Jeff Sessions

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, the judge has provided our committee with a good deal of information. We also appreciate that the judge has already once recognized that her quick questionnaire was incomplete. The issue was raised, and she provided the committee with additional information on June 6 which really should have been in the first response. However, we are still concerned with several aspects. As I have already said, the minority leader reiterated this morning that members of the Judiciary Committee and the full Senate need a complete and thorough record in order to make informed judgments on this nomination. This is a lifetime appointment. It is our one chance in Congress to get it right. A Justice on the Supreme Court, if not faithful, has the power to actually alter the Constitution in addition to faithfully follow it, and sometimes I think that is what they have done. We need to know what kind of judges we are going to get. Does this judge understand that he or she will be under the law, subordinate to the law, one who must faithfully follow the law or do they believe they are above the law and have the freedom and the ability to interpret it in new and novel ways which might seem to further some agenda he or she might have, if they are on the bench? I think the American people are concerned about that. I think they are right to be concerned about that. Decisions have been rendered, in my opinion, that are not faithful to the Constitution, not required by the Constitution. Those are things we need to talk about and do it in a fair way and do it at a high level. There is no need to be personal about it. The oversights and errors in this questionnaire are the product of trying to rush through a nominee with one of the most lengthy records in recent history, maybe ever, to the Supreme Court, in one of the shortest timeframes in history. I think we should try to get it right. I believe a fair and thorough process, in the best spirit of this Chamber and in the best interest of this Nation, is what we should look forward to. I want to see we get the complete record and get back on the right track. I believe we can do that and it is important we work at it. I promise, as I said, to do what I can, and I believe we will have a very fair and objective hearing. But it is also important that we are fair to the American people. They are depending on us to carefully scrutinize anyone who comes up for confirmation. We cannot do that without a complete questionnaire. There are a number of things I raised the other day, yesterday, about the shortfall. I will briefly make a point or two. The letter sets forth in some detail quite a number of areas we set forth. It is eight different items and some other comments that we believe are inaccurate and we call for additional information. There are some significant matters there. When the judge supplemented her initial questionnaire on June 6 by providing us with a report concerning the death penalty article she drafted during her time on the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Education Fund, she had initially omitted that from the report. We would appreciate confirmation that a thorough review of those records has been completed, given the initial omission, and that she has provided all the relevant documents to the committee in response to this question. There are other questions of writings, reports, and speeches. Question 12(a) requires the nominee to provide copies of materials written or edited. Judge Sotomayor has been widely described as one of the editors of the Yale Law Journal and, as managing editor, Yale Studies in World Public Order. However, we have not received any copies of either publication that she has edited. We need to see copies of those materials. The questionnaire also requires copies of reports, memorandums, and policy statements prepared by specified organizations. The judge responded: [a]s a member of various court committees [she has] prepared and contributed to numerous reports and memoranda on court issues, which relate to internal court deliberations and are not available for public dissemination. I don't think those are the kind of documents that are secret. I think they can be obtained, and I believe the questionnaire calls for all of those. Paragraph 12(d) talks about a list of speeches and lectures providing the text of those speeches or, if that is not available, outlines or notes and, if not that, a summary of the subject matter involved in the speeches. About a third of those speeches have not been prepared and the summaries are inadequate. I will give an example. This was a response to one of them: I spoke on Second Circuit employment discrimination cases. There is no summary of what it was about, no outline or other information on that speech. Another one: I spoke at a federal court externship class on Access to Justice. Another one: I spoke on the United States Judicial System. Another one: I participated in a symposium on post-conviction relief. I spoke on the execution of judgments of conviction. Another one: I spoke on the implementation of the Hague Convention in the United States and abroad. It goes on. There are several others. But those are inadequate responses, probably as a result of rushing the questionnaire through. I hope the nominee will go back and see, first of all, if she can find the written speech she gave and provide us a copy of it. That would be helpful as we review these matters because there have been some questions about speeches that the nominee has made. I will not take any more time. I will let the letter speak for itself. I tried to call the judge earlier this afternoon, but she will not be available until sometime later, to tell her this is coming forward. I believe her staff may have already been notified of it, the White House Counsel's office. These are not little bitty matters. They are important matters. If we are going to move forward in a recordbreaking timeframe, the least we can expect is complete and full answers to these questions. It is appropriate that we insist this questionnaire be properly and completely answered. I hope and believe it will be. Certainly that is what our request is. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I wish to assure our Members, the American people, and Judge Sotomayor that our committee is going to do its best to have a hearing on her confirmation that would be worthy of the serious responsibility we have and that the American people will feel is fair. I hope they will say it is the best hearing we have ever had. I have to tell you, though, things are moving faster than I would like to have seen them move, and it does cause some difficulties for us. As I discussed on the floor yesterday, the Republican members of the Judiciary Committee are deeply concerned about this process being moved this rapidly. Yesterday, Chairman Leahy unilaterally announced that the hearings would begin on July 13, some 48 days from the announcement of this nomination. I won't go into a lot of detail, but I would note that in the recent three Supreme Court nominees, Justice Breyer's hearing was 60 days after the announcement, Justice Roberts'-- the one that has been most cited and was the shortest--was 55, and Justice Alito's was 70. And I would note that Justice Roberts had 370 cases, whereas Judge Sotomayor has 3,500-plus cases to review. So I think, to quote Senator Schumer and Senator Leahy in remarks they made previously, it is better to do it right than to do it too fast. I would note that late last week, the White House sent her answers to the questionnaire we send to all the nominees, requiring a good deal of information, and that is done on a bipartisan basis. Those answers were sent forward with great fanfare. In a press release from the White House Counsel's Office, the Obama administration proclaimed that they set a record by completing the process in just 9 days. But this is a confirmation process, not a confirmation race. I think the White House should focus more on having thorough and complete answers to the questionnaire, not on entering the ``Guinness Book of World Records'' for the fastest response from a Supreme Court nominee. We know now that Judge Sotomayor omitted or failed to include key information and has provided incomplete and sometimes contradictory responses to the questionnaire. The responses are not satisfactory. So today all seven Republican members of the Judiciary Committee, who have been through this--most of them--for some time and seen these issues develop before, have written to ask that the nominee fulfill her duty to provide clear and complete answers to our questions in order to obtain quite a bit of information that is now not available and should have been included. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have that letter printed in the Record.

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

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. I know the Senator from California raised the question of doing for this nominee as the others. If this goes forward as planned, it would be 48 days from nomination announcement to the first hearing. I wonder if the Senator from New York would acknowledge that for Justice Breyer it was 60 days; for John Roberts it was 55, the shortest; and Sam Alito was 70. This would be much shorter a period of time than the period we are being given for this nominee, who has 3,500 cases. I would ask if the Senator remembers saying with regard to the Alito nomination, when our Democratic colleagues asked that it be held over past Christmas, and at their request it was done so, he said: It is more important to do it right than to do it quickly. And now we have a bipartisan agreement to do that. So we just ask for a bipartisan agreement to do it right and not too fast. I don't know how we can work it out, but I think this is an arbitrary date, designed to move this process forward by a certain end game, faster than we need to. The vacancy, as the Senator knows, does not occur until October when Justice Souter steps down. So we do need to complete it by then. I have told the President I will work to make sure that occurs.

Mr. SESSIONS. Will the Senator yield for just one question?

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank Senator McConnell for his leadership in so many ways but in particular the concern he has shown repeatedly on the U.S. judiciary. He is on the Judiciary Committee, and he takes these issues seriously. I think it is important that we all do so. I have to say I am disappointed that this morning we learned from media reports--I did--that the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Leahy, announced we would begin the hearings on July 13 on Judge Sotomayor. I believe that is too early. I don't believe it is necessary. It is far more important that we do this matter right than do it quick. When the announcement was made, President Obama said the time we should look to is October 1, when the new Supreme Court term starts. I think that always was an achievable goal, and it is something I said I believe we could achieve and still do it in the right way. The question is, Can we get all this done in this rush-rush fashion? It will be the shortest confirmation time of any recent nominee. It is a time well shorter than that of Justice Roberts--now Chief Justice-- and we had a need to move that a bit because he was confirmed, as it turned out, on September 29, a couple of days before the new term began. He was going to be Chief Justice. But the last nominee, whose record was much like this nominee, Justice Alito, was coming up in late December, and the Democratic leader then on the Judiciary Committee, Senator Leahy, asked that it be put off until after Christmas. The Republican chairman at that time, Senator Specter, despite President Bush's desire that it move forward, said: No, I think that is a reasonable request, and so we put it off. It was 90-some-odd days before that confirmation occurred. It was well over 70 days before the hearings began. Mr. President, first and foremost, we are committed to giving this nominee a fair, good, just hearing. But to do so requires that we have an opportunity to examine her record of probably more than 4,000 cases. In addition to that, she has given a lot of speeches and written law review articles, which need to be analyzed. Make no mistake about it, this is the only time, the only opportunity this Congress and the American people have to play a role in what will turn out to be a lifetime appointment, an appointment to a Federal bench of independence and unaccountability for the rest of their lives. I think it is important that we do this right. I thank Senator McConnell for his leadership in trying to insist that we do it right. I believe, from what I know today, the timeframe set forth is unrealistic. More than that, it is not necessary. Let's do this right, take our time, and do it in a way that I hope--as I have said repeatedly, this would be what people could say is the finest confirmation process we have ever had. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank Senator Kyl for his leadership on this committee. He is one of the Senate's great lawyers. I appreciate his insights, as we all do. I note that I think this rush is ill advised. In truth, the White House was determined to get the nominee's questionnaire to the Senate in a hurry. There were a number of cameras and crews and press releases that went out when boxes were delivered. In many ways, the questionnaire was incomplete, the result, I think, of that kind of rush. In others, the nominee failed to provide sufficient details that are required by the questionnaire. For example, the judge did not include a troubling recommendation to the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund to lobby against a New York State law that would reinstate the death penalty, and it had quite a bit of intemperate rhetoric in it. After that was noted, she admitted she had failed to include but got that document in. But I suggest perhaps if somebody had not been aware of that omission, maybe we would not have received that document at all. What else might she have failed to include that might be an important bit of information as our committee does its oversight work? In addition, the nominee was supposed to provide opinions and filings for cases going to verdict, judgment, or final decision. For three cases, she indicates that the District Attorney's Office is searching its records for information on this case, and she did not provide those. In 14 cases, she noted that she tried, the record is incomplete and not provided. So we don't have any documents related to these cases. As another example, the nominee is supposed to list speeches, remarks, and lectures she gave and, in the absence of having a prepared text, to provide outlines, notes, and then a summary of the subject matter. Several of the entries lacked any subject matter descriptions or are so vague as to be utterly uninformative, including these quotes I will note for the record, and we have had some problems with her speeches. A lot of speeches she has given she has no text for. I note this is on her questionnaire: ``I spoke on Second Circuit employee discrimination cases.'' She did not indicate what or give any summary of that. Another one: ``I spoke at a federal court externship class on `Access to Justice.' '' It is not clear what that was in any way, and no summary and certainly no text. ``I participated in a panel entitled `Sexual Harassment: How to Practice Safe Employment.' '' Similarly, no additional explanation. Next: ``I spoke on the United States judicial system.'' Next: ``I spoke on the topic `Lawyering for Social Justice.' I discussed my life experiences and the role of minority bar organizations.'' ``I participated in a symposium on post-conviction relief. I spoke on the execution of judgments of conviction.'' ``I spoke on the implementation of the Hague Convention in the United States and abroad.'' ``I participated in an ACS panel discussion on the sentencing guidelines.'' ``I participated in a roundtable discussion and reception on `The Art of Judging' at this event.'' It would be nice to know what she thought about the art of judging. ``I contributed to the panel, `The Future of Judicial Review: The View from the Bench' at the 2004 National Convention. The official theme was `Liberty and Equality in the 21st Century.' '' Those are some of the things that I think are inadequate responses to the questionnaire's requirements. This questionnaire is one we have used for nominees of both parties for a number of years. The chairman justifies this rushed schedule because of the need, he says, to allow the nominee to respond to unfair criticisms of her record. But the chairman and all our Democratic colleagues know that the Republican Senators who will actually be voting on this nominee, I am confident and certain, have been nothing but extremely fair and courteous and respectful of the nominee. Even when she made mistakes, such as omitting several things from her questionnaire, we have not criticized her for that. So in return for this courtesy, I am disappointed that we are being rushed to complete this process in a time based on what I know now is not a wise approach. I don't think it is a good way to begin the proceedings. I look forward to working with my colleagues on this date. Perhaps we can do better as we move forward. It is an important process. It is the public's only opportunity to understand what this is about. I think we ought to do it right. As Senator Leahy has said, do not rush it. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I wish to express my appreciation to Senator Burr for his hard work on this issue. He is one of our most able Members. I think the fundamental premise of the study that showed his bill will reduce smoking more than the bill on the floor, the Kennedy bill, is something that should give us pause. I know they have worked very hard on it. He has worked very hard on it, and I hope my colleagues will avail themselves of his suggestion to read it--both bills--and make a judgment on what they think is best for the country. Unprecedented Budget Deficits Mr. President, the unprecedented budget deficits we see today are creating fears of a surge in bond interest yields and a fall in the U.S. credit rating. I wish to talk about that. I have talked about it previously. But I would repeat my fundamental assertion that nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could, as Julie Andrews said. Debts must be paid, and they will be paid one way or the other. Either somebody is going to lose--either you are going to print money and inflate the money or you are going to pay back the debt with interest to whomever will loan you the money to fund the debt. We are moving into a decade of the most unprecedented deficits in the history of our country. Nothing has ever been seen like it before. It is irresponsible. We have not discussed it enough. It is breathtaking to people who examine it. The estimated deficit for fiscal year 2009, the one we are in, ending September 30, is expected to be $1.84 trillion. That is a lot of money. That number dwarfs even the $500 billion maximum, inflation-adjusted deficit--nearly the same dollars to dollars--during World War II. It was only $500 billion in World War II. So this year, the deficit is projected to be 12.9 percent of the gross domestic product. In 1 year, the deficit will be 12.9 percent of the gross domestic product of the United States of America. That is a level not seen since World War II. David Walker, the former Comptroller General of the United States-- that is what we call the Government Accountability Office--has been speaking out for a number of years on deficits. He criticized President Bush for deficits. He continues now to speak out since he has left government. He has concluded that the United States of America is in danger of losing our AAA credit rating. He points out that the cost of insuring U.S. Government debt has risen so much that it recently cost more to buy protection on U.S. debt than debt issued by McDonald's Corporation. That is his statement. In fact, a Wall Street Journal editorial in March noted that the insurance rate for U.S. Government bonds rose 700 percent to 100 basis points between March of 2008 and March of 2009. That means in this past month of March, it costs $10,000 to insure $1 million in Treasury bonds. Who would think you would have to get insurance to guarantee the payment of U.S. Treasury bonds? As of May 28, that insurance cost had fallen to 45 basis points, but that is still more than three times what it was in March of 2008, just a year ago. Not only that, as of May 28, the cost of insuring our government's debt is higher than that of France and Germany. Mr. Walker goes on to note that the United States has had a AAA credit rating since 1917. Furthermore, he states that given the current national debt and deficit, the United States may not deserve the AAA rating we have today. That is a warning. I hope that is not so. I hope we don't see a reduction of our AAA rating, which has a real impact in how much we have to pay to borrow money, and we are borrowing a lot. But I think this man deserves hearing. This is a serious commentator on American deficits and debt. So the idea he has proposed is not farfetched. In fact, the Standard & Poor's--S&P--a few weeks ago lowered its outlook on Great Britain's debt. They put it on a negative outlook. While the United Kingdom is keeping its AAA rating for now, the Wall Street Journal notes that the negative outlook that S&P has found is a precursor to a downgrade. They also note that Japan's debt, in fact, has already been downgraded to AA2 from AAA. So the question is, are we next? Not only is our credit rating in danger, but it is costing more and more to borrow. This is very important. While it may appear to be a separate problem, I think it is related to us spending more and borrowing too much. The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond, which rises with the increased government debt and expectations of inflation, has surged 54 percent this year, from 2.4 percent to 3.7 percent as of yesterday. It was 3.2 percent 2 weeks ago. Yesterday it was 3.7 percent. That is a significant surge. So let me say it this way, and to repeat: We will borrow this year a record amount of money. Not only that, over the next 10 years, we will continue to borrow at unprecedented rates. We are borrowing because we are spending more than we take in--a lot more than we take in--and nothing comes from nothing. How do we spend more than we take in, in taxes? How do we do it? We borrow the money. How do we borrow the money? We sell Treasury bills. We ask people to take their money out of their bank account and buy U.S. Treasury bills. We have had an unusual situation with interest rates being low, because people were so afraid if they bought stock or private bonds, that companies may go bankrupt, and they were interested in buying government bonds, Treasury bonds, presumably the most secure bonds in the world. So we have had a bargain and we have been taking advantage of it. But all of a sudden now we are beginning to see a surge in these interest rates, because people are thinking: Well, if I don't get a 3-percent return when I buy a Treasury bill, and inflation next year is 5 percent, and my money is tied up for 10 years, I am losing 2 percent a year. I am not gaining money; I am losing money. The world looks at it like that. The Chinese and people in Saudi Arabia who have excess wealth and bought Treasury bills are looking at this too and they are demanding higher interest rates. That is why it is going up. That means each year we will pay a larger percentage of the tax money we take in to pay interest on the debt than we would have if that had not been the case. I am told that this rampant rise in Treasury rates is the talk of Wall Street. How has it happened? Net debt sales; that is, the net sales of Treasury bills and the borrowing the government has done, increased from $332 billion last year to $1.555 billion this year. That is a lot. That is almost five times. When you put too much of a product on the market, things happen, and people start demanding better returns. Two weeks ago, Barron's reported as big news that the U.S. Department of Treasury bond yields could top 4 percent this year. And it seems, since it already hit 3.7 percent yesterday, that we may get there sooner than Barron's even anticipated. So how does all this stack up with what the President estimated when he submitted his budget earlier this year? His budget estimated an average yield on Treasury bonds at 2.8 percent for the entire year. We already hit 3.7, and Barron's said we are going to hit 4, so we are ahead of Barron's schedule already. So the 10-year Treasury bill is increasing, and hopefully, it won't surge out of reason. Some are worried about that. It does look like it may well reach that 4 percent or more this year. That is bad news for American taxpayers. So we are like the credit cardholder. When interest rates go up, it costs us more. When the interest rates on Treasury bills go up, we have to pay more to get people to loan us money so we can spend it. I guess it is fair to say we have only ourselves to blame. Even if you took the President's assumptions, interest on the debt is supposed to be $170 billion this year. So this Nation will pay on the debt we already have accumulated $170 billion in interest this year. That is a lot of money. We spend $40 billion on the Federal highway program. We spend less than $100 billion on Federal aid to education in America. We are already spending, and will spend this year, $170 billion on interest, on debt we have run up before. That equals $1,435 per household. That is a lot of money, $1,435. By 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office, our own Budget Office's evaluation of what the President's budget is going to be, 10 years from now, the interest on the debt will not be $170 billion; it will be $800 billion. That would be $3,433 per household, more than twice the current debt interest payment that each household in America is to incur. Why? Because we are spending too much. We are spending money we don't have. We spent $800 billion on a stimulus package. We are spending $700 billion on the TARP Wall Street bailout. Our increase in spending for the underlying Federal budget this year, the nondefense, the discretionary spending was a 9-percent increase. That is huge, many times the rate of inflation, a 9-percent baseline increase. Most of my colleagues know that if you increase spending, or have an interest rate of 7 percent, your money will double in 10 years. So at 9 percent, in less than 10 years, the amount of our spending would double; entire government spending in 8 or 9 years would be doubled. That is why we are running up debt. But the most troubling thing is, it is going to continue. We have heard the President say, I am worried about this. We are going to have to talk about this in the future. Have you heard that? Oh, yes. This is a big problem. We are going to have to do something about it in the future. Well, the future is becoming now. The budget that he submitted to us didn't do anything about it in the future. Let me be frank with my colleagues. The budget this year, the deficit this year the President projected would be $1.76 trillion. That has already been proven to be low. They are now estimating $1.84 trillion in 1 year. And they project it dropping down to maybe $500 billion in 3 or 4 years, assuming the economy is growing well. But over the 10 years, in the tenth year of his budget deficit, the annual deficit in the tenth year, is over $1 trillion. And over the 10 years, the average deficits from the President's own submitted budget would be almost $1 trillion a year, and the highest deficit prior to this we have ever had was $455 billion last year. So this is averaging almost twice, really twice the highest deficit we have ever had. The President has said, correctly, that these trends are unsustainable. He recognizes that. He also said, according to Bloomberg at a townhall meeting in New Mexico on May 14, that current deficit spending is unsustainable. He warned of skyrocketing interest rates for consumers if the United States continues to finance government by borrowing from other countries. So I agree with him on that, but it is time to start doing something. China remains the biggest foreign holder of United States debt in Treasuries, and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao stated in March that China is worried about its investments. Not only that, but yields are currently rising despite an extremely unusual move by the Federal Reserve to directly purchase Treasury bonds. So the U.S. Federal Reserve--our banking gurus--have decided they will take money and purchase U.S. Treasury bonds to keep the interest rates from going up so fast, because there are not enough people out there to buy them all, I suggest. It holds the interest rates down somewhat. The Fed has not done anything like this since the 1960s. It is very unusual. Even then, it was a much smaller operation. They announced a $300 billion purchase plan in March and have made $100 billion in purchases so far. If those purchases are not carefully managed, they could lead to inflation down the road; there is no doubt about it. Not only that, but the Fed could get stuck with sizable losses if the yield on those Treasury bills continues to rise. According to Barron's, if rates rise 1 percentage point, it could lead to a $140 billion loss for the Fed in that deal of purchasing these bonds. That is $140 billion. The Federal highway spending in America is $40 billion. This is a huge sum of money. Let's look at the deficit and debt that are driving our interest rates higher as part of his detailed budget released in May. The President raised his estimate of a deficit from $1.75 trillion to $1.84 trillion. I ask, do we remember that at that same time when the President released his budget, he also released a plan that was going to show that he was committed to frugality, and it would supposedly save $17 billion? Remember that? Some people had to laugh at it, really. It was pretty amazing. There were these numbers out there, and he announced this frugality package to save $17 billion. It wasn't clearly understood, in my view, how insignificant that was, because at the same time they were announcing saving $17 billion, the reaccounting of the projected deficit for this very fiscal year jumped $90 billion. So it dwarfed the $17 billion in spending cuts that were announced at that time. So we had a $17 billion efficiency project, which remains to be seen whether it will be successful, and the total deficit expectation jumped $90 billion. The President's budget proposes to take us to a debt level of 82 percent of GDP by 2019. In 2019, the amount of debt, in the country at that point would amount to 82 percent of our entire gross domestic product in America. That is a level not seen since 1946, at the height of World War II. The difference between now and then, of course, is that that was during a war. It was widely known that those expenditures were temporary, and when the war was over, they would end; and, in fact, they did. However, today, the President is projecting deficits averaging nearly $1 trillion as far as the eye can see, with no projections to show them drop, or be reduced. It has been popular to complain that, well, President Bush had deficits--and he did. I criticized him for that, and I think he could have done a better job. His highest deficit was $455 billion. This year's deficit will be $1.8 trillion, and they will average $900 billion over the next 10 years. Not 1 year in the next 10 years, according to the President's own budget, will his deficit be as low as the highest deficit President Bush had, which was $455 billion. Even as a percentage of the total gross domestic product, it is astounding. President Bush's deficits averaged 3.2 percent of GDP. President Obama's budget, over the next 10 years, will average 7.3 percent of GDP each year--twice what President Bush's averaged. I am worried that we are not getting the kind of bang for our buck that we hoped to get. We got an $800 billion stimulus package that was supposed to go out there and build infrastructure and create jobs now. It was money that had to be spent in a hurry. The truth is, though, that most of that money is not going to be spent until after 2010. It takes time to get that money out. The CBO estimated that $162 billion of the $311 billion now appropriated won't be spent until 2011, or later--not to mention that there is no evidence of the government ever taxing and spending its way out of a recession. That is not, historically speaking, proven to work. Christina Romer, the Chairman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, wrote about this in 1992, in a paper titled ``What Ended the Great Depression?'' in the 1930s. She concluded: Nearly all of the observed recovery of the U.S. economy prior to 1942 was due to monetary expansion [from gold inflows]. She gives almost no credit to the increased spending that occurred. Another report with Ms. Romer's name on it, one that the President's economic team put out this January--and she is the head of the team-- was titled ``The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.'' It estimates that the $800 billion stimulus package will lower the unemployment rate and create 3.6 million new jobs, and it includes a chart. The chart, if you look at it today--and it has been examined by others, such as Greg Mankiw, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers--it shows that their projected unemployment rate, without the stimulus package--that rate would hit a certain level. Now that we have had the $800 billion stimulus package, what does it show? That we are trending, on unemployment, exactly where they projected the unemployment rate would be if there were no stimulus package at all. Indeed, if you look at the numbers, very little of it has gotten out of there, and you can see how little was stimulative, or job creating, or how much of it was spent on things it should not have be spent on. Indeed, this Senate rejected and failed to adopt my amendment that would have said at least the employers who hired people with this money ought to run the E-Verify system to make sure the people they hire are here legally in America and are entitled to work. That wasn't even part of it. Unemployment continues to go up. It was 8.9 percent in May, and a lot of people think it may hit 10 percent. I hope not, but I think it is likely to continue above 9 percent, which is higher than what was projected, for sure. I say all this to point out that some of the brilliant thinkers in our country believe we had to do all this; if we had not, the country would sink into the ocean. We could have this problem and that problem. But the testimony we had in the Budget Committee from the Congressional Budget Office, whose numbers have held up pretty well so far, and they are basically hired by the Democratic majority here, but they are nonpartisan and do a good job. They projected only a slight difference in unemployment, if you had a stimulus package--only slightly better than if you didn't have one at all. But, more importantly, they concluded that over 10 years, the stimulus package, if we passed it, would have a net negative effect on the economy. It should help some in the 2 or 3 years from the moneys being pumped out--it has to help some out soon. But the crowding out of private borrowing, the interest that will have to be paid on the debt over the 10-year period, will mean that the economy will be less healthy at the end of 10 years than if we hadn't had the bailout package or stimulus package at all, which confirms my view that nothing comes from nothing. There is no free lunch. Debts have to be repaid. You cannot create something out of thin air. If you spend something today and you have resources today to spend today, and you took them from tomorrow, they are not going to be there tomorrow. Somebody is going to have a greater burden to carry--our young people-- than if we hadn't taken their money and spent it today. I have to say that I am not happy about this. I am worried about it. I do believe deficits matter. People who say deficits don't matter--and some Republicans used to say that--what planet are they from? Of course, deficits matter. You can cover them up, the Fed can help, and smart monetary policy and spending policies may make a difference here and there, but in the long run, it drives you down, and we have to be serious about it. I hope as time goes by, we can work together in a bipartisan way to try to establish some control over our spending. Just Monday, GM went into bankruptcy. We already have $20 billion in Federal Government money going into General Motors prior to bankruptcy, and the White House plans to add another $30 billion. That is a substantial additional investment. This is what the numbers show. First, the White House said we are going to be out of GM and get our money back in 5 years. That is their goal, right? You heard that we are going to get the money back. But the Wall Street Journal has calculated this, and they have said for the Federal Government to get their money back out of GM, they would have to sell their stock, and GM's market cap, the total value of their stock, would have to reach a value of $80 billion. So to get our money back in 5 years, the market cap or value of GM stock would have to total $80 billion. Let me remind you that at its peak, in 2000, the highest GM ever got as a market cap was $56 billion. Their current market cap is less than $1 billion--$441 million dollars. It goes beyond rationality to believe that in 5 years--or maybe ever--we are going to get our money back out of GM. I am worried about that. That is one more example of the kind of spending we are doing, and the money is being spent in a way that is not controlled. How does the Secretary of the Treasury decide how much money to give? And to what corporation? What about suppliers of GM? What about automobile dealers, who are losing their shirts and going into bankruptcy? Nobody bailed them out. Somewhere along the way, it has been decided that we need to do this. It should have been done according to the established constitutionally- approved reorganization policies of bankruptcy. The U.S. Government could have put some money into GM in an effective way, I think, and had a positive benefit. But just to pour the money in, as we have, in an unprincipled way, is not good. I will repeat one more time my concern about the unlawful way, the unprecedented way, in which this money is allocated. The money comes from the TARP, the Wall Street bailout. I opposed it because I thought the language was too broad, but even I didn't know it was this broad. But we were told if we passed the TARP bill, Secretary Paulson and the Treasury Department would buy toxic assets. He was specifically asked at a House committee meeting whether he would buy stock in banks. He said: No. His goal was to get the money flowing again in the financial markets, and we had to do something about the financial markets. Senators were eventually convinced, and it was rammed through here in the very shortest period of time--in a panic, really. A week had not gone by when he had decided to buy stock and not buy toxic assets, not to buy toxic mortgages. As time has gone by, that same money is used to buy stock in what was once a private corporation. I think this is unbelievable. There are no hearings on where the money is going. There is no public ability to understand what kind of justification these banks, GM, or Chrysler had to put forward to receive billions of dollars from the taxpayers. It was all done basically in secret, as far as I can understand. They are telling the company they have to do this and that and firing the CEO and all of those kinds of things that have been occurring. I don't think the American people are happy with that. The American people are very concerned--I believe they are rightly concerned--because we are doing some things that have never been done in the history of our Republic. It is not healthy. I hope that somehow we can get our footing again, get our balance, and return to the tried-and-true principles that made this country great. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I am concerned by the reports of several news outlets that the implementation of Executive Order 12989, which mandates the use of E-Verify for Federal contractors and subcontractors for the Federal Government, is now being delayed again until September of this year. This is the fourth such delay this year and I am afraid that it signals this administration is not serious about immigration enforcement--not even serious enough to utilize effective systems that we have in place. On January 28 of this year, President Obama pushed back implementation of Executive Order 12989 to February 20. A few weeks later, that implementation date was pushed back again to May 21. Prior to that date, implementation was pushed back to June 30. Now various sources are reporting implementation will be delayed until sometime in September. E-Verify is one of the most effective tools at our disposal for protecting American jobs and should be made mandatory and permanent. Instead, the administration yet again has decided to delay this program as it applies to Federal contractors and subcontractors-- that is, people who do work for the Federal Government; not every private business, just those who get jobs and money from the Federal Government to do contracting work. The administration claims they need more time to review the program. But it has been 5 months already. I was also, let me recall, extremely disappointed when this Senate's Democratic Members stripped the E-Verify provisions from the final version of the economic stimulus package without discussion or debate. I tried to bring up an amendment in the Senate that would have matched the language that the House accepted unanimously in committee and was included in the final version of their bill. That language said that contractors who get money out of the stimulus program from the Federal Government had to use E-Verify, this computer system, to determine whether the people they are hiring are legally in the country. That was not too much to ask, I thought. The House, as I said, unanimously accepted that provision in committee and passed it overwhelmingly as part of the final version of their bill. Every time I sought to bring it up, it was blocked by the Democratic leadership. They did not want to vote on it. It became pretty clear why, because if it was in the Senate bill and the House bill, it would certainly be in the final conference report language and would become law. As long as they could keep it out of the Senate bill, when they went to conference they could take the language that had been passed in the House out of the bill. Part of the compromise in conference would be to eliminate the E-Verify related language. I warned that would happen and that is exactly what did happen. We could not get a vote in the Senate. If we had gotten a vote, I am confident the Senate would have voted in favor of requiring recipients of stimulus funds to use E- verify. The purpose of the stimulus bill was to put Americans back to work. Unemployment continues to rise. We are now hearing it will hit 10 percent. That is a serious number, much higher than some were projecting. I think the Obama administration's budget projected unemployment would be between 8.1 to 8.5 percent. Currently, unemployment rates are close to 9 percent and many are saying we will hit 10 percent. So why would we want to use stimulus money that was promoted as a way to create jobs for Americans and reduce unemployment in this time of recession and not make sure that those jobs go to American citizens. I think it is a matter of real, serious import and I am baffled by it. Briefly, E-Verify is an on-line system operated jointly by Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration. Employers can check the work status of people who apply to work for them on line by comparing information from the employee I-9 application form against the Social Security and DHS databases. More than 112,000 employers are already using it because they do not desire to hire somebody not legally in the country. I think they should be congratulated for that. It also helps the employer because they can use this as a defense and say I used the E-Verify system if it is later found out that an employee they hired is here illegally. It did not tell me the person was illegal. They produced a document. It looked good to me. I checked the number and they said it was OK. They are protected. They have safe harbor against Government action for hiring people who are illegal. E-Verify is a free and voluntary system. As a practical matter, it is the best means we have today for determining employment eligibility for any hires and the validity of their Social Security number. We have had thousands of employees using bogus Social Security numbers to get work. There are examples of hundreds of people being hired under the same Social Security number. Well, that ought to give somebody a clue. According to the Department of Homeland Security, 96 percent of the employees who are checked by businesses are cleared immediately. So the idea that large numbers of people are being blocked is not true. If you are not cleared, you can still be hired temporarily until further validation occurs to see if you have a legitimate Social Security number or if you are legitimately in the country. It is working fine. This many companies would not be using it if it were not. On a related note, though people do not like to talk about the impact of illegal immigration on low-skilled workers, we must be factual. The large number of illegal workers in this country is having a depressing effect, particularly on the standard of living of low- skilled Americans. The U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, chaired by the late civil rights pioneer, Barbara Jordan, found: Immigration of unskilled immigrants comes at a cost to unskilled U.S. workers. The Center for Immigration Studies has estimated that such immigration has reduced the wage of the average native-born workers in a low-skilled occupation by 12 percent, or almost $2,000 annually. Harvard economist, George Borjas, himself an immigrant from Cuba, has studied this probably more than any other person in the whole source of issues on this. He has written a book on the subject. He has estimated that immigration in recent decades reduced the wages of native-born workers without a high school degree by 8.2 percent. Doris Meissner, in 2009, a few months ago, the former head of Immigration Services under President Clinton, said: Mandatory employer verification [that is what we are talking about through E-Verify] must be at the center of legislation to combat illegal immigration . . . the E-Verify system provides a valuable tool for employers who are trying to comply with the law. E-Verify also provides an opportunity to determine the best electronic means to implement verification requirements. The administration should support reauthorization of E-Verify and expand the program . . . '' That was Doris Meissner, the INS Director under President Clinton, who said that a few months ago. Alexander Aleinkoff, who was an official at INS under President Clinton, and the Obama administration DHS transition official--he participated in the transition for President Obama--calls it a ``myth'' that ``there is little or no competition between undocumented workers and American workers.'' I know our majority leader has written that he favors the E-Verify Program. Senator Reid wrote this: I strongly believe that every job in our country should go only to those who are authorized to work in the United States. That is why I strongly support programs like E-Verify that are designed to ensure that employers only hire those who are legally authorized to work in the United States, and believe we need to strengthen enforcement against employers who knowingly hire individuals who are not authorized to work. I support reauthorization of the E-Verify program, as well as immigration reform that is tough on lawbreakers, fair to taxpayers and practical to implement. Those are Senator Reid's comments. So it is time for us to get busy. Let's do some of these things. I know some have said this is a cumbersome program. That is not so. These are excuses put out by big businesses that are using workers, many of whom they have reason to believe--I would suggest--are illegal. They do not want to be checked. They do not want to have any checks. There was a recent letter to the Wall Street Journal by Mark Powell, a human resource executive for a Fortune 500 company. This is what he said about how hard it is to use this system: The E-Verify program is free, only takes a few minutes, and is less work than a car dealership would do checking a credit score prior to selling a vehicle or letting you take a test drive. Well, that is correct. He is right about that. How else can you explain the thousands of employers who voluntarily sign up to use the program? Short-term extensions and delay in implementation, such as what we are seeing today, only discourage participation in the E-Verify Program, since employers have no assurance that the program will even exist down the road. I have offered legislation, and others have worked on the floor, to try to make E-Verify permanent and mandatory. We keep having one roadblock after another one. Who is pulling the strings around here? I do not believe they are talking to the American people. I do not believe whoever it is blocking this kind of activity is talking to the American people, talking to people with common sense. They must be talking with people who have special interests that are not interested in a lawful system. T.J. Bonner, who heads the Border Patrol Officers Association, testified at the Judiciary Committee, and he said this many times: One of the best things, perhaps the best thing, you can do to reduce the numbers of people who enter our country illegally is to eliminate the jobs magnet. The jobs possibility is a magnet that draws those who come illegally. He said: There are a lot of things that can be done to eliminate that magnet, and this is one of them. Further delay in the implementation of this Executive order is not acceptable, I believe, and am afraid it signals some sort of lack of commitment to enforce our immigration laws. You see, E-Verify does not require anybody to be arrested, it does not require anybody to be deported, it does not require anything--you simply do not get the job if you are not legally authorized to work. Law enforcement officers are not called. The businesses check the number to see if the person is legally here with a valid Social Security number, and if they have information that the individual is not, then they do not hire them. That is all that happens. How simple is that? It is a good step, a modest step but an important step. We keep putting it off and keep rejecting the idea that even Government contractors that get work from the Government of the United States should have to use the program. Every employer in America should be using the program. That is where we should be going. That is the policy we should be pursuing if we are at all serious about dealing with the matter. There has been some good news. The good news is that last year, our border enforcement officers arrested only 770,000 people entering our country illegally. A couple years ago it was over 1.1 million arrests. That number doesn't include illegal aliens that evade CBP agents at the border. The reason the number of apprehensions is still so high, in my opinion, and I have studied it a good bit, is that we have inadvertently, perhaps intentionally, sent messages around the world that our border is open. As long as we have a willing worker and a willing employer, President Bush once said, he almost said: I am okay with it. Well, that is not right, is it? We have laws. Good people every day apply to come to our country and to enter our country through legal channels. Some of them have to wait in line, and they do so dutifully. But large numbers are ignoring that because somehow they have gotten the impression that nobody here cares at all. So we have stepped up enforcement. We have built some fencing, not nearly what was contemplated being built, but we built some. We are doing better. We are prosecuting some of the people who enter the country illegally. That has worked dramatically. I do not mean long times in jail but a prosecution for a misdemeanor. They serve a little time, they got a conviction, if they come back it can be a felony. That is working. So you do those kind of things and it makes a big difference. If we make the E-Verify system a part of what we do within this country every day, and especially for government business, that will further send the signal to the world that our country is not open to illegal entry. If you want to come you should come under the normal, lawful process. It is so important America reestablish the rule of law when it comes to immigration in our country. We are a nation of immigrants. We are the most generous Nation, I think, in the world for allowing people to come here. But there has to be some limit on those numbers. It has to be done in an orderly fashion, a lawful fashion. If you do not have order and lawfulness at our border and you have huge numbers coming through every year, then it undermines respect for law and sends a signal worldwide that we are not serious. I think we are making some progress. We need to get E-Verify going. It needs to be made permanent and mandatory. At the very least, every business that does business with the U.S. Government should have to use it. Pretty soon every business in America should use it. When we do that, we will have taken a big step toward assuring even ourselves that we mean what we say and that we are going to establish a lawful program. Some say we need these workers. Well, let's talk about a good guest worker program that would work, and we could allow people to come legally. That is critically important. So when your unemployment rate is going over 9 percent, highest in over 20 years, then maybe we do not need as many people coming into our country, as some people have said we do. But regardless, there ought to be a mechanism for allowing temporary workers to come, the number allowed to come should serve our national interest, and we ought not to allow the large numbers who are now coming illegally to come and be able to successfully take jobs that Americans need right now. Maybe the reports saying that the administration is delaying implementation of mandatory E-Verify for Federal contractors are not correct. But since we have seen it happen several times already, I think it is important the American people know something is not going well here and maybe there will be an opportunity to make their voices heard and maybe we can somehow, some way get this E-Verify Program made permanent and workable.

Mr. SESSIONS

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

Mr. SESSIONS

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I wish to speak for a few moments regarding the President's remarks on national security today and about some national security issues in general. At the outset, let me note that there are some points in the President's message I do not agree with and some points of plain fact he made that should help us clarify some of the issues that have been raised in recent debates over national security. President Obama endorsed the continued use of military commissions with some minor changes. These commissions are historic and certainly appropriate and have been used by nations all over the world. I will reserve judgment on those changes until I see the details, but the President is right when he states that military commissions are ``an appropriate venue for trying detainees for violations of the laws of war,'' though some have not agreed with that. The President correctly noted: ``Military commissions have a history in the United States dating back to George Washington and the Revolutionary War.'' As the President also noted, military commissions ``allow for the protection of sensitive sources and methods of intelligence gathering.'' That is absolutely true, and it is an important principle in defending America. He also noted that the commissions allow ``the presentation of evidence gathered from the battlefield that cannot be effectively presented in a Federal court.'' In other words, we have strict rules of evidence in Federal courts. Our soldiers are in a life-and-death struggle on the battlefield. They are not police investigators. They are not homicide investigators. They can not be expected to be able to comply with every rule regarding the collection of evidence. Military commissions account for that difference. It is also reassuring to see that President Obama has stated he will exercise his power as Commander in Chief to detain as war prisoners those al-Qaida members who continue to pose a danger to the United States, but who cannot be tried by a military commission. Some detainees may not be able to be tried by military commissions for legal reasons. For years, we have heard criticism from some of the fringe groups on the left--criticisms that have been echoed occasionally in this Chamber--that we must either try every enemy war prisoner or release them. That has never been the practice in the history of war, and that is not what our law says. This is a notion that cannot be sustained and one that would pose a threat to us if it were ever adopted as policy. I am glad to see President Obama rejected that notion. As he noted in his remarks today: There may be a number of people who cannot be prosecuted for past crimes, but who nonetheless pose a danger to the security of the United States. Examples of that threat include people who have received extensive explosives training at al-Qaida training camps, commanded Taliban troops in battle, expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden, or otherwise made it clear they want to kill Americans. These are people who, in effect, remain at war with the United States. As I said, I am not going to release individuals who endanger the American people. Al-Qaida terrorists and their affiliates are at war with the United States and those we capture--like other prisoners of war--must be prevented from attacking us again. That is fundamentally true, but some people have a confused notion about that. Under the Geneva Conventions, even lawful combatants can be detained throughout the duration of a war. When illegal combatants conduct a war outside the laws of the Geneva Conventions and other treaties and laws that deal with the conduct of civilized warfare by deliberately and intentionally bombing innocent men, women and children who are noncombatants, those people are not entitled to be released. President Obama also stated this morning that: We are not going to release anyone if it would endanger our national security, nor will we release detainees within the United States who endanger the American people. Well, that is hard to know for certain. Attorney General Holder has talked about releasing the Uighurs, a terrorist group focused primarily on China. I don't believe the administration has the legal authority to release these detainees. Recently, according to the Los Angeles Times, some of the Uighurs were watching a soccer game--they allow them to watch television at the Guantanamo Bay facility--and a lady came on with short sleeves. This offended one of the Islamic Uighurs and they jumped up and grabbed the television and threw it on the floor. I point that out simply to say it is difficult to know for certain who is a threat. Many may well harbor a secret determination to attack America as soon as they are released. I think the President has made clear that he does not have the full and free discretion to simply release al-Qaida members and their fellow travelers into the United States. Federal law expressly bars admission to the United States of anyone who is a member of a foreign terrorist organization. A Federal law we passed some years ago bars admission of any person who is a member of a foreign terrorist organization--pretty common sense, right? If you are going to have lawful immigration policy, you don't want terrorists to be able to immigrating into the country. The law bars admission of anyone who has provided material support to a foreign terrorist organization, and it also bars from this country anyone who has received military-style training at a camp operated by one of these terrorist organizations. The United States Congress decided that these individuals, ones who have ties to or have assisted or who have been trained by groups such as al-Qaida pose a danger to the American people and should not be admitted into this country. That congressional enactment is now the law. It is binding upon the President and the Attorney General, who is charged by the Constitution with enforcing the law. So when the President states he will not release detainees within the United States, I can only state that I would expect no less. The law requires the President to bar admission to al-Qaida members or material supporters or those who trained in a terrorist camp, and I think he will follow that. I note his speech also is rather selective, however, in how it cites to: ``The court order to release 17 Uighur detainees that took place last fall.'' The President referred to a court order to release these Uighurs, but he inexplicably failed to acknowledge what happened to that case on appeal. A lower district court judge ordered that they must be released, but the Federal appellate court reversed that order which would have allowed these terrorist to be released into the United States. This February, a couple of months ago in Kiyemba v. Obama, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that the district court did not have legal authority to order the release of the Uighur detainees into this country. These are individuals who have trained in a terrorist camp, a terrorist group that is connected to al- Qaida. A month ago, the U.S. Department of Treasury reaffirmed the determination that they are a terrorist organization. The appeals court could not have been more clear when it wrote: Never in the history of habeas corpus has any court thought it had the power to order an alien held overseas brought into the sovereign territory of a Nation and then released into the general population. As we have also said, in the United States, who can come in and on what terms is the exclusive province of the executive branches. There are other things the President said today that I disagree with. First, President Obama committed himself to banning the enhanced interrogation of al-Qaida detainees. I certainly oppose torture of any detainees. But he went on to state: ``Some have argued'' that these techniques ``were necessary to keep us safe,'' and he said he ``could not disagree more.'' Well, that is not exactly accurate, I have to tell my colleagues. On September 6, 2006, when President Bush announced the transfer of 14 high-value al-Qaida detainees to Guantanamo, he also described information that the United States had obtained from these detainees as a result of these enhanced interrogation programs. Most people agree many of these enhanced techniques clearly are not torture. Some argue that a few of the techniques may amount to torture; but many say they are not torture. We have a statute that prohibits torture and it defines it pretty clearly. President Bush noted then that Abu Zubaydah was captured by U.S. forces several months after the September 11 attack. Several months later he was captured. Under interrogation he revealed that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was a principal organizer of the September 11 attacks. Zubaydah also described a terrorist attack that al-Qaida operatives were planning to launch inside this country--an attack of which the United States had no previous knowledge. Zubaydah described the operatives involved in this attack and where they were located. This information allowed the United States to capture these terrorists, one while he was traveling in the United States. Under enhanced interrogation, Zubaydah also revealed the identity of another September 11 plotter, Ramzi bin al Shibh, and provided information that led to his capture. U.S. forces then interrogated him. Information that both he and Zubaydah provided helped lead to the capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the person who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed also provided information to help stop another planned attack on the United States when he was interrogated. KMS provided information that led to the capture of a terrorist named Zubair, and KMS's interrogation also led to the identification and capture of an entire 17-member Jemaah Islamiya terrorist cell in Southeast Asia. According to President Bush, information obtained as a result of enhanced interrogation techniques also helped stop a planned truck bomb attack on U.S. troops in Djibouti. Interrogation also helped stop a planned car bomb attack on the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan, and it helped stop a plot to hijack passenger planes and crash them into Heathrow Airport in London. On September 6, President Bush said: Information from terrorists in CIA custody has played a role in the capture or questioning of nearly every single al- Qaida member or associate detained by the United States and its allies. He concluded by noting that al-Qaida members subjected to interrogation by U.S. forces have painted a picture of al-Qaida's structure and financing, communications and logistics. They identified al-Qaida's travel routes and safe havens and explained how al-Qaida's senior leadership communicates with its operatives in places such as Iraq. They provided information that has allowed us to make sense of documents and computer records that have been seized in terrorist raids. They have identified voices in recordings of intercepted calls and helped us understand the meaning of potentially critical terrorist communications. Were it not for the information obtained, our intelligence community believes that al-Qaida and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland. By giving us information about terrorist plans we would not get anywhere else, this program has saved innocent lives. Well, this was information obtained in the last administration as a result of the enhanced interrogation techniques of al-Qaida detainees. It allowed us to stop terrorist attacks. It allowed us to learn about al-Qaida communications, how it responded and operated. It even allowed us to capture Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the organizer of 9/11. I don't think anybody here can reliably contend that this information was not valuable. It was valuable. We have to be careful how we conduct interrogations. I believe the debate over this has helped us clarify the responsibility we have to not participate in torture. But it does not mean that we cannot used enhanced techniques to move a person to the point they are providing information that can help protect this country. We have to be careful that we don't go too far. We have a history of going too far in reaction to matters like this. One of the things we did is we put a wall between the CIA and the FBI. We said the CIA should not deal with dangerous thugs around the world to get information. After 9/11 it was clearly determined that both of those were bad ideas, and we reversed them immediately. Nobody in this Congress should suggest that we are incapable of making a mistake. But we have gone 8 years without an attack. That is something of significance. We should be proud of that. We have men and women in the CIA, in the FBI, and in the U.S. military, who are putting their lives on the line right now. I remember being, several years ago, in a foreign country with a history of some violence and terrorism. A man from the CIA met with us. He worked 7 days a week. He had dinner with us at 8 o'clock. He said that was the earliest he had been off duty since he had been there. They are putting their lives at risk for us, and we need to back them up when we can. If they make a mistake, they need to be held to account for it. Madam President, I see my colleague from Texas. I assume she would like to make some remarks. I am not sure what the expectation is, but I will just wrap up and say a few more things. This is an important issue. I just don't believe this issue has only one side. I have to tell you, I believed that the President's remarks today reflected a view that only he had the correct view of how these matters should be conducted, and that everybody else who disagreed had less decency than he. I don't think there is any doubt that the work this Nation did after 9/11 stopped further attacks and saved the lives of Americans. It can and should be done, consistent with the laws of this country. But that doesn't mean that unlawful terrorists--not legitimate prisoners of war--cannot be subjected to interrogation. They can be and they have been. I trust that they will be in the future. The President argued today that releasing the Office of Legal Counsel memos from the Department of Justice and exposing the details of the interrogation and actually tricks that CIA has used will not harm national security because this President has decided not to use those techniques. I simply point out that the war with al-Qaida will not end with this administration, and future administrations--and even this administration--may need to have access to reasonable interrogation techniques, and providing this information is not the right thing. It is odd that of all the material released, we have not had further information released from the intelligence agencies that would provide evidence of interrogations that have enabled us to stop other attacks on our country. I don't know why they would not want to release that; they want to release the techniques and a lot of other things. When the President released the legal counsel's interrogation memos, he excised certain information from the memos and left out other memos entirely. These other memos describe in detail the information that was obtained as a result of the enhanced interrogation of al-Qaida detainees. If the President really believes these interrogations don't work, I urge him to release these other memos, the ones Vice President Cheney called on to be released. If he believes in full transparency, why don't we see that? We know some of it because it was in President Bush's September 2006 remarks. Madam President, to sum up, we are in a great national effort. We are now sending 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan. I think President Obama studied that carefully. I know he, like myself and most of us, doesn't look forward to having to send more troops there. He decided it was important for America and our allies and stability in the region and the world that they be sent there. This Congress supported that. So we continue the struggle. It is going to be a long time. Intelligence is a critical component of our success against the war against the terrorists. That is what the 9/11 Commission told us. That is what the American people understood with clarity. Good intelligence prevents attacks and saves lives. Good intelligence is so valuable, it is almost invaluable. We have to be careful when we set about passing more and more rules that chill the willingness of our investigators and military people to do their job. As we have found from previous spasms, harm to our intelligence community can be the result of irrational, reactionary decisions. We didn't wisely consider this when we put a wall between the FBI and we limited the CIA in these dangerous areas of the world in getting information. I share a deep concern about that. There is one more thing I will conclude with. The President talked repeatedly in his speech, in a most disparaging manner, about Guantanamo. I think inadvertently, and I am sure unintentionally, I believe he has cast a shadow over the fabulous men and women who serve us there, who participate in running a very fine facility. I would have appreciated it if he had taken the opportunity to clear the air about Guantanamo, our military prison. Do you know that not one single person was subjected to waterboarding at Guantanamo? Actually, there were only three instances of it, all done by our intelligence agency in a different place. None of that occurred there. I wish he had said that. I wish he had quoted from one of the investigative reports of what happened at Guantanamo. This is what the finder found: They found one incident in which a series of techniques were used during interrogation, not one of which would have amounted to torturing that person, but all together they concluded it put too much stress on that individual and that it violated the law against torture. Well, that should not have been done. But to hear the talk about Guantanamo, you would think we are waterboarding people and torturing people constantly. That is just not what happened there. I have been there twice. These are great men and women down there trying to serve our country. They are absolutely committed to trying to extract as much good information as they could to protect America. They are not abusing detainees nor are they violating the law. If they cross that line, they should be disciplined for it. But it is not the kind of thing that is or was systematically occurring. I wish the President had taken the opportunity--as Commander in Chief of our men and women who sends them into harm's way--to defend and explain that a lot of the allegations about Guantanamo were exaggerated and false. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I wish to briefly discuss an issue that I think is important and at one time would probably have been worthy of front-page news articles around the country. Instead, I notice it is just another piece of news in the middle of a paper. Last Thursday, Mr. Stephen Friedman announced his resignation, effective immediately, as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, considered a central reserve bank in the country, the one that now-Secretary Geithner used to serve as president. As Chairman, Mr. Friedman stepped down only after a Wall Street Journal story questioned his ties to Goldman Sachs, a banking institution, at the same time he was serving on the New York Fed's board. Unfortunately, his bad judgment is just another example in a long line of examples demonstrating the tangled web we have woven in allowing so prominent a government role in private businesses, involving hundreds of billions of dollars. Let me read what the Wall Street Journal reported last Monday, May 4: The Federal Reserve Bank of New York shaped Washington's response to the financial crisis late last year, which buoyed Goldman Sachs . . . and other Wall Street firms. Goldman received speedy approval to become a bank holding company in September [of last year] and a $10 billion capital injection soon after. That is a $10 billion capital injection after they redefined themselves as a bank holding company. Prior to that they were not eligible. It goes on to say: During that time, the New York Fed's chairman, Stephen Friedman, sat on Goldman's board and had a large holding in Goldman's stock, which because of Goldman's new status as a bank holding company was a violation of Federal Reserve policy. The New York Fed asked for a waiver, which, after about 2\1/2\ months, the Fed granted. While it was weighing the request, Mr. Friedman bought 37,300 more Goldman shares in December. They've since risen $1.7 million in value. This is a troubling matter. Members of the Senate cannot even allow a lobbyist to buy our lunch. Yet this man can be on a board and can buy stock while he is asking for approval to do something he wants to do-- and they eventually gave him that approval--and he continues to buy stock and it goes up in value $1.7 million. According to the article: [Mr. Friedman] says he checked with a Goldman lawyer to make sure there was no timing issue with such a purchase. He says he didn't check with the Fed. New York Fed lawyers say they didn't learn about his share purchase until the Journal raised questions about them in April. . . . [The day after receiving a waiver,] Mr. Friedman purchased 15,300 more Goldman shares. . . . That million-dollar purchase brought his holdings to 98,600 shares, according to the filings. I find this unacceptable behavior. There is a reason the Federal Reserve has a policy prohibiting a chairman of any regional Fed bank from having any connections with regulated financial institutions. You do not want the regulator to have a personal financial interest in those being regulated. I appreciate Mr. Friedman doing the right thing now and resigning. That is a good thing. However, too many officials have been acting in a way that suggests an erosion of propriety and the proper separation of interest. Recently, we learned from the New York attorney general that Government officials may have threatened Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis to continue a merger with Merrill Lynch or lose his job. After he figured out it was going to be very bad for his stockholders and indicated he was not going through with it, they told him they would fire him if he didn't go through with it. Some of the stories are unclear about how that all happened, but the issue does remain, and I will be interested to see what more we learn about this troubling matter when the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform holds a hearing with Mr. Lewis and top Government officials, who will testify under oath. Since last year, when then-Secretary Paulson told us we must act or the economy would go into collapse--and we heard those dire warnings repeatedly--we have seen more and more of these instances of impropriety and lack of wisdom. Through TARP--the $700 billion bailout--a blank check with no accountability was given to the Government to do basically as it pleased. The money was given to the Secretary of the Treasury, and he met in private with many of these banks. Many of them were people he knew and were friends and buddies with, and he started allocating this $700 billion. It has continued now under Mr. Geithner, a man who previously was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Last month, Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general overseeing this $700 billion bailout, issued a report stating he has opened 20 criminal investigations and 6 audits into whether tax dollars are being misused or wasted. I think we have entered a time in American history where the line between Government and free enterprise has become muddled more than ever. During good times and bad--but particularly during times such as today--the American system of capitalism and free enterprise should not be manipulated for the benefit of insiders. We expect the people who are setting policy to be independent and above that kind of action. I will note that the reports concerning how the AIG bailout was handled remain unchallenged. This is what the report is indicating: that Mr. Paulson, who was Secretary of the Treasury and who had been the CEO of Goldman Sachs, was in and out of a meeting--a very important meeting--involving the insurance company AIG. Also, in that meeting, as I recall, was Mr. Kashkari, Mr. Paulson's assistant, who was also from Goldman Sachs. But who else was in that meeting? The chairman of the board of Goldman Sachs--the current, immediate chairman at that time-- and they were talking about an insurance company, AIG, and they decided to pump $80 billion into that company. Now we have pumped in $170 billion. Of course, we now know that of the money that went to AIG, $20 billion went to Goldman Sachs. So these are the kinds of things that are causing me great difficulty. I am a lawyer. I know how things are supposed to work. When you ask for money, you raise your hand under oath. People ought to be asking you questions. If you are in bankruptcy, you have to be cross- examined by lawyers. The judge gets to ask questions. You have to submit certified financial statements before you get money. We cannot just allow a handful of people to meet in secret, decide we are in an emergency, and pass out hundreds of billions of dollars without the kind of accountability that I think is necessary. I will say to my colleagues in the Senate, that when we passed the TARP bill, I opposed it, and I said it was far too much a grant of power to one man--the Secretary of the Treasury--to allocate money that Congress should be appropriating. I raised that point, and it was one of my top objections. I believe history has shown the language in that bill was even more broad than we thought. Because, originally, we were told the money would be used to buy toxic mortgages from banks that were in trouble. That is what Mr. Paulson told us. That is what everybody thought they were voting on--except the language was much broader than that, if anybody took the time to read it. As soon as he got the money, within a week or so, he had decided not to buy toxic assets but to buy stock in the banks. He bought stock in the banks. Then, pretty soon, he was buying stock in an insurance company--AIG--pumping half the money into one insurance company, and $40 billion of the money that went into AIG went to foreign banks to pay the claims those banks had against AIG, as it did with other banks. We, the taxpayers, became the guarantor of an insurance company's responsibilities, which was never discussed with the Senate, the House or the American people. They just did it. The amount of money they committed was tremendous--I believe $170 billion; whereas, the Federal highway budget for the whole United States is just $40 billion, and the education budget for the United States, the Federal Government, is $100 billion. I don't like this process. I am seeing too many stories such as this one involving Mr. Friedman, and it is time for Congress to get serious about it. I hope the Obama administration will stand and be counted. Mr. Friedman came in, I believe, under the Bush administration, so I am not being partisan. But it is time for the Obama administration to take a stand too. Mr. Geithner was in the middle of most of this; he helped write the proposal and was, what many called, the brains behind the Paulson proposal--the $700 billion bailout. This is a continuing problem in both administrations. It is time for Congress to reassert its constitutional responsibility to monitor the purse and to not allow money to be distributed in these kinds of sums without direct approval of the people through their elected representatives. I thank the Chair, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SESSIONS

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

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank Senators Levin and McCain for their work. We do need to address wasteful spending. Both of these Senators understand it. Senator McCain has always been willing to challenge programs he thinks are not justified for the warfighter. I wish to note a few things before we vote on passage as well as urge support for the legislation. First, the legitimate concerns voiced by the Department of Defense about the implications of this bill have been listened to and have been reasonably accommodated. I wish to highlight a few points identified by a report last month by the Government Accountability Office, the independent GAO, titled ``Defense Acquisitions, Assessments of Selected Weapon Programs.'' Since 2003, the number of major defense acquisitions programs has grown from 77 to 96. All 96 programs were assessed by GAO. They found investment in these programs had grown from $1.2 trillion to $1.6 trillion. Research and development costs are now 42 percent higher than originally expected. The cumulative cost growth was $296 billion. I find that to be a stunning number. I almost have to believe that somehow they calculated it in an excessive way. Sometimes numbers can look misleading. But if it is a third of that, we have a major problem. They concluded the cost growth on these programs was almost $300 billion. The average delay in delivering the initial capabilities has increased to 22 months. So we have an excessive delay in producing our capabilities. GAO found that only 28 percent of the programs were expected to be delivered on time or ahead of schedule. To combat cost growth, they found that quantities; that is, the number of the weapon systems and vehicles and other things that were to be produced, had to be reduced by 25 percent or more for 15 of the programs in the 2008 portfolio, and 10 of the largest acquisition programs, which account for half the overall acquisition dollars in the portfolio, have seen quantities reduced by almost one-third. When the price per item goes up significantly, often the compensating action is to reduce the numbers. But the net reality is, that the taxpayer hasn't received as much as they expected out of the program. So clearly these statistics are disturbing and underscore the need for this important legislation and reform. In summary, our warfighters are receiving less capability at a higher cost than was originally agreed upon. I believe this bill will improve the acquisition process by ensuring the Department and industry are more thoughtful when estimating the production cost at the beginning and the total life cycle cost of these programs. While I am mindful that acquisition reforms can continue to be improved, I encourage colleagues to vote in favor of this legislation. It is clearly a step in the right direction. I salute our chairman and our ranking member, Senators Levin and McCain, for this accomplishment. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I am firmly opposed to this proposed budget conference report. It is, I sadly conclude, the most irresponsible budget in the history of the Republic. This budget will increase nondefense discretionary spending in 2010 9.7 percent over this year's levels. As a result of this reckless spending, the budget proposal doubles the national debt to $11.5 trillion in only 5 years, and will nearly triple it in 10. The amount of money we spend each year to pay the interest on this debt will also soar because of the conference report. This year alone we will spend $170 billion to service the national debt. In 5 years we are projected to spend $428 billion on interest payments in that year alone, and we will likely spend over $800 billion in 2019 to pay the interest on our national debt alone. By comparison, the Federal Government spends less than $100 billion a year on education, and about $40 billion a year on highways. In 10 years, this budget will spend more on interest payments on our national debt than it spends on education and highway funding combined. I am also disappointed that the conference report includes reconciliation instructions to expedite sweeping changes to our Nation's health care laws under special rules that limit debate and require only a simple majority for final passage. The purpose of reconciliation is to maintain fiscal control over the Government, not to fundamentally change the government's policies. The American people deserve a robust and full debate on the merits of health care reform. Using the reconciliation process to move health care legislation would preclude the reasoned and informed debate necessary to ensure that the best possible policy is enacted. Therefore, I urge my colleagues to oppose this dangerous budget. Mr. DURBIN Mr. President, today the Senate will vote on final passage of the budget resolution conference report for fiscal year 2010. We will be voting on fundamental decisions about the shape of our economy and the prosperity of our country. We need to face the facts--we have inherited the worst economic crisis in generations. We took an important first step in returning our Nation to prosperity earlier this year by passing the economic recovery package. The Obama administration continues to work hard to repair our financial system so that businesses can make payroll and families can borrow for college. But there is much more to do to put our economy back on track, and the budget resolution conference report we are considering follows the principles President Obama laid out in his budget proposal. This budget resolution sets a path to regain the balance our country once enjoyed--careful investments in our future, while creating opportunity for working families who have lost ground over the last decade. It provides the flexibility the authorizing committees need to tackle our toughest challenges. And it begins to repair years of neglect by making critical investments to recover economically--particularly in health care, education, and energy. We need to reform our health care system fundamentally, and we need to do it this year. This budget gives the Congress the flexibility we need to get this job done. The budget resolution includes a deficit-neutral reserve fund that will allow the Finance and HELP Committees to take on the challenge of fundamental health care reform this year. We hope to work on a bipartisan basis to reform the system in a way that benefits all Americans--patients, providers, insurers, and the taxpayers. But if the Republicans decide to try to obstruct these reforms, the reconciliation instructions included in this budget give us the tools we need to pass meaningful reform. Those instructions don't take effect until October 15, and so we have several months to work together before reconciliation is even an option. I very much hope that we don't need to use this approach. But reform can no longer wait. The budget resolution conference report also offers a promising vision for education. First, the budget will dramatically expand access to quality early childhood education programs, including Head Start. And the budget invests in teachers and innovative programs so that all children can succeed in the classroom. This budget will help us build the education system we need to compete in the global economy, not just today, but in the next generation. This budget would also help families afford the high cost of tuition by raising the maximum Pell grant award and streamlining student loan programs. The cost of college is higher than ever before. Since 2000, the average cost of tuition at public 4-year college has increased 29 percent, far outpacing inflation and increases in household income. Financial aid hasn't kept up these costs. Thirty years ago, a Pell grant could cover 77 percent of public college costs. Now it covers just 35 percent. The budget would increase Pell grants to $5,550, which will help the 7 million students who rely on these grants pay for college. We can't transform our education system overnight. But we can start to provide the investments and the programs that will help to get us there soon. This budget would do just that. This budget also starts the process of reducing our dependence on foreign energy by funding the President's request for energy funding in 2010. This budget also lays the groundwork for cutting back on energy sources that generate greenhouse gases. The budget proposes we spend less money burning conventional fuels and more money developing cleaner energy sources. This budget helps us create good jobs, dramatically improve energy efficiencies, and protect the environment before climate change inflicts permanent damage. Finally, the conference report provides for tax relief to American families at a time when that relief is much needed. The budget provides $764 billion in tax cuts, mostly to the middle class. The conference report provides $512 billion to extend middle-class tax cuts such as the child tax credit, marriage penalty relief, and education incentives. It includes $214 billion for 3 years of alternative minimum tax reform. The budget matches the President's estate tax proposal, which would permanently extend the 2009 exemption of $7 million for couples and index that for inflation. And the resolution provides $63 billion for 2 years of ``tax extenders'' for businesses and individuals. Preparing a budget is about making choices. It is a moral document, one that describes what you believe in. The conference report prepared by the Budget Committee would make critical investments in our Nation's highest priorities, at a time when America needs them most. This budget would provide a little bit of help to hard-working families that desperately need it. This budget would bring true, long-lasting change to America that is smart, fair, and responsible. I urge my colleagues to support it. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank Senator McConnell for his leadership on the issue of securing the peace and security of the United States of America and the challenges we face in this very difficult world. I am pleased it was he who offered a resolution not long ago that passed 94 to 3 to say that those terrorists we have in Guantanamo should not be released into the United States. It passed this Senate 94 to 3. So I was alarmed on Friday to see a report in the Los Angeles Times by Julian Barnes, the first line of which said: The Obama administration is preparing to admit into the United States as many as seven Chinese Muslims who have been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay in the first release of any of the detainees into this country, according to current and former U.S. officials. The Times report was followed by an Associated Press story over the weekend entitled ``Holder Close to Making Decision on Gitmo Detainees''--Holder being Attorney General Eric Holder--which detailed an emerging plan to release a group of Uighurs held at Guantanamo into the United States, possibly northern Virginia. Three weeks ago, on April 2, 2009, I wrote the Attorney General. I am a member of the Judiciary Committee, and I served in the Department of Justice for 15 years. I wrote Mr. Holder on exactly this issue, to explain my concerns about the serious national security and legal issues raised by any proposed release of Guantanamo detainees. In my letter I explained that the 17 Uighur detainees currently held at Guantanamo ``received military training, including firearms training, in terrorist camps in Afghanistan for potential terrorist actions against Chinese interests.'' I further explained that Federal law, specifically title 8 United States Code section 1182(a)(3)(B), clearly prohibits the admission of any alien--and they are all aliens--who has engaged in various forms of terrorist activity or training, including military type training ``from or on behalf of any organization that, at the time the training was received, was a terrorist organization.'' The Uighurs at Guantanamo received military training, including on AK-47s, at camps run by the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, which has been designated as a terrorist organization by both the United States and the United Nations since 2002. Accordingly, under the clear letter of Federal immigration law, these detainees are not eligible for admission into the United States. In my letter I called upon the Attorney General, whom I supported for that job and have respect for, to explain ``what legal authority, if any, you believe the administration has to admit into the United States Uighurs and/or any other detainee who participated in terrorist-related activities covered by Section 1182(a)(3)(B) [of the federal immigration law].'' He has not responded in any way. I am a member of the Judiciary Committee. That was a respectful and proper request I made. I have not heard from him at all. Yet we are reading in the paper that there is a plan afoot to allow this release. The current stories in the Times and the Associated Press suggest that the administration is knowingly and willfully acting contrary to law and to the will of Congress and doing so on a matter that is directly at odds with our Government's obligation to keep America's communities safe from dangerous terrorists and militants. Let me say, the Attorney General has a responsibility to uphold the law and protect civil rights. But I would say this, the primary responsibility of the Attorney General of the United States is to ensure that decent people who follow the law are protected from criminals and terrorists and those who would do them harm. If he is not the one who is going to lead the effort to protect us from those who would harm us, who is? Sometimes I wonder what they think their goal is. So some will claim that the Uighurs held at Guantanamo are not dangerous because the courts and previous administrations agreed that these individuals are not enemy combatants against the United States. But this argument overlooks the fact that the Uighurs aren't deemed enemy combatants against the United States because the organization they were affiliated with, the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, is not closely associated enough with al-Qaida or the Taliban to justify that determination. But make no mistake about it, these detainees are trained militants with ties to a terrorist organization, albeit one targeting Chinese interests rather than American interests. They should not be ushered into American communities by this administration. The Los Angeles Times story from last week illustrates the danger these detainees pose: Not long after being granted access to TV, some of the Uighurs were watching a soccer game. When a woman with bare arms was shown on the screen, one of the group grabbed the television and threw it to the ground, according to the officials. According to the news story, the officials at Guantanamo had to censor the TV shows and showed only pretaped programs that wouldn't offend the Uighurs. If these detainees cannot handle mere televised depictions of Western culture without violent outbursts, why are we releasing them into our towns and communities? Even though this seems like an obvious question, this administration seems to have little concern over it. Rather than sounding alarm bells, the Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair proposed releasing the detainees with some form of welfare subsidy. In comments in March, Admiral Blair agreed that ``[y]ou can't just put them on the street.'' But his solution was not to continue detention or to release detainees to their home countries or to China, which wants them. Rather, he said, ``If we are to release them in the United States, we need some sort of assistance for them to start a new life.'' So this administration seems more concerned about the welfare of the dangerous militants, frankly, than it does about the real safety concerns of the American people and of the views of the citizens of our country who, by overwhelming polling data, oppose the release of these Guantanamo inmates into the country. According to an April 3, 2009 Rasmussen Reports survey, 75 percent of U.S. voters oppose the release of Guantanamo inmates into this country. A similar number--74 percent-- oppose providing public assistance to any Guantanamo detainees who might be released. So what is surprising about the recent news reports about the possible release of Guantanamo detainees is that they come on the heels of another announcement earlier last week which made me think the Obama administration was coming to understand the dangerous nature of the Eastern Turkish Islamic Movement. This past Monday, April 20, 2009, President Obama's Treasury Department issued a release listing Abdul Haq as a designated terrorist. This announcement, which follows on the heels of a similar announcement from the United Nations, is significant for three key reasons, as well as a fourth reason that relates directly to the Uighur detainees: Abdul Haq is the leader of the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement. Abdul Haq was listed as a ringleader in planned attacks on the Olympic games in China. Abdul Haq is listed as a member of a council within al-Qaida. He is connected to al-Qaida. Perhaps most importantly, Abdul Haq is directly tied to the Uighur detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. According to a recent article by Thomas Jocelyn, who published a series of excerpts from the Combatant Status Review Tribunal proceedings for the Uighurs at Guantanamo, the detainees, one after another, testified that they were trained by none other than Abdul Haq who ``was the one responsible for the camp.'' So just as these detainees testified that Haq ran the camp and led their training, they, time and again, admitted to training on what they referred to as ``the AK-47'' or ``the Kalashnikov.'' It is unbelievable to me that we are talking about releasing these dangerous detainees into American communities, despite the fact that they received military-style training on AK-47s in a camp run by a known terrorist and terrorist organization, both of which are designated as such by the United States and the United Nations. And the administration is doing so just one week after it denounced the man who trained the Uighur detainees in the following clear words. This is what the Treasury Department said: Abdul Haq commands a terror group that sought to sow violence and fracture international unity at the 2008 Olympic Games in China. Today, we stand together with the world in condemning this brutal terrorist and isolating him from the international financial system. So within a week of our Government seeking to condemn and isolate ``this brutal terrorist,'' the administration is planning to turn loose his pupils into the United States. There was a time not long ago when no Senator would need to come to the floor to explain that it is dangerous and unlawful to release extremist militants trained by terrorists into the United States. Why would we release them here? We captured them on the battlefield. We took them to Guantanamo. Now we are going to release them. China would like to have them back. They are rightly concerned about the people who attempted to bomb the Olympic games. We don't have to release them here. We don't have to release them. Well, according to the press reports I have cited, the administration is planning to release the Uighur detainees to gain favor and ``generate good will'' with foreign governments. Now we understand, according to the Associated Press, Mr. Holder is in Europe where he is ``to reassure skeptical Europeans without generating too much opposition back home.'' That is an uneasy statement for me. That sounds a little duplicitous to me, for an Attorney General to be in Europe where he is ``to reassure skeptical Europeans without generating too much opposition back home.'' I suggest he needs to be focused on security in the United States. I think we need to consider why it is we feel that a nation we have favorable trade relations with, China, which successfully conducted Olympic games, isn't able to detain people who are committed to a group that was designed to attack those games. If another country captured terrorists who were attacking the United States--and we would like to have them and hold them in custody--let me ask, what would we think if they released them into their communities and gave them subsistence and payments from the government? Wouldn't we think that government was aiding terrorism? How did we get into this position? I do not think the administration has thought this through. There is no question China has certain well- known problems with human rights, and I have been one of their critics. But are those problems any worse than the problems in Yemen, Algeria, Libya, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia--all countries to which the United States has returned Guantanamo detainees? What message is our government sending here, and what will be the repercussions? Have any of these questions been seriously considered? I call on Attorney General Holder to answer my letter of April 2 well before he plans to release any of these militants onto the streets of America. If he is able to travel halfway around the world ``to reassure skeptical Europeans,'' perhaps he can answer a simple, direct, two-page letter from this skeptical Senator. We know as many as 60 former Guantanamo Bay detainees who were released overseas have returned to the battlefield, including some in senior roles with al-Qaida. That stark reality is why the Senate voted 94 to 3 to support Senator McConnell's resolution that concluded with these words: It is the sense of the Senate that detainees housed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including senior members of al Qaeda, should not be released into American society, nor should they be transferred stateside into facilities in American communities and neighborhoods. I note that now-Vice President Biden and now-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton--Members of the Senate then--voted for the resolution. Then-Senator Obama did not. He was not voting. But he has made statements that indicate he understands the dangerousness of these individuals. I suggest that he give more thought to those words he has previously issued and that he follow the law, the plain law as I see it, and not release any of them into the United States. I thank the Chair and yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, this motion would instruct that the budget be altered so that there would be level funding for 2 years during the time that we are now spending an additional $800 billion in the economy as part of the stimulus package. We ought to be able to keep the baseline budget level for 2 years, and then finish out the 5-year budget at 1 percent growth. We have doubled the national debt through this budget--we will do so in 5 years--and triple it in 10. Interest on the debt today is $170 billion over the President's 10- year budget. At the 10th year, it would be $800 billion in interest alone, dwarfing our education budget of $100 billion, dwarfing the highway budget of $140 billion. This is the right approach to show some discipline on the baseline budget at a time we are surging the discretionary spending through the stimulus package.

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, while I agree with Senator Conrad that Senator Wyden has worked hard on this and he is raising some important issues, I am very worried about where we may be heading in the realm of health care. I have been impressed with Senator Wyden's efforts to create something that could result in bipartisan agreement. I don't know where we are headed, but I respect him greatly for his efforts. Motion to Instruct Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to call up my motion to instruct conferees.

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, the budget resolution is on the floor now, and I believe we ought to talk about it and be honest with ourselves about it. I will speak as one Senator. I know it passed this Senate. I don't think any Republican voted for it. Maybe a couple of Democrats voted against it, but it passed with extra votes to spare. I would say--and I hate to say it, but I will repeat what I have said before: I believe this is the most irresponsible budget in the history of this Republic. It surges debt to a degree to which we have never seen before, not because it assumes we are going to be in long-term economic turmoil--they assume we are going to have economic growth roaring back in a year or two and that revenues will be surging in to the Government. The debt and deficit we are incurring is a direct result of massive spending--an alteration, I believe, by all accounts of an historic concept that Americans have of limited government, lower taxes, and a vibrant private sector. We have always objected to the Europeans and their more socialist model. We have consistently, year after year, had greater growth than they have had, lower unemployment than they have had, and we have been proud of that. Of course, both Europe and the United States are in trouble today. I was rather mortified when the European leaders told our President and our Secretary of the Treasury that no, they were not going to spend like the United States; no, they believe we are incurring too much debt and they were not going to follow us; and the President of the European Union said our financial proposals were the road to hell. That is what he said about them. Let me share a few things before we get started on the specifics of the motion to instruct. This is what the President's budget called for. He submitted a 10-year budget, and this is not something, let me add, that he was forced to do. This budget represents the President's, the administration's, and now, I guess, this Senate's fundamental view that we need to spend, spend, spend more than we ever have in history and not be too much worried about the debt. So under the present state of affairs, in 2008 the debt of the United States, from the founding of the Republic over 200 years, totaled $5.8 trillion--a lot of money. We paid on that $170 billion in interest in 2008. That is how much interest we paid. We spent less than $100 billion on education and $40 billion on highways. This year we paid $170 billion on interest on our debt. But, within 5 years, according to the President's own budget numbers we will double that debt to $11.8 trillion in 5 years, and in 10 years, the debt will triple to $17.3 trillion. The young people who are coming out of school today and beginning to work, how much interest will they be required to pay on that 10 years from now? Not $170 billion, but according to our own Congressional Budget Office that scored this carefully--and they are under the control of the Democratic majority, but they are a nonpartisan group, and I respect what they do--they calculate we will pay $806 billion in interest, over ten times what we are spending today on the education expenditures of the Federal Government, and many times the $40 billion we spend on highways this year. I would say this is a stunning development. I am worried about it. I think every American should be worried about it. Are those projections off base? I have the numbers; they just released the numbers for this year. Remember, last year was the biggest deficit this Nation has had since World War II--$455 billion. We need to be working that annual deficit down. Look: In October, the first month, we hit $134 billion; by January--4 months--we were at $563 billion this fiscal year. That is this fiscal year. By January of this year, in 4 months, $563 billion in deficit represents the largest deficit in the Republic since World War II. Here we go back to the end of the quarter, at 6 months from October, through March, it is now $953 billion, already twice what last year's numbers were. So we are on track this year to see an annual deficit of $1.8 to $1.9 trillion. That is unbelievable. I ask my colleagues, does it get better? Not under the President's budget. Under the President's budget, in the outyears, the numbers continue to go up, and in the tenth year, his budget projects a deficit of $1.2 trillion. Over 10 years, his budget deficit will average over $900 billion each year. Again, this is not projecting a war; it is projecting a decline in defense spending for military activities around the globe. It is projecting solid, even robust economic growth. The deficits are caused by spending. I am so disappointed we haven't done a better job of controlling it. I know the Senate budget is a 5-year budget. That is what they think is going to look a little better than the President's 10-year budget, but according to the Republican staff, they did an analysis of it and it is essentially the same over the first 5 years. In fact, Mr. Orszag, of the President's Office of Management and Budget, who used to be the Director at CBO, said publicly it was 98 percent of what the President wanted. This chart shows that in discretionary outlays it is 98.8 percent identical to the President's 5 years; on total outlays, it is 96.6 percent identical; and the revenue they project is 99.8 percent identical. What can we do about it? There are a lot of things we can do. The most difficult--and our chairman, Senator Conrad, and the ranking member, Senator Gregg, have made some steps toward dealing with the crisis in entitlements. They are growing at a rapid pace and we have to do something about it. This budget assumes no reform on entitlements whatsoever, but maybe they will be able to make something happen. I would like to see us project some savings in that, but it is not shown in this budget. So the motion to instruct I have filed, and that at some point we will be voting on, would say we ought to begin to establish some sense of fiscal responsibility by containing the growth in discretionary, nondefense, nonveteran spending. This can be done. It is particularly easy to do so this year because we, a few months ago--a few weeks ago, really--passed an $800 billion stimulus package, on top of our base budget. So I would have thought, when we did our baseline budget this year, knowing we had pumped in $800 billion over the next 2 years to try to stimulate the economy, that we would have a frugal baseline budget. Not so. In fact, according to the budget that is on the floor, I believe, it shows a 7-percent increase in baseline discretionary, nondefense spending. Most of my colleagues know the rule of seven: A 7-percent growth rate doubles your money in 10 years. So this proposal puts us on a track to double the spending for discretionary, nondefense spending in 10 years. It is an unsustainable track. I propose this: In light of this stimulus package--the largest single appropriation of money in the history of America that we passed, and every penny going to the debt; all $800 billion of it has to be borrowed so we can spend it. In light of that, we ought to be able to keep the baseline budget flat for 2 years and show a modest increase of 1 percent over the next 3 years. This will make a difference. It will save us $173 billion. It will give us--it will start us on a process of having a baseline spending level for this country at a more frugal rate. Most States are having to cut. Most cities are showing reductions, 3.56 percent, some more than that, all over the country. They are not disappearing from the face of the Earth. It is not impossible to cut spending, but this doesn't propose any cut. It proposes 2 years of flat spending--but remember, we added $800 billion on top of it; and then for 3 years, a 1-percent increase. This will make a difference. In over 10 or 15 years, it will have an even bigger impact than we might think. I urge my colleagues to consider this. We ought to show some restraint. Everybody is saying, Well, we will worry about that tomorrow. We have a crisis today, and we are going to spend today, and we will worry about the debt later. But it is time for us to stand up and be counted, I believe. I think my amendment is modest, I think it is responsible, but I think it is significant. I urge my colleagues to consider this motion to instruct. I appreciate the opportunity to speak on it. I appreciate those who worked on this budget, but I have to say, it should not become law. It is a bad mistake for this country to do it. I urge my colleagues to not go forward with a lockstep movement to vote for this budget. I don't think the American people are at all happy with it. I believe they know we are doing something fundamental to this country--and that was a big part of some of the tea party talk--a deep angst out there that something is happening to their country that is unprecedented. I appreciate my colleagues' attention to this motion to instruct and I urge their support for it. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I ask to be notified after 4 minutes.

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I thank the Chair. I appreciate the comments that have been made. I agree first with Senator Coburn's comments about our distinguished chairman's pride in spending less money than the Obama proposal called for for discretionary spending over 5 years. He said he saved $600 billion--and it should save some. However, President Obama's budget was an 11-percent increase. Senator Conrad came in with a 7-percent increase, which is huge in light of the money we are spending on top of that with the stimulus package we just passed; and at 7 percent, Government spending would double in 10 years. But the House is at 12 percent. So when the bill goes to conference, it is not going to be at 7, it is going to be at 10, 11, maybe 12 percent. No. 2, his savings are projected in years 2, 3, 4 and 5, and as Senator Coburn said, when we come back next year, this body, if the same Members are here, is going to have another 7 percent or 10 percent. The only one that counts is this year. So I do not believe we have a real change in this budget. I believe Mr. Orszag is correct--the President's budget manager--that this is 98 percent of what he asked for and he asked for a budget over 10 years that doubles the debt in 5 years and triples it in 10. It triples the debt in 10. It is admitted by the President's own budget. It is in the numbers he sent to us. We are not making this up. That is No. 1. I have several amendments I will be calling to my colleagues' attention. One is the Comprehensive Outer Continental Shelf Study. We have no idea today how much oil and gas may be off our coasts, our Atlantic coast and Pacific coast. Particularly, the Atlantic States are eager to know what is out there and to consider whether they want to produce out there. I think it has great potential for America. Every barrel of oil and energy we can produce in the United States off our shores so we do not have to transfer our wealth to Saudi Arabia or Venezuela or places around the world but keep it here creating jobs and revenue is progress for America in a significant way. That is an amendment on which I hope we will have bipartisan support. Missile defense, I am working with Senator Lieberman on that. I am concerned there might be some belief that we can ease off the completion of missile defense. Our missile defense system now has 26 launchers already built or contracted for; we want to do 44. After years and years of science and technology and investment, we are about to be able to complete a missile defense system that will make us all proud and can protect us from such things as a North Korean launch. If we don't get this system up like we need it, we will not be able to do that. I believe today our technology would knock down that missile if it reached the United States. We need to complete that program. If we slow it down, it will just drive up the cost even more. That is important. I am concerned about the history of this Congress when it deals with border security. We have voted repeatedly--the last big vote was 80 to 19--to complete 700 miles of fencing and barriers on our border. The money often does not get appropriated, however. We vote and say we are for it, but when the chips are down the money doesn't get funded. This would call on us to complete the funding for that project. I think all of us would want to complete what we have started.

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I want to say it is not impossible for us at least to move substantially toward a balanced budget. In the immediate years ahead it is going to be hard to get to a balanced budget. But the President's budget does not attempt to do so. In fact, in years 7 and 10 of his budget, his deficits are not going down. This is his own document he submitted to us--they are surging upward. In his 10th year, the Congressional Budget Office says his deficit will be, in 1 year, $1.2 trillion. That will be almost three times the highest deficit this country has ever had in its history. I thank Senator McCain and others who are working on it.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank the chairman of the committee. This Congress passed the Secure Fence Act of 2006 by a vote of 80 to 19, with broad bipartisan support, including then-Senators Obama, Biden, and Clinton. We committed to 700 miles of barriers. Today we are less than halfway there. The funding has simply not been there. Some progress is being made in areas where the fencing is in place. We have had a dramatic reduction in crime in the San Diego area since the fence was completed a number of years ago. This will help us reduce crime. It will help us reduce drug smuggling, gun smuggling, and immigration violations. We have a lawless border. Progress is being made, colleagues. We are seeing a reduction in the number of people entering America, a reduction in the number of arrests. And if we follow through with what we have told the American people we intend to do, we will be able to create a lawful system of immigration, which is a responsibility this Congress has. I urge support of this amendment. It is consistent with previous votes. It puts a budget point of order against an appropriation in this area that does not fund the fence completion.