Jeff Sessions

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have 2 additional minutes.

Mr. SESSIONS. It shows the interest rate or payments on this tripling debt reaching $694 billion, according to the White House's own estimate, in 2019, to the people who buy our debt--the largest foreign recipient of which is China. CBO says that is underestimated. They calculate it to be $806 billion. The entire general fund of the State of Alabama, an average- size State, is about $7 billion for the counties, schools, teachers, and roads. The highway budget for the entire United States of America is $40 billion a year, including interstate, all the money we send to the States, and all of the pork money we put on top of it. This is $806 billion in interest alone on a debt that we have run up in previous years. That is why people are worried about it. I will conclude with that and say, again, I know we all get caught up in politics, that is true. But this year, this budget is not a normal budget. It is not a bigger budget or a lot bigger. It is a gargantuan budget, the likes of which we have not seen before. It results in debt increases that are not sustainable. It has no projection of any containment of spending. It does nothing to deal with the entitlement difficulties that are driving much of the debt, and it cannot be passed in this fashion. I urge my Democratic colleagues to say: No, Mr. President, you have to go back and look at this some more. We cannot pass this budget and not just take a few hundred billion dollars off, or something like that. We need to have a serious discussion of the financial condition of our country. I think the Republicans will be there trying to work with you on it. But without some leadership from the other side, this budget will go into effect. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank Senator Chambliss from Georgia for his very fine summary. I think one of the more dramatic situations in which this Congress has found itself, in the face of a projected positive turnaround in the economy, a predicted unprecedented debt for years and years to come. This cannot go quietly. It is a big deal. We have never seen anything like this before. I hope our Senate colleagues will focus on it. I wanted to first return again to the AIG bonus issue and expand a little bit on the remarks I made earlier in the week. The simple fact is, we are investing a very large amount of not only money but time, energy, and bombast in how to deal with the one one- thousandth of the AIG bailout money that has gone to bonuses. I think they are utterly unacceptable. They are going to the very division of AIG that got them into trouble. They were the last people who ought to get bonuses. Now, normally politicians who have a nation to run, Cabinet Secretaries who have an economy to manage, should not be spending a whole lot of time on a private company's bonus plan. But it has become necessary, unavoidable really, because our Government owns 80 percent of this company. We own 80 percent of the stock in AIG after investing $173 billion to buy that stock. So no wonder people are furious. If you are running a company, Secretary Geithner, how come we are having bonuses given to people who ought not to be receiving bonuses? Well, it is a difficult thing with the CEO. Why didn't he do something about it? The CEO, Chairman Liddy of AIG, was put in place by us--first, by Secretary Paulson back when he first started this misguided attempt last fall to take over this company, and he has been kept in place by Secretary Geithner, our new Secretary of the Treasury. I would also note that Secretary Geithner was walking hand in hand with Secretary Paulson last fall when they conjured up this scheme that sought to alter the financial problems on Wall Street. In reality, Secretary Geithner is the ultimate chairman of the board of AIG. He ultimately is responsible for bonuses, pay scales, office space, whether or not they have airplanes, and all of that stuff. So, oh, what a tangled web we create when we first start to regulate, to take over a private company. Mr. Geithner needs to get AIG and these banks--in addition to AIG--we have invested in, of which we now own large stock shares, off his portfolio, his list of things to be dealing with. He needs to be focused on the policies necessary to revive this economy. Did anybody see Coach K from Duke? He was asked about the President saying they were going to make it to the Final Four. And Coach K did not miss a beat. He just looked up and said: Well, that is nice. But I would really feel better if he were focusing on the economy. So would I. Distracted by these noteworthy and transient issues over bonuses, Mr. Geithner, who stands at the center of our people's concern over the economy, has not even begun assembling his staff. It is really troubling. I understand there are about 17 vacancies in his top staff. People are basically saying he is running the office himself with very little help. But he did find time to call Mr. Liddy, the hand-picked CEO at AIG, to demand that he not give bonus payments. He found time to go over to Europe to present--a mortifying spectacle to me, of the once-proud U.S. Secretary of Treasury now urging the big-spending, quasi-socialist Government of Europe to increase their spending, to increase their stimulus package, to increase their debt, and assuring them we are going to do more and we are leading, big government, big taxes, big spending, big debt. That does not make me proud. Some people may think that is leadership. I am not in that range. That is not my mindset today. Basically, it appeared the Europeans said no. They already thought they had spent enough. They are well below what we are spending as a percentage of their gross domestic product. They are not spending any more. I remember when I first came here as a young Senator. It came my time to question the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Mr. Alan Greenspan. I was nervous about it. I am not an economist. So I read to him from an article. I asked him if he agreed with it. It basically said the reason our economy was growing more than Europe, the reason we had quite substantially less unemployment was because we had less taxes, less spending, and less regulation. So I asked him: Is it less taxes, less spending, and a greater commitment to the free market the reason we are doing better than Europe? He looked up at me and he said: I absolutely agree with that. So I have taken that as sort of my marching orders. I still think that is a sound philosophy: to keep our regulations low, keep our taxes low, keep our spending as low as possible. Do not waste money, and we will get through a lot of these difficult issues. I would also note that I assume that Secretary Geithner at least had some role in this phenomenal, gargantuan proposal the President has just sent over here to us that proposes--get this--budget deficits higher than anything we have ever seen before. Last year, President Bush, his budget deficit was a record $455 billion, and he was criticized for that. He was criticized for a $412 billion budget deficit back on 9/11, the time when that recession hit us. He reduced it to $161 billion in 2007, and it jumped to $455 billion last year. This year, with the stimulus package and other things we are doing, the projected deficit--as of September 30--will be $1.8 trillion. Next year, it will be $1.1 trillion. It is projected to reach its lowest point in 4 years, according to the President's own plan. The lowest point is at $533 billion, well above the highest amount in the history of the Republic. In year 10, it would be over $700 billion. As Senator Chambliss just noted to us, those figures are not accurate. Our own Congressional Budget Office is going to calculate the assumptions given to us by the White House, and everybody is pretty firmly convinced the numbers are going to come in higher and worse than that. It cannot be so that we will pass a budget that assumes a $700 billion deficit 10 years from now, when they are also assuming a nice growth, not a recession or anything, but a nice growth at that time. Well, that is a general situation. It is not good. I just cannot believe this Congress would pass such a budget. I believe we will have to push back. I know a lot of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are uneasy about it. The more they learn about it, I am confident the more uneasy they are going to be. It is just fact. I mean, you can talk and testify and you can spend, but when you send out a budget in a slick binder, with a blue cover on it, and it is the official projection for the next 10 years from the President of the United States, when they project these kind of numbers, I think the Congress and the American people will rally and do something about it and not accept it. I just wanted to say that. Now, with regard to AIG, this is a matter of great importance. In addition to teaching us a lesson about the danger of taking over private companies in general, there are some specific special problems with this bailout that I believe are worthy of discussion, and in some points, real investigation. It was highlighted by the Wall Street Journal in their lead editorial 2 days ago. They pointed out that the bonus flap we have been talking about is a deflection from--a neat deflection--they say, from the ``larger outrage, which is the 5-month Beltway cover-up of who benefitted the most from the AIG bailout.'' First, they note that the Federal takeover of this once proud insurance company, AIG, was never approved by the AIG shareholders. Normally a company that merges or sells or changes its corporate makeup goes through some sort of vote by stockholders. They have proxy votes, solicitations. They attempt to get approval of the stockholders. We just took it over. The Wall Street Journal notes that, in effect, AIG was used as a conduit, a funnel to bail out others not mentioned. Since September 16, 2008, AIG has sent $120 billion of their $173 billion of taxpayer money to banks, municipal governments, and ``other derivative counterparties'' around the world, not only in the United States. The Journal goes on to say that this includes at least $20 billion to European banks and, they wryly note, ``charity cases like Goldman Sachs which received at least $13 billion.'' They further note: This comes after months of claims by Goldman that all of its AIG bets were adequately hedged and that it needed no ``bailout.'' Why take the 13 billion then? Then the Wall Street Journal, not one to needlessly dump unfairly on the Wall Street business crowd they often speak up for when they believe they are abused, declares importantly: This needless cover-up is one reason Americans are getting angrier as they wonder if Washington is lying to them about these bailouts. Then they ask the most critical question. Remember, Congress was told last fall that we had to bail out the banks because they were too large to fail and that their failure would pose a systemic risk to our economy. They said they were going to buy toxic assets. They never said they were going to buy stock. They never hinted they would buy stock in an insurance company. This is what the Wall Street Journal said about the systemic risk question: Given the government has never defined ``systemic risk,'' we're also starting to wonder exactly which system American taxpayers are paying to protect. It's not capitalism, in which risk-takers suffer the consequences of bad decisions and in some cases it's not even Americans. The U.S. government is now in the business of distributing foreign aid to offshore financiers, laundered through a once-great American company. That is fundamentally true. It is not good. I don't think we ever should have started down that road. The Wall Street Journal concludes: Whether or not these funds ever come back to the Treasury, regulators should now focus on getting AIG back into private hands as soon as possible, and if Treasury and the Fed want to continue bailing out foreign banks, let them make that case honestly and directly, to the American people. I thank the Wall Street Journal for writing the truth on this complex issue. I don't like the way it was done. These decisions to hand out billions of dollars were not made in public. Until a few days ago, we didn't even know who got this money. These banks, these foreign banks, Goldman Sachs, the ones that have been listed as getting money, we didn't know their names. Our Secretaries of the Treasury, the two of them, have been passing out this money to these banks through AIG and not even saying where the money went. That is no good. And how do they decide how much to give them? Was there a hearing somewhere where people came, such as in the Senate--poor as we are at it--raised their hands under oath or, much preferred, was there something like a bankruptcy proceeding where a Federal judge calls all the people in, collects the data, figures out what the income is and the debts are, and makes people testify under oath and lawyers cross-examine them and they get down to what the real facts are and then decisions are made about how to handle a company like this? No, apparently they went in and got down on Mr. Geithner's rug and Mr. Paulson's carpet and asked for $20 billion. And he said: How about 10? No, I need more. OK, you get 13. Of course, they knew one another. That is just a fact. I am not making it up. Where did Secretary Paulson come from? He came from Goldman Sachs. I wonder what it would have looked like if he had given Goldman Sachs $13 billion publicly. I am not happy about it. I don't think the previous administration handled it well. I am disappointed that this administration has taken Mr. Paulson's right-hand adviser--some say the architect of his plan-- and put him in charge of it. He is continuing this indefensible process. I opposed it at the time. I said we are giving too much power to one man. In the history of the Republic, we have never given this kind of power to one man to pass out this kind of money. This is the Senate. It is taxpayers' money. We threw him $700 billion and said: Do whatever you think is right. He told us he was going to buy toxic mortgages. Remember that? Within a week, he decided he wasn't going to buy toxic mortgages. He bought stock; not only in banks, he bought stock in insurance companies. It is a dangerous thing. When you get into owning these companies, people start wanting to know about what kind of bonuses they have, what kind of car the CEO drives, whether they should have a jet plane. The Secretary of the Treasury ought to be involved in other things besides managing corporate affairs. He needs to get us out of these companies as soon as possible. I talked to some people from a very solid Main Street bank, big Main Street bank, who were pressured to take money at the time they came up with this scheme. They want to pay the money back and get out from under the Federal boot. They are not agreeing yet to do that. I am not happy about that. I understand another bank may be the same. Others are worried about whether they will be allowed to pay this money back and get out. This bank told us, the people I was talking to: We are ready to get out. We think we will do better. Our stock will go up, if the people know we are not indebted to the government. We are strong enough. We are not happy about this. They are getting the impression and the fear they have--along with other banks in a similar situation--is that there is a resistance from the Treasury Department to have them do that, which would be unthinkable to me. I hope we will find out more about it. If there is wrongdoing of a more serious nature than incompetence and bad judgment, I hope it will be pursued. Hopefully not; I hope there is no more than bad judgment. I hope as Americans we learn a lesson that it is not easy and there are all kinds of unanticipated ramifications from the act of taking over private companies. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the text of this Wall Street Journal editorial, as well as the list of companies benefitting from AIG's bailout.

Mr. SESSIONS. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. If the Senator will yield, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee has set up ample time for this to be discussed today. I thank him for that. Senator Specter, a little while ago, indicated that he thought the time should be yielded back and we could vote as early as 5. He hoped that would be acceptable, and he urged people to come down if they have comments. I will join him and you in urging people to come down if they have remarks to make. It would be more convenient, I think, for people to have an early vote.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I wish to share my thoughts about the nomination of Elena Kagan to be Solicitor General. I have strong concerns about her nomination and will not support her nomination. I do believe the President, like all Presidents, should be entitled to a reasonable degree of deference in selecting executive branch nominees. But for some of the reasons I will set out, and one in particular, I am not able to support this nomination and will not support it. I believe her record shows a lack of judgment and experience to serve as the Nation's chief legal advocate--a position many have referred to as the Supreme Court's ``tenth Justice.'' It is also a position that has been called the best lawyer job in the world. Well, so far as I can observe, other than time in the White House Counsel's Office, Dean Kagan has only practiced law for 2 years in a real law firm practicing law. She had very limited experience in the things you would look for in a person of this nature. But let me discuss one defining moment in her career that I was sort of indirectly involved in because of legislation that was percolating in the Congress, in the Senate and in the House, and it means a lot to me. During her tenure as dean, Ms. Kagan barred the U.S. military from coming on the Harvard Law School campus to recruit young law graduates to be JAG officers in the U.S. military. That was from November of 2004 through September of 2005. She barred them from coming and recruiting on campus while 150,000 of our finest men and women in this country were serving in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan and during a time in which 938 troops died in combat, preserving the rights of people like law deans, faculty, and students to have all the opinions they want. Her decision to bar the military from her campus during a time of armed conflict represents exceedingly poor judgment and leadership, particularly for someone who wants to lead the Department of Justice, the executive branch, and support the military of the United States. By refusing to allow military recruiters on the Harvard Law School campus, she placed her own opposition to military policies above the need of our military men and women to receive good legal advice, even from Harvard lawyers. And she did so at a time when the military, serving in conflicts in two foreign countries, was facing a host of complex legal issues. We are still fighting over them, for that matter. Maybe it would have helped if we had some of those graduates participating in them. I don't believe she ever had a basis to have barred the military from her school's campus, and I believe she should have had the judgment to realize the signal and the impact that was being sent to our military and to the students who want to support and serve in the military. Indeed, President Obama should have realized the signal he was sending by nominating her to this position. Flagg Youngblood wrote an op-ed in the Washington Times on January 30 and this is what that op-ed stated. I will quote from that article. I think it makes a point. This is a military person: Since the Solicitor General serves as the advocate for the interests of the American people to the Supreme Court, we're expected to believe Kagan is the best choice? Her nomination smacks of special interest, aimed at protecting the Ivy League's out-of-touch elitism at the expense of students, taxpayers, and our military alike. And what about the qualified students who desire to serve our country? In the military, he is referring to. Second-class, back-of-the-bus treatment, that's what they get, typically having to make time-consuming commutes to other schools and, much worse, the ill-deserved disdain of faculty and peers on their own campuses. The military, nobly and selflessly, stands alert at freedom's edge, ready to defend our Nation in times of crisis, and should therefore be honored, and, as most Americans would argue, given preferential treatment, for guarding the liberties that academics such as Kagan profess to protect. That's precisely why Congress intervened more than a decade ago, at the behest of a large majority of Americans who recognize and appreciate what our military does, to fulfill the Constitution's call for a common defense among the few, enumerated Federal powers. And, to stop financing those who undermine that fundamental duty. Yet, leftwing views like Kagan's still disparage the sacrifices our military makes and cause real, quantifiable harm to students and to our Nation at taxpayer expense. Well, Mr. Youngblood's editorial--he felt deeply about that-- deserves, I think, extra force and credibility because he was affected by similar policies when he tried to participate in ROTC while attending Yale University during the 1990s. Due to Yale's exclusion of the ROTC from campus, Mr. Youngblood was forced to travel because he wanted to serve his country, 70 miles to commute to the University of Connecticut to attend the military ROTC classes. His ordeal--and many like it--led to the passage of the Solomon amendment, which is the Federal law that requires colleges to allow military recruiters on campus in order to be eligible for Federal funds. Well, let me say, that amendment didn't order any university to admit anybody or to allow anybody to come on campus; it simply says when you get a bunch of money from the Federal Government, you at least need to let the military come and recruit students if they would like to join the U.S. military and not exclude them. So the Solomon amendment is critically important here because it shows that Ms. Kagan's decision to block the military from Harvard Law School's campus was not just wrong as a matter of public and military policy. It was also clearly wrong as a matter of law. While dean at Harvard, Ms. Kagan was a vocal critic of the Solomon amendment. She called the law immoral. She wrote a series of e-mails to the Harvard Law School community complaining about the Solomon amendment and its requirement--horrors--that federally funded universities, if they continue to get Federal money, ought to allow military recruiters on campus or lose the Federal money. She thought that was horrible. I should note that Harvard receives hundreds of millions of dollars in Federal funding: $473 million in 2003, $511 million in 2004, and $517 million in 2005. That is a lot of money. The Federal highway budget that goes to the State of Alabama is about $500 million a year. Harvard University gets that much. By opposing the Solomon amendment, Ms. Kagan wanted Harvard to be able to receive these large amounts of taxpayers' dollars without honoring Congress's and President Clinton's judgment that military recruiters were eligible to come on campus. Under the Solomon amendment, Harvard has always had the option of declining Federal funds and relying on its big endowment--$34 billion-- and their tuition to fund the university. Much smaller institutions, such as Hillsdale College, have chosen to decline Federal funds to carry out their full academic independence. Harvard and Dean Kagan were not willing to do so. They wanted both. They wanted money and the right to kick out the military. I think she showed her legal judgment regarding the Solomon amendment in 2005 when she joined in an amicus brief of Harvard Law School professors to the U.S. Supreme Court in Rumsfeld v. FAIR, opposing the Solomon Amendment's application to Harvard Law School. Unlike the chief litigant--the formal appeal group--in the case, which raised a straightforward first amendment challenge to the Solomon amendment, the brief Ms. Kagan joined with other Harvard Law School professors made a novel argument of statutory interpretation that was too clever for the Supreme Court. Her brief argued that Harvard Law School did not run afoul of the letter of the Solomon amendment because Harvard law school did not have a policy of expressly barring the military from campus. Harvard, she argued, barred recruiters who discriminate from campus. Her brief reasoned that the Solomon amendment shouldn't apply where the military wasn't singled out, but just ran afoul of a school's nondiscrimination policy. Ms. Kagan's argument was considered by the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Solomon amendment. In specifically addressing Ms. Kagan's amicus brief with the Harvard professors, Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the Court, dismissed Ms. Kagan's novel statutory interpretation theory using these words: That is rather clearly not what Congress had in mind in codifying the DOD policy. We refuse to interpret the Solomon amendment in a way that negates its recent revision, and indeed would render it a largely meaningless exercise. It is telling also to note that the brief she signed on to was unable to convince a single Justice of the Supreme Court to go along with it-- not even Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg who was once general counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union. Let me mention one more thing people have mentioned about the Kagan decision to bar the military from recruiting on the Harvard campus. Some may have heard that the decision to bar the military was merely honoring a ruling of the Third Circuit, which briefly ruled against the Solomon amendment on a split decision in Rumsfeld v. FAIR. It is critical to note that the Third Circuit's ruling never went into effect because the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court and the Third Circuit stayed enforcement of its decision. In other words, the Third Circuit said: Yes, we have rendered it. We understand our opinion is under appeal. We are not going to issue a mandate or an injunction that our opinion has to be followed. We will allow this case to be decided ultimately by the Supreme Court of the United States. No injunction was ever entered against enforcement of the Solomon amendment. Any decision by any dean to reject the Solomon amendment and not enforce it was not required by law. The law stayed in effect. In fact, Dean Kagan acknowledged that in an e-mail to the Harvard Law School community in 2005. There was a lot of controversy about this at Harvard. A lot of people weren't happy about it, you can be sure. She admitted in that e-mail that she had barred the military from campus, even though no injunction was in place, saying: Although the Supreme Court's action meant that no injunction applied against the Department of Defense, I reinstated the application of our anti-discrimination policy to the military . . . ; as a result, the military did not receive assistance during our spring 2005 recruiting season. So it is clear that the barring of the military took place while the Solomon amendment was, in effect, the law of the land. Her e-mail indicates she understood that at the time. As a result, students who wanted to consider a military career were not allowed to meet with the recruiters on campus. The military was even forced to threaten Harvard University's Federal funding in order to get the military readmitted to campus as time went on. This was all a big deal. The Congress was talking about it. We had debate on it right here on the floor and in the Judiciary Committee, of which I am a member. I think a nominee to be the Department of Justice's chief advocate before the Supreme Court, to hold the greatest lawyer job in the world, should have a record of following the law and not flouting it. The nominee should, if anything, be a defender of the U.S. military and not one who condemns them. Ms. Kagan's personal political views, I think, are what led to this criticism of the military, this blocking of the military. She opposed a plain congressional act that was put into place after we went through years of discussion and pleading with some of these universities that were barring the military. They had refused to give in, so we passed a law that said, OK, you don't have to admit the military, but we don't have to give you money, and we are not giving you any if you don't admit them. They didn't like that. So Ms. Kagan's refusal of on-campus military recruiters went against a congressional act. Her actions were an affront to our men and women then in combat and now in combat. The Solicitor General should be a person who is anxious and eager and willing to defend these kinds of statutes and to defend our military's full freedom and right to be admitted to any university, even if some university doesn't agree with the constitutional and lawfully established policies of the Department of Defense. I would also raise another matter, and I think this is important. If there was some other significant showing, I think, of competence or claim on this position, I would be more willing to consider it. If she were among the most proven practitioners of legal skill before Federal appellate courts or had great experience in these particular positions, maybe I could overcome them. Maybe if she had lots of other cases in her career that could show she had shown wisdom in other areas, but that is not the case. She has zero appellate experience. Dean Kagan has never argued a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, which isn't unusual for most American lawyers, but for somebody who wants to be the Solicitor General whose job it is to argue before the Supreme Court, it is not normal. But for that matter, she has never argued any appellate case before any State supreme court. In fact, she has never argued a case on appeal before any appellate court, whether Federal, State, local, tribal or military. That is a real lack of experience. When asked about this lack of experience at our hearing, Ms. Kagan tried to compare her record to other nominees saying this: And I should say, Senator, that I will, by no means, be the first Solicitor General who has not had extensive or, indeed, any Supreme Court argument experience. So I'll just give you a few names: Robert Bork, Ken Starr, Charles Fried, Wade McCree. None of those people had appeared before the courts prior to becoming solicitor general. Well, Ms. Kagan's record hardly compares to the names she cited in her own defense. Regarding Charles Fried, Ms. Kagan was wrong in stating that he never argued to the Supreme Court. Although Professor Fried did not have much in the way of litigation experience before being nominated, he had argued to the Supreme Court while serving as Deputy Solicitor General in Rex Lee's Solicitor General's Office. Accordingly, Mr. Fried had two things Ms. Kagan lacks--Supreme Court experience and experience within the Solicitor General's Office. Ms. Kagan also compared herself to Ken Starr and Wade McCree, both of whom had a wealth of appellate experience that she lacks. Prior to his nomination to be Solicitor General, Ken Starr served as a U.S. Court of Appeals judge in the District of Columbia--an appellate court--from 1983 to 1989, a court before which the best lawyers in the country appear and argue cases. He had to control and direct their argument, and as a result he got to see and have tremendous experience in that regard as an appellate judge. Wade McCree had even more experience before his nomination. Mr. McCree served as a U.S. Court of Appeals judge in the Sixth Circuit, from 1966 to 1977, 11 years. Robert Bork also had a strong litigation background before his nomination. He was one of the most recognized, accomplished antitrust lawyers in private practice in the country. We should not forget the critically important role the Solicitor General plays in our legal system. As Clinton-era Solicitor General Drew Days wrote in the Kentucky Law Journal, ``the Solicitor General has the power to decide whether to defend the constitutionality of the acts of Congress or even to affirmatively challenge them.'' That is quite a power--the power to defend statutes in the Supreme Court, or even challenge them in the Supreme Court. This is a very critical job within our Government. I think it deserves a more experienced lawyer, one with a record that shows more balance and good judgment. I think Ms. Kagan's lack of experience is an additional reason I am uncomfortable with the nomination. I think nominees have to be careful about expressing opinions on matters that might come before them in the future. But for a nonjudicial position, and concerning issues which were commented on today, Senator Specter believes she has been less than forthcoming. Had she been more forthcoming, I might have been a little more comfortable with the nominee. Her failure to be responsive to many questions, I think, causes me further concern. To paraphrase a well-known statement of then-Senator Biden--now our Vice President--the job of the Solicitor General does not lend itself to on-the-job training. One time, Rudy Giuliani was arguing about who should be his replacement as U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, and they were discussing people with very little experience. He said: I think it would be nice if they were able to contribute to the discussion every now and then. I think it is good to have some experience. So I don't see a sense of history here to overcome what I consider to be bad judgment on a very important matter. I supported the nomination of Eric Holder. I like him and I hope he will be a good Attorney General; I think he will. I intend to support most of the other nominees to the Department of Justice. I certainly hope to. But I am not able to support Elena Kagan's nomination in view of her positions concerning the ability of the U.S. military to come on the campus of Harvard and actually recruit the young men and women who might wish to join the military. I think that was wrong. I also believe she has a very significant lack of relevant experience for the position. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I first would like to say a thing or two about the bonuses that have been paid to the AIG employees, those persons who are in the specific division whose actions led to the demise of what was once considered a great insurance company. No doubt about it, that was a very serious error, and now as a result of agreements made, apparently sometime ago, they are going to receive bonuses. Everybody has been upset about it. So have I. I said Monday on this floor the only thing I felt like giving them for free would be a free lunch and a free bed somewhere in a penitentiary. I know the Presiding Officer is a former prosecutor and has sent some people to the penitentiary. I hope they are not guilty of criminal activities, but that is how I feel about it. But the reason we are in this is because of an unwise act. That act was--beginning with Secretary Paulson, President Bush's Secretary of the Treasury, continued now under Secretary Geithner, President Obama's Secretary of the Treasury--taking over AIG. We own 80 percent of AIG's stock. Secretary Paulson picked Mr. Liddy, who had a good record in the past and was off somewhere with his grandchildren, and asked him to come back and try to take over this company and start pumping billions of dollars into it. It now has totaled $170 billion. It is unbelievable how much that is, $170 billion. I would repeat, that is, compared to the Alabama budget, including schools and teachers' pay, $7 billion a year. We gave one private company, competing with a lot of other private insurance companies in America today that did not get themselves in trouble--we are bailing them out. So we should not have done that. Now, when Mr. Paulson came before this body and asked for this power to get $700 billion to spend as he wished, I objected. As just a Senator, I was flabbergasted that he would ask for such unlimited power. Not one time did he hint that he was going to buy stock in an insurance company. It was to buy the toxic assets from banks. Do you remember that? So Secretary Paulson, within a few days, a week I believe, had gotten his authority. But it did not say: Mr. Secretary, you get to buy toxic assets in banks--which I did not think was very good anyway and voted against it--it gave him power to do virtually anything. That is another reason I voted against the legislation. By the way, under oath in a House committee, Secretary Paulson said he had no intention of buying stock. Somebody asked him: What about buying stock in these banks? He said, no, he did not want to buy stock; that we were just going to buy these toxic assets. A week later he was buying stock in an insurance company and stock in banks. And to this day, we have not yet bought any of these toxic assets, these bad mortgages that are really the problem that have destabilized our financial situation and have not dealt with yet. That is why there is still instability out there. OK. So here we are now; we own this corporation. So I asked the question about the bonuses at AIG. Apparently, they got a contract. By the way, when we passed legislation here, it was with a Democratic majority. Somewhere in conference they put in language in the legislation that basically said bonuses would be honored if they were entered into before a certain date. These bonus contracts were entered into before that date. So now we have all of these protestations and all this angst and all this outrage about bonuses, and we have to do something about it. I am outraged, too, really but have a little perspective. The amount of the bonuses are one-thousandth, less than one-thousandth of the amount of money we put in this corporation that is at great risk today. And that is a galling issue for all of us, to have this division, the bad division in the whole fine insurance company, taking this company down, and they get the bonuses. It is outrageous. It really is. But the truth is, it appears there is some contractual right for them to have it. So I would ask, what about the folks in these companies who are paid too much? Maybe we ought to have debate on the Senate floor about how much every employee of AIG should be paid or how their bathrooms should be configured or whether they should even have a private bathroom or how many businesses they ought to have or what kind of cars they should drive, whether they should have jet airplanes, whether they ought to be on Manhattan or some cheaper place in Brooklyn. I mean, what we are going to enter into is these have become political decisions because politicians own the company. This is a warning for us. We have to be careful about buying stock in corporations. I am telling you, it is not a good policy. I do not believe it was justified in this circumstance. I think history is demonstrating that. I am worried about it. We need to get out of AIG. How are we going to do it? I think the way you do it, and the way it should have been done from the beginning, is the company should have gone into chapter 11 under the Bankruptcy Code. You would have had a Federal bankruptcy judge bring all of them in, raise their hands under oath, testify to the financial condition, how this all happened, what parts of the company are good, valuable, prosperous, what parts are sick and in danger. Then we could have figured out as a government how we could help with the sick and toxic parts, get rid of the others and let all of that go, and we would not have been running this company. So now we are going to tax them. I am not sure how this has been written, but we are somehow going to identify the several hundred people who got bonuses, and we are going to tax them. We might as well put their names in the Record. I do not know; it is probably unconstitutional. It really is. It is a real constitutional question, certainly a policy question, that the Congress is going to abrogate a contract whether we like it or not. But a bankruptcy judge can. A bankruptcy judge has constitutional power to abrogate a contract. I am certain a bankruptcy judge would have invalidated the contract for bonuses for the people in this division. They do not have the money. The only reason they are afloat today is because we bailed them out. They would not have jobs if we had not bailed them out. This whole thing would have been done differently. So I am worried about what we are doing. The Budget Mr. President, I am also worried about the budget. The President has submitted a budget. It has come over to us now. It is in a bound book, slick cover. It sets out his agenda for the future. It is an important document, and it sets out his priorities and his direction he wants the country to go. I am a member of the Budget Committee, and we will be marking that up and offering amendments to it next week. But the American people need to know that the financial condition of our country will be altered to a historic degree if this budget is passed. I am not just saying that. I am saying, read the budget. That is what it says. I will share some thoughts about it. I think there is a growing bipartisan consensus, and certainly at least a concern on both sides of the aisle, that the budget deficits and spending levels are unsustainable; that is, continuing these levels of spending will destabilize this country, weaken the value of our dollar, perhaps kick off inflation, and in many other ways erode confidence in the United States as a government of integrity and financial wisdom and management that can be relied on. So while American families are out there right now saving a good bit more than they have in years past, watching their pennies, while American cities and towns who have been in my office this week and are telling me they are seeing a 6 or 7 or so percent reduction in sales tax revenues and revenues for their towns, they are managing well, and they are getting by. They are postponing some things they would like to have done this year until they get a little more money in, and they are not going out of business. They heard there was some free money in the stimulus package. They wanted as much of it as they can get. Fair enough. But, you know, they are getting by. Our Government is increasing spending to a degree to which we have never seen before. This budget calls for $3.6 billion in spending, which is, in effect, a 20-percent growth in nondefense programs. I am talking about the discretionary programs under our control that we deal with from 2008 levels to 2010 levels, 20 percent. At that rate, of course, that is 10 percent a year, and with a 7- percent growth rate per year your money will double in 10 years. This is the track we are on. It is a huge baseline budget increase to pay for this expansion of Government. The budget imposes or presumes $1.4 trillion in new taxes. That includes a national energy tax similar to the one the MIT experts predict would cost working families $3,100 per year. That is almost $300 a month for the average family for this tax. So despite these taxes, the budget will require even more borrowing. We will go even further in debt despite the tax increase. We would double the debt held by the public in 5 years. I mean, the total American debt we have today would double in 5 years and triple in 10 years. Our budget is a 10-year budget. It projects what this administration believes should happen over the next 10 years. That is what they project will happen. Under this plan, starting in 2012, the United States will pay $1 billion a day in interest to our creditors, the largest of which are China and Japan outside of our country. That is $1 billion a day in interest on this surging debt we have. So, in summary, I believe it is fair and honest to say this budget spends too much, it taxes too much, and it borrows too much. The administration has promised the budget would be free of accounting tricks and gimmicks, but they have not met that standard either. On the one hand, we have been told repeatedly by the administration that we face the gravest economic crisis since the Great Depression. On the other hand, his budget assumes that unemployment will not rise beyond today's level and economic growth will not substantially fall. I cannot accept and I do not buy the rhetoric of imminent economic disaster. I have not believed that is likely. I still don't believe it is likely. I know we are in a difficult time, but few, if any, economists would agree with the budget's prediction and assumption that unemployment will stay at today's rate of 8.1 percent or that the gross domestic product this year will only decrease by 1.2 percent. The administration's rosy economic picture permits them to assume, therefore, greater revenue. If you assume you have a higher growth rate, a lower unemployment rate, more people are making money, more people are working and getting paid, less people are on unemployment compensation, you assume you have billions more dollars to spend on whatever you would like to spend it on. An independent blue chip group that predicts unemployment and predicts GDP is predicting GDP will decline more than twice 1.2 percent, and they are also predicting the unemployment rate will hit 8.9. I believe our Congressional Budget Office is predicting unemployment will cap out at 9.1 percent. I have seen some figures of 9.4 percent. I am hopeful we will come in under 10 percent. I believe we will. To build on good feelings here, I will note that under President Reagan, when Mr. Volcker was Secretary of the Treasury, they realized they had to confront and break the back of surging inflation. Unemployment hit 10.9 in the early 1980s. It kicked off, though, a sound economy, and for 20 years we have had steady growth after collapsing the unacceptable inflation rate. The best estimates I am seeing do not predict economic disaster, but they certainly don't predict the kind of minimum economic slowdown these numbers are assuming. When those numbers prove to be off the mark, the result will be deficits higher than the administration is predicting in their own budget. That is what I am saying. If you look at the budget over the next 10 years, that is what really worries me. In 2004, President Bush, after 9/11 and after the recession that occurred there, his deficit hit $412 billion. That was the biggest deficit we had since World War II. He was roundly criticized for that. I wasn't very happy with it either. I liked President Bush, but I thought that was too big a deficit. It dropped until 2007, when it hit $161 billion. Last year, President Bush sent out the $300 checks and the $150 billion in deficit spending on top of our other deficit to try to stimulate the economy. It didn't work. He sent out that money. Everybody got the little check. Whatever they did with it, it didn't do much good. The debt jumped to $455 billion. So last year, September 30, the deficit was $455 billion, the largest we have ever had, perhaps including World War II. This year, there is uniform agreement. The Congressional Budget Office is scoring that at September 30, our deficit--the amount of money we spent, less the amount of money we have taken in in taxes--will be $1.8 trillion, one thousand eight hundred billion, four times the highest deficit we ever had last year. That is a serious matter, not a little bitty matter. The budget the President sent us projects that next year--and he does this over 10 years--it will be $1.1 trillion. It begins to drop down to that and hits $533 billion in the fourth year. That is the year he said he cuts the budget deficit in half. The reason the deficit was particularly high this year is the money we spent for the financial bailout of Wall Street that they bought AIG with and other bank stock. The Congressional Budget Office said we are going to lose about $250 billion in that deal. We will get some of it back. They scored in this year's budget $250 billion for that. We have bought Freddie and Fannie, taken over and guaranteed all those loans at those two huge financing institutions, which were quasi-private, basically private, we have taken those over now, and CBO has scored about another $250 billion. They are putting all of that in this year. And then we passed, a few weeks ago, $800 billion--pure stimulus spending to send out over the country. You heard it was for roads and bridges. Only 3 or 4 percent went for roads and bridges. The rest of it went for all kinds of nice ideas, not very stimulative in the minds of experts. So you add that over the next 2 years of spending, split that out. That is how we get such a high year this year. One reason we are at a trillion dollars next year is because they are scoring some of that $800 billion in next year's deficit. At any rate, it drops down, OK? So the fourth year, we are hitting $533 billion. That is still the highest deficit in the history of our Republic. Then it starts going up. And the budget President Obama gives us projects that in the 10th year, the deficit will be over $700 billion. That is why we need the American people to be engaged. Members of Congress are going to have to study the numbers. They are going to have to study the immensity of the requirements of this budget. We are going to have to reject it. We cannot pass such an automatic guaranteed surge in debt. It would triple our total national public debt in 10 years. This is the beginning. The budget will begin to be marked up next week in committee. It is going to take more than just the committee members to decide what we do. I believe the American people and the Members of this Congress are going to have to get our heads together and figure out some ways to do like our cities and counties. Instead of having baseline spending increase at 7, 8, 10 percent a year, we might go for a year or two where we don't increase at all. Just a little bit of that would have a dramatic impact on the deficit. It is the increases that are killing us. They are projecting increased revenues in the years to come, but they are projecting substantially greater increases in spending. That is not who we are as a people. We are a people of limited government. We are people of low taxes. We are people of individual responsibility. That is a fundamental American ethic, individual responsibility. The Europeans are more into this Socialist mentality, but we were faced with the spectacle over the weekend of our own Secretary of the Treasury going to Europe meeting with Europeans and upbraiding them because they aren't borrowing enough or spending enough, in his mind, going far enough into debt to stimulate the economy as much as he would like to see it done. They are being more conservative and responsible than we are. It is a matter of real concern. These are important issues. I hope the debate will continue and all of us will look at the long-term interests of this great Nation and take the steps today that will protect our future. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I wish to briefly begin discussion in the Senate about the President's budget that has been submitted to the Congress. We have had hearings under Chairman Conrad, Kent Conrad. His committee has had excellent hearings. We have had some good discussions. We have had some important witnesses, and we have been talking about some very important matters. I wish to say now that I think the American people and the Members of the Senate need to get focused on the fact that the budget is not a good budget. The budget proposed by the President presents unsustainable spending, tax increases, and debt. It is just that way. It is right here in the book and the numbers cannot be changed. People can talk and spin any way they would like to, but if you look at these numbers, it is a chilling proposal for America that cannot be sustained. One of the things the President promised, I think in his State of the Union and in his budget, was that we would have an honest budget and there would not be gimmicks in it. There have been, over the years, quite a number of times when Republicans and Democrats have put gimmicks into the budget. I would say I do not think this one is any better than the past. In fact, I think it is probably worse, maybe considerably worse. The budget, entitled ``A New Era of Responsibility, Renewing America's Promise,'' says on page 43, the conclusion of the introductory summary: The budget itself does not use budget gimmicks or accounting sleights of hand to hide our plans or the status of our economy. It is forthright in the challenges we face and the sacrifices we must make. I do not think that is a fair statement of some of the things in here. We will be talking about some of the concerns as we go on. Fundamentally, the budget, as proposed, presents an overly rosy economic forecast. In fact, the numbers do not correspond with the best numbers we have on the economy from the Blue Chip indicator. That is the top 51 economists in the country. It is considered the gold standard of economic forecasting that we should have used or been close to. The consensus view of the Blue Chip economists--why is this important? It is important because if you are projecting an overly healthy economy, you are projecting more revenue into the Treasury than you are actually going to receive. That is the big deal. In a budget you assume certain things. If it assumes a level of growth that is too high or a level of unemployment that is lower than we can reasonably expect, then it provides the Government, for the purposes of a budget, the right to assume more income than we are going to have. The budget predicts our economic growth is going to only decline this year by 1.2 percent. That is what the budget has. It has these assumptions in it. That is how they reach the numbers they reach. According to the President's speeches, of course, we are facing one of the greatest economic crises in our Nation's history and things are not good at all. So I would say that is not a very honest evaluation. The Blue Chip forecast shows that the economy will decline this year by 2.6 percent, more than twice that. That is hardly a depression, thank goodness. I like to see that number. It is not as bad as a lot of people have been predicting, 2.6, but it is way more negative than the President's budget. Of the 51 economists who contributed to this forecast, only three said growth would decline less than 2 percent and not a single one said growth would only decline 1.2 percent. The closest that one came to 1.2 percent was one economist who predicted 1.4 percent, but the average was 2.6 percent and some, of course, higher than that. I do not think it is responsible. I think it is a gimmick or a misrepresentation to predict this economy will only contract by 1.2 percent in this year. Let's look at unemployment. The administration forecasts it will only rise to 8.1 percent. That is in the budget. It says next year it has it coming down to 7.9 percent. That means more people are working, more people are paying taxes, we have less food stamps and less welfare and less unemployment insurance. It impacts how much money we are actually going to have to spend. So they are projecting 8.1 percent, which will be the peak of unemployment and that next year it will be lower, 7.9. In the early 1980s, when President Reagan and one of President Obama's advisers, Paul Volcker--who was then head of the Federal Reserve--broke the back of 15 percent inflation, but it put us in a severe recession, unemployment hit 10.9 percent. We survived that without a $800 billion stimulus bill, every penny of it going to the debt. But at any rate, they are predicting 8.1 percent on that. What are these economists saying, the consensus? They project 9.2 percent this year and 8.8 percent next year--not 7.9. That makes a big difference. This is a big difference. It matters as to whether we can reach the goal the President has stated of reducing the deficit in half by 2013. That is not a significant commitment, frankly. It, in itself, is a gimmick, and I will explain that too. Using the Blue Chip forecast, the deficit is going to be $53 billion higher next year for fiscal year 2010 and about $150 billion higher in 2013. We will have opportunities as we go forward. We will have budget hearings this week, I think some more, and a markup in the Budget Committee next week. I think we have a good committee. Chairman Conrad is asking some tough questions. He is not rubberstamping the administration's ideas, and I am proud of that because we are going to have to take some tough decisions. Let me share, fundamentally, where we are in spending. After 9/11, the budget deficit was $412 billion. That was one of the largest deficits we ever had. It fell in fiscal year 2007-2008 to $161 billion. Last year, ending September of last year, that would be the 2008 budget--the previous one was 2007 at $171--we came in at $455 billion. In 2004, a $412 billion deficit; the $455 billion deficit last year represented the highest deficits in our Nation's history. President Bush was roundly criticized for those and a good bit of that criticism was deserved, in my opinion. Now that we have pumped another $800 billion into the economy this year on top of the Wall Street bailout, that $700 billion; on top of the $200 billion that the Congressional Budget Office has scored that we pumped into Freddie and Fannie, those mortgage holding companies, we will total, hold your hat, this year when September 30 concludes, of this year, the estimate is projected to be $1.8 trillion--not $455 billion but $1,800 billion. They scored in that, I have to say, $200 billion, about $200 billion from the Wall Street bailout, $200 billion for Freddie and Fannie, one- time expenditures. But they didn't score all the stimulus package. In fact, they have a portion of it scored as being spent this fiscal year and a portion of it the next and some the third year. Next year's fiscal situation, according to our own Congressional Budget Office, is that the deficit will be $1.1 trillion. I just wish to say to my colleagues and to those who might be listening outside this Chamber, it is not very hard to cut a budget deficit of $1.8 trillion in half; $1.8 trillion is almost four times the highest budget in the history of the Republic--unless perhaps during World War II we reached that deficit, I don't know. But certainly nothing has approached it in the last 30 or 40 years. We are not doing well. Also, I have to tell you that the budget is a 10-year budget. All of us know that in the outyears it is hard to predict what is going to happen. I will just say, however, that President Obama's 10-year budget projects that the deficit in the 10th year--you would think if we cut the annual deficit, the annual shortfall, if we cut it in half in 4 years, we would keep cutting it. He is projecting some $500 billion in 2013, and that is certainly conceivable, if we do not continue spending. If we keep spending at the same level we have today, we would be well below $500 billion, Lord willing and things continue the way we project them to continue. But I will say in the 10th year under the budget, they are projecting $712 billion in deficits. The lowest deficit they are projecting over the entire 10 years exceeds $500 billion. As Senator Gregg said at the hearing with Secretary Geithner in the Budget Committee last week, that is not sustainable. I am just going to tell you, that is not sustainable. I think we all, as a nation, have to ask ourselves: Should we go forward with a budget that is composed of more taxes, more spending, and more debt? I am worried about it. I know a lot of Members are worried about it. We believe, as a lot of people do, that we have to spend some money right now to help start this economy. I am prepared to support some of that too. But I think we have gone overboard. But regardless, if it was ended after 2 years, if there were the kind of projections in the future that show these programs to end and this excessive spending of today would not continue, that is one thing. But if we present a budget and ask this Congress to pass it, that calls for, over 10 years, each year having the highest deficits--higher than any deficits we have ever had before, ending up with a $712 or $720 billion deficit 20 years from now, I don't think we can support that. It is time for a national discussion. As the President said, we need to talk about an honest evaluation of the challenges we face. And we face some tough challenges. But I have to tell you I am hoping CBO and the Blue Chip guys and the President are correct. I am hoping unemployment will not hit 10 percent. I am hoping next year will be a better year. History tells us that is probably going to be the case. We have certainly had the Federal Reserve take some very aggressive action, most of it probably wise and needed. We needed some stimulus from the Government. We certainly got that and more. It absolutely should give us some boost in the short run, although the Congressional Budget Office said the $800 billion stimulus bill over 10 years would result in less growth of the economy over 10 years than if no bill at all was passed. But it will help us some in the short run. I am sure that is true. So we are going to hope this economy will come back. If we contain spending, if we watch the debt we are creating, we could end up with a lot better projection than this without a lot of pain because a big part of this debt increase is based on an increase of sizeable proportions in spending, more than we can sustain. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. I thank the Chair.

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

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, the bonuses for thousands of employees at AIG, that huge insurance company to which the Government, the taxpayers of the United States, have shoveled $170 billion into to keep that company afloat, makes me recall an old maxim. The Sessions maxim I call it--announced about 20 years ago when I was a Federal prosecutor attempting to faithfully enforce complex Federal regulations. I stated this: Oh, what a tangled web we create when first we start to regulate. The more we proceed with policies whereby the Government owns 80 percent of the stock of a private insurance company--or any company-- especially after we poured $170 billion in to buy that stock--the more we are inevitably compelled to direct how the company operates, to the point of deciding whom their executives should be. We basically picked Mr. Liddy, the chief executive--plus what the company's salary scale should be or what aircraft it can or cannot have or where and what kind of corporate retreat they might have or whether they can pay bonuses. The size of our investment--``investment'' is an absurd term when used to describe the reckless, gargantuan commitment of our citizens' money to AIG puts us, the American people into the insurance business. Not long ago, I had occasion to meet an official of a healthy insurance company. In jest, I asked him--it is not one of the biggest in the country, but it is a sizable company with broad reach. I asked him how he liked competing with a company supported by the deep pockets of the taxpayers. He replied it wasn't a joke--AIG was their top competitor in several economic or insurance markets. At bottom, we extract tax money from this businessman to keep afloat his reckless competitor. The size of this commitment cannot and should not be lost on us. The entire Alabama State budget--we are about one-fiftieth of the national population, a State well and frugally run by our Governor, Bob Riley-- including the State education budget for all the schools and all the teachers--thousands of schools--amounts to about $7 billion a year. So how big is the $170 billion we put into AIG? It is big. The entire Federal highway budget, for our interstate system and all the pork projects that get added to the highway bill, and the billions we send to the States for their highway programs, since they are on an 80/20, 90/10 matched basis, with the majority Federal Government money, is $40 billion a year. So that $170 billion is a lot of money. But here we are, and similar to that unwise banker, we face the dilemma: Do we pour more good money in to revive this corpse in a desperate effort to recoup our improvident ``investment''? It is not an investment because no rational investor would ever have invested this kind of money in this company. The bullet was already in its heart. It was a dead duck. Only the Government would have put in the kind of money we put into it. So the facts are now becoming clear about some of the problems that go along with being in the private insurance business. The New York Times and the Washington Post have produced certain facts, with front- page stories yesterday, which, having read them, caused me indigestion and provoked me to write these remarks for which I ask you to forgive me for delivering. But it makes me feel a bit better. What was the purpose of this $170 billion? The Washington Post said yesterday that it was to ``keep the company afloat.'' Treasury Secretary Geithner has had a ``difficult'' conversation, according to the papers, with AIG's leader, Mr. Edward M. Liddy, about Mr. Liddy's plan to award $165 million in bonuses. Mr. Liddy says he finds that awarding the bonuses is ``distasteful.'' I am glad to hear him say that. But then he says they are required under previous contracts entered into before he came to AIG or was put there by Secretary Paulson, President Bush's Secretary of the Treasury. As an aside, let me recall that had this matter been handled in the regular order such as other businesses in America get handled; that is, by appeal to the bankruptcy court for protection and reorganization under chapter 11, which doesn't shut down a company entirely but allows it to operate under bankruptcy protection, such as Delta Airlines, which is now performing very finely after saving itself through reorganization in bankruptcy, these bonus contracts would surely have been invalidated. For how could any Federal judge hold that executives of the ``same business unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year,'' said the New York Times, be given bonuses. This was a unit that did these reckless insurance derivatives that got them into this fix. So why should they be given a bonus? This has certainly been an embarrassment to, I will say not so much to the company which has by contract apparently awarded these bonuses, but to Secretary Geithner and President Obama, who I understand himself, his very self, today called for not awarding these bonuses. The President of the United States is now deciding the bonus policy of what was once at least a private company in the United States. At bottom, our tax money is being used to pay bonuses to reward those responsible for one of the most colossal and reckless errors in the history of world finance. I think this whole situation is one small but very revealing reason why I think that our Government--and I certainly include the Bush administration which started the process--should not have allowed itself to be drawn into, in fact, punching this tar baby, getting itself more and more deeply embedded in a situation that it has no real ability or capability to manage. You see, we now own about 80 percent of AIG. It is ours--yours and mine. Who then is to run AIG? Secretary Geithner? I like to call these high finance guys such as Mr. Geithner ``masters of the universe.'' He is now returning from Europe where he upbraided the Governments of France and Germany for not spending more money and for not invading deeper into the private sector and for not going into debt even more deeply to, as he would say, I guess, stimulate the economy. He thinks they ought to spend more and borrow more, and they are spending more and borrowing a lot. He thinks they should be spending more and borrowing more and they should be like us. I suspect running AIG must be a bit distracting even for our fine master of the universe because he has taken on the duty of advising not only the President and our Congress on how to fix the economy, but he is now advising our big government friends in Europe who are concerned about taking on more debt. The world is his parish, it seems. All the while, the proud people of the United States, inheritors of a great tradition of free enterprise and limited Government, watched this spectacle unfold in total mortification. The irony of these events, the historical dissonance of these acts of the United States pushing Europe further toward socialism, seems to be lost on our smiling and brilliant young Secretary. We are in a very difficult period financially, and there is only a limited number of actions prudent governments can take to fix it. But still in campaign mode, our Secretary declares it is the fault of the previous administration, and he promises that the new President will lead us out of it with bold action. Our Secretary of the Treasury is now calling Mr. Liddy at AIG and the paper said ``demands''--that he apparently violate contracts requiring these bonuses. I submit it is not so much because of the financial significance of these bonuses, but because it is an embarrassment politically. You see, the populace is getting a bit aroused about this, and the focus of their anger might cease to fall on the last administration and begin to fall on Secretary Geithner and his boss. The ``bonus'' dustup in one sense was theater, flim flummery, mountebankery, of course. Apparently in accordance with contracts and law, Mr. Liddy, while properly effecting his distaste for having to pay these bonuses, reluctantly paid them. I think they were paid yesterday. It caused much ado. Mr. Liddy, the Government--it is not fair to call him a stooge. He was actually placed in this position by the Government to take over this unfortunate, disastrous company. However, he could not resist one parting shot to his overlords, noting that he could not run ``the AIG businesses--which are now being operated principally on behalf of the American taxpayers--if employees believe their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the U.S. Treasury.'' He says right there he is operating this company on behalf of the American taxpayers, but he cannot do so if the Secretary of Treasury is going to tell him what kind of employment policy he should execute. That was in the paper yesterday. Apparently he wrote that letter Saturday. Oh, what a tangled web we create. Will Secretary Geithner now set policy on insurance premiums? We own the company. Why can't the Government cut everybody's premium? Maybe we could order the premiums to be lowered. We own 80 percent. That would be a nice stimulus, wouldn't it, lower everybody's premiums? That is a stimulus we have not tried yet. Probably not. He is too busy running the world and advising the French and the Germans on how to conduct their business and telling them they need to borrow more money. What is going to happen now that the President and Mr. Geithner have demanded that the bonuses be stopped? This is pretty interesting now. What is going to happen? The people at AIG said they have to award the bonuses or they will be sued. Are they going to sue Secretary Geithner and the President if the bonuses do not get awarded? I suggest it is plainly obvious that the folks who destroyed the financial soundness of AIG should not in any just world get a bonus. The only thing free they may deserve is a free lunch and a free room in the Bastille. One thing we know: Much of this money has passed through AIG to the benefit of other corporate interests. But one thing we don't know completely is who they are, although today's paper had some of them listed. The biggest one getting $12 billion plus, almost twice the total 1-year funding for the State of Alabama, was Goldman Sachs-- Secretary Paulson's company he left to join the Government and be Secretary of the Treasury. They were the biggest ``bailoutee'' of this whole mess. We are going to find out more about that. But it doesn't look good to me. I don't like this whole process. Things were decided in secret without any kind of hearing, so far as I can tell, without in-depth taking of testimony under oath, such as would happen in a bankruptcy court. Apparently people came in to Secretary Paulson's and later Secretary Geithner's office. They sat in and asked for $50 billion, $100 billion, $80 billion, and they would discuss it a little bit and would come out and say: We will give you $60 billion. How does this happen? I don't know. I think we have a right as Americans to be concerned--very concerned--about the recklessness on Wall Street that caused a major financial catastrophe for the country. And we need to be worried that our attempt in panic, I think, to fix it may cause more problems for our historical heritage of free enterprise. A lot of people have begun to think about it. Although when I talk with people in my home State, they think about it. They say: What are you guys doing? My 88-year-old great-aunt, whose eyes are failing and she cannot read now, but she tries to keep up on things, she put her hand on my arm a few weeks ago and said: Buddy--she calls me ``Buddy''-- ya'll don't know what you're doing up there, do you? She was so sympathetic. That is what most American people think and are probably right. I will say again, if your Government, our Government had acted properly, we would have allowed this company to go forward in a controlled, orderly process through reorganization under chapter 11, and we would not have this bonus embarrassment. Those folks would have been ordered to tell the truth in a well-equipped Federal court process, and there would have been no reason for the healthy parts of AIG to fail at all. They are being pulled down by the bad part. They could have then dealt with that toxic part of the company in a more responsible way, in a more public way, in a bankruptcy court before a Federal judge who took testimony under oath and could put people in jail who deserve to go to jail. I conclude with this. This spectacular spasm should be a vivid warning to the danger of arrogance by those would-be masters of the universe. You are not as smart as you think you are. Market forces ultimately control in the real world. Nothing comes from nothing. Debts must be paid. Secretaries Paulson and Geithner remind me of a man in an airplane off the gulf coast throwing out dry ice in an attempt to prevent a hurricane. Do you remember that? Or of Mr. Ludd in England taking a sledgehammer to the weaving looms of England to stop the Industrial Revolution. I have seen the force of real hurricanes. We are now seeing the force of a financial hurricane, and a lot of people are getting hurt. But there is good news, really there is. Hurricanes do pass. We will recover. The greatest danger, though, is that in this time of trouble, our Government, in a burst of overreach, will permanently damage the great heritage of free enterprise, ordered liberty, and limited Government that has made this the freest, most productive economy in the history of the world. Why would we want to be lecturing France on how to conduct an economy by telling them they should be a bigger, more oppressive government than they already are? I will certainly meet my colleagues in a bipartisan effort to work to mitigate the economic and emotional pain we are now suffering. But if bipartisanship means acquiescing in the wildest of economic chimeras that we have recently followed, count me out. If it means changing the legal and economic order that, through ups and downs, has formed the moral basis of the American dream and served us so well, count me out. Oh, we are told by our leaders--and Mr. Geithner said this at the Budget Committee hearing when I asked him a few days ago--we would never want to do that. We are committed to the American heritage of economic order, he said. But one writer noted that at a time of rapid erosion of a nation's classical values, the leaders are most vociferous in proclaiming their adherence to them. Count me a skeptic. I am watching what is being done, not what is being said. For me and for those who love liberty, limited Government, and free enterprise, these actions that are occurring today are troubling and frightening indeed. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, 1 minute or 2 minutes?

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, this amendment simply will extend the authorization for the E-Verify system for 5 years. On this current bill, it will be extended only for 6 months. I ask why we would not make it a more extended period of time unless we have doubts about it, unless we don't like it, unless we are looking for a way to eliminate it. It is the core system businesses are signing up to use voluntarily. Over 100,000 are now using it. They punch in a Social Security number and determine whether the job applicant who is before them is legally authorized to be employed, if they are legally in the country. That is what it is. It is not required to be used even in Government contracts. It does not require there to be any police officers, detention spaces, or any enforcement. It simply allows businesses to use this system voluntarily. We cannot allow it to expire. I am amazed we are not extending it permanently. We need to do that. And we need to soon pass legislation, which this bill does not do, that would require all Government contractors to use the system because that would have been the law as of January until President Obama stopped that Executive Order.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I hope that in a little bit we will vote in favor of the amendment I have offered to extend the E-Verify system for 5 years. It is time we do that. It is a proven, effective system that brings integrity to our immigration system. The E-Verify system is up and working today all over America. Between 1,000 and 2,000 businesses a week are signing up voluntarily. Over 112,000 have already signed up. When an applicant submits an application for a position with a company, the company can input their Social Security number into an electronic system, and the computer checks it to see whether it is a valid Social Security number. People who are not authorized to be in the U.S. know they can use any Social Security number you choose. We found a few years ago that hundreds of people were using the exact same Social Security number to get a job. People were also using the same fake ID and getting jobs in that fashion. E-Verify is a program that would help eliminate the jobs magnet, the ability of a person who enters America illegally to get a job. If employees aren't authorized to work after they have been checked through E-Verify, nobody will be arrested. Police officers are going to be called out. Nobody is going to be put in jail under this system. What would happen is the employer would simply say: You don't qualify. You are not a legal resident. If there is any doubt about it, the applicant has a mechanism to very quickly validate their status if they have a legitimate status to validate. It can make a big difference. The Heritage Foundation and I believe the Center for Immigration Studies a few days ago did a study, and they estimate that under the stimulus bill, 300,000 people who are not legally American will be given jobs. My colleagues probably saw the article--I am sure many of my colleagues did--a couple of days ago where 700 people signed up for a janitor's job in Ohio. The American people are seeing an increase in unemployment. I don't think the numbers are going to reach as high as they did in the 1980s--at least that is the testimony we just had at the Budget Committee at two different hearings--where employment reached 9.4 percent, 8.6 percent. People were estimating what unemployment will reach. I don't know what it will reach, but I know a lot of good people are out of work and looking for a job. We created a stimulus package, $800 billion worth, and that stimulus package was supposed to create jobs. The President says he wants to create 3 million, and we have just been given a report that says almost 10 percent of those jobs could go to people who are in the country unlawfully. Let me just say as an aside something that worries me. I think every Member of this Congress should be worried about it. Under President Bush's Executive order 12989, which was supposed to be implemented in February of this year, every business that got a contract with the U.S. Government must use the E-Verify system. As I said, over 112,000 are using it voluntarily today. What worries me is that President Obama pushed back implementation of that Executive Order. He has now put it off until May 21. At the same time, our Democratic leadership is blocking an effort to make E-Verify permanent or even extend it for just 5 years. What does that signal, I ask? Do we want people here unlawfully in this country to get jobs working for the Government when there are hundreds of people applying for a janitor's job? Do we want contractors who hire illegals to get Government work while Americans cannot get the jobs? I don't think so. I will just say with regard to extending the E-Verify Program, in the House they had a square vote on it last July. It passed 407 to 2. So now we are not going to put that in this legislation. I was blocked 3 times in my attempt to get a vote on the amendment as part of the stimulus package. At least, I have to say, I am pleased I will apparently get a vote on this bill. But I am troubled with what I am hearing that the leadership is going to put pressure on Democratic Members to vote no. There is a majority there, and if they do, it will not even pass today. I urge my colleagues to listen to the telephone calls. I am getting calls asking that I vote for it. It is my amendment. People care about this issue. The American people wonder what it is we are doing here. Do we not get it? Do we not understand what this is all about? It is about a jobs package to create jobs for lawful American workers. They can be noncitizens, but they need to be lawfully present in the country. The first thing you do in dealing with a situation of illegality is stop rewarding it. You do not give them good jobs. I am amazed there is an objection to this amendment. I had a suspicion that a move was afoot to keep my amendment from passing on the stimulus bill, and that turned out to be correct. In addition to a 5 year extension, the House accepted an amendment making E-Verify mandatory for stimulus money recipients without objection in the House Appropriations Committee. It was in their bill, but Senate leadership was able to block us from getting a vote on it. So we did not get a vote and it was not in the Senate bill. What happened when they went to conference? Speaker Pelosi and the majority leader meet. They control the conference. And, oh, goodness, they decided the House would concede and the amendment would be taken out of the bill. Since the Senate had not put it in the bill, it would be stripped from the legislation. That is how the stimulus package passed without any E-Verify extension. I think it has expired now, actually. We need a long-term extension because it is going to cause businesses that don't use it to wonder whether they should sign up if they do not even know it is going to be a continuing system. It would be very bad. The new Secretary of Homeland Security, Secretary Napalitano, President Obama's Secretary, says she does favor this program. Michael Chertoff, the previous Secretary of Homeland Security, strongly supported this program. A bipartisan group of people support it. We need to extend it. We need to actually make it permanent, and we need to make it apply to all Government contractors, as even President Bush required in his Executive order, which has now been abrogated by President Obama. To sum up, this amendment does not make E-Verify required for Government contractors. All it does is extend the E-Verify system for another 5 years. I cannot imagine we would let this cornerstone of a plan to establish a lawful system of immigration to expire. We are on the verge of that now. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. SESSIONS

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

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, when we recently worked on the stimulus package, I attempted, on three different occasions, to get a vote on my amendment which incorporated E-Verify provisions that were included in the House version of the bill. I was extremely disappointed that all of my attempts were blocked by Democrats. The provisions I refer to were both unanimously accepted without a vote by the House Appropriations Committee. The provision that extended the E-Verify Program for another 4 years had, in addition to being included in the House-passed stimulus bill, overwhelmingly passed the House last July by a vote of 407 to 2. The E-Verify system is the system that about 2,000 businesses a week are voluntarily signing up to use. Over 112,000 businesses are now using it voluntarily. They simply check a person's Social Security number when they make employment applications to verify they are lawfully in the country, and not here illegally. The main purpose of the stimulus package was to put Americans back to work. It is common sense, therefore, to include a simple requirement that the people hired to fill stimulus-related jobs be lawful American citizens or residents. They could be here lawfully and obtain a job, whether through as a green card or otherwise. The actions of the majority in blocking that amendment seems to be a clear signal that they are indifferent to the utilization of American tax money to hire people who are unlawfully in the country and indifferent to the fact that would deny an American citizen that job. So I tried to offer the amendment that incorporated both the House provision to the Senate bill. But it was blocked. That was interesting, because the House had it in their bill, we did not have it in ours. We could not get a vote on it. Had we had a vote on it, I am certain it would have passed. But we did not get a vote on it. When they went to conference, it was not in the Senate bill, but it was in the House bill. So one side or the other had to give. So what happened? The House gave. Speaker Pelosi and her team gave in and they took the language out. So I did not think that was good. I am pleased now that at least we will get a vote, apparently, on that portion of the amendment that would reauthorize the E-Verify Program for an additional 5 years. I will be introducing soon a bill to make the E-Verify system permanent and make it mandatory for contractors who get contracts with the U.S. Government, get money from the U.S. taxpayers. Every one of them should be using this program. In fact, it should have been law already. That would include the TARP spending or other bills we are passing that spend taxpayers' money. At a minimum what employers should do is take the 2 minutes it takes to use E-Verify and determine whether a job applicant is legally authorized to work in the country. Short-term extensions, such as the 6 month extension included in the underlying bill, are not the right way to go. It is baffling to me that we would go through the process of wanting to extend this program for 6 months. Why 6 months? If you are committed to it, if you understand, as almost every top official who has dealt with it understands, the E-Verify central component of creating a lawful system of immigration, a short term extension is simply unsatisfactory. E-Verify is a central component of eliminating the jobs magnet that draws people into our country illegally. E-Verify is an on-line system operated by the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration. Participating employers can check the work status of new hires on line by comparing information from their I-9 form against the Social Security Administration and DHS databases. It is free and voluntary. It is the best means available for determining employment eligibility of new hires. According to Homeland Security, 96 percent of employees are cleared automatically, and growth continues throughout the country voluntarily by businesses. As of February 2 of this year, there have been over 2 million inquiries run. In 2008, there were more than 6 million inquiries run. So we can see that those numbers are going up exponentially, since more than one-third of the number of inquiries made last year were already made from January 1 through February 2 of this year. An employer who verifies work authorization under the E-Verify system will have established a rebuttable presumption that it did not knowingly hire an unauthorized alien. In other words, if law enforcement says you illegally hired someone knowing they were illegal and wants to prosecute, companies using E-Verify have a defense. That is one of the reasons people like to use it. I was most disappointed to learn that on January 28 of this year, President Obama pushed back the implementation of Executive Order 12989 which would require all Federal contractors and subcontractors to use E-Verify. It was supposed to take effect on February 20, but now it has been pushed back to May 21. Congress needs to act on this. My amendment that I called up today only incorporates one part of what we need to do, that is, a short 5- year extension. Though I do plan to offer the other provisions at some point later, it is imperative that we reauthorize this successful program which is currently set to expire when the CR runs. It is important, particularly because of the economic downturn. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the unemployment rate in February jumped to 8.1 percent, 651,000 jobs lost in January, which equates to roughly 12 million workers without jobs. This is the highest unemployment rate since the mid 1980s. Immigration by illegal immigrants and other poorly educated aliens has had a depressing effect on the standard of living of lower skilled American workers. This is a matter of very little dispute. The U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, chaired by the late civil rights pioneer Barbara Jordan, found that immigration of unskilled immigrants ``comes at a cost to U.S. workers.'' The Center for Immigration Studies has estimated that such immigration has reduced the wage of average native-born workers in a low-skilled occupation by 12 percent or almost $2,000 annually. Is there any doubt about that? I do not think so. In addition, Harvard economist George Borjas, himself a Cuban refugee, an immigrant who came here as a young man, has estimated that immigration in recent decades has reduced wages of native-born workers with a high school degree by 8.2 percent. It also takes jobs. A report in today's USA Today cites to studies by the Heritage Foundation and the Center for Immigration Studies which found that according to their estimate, out of the 2.5 million jobs projected to be created by the stimulus plan, 300,000 would be going to people illegally here. That is approximately 15 percent. Doris Meissner, in February of this year, former head of the INS under President Clinton, said this. ``Mandatory,'' this amendment does not make anything mandatory, but she said: Mandatory employer verification 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 . . . This is an expert in this. She knows that E-Verify is the cornerstone of the entire effort to clear a lawful system of immigration. Mr. Alexander Aleinikoff, the Clinton administration INS official and President Obama's transition team member, called it a ``myth'' that ``there is little or no competition between undocumented workers and American workers.'' It is a myth. Of course it does. Of course it pulls down the wages of lower hard-working American citizens. They are competition. Even the distinguished majority leader, Senator Reid, has indicated he supports the program. In a time of increased unemployment, our focus should be on creating jobs for American citizens. It is critical that we extend the E-Verify Program in order to protect American jobs and to create a system we can be proud of. Some critics have argued, the program is too cumbersome and costly. But in a recent letter to the Wall Street Journal, Mark Powell, a human resources officer executive for a Fortune 500 company, wrote this: The E-Verify program is free, only takes a few minutes, and is less work than a car dealership would do in checking a credit score. Well, that is correct. How else can you explain so many employers signing up voluntarily. Recent improvements have also made the system more accurate. The USCIS has begun to incorporate Department of State passport information into the E-Verify program. This allows the system to check passport numbers for citizens providing a U.S. passport as Form I-9. Additionally, foreign born workers who receive a tentative nonconfirmation can now directly call USCIS instead of visiting a Social Security Administration office to resolve the case. Both of these measures are steps toward greater accuracy by eliminating any unforeseen delays in this system. I will conclude by saying I hope our colleagues will consider this amendment and will all vote for it. It would represent, in my view, a statement that the fundamental electronic system that will help businesses, particularly those that are doing business with the Government, to ensure the applicant who applies with them for a job is lawfully in the country. That system would continue, and it would give encouragement for other businesses to voluntarily sign up for the program. There are 12 States that have made it mandatory. I think this is a good amendment. My amendment is not as far as we should go; it simply reauthorizes the program. It is time to do that. I believe our colleagues are prepared to vote for it. I certainly hope so. I think it would send a very bad message were we not to do so. We need to make it clear this foundational system will be continued and will remain a part of our enforcement mechanism and we will continue to enhance it, improve it in the years to come. I would note, of course, if someone shows up as not being lawful, and they cannot be hired, we do not have investigators or police or arrest warrants or jail for them. The employer simply denies their employment eligibility; they are not hired. That is not too much to ask. I think it is the right thing. It is good policy. I urge my colleagues to support it. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to call up amendment No. 604, the E-Verify amendment. I believe it has been agreed to by the leaders.

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, we have had a number of discussions in recent days about the E-Verify system that allows employers to do a quick computer check of an individual's Social Security number to validate whether it is a legitimate number before hiring them, an action that would help them avoid hiring people in the country illegally. The discussion has been whether to extend that program which is currently set to expire in March. I offered an amendment to do that, an amendment similar to the one that passed in the House last year, 407 to 2, that would extend the E-Verify program for 4 years. There are 100,000 American businesses using it every day, and 1,000 to 2,000 new businesses a week are signing up voluntarily--just voluntarily because it protects them. They want to follow the law, as most of our businesses do. When they go through this process, if someone were to say: You deliberately hired someone illegally in the country, they could say: Well, we checked it out on the system and they showed up to be legitimate and we felt legitimate in hiring them. So it protects them and helps them follow the law. But for some reason there has been a resistance here. It passed the House. It was in the House stimulus bill, that $800 billion stimulus bill. It also provided, in the House legislation which was accepted and the majority of the House Members all voted for it on final passage, that everybody who gets a contract from the U.S. Government as part of this stimulus package must use E-Verify. In other words, it was designed to create and protect jobs for lawful Americans. The amendment, which was unanimously accepted in committee, said that beneficiaries of stimulus money must use the E-Verify system, and that E-Verify system would help ensure that only legal people would be hired. They could be green card holders; they could be legal workers; they did not have to be citizens. But they at least ought to be in the country legally. And this Senate systematically refused to allow us to have a vote on that amendment, so it was not in the Senate bill. I asked three or four times to be able to have a vote on that amendment and was rejected. When they went to conference, sure enough, as I suspected, as I stated on the floor, the Senate version won. Our bill, which did not have this language in it, prevailed. They took the House language out at conference without any deliberation. This was a common sense amendment, and I think it would have passed overwhelmingly in this Senate had we been allowed to have a vote. So this has caused me great concern. A lot of us have believed President Bush and his administration failed to aggressively enforce the law to ensure that jobs are going to American workers and not those in the country illegally. And I criticized him for that. But it does appear this administration and this new Congress may be even more determined to not enforce the law. In fact, it appears they may be indeed taking steps to undermine some of the programs that President Bush and the ICE Agency and the Homeland Security Department have been taking that were at least making progress toward creating a system of lawful immigration that we can be proud of. We are a nation of immigrants. Nobody wants to end immigration in America. Over 1 million people can enter our country lawfully each year and become citizens and contribute to our country in many positive ways. But since so many people would like to come to our country, and we recognize we have to have a certain limit on the number who come, we have a legal system that requires them to make application, and by various standards they are approved or disapproved in their application. Those who are approved get to come to America, and those who do not have to wait until maybe later or maybe they, for one reason or another, are permanently unable to come. Maybe they have a criminal record or have other problems that would make them unacceptable for admission. No one has a constitutional right to come to America. We cannot have and do not have and should not have an open borders policy so that everybody who would like to come and work, can come and work. So this is the situation we are in. In light of that, I was particularly troubled, I have to say, and all Americans should be troubled by a recent headline article in the Washington Times this week. It was about certain activist immigration rights groups criticizing the Obama administration because some of the agents in the Immigration Enforcement Division had raided an engine machine shop in Washington State and actually went so far as to detain certain illegal immigrants. They are not happy they actually went into a business and detained some individuals who were in the country illegally, and they complained about that. So, apparently, according to the article, the Obama administration itself seemed ``taken aback by the raid by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency.'' The new Secretary, Janet Napolitano, was ``vowing to Congress that she would get to the bottom of it.'' The article goes on to say that an official with the agency said, ``The Secretary is not happy about it.'' Well, that is troubling to me. In 2008, under the Bush administration, which was not, I think, particularly aggressive--as a matter of fact, not aggressive enough, ICE made 5,173 administrative arrests at work sites. Additionally, ICE made 1,101 criminal arrests in connection with worksite investigations. Those arrest represented criminal activity, gangs or drugs or other kinds of criminal activity. They were doing that, and periodic enforcement actions were taken because a company does not have a right to have hundreds and hundreds of illegal workers who perhaps certainly are working for less money than Americans would work for. That is not good and creates unfair competition and undermines our lawful immigration system. But this worried me even more. According to the Washington Times article, immigrant rights groups said they had discussed this with the administration some time during the last election. They did not discuss it publicly, but they apparently had discussions with the campaign, and they said this: This was a fixture of our conversations and demands with him during the campaign. It has always been one that there would be a hold on the raids or a stop to the raids. The National Council of La Raza has urged supporters to call the White House and demand that Mr. Obama lay out his immigration policy. In criticizing this, they said: What are Latino and immigrant voters to think? They turn out in massive numbers and vote for change and yet the change we can believe in turns out to be business as usual. Well, I think maybe the American people need to make some demands on this administration. Maybe that is the way you get things done; you make demands on the administration that they actually enforce the law and that they do not conduct investigations of the law enforcement personnel who were doing what the law required and who were, by all accounts, legitimately identifying illegal workers in America. So now, according to this article, the Secretary of Homeland Security is investigating our law enforcement officers for simply doing their duty in response to some secret demand and agreement they made back in the campaign to undermine law enforcement in America. I do not think it is good. This is why people are upset with Washington and upset with Congress. I believe in lawful immigration. I think we need to stop all of this. But what do we do? Nothing. Whenever something starts happening and has some possibility of being successful, well, politicians intervene and stop the law enforcement officers from doing their duty. I am really concerned about it. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency says in their statement about the operation that they were investigating criminal activity, and they apparently discovered in the course of that the hiring records revealed a significant number of people were using bogus Social Security numbers and counterfeit identity documents. That is why they did their jobs. They went and checked it out and found 28 people at this company who were not here lawfully. So now the Secretary of Homeland Security has promised to get to the bottom of it--not to the bottom of why this company was hiring 28 illegal workers, not asking whether this company ever used the E-Verify system, they are going to get to the bottom of why the law enforcement officers of the U.S. Government, paid for by the taxpayers, had the temerity to actually go out and investigate criminal activity and detain people in the country illegally. So I have to tell you, this is not going to fly. We are not going to go quietly about this issue. We need a vote in the Senate, and we need one soon to extend E-Verify. It is unthinkable that this highly successful, proven system that over 100,000 businesses voluntarily are using would be allowed to expire. The only reason it would be allowed to expire would be we do not want the laws enforced. And, by the way, E-Verify does not raid any businesses. E-Verify does not call for a single investigator, not a single detention facility. All it says is the business owner could check and not hire someone if they did not have good documents. That is all. They do not arrest them. They do not call the police. Nothing happens. You just eliminate the jobs magnet, as the Border Patrol people tell us, that is causing people to come to our country illegally to get jobs, and that magnet is a factor. E-Verify would diminish that. I wished to share those thoughts. I believe this is a troubling event. We need to consider it and not go down this path. It signals a further erosion of the efforts to bring a lawful system to this unlawful system we have today. The Secretary does deserve credit for one statement she made, that businesses do need to be held accountable for exploiting the illegal labor market. I thought that was a good statement. She went on to state that there is an impact of illegal workers in the country and ``that has impacts on American workers, and it has impacts on wage levels, often has undue impacts on illegal workers themselves.'' This is also true. There are costs to the American worker in terms of wages, the ability to get a job, when we allow huge numbers of illegal workers into the country. I hope our colleagues will consider this issue. The American people have a different view than some about the need to enforce our laws. The American people would like to see that, before we start talking about amnesty and a lot of other things. If we are not going to enforce the law, why should we go forward with some of these expansive programs that have been proposed to allow persons who only recently broke into the country to be placed on legal status? The American people are not naive about this. They want something done, and they have a right to expect it. We in Congress have to figure out a way to be responsive to their demands and not focus only on the demands of special interests, certain big businesses, and certain activist groups, but to focus on legitimate demands of the public for good public policy. Good public policy requires the end of the illegality in immigration and the establishment of a lawful system of immigration that honors our great heritage of immigration of which we have always been proud. I yield the floor.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, this is a distressing situation where, for some reason, we have abandoned the knowledge we gained in 1977 that it takes a constitutional amendment to get representation in the Congress for the District of Columbia. There is so much in the Constitution that refers to this, but article I--the very first article--section 2, says the House of Representatives--that is what we are talking about: giving a Member of the House a vote for the District of Columbia--shall be composed of Members ``chosen every second year by the people of the several States.'' It goes on to say that the requirements of a Representative are that they should be--they must be, when elected, ``an inhabitant of that state in which he shall be chosen.'' The Senate--discussed in section 3--of the United States ``shall be composed of two Senators from each State.'' So I know there is politics here, and I hope when the Supreme Court reads this debate they look right through it because I don't think it is a sound position we are dealing with. I believe Senator McCain has rightly raised a point of order as to the constitutionality of this bill. I wish to make some general remarks. I think the legislation is an affront to the Constitution. Professor Jonathan Turley, one of the liberal outstanding scholars of the law, who has testified before our committee a number of times, testified before the House Judiciary Committee recently--this is the language he used, and I am sure he would consider himself a Democrat. He said he considers this bill to be ``one of the most premeditated unconstitutional acts by Congress in decades.'' Congress cannot, consistent with the Constitution, pass a bill that gives congressional voting rights to a non-state without violating the plain text of the Constitution. The Framers of our Constitution envisioned a Federal city that would not be beholden to any State government. The text of the Constitution does not provide anywhere that a non-state may have a congressional voting Member. Also, the District of Columbia is not a forgotten city. In fact, it receives more Federal dollars, per capita, than any State in the United States. History is clear that the Framers excluded the District of Columbia from having direct congressional representation. Our Founders could have placed the seat of the Federal Government within a State--and that was discussed--thus ensuring direct congressional representation from that city, but they chose not to do so. As James Madison stated in Federalist No. 43, there was fear that the State that encompassed the Nation's Capital would have too much influence over Congress. It has a lot now. The Framers feared that, symbolically, the honor given to one State would create ``an imputation of awe and influence'' as compared to other States. That is, that the State would have an advantage in some fashion. Thus, when the Framers of our Constitution considered carefully how to treat the Nation's Capital, they provided in the District clause-- article I, section 8, clause 17, of the Constitution--that Congress had the power to ``exercise exclusive Legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District.'' So it gave Congress the legislative power over the District, clearly. Congress was, of course, made up of Representatives from States. This meant that residents of the District would not have direct representation in Congress--they understood that, clearly, from the beginning and, indeed, they have never had it--but instead, they would have indirect representation and that such direct representation was reserved only for the residents of States. Second, this bill violates the plain text of the Constitution, as I noted. Article 1, section 2 says ``each State shall have at least one representative.'' Further, one of the qualifications to be a Congressman is to ``be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.'' As George Smith, the former senior counsel at the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel recently wrote and was published: ``All told, no fewer than 11 constitutional provisions make it clear that congressional representation is linked inextricably to statehood.'' Congress has recognized this fact in years past. In 1977, Congress passed a constitutional amendment, which was never ratified by the States, but we passed it. It was a constitutional amendment that would have given the D.C. residents congressional representation. I suppose that was then and this is now. Now we are just going to pass a law that doesn't have to have a supermajority in Congress or be ratified by the States. That is a lot easier to do. I remind my colleagues that while political winds may change, the plain text of the Constitution doesn't. The Constitution says only States may have congressional representation, and no bill, no mere congressional legislation, no law we pass can change that fact. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Our legislation can't alter the constitutional requirements. We can alter the Constitution through the amendment process, as has been previously done, to fix this very problem. Alexander Hamilton, many years ago, wrote: The qualifications of the persons who may . . . be chosen, are defined and fixed in the Constitution, and are unalterable by the legislature. Finally, the District is not, as I said, forgotten. Its residents have indirect representation. All 435 Members of the Congress travel in the traffic here, go in and out of the city, and 100 Senators likewise do the same. They have done pretty well by way of getting money out of the Federal Government. One of the Framers' concerns, which Madison articulated, was a fear that the ``host'' State would benefit too much from ``the gradual accumulation of public improvements at the stationary residence of the Government.'' According to the most recent data available, as of 2005, the District of Columbia taxpayers received more in Federal funding per dollar of Federal taxes paid than any of the 50 States. According to the Tax Foundation, for every $1 of Federal tax paid in 2005 by the District of Columbia citizens, they received approximately $5.55 in Federal spending. This ranks the District the highest nationally by a wide margin. For example, New Mexico, which is perceived to be the most benefitted State, received $2.03 in Federal spending per $1 of tax payments their citizens made. But even that amount is $3.52 less than what the citizens of D.C. receive. Perhaps, some would say Madison's fear has become a reality, with all the jobs that are here and paying good wages--how many of us would love to carve out some of these agencies and have them be settled in Birmingham or Baltimore or New York? Then that tax revenue would be spent in our States. But it is being spent here. I am just saying I don't believe the District of Columbia is being abused. In fact, they are doing pretty well with taxpayers' money all in all. I know the argument that you don't collect property tax on Government property and everything, but they are doing pretty well under any fair analysis. The Framers envisioned a Federal district serving as the National Government's home. That district was not to be a State, and the District of Columbia was never to be treated as a State. Granting a non-state congressional representation and voting rights in the Congress of the United States violates the Framers' intent, pretty clearly, and the plain language of the Constitution. Congress, as Professor Turley notes, ``cannot legislatively amend the Constitution by re-defining a voting member of [the House of Representatives].'' We have all sworn to uphold the Constitution and to defend it. As written, this bill violates the Constitution and it will, I predict, be struck down by the Court. I think it is going to come back from the Court like a rubber ball off that wall. If it doesn't, we are going to learn something about the Supreme Court of the United States--something we don't want to know. I submit that we cannot in good faith vote for this bill without conflicting with our oath to the Constitution. So that is why I cannot support it. I would just point out a recent case decided November 4, 2005, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. The panel consisted of now-Chief Justice John Roberts; Judge Harry Edwards, appointed by President Carter; and Judith Rogers, appointed by President Clinton, for whatever that is worth. I hate to even say that because we expect our judges to put away partisan activities when they put their robes on. So that is just background. Basically, the court dealt with an argument over taxes. As part of their holding--it is a per curiam opinion; no one judge was considered to be the author. They all agreed to this language. They said: Congress, when it legislates for the District, stands in the same relation to District residents as a state legislature does to the residents of its own State. So we stand in the same position to the people of D.C., as set up by our Founders, as the State legislatures do to the people of the States. The court also noted: Not only may statutes of Congress or otherwise national application be applied to the District of Columbia-- That is the tax laws-- but Congress may also exercise all the police and regulatory powers which a state legislature or municipal government would have in legislating for state or local purposes. Then the court said: This is true notwithstanding that the Constitution denies District residents voting representation in Congress. So this panel, in 2005, concluded--all three judges--that the Constitution denies District residents voting representation in Congress. I am not personally of the view that people who voluntarily live within the borders of the District of Columbia have to have direct congressional representation. I guess it is a matter that we can discuss and debate. Arguments on both sides can be made. I simply say the matter is conclusively decided by the plain language of the Constitution. As Mr. Smith says, 11 different places in the Constitution say that representation in Congress must come from States. It does not come from districts. It does not come from territories. It does not come from tribal areas. It comes from States. If we would like to change it, maybe we can, but we are bound by the laws and our Constitution, and a mere statutory act of this Congress is not able to reverse the Constitution. Therefore, I will object to the passage of this legislation. I think it is incorrect. I will support Mr. McCain's constitutional point of order because I see no other rational conclusion. As shown by a recent opinion from the District Court of the District of Columbia in 2005, the Constitution does not give congressional voting rights to residents of the District of Columbia.

Mr. SESSIONS

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from California for allowing me to interrupt. Most Senators, a lot of times, don't like to do that. She is a good advocate on the floor. I would just say that we need to get away from the political situation. As I showed in my chart, I would note to the Senator, the Bush administration had the largest debt since World War II in 2004 and was rightly criticized for that. After going down for 3 years, when we sent out the checks last year, it jumped to $455 billion, and we got not much for it. This is $1.3 trillion this year, $1 trillion the next year, $632 billion the next year, according to the Congressional Budget Office scoring. So I think this is a quantum leap higher than the deficits we saw in previous years. I know we are in a difficult time. I would just say I hope my colleagues will share President Obama's commitment to deal with the long-term structural problems we have. He is correct on that. He has a commitment to quit using gimmicks, which we have been using in the Senate too often to mask how big the deficit is. Those are good steps, but sooner or later we are going to need to reduce spending. I thank the Chair.

Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, will the Senator from California yield?