Medicare Late Enrollment Assistance Act of 2006

Mr. President, I would like to make some comments on this legislation and ask that I be notified after 8 minutes.

Mr. President, we are indeed a nation of immigrants. We will always have immigrants coming to our country, and they have enriched our Nation in so many different ways. It is time for us, however, to recognize that the policies we have adopted as a Nation are not working; that the law that we as Americans respect so greatly is being made a mockery of; the system is in shambles, and the American people are very concerned about it--as they rightly should be. I believe public officials are coming to understand the gravity of the problem after the American people have led them at last to that event.

For the last 30 or 40 years, the American people have been right on this subject. They have asked for a lawful system of immigration. They have asked for a system of immigration that serves the interests of the United States of America. And they have expressed continual concern about the illegality that is ongoing. Frankly, the politicians and Government officials have not been worthy of the good and decent instincts and desires of the American people.

Finally, I think those voices are being heard today.

We want to talk about the House bill that is on the floor of the Senate today. We are asking that this legislation be considered by the Senate. The majority leader has had to file for cloture because apparently some in this body do not even want to consider this legislation. They do not want to talk about it, push it away through surreptitious legerdemain. They want to figure out a way to undermine whatever legislation has been passed and make sure nothing ever gets done. That has been the problem. I hate to say it. We have gone again and again, and we have promised we are going to do something and we tell the American people we are going to do this and we are going to do that. But they are not ignorant, they know we have not done anything, except for the last few months we began to take a few steps that had some significance. But for the last 40 years we have basically had a system driven by illegality that is not worthy of the American people, not worthy of our heritage of law, and it must end.

Let me tell you what happened in the Senate about the fencing issue. Five months ago, May 17, my colleagues, by a vote of 83 to 16, after talking to their constituents, I submit, approved my amendment to mandate the construction of at least 370 miles of fencing and 500 miles of vehicle barriers along the southwest border. That totals 870 miles of physical barriers, either a fence or a vehicle barrier. Admittedly, that was a strong vote in this body, indicating that fencing on the southern border is and should be a part of our plan to recapture a legal system of immigration in America. It remains one of our important priorities.

On August 2, my colleagues, this time, by a vote of 93 to 3, voted to fund the construction of those miles of fencing and barriers on the DOD appropriations bill as part of the National Guard effort at the border. Today we will vote again. I expect and hope that the Senate will have the votes for cloture so we can move forward with this bill and not have it obstructed from even being debated in the Senate. The miles of fencing contained in this bill are not that different from what the Senate had already voted for, 93 to 3 to fund this year.

The Senate has already voted to fund them, and we are moving forward. This bill simply requires--the House bill that has been passed by the other body--that more of those miles be fencing in designated areas.

I will make this point: We are not there yet. Just because we have had these votes, just because the House has voted for fencing, just because the Senate, by an overwhelming vote, has authorized fencing, we have not begun to construct that yet. We have to get the money, and we have to get a final bill. The amendment I offered--that passed 83 to 16--was part of the comprehensive immigration bill. That bill is not going to become law. That whole bill is not going to become law. So if we are going to commence now to build a barrier on the border, we need to pass this legislation that actually authorizes it. So don't go back home and say I voted for it, but I didn't vote for this bill. This bill is going to determine whether we actually do something and we authorize it and direct how it is to be done, not your previous vote.

That is what has been happening. We have always said we have had these votes, but when the dust settled we never made it law and never made it reality. I urge my colleagues to understand that. Without this legislation we are not going to get there in the way you previously voted, and everybody needs to understand that.

Let me tell you a little bit about what is in the legislation. The majority leader summed it up correctly. I appreciate his leadership and his strong support from the beginning for sufficient border barriers. Majority Leader Frist is committed to a good and just solution of the immigration problem in America, but he has come to understand that we have to take steps and do some things, and one of them is fencing.

This is what this bill will do. It will establish operational control of the border. Most people think we ought to have that now but we do not. We do not have operational control of the border. So not less than 18 months after the enactment of this bill, the Department of Homeland Security must take all actions necessary and appropriate to achieve and maintain operational control of the border. Isn't that what we want? Isn't that what we have been asking for, for 30 years?

Within 1 year of enactment, and annually thereafter, the Secretary must report to Congress and to the American people on the progress made toward achieving operational control of the border. We are not going to just pass a bill this time and forget it. We are going to have some reports and some analysis so we can monitor whether we are being successful.

Operational control under the legislation includes systematic surveillance

of the international land and maritime borders through the use of personnel and technology such as unmanned aerial vehicles, ground-based sensors, satellites, radar, and cameras. Those are all going to be part of any effective system. We know that. We are not opposed to that. But don't let anybody tell you only those things will make the system work. They will not.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Physical infrastructure enhancements to prevent illegal entry of aliens and to facilitate access to international land and maritime borders by the Customs and Border Protection Agency are important. The bill further defines operational control as the prevention of unlawful entry into the United States, including entry by terrorists, unlawful aliens, instruments of terrorism, narcotics, and contraband. Second, the bill extends the current requirement for border fencing in San Diego, requiring that fencing be installed by 2008 through several urban areas. It mentions those. All the fencing in the bill is focused on the heavily trafficked areas on the southwest border. None of the fencing extends further than 15 miles outside high trafficking areas.

Let me just say this: The system that we have today is failing so badly that last year we apprehended 1.1 million people entering into this country illegally. Tell me that is a functional system.

By sending in the National Guard, by building these barriers, by adding to the number of agents, each one of those steps will help send a message throughout the world that we are not wide open, that our borders are going to be enforced. You should not come illegally. You should wait in line and come legally.

Those are facts that I think all of us need to consider as we evaluate this legislation.

Mr. President, I see the Democratic leader here, Senator Reid. I know his day is busy. I will be pleased to yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I thank the Democrat leader and his citing of that report. I look forward to reading it.

The reason that is important, this so-called comprehensive reform bill that actually passed the Senate, with a substantial number of no votes, is nothing more than an extension of the current failed system. It is not a comprehensive reform of immigration at all.

We had a hearing last week at my request. We had some of the best minds in America on immigration. They said our present system is completely ineffectual. I think that is fair way to summarize what they said.

They all spoke favorably of the Canadian plan, the Australian plan, and other plans being developed by developing nations around the world. It makes every sense that we do that. I am looking forward to analyzing that report. I am confident it will be further evidence that business as usual in immigration must end.

Next year we need to come forward--and I will commit to working with my colleagues--and have a real dialog on what immigration should be for America. The seminal expert in America, Professor George Borjas, himself an immigrant, at the John F. Kennedy School at Harvard, has written the most authoritative and best-known book on immigration, ``Heaven's Door.'' He just testified at our hearing last week. He has said in his book and in his testimony, fundamentally, America needs to ask this question: Are you crafting an immigration policy that serves your national interests?

If that is what we are doing, then he has some ideas that help us do that. But that is not what we have been doing. We have never had a discussion of the Canadian plan that gives preference to people with education. We have never discussed the Canadian plan that gives preference to people who already speak English. We have not discussed the system in Canada that gives preferences to people who bring business investment or have skills that are important in the workplace.

Isn't that what a rational nation would do? This bill that passed the Senate is fatally flawed. We need to start over completely. I believe, that report will validate the things I just mentioned.

Of course, let me say to all of our colleagues, no one suggests that building a fence is the end to the problem. Mr. T.J. Bonner, head of the Border Patrol Agents Association, testified at our committee. He said there are two things we need to do: We need to strengthen the border and eliminate the magnet of the workplace by cracking down on illegal hiring in the workplace.

The Senator from Nevada, the Democratic leader, is correct. We have seen some reduction in the numbers being apprehended. I hope that indicates we are seeing a reduction in those attempting to enter the country. I believe it does.

What should that tell us? That should tell us that if we continue to take strong steps, we can end this worldwide perception that our border is wide open, that anyone can come through our country legally or illegally and end that whole perception and shift toward that magic tipping point where people realize they are not going to be successful getting in our country illegally, and they are not going to be able to get a job once they get here. We can do both of those.

The American people need to know, our Members of Congress need to know, if we continue the course we are on and actually follow through on the things we have discussed, we can create a lawful border. It is not impossible. Don't have anyone say that is impossible. It is part of the steps. To say we should not do border fencing because that is just one step and that is not the whole thing is silly. If we have to take 20 steps to get to the goal, why say it is worthless to take 2 of those steps? Certainly we ought to take the steps we know we can do right now.

The American people are a bit cynical about what we are doing. The leader asks, Why do we want to bring it up now? We are about to finish the session, and we still haven't gotten it done. I don't want to go home without having done some things to improve the legal system of our border. I don't think most Members do. We have to get it done. We should have already had it done. I agree with that.

I was sharing some thoughts before the minority leader, the Democratic leader arrived, about what is in this bill, how it actually is effective and will actually work and will actually reduce the immigration in our country from illegal sources by a significant amount.

I was able to travel with Senator Specter, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to South America recently. We were in a number of countries. We saw a report on polling data in Nicaragua that said 60 percent of the people of Nicaragua would come to the United States if they could. I mentioned that to the State Department personnel in Peru. They told me that 70 percent of the people in Peru would come to the United States if they could, according to a recently published poll. This is a wonderful place. America is a great country. All over the world, millions and millions and millions would like to come here. We cannot accept everyone that would like to come. I wish we could, but it is just not possible.

We need to set standards and appropriate behaviors to create a system that is lawful, No. 1; also, a system that lets people come in on the basis of merit and what is in the best interests of our country.

The House bill we are now considering has some important and valuable things in it. It calls for interlocking surveillance camera systems that must be installed by May of next year. They are going to keep waiting. How much longer can this go on? We need Homeland Security to get moving. It says all of the fencing must be installed by May of 2008. That is a good step. That says we are going to get serious and we are going to do something.

Laredo-Brownsville would be given until December of 2008. The bill provides the Secretary of Homeland Security the flexibility to substitute fencing with other surveillance and barrier tools if the topography of a specific area has an elevation or hillside of greater than 10 percent.

I ask what the balance is on both sides.

Mr. President, the bill that is before us today requires the Secretary, not later than 30 days after passage, to evaluate the authority of our Customs and Border Protection agents to stop vehicles that enter the United States illegally and that refuse to stop when ordered to stop. Compare that authority with the authority given to the Coast Guard to stop vessels on the high seas that don't stop

when they are ordered to stop, and to make an assessment about whether the Border Patrol authority needs to be expanded. We have a real problem with people just riding by and placing people at risk by not stopping. That situation needs to end.

We need to give our agents authority sufficient for their own personal safety and the protection of the laws of this country.

The Secretary would be required to report his decision within 60 days.

The bill further calls for a northern border study to assess the feasibility of a state-of-the-art infrastructure security system. The report will assess the necessity for such a system, the feasibility of implementing a system, and the economic impact of the system.

We need to look at the northern border. We are not arresting 1 million people-plus a year on the northern border. It does not have anything like the impact of the movement of people illegally such as we have on the southern border, but we need to watch that, too.

Fencing is proven. In San Diego, where they built a fence a number of years ago, crime has fallen dramatically. According to the FBI Crime Index, crime in San Diego County--the whole county--dropped 56 percent between 1989 and 2000. Can you imagine that? Just by ending the open border that existed, vehicle drive-throughs where they do not stop--and the reason they have fallen from between 6 and 10 a day before the construction of the fence, to only 4 drive-throughs in 2004, the whole year.

This is a mockery of law when 6 to 10 people are just driving through the border ignoring the Border Patrol officers who are there. What kind of mockery of law is that?

Fencing has reduced illegal entries in San Diego.

According to the numbers we have, apprehensions decreased from 531,000 in 1993 to 111,000 in 2003. That is by four-fifths. That is only one-fifth the number being arrested today as there were 10 years ago as a direct result of serious enforcement bolstered by physical barriers.

Fencing has also reduced drug traffic in San Diego. In 1993, authorities apprehended over 58,000 pounds of marijuana coming across the border. In 2003, only 36,000 pounds were apprehended. In addition, cocaine smuggling decreased from 1,200 pounds to 150 pounds.

I am glad to hear that the majority leader--and the Democratic leader--indicated he would move to have this bill come forward on the Senate floor. If there is some tweaking which needs to be done, that will give us an opportunity to do that.

I think the bill is fundamentally sound in all respects. I urge my colleagues to look at it. I think they will feel comfortable that it is consistent with their previous votes in this body for a fencing measure.

But the Members of our body need to understand that our first vote on fencing, which we authorized on the immigration bill, is not going to be effective because that bill is not going to pass. It was an amendment to that bill. If we are going to do anything before we leave this year--and the American people should be watching us carefully-- this is what we need to do. We have an opportunity now to stand up and make real what we have talked about and what we voted for. If we don't do it, we will not make that reality come into effect, and we will not be faithful to the promises we made to our constituents. And, once again, we will see this kind of cynicism and disrespect for Congress because of our inconsistency in what we say and what we do.

Too often I have observed in this body when we come up with an idea about immigration that does not work, it will pass. If you come up with something that actually does work, for some reason or another, even if it is voted and passed in one body or other, it never seems to really become law. This time we need to make our legal system work.

I thank the Chair.

I reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. President, I am convinced that physical barriers at our borders--fencing in particular--are an important and central cost- effective solution to border security.

My colleague, the Democratic leader, has used a figure of $7 billion. We think that is greatly exaggerated. We believe it can be done for much less than that, although that money has been floated. A private contractor has indicated he could do it for about $1.8 billion, and that is the money we put into the bill. And with the help of the National Guard, I think we ought to be able to build fencing at a rate far less than that.

I note that this is a one-time expenditure. This expenditure is going to reduce the 1 million apprehensions a year dramatically. A barrier like this will enhance the ability of each and every single Border Patrol officer to do his or her job. It will enable them to be far more effective. It is going to enable us to not have to hire nearly as many people. It will send a signal to the world that our border is not open. That means we will need fewer bed spaces.

We are going to be moving toward reaching that tipping point where the border is perceived as being closed, where the legal system is being honored in America again, and where we can make a difference in this whole system. Manpower alone cannot work.

Are they going to have to stand every 500 yards on the border and try to catch people? When you apprehend somebody, you have to pay to take them to a facility and then take them back across the border; or if there is some distant country, pay for a plane ticket and send them back home and put them in a detention place until that occurs. We think we need a catch-and-release program. But even if we do this, it is still very costly.

A fence is going to save us billions of dollars over the years. It is going to allow us to be effective, with fewer Border Patrol agents. It is going to help us reach that tipping point where we will need far fewer bed spaces and far fewer planes to charter to take people back home. We will have far fewer efforts to move people back across the border, at a great savings to this country. This is a cost-savings bill. It is a statement bill, I submit. When you count the costs of salaries and the time and insurance for our Border Patrol, the risk at which they are placed, a fence is going to be a tremendous asset to them. We will have a roadway so they can move down in their vehicles along the border to pick up people who have entered. The word is going to get out that it is not easy to do that anymore.

There are a lot of other things we need to do. We need to clarify the current law as it exists.

Along with my staff person, Cindy Hayden, a lawyer on the Judiciary Committee, my chief counsel, we wrote a Law Review article for the Stanford Law Review. We talked about the authority of the local law enforcement officers. They have authority in most instances, but it is blurred and confused, and as a result most State and local law enforcement officers are afraid to do anything. We need legislation that will fix that. We need the workplace enforcement.

All of these are steps that need to be taken so that people can't come into the workplace fraudulently and get a job as they are today. Those things can be done, but a critical part of this entire process is securing the border first. The American people expect us to do that.

This legislation gives us that capacity. We can make that difference, and the result will be that we are going to see further improvements in the number of apprehensions.

Then, next year we need a good dialog. As Senator Harry Reid said, we need to take Professor Borjas's book, ``Heaven's Door,'' and take other testimony that we have seen and reviewed and build on that and develop a comprehensive program that we can be proud of, that will allow talented immigrants to come here, people whom we know scientifically from studies and analyses will be successful in America, who will pay more in taxes than they take out. And the numbers are really scary.

Large numbers of people coming in today are high school dropouts, do not have a high school diploma. According to the National Academy of Sciences, a person coming into our country without a high school diploma, over a lifetime, will cost the U.S. Treasury almost $90,000. Think about that. They

will have a low-wage job. They will not be paying income tax. They will be receiving other benefits. That does not include extra schools and highways that will have to be built. It only includes what they will be getting in terms of earned-income tax credit or Food Stamps and other benefits such as medical and the like.

We are moving now. The American people's voices are beginning to be heard. But I think we are going to have to study this issue. If the American people will stay in tune, if they will insist on the highest and best values, including law and decency and generosity and a positive view of immigration, we will have all those values at play in our decisionmaking process. We can come up with legislation next year that actually could do more good than most people realize.

I can't tell you how exited I am about it. But it is absolutely essential that we take steps today to gain credit with the American people; to have them understand that we are listening, that we are going to make the legal system work. And then we can enter into a dialog with them next year to develop, as Professor Borjas's book says, policies that serve the legitimate interests of our Nation.

Why shouldn't we do that? Other countries are doing that. Are we saying that Canada is not an advanced and humane nation? Are we saying that the policies that New Zealand adopted are not humane and decent and effective? Look at it. We will find that they are. In fact, they allow quite a number of people to come into their country every year, but they try to allow those to come who have the best chance of being the most successful.

It has exciting possibilities for us. It is important that the misguided legislation that has come through this Senate has now ground to a halt, that the House has flatly rejected it, and that we in our own body are reevaluating it--I think rightly--and we will be at a point where we can start over, start afresh and develop a comprehensive plan.

Let's get credibility with the American people.

Let's make this border a lawful border again, and we will see a reduction in crime. We will see increasing economic and commercial development in the areas where enforcement becomes a reality. We can tell the world that you have an opportunity to come to our country, but you are going to have to meet standards. You will have to apply, and you will be objectively and fairly evaluated. And if you meet those criteria, you will rise up in the list. If you do not, you may not be able to get in. We are sorry, because everybody cannot come in here. We wish it were different, but it is just so. We cannot accept more and more and more. We have to decide what the right number is, what skills and assets they bring that we want for our country, and make a selection process on that basis. It is really exciting, that possibility.

In our situation today--I say to my colleagues, I would like to share this one thought with you--and I am sure the report that Senator Reid mentioned probably has some discussion of it because it is a defining event--only 20 percent of the green cards--that is the card that gives one permanent residence in the United States--only 20 percent of those are given out based on the skills of the applicant. Think about that. How can that be in our national interest? The experts we have heard say it is not in our national interest. Canada and other nations have analyzed this. They have decided that is not where they want to go. So they are trying to get to 60, to 70 percent based on skills.

Yes, we will always have those subject to persecution around the world, humanitarian cases, who we will allow in our country. But the number and the way we are doing it now is not a sensible way to proceed.

Mr. President, I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I notice that none of my colleagues are here. Senator Reid, I am pleased to say, indicates he will be supporting moving forward to the bill and cloture. I will take time, as we are heading up to the hour to vote, to share a few additional thoughts.

The only way we are going to get an authorization of the fencing is to pass this amendment. The authorization for border barriers I offered as an amendment, which was adopted as part of the comprehensive so- called immigration bill, will not become law because that bill will not become law. This is the way we have now to do it.

The House has passed a bill that is thoughtful, that makes sure we are not playing a shell game with the American voters but that we actually create a mechanism to ensure that the fencing gets built on a timetable. It includes a number of other things, such as technology and sensors and the like.

The second aspect of the legislation is very, very important. We voted in this body 93 to 3--and the majority leader and the Democratic leader both made reference to it--to fund it at $1.8 billion. That was a commitment we made. We said we were for that. This budget that we passed has $20 billion set aside for emergency funding as part of our budgetary expectations for this year. How much of that will go to homeland security? We have to be careful to watch. And even though we authorized these barriers at the border, which are going to make a huge, huge difference in reducing illegal entry into America--it is going to be so positive--but if we do not fund it so we can actually build it, it cannot be built. That requires an appropriations.

So I am getting worried about that. I am hearing some things--that the $1.8 billion we passed with such an overwhelming vote may not be funded. So isn't that the shell game we are talking about now? Isn't that the deal? We thought we had done it on the Defense bill. It would be built through the National Guard who is already on the border. And the money would go to them to supervise, to contract out, or utilize their own personnel to construct this fencing.

That is what we thought we had done. But as often happens around here, subtle things happen. You think you have something in your hand and like a will-o'-the-wisp it just disappears. I hate to use the words ``shell game'' because it is not always planned out that way, but the effect can be the same. First you think you have it, and then it disappears. You think it is under that shell, you think you have it, and it is not there.

So I am going to have to tell our leadership on both sides of the aisle I am pleased to see we have a commitment to building the fences. We voted twice now, and the House has overwhelmingly voted for this. But we need to make sure we don't play a shell game where we don't have the money at the end to build it because somebody wants to spend it on a pet project they have.

This is a matter of national interest. It is a matter of national security. It is a matter we cannot fumble the ball on. It is a matter we are committed to by our previous votes. So let's make sure we do it. And setting priorities is what we do. That is what we are paid to do. We cannot do everything. So we will have a bit of a test as the session winds down to see if the appropriations process--the actual appropriating of the money to do the things that are needed to be done--is carried out and the funding is there and the barriers are built.

Again, I repeat, this would be a one-time expenditure. I believe the numbers we are hearing are too high. We felt like $1.7 billion, $1.8 billion would do the 370 miles of fencing, including 500 miles of vehicle barriers. There is enough money to fund that. But if we are going to have to have that, we can't have no funding, a third of the funding, or a half of the funding or we are not going to be able to do this job. And if it turns out we are wrong and the cost is higher than we expected, we are not going to come close to doing what we are telling the American people we intend to do. So we will have to watch that.

I will just share, in conclusion, my thoughts about the nature of the American Republic of which we are a part. It is a good and decent nation. We have a positive view of immigration. We have been a nation of immigrants from our founding. We believe in immigration. But we are also a nation of laws.

I was a Federal prosecutor for 15 years, and it breaks my heart to see the Federal United States law be made a mockery along the border of our country, that without fencing people are driving by, and not even stopping when the Border Patrol attempts to detain them.

We had a hearing yesterday on crime in America. We had the Director of the Bureau of Prisons. He told us that in the Federal prison penitentiaries 27 percent of the people detained are not American citizens. Can you imagine that--27 percent?

Now, I am absolutely convinced that overwhelmingly the people who come to our country are law-abiding; even if they come to our country illegally, they are law-abiding, other than their entry. But I have to tell you, if I were in big trouble somewhere in some foreign country, and they were trying to arrest me in my hometown, and the chief of police knows my name, and I am facing a big, serious crime, why would I not want to scoot across the border and go to the United States where nobody would know me?

I think we are picking up an excessive number of people who may even be fleeing prosecution in their towns or people who have come here to set up drug distribution networks and things of that nature. So somehow we are picking up a larger number of the criminal element than we ever have. When I asked Mr. Lappin about the prison system and the fact that he said 27 percent of the people in the Federal penitentiaries are noncitizens, I asked him: Does that include those we detain at the border who are being held waiting to be deported? He said, No, it does not even include those.

So this Nation, in our own interest, has every right--indeed, we have a duty to our people--to make sure our borders are not wide open, terrorists do not come here, drug dealers do not come here, people in trouble for sexual offenses and child pornography and those kinds of things, and child abuse, who flee their own countries, do not run across the border to safety in the United States, where they are never apprehended and live here.

So this is all part of it. If we are coming through with the right funding, we will be successful in taking the historic step to creating a lawfulness in this country.

Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, what is the pending business? Is there pending business, might I inquire?

All right. Does the Senator know how long he might speak?

Well, Mr. President, I want to talk on a slightly different issue, so I would accept that and withdraw any objection.

Mr. President, I say to the Senator from California, I attempted to follow the Senator from Colorado, and Senator Leahy wanted to speak next.

I am thinking about 20 minutes.

Mr. President, with regard to the question of fencing along our southern border, I wish to make a couple of points.

Over 1 million people were apprehended last year along that border. One million people coming in illegally were apprehended. Probably another half million got through without being apprehended. Good fences make good neighbors. It is time for us to bring lawfulness to that border. I think the American people want that.

If somebody would like to know the differences between our parties and the differences of how we approach the question of having a lawful immigration system in America, I suggest that my colleague--I enjoy working with him a great deal on the Judiciary Committee.

My colleague referred to the legislation that we voted to move forward to consider--legislation that passed this Senate 94 to 3 to fund the fence on the border and passed 83 to 16 to authorize the fence to be constructed--as ``hasty, ill-considered, and mean-spirited.'' He then went on to suggest Secretary Chertoff is conducting a war on immigrants.

How much of a difference can we have here? How big a gulf? Do the American people want us to just say nothing can be done one more time and just give up, or do they want us to take rational steps that would bring lawfulness to the border? I think they want us to do the latter. They have been asking us to do that for some time, and the votes in this Senate and the House of Representatives have been overwhelming in favor of that approach.

My colleague says that we had hearings in the Senate and we had a Senate bill on the floor, and he implied--I thought he said that fencing was a part of that bill, but it wasn't really. It was my amendment on the floor that moved that bill forward in a significant way. At any rate, we did discuss it, and there has been broad support both in the committee and on the floor to proceed to that matter.

I just want to say, yes, we want comprehensive reform. No, we don't want to end all immigration. The wall the Communists built in East Germany was to keep their citizens in East Germany, to keep them from fleeing their country so they could have freedom. That is quite different from an attempt to maintain a legal flow of people into the country because we just can't accept everybody. This country cannot accept everybody who would like to come.

A recent poll in Nicaragua said 60 percent would come to the United States in they could. A poll in Peru said as many as 70 percent would come if they could. The whole world has millions and millions of people who would like to come to this country. So we ought to set up a rational system, one that serves our national interest, one

that is fair, and then enforce it, set up a system that works. As long as we have a wide-open border, without control and law, we are not doing our duty. I don't think those of us in this Congress, in this Senate, want to go back home after we recess and say we didn't follow through on what probably most of us have been saying--that we do believe barriers are necessary.

The House has sent us a bill, not unlike the Senate bill that we passed 83 to 16 and we voted to fund 94 to 3. The bill I offered had 370 miles of fencing and 500 miles of barriers. The House bill has about 700 miles, I believe, of fencing and barriers and electronics. There is not a lot of difference fundamentally between the two.

We now will have an opportunity to offer amendments to discuss details. Fundamentally, we need to take action. We need to do something. We don't need to go home again and wait until next year without any action.

Then when it comes to comprehensive reform, we need to bury the proposal we have that the Senate has considered and voted on, move that aside, and come back next year with a fresh approach and create a comprehensive plan for immigration that serves our national interest, that is consistent with what our allies, such as Canada and Australia, do, and consider what they do. If we do, we will come up with some good ideas, and we will have something the American people can support.

If we gain some credibility with the American people by, first, taking action toward enforcement, we will be able to do something good, but it will have to be next year. There is no way this Senate should accept a rushed-through package before this election or after this election in some lame-duck Congress that does not have a fresh look at our policy. I will resist that with every fiber of my being, but I will not resist comprehensive reform because I think we need it.

I wanted to share those thoughts, Mr. President. I am pleased that we just had a unanimous vote to move forward to the fence bill the House has passed. We will talk about it today and tomorrow.

I also serve on the Judiciary Committee and the Armed Services Committee. We have had quite a lot of discussions on those two committees and now in Armed Services, in particular, about how to deal with the effect of the Hamdan decision and how to make sure we are in compliance with the Supreme Court opinion. I want to make a couple of points.

The President thought and believed and his top lawyers advised him-- his top lawyers advised him--that the detainee interrogation program that was being conducted, that they wanted to conduct, was producing substantial results for America, obtaining information that has thwarted attacks on America and saved lives, has provided information to identify that some of the people involved in 9/11--these are some of the people who have admitted and we have evidence against to prove were actually complicitous in 9/11, coconspirators. The President has moved those prisoners down to Guantanamo.

The interrogation process for those have been exhausted. They believe they have obtained all the information they can expect to obtain. They need to be tried for the crimes they have committed in a war they are conducting against the United States of America. They will be tried in the forum in which they should be tried, in a forum provided for in the U.S. Constitution, in a military commission.

This is not a trial in the Southern District of New York for an American citizen for bank fraud or drug dealing. This is a military commission adjudication of whether these people are involved in a war against the United States that has resulted in the deaths of 3,000 American citizens on 9/11 and other deaths since then. So he had a legal opinion on that. They briefed it to him. And do you remember the President looking us in the eye right after 9/11, and he said just the other night, Monday night a week ago, I guess, on television, he looked the American people in the eye and said: I am going to use every lawful power I have to defend the people of this country. That is my responsibility, in effect, he was telling us, that is my duty, to protect this country, and I am going to use every lawful power I have. And we cheered. And we said: Yes, sir. And we said: Mr. President, catch those guys. Put your people out there and catch these terrorists who have attacked our country and killed our innocent people and crashed into the Trade Towers and run airplanes into them. Go get them. Do you remember that? Boy, I am telling you, people felt strongly about it.

So now what do we have? Oh, we have the complainers and the second- guessers. I just want to say this: I believe the President's program was legal from the beginning. I have researched the law. I have been involved in this. I was a Federal prosecutor. I don't know everything, but I have some understanding of it through both of the committees in which I have been involved, and I know they researched the law and they believed they were operating lawfully.

I remember the Ex parte Quirin case during World War II when President Roosevelt was President. They caught a group of saboteurs who were let loose on the American homeland from a submarine, I believe it was, and they came in and they planned sabotage against the American people. Do you know what they did? And the Supreme Court approved this in the famous case Ex parte Quirin. They took them, they caught them, they set up a commission, they tried them, and they executed most of them in short order because this was not like some normal trial. These were people coming into our country for the purpose of sabotaging this country, people whose motives and desires were to kill innocent men, women, and children, contrary to the laws of war--contrary to the laws of war, which do not allow for that. That is the big deal.

So the people who have been apprehended, the people who were being detained and incarcerated and interrogated were not prisoners of war. This is crystal clear. You can't execute prisoners of war the way we executed the Nazi saboteurs. Prisoners of war are entitled to all of the protections of the Geneva Accords, and they have to be provided great protections and great advantages, really, and we adhere to that, we adhere to that today, and we always have. It was been taught to every soldier in America.

But these are unlawful combatants. They sneak around. They don't wear uniforms. They don't carry their weapons openly. And their goal and tactic is to utilize terror and slaughter innocent men, women, and children to promote their agenda. That is not a soldier. A soldier can drop a bomb on a military target, but a soldier can't shoot because it may unfortunately result in someone being killed. But a soldier can't deliberately have his policy to kill women and children and noncombatants. Otherwise, they are an unlawful combatant, not a lawful combatant, and they have been considered not to have been covered by the Geneva Accords.

But the Supreme Court, in my opinion fundamentally reversing the Quirin case, which the President relied on, came along and said that in Hamdan, Common article 3 of the Geneva Conventions applies to these terrorists and that we need some more rules and regulations with regard to how to try them to create a just trial.

OK. So what did the President do? Did he act unilaterally and say: I am not going to do it, I am not going to comply with the Supreme Court. Yes, he previously said he thought what he was doing was proper. No. What did the President say? He said: Congress, let's review Hamdan. We are sending you some proposals which will clarify what we can do with interrogations, which will fix the concerns about trying these unlawful combatants, and I want you to act on that, and we need to do it quickly because we need to continue to interrogate terrorists and we need to try those people who are responsible for the deaths of American citizens on 9/11. That is not a seizing of power--some dictator. That is not someone who comes along and says: It has to be my way or the highway.

So we have a group of Senators now on the Armed Services Committee who say: Well, they have their own plan and they have researched the law and they don't want to do what the President says. They want to do it their way. OK. This is what Congress is all about.

I agree with the President. From what I understand of the situation,

Madam President, I am very pleased to join my colleague, Senator Stabenow, and my colleague, Senator Sarbanes, to talk about the reality that is confronting the American family across the country. That reality is, they are being squeezed, and they are feeling every day increased pressure from an economy that is not resulting in higher wages and income but is demonstrating increased costs to every family in the country. Between flat, stagnant incomes and increasing costs, they are seeing their dreams shredded.

It is our obligation, our duty to respond. This administration has not responded. The President tries to paint a rosy picture of the economy, but the American people know better because every day they see the high gasoline prices, and increased costs of education. They look at their paychecks and see no significant increases. And they wonder, really, for the first time in my lifetime, whether their children will have a better life than they enjoyed.

It was taken as an article of faith in America when I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s that your children would do better than you did. They are probably going to college, if you hadn't gone to college. If you were fortunate to be a college-educated person, they certainly would go to college and maybe on to professional school beyond. They would be able to enjoy a home in a good community. They would be able to use their talents and their energies to provide for their families and to build a strong America. But, again, for the first time in generations, many, many people are wondering whether their children will be able to afford what they did, and be able to accomplish what they have done. Can they afford a home in the same community they grew up in? In many cases, that is not true in America today. Will they have a pension that they can depend on when they get older 40 or 50 years from now? Will they have the ability to send themselves to school, to educate themselves, not just through college but throughout their lifetime?

This is not something that is just the impersonal effect of the world economy and globalization. This is something that Government has a duty to respond to, and this administration has not responded to it.

The facts are very clear. After adjusting for inflation, the income of the typical family is lower than it was when President Bush took office. The typical family has fallen behind in the last 6 years. The economy has gone through the most protracted job slump since the Great Depression. Even though job creation has turned positive, the pace of job creation has been modest and real wages are not growing.

The administration likes to point to statistics that show an increase in average income or compensation. But it seems pretty clear that these averages reflect gains by highly compensated individuals who receive bonuses, who exercise stock options, while ordinary workers see their wages falling behind with rising living costs.

When you talk about an average, if you have a lot of poor people and you have several highly compensated individuals, that average moves up. That is what the President is talking about.

What we should be looking at is, how do we help those low-income Americans see more in their paychecks? How do we help them protect against rising prices in so many critical areas?

This first chart demonstrates what has happened between 2000 and 2004. This is the median inflation-adjusted household income. This is the centerpoint of households in the U.S., 50 percent below, 50 percent above. So

it takes away the distorting effect of a few, a handful of terribly wealthy households in the country. This is the most accurate view of what has been happening. You can see in 2004, the median income was $47,399; in 2005, in inflation-adjusted terms, $46,326, a fall of $1,273. Median household incomes fell. That is not the sign of a good economy. In fact, that is the sign of a failing economy.

This is accompanied by another phenomenon. The second phenomenon is that prices are increasing. In fact, they are rising dramatically in critical areas.

This is a chart that shows the middle-class squeeze under the Bush administration. College tuition, room and board, up 44 percent; households have $1,300 less at the median; their expenses for college are going up 44 percent. Health insurance premiums, if you can afford them or you have access to health insurance at all, because there is a growing number of Americans who can't buy health insurance; those premiums are going up 71 percent.

Gasoline prices, up by 104 percent. Even in the last few weeks of lower prices, they are still extraordinarily high given the prices in 2000.

What you have seen is a situation--this is just arithmetic--income goes down, costs go up, families are squeezed. They have to put on hold a lot of their dreams and hopes for the future--for college, in some cases. They have to worry about whether they will be destroyed financially by a health care crisis at home because they cannot afford health care coverage.

Certainly we are all seeing throughout the economy how expensive it is just to get around because of the price of gasoline. For upper income Americans, the people who are certainly above the median income, this is a problem. For the vast majority of Americans, low-income Americans, the extra $10 or $15 per fillup means they cannot take the kids out for even a modest meal. They can't do things that they took for granted. They certainly cannot save.

One of the other phenomenons we have seen is virtually a zero savings rate for households in the country. They are not getting ahead.

I can recall--I think we all can recall as children--when parents talked about trying to get ahead, trying to get a little bit ahead, something that will give them not only some financial security but peace of mind. For some families in the last 6 years they are not only not getting ahead but they are falling behind. It is not predestined; it is not inevitable. It is because of the policies of this administration.

One of other startling aspects of the Bush administration is that employment has not grown. This is a chart showing the growth of nonfarm employment throughout administrations in the country going back to Herbert Hoover. The Bush administration has the worst nonfarm employment growth of any administration since Herbert Hoover. That is not a comparison anyone would like to entertain.

We have seen it go up and down through administrations, but this is the worst. Under the Clinton administration, there was a 2.4 percent per year growth in nonfarm employment. That has been reversing.

This is a situation where people are looking around, again despite all the happy talk of the administration, people just have to look around. The jobs are going away and they are not coming back. Pick up the paper. About every day you see a big American company announcing 20,000 jobs being let go, changes, restructuring, et cetera. That causes people great concern.

Again, we have to do something, and nothing of consequence is being done by this administration. It is the worst job record since Herbert Hoover.

That is a damning epitaph for the economic policies of this administration.

Coupled with the anemic job growth has been a similar anemic growth in earnings. Here again is a comparison. Between 1995 and 2000, under the Clinton administration, and between 2000 and 2005 under the Bush administration. What you see in the Clinton administration is a strong growth in earnings, weekly earnings, for every category of worker, from the lowest to the highest.

In fact, I should point out that the highest-income Americans did much better under the Clinton administration than they are doing under this administration. But what is startling is that this picket fence of the Clinton administration of growth in every income level, strong positive growth, is not the case in the Bush administration. In fact, in the lowest 10 percent you are seeing negative growth, a loss in terms of weekly earnings. The poorest Americans are not only not keeping up, they are falling behind. It is not just at the bottom, it is all the way up to the 50th percentile. Half of American full-time workers have seen a loss in the last 5 years in their usual weekly earnings. They are losing ground, and they know it. They are not getting ahead. They are falling behind.

You see at the upper income levels a slight increase. It was much, much better under the Clinton administration.

One of the ironies here is that the economic policy, relatively speaking, is benefiting the wealthiest Americans, but it is not benefiting them as much as under the Clinton administration.

Again, these are weekly earnings. This figure would be much, much different if we put in all forms of compensation. There you are seeing even a more pronounced view of the upper income Americans because of stock bonuses, because of all sorts of compensation that is not in the form of weekly earnings.

I would be happy to yield to the Senator.

That is absolutely correct.

That is right.

The Senator is right. It is absolutely a phenomenon between being crushed by falling real income and rising costs. It is not a situation where incomes are falling and being compensated by falling prices. It is a situation where they are being caught in this vice. The pain is palpable to working families throughout this country. These are all of our citizens. These are the people we all say we are here to help. And we are not helping them--not this Congress, not this administration. Not only are we not helping these individuals but it turns out the very policies of this administration and this Congress are rewarding those people who are doing the best, not those who need the assistance. That is evident in the tax policy being pursued by this administration and supported by this Republican Congress.

This is the average amount of capital gains and dividend tax cuts by household incomes in 2005. This is one of the centerpieces of the administration's proposal. They have to cut capital gains taxes. They have to cut dividend taxes. Here is where the benefits go. If you make under $50,000--that is an awful lot of Americans--you get $6 in benefits If a person is making between $50,000 and $100,000--most Americans within that range are considered to be pretty prosperous folks--they get $55 in benefits. If a person makes over $1 million, they get $37,000 in benefits. One of the reasons for this is the fact that most working Americans, if they hold stock, they hold it in their retirement accounts. These retirement accounts do not benefit directly from these capital gains and dividends tax cuts. So

for the vast majority of Americans, we are seeing virtually no direct benefit from these capital gains and dividends tax cuts. Of course, for the wealthiest, it is a bonanza.

Now, if this somehow stimulated a huge spurt in economic activity, growth, job performance, and increased employment, that might be a justification--not the most compelling, but a justification. We are not even seeing that.

What we are seeing--because, again, ultimately this is about arithmetic as much as anything--we are seeing a decrease in the resources and revenues of the Federal Government. So we can't compensate for increased cost of tuition. In fact, this administration, as the Senator from Michigan suggested, is sending up a budget that has record cuts in Pell grants and Stafford loans and those supports for education that are so critical at a time when everyone reflexively says we have to be the best educated country in the world because we must compete today with an emerging India and an emerging China.

We can no longer sit back on our laurels saying we have the best educated people. We have to keep investing in education. We have dissipated those resources in a way that does not benefit the vast majority of Americans but benefits very few. As a result, not only are the costs of education going up, but our Federal support for education is going down.

I should say something else, too. The last several weeks the, President hasn't missed an opportunity to remind the American people that we are at war. We are. And we have to support our forces in the field. I saw a figure today that to keep an Army division in operation in Iraq for 1 month costs $1.5 billion. Those costs have to be met.

With the tax policy rewarding the wealthiest Americans without benefiting the rest of America, without contributing in a demonstrable way to significantly increase employment, without contributing to supports and programs so essential to investments for the future of this country, we are not only dissipating our resources, we have also engaged in an international policy that requires spending that is very difficult to avoid, nigh impossible. Who is bearing the burden? It is all being rolled into the next generation of Americans as we accumulate a huge amount of debt going forward.

This is the most reckless economic policy I have ever seen. It is ``credit card economics,'' borrow as much as you can to fund military operations abroad, but we cannot afford domestic programs. What resources we have we give away in the form of tax cuts that are not strengthening the economy.

It is a massive shift of resources from the vast majority of Americans to the wealthiest Americans; from a generation in the future that will pay for it, to a generation today that seems to be consuming it.

Ultimately, these policies will catch up with us. They have already caught up with the families of America. As we debate these issues today, they are looking at sticker shock in health care, education, at the gas pumps, and housing. And they are looking at their stagnant paychecks.

Not only can we do better, we must do better. This Government has in the past been able to sort these problems out. We have a record over the last 5 years of the preceding decade of growth across the board in terms of income at robust levels, of significant employment gains, of fiscal responsibility. All of that today is history.

I yield.

That is absolutely right. The Senator is right.

We have extraordinary debt being held by countries such as China. Even Mexico is a creditor of the United States today. That debt has to be serviced. That money goes overseas. It is not kept within the United States for investment here.

It also not only economically weakens us, it puts us into a position internationally where we do not have the kind of leverage we used to have when we were an economic power that did not have these huge debt burdens, and we did not rely upon the kindness of strangers. We are relying on the kindness of lots of countries who, sometimes, are not our friends.

We can see that manifested in situations such as our relations with North Korea, China and our relationship with Iran. The Senator is a senior member of the Foreign Relations Committee. We are struggling now to control the Iranians' race for nuclear technology. A key player is the Chinese. We cannot push them hard to take a tough line, in some cases because they hold a lot of our debt. That is a reality not only economically but also in terms of international affairs.

The Senator is absolutely right. He realizes, as I do, when the Bush administration came into power, we were running a surplus. We had a projected surplus over several years in the trillions of dollars, an opportunity to do lots of critical and important tasks for America: to try to reform our health care system which will require not only changes in rules, regulations, and procedures, but probably additional resources; to try to reinvigorate public education at the elementary and secondary level and try to make college more affordable. These were investment goals. At that juncture we had the resources to do it.

The Senator listened, as I did, to proposals which we thought were fanciful: the suggestion that if we did not cut taxes, our surplus would grow so great it would be unmanageable. What has grown so great and what is unmanageable now is not a surplus but a deficit.

The Senator also recognizes, as we look ahead and as we see this continued deficit finance and growing debt, there are structural issues which will drive the deficit further. For example, we have to somehow come to grips with a longer term solution to the alternative minimum tax which will take additional revenues and resources away from the Federal Government.

There are proposals, and we have heard them, of a full-scale repeal of the

estate tax. Again, that would be an additional denial of revenues and resources to the Government at a time when we are running a huge deficit and we are fighting a war.

All this adds up to what the Senator pointed out: not only annual deficits but a hugely increasing debt funded by foreigners, leaving us vulnerable not only to economic shocks but also to the fact, as the Senator suggested, that we are dependent. Dependency, in many respects, is the opposite of strength. We have surrendered a great deal of economic strength through these policies.

The bottom line of this discussion is that this is not some theoretical macroeconomic research topic. This is reflected in the daily lives of Americans who are struggling, and in the future they are seeing every day a decreasing sense of confidence that they can provide their sons and daughters at least as good a quality of economic life, family life, and support as they have enjoyed. That is distressing the American public.

Well, I think the Senator has a very valid point about Social Security, that, yes, you are right, from what I read into those comments, the President and the Republicans in the House of Representatives are committed to, once again, going after Social Security. It seems to me to be contradictory to everything that Americans are experiencing today.

The one phenomenon that is frightening everyone is the loss of defined benefit pensions, left and right. Thinking back to when I was beginning to enter the workforce, in the 1960s and 1970s, if one of my colleagues had said: I have just taken a job as a machinist at United Airlines--you would say, you are set for life, just like your father was. You are going to work for 30 years, and you are going to retire with a nice pension and have benefits like health care. You, financially, are in a good position.

Now we are hearing stories about machinists' pensions being abrogated because of bankruptcy proceedings, companies that we took for granted as being solid trying to get rid of their pension liabilities. The only thing left for most Americans is Social Security.

Now, we hope they all have 401(k)s and private investments. But there is that credit card commercial about how something costs $50 and something costs $80, but at the end there is that priceless element. The priceless element, when it comes to pensions, is Social Security because at least you know every month you will get a certain amount of money, you will have something, you will know what it is. And that is worth a great deal because it gives a certain peace of mind. For most Americans, it is very modest, but at least it is something they can say they will have as long as they live.

This administration wants to eliminate that. They want to put every American into a market which has great ups, but also great downs. It has cycles where everyone is doing well and cycles where people are not doing very well at all.

That cannot be the bedrock of retirement. We have to maintain Social Security. So it is shocking to me that despite what America said over the last several months--essentially, take your hands off my Social Security--this administration is going to try again.

And, of course, there are ways we can fund Social Security. I think we did that under the leadership of you and your colleagues in the 1980s, where changes were made to the formulas, changes were made to the rates of taxation, changes were made to strengthen Social Security.

They are not interested, I think, in strengthening it because their objective is not making sure that American families have something to rest their dreams on in retirement. This is, in some respects, simply another example of catering to the market, of letting these investments be turned over to private markets. And there is some advantage to that, but not fundamentally with respect to Social Security.

I am afraid we are going to have to fight this fight again.

Yes.

Well, I think the Senator is absolutely right in terms of his analysis. He has stated very eloquently and accurately about how many Americans depend upon Social Security; how, over the long term, it is a program that will be solvent--with no changes--for 20-plus years, and 50 years even if it is not paying full benefits.

Frankly, I cannot think of another Federal program where we can say we can guarantee 25 years from now you are going to get what we told you you are going to get. That is one of the few programs of the Federal Government that will do that.

I think the other point that should be made is that these actuarial assumptions are rather conservative. So this is not a situation where we are trying to, with smoke and mirrors, create an artificial picture of the funding stream going forward. And I have the same shock that you have, in a way, at these proposals because right now Social Security is even more important.

There was a period in our economic history, from the end of World War II up until fairly recently, where many Americans were looking at and anticipating not only their Social Security but a defined benefit private pension--a rather good private defined pension--and their private investments. Frankly, we all understand that the best retirement plan has, as a foundation, Social Security, but it is not only Social Security. It has to have private savings, private investments over time.

Sometimes--I am sure the Senator might have some of the same feelings I have--if we have all these proposals--benefiting the wealthiest Americans, why can't we give incentives for average Americans--more incentives--to save for their retirement, to put money away? We have some, but they are not enough. We can do that. But that is a conscious choice to favor, in this respect, the wealthiest over the vast majority of Americans.

I do not think it makes much sense in terms of economic policy, fiscal policy, and also social policy. But today we have seen those private pensions too often disappear. Today it is more important to maintain the defined benefit program of Social Security, and I hope we can.

But again, I say to the Senator, like you, I am concerned there is another movement afoot. Just listen to what the President says and what the chairman of the relevant subcommittee in the House and also the House majority leader say. If they get a chance, next year, they are going right back after Social Security, despite, as you point out, the rejection by the American people. And this was not some type of narrow, close call. Seniors, middle-income Americans--all Americans, I think-- were standing up basically saying: This is not a sensible approach.

I think the Senator is absolutely right. I think what Americans are seeing is a bifurcated society. That is a fancy term for the haves and the have-nots. The haves are doing quite well.

I remember Warren Buffett once said: ``If this is class warfare, my class is winning.'' And it is not class warfare. What it is is a series of economic policies that are not creating the jobs, that are not creating circumstances so that those jobs provide growing compensation to workers, and then on top of that, developing tax policies which favor the very wealthy and do not do enough to help those who do need assistance. Then it is complicated further by budget policies that are undercutting education and health care. We are debating a cut to physicians in terms of their compensation which goes into the overall effect of the health care system.

One point I would make, in addition to this issue about education, is that one of the reasons we saw a spectacularly productive decade in the 1990s and previous decades is not because anything was done in the 1990s, it is because of the Pell grants and Stafford loans of the 1960s when Americans with talent and ambition could go to college. Twenty- five years later, they were inventing new products. They were developing new ways to develop and provide services. They were leading the world economy in every dimension--health care, business, all these things.

If we stop investing in education now, we will lurch along for a few years, but we will start slowing up in terms of momentum, and we will ask ourselves 20 years from now: Are we still the preeminent economy, the preeminent area of scientific research? And that is a question mark.

People understand that. I think it goes back to the point we have all tried to make, which is that these charts are illustrative of what is going on from a statistical and analytical point; but just ask the average family and they will say simply: My wages are stuck, my expenses are going up, I cannot provide for my children the way I thought I could, and I need help. We should be giving them help and we are not.

Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, will my friend yield for a question on how much time he would like? I would like to speak immediately following his remarks.

I don't have a problem.

That is wonderful. I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of the Senator's remarks, I be recognized.

Mr. President, I have listened to the Senator from Alabama. He brought us back to 9/11 and that is where I am going to start in my remarks right now, on a dreadful day when we saw the Pentagon in flames right here from the Capitol and we ran down those front steps and it was the bluest of skies and we were looking for Flight 93, was it coming our way? We all vowed to go get the people who attacked us.

I came down to this floor and with a heart full of grief. Every one of those planes was going to my State. I voted to go get the terrorists. Go get al-Qaida. Go to war against Osama bin Laden. I am sorry to say that, for whatever reason--and we are beginning to learn more about it--based on misinformation, faulty information, skewed information, we turned around and we took our resources, great resources and the greatest men and women in the military, and we went into Iraq.

The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee now tells us unequivocally there was never one connection between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein. Remember all the talk and all the chatter from the Vice President and the President and Condi Rice? Remember when Donald Rumsfeld said we know where those weapons are? I remember sitting literally 8 feet from Donald Rumsfeld, asking him where the weapons of mass destruction were. And he said, Oh, they are all around Baghdad. You go down the street, take the left, turn to the right--there they are.

No. No. Now we have a circumstance where, because of the great work of our intelligence community, we have brought back people, some of whom were involved--that is what we believe--in 9/11. Right now we do not have a system in place so they can meet their just reward because the Supreme Court said Congress has to act and set up a tribunal in a way that respects the Geneva Conventions--this is very important.

We have three Senators with distinguished military careers on the other side of the aisle, who have said: Whatever we do we must not jeopardize our troops. Therefore, we must make sure that we do not do anything to change the Geneva Conventions. What do they get for thanks from those who have never seen combat?

My husband served in the military. I know what it is like to sit and wait, because he was 6 years in the Army Reserves, asking, Will he be called? Won't he be called? We were fortunate. Senator McCain was not that fortunate. He was a prisoner of war. He, John Warner, and Lindsey Graham, who was an attorney in the military, are guiding us to write something that makes sense so that we can try these people. And if in fact they are guilty, they can meet their just reward.

They get people on their own side of the aisle calling them out. I think it is outrageous. To quote the Senator from Alabama:

People who don't agree with the President on this, they are

slandering the military.

I can't believe it. It is basically like swiftboating Senator McCain and Senator Warner. It is unbelievable.

Who would you trust, I ask the people of America, on this military matter? People who never served a day in combat or people who put their life on the line? And then to hear them slandered in this way on the floor of the Senate--not by name, but by inference--is very disheartening. And to see a Republican do it to a Republican? I don't get it. I don't get it.

I hope we can come together to make sure we have a good plan in place because if we do not have a good plan in place, what good does it do us? It doesn't do us any good if we don't have a plan in place that passes the legal test, because it will be thrown out by the courts and we will be back to square one and we will not be able to try these people in the way they ought to be tried.

I come here to say thank you to those Senators who stepped out and said: Wait a minute; we want to do this right, Mr. President. Work with us. We want to do it right.

I think we have had enough. We have had enough of swiftboating around here, and it has to stop in America. It has to stop in America.

I want to go back to 9/11 because when I voted to go after the terrorists, that is what I thought this Government was going to do. I thought they would throw all the resources at it. We went into Afghanistan. We freed the people there. I was proud. I went to my Afghan-American community and I was so happy for those people. They saw light. And we shorted that. We shorted them. We don't have enough troops there.

You know what is happening even in Kabul now. You are seeing attacks on women and girls, you are seeing murders. The poppy trade is growing. This was our opportunity to not only find Osama bin Laden, who was there, but also to make Afghanistan a model of democracy that the President is always talking about. He stood up at the United Nations-- some of the things he said I really believe were correct. But one of the things that was not correct is when he said: We need democracy; take a look at what we have done in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I can tell you, anyone with a television set looks at what is happening in Iraq and says: Oh, my God, it's close to civil war. He puts that picture in our minds next to the word democracy? That is not going to help people. People looking around the world at that say, You know what? I really want democracy, but if my country is going to look like this, count me out.

It is just not real, Mr. President. It is not real. Just like it is not real to go after three Senators with distinguished military careers and tell them they are off-base when they try to put forward a solution to the problems that we are facing in terms of how we try these alleged terrorists. If they did what we think they did, again, I don't want them sitting in prison, I want them tried, convicted, and meet their fate. That means we need to put a system in place.

After 9/11 and after we took that turn and we didn't go after the terrorists as we should and we went into Iraq instead and we got bogged down there, year after year after year, and the President's plan is, and I quote: We will be there as long as I am President. That is his plan. That is not a plan. That is not a strategy. That is not a policy of success. It is the status quo, and it is weighing on the American people.

The President said that. I agree with him. It is weighing on the American people. What he didn't say is it is weighing down the American people because it is so expensive that it is up to near $8 billion, $9 billion, $10 billion a month in Iraq.

I went to a rally on The Mall today for cancer survivors. Mr. President, I don't know if you got to go over there, but it is the most touching thing I have seen in a long time. Each State there has a tent and in the tent are the cancer survivors. They are asking us,

they are begging us, they are pleading with us to reverse the cuts that this President made in this budget for cancer research. That is what they are asking.

We spend $5 billion a year on cancer research--$5 billion. That is 2 weeks of the Iraqi war. Why don't we just decide we will end the war 2 weeks earlier and double the funding for cancer research?

Our families need us at their backs. They cannot do this alone. They cannot find the cure for cancer. They cannot come up with the treatments, with the science. Many of them need insurance. We spend $10 billion a month, almost, for the Iraq war. Think about it.

So this war, which has nothing to do with the war on terror, which has been shorted because of this war, is also now stealing from the American people, and they do not want it. They want to start bringing the troops home.

We need a political solution in Iraq. We need a conference with that country and its neighbors. We need to look at semi-autonomous regions, with the Federal Government there making sure that the oil is distributed in the right way. That is a way out of this. Senator Biden has explained it many times. He understands that it is not a policy to just say we are just going to keep on keeping on.

Anyone who has ever read a book on Iraq knows that after World War I the Brits put together everyone in that country who didn't get along with each other and then they were just busy taking in oil while everyone else was fighting. It took a monstrosity of a man, a tyrannical man, to keep that country together--and now that man is facing his just rewards.

But there has to be a better way than the status quo. We need a new direction in Iraq, and we need it because the Iraqi people have to step up to the plate and take care of their own country. No country can survive with an occupation force running the show. It doesn't work.

They have to want freedom and democracy. They have to love each other enough to live in the same country as much as we want it for them; otherwise, this is an endless war. This is the forever war.

Come to my office. In front of the door I have four easels. I am sorry to tell you they are huge easels with small print. On those are the names of the dead from California or based in California. We are all faced with this in our States more and more--broken-hearted mothers, hysterical children. And what is the ultimate plan?

First, it was the mission: go get the weapons of mass destruction. Then we found out there were none. That mission was done. Second mission: go get Saddam Hussein. Our military was brilliant. They got Saddam Hussein. He has been brought to trial. Then they said, well, things are still not good. Maybe you ought to get his family members, and we will show them to the Iraqis. That will stop the killing. Tell them that we mean business. Our military did it. That didn't help. Oh, well, we will get a terrorist. That will show them. That didn't help because the underlying problem is these are people who have hatreds that go way back. They have to decide if they want to set those hatreds aside. Otherwise, we will be there forever.

We are fueling terrorism. We cannot stop this civil war. And we are paying the price in dead and wounded, 20,000-plus, with the worst injuries you can imagine, including brain damage, burns, things that I don't know whether any of us here could actually imagine.

The cost is weighing us down. Everywhere you look we don't have the money for this, we don't have the money for that, we don't even have the money for what Senator Sessions is putting before the body, which he voted for before. There are areas of the border where you can build the fence. This isn't an issue with me. But we don't even have the money for that. It is not even in this bill that is before us. Where are we going to get it?

I wasn't going to go on and on with these different subjects because I really came to talk about the state of agriculture in my State. I am going to do that now. But when the Senator from Alabama--and he is most sincere--came down here and attacked people who are trying to find a reasonable solution to a difficult problem and said that they were slandering the military if they do not agree with the President, I had to talk about these things.

It was a Republican President who said this. I wish I had the exact quote. I will paraphrase it. This was Teddy Roosevelt. He said--and I paraphrase--that the President is the most important elected official among many, but those who say that he should not be criticized are guilty of being servile and border on the treasonous.

I can tell you when I came here, I took an oath to protect and defend my country. I told the people of California they could count on me to do that. I didn't come here to be a servile Senator, to rubberstamp any President, Democratic, Republican, Independent, you name it. And I certainly didn't come here to say to another Senator who might not agree with me that if they do not support the President they are slandering the military. I find that over the top, outrageous.

We have a bill before us that, as I understand it, the Republicans are not going to allow us to amend. I hope I am wrong. I hope Senator Frist, in fact, will allow us to amend it because there are some very good ideas in this body that need to be heard about security, about immigration reform. And I know my colleagues in the Chamber today have worked very hard to try to bring balance into the way we approach the immigration debate. I support them on that.

I want to tell you what is happening in my State right now. We haven't acted, and we haven't taken care of the broader issue. I have a farm community, an agricultural community that is in deep trouble. It seems to me, since we have 62 Members supporting the Craig-Kennedy bill, which is the AgJOBS bill, that at minimum we ought to be allowed to offer an amendment, which I know Senator Craig wants to do, to deal with this terrific problem. We must do more than one thing at a time.

To those people who say we will take care of the fence, and then after it is built we will figure out how we can take care of the rest of the immigration problem, I say that is a recipe for economic disaster, at least in the agricultural community.

I want to read to you a letter that I received from an organization that represents 1,100 organizations, the United Fresh Produce Association. The headline says: ``Farmers to Congress: Support a Safe and Secure American Food Supply, Pass an Immigration Fix Before the Election of 2006.''

It goes on to say that we have a horrible problem in our agricultural industry.

Here is what they say:

American labor-intensive agriculture has proactively sought

a solution to its labor and immigration challenges since the

early 1990's. Unfortunately, Congress has failed to act. Now,

growers and producers are experiencing actual labor shortages

rather than just shortages of legal workers. Labor shortages

are being reported from coast to coast. Crop losses are

starting to occur, from berries and pears in the West to

oranges in Florida.

Specialty crops, fruits, vegetables, nursery, greenhouse

and floriculture plants, turfgrass, sod, wine grapes, forage

crops, and Christmas trees comprise 50 percent of the value

of the American crop agriculture. They are labor-intensive

crops, and they are at risk. Also at risk are poultry, dairy

and livestock production.

My dairymen tell me the same thing. They talk about the fact that the 50-year-old flawed guest worker program just isn't working. It is unresponsive, it is bureaucratic, and it is expensive. It is litigation prone. They are asking for this AgJOBS bill.

You may ask: Senator, why can't you offer this amendment? The answer has to come from the Republican side. They control this place. I can tell you right now there is support from 1,100 businesses from growers to shippers, wholesalers, retailers in every state want this bill.

I ask unanimous consent that their letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, we need to pass an AgJOBS bill. Our farmers and our ranchers are begging us to do it. They need a solution. But because we haven't acted, everything is paralyzed.

I want to show you a picture of Toni Skully, a pear farmer from Lake County, CA, looking at the pear crop she lost because she didn't have enough workers to pick the trees. Pear farms are an estimated $80- million-a-year business in California. They were unable to harvest 35 percent of their crop this year due to the lack of field and packinghouse labor. Unfortunately, situations like Toni's and the pear growers of Lake County are happening all over California.

I discussed this with my colleagues. They are telling me it is happening in their States, too. My lemon growers in San Diego are experiencing a 15- to 20-percent harvest loss. Avocado farmers in Ventura County are worried about workers for the December planting season. Tree fruit growers in Fresno County have seen their labor force increase by as much as 50 percent. In Sonoma, as many as 17,000 seasonal farm workers have not returned from Mexico to work in the fields.

According to USDA, agriculture is a $239-billion-a-year industry. And if we refuse to provide a solution to labor shortages now, we are jeopardizing our domestic economy and our foreign export markets. We are driving up production costs that get passed on to consumers. Our consumers are already having trouble. Even with the decrease in gasoline prices, they are way up from where they where historically. They are dealing with health insurance premiums that are way up. They are dealing with college tuition costs and education costs that are way up. Now they are going to walk in the supermarket where we have such good prices and see that prices are up because of the inability to hire people because there has been a crackdown on the workers.

All of that is happening for one reason: the House wouldn't follow the Senate. The Senate had taken care of it. We had a good, broad bill that dealt with border security, additional guards at the border, and everything they needed at the border, plus a way to deal with the agricultural industry and the millions of workers who are in the shadows who are afraid to come out of the shadows.

Let me tell you, do you think that makes us secure when we don't know who they are? I don't think it does for a minute. That is why we need to have this type of bill passed in the Senate.

But at minimum, I say to Senator Frist, allow us to offer the Craig amendment. Senator Feinstein is very strong on this.

It was interesting. Independent of one another we immediately said we ought to offer the Craig-Kennedy amendment. She and I talked to Senator Craig. We said: Please put us on as cosponsors.

A 2006 study done by the American Farm Bureau found that if agriculture's access to migrant labor is cut off, as much as $5 billion to $9 billion in annual production would be lost--and that is just the short-term prediction. If agriculture's access to migrant labor is cut off, as much as $5 billion to $9 billion in annual production of primarily import-sensitive commodities would be lost in the short term. That is a statistic from the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Again, this is a place where Republicans and Democrats should come together. I don't understand why Senator Frist will not allow us to offer this Craig amendment. We have a vast majority in this body in favor of it. Our farmers say pass the AgJOBS bill now.

It is supported by United Fresh Fruit and Vegetables, the Agricultural Coalition for Immigration Reform, the National Council of Agricultural Employers, Western United Dairymen, the California Grape and Tree Fruit League, California Citrus Mutual, among many other agricultural groups.

The AgJOBS bill pulls together both the owners and the workers. This is rare in and of itself to have everybody come together, farmer groups and the agribusiness people coming together, and yet with all that support--I believe we are up to 62 supporters in the Senate--we cannot at this stage be assured that Senator Frist, the Republican leader, will allow us to have a vote on this amendment.

The AgJOBS bill would allow immigrant farm workers who are here now to harvest the crops. It would put 1.5 million workers on a path toward legal status if they prove they worked in agriculture before enactment of the law, and if they work 3 to 5 more years in agriculture after its enactment.

It is a way to save the workforce and get people out of the shadows. We know who they are. That is key, to know who is in this country, not to have people hiding. It makes no sense.

In May, the Senate again passed immigration reform that included this very language we want to offer. It got 62 votes. Building a border fence--again, I voted for it. There are parts of our border that need that kind of structure. I don't have a problem with it.

What I have a problem with is the fact that is not going to solve our problem because we need to address the economy. We are worried about a housing slump. It is coming on pretty quick. We hope it does not materialize, but it does not look good. In many cases, a housing slump is followed by a recession. Do we want to add to the trouble by having a situation where as much as $5 to $9 billion in annual production is lost? I don't think so.

I will do whatever I can to convince the Republican leadership to allow Congress to take care of agriculture. When we have a bill that is supported by 62 Senators, on both sides of the aisle, that is supported by labor and management, it makes sense to move it forward. I cannot stand the thought of looking in the eyes of my dairymen and my farmers one more time when they come back here and say the first issue on their agenda is this problem they are having with their workforce.

There is a way to do this that makes sense. There is a way to do this that will give us control of our border. That is what we ought to be doing. We ought to be looking, at the minimum, to saving our agricultural industry.

I say to my Republican friends, and I am being very honest, I am not sure farmers have been my strong supporters over the years. They usually go Republican. I can read the list of supporters. What is the majority doing, shutting them out?

Let's work together. Let's work together for them, for the consumers, for the workers. We cannot afford the one-two punch of an agriculture industry that begins to fall apart as the housing industry is having problems. We just cannot afford to see another sector have a problem. Autos, housing, now agriculture?

Please, this is too important to play politics with. Help our agriculture businesses. Help our workers. Help get people out of the shadows. Do something to help America. Don't keep this bill so narrow in focus that we do not see the forest for the trees.

I hope we have some good news and that there will be a good agreement on our surveillance issue, on our military tribunal issue. I hope the leadership will open this up to save our agriculture industries. They are asking us for this.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I come to the floor this afternoon to speak about the issue which is before us at the moment; that is, H.R. 6061. We voted on a motion to proceed to debate today and invoked cloture on that motion by getting a substantial number of votes. Now we are in the next phase of the

rule process in which we would actually move to the bill, debate it, and possibly amend it.

I voted this morning to move this bill forward because I believe it is important for the American people to understand that we are very serious about border control. If this bill serves that purpose, then that is a step in the right direction.

It is not my intent to come here and say it is a bad bill. It is my intent to come to the Senate floor and talk about what we have done to date in the area of border security and that a piece of paper, a piece of legislation, does not a safe border make. It establishes the legal basis for which we build upon a foundation for safe border and border action, but it is the financing of it, it is the funding of the necessary construction, the supplying and the training of Border Patrol men and women, and creating the devices and vehicles necessary to effectively monitor and control our borders that build a safe border.

Step 1 is a very critical process this Senate, and the Congress itself, has been involved in for some time; that is, the recognition of a broken immigration system and an unsecured border structure in our country that has allowed, over two decades, possibly 8 to 10 million foreign nationals to come into this country illegally.

America didn't awaken to this issue until after 9/11. It awakened because it found that some who had come, legally and illegally, were intent on delivering the citizens of this country an evil act, and that happened. Not only did it kill nearly 3,000 of our fellow country men and women, but it launched this country into a new dimension of foreign policy that we had not been involved in or as intent on as we should have been a long while ago--a war against radical Islamic fundamentalism and the tools they use in that war known as terrorism.

That is where we are today. It has swept our country. It is the political debate of the day. It is the frustration of the American citizen to try to understand why we are where we are today and what we are doing and why young men and women bearing the uniform of the United States of America are dying in a foreign land or foreign lands. All of this issue is really one. It is a combination of understanding the world we live in, and that is a world that is not as safe as we would like it to be, and there are very real enemies out there. But it is also understanding a new world that we live in right here on the North American Continent and one that we have ignored for years; that is, creating secure borders and defining and designing a well-run immigration program that responds to our needs and our economy and, at the same time, is fair and responsible to those foreign nationals who would like to come to our country to work.

I began to work on this issue not just a year ago, not just 2 years ago, but in 1999. I first looked at it through the eyes of American agriculture when they came to me and said: Senator, we have a problem. We have a very big problem. The H-2A program that supplies foreign national workers to agriculture doesn't work. It is broken. It is bureaucratic. It is nonfunctional and doesn't meet our seasonal needs. As a result, that Federal H-2A guest worker program only supplies about 40,000 to 45,000 workers. But we need and have over 1 million in our workforce who are foreign nationals and, frankly, they are illegal, and we know they are. It ought to be fixed because we don't want to base our economy as American agricultural producers on an illegal process because someday it may do us damage.

So I began to work, along with several others, to try to build and propose changes within the immigration laws to create a legal guest worker program. We were doing that in 1999 and 2000. And in 2001, as we all know, America's roof literally fell in as we were attacked by the terrorist elements of radical Islamic fundamentalism.

America became angry and frustrated. We began to find out that our immigration process was broken. I knew about it. I was working on it at the time. What I kept saying to my colleagues in counseling them is, as we secure our borders, let's also redo our immigration laws to identify the illegals who are in our country--treat them justly and fairly but identify them--to see if some of them deserve to stay here and work, while at the same time making sure we have a system that in the future recognizes the need for immigrant labor in our economy and specific to agriculture.

We worked on that a long while.

This year the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration bill. Parts of it I agreed with and parts I disagreed with. I voted for it to move the process along because I thought it was critically necessary because I didn't want to get the cart in front of the horse. I wanted the horse in front of the cart, and the horse in front of the cart is border security as a first line of defense in monitoring and controlling illegals in our country. The second line is a legal process which makes sure that those who are here are legal, and those who want to come to work in our economy are legal. And if you don't do them both in tandem, I think you create phenomenal problems for our country and our economy.

While we have been doing all of this, some would say we have done nothing on the border. That is why we need to pass H.R. 6061. If they are saying that, they are not looking at the facts, and they don't recognize what has happened.

Let me read some of the facts of what we are doing. We have increased funding by $7.97 billion--billion--for border, port, and maritime security. We spent $34 billion on the border and port and maritime security to date. We have added 3,736 new Border Patrol agents, out of a total of 14,000, whom we are training and supplying over the next 5 years. And it was the Craig-Byrd amendment of 2 years ago, at the time of appropriations on the floor, when real dollars went into the program--$500 million a year--to train those border patrolmen that we are talking about right here at this moment.

So if you detain and arrest foreign nationals who are illegal in our country, what do you do with them? You have to hold them. We didn't have anyplace to keep them. We have now added 9,150 new detention beds out of a total of 27,000.

We are now building 370 miles of fences in the congested urban areas along our southwestern border with Mexico. We are doing it right now. The legislation before us simply talks about it. Concrete is being poured, wire is being strung, and double fencing is being created as we speak. Why? Because many of us thought it necessary 2 or 3 years ago to get started in this process that is critically important right now.

In the area of border tactical infrastructure and facility construction--and by that we are talking about surveillance equipment, electronics, sensing devices--$682 million is being spent. The numbers go on and on and on.

Why I am here talking about this is because we are today building a border system to secure and control our borders.

Just before the Easter recess, I was one of those privileged to be at the White House to talk to our President about our chairmanships. I am chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee. And that afternoon the President said to me: Well, Senator Craig, how are things in Veterans?

I said: Mr. President, I don't want to talk about veterans today. I want to talk to you about something that I think is critical and necessary that we do now.

He said: What is that?

I said: I think you need to declare a state of emergency on our southwest border, nationalize the Guard, assemble our National Guard on the border and close it.

He looked at me with a bit of surprise. He said: How can you propose that? You are the advocate of AgJOBS, Senator Craig. You are the guy out there promoting reform in immigration right now.

I said very simply and very clearly: Mr. President, we have to build credibility with the American people that we have lost because our borders are not secure and we have not controlled them.

Now, all of us and all who may be listening know the rest of that story. There are now 6,000 Guard men and women deployed to our southwest border, and that allows us to more effectively utilize the Border Patrol along our border and to spread our Guard out into the broad expanses of a 2,000-mile border which are maybe less dangerous

than the congested areas where the greatest numbers come across. Our Guard men and women are not policemen. Our border patrolmen are. They are trained. They are officers of the law so they can detain and arrest. But at the same time, the combination of using our border patrolmen, our National Guard men and women, and our Border Patrol is the right combination.

The reason I talk about this and set this idea in front of my colleagues is to express what is really going on out there; that is, this country is investing heavily on the southwestern border as we speak. We are spending billions of dollars. Fences are being built, and there are literally thousands of our men and women on that border securing it.

Is it working? Yes, it is working. Is our border closed? No, it is not. It is a 2,000-mile border across arid, desolate, and oftentimes extremely rugged terrain, and we will have to continue to invest to do that.

Let me tell my colleagues and show my colleagues the proof of what I am saying. The border is closing. My colleagues will remember that cart-and-horse analogy I used a few moments ago, where if we didn't close the border and get a comprehensive legal process to bring migrant workers into our country for the sake of agriculture and other industries, we could do real damage to our economy. So the border is closing, but we haven't passed a comprehensive reform bill. In fact, the politics would suggest we can't get there right now. And most assuredly, the U.S. House of Representatives, in my opinion, did the wrong thing this summer. They went out and condemned the work product of the Senate when they should have been at a conference table trying to work out our differences. They should have been trying to solve the very real problem that is now embodied in all of these press releases which are pouring in from across the country that speak of the crisis in American agriculture. It is a crisis born out of the reality of what I have just talked about: that a border that should be closed and secured is, in fact, closing and being secured.

Let me start with Idaho: ``Potato Growers Struggle Without Immigrant Labor.'' The potato harvest is now just starting in the State of Idaho. The packing sheds will soon be full as that marvelous Idaho baking potato begins to sell in the world market. There aren't enough people available this year to help harvest those potatoes, and many of those people who are not available are migrant workers. The reason they are not there is because they can't get there. The legal system can't function quickly enough to get them there, and those who were coming illegally aren't coming because the border is closing.

Another press release: ``Potato Growers Face Labor Shortage.'' That is just in Idaho where tragically enough, and in a real sense, we probably have 30,000 or 40,000 illegal foreign nationals working in agriculture and other work areas every year, and our unemployment rate is 2.5 percent, which means we are at full employment. But we need that kind of labor, and it is not coming.

Now let me continue--but only for a moment because other colleagues are here on the Senate floor to talk about this issue--down through these press releases. My colleague from California is on the Senate floor. She represents the largest, wealthiest agricultural region in our Nation known as the great San Joaquin Valley. There is no other agriculture like it in the world. If you haven't been there and visited, it is simply worth your time. Every fresh fruit and vegetable known to any consumer in this country is grown in the great San Joaquin Valley. I have always marveled at that agriculture. It is also true the Senator from California and the San Joaquin Valley probably host more illegal workers than any other area in our country. What is happening there today is that crops are rotting in the fields. Fruit is not being picked. Vegetables are not being harvested. That kind of agriculture that is intensively hand labor agriculture is suffering. I am told by some we could literally lose the raisin industry of our country, and that would be a tragedy if the politics of the Congress will not allow us to get to a legal system to allow that type of workforce to exist in our country today.

I could walk my colleagues through hundreds of press releases and the stories now being told by American agriculture of nobody there to help them pick their crops, to supply the marvelous vegetable stands of the produce sections of America's retail food industry with the abundance that we have all known. We saw it start in February in Yuma, AZ, in the great Imperial Valley where billions of dollars' worth of vegetables are picked in February and March to supply us--lettuce and celery and all of those kinds of things that we are used to. A third of it didn't get picked this year. That is a crop that is worth $3.2 billion at the farm gate, and a third of it rotted in the fields because we in Congress couldn't get our act together. That is a tragedy and it is a shame.

It is believed between now and the end of harvest, or between now and next year, American agriculture could literally lose billions of dollars' worth of fresh produce that would go to the supermarket shelves of our country for all of us to eat, all of us. And if it isn't there and there is a limited amount, you know what happens. The price starts heading up.

Those producers of those products tell me they have advertised in their communities, they have pled with people to come out and work. They said they would increase their salaries substantially. But nobody is there to do the work. Americans do not do stoop labor anymore. It is a reality that we ought to face. Yet we have not been willing to face it.

Yes, we need a fence and we are building it. Yes, we need border security and we are accomplishing it, and we have not finished. Clearly, for the safety and security of this country our borders are more important than nearly anything else. But if you cannot feed your country, if you are going to lose your agriculture, if you are going to cause bankruptcies that are no fault of the farmers themselves, then you are doing some very real damage--along with your unwillingness to recognize the reality of a law that no longer works and a work product we are trying to accomplish at this moment.

We will probably have to go through an election. We will probably have to get the politics of the election out of the way before the House and Senate will come to the reality of the problem that is clearly before us today because we are just a week and a half from adjournment or recess until after the election.

The kind of comprehensive work that we should have been doing in August and we should have been doing in September turned into politics and not constructive work. I hope the House bill in front of us is not an extension of those politics and politics alone. I hope it really is meant to fit into a total package of border control and comprehensive immigration reform that allows this country and our economy and our hard-working agricultural people a legal, transparent, and open guest worker immigrant labor force. We need it. We have always needed it. We should not be denying its reality today.

The Senate attempted to accomplish that. We argued mightily on immigration reform on the floor of the Senate for nearly a month, and we do not all agree because it is in itself a very contentious issue. It has all aspects of the American culture and the American emotion tied into it. But as we studied it I think a majority recognized the reality of doing the right thing. The horse and the cart have to be connected. Border control and border security is the first line of defense, and a legal structure behind it that gives employers a legal, identifiable workforce is necessary and appropriate, and they have to be connected.

Let me close with this thought: We do not reform immigration laws in this country, we let them go. Politically we will not handle them. But we will continue to tighten a fence until our 2,000-mile land border is complete and the border closes. There will be a new phenomenon emerge in the port of Los Angeles along the coast of California, and they will be called ``boat people.'' Because those who want to come here to work, once we have created the fence across the land surface that they now trek, will find another way to get here. Somebody in a fast speedboat will charge $1,000 a head and they will pick them up in Mexico and shoot them around the water and across the waters and into the coastline.

My point is simply this. You have to have two things that work here to

make it work. You have to have border security and you have to have a law, a law that works, so when that employer hires a foreign national, the ID card is real and they know they are hiring a legal person. I am not going to put American agriculture or any other law-abiding employer at risk when they need people to get the harvest out unless we do so in a way that says we will sanction you if you hire somebody who is illegal, but we are going to make sure that you have a workforce that is legal and has the kind of transparency of ID and uncounterfeitable documents that are critical and that are in the Senate bill.

Those are some of the issues we need to talk about and we are going to ignore now until after the election. Here are the press releases. Billions of dollars will be lost in American agriculture this year and American consumers will pay an increased price for the quality produce they buy on the fresh fruit shelves of our country. It is a reality. It is happening as we speak.

I thought it was important that I come to the floor to talk about it. Most want to simply ignore it because the politics of the issue is simply too difficult to deal with. It is not too difficult to deal with. We can do both as a great nation. We can secure our borders. We can improve our immigration laws. We can provide a legal and necessary guest worker/migrant worker program for the segments of our economy that speak to that type of workforce. It is our responsibility. I hope we do not shirk it or turn our back on it.

American agriculture, along with a lot of other segments of our economy, will suffer if, in fact, we do not have the political will to accomplish the right and responsible issue and things at hand.

I yield the floor.

I believe when there was a clear and clean vote on AgJOBS alone there were 53 who voted for it that day and there were 4 absent who would have voted for it. I believe there are between 58 and 60 votes for the AgJOBS provision and bill the Senator speaks to.

That is correct.

If the Senator will yield, she makes a tremendously important point. The original AgJOBS bill that brought the vote I just spoke to is not the bill before us now. The amendments that the Senator has brought and the amendment that I brought--because the Judiciary Committee itself changed some of it at the Senator's guidance and direction, and on the floor we added additional amendments--added the safeguards and protections and fines and the requirement of paying back taxes, to cause that illegal, who might become legal through this process, certain responsibilities that were not in the original bill.

The Senator is absolutely correct. It identifies and deals with those agricultural workers who have been here for 3 years or more, who are undocumented, who could become legal. That is step one. Then it deals with a reform, streamlining of and a more usable H-2A Program, to implement an effective guest worker program.

The point the Senator is making I think is very important for the Senate to understand. If we were to pass AgJOBS tomorrow, if it were to become law, many agricultural workers who were once in the field working but may have moved somewhere else in our economy with the opportunity to become legal would return to agriculture. It is not letting more across the border. It is causing those who have moved to construction and housing and other places to say, Gee, you mean I could become a legal worker if I went back to agriculture and stayed there for 150 workdays?

The answer is yes. There could be a near immediate relief brought by the passage of the AgJOBS provision.

We are not quite sure. We believe it could be between 35,000 and 40,000.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to claim my 1 hour at this point and ask to speak as in morning business.

Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the most pressing issue that I believe families feel across this country and certainly in my home State of Michigan, and that relates to the squeeze that families are feeling on all sides today. It starts with the issue of jobs. We see that almost 3 million jobs have been lost in the manufacturing sector in the last 6 years--almost 3 million jobs. When we look at this chart, under this administration we see that we have the slowest job growth of any administration in over 70 years. We have to go back to Herbert Hoover to see the kind of job loss that we are now seeing--the slowest job growth in over 70 years.

In my home State of Michigan it is even worse than that, because what we are seeing is the impact of a lack of a 21st century manufacturing strategy on those in my State who have been the global leaders--who are the global leaders--in manufacturing. Almost 3 million jobs have been lost in manufacturing alone, and 260,000 of those jobs have been in manufacturing in Michigan.

Now, to add insult to injury, we see expenses going up on all sides for families. They are losing good-paying jobs.

Absolutely. I yield to my dear friend who is the ranking member on the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee.

That is correct.

Absolutely. Prior to the Great Depression.

Absolutely. In my home State of Michigan, because we are the global leaders in manufacturing, and I know in my good friend's home State of Maryland it is the same way, in terms of manufacturing, that number is even worse because of the lack of effectiveness in enforcing trade-offs, because of our inability to address health care and being able to change the way we fund health care, because of the lack of investment in education and innovation. That number does not reflect the fact of the impact of the loss of good-paying jobs, the kind of jobs that have built the middle class of this country.

Frankly, I am very proud to represent a State that has been at the forefront in the auto industry, with an industry that has created the middle class in this country--middle class jobs, not only in autos, in furniture production, in other manufacturing.

The reality is that we have lost almost 3 million jobs that created the middle class of this country. Even though there has been just a tiny little bit of an increase here over all, we see it is the lowest, slowest job growth of any administration. We have to go way back to Herbert Hoover to find an administration that has a worse jobs record than this particular President.

I have to say it is particularly insulting to those of us in Michigan who, given this record and the fact that we have almost 3 million jobs that have been lost, and 260,000 manufacturing jobs in Michigan alone, that when the President of the United States came to Michigan a couple of weeks ago to do political fundraising, he didn't have 30 minutes to meet with the auto industry. He didn't have 15 minutes to meet with the executives of the largest employers in the country. In fact, he has postponed or canceled I believe three different meetings with them and now says he is prepared to meet with them after the election.

This isn't about elections. This isn't about politics. This is about a fight for a way of life. This is a fight for a way of life in this country. While he is waiting until after the elections to meet with the auto industry and to begin to engage to do something about these numbers, we have folks who are facing layoffs today. We have headlines. We have Ford Motor Company and their latest headlines. We have struggles going on throughout the industry. Every day, somebody in Michigan gets up in the morning and worries about whether or not they are going to have a job, worries about whether or not they are going to be able to afford to send their kids to college, whether or not their health care is going to still be there, and whether or not they are going to be able to pay for it.

To add insult to injury, too many people who have worked all their lives and who have paid into a pension are now finding themselves in a situation where that pension won't be there. I think that is the ultimate outrage. In the United States of America, I never thought I would have to stand on the floor of the U.S. Senate and say somebody may be in a situation to lose a pension they have paid for their whole lives. We addressed this issue on a bipartisan basis, and I am very proud we put in place efforts that are going to save many of those pensions because of the work that we did a few weeks ago. But too many people still find themselves on the line as a result of that, and that should not be an issue. Bankruptcy or no bankruptcy, in this country you ought to get your pension, period.

So we have a situation where more and more families are on the edge, more and more families who believe in America, who believe in playing by the rules, who get up every day and work hard at one job, two jobs, three jobs, and still find themselves falling more and more behind.

On top of the job situation that they are concerned about, they are being squeezed on all sides by all of the other costs that relate to their families. We see, for instance, a 44 percent increase in the cost of college tuition, room, and board--a 44 percent increase. So here we are, we are in a transition. We hear that the economy is changing. We need to be investing in education. We need to be investing in opportunity for the future, and in innovation and, at the same time, we see the costs going up, and the exact opposite policies are being put in place in terms of cutting opportunity for people.

We all want our children to have a better opportunity than we have had. I am very fortunate to have two children who have worked their way through school and a wonderful stepdaughter who just graduated. I understand about

student loans and what that means. I know the costs have gone up, because we have watched them go up over the last several years. There is no question that families are feeling more and more squeezed as it relates to creating opportunity for their children to be successful, and that makes no sense in this country. That makes no sense at this time when we could be doing something about it.

Health insurance premiums have gone up 71 percent. Seventy-one percent under the Bush policies and this administration--71 percent. Now, this is an issue for us in Michigan with not only families and individuals who are struggling to be able to pay for what I believe should be a right in this country, not a privilege, which is health care, but we know what it is doing to our businesses as well. We know that in a global economy, we are the only industrialized country that pays for health care the way we pay for it. So we add to the burdens on our manufacturers, our small businesses, and others by having health care predominantly on the backs of business

To make it even worse, we end up, because of our system, because of the craziness of our health care system, paying twice as much of our GDP for health care as any other country, but we have 46 million people with no health insurance. What is wrong with this picture? The United States of America has the highest infant mortality rate. Shame on us. We can do better than that. All this takes is a matter of political will, to make the changes that are necessary so no family has to go to bed at night praying that the kids are not going to get sick; no small business has to worry about whether they are going to be able to find health care for themselves and their employees; and no manufacturer should have to worry about whether they are going to be able to compete internationally and still provide health care for their workers.

Health care costs have gone up 71 percent. To add insult to injury, gasoline prices experienced a 104-percent increase. They are coming down now. They are coming down a little bit before the election. We know what will happen after the election. And we also know what has happened to people trying to go to work, trying to take the kids to school.

In my home State, in Michigan, where we have a very robust tourism season, we want everybody to be able to go to the cottage up north, take the boat out, and enjoy the wonderful Great Lakes or go fishing on the inland lakes and rivers. This is a major economic factor for us, gas prices. What happens to individuals who have to take more money out of their pockets just to be able to get to work? Maybe this summer they didn't take that trip they normally take, which means our small businesses up north were hurt. It means economically we are not seeing the robust investment in tourism that normally we have seen in Michigan.

Families are being squeezed on all sides. This is just a fraction of the cost we have seen going up. What has been the response of this administration? What has been the response of the Republicans in Congress? Unfortunately, the response has been, first of all, to block our efforts to ban price gouging. As part of the Energy bill that passed a year ago, an amendment of mine was agreed to that required the Federal Trade Commission to do a complete investigation of price gouging. It took them way too long, but they finally came back and indicated that on the surface of it, they didn't think it was happening and they really didn't have the tools. We had not defined price gouging so that they could really be serious about that. The administration basically took a pass on whether there is price gouging. So we introduced legislation to define it. That has not been able to move because there has been no support to do that.

Health care costs? We could go on and on in all of the areas in which, instead of coming together and doing what we can do, efforts have been blocked. Here are some of the basics, starting with the Medicare prescription drug program. Instead of having a plan that works for seniors and the disabled, a plan was written that was great for the drug industry. Included in that was the outrageous provision that we are not allowed--Medicare is not allowed to negotiate group discounts. Can you imagine that anywhere else? Anybody knows bulk purchasing is cheaper, negotiating group prices is cheaper. Yet, in the area of Medicare, in behalf of the industry, that is prohibited.

What is the result of that? First of all, we have a Medicare plan, essentially, that is privatizing Part D, requiring those to go through private insurance rather than directly through Medicare. There is just a great big hole. Some folks have called it a doughnut hole, this gap in coverage, because there is not enough money to pay for complete coverage because they can't negotiate group prices. All the money is going to the industry rather than going to make sure there is comprehensive coverage.

There is a better way to do that. I am introducing legislation that would allow us to go directly to Part D. Any senior, any person with disabilities, could go directly to Medicare, sign up under Part D under the normal copays and premiums, go to their local pharmacy, they negotiate prices, we eliminate the gap in coverage, and folks would get what they need without all of the confusion and complexity. But that has stalled. We have not been able to move that forward because of the administration and those in control.

The Senator is absolutely correct. We have the model. It is the VA. They have done it very well. They have been able to get a better deal, anywhere from a 35-percent to a 40-percent lower price because they negotiate prices. I don't know anywhere else in the Federal Government where we are not trying to get the best price, where we are not trying to negotiate, except in the area of prescription drugs, except in the area of lifesaving medicine where somebody may need it or they may not be able to live or may not be able to treat their symptoms for high blood pressure or diabetes or get their heart medicine or get their cancer medicine--except in the area that is lifesaving.

Even with the VA, which does a marvelous job in negotiating prices, we are able to do that in every area except Medicare--Medicare, the health care system for older Americans and the disabled. It is the only place where the decision was made to go with the drug companies rather than to go with the people who are on Medicare.

There are so many areas in health care costs we should be addressing--health IT, bringing down the cost of prescription drugs with the use of generic drugs, addressing the issue of health care costs. Senator Durbin and Senator Lincoln have a very important proposal that would allow small businesses to pool together nationally and to be able to have a pool--whether it is Blue Cross, whether it is other private insurance, whether it is HMOs--be able to pool together to get the best price. That came to the floor and was voted down.

I have legislation that would provide a catastrophic tax credit for our manufacturers. We know about 1 percent of employees in a business will be seriously ill during the year, but it is 20 to 25 percent of the cost of the health care paid during that year. We could take a major step forward if we provided a tax credit for catastrophic costs to help our manufacturers and our businesses.

This is not rocket science. It is about having the political will and the right values and the right priorities. This has not happened here, and every day people continue to struggle with their health care. Too many people end up in emergency rooms where we pay twice as much because they are sicker than they should be and they are not getting the care at the time they should be getting it. They get treated. The hospital, of course, does the treatment, as it should. Then the costs roll over onto everybody with insurance. That is why

we pay so much for health care, and we in the Senate should be focusing on this as a No. 1 priority.

I mentioned college tuition before. Right when we need to be focusing on more opportunity for people in a changing economy--we all talk about education all the time--what happens here? Right before Christmas, we had the largest cut in student loans in the history of the country, $12 billion. For everybody who had to refinance their loan by July 1 and saw their interest rate go up, it was as a result of that.

Then, on top of that, we see the President proposed the largest cut in education for next year, the largest ever proposed since the Department of Education was established. Who would believe that at this time, in a global economy, that we ought to be proposing and passing the largest cuts ever suggested for education? These are the wrong priorities and the wrong direction.

And then, certainly, time and time again, we have tried to pass a minimum wage bill that truly raises the minimum wage for everyone. It is something that makes sense. It is something where workers in every State will find that their minimum wage will be raised.

Let me just say that I see our distinguished colleague here, Senator Reed, who has played such a distinguished role on economic issues, and I will yield to him to speak in just a moment, but when you look at the numbers and you look at what is happening to families across this country, we need a new direction. We need a new direction. We need to create a new set of priorities based on a different set of values that put Americans first--American businesses and American workers.

What I see happening in this country is a willingness by the President and those in charge of Congress to accept a race to the bottom in a global economy. Too many workers in my State have been told: If you only work for less, pay more in health care, and lose your pension, we can be successful. That is a lose-lose strategy. First of all, there is always going to be somebody in another country who can work for less.

I don't want to win that race. Nobody in Michigan is interested in winning a race to the bottom. What we understand is that we need to do what America does best, which is make this a race to the top. In order to make it a race to the top, we have to have a level playing field on trade. We can compete with anybody if the rules are fair, if it is a level playing field. We have to change the way we fund health care and address health care costs for businesses and families. We have to change. We have to start passing legislation that addresses health care in a positive way, to truly bring down costs, not just shift them around but bring down costs in a real way and make health care available and affordable and support businesses and families.

We have to continue to say we are going to protect pensions. We did make a step forward in that area, and I am proud that we did that together.

Then we have to race like crazy on education and innovation. That is what we do in America. Let's race up. Let's make every other country race to keep up with us. Let's be the ones who are continuing to invest in education, in opportunity for every child, in opportunities for everybody to be able to go to college and focus on areas of math and science and technology and engineering and all of those things we need to do to make it a race up, areas of health research, creating new opportunities and new discoveries. That is what we do in America. That is what we have always done in America. But we have seen in the last 6 years a willingness to put that all aside for other priorities, put that all aside and make this a race to the bottom. That is not good enough.

We believe in a race to the top, and we know that is going to take a new direction. It is going to take a different set of priorities. It is going to take a different set of values to do that. But in a global economy, if we are going to keep our middle class, we have to do that.

We are in a fight for our way of life in this country. It is not going to do any good if a few people have a lot of money if the average person has no money in their pocket to be able to buy that house, that car, send the kids to college, get the boat, and be able to enjoy the beautiful lakes in Michigan, be able to buy their medication. It is not going to matter if everybody is being asked to race to the bottom.

So I am hopeful--in fact, insistent--that we turn things around. America can do better. We need a new direction. We need a race to the top. We can do this. It just takes people who get it, people who get it to be in charge with the right values and the right priorities, and Americans are expecting that to happen. In fact, they are tired of waiting for it to happen. And so am I.