn't result in something that would work and be fair.