Illegal Immigration Enforcement and Social Security Protection Act of 2007

I thank the Speaker for this time, once again allowing us to begin the 30-Something Working Group.

We have a lot of issues to talk about. And as everyone who has followed the 30-Something Working Group over the years knows, this is our attempt to let the American people know what is happening in their Congress and what the issues are that are being discussed, and we have requested some time here to be able to go into some detail on what these issues are. And I wanted to start today by talking about the situation at Walter Reed, which I know is a subject that is of great concern to everybody in this Chamber, and it is certainly the issue that I am hearing the most about as I travel around my district. And if we have some time after we conclude that discussion, we may move on to some other issues.

But I wanted to start by talking about the situation at Walter Reed. And I have put up here for my colleagues to take a look at the Newsweek cover from this week, and we see here that this is a national story. It is the number one story in the country, and it tells the story about how we are, unfortunately in many cases, failing our wounded. You can see it on the cover.

What we are talking about with the situation at Walter Reed is we have brave men and woman who are fighting for this country, who are putting their lives on the line, who are making every possible sacrifice, and they are coming home in need of medical treatment, in many cases serious health situations, long-term medical problems, and we have not seen the best quality of care that those men and women deserve. And the situation that has been uncovered recently at Walter Reed is something that was uncovered by a Washington Post expose'. It wasn't brought to light by the people at Walter Reed, it wasn't brought to light by elected officials, it wasn't brought to light by anyone except for a series of newspaper articles.

There are two issues that we need to discuss. The second of those issues is, why did it take a Washington Post news article before people started to talk about this issue, before people started to be held accountable for this issue? Which, as I am going to talk about in the time line of events, for those of you who may wonder how this

all came about, what were the complaints, how long has this situation been known, we are going to walk through that entire time line tonight. But the second issue is, why did that Washington Post news article become the first source for all of this to happen?

The number one issue that we need to deal with as a Congress and that we can promise the American people that we are going to deal with is we need to find a solution to this problem right now. We understand there is a situation that needs to be resolved. And to be candid, the American people aren't calling for another blue ribbon panel that is going to take a 2-year study and issue a report that is 2\1/2\ inches thick and sit on somebody's desk before anything happens. They want results right now.

We need to go into every military and veterans health care facility in this country and make a determination: Are the conditions substandard? Are there actions that need to be taken? And, if so, let's deal with that immediately. Let's not wait for the course of a long- term study. There is going to be room for that and there are going to be people held accountable, and that is not to say that we are not going to work hard to detail every single fact of how this came to be. But the most important part for our military men and women who were promised quality health care when they signed up is we need to restore their confidence and their trust in the system, which right now, justifiably, is lacking. Because we have military men and women every day who are coming back, not just to Walter Reed, but all across this country to Department of Defense facilities, and veterans who have put their lives on the line who are coming back and using the VA health care system and finding that the care in many cases, as has been described with Walter Reed, is substandard. This is outrageous and this is unacceptable, and this Congress is going to take the appropriate action to make sure that these things are taken care of and they do not happen again.

So, again, the two issues: number one, fix the problem now; number two, let's get to the bottom of why it took so long for people to be held accountable and for us to get to the point where this situation was known to the American people and especially to our brave men and women.

So I do have a time line of events that we in the 30-Something Working Group are going to turn into a chart which we will be able to display at one of our future meetings, but now I did just want to read some of these things that have happened in the past.

In mid-to-late 2004, a very senior Member of this Congress, with his wife, announced that he was going to stop visiting Walter Reed out of frustration. He said he had voiced his concerns about what he was seeing to his commanders, including Major General Kiley, over the troubling incidents that he had witnessed. And this, again, is a very senior Member of this Congress, said his efforts were rebuffed and ignored. And he has a quote that says when he brought problems to the attention of Walter Reed, he was made to feel very uncomfortable. Now, that is unacceptable, and that was 2\1/2\ years ago. So right there we have a very senior Member of Congress voicing concerns and being ignored.

In November 2005, the Congress was then of course controlled by the Republican Party, and the House Veterans' Affairs Committee announced that, for the first time in at least 55 years, veteran service organizations would no longer have the opportunity to present testimony before a joint hearing of the House and Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee. So in November of 2005, we had an announcement from this Congress, then under Republican control, that we would not be investigating any situations and there would be no forum to bring before Congress complaints about what we were seeing at Walter Reed.

The pattern continues. In September of 2006, 13 Senators sent a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee to preserve language in the House Defense Appropriations bill that prohibits U.S. Army from outsourcing 350 Federal jobs at Walter Reed Medical Center. This is September of 2006. A similar provision was defeated by a close vote in the Senate of 50-48 during the bill's previous consideration.

Also in September of 2006, and again for my colleagues watching we are going to have a chart that will illustrate this and it be visible. But in September of 2006, Walter Reed awards a 5-year, $120 million contract to IAP Worldwide Services, which is run by a former senior Halliburton official, to replace a staff of 300 Federal employees. So those employees were replaced in September of 2006, despite the fact there had been to that point complaints by very senior Members of Congress about what was happening at Walter Reed.

I would pause there to ask my colleague from Connecticut, Mr. Murphy, if he is ready to weigh in on this issue. And if not, I can certainly continue down the time line.

Thank you, Mr. Murphy. And I wanted to, before getting into some of the quotes that the men and women who have been in Walter Reed have, over the course of time provided, I did want to continue down the time line. And I had left off with the 5-year, $120 million contract that was awarded to a former Halliburton official which led to the replacement of 300 employees at Walter Reed.

And I wanted to, then, quote from a New York Times article about that issue. It said: ``The prospect of privatization at Walter Reed led to a large exodus of skilled personnel after the Army reversed results, actually changed the results of an audit conducted that government employees could do the job more cheaply.''

So they had done a study that showed that things could be done in that manner. But they decided to reverse the results and move in the direction that we have described. And we have, unfortunately, seen the results.

I will move in, now, to some of the quotes. And it is troubling, I will tell my colleagues who are watching, to hear some of the complaints that were made. And I would remind, again, that in 2005, the Republican leadership of this Congress made a decision that they were going to not hold the joint hearings on this issue to allow some of these things to be brought to the attention, not only of the Congress, but of the American people. And it is unfortunate what the result has been, that 2 years went by and these things continued, and these quotes are the result.

And I am going to refer my colleagues to this chart as I am reading: ``The mold, mice and rot at Walter Reed's Building 18 compose a familiar scenario for many soldiers back from Iraq or Afghanistan. Soldiers and veterans at other facilities report bureaucratic disarray similar to Walter Reed's. Indifferent, untrained staff, lost paperwork, medical appointments that drop from the computers, and long waits for consultations.''

And what this describes, unfortunately, is that the problem at Walter Reed is not unique to Walter Reed, but it is a systemic problem across the country's military and Veterans Affairs facilities. And that is very troubling to me.

I have three VA hospitals in western Pennsylvania, one of which is in my district. And it is undergoing a $200 million renovation right now. And I am hopeful that we will, at that time, have the premiere Veterans Affairs highest-quality facility in the entire country.

But the systemic problem facing our military health facilities and our Veterans Affairs facilities is shown by some of these quotes. So, again, my colleagues want to refer to this chart. From California, this says: ``The room was swarming with fruit flies, trash was overflowing, and a syringe was lying on the table.'' That is from a facility in California.

From a facility in Fort Knox, Kentucky: ``The living conditions were the worst I had ever seen for soldiers. Paint peeling, mold, windows that didn't work. I went to the hospital chaplain to get them to issue blankets and linens. There were no nurses.''

So as troubling as the situation at Walter Reed is for those of us who are now delving into the details and learning the unfortunate facts, it is even more troubling to think that these are problems that are happening all across this country.

Well, the level of frustration I think that we are all feeling builds every day as more of these facts come out. And I think the most upsetting part is the fact that these are situations that were known within the military health apparatus, and nothing was done about it.

Complaints were made from patients. Complaints were made from families. Complaints were made, as I talked about earlier, not just from Members of Congress, but from very senior and influential Members of Congress, all of which were ignored.

And continuing with our around-the-country look at some other things that have happened, if my colleagues could refer to this chart.

This comes from Fort Campbell in Kentucky where they said: ``There were yellow signs on the door stating that our barracks had asbestos.'' This was an open and operating military facility.

From Fort Irwin in California: ``Most of us had to sign waivers where we understand that the housing we were in failed to meet minimal government standards.''

It is very troubling for me, and I am sure for my colleagues listening, to read and to hear these quotes and think of the fact that there is no group of people that should stand ahead of our men and women in the military and our military veterans when it comes time to allocate Federal resources. And we have a Federal budget that is approaching $3 trillion, and we certainly spend a lot of that on the Defense, and rightly so, Department of Defense. And to hear these situations taking place, it is just very upsetting.

So, continuing, for my colleagues, to refer to the chart again: ``Behind the door of Army Specialist Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. Signs of neglect are everywhere. Mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.''

And I will move to the last chart we have with these quotes, and then we can discuss it a little further. This is from building 18, which is the subject of the Washington Post report on Walter Reed which began this whole investigation: ``Life in building 18 is the bleakest homecoming for men and women whose government promised them good care in return for their sacrifices. `I hate it,' said one soldier, who stays in his room all day. `There are cockroaches. The elevator doesn't work. The garage door doesn't work. Sometimes there is no heat, no water.' ''

Well, I do want to assure my colleagues and the American people and reiterate what I said earlier that by far the more important thing here is fixing the problem. We have outlined, I think, in pretty graphic detail what the problem is and the scope of the problem. We are not just talking about one facility at Walter Reed, although that has been the source of the beginning of this story. We are talking about facilities all across this country. And we do need a top-to-bottom review of every single facility. Let us find every problem that exists and let us fix it right now. That is the number one issue.

And we are not as interested in casting blame in this situation. There is no question people need to be held accountable for this problem. And the hearings that we have had and the hearings that this Congress is going to continue to have with the Armed Services Committee, with the Veterans' Affairs Committee and with the Government Oversight Committee, we are going to get to the bottom of how this could possibly have happened, why it happened, who is responsible and who should be held accountable. But, again, that is the secondary issue. The primary issue is fixing the problem now. And I want to assure the American people, as I am sure my friend Mr.

Murphy does, that this timeline that I was reading from is going to stop in March 2007, as far as the situation being ignored and the situation not being brought to light. This is a new day. It is a new Congress. And we are going to take action. And it is unfortunate, and I am regretful that it took this long. But we are here now, and the situation that we are describing is not going to be easy, but we have a commitment in this Congress for Members like Mr. Murphy and myself that place no greater priority than finding the resolution to this problem and to our Nation's military men and women.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. You talked about investments, making investments in our troops and making investments in our veterans. As you know on this 30-Something Working Group, I have spent a lot of time talking about our Nation's veterans and our VA healthcare system, and I am going to spend a lot more time talking about our VA healthcare system, because, as I said, there is no group that should stand ahead of our Nation's veterans when it comes time to make funding decisions.

I wanted to talk a little bit about the decisions that have been made in past years. We have talked about this before, and I have another chart here that I would like my colleagues to take a look at. This is the underfunding, the chronic underfunding of the VA healthcare system.

We have talked before about the fact that President Bush has delivered seven State of the Union addresses now and he has only mentioned veterans healthcare in one of those seven State of the Union addresses.

I think as a Congress we have a responsibility when we talk about supporting our troops and we talk about supporting the brave men and women who we are sending off to battle, who were promised quality healthcare in

the VA health system when they signed up, we have an obligation to fund all of them at levels at which they can obtain this quality healthcare.

So let's take a look at what has happened in recent years. I refer to the chart.

In January of 2003, President Bush's budget cut veterans healthcare and eliminated 164,000 veterans from the roles of eligibility for VA healthcare. That was in January of 2003.

In March of that same year, this Congress's budget, the Republican budget that cut $14 billion from veterans healthcare, passed. 199 Democrats voted against it in this Chamber, but, unfortunately, at that point the Democrats were in the minority and they couldn't prevent these cuts. We have seen what the result has been of that $14 billion cut.

In March of 2004, the Republican budget that shortchanged veterans healthcare by an additional $1.5 billion passed Congress, and this time 201 Democrats voted against it. But, again, being in the minority, Democrats were unable to prevent those cuts, and we have seen the result.

In March of 2005, continuing, President Bush's budget shortchanged veterans healthcare by an additional $2 billion for 2005 and cut VA healthcare by $14 billion over the next 5 years. 201 Democrats voted against that.

So I think, Mr. Murphy, you would agree that you see a trend developing here over time of just cut after cut after cut to the VA healthcare system, and that is, A, not fair and not just, but it is also not sustainable, without encountering the types of problems and the systemic difficulties that we are seeing across the VA healthcare system.

So in the summer of 2005, after serious Democratic pressure, months and months of pressure and warnings that the shortfall was going to be detrimental to the VA, the Bush administration finally acknowledged that their previous budgets had been inadequate and the shortfall had been $2.7 billion. The Democrats fought all summer to get this resolved. It is a disgrace that it had to come to that. We never should have been in that position.

Then, after months and months of this discussion, in March of 2006, almost a year earlier from today, President Bush's budget cut veterans funding by an additional $6 billion over 5 years. Keep in mind, this is in the context of not mentioning veterans in his State of the Union addresses when he comes before this Chamber and outlines to us what his priorities are within his budget for the coming year. Veterans are not even mentioned. And I can see why. I wouldn't mention it either, if I had the same type of record on veterans healthcare as the President has. So in March of last year he proposed $6 billion in cuts over 5 years.

Well, something happened in November of 2006. As we all know, the American people spoke up and said they were fed up with this and weren't going to take it any more. I know I heard loud and clear throughout my campaign and certainly on that election day in November that veterans funding was a big part of why the American people were frustrated with the decisions of this administration and the decisions of this Congress up to that time.

As we have talked about many times, I said that my number one priority in considering the budget for the current year, which was left undone by the previous Congress, was veterans healthcare funding. I said I would never support a budget that did not at least maintain the current level of services for VA healthcare funding in the continuing years, and certainly in the current year.

Thankfully, under the new leadership in Congress we passed a budget for fiscal year 2007 that increased veterans funding by $3.6 billion. I won't go back and read the numbers again, but you remember hearing about a lot of billions of dollars of decreases, $14 billion over 5 years, $6 billion additionally over 5 years in previous Congresses.

The first budget we had to pass in this Congress, in the climate of enormous pressure for fiscal responsibility, we had to cut over 60 programs to find the room in the new pay-as-you-go budget scoring to pay for this, because we are not running the country on a credit card as we have in years past. We are fiscally responsible and we do have an obligation to find the funding to pay for our priorities. And we did that. We found $3.6 billion to increase funding for veterans healthcare.

I think in the time to come, very shortly you are going to see a further demonstration, a very strong demonstration from this Congress in a very difficult climate of our commitment to funding VA healthcare. That is going to be something that we are able to demonstrate to the American people, and to keep our promise to do what we said we were going to do and to do what the American people expected us to do.

But the unfortunate reality, Mr. Murphy, is that these funding cuts from the past have had a terrible effect on the institutions, both in the VA and also the lack of attention in the Department of Defense health facilities, and has led to some very, very serious problems, as outlined by the Washington Post. But those issues have consequences, and they are in the past. We have a responsibility now in the new Congress as leaders and as the elected group from the American people that is charged with dealing with this to take action. As we have said many times tonight, we are going to take action.

I appreciate the gentleman mentioning that.

I wanted to finish the time line. I want to make sure to get that in before we run out of time here, and then maybe move on to one other issue.

In September 2006, we talked about the replacement of the 300 employees by the former Halliburton official.

In October 2006, the Secretary of Defense's wife, Joyce Rumsfeld, the then-Secretary of Defense, was taken to Walter Reed by a close friend who was also a Walter Reed volunteer. When hospital officials found out that this was the case, Mrs. Rumsfeld's friend was banned from entering or continuing to volunteer at the hospital.

So the implication was they did not want them to see what was happening at the hospital. That is from a Washington Post article. I would not have mentioned that were it not printed in the Washington Post, that the Secretary of Defense's wife had a close friend volunteering at Walter Reed, and they were asked not to continue volunteering, again the implication that they would not like what they would be seeing there.

Then, moving to February 4, 2007, getting up almost to current time. The number of Federal employees providing facilities management services at Walter Reed by this time, a month ago, had dropped from 300 to fewer than 60. This is before The Washington Post article came out, immediately before. The remaining 60 employees, 50 of them were private workers. That is from the Army Times where we get those statistics.

And then everything begins to change.

February 19, The Washington Post expose comes out detailing mistreatment of veterans and housing on the grounds of Walter Reed Army Medical Center. That is the turning point. Unfortunately, we heard about the 2004 visit and the complaints registered by a senior Member of Congress. We heard, in 2005, the then-Republican Veterans' Affairs Committee chairman announced they were not interested in hearing from our Nation's veterans anymore; they were not welcome to address the committee to talk about some of these issues.

The Washington Post article comes out February 19, one week later, February 26, the soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center were told that they were to wake up at 6 a.m. every morning and have their rooms ready for inspection at 7 a.m. This was new. More importantly, they were told that they were no longer allowed to speak to the media. I think we can see why that is.

So that is the time line of events leading up.

Let's look at what has happened this week. This is Wednesday, March 7.

Well, on March 5, in the new Congress here, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee began holding hearings to investigate the Walter Reed scandal; again, in the context of the previous Congress, that was unwelcome.

March 6 and 7, yesterday and today, the House Veterans' Affairs Committee held hearings on the Walter Reed scandal, and today there was also an Armed Services Committee hearing. So we have three separate committees looking into this, actively reviewing the situation and actively looking for answers and actively looking for results.

So I would refer, once again, anyone interested in learning more about this story to the Newsweek article, and I once again put this chart up. It is a great article. It gives a good summary of the situation, and I would ask the American people and our colleagues to just continue to seek answers. We are going to do our best to get to the bottom of this. We are going to do our best to make sure that this system is resolved, and unless Mr. Murphy wants to talk about this, I was going to, in our short time, move into one other issue because it is budget season.

And we actually had booked this time to talk about the budget, and then these issues were developing this week.

That is a chart that we are going to be seeing a lot more of, and I did want to make one point about that.

Those 81 oversight hearings on what is happening in Iraq, those are not make-work hearings. Those are not hearings just to hold hearings. Those are serious issues that this Congress is looking at.

This is in the context of being told, the American people were told, that the oil proceeds in Iraq would pay for the cost of the war. You have a couple of issues. One is the oil proceeds. We do not have any accounting of where a lot of them are going. They are disappearing into the black market. They are certainly not paying for the cost of the war.

The second issue is, we have paid almost $400 billion as a Nation on the Iraq War of our money, the American people's money, and as you have outlined, we have lost billions of dollars in Iraq that is completely unaccounted for. You certainly know about that from the Government Oversight Committee, and I am sure we will talk more about that.

In just the few minutes that we have remaining, about 4 minutes remaining, I did want to talk about budget season. Here we are in the spring, and as our loyal constituents and people who follow the 30 Something Working Group will know, we do talk about the budget at some length and rightly so, because the budget has not been managed well over the past 6 years.

We have an administration that came into office. We had just had four consecutive years of budget surpluses that were forecast as far as the eye can see, and in the last 6 years, we have had six consecutive budget deficits that are now forecast as far as the eye can see. There has been a $9 trillion swing in the 10-year forecast from a $5.5 trillion surplus over 10 years to a $3.5 trillion dollar because of the fiscal mismanagement that we have seen over the past 6 years. The President just submitted to us his 2007 out-of-balance budget.

So I will use this as a teaser for perhaps our next 30 Something Working Group because we will not be able to get into it as much as we would like, but for those watching, I would just say that we are going to talk at great length about some of these issues in the coming weeks.

We were going to talk about foreign-held debt today, and I have a chart that I would refer my colleagues to. This President has added more than $1 trillion of foreign-held debt to America's balance in just 6 years. He did more than his 42 predecessors combined in just 6 years. The history of the country up to his administration had put less in foreign-held debt than he did in just 6 years.

So let us take a look at who is holding this debt. I get this question all the time because I talk about the deficit and the debt and who is holding it. Japan holds $644 billion in American debt right now. China holds $350 billion of American debt. That is after only 1 year earlier it was $250 billion. So the Chinese have added $100 billion in American-held debt. The U.K., $240 billion, and you can see the other countries down here, Hong Kong is on there. Of course, they are now part of China. This was a historical chart.

So we have a lot of work to do to restore fiscal responsibility, but we are going to be talking in the weeks ahead in how we are going to do that with this Congress.

We have already taken the steps to move in that direction with the pay-as-you-go budget scoring, and you are going to see some things happening with the budget that have not been done in 6 or 7 years because we do have a responsibility to be fiscally responsible. The American people sent us here to do that.

So with that, I would ask Mr. Murphy if he does not have any comments, he has got his e-mail chart there.

I think they are out celebrating.

But thank you for saying that.

I thank the gentleman and today is my birthday. It is my 39th birthday, and I was happy to spend it here with you tonight talking about the budget.

Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor this evening on behalf of the Immigration Reform Caucus of this House of Representatives. Hopefully, as we go forward with the Immigration Reform Caucus in a bipartisan fashion, and our new chairman hopefully will be joining me during this hour, and that is Congressman Brian Bilbray from the great State of California who is determined to make the Immigration Reform Caucus of this House a bipartisan organization, and I really look forward to that change.

As we reach out to our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, both Republicans and Democrats, I think we can solve this problem of immigration, and in particular, illegal immigration. We have to do that, Mr. Speaker.

This is a hugely important issue. It is an issue to our security, it is an issue to our economy, and it is an issue to this great country, this sovereign Nation, the United States.

Tonight I come to my colleagues to talk about a problem not regarding illegal immigration, we may have an opportunity tonight to discuss some of those issues which are so important and which we have worked so hard on in the 109th Congress and hopefully we will continue to do so in the 110th Congress; but my concerns tonight will be addressed toward a legal immigration problem, Mr. Speaker. Let me repeat that, legal. That is a situation that we refer to as chain migration. Let me try to explain that to my colleagues.

I have here to my left a first slide, if you will, in this presentation. As we look at it, Mr. Speaker, at first glance those in the audience tonight might think, gee, Gingrey is up here with a chart of his high school or college chemistry periodic table; or somebody else may say, no, that is his grandchildren's Pac-Man game. It is a confusing chart to look at, but I am going to hopefully be able to, in a short period of time, to simplify this rather arcane, complex looking first slide. But this really is what this whole problem, this legal immigration problem is about, this chain migration issue, Mr. Speaker.

If my colleagues will focus their attention at the bottom of this first slide, I point to this very prominent kiosk, this icon that would be a legal permanent resident in this country. That individual, man or woman, could be here through any one of several ways of entering this country legally. It could be a skilled worker. And that is indeed why we have an immigration policy, to make our country better, to bring in skilled individuals from countries throughout the world, as we have always done since we started this country. That is the whole purpose of being able to bring individuals in based on what they can contribute. Certainly we want to make their lives better as well, but we want them to be able to contribute to our great Nation and enjoy the privileges of citizenship eventually.

So this individual comes, maybe as one of those legal immigrants, as a skilled worker; or possibly this first person that I am going to refer to at the bottom of the slide is a part of somebody's nuclear family, maybe it is the wife of a legal permanent resident who has already come; or maybe it is a minor child who has grown up and become of age to marry and have a spouse; or possibly this is an individual, a third category, who has sought asylum in this great country. And certainly that is what the Statue of Liberty is all about, that is what the inscription of the bottom of Lady Liberty says in regard to opening our arms to the oppressed and the people that need safety in this great country. So any one of these three categories, Mr. Speaker, of legal permanent residence in this country can start this chain migration. Which clearly, clearly our country never intended that effect.

What happens is this legal permanent resident is able to bring in his spouse or her spouse. And they can legally bring in their minor children. And let's say, based on the current fertility rate south of our border, our southern border, it is three children, three minor children. Now, that is one individual that, by virtue of bringing in an additional skilled worker under the quota for that particular country, has brought in four additional people by virtue of genealogy. And this is, of course, a nuclear family so far. We are talking then about a nuclear family, a husband, a wife and their three children.

Now, once the husband and wife become citizens, then the real problem begins, because at that point then each of the husband and wife can bring in their parents. This is perfectly legal to do this. So there are an additional, assuming that both parents of both the husband and wife are still living, which is very likely, maybe it is a man and a woman on each side who are in their late forties or early fifties.

In addition to that, Mr. Speaker, in addition to that, again, this one individual that is in this country legally, as a legal permanent resident, hopefully has become a citizen. At that point, then all of his siblings and all of his wife's siblings can come into this country. And that is where the chain really takes off, because you repeat this over and over again. And at the end of 17 years, a short of 17 years and two generations, what you end up with under this insanity of legal chain migration is that one legal permanent resident who was brought into this country as a skilled worker, as an individual seeking asylum from a country in which they are suffering the devastation of oppression, or it happens to be a spouse of a legal permanent resident, that one person in a short span of 17 years can bring in 273 people, Mr. Speaker; 273 people. And that counts against the quota for that country.

So this is the problem, Mr. Speaker, that I think a lot of people just don't realize. We worry about a porous border. We worry about the fact that there are anywhere from 12 to 20 million illegal residents, immigrants in this country, many of them, of course, most of them probably are hardworking, God-fearing, good people, moms, dads, good families, and they are trying to do the right thing. And the only thing that they have committed, of course, is coming into this country illegally. But it is a huge, huge problem for us, as I said at the outset, in regard to the stress and strain on our economy, on our infrastructure, on our safety net programs, on our public school systems. But here we have something that is part of our legal permission to let people come into this country, and then bring in 273 additional extended family members. Not, Mr. Speaker, what we originally intended.

I want to go back and talk about the Jordan Commission. In the early nineties, Congresswoman Barbara Jordan from Texas, a very, very distinguished Member of this body, chaired that commission to study immigration reform and clearly said as part of the recommendations, there were a number of those recommendations, only some of which, Mr. Speaker, were implemented, but one of them was to say very specifically that it should only be a nuclear family, not this situation where because of this chain effect, that in a very short period of time of a couple of generations, or really a short period of 17 years, we end up with 273 people. And they may be good, hardworking, skilled men and women that can contribute to our society, can make their lives better, can make our lives better. But it is really not based on that, it is based totally on genealogy, by virtue of being related in some extended way, first, second, third cousins, aunts, uncles, grandfather or grandmother and on and on and on.

And what that does, other than just overwhelming the number of legal permanent residents who come into this country from a specific country on a yearly basis, indeed, Mr. Speaker, from Mexico to our southern border we are talking about maybe 30,000 a year, and that quota is surpassed in day one of the calendar year.

So you can't say, well, it just doesn't matter; that means maybe you are going to push these skilled workers a little bit further behind in the queue, but they will get there eventually. Well, they may get there eventually, but instead of 2 or 3 years, Mr. Speaker, it may be 15 years, it may be far beyond the time that it would be any advantage to them or us for them to remain in the queue. So this is the problem. We have a solution. I have a solution for it, and I want to talk about that as we go forward.

Mr. Speaker, this next slide that I have again just points out, and I hope my colleagues, I hope this writing is big enough. In case it is not for those in the back of the Chamber, I would be happy to go through it bullet by bullet. But this says ``Chain Migration Equals Inter-Generational Relocation Program.'' It gives visa priority to the cousins, to the adult children and distant relatives of legal immigrants. It creates a backlog of visa applicants. And it allows, and this is the final point on this slide, Mr. Speaker, and of course I have already alluded to these points in my opening remarks, but it allows genealogy, not job skills, not education, not English proficiency to determine who immigrates to our country. We just can't afford that. We absolutely must use common sense and go back to the Jordan Commission recommendation in regard to limiting genealogy entry into this country based not on skills at all, but on just who you happen to be related to. And I will get to that in just a few minutes.

My colleague from Iowa is with us tonight. We call on him a lot, but he is always forthcoming with very, very good, useful information on many subjects, not the least of which is the issue of immigration. I am talking about Representative Steve King, my classmate. I thank him for joining me during this hour, and I look forward to his comments.

I would like to go ahead and yield the floor to him now for however much time as he would like to take. We can colloquy back and forth. And I certainly appreciate him being with us this evening.

And the same thing, as I said at the outset, anywhere from 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants we estimate, and we hear talk about the need for a comprehensive bill that would include letting them pay a little fine and fess up and get a clear ID card, identify themselves, and all of a sudden become a permanent legal resident on a track to citizenship. Each one of those 20 million then could start this chain migration.

Mr. Speaker, I would also like to thank him, and I would like to do it formally. I would like to thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Bilbray), who is chairman of the Immigration Reform Caucus in the 110th Congress. I look forward to his leadership on this caucus of the Congress, this bipartisan effort on his part. The gentleman from California certainly knows of what he speaks.

I thank the gentleman, and I hope the gentleman will be able to stay and continue as we have a colloquy on this issue.

Just by coincidence, we have the Catholic caucus here, as we have the gentleman from California and the gentleman from Iowa and myself, so we know about these large families.

But to put it in perspective, in regard to numbers, Mr. Bilbray mentioned the fact that a million come into this country as permanent legal residents every year. It varies from country to country and hemisphere to hemisphere, the overall quota. And then that million additional that come in under all of the visa programs, the H-1B, et cetera, temporary agricultural workers and various skill levels, you are talking about an additional million.

But from 1776 to 1976, 200 years of our country's existence, the average number of immigrants was about 250,000. So that just shows you where we are today; and of course we are not talking about the 3 or 4 million illegals if we don't close down our border and secure our border. Not close it down, secure our border. Then you are going to have 3 or 4 million illegals in addition to that.

The gentleman from Iowa has been mighty quiet for the last few minutes, and I yield back to him.

I thank the gentleman from Iowa. I want to move back now for just a moment and focus again on the solution to this problem of chain immigration, and we will get into further discussion of some of the many things this Congress, and the 109th Congress when we were in the majority and led this great House of Representatives, some of the many good things that have been done in regard to controlling illegal immigration.

But let me just for the moment, before my colleagues some possibly have to leave, refocus on this issue of chain migration, Mr. Speaker, because we have presented the problem. We have spent maybe 20, 25, 30 minutes talking about the problem of chain migration, the one person bringing in 273 others, not based on skill, strictly being, I guess, based on the luck of your birthright, geneology, and how inappropriate that is and how we cannot afford to continue to do this. We have a solution.

But Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to call my colleagues' attention to this next slide, and again, it depicts on this scale of justice, as we have here in the middle of this slide, on the one side you have an imbalance, too much emphasis, too much weight in regard to the second cousin of an immigrant, i.e., chain migration.

On the other side, however, not weighing so heavily in this scale of this balance of justice is the skilled laborer waiting to emigrate into this country.

This is what this hour is mainly about, Mr. Speaker, that we need to correct this. We need to get back to what Congresswoman Barbara Jordan recommended to this House back in the early 1990s as she chaired the Commission on Immigration Reform.

Basically, this is what she said, Mr. Speaker, in this next slide: Proposed tripartite immigration system, legal immigration. That basically, as I said at the outset of the hour, people come to this country first and foremost maybe as a skill-based worker, skill-based admission; or possibly on the far side of the slide, come in as a refugee for humanitarian reasons, a humanitarian admission; and then, finally, the nuclear family admissions that Congresswoman Jordan, the distinguished lady from the great State of Texas talked about, nuclear family admissions, Mr. Speaker.

That is the solution to this problem, and how we got away, how we did not follow her recommendation, there were a number of things that were recommended that were enacted by this body, but we missed the most important, and that is in regard to nuclear family admissions.

This print is far too small for my colleagues to see, even in the front of the room, so I want to point out, under nuclear family, the first priority would be spouses and minor children of United States citizens, under the nuclear family. The second priority would be parents of the United States citizens, and the third priority, as we talked about, would be spouses and minor children of legal immigrants. Of course, hopefully they will become and we want them to assimilate into our society. We want them to be part of this great country, the United States of America, and at that point of course they could bring their parents, both husband and wife, as part of this nuclear family.

Mr. Speaker, in my final slide, here is the result of that. Again, this is the initial skilled worker that comes in legally. This is her husband or his wife and their three minor children. That is a total of five people, one permanent legal resident and an additional four. Now, when husband and wife become citizens of the United States, then each of them under this new Nuclear Family Act, and that is what I want to present to my colleagues tonight, the bill that I have introduced, H.R. 938, remember that number, many of you on both sides are considering signing on to this bill. Many of you already have. I think we are up over 60 at this point, and hopefully, there will be many more when they understand the magnitude of this problem that we are presenting tonight.

So H.R. 938, the Nuclear Family Priority Act, taken almost verbatim from Congresswoman Barbara Jordan's recommendations back in 1990, again, a distinguished Democratic Member of this body, these two, husband and wife, when they become citizens, they can bring their parents. Assuming both parents are living, then that is four additional people, and then they in turn having become citizens can bring their parents in. There is a possibility that if the parents were divorced and remarried, that instead of two on each side, there would be four.

I do not want to confuse my colleagues with another arcane slide, but basically, this is the bottom line to take home. On this slide, if all of these people came in under the Nuclear Family Priority Act, you are talking about 35 people. Chain migration, which currently is the policy, you are talking about 273 people.

So, Mr. Speaker, we are talking about cutting that down by 87 percent, and that is not small change. That is a significant solution to this problem, moving in that direction to enact the Nuclear Family Priority Act.

So, again, it is straightforward. I leave this slide up and let my colleagues continue to look at it. I want to yield back now to the gentleman from California (Mr. Bilbray).

I thank my colleagues, the gentleman from California, the gentleman from Iowa, for being with me tonight. The hour is getting late. I appreciate their sharing their knowledge. It is so important that our colleagues do that, because we have very bright Members of this body on both sides of the aisle. We are not all experts on every issue, but we help one another. We share our knowledge. We rely on each other.

I am very grateful to Mr. Bilbray and Mr. King of Iowa for being with me today, to help me talk about not just this issue of chain immigration, that's the main focus of the hour, but to discuss the overall problem of Georgia.

It is a huge problem. We can't really afford to turn our backs and shut our eyes and bury our head in the sand with regard to 3 or 4 million additional people coming in every year illegally on top of those 2 million that are coming, as the gentleman from California pointed out in his earlier remarks. There is no way, this country cannot sustain that.

He talked about the cost in California and their problem, indeed, as a border State, is a lot bigger than it is in the State of Georgia. Of course, their population approaches 55 million, and the population of Georgia is 9.3 million. But on a percentage basis, we have a huge problem in Georgia as well, maybe fourth or fifth number percentage- wise of illegal immigrations of any State in this country. I think the last count in Georgia was about 750,000.

We have got a problem. Certainly, we are a great country. I think that we have done some great things in the history of this Nation. Indeed in 1969, we put a man on the Moon. If we can do that, we can solve this problem. We just need to have the will. I think my colleagues are helping bring that to the attention of the Members of this House and this Congress, both House and Senate, to the administration, to the American people. I like it when we talk during these times to our colleagues in a bipartisan way and say that, look, we can do this together. We all worry about who has got the power and who is in control, and who is in the majority, and who is the Speaker, and who are the committee chairs, and who is the next President. Of course, that will be upon us pretty soon.

But in the meantime, there are so many things that we can do in a bipartisan way and really pat ourselves on the back, because I don't think our constituents care whether the Democrats solve this problem or the Republicans solve this problem. They want us to do it in a unified way.

We have got such a few more on the Democrats side of the aisle in this 110th, a few more on our side of the aisle in the 109th back to 1994, these things go back and forth. But we can't let that tie our hands and keep us from going forward and getting things done for the American people.

I know that my colleagues that are here with me tonight, and I think all the colleagues of this 435-Member body would hopefully say, right on, Gingrey, we agree with you on that.

You know who else would be pleased, and that is the employers in this country, and a lot of the industries. In Georgia, I mean we have got agriculture, we have the poultry industry, we have the carpet industry. We all have the homebuilding industry in every State, and I know that most of my friends that are in those businesses pay good wages, they pay good benefits, they are treating their employees in a compassionate way.

In return, they are getting a heck of a day's work for their wages that they pay, and I think they would welcome, I think that the employers would welcome. I know Representative King, in a bill that he introduced in the last Congress and has championed in regard to an identification system that is foolproof, and we can do that, we can have a tamper-proof, biometric identification card. And I think our employers, and I have talked to many of them, and I commend them, but there may be a few that are paying low wages and gaming the system. You always have that problem. But we will ferret them out.

At the same time, kudos to those who are playing by the rules and doing the right thing.

There is no question about that.

The point the gentleman from Iowa is making is that we have really tried hard in this body to address this problem. We on this side of the aisle, when we were in control and had the majority in the 109th, felt very strongly that first and foremost to solve the problem and ultimately decide what to do with the 20 million that are estimated to be here illegally, is to stop the hemorrhaging. As a physician member, I use that expression a lot, having been a surgeon in my previous life, OB/GYN physician, but you have to stop the bleeding. If you sit there and let the patient continue to bleed, and that is analogous to the porous borders, the 3 or 4 million that continue to come in every year, in addition to the 2 million that the gentleman from California was talking about earlier, then the patient is going to die. That patient, as the lifeblood seeps out of us, is the United States of America.

So it is so important to do the things that we have done, tried to do in regard to Mr. Sensenbrenner's legislation. He was a champion in regard to the REAL ID Act. Basically the REAL ID Act was just in response to the request of the survivors of the 9/11 victims. As they testified before the 9/11 Commission and made those recommendations, 41 or so specific recommendations, one of the most important ones was to say you have got States that issue driver's licenses without requiring any proof of legal residency. The 9/11 hijackers, 19 of them I think, had something like 53, a total in the aggregate of 53 legal issued driver's licenses from some 10 or 12 States.

So basically what we said is, look, we can't tell you, we the Federal Government can't tell the States how to run their motor vehicle department and how they issue driver's licenses and to whom and how long and how much you pay for driver's licenses, what age you have to be, whether you have to take driver's ed or not. That is a State prerogative, certainly. But if they do not have proof of legal residence, not citizenship, because a permanent legal resident certainly can be granted a driver's license, then they can't use that license from that State for Federal purposes, like getting on an airplane and blowing it to smithereens or using it as a guided missile.

I see Mr. Speaker is tapping me down. I didn't realize, I was having so much fun with my colleague from California, the chairman of the Immigration Reform Caucus, that all of a sudden our time has expired.

I appreciate his patience and indulgence. I continue to promote the Nuclear Family Protection Act. Let's all get behind it and thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Altmire. I want to let you get back to the time line because I think it is important for people to understand where this started, and to talk a little bit about where we are going, because so much of the news these days is filled with bad news, bad news for our veterans, bad news for the security of our country. And we talk about that a lot here. Mr. Altmire, as you know, this place focuses on crises often and on bad news.

The good news is that things are changing. The good news is that there is a commitment now to make up for the wrongs of the past. But it is fairly mind-blowing to people out there to think that it took The Washington Post to uncover what was happening in our veterans system. Because, Mr. Altmire, as you know, veterans back in our districts, back in Pennsylvania and in Connecticut and throughout this country, have known what is going on with veterans for years. I mean, they have been down here in Washington, DC, month after month, year after year trying to tell this Congress that there are waiting lines for care; that the conditions are often substandard because of years of neglect in capital improvements; that they simply don't have the access to the funds necessary to pay for the rising premiums and rising copays.

And before this story in The Washington Post broke, you, Mr. Altmire, and those of us in the 30-Something Working Group were yelling about this on the House floor. We got here with that mandate, to change things.

So you are going to run through, I think, some fairly amazing comments from some of the soldiers and staff at Walter Reed Hospital in terms of what they have been dealing with over the past several years. But we just need to remind people out there that you can't absolve this former Congress in the last 12 years from the catastrophes that we are uncovering within our medical system, specifically, in this case, within our veterans medical system simply because The Washington Post didn't get around to writing about it until last month, because if you were back home listening to this, you heard it time after time again.

I mean, here is the thing. We are talking about a substandard level of care for our veterans. We should be talking about the gold standard of care for our veterans. And we shouldn't be talking about just lifting up Walter Reed Hospital so that it meets the standards of dignity that every other hospital in our health care system abides by. We should be talking about raising up veterans care so that this is the highest standard. It is what everyone else in the medical community and the provider community seeks to meet. The people coming home from Afghanistan and Iraq, people coming home from Vietnam and previous engagements should come home to the best care this country can provide, Mr. Altmire.

And I would like to yield back to you so you can continue to tell the story of what we have found at Walter Reed hospital.

Mr. Altmire can you yield for a moment? Because I want to talk about, as these revelations were coming out in The Washington Post and in articles that followed, this administration had a choice to make. They could open up this issue and they could allow for a vetting of these problems and put them out in the open air and come together, as Republicans and Democrats, to solve them; or they could try to paper over it and cover it up.

And some of the most disturbing things that have happened in this sequence of events, which are a little bit later on your time line, is what happened after these revelations came into the light. We know that in the days following that article that the soldiers at Walter Reed were told that they couldn't speak to the media about what was happening.

We know that the Government Reform and Oversight Committee, which I sit on, had to subpoena the former head, the fired chief of Walter Reed Army Medical Center after Army officials told him that he couldn't come testify at the hearing.

And so I am so thankful that we have a majority now in charge of this House which is actually going to do the work to uncover, I hope, not too many more abuses that we haven't already seen in the newspaper reports that have come out. But the fact is that right now we don't have an administration that is helping us try to correct this, Mr. Altmire. And it makes our job even harder; but makes me, I think, and I think the American people are in the same position, that they are thankful that there are people here doing that work.

Mr. Altmire, you hit it right on the head. It is, fix the problem, hold people accountable, in that order. We need to start holding people accountable here. I think that is a lot of frustration that led to you and I coming here and 40 or so of our fellow new colleagues here. I think a lot of the impetus that brought us here was this sense that nobody was being held accountable for what was happening in the government, whether it be the failure of our military strategy in Iraq or whether it be the failure of many of our domestic programs here at home.

So we have got to keep the focus and the light of this place on finally holding this administration and the people in it and, frankly, even Members of this legislature accountable for their actions. But we have got to fix the problem first because people didn't send us here just to investigate and hold hearings and put out subpoenas. They want that responsibility of Congress to come back. They want us to fulfill that constitutional obligation. But they sent us here to get stuff done. And that is the miracle of what has happened here over the last 2 months is that we are fixing problems. We are not just talking about it. We are actually doing what we are saying.

The first 100 hours was all about that, Mr. Altmire. It had to be for the two of us one of the proudest moments of our life to be here joining hands with many of our Republican colleagues and for the first time making this place work again. Passing new bills to fund higher education, reforming the Medicare prescription drug law, investing in stem cell research; doing it with Democrats and Republicans, making this place work again.

So here is the thing. We proved we can solve problems. We proved that we can work as Republicans and Democrats to fix things. And maybe we are confronted with our biggest problem; not just what we have uncovered in our veterans' system, what people like you and I have known for years, but the greater quagmire which exists in our military today in the situation we have got ourselves in Iraq. But we need to take both of these on, fix the problems to the extent that we can, and then hold people accountable because what we know is that we weren't ready for this war. We weren't ready for this war with the equipment, the trucks and the kits we needed for our troops. We know that, when this war began, we were $56 billion underfunded within the Army for the equipment that they needed. We know that, after the invasion, it took 18 months for American soldiers to receive body armor; 18 months of being on the front lines before they got the body armor that they needed. And we know the health care system wasn't ready for the legions of troops that came back.

I think I shared this on the floor the other night: A group of veterans came into my office and shared with me a statistic that was as interesting as it was sobering, that in conflicts earlier in this century, on average three wounded soldiers came back for every soldier that died on the battlefield. Today 16 soldiers come back wounded for every soldier that dies on the battlefield. And that is due to some of the advances in armor protection equipment. It is also due to the miracles of modern medicine and the response time that our medics and doctors in the field are able to perform.

But it means that we have more people coming into our hospitals with more complex, more lasting injuries. They need better care, and they need faster care. And it appears that no one at the outset of this war was thinking about this problem ahead of time. They weren't preparing our military for battle. They didn't have a plan to occupy that country. They didn't think, it seems sometimes, more than a few seconds about the political realities that would emerge on the ground as we invaded Iraq. And now it turns out they also didn't think about what to do with the veterans when they come back.

Mr. Altmire, I never served in the military. I never fired a gun. I have never been shot at. I get to serve in this Chamber on a cold night like tonight in Washington, DC, in a nice, heated place indoors because my contemporaries, my classmates made a different decision. They decided to go overseas and protect this Nation. And there isn't a day that I get up that I am not grateful for the decision that my friends and my relatives and my classmates made to allow me to serve this country in a very different manner. So as unfathomable as it is to me to think about what it is like to be on the ground in Baghdad today, to have veterans comparing their experiences in our own domestic veterans' health care system to the situations that they faced on the ground in Iraq is unconscionable to me. Think about what it must be like to come back to this country maimed, injured, perhaps with legs, arms amputated, and to enter a system with flies, with garbage, with syringes. I mean, we know what is happening with soldiers coming back with PTSD and other mental health issues from what they have seen on the battlefield, and to think that we are putting them into a system which not only abuses the sense of honor that we should have for those that come back. We should be celebrating them rather than putting them in these conditions.

But I am sure it aggravates what must be an unbelievably complicated transition back to life here in the United States. We need to start honoring their service again. And God forbid we ever have to engage in another military action in this country again. God forbid we have to send our brave young men and women overseas to fight.

You know that in our lifetimes we will see that moment. We hope we don't. We hope we are wise enough in this Chamber to prevent another foreign engagement from happening, but the chances are that you and I may vote sometime during our service here to do this again.

We better get it right that time. We better make the investment up front to make sure they are safe when they head over to that battlefield, and when they come home, the services are there for them.

We are going to fix it. We are going to fix it and hold people accountable, and we are going to do it in that order. The American people for a long time maybe didn't have confidence when people stood up here and said there is a problem and we are going to do something about it. In this Congress, that is going to be our hallmark. We are going to be able to go home in the coming weeks and months and tell people that what you read about, whether it be in Newsweek or the Washington Post, is going to be taken care of.

Mr. Altmire, we have to look at veterans' health care, care for our wounded as part and parcel of the cost of the war. The cost of the war is not just troops on the ground, the equipment, the weapons. The cost of the war is all of that, which, of course, runs into the billions, racking up hour by hour, day by day, but the cost of the war also includes top rate, gold standard care for those troops when they return to this country.

Sometimes you talk about the cost of the war and veterans' health care. They are in kind of different silos in Washington speak, and we are figuring out how Washington talks versus the rest of the world.

Out there, what our veterans and soldiers talk about is a cost of battle, a cost of sending our troops overseas, which includes making sure, when they come back to this country, they get everything they need. That is part of our challenge. We came down here I think, not to speak for both of us, but to sort of change how Washington thinks about this world and start making it match up with the reality out there in our communities. We sat there for the last 2 years campaigning to get here, listening to people screaming and yelling about rising energy prices. We listened to families talk about how they couldn't afford to send their kids to college, and we heard seniors talking about how the Medicare prescription drug bill does not work. And they watch Washington do nothing about it. There is a disconnect that has happened over the past 12 years, and certainly over the last 6 years especially, and how people talk about their problems in the world and how Washington views them. There is no better example than veterans' health care.

To veterans and soldiers, the cost of the war includes taking care of soldiers when they return to the United States. We have to make people understand that again.

We sat for that very long debate about the escalation of the war. We listened to the people on the other side of the aisle make a ridiculously simplistic argument. They said, to support the troops, you must support the commander of the troops. Part of supporting the troops has to be supporting everything he asks you to do. You can't make an independent judgment about whether what he wants is right or wrong; you simply have to line up with him, or we are going to tell you that you are not supporting the men and women who fight for this country.

We know that is wrong. We know that the American people don't believe that, and we know this election was in part about separating what is right for the troops, the country and what the President has asked them to do and has vastly under-equipped them to do.

But you just detailed maybe example number one where what the President's policies are over the past several years has been the exact opposite of what is right for our troops, cuts to veterans' health care, increases in premiums. That is as bold and plain and simple and concise as you can make it.

You can't stand here and say, in order to support the troops, you have

to support the President when the President puts forth a budget, year after year, budgets that don't do justice for the veterans who return.

I think the American people have weighed in on that issue on whether or not we need to support the President on everything he does in order to support the troops, but there is yet another example.

Mr. Altmire, I think we also have to talk about the issue of accountability here. Here is the problem, is that our military is stretched thin right now. This isn't just about supporting the troops; it is about supporting the generals that oversee those troops and supporting the commanders who are struggling to do more with less.

Let me read a quote from General Peter Schoomaker, the Chief of Staff of the Army. He says, ``To meet combatant commanders immediate wartime needs, we pooled equipment from across the force to equip soldiers deploying in harm's way. This practice, which we are continuing today, increases risk for our next-to-deploy units and limits our ability to respond to emerging strategic contingencies.'' This was from a Washington Post story.

That is a pretty amazing statement to come from our Nation's top military brass. To come out on the record, flying in the face of what the President is telling the American people and saying that we are endangering the lives of our troops by overextending the limits of our equipment and our machinery within our Armed Forces.

So we also have to force the military commanders who are desperately trying to do the right thing with a very flawed policy and with an administration which pays no attention to the root causes of the insurgency which puts our forces in harm's way and who doesn't give the Army the resources they need to fight this battle and obviously doesn't treat the soldiers the way they need to be treated when they come home.

This is about supporting our troops and about supporting our commanders and about supporting our Armed Forces in general. They are being asked to do so much more with so much less. This is no secret. When we come and vote on the supplemental request from this President, you better believe that Members on this side of the aisle are going to make sure that there is a historic commitment to veterans, just like there was in the continuing resolution. We have to make that a priority in this new authorization of funding because we are beginning to talk like everybody else talks out there. We are beginning to understand that the cost of this war is the money that it takes to fight the battle on the streets of Baghdad, but it is also the cost of taking care of those soldiers when they come home.

Mr. Altmire, you underplay your effect on that discussion. You were a real hero on that issue of making sure that the veterans' care and funding were in that continuing resolution. I hope people back in your district understand what you did on that issue to ensure that those funds were part of that continuing resolution.

Sure.

Let me highlight one thing before we leave this subject. This is going to be a chart that we might see a few more times on the 30 Something Working Group hour here.

I just want to make sure the people know we are back to business here. This is 81 hearings that have been held on issues related to the Iraq War this year. I mean, you go through the list just the week right after we got back from recess, the last week of February, on Tuesday, the 27th, two hearings; on Wednesday, the 28th, five hearings; on Thursday, the 1st, three hearings.

Now, that may seem like a lot. It seems like, well, what is Congress doing with all these hearings. There was so much work to be done to uncover all of these abuses. I think that is going to kind of level out over time, but right now we needed to get back to the work of starting to do some oversight when it comes to this war, to start uncovering many of these abuses. We will continue this chart going forward.

This idea that you presented that we have got two jobs, fix it and hold people accountable, we are doing both. This continuing resolution that kept the government running had historic levels of funding for veterans care. I think we are going to be able to do something similar with the supplemental authorization that we will vote on in the coming weeks.

But we are also doing that second part, which is holding this administration accountable, to make sure that it does not happen again, because I do not want to be here a year from now just trying to play catch-up and plugging all the holes that this administration creates. I actually want to solve the problems and make sure that competent people get into places that matter in this administration.

I want to make sure that the President starts putting budgets before us that make sense so that these oversight hearings, 81 hearings that have been held already in this Congress, are going to start to get us there.

That is maybe the moment to turn. We have got a few minutes left to talk a little bit about this budget.

I sit on the Government Oversight and Reform Committee, and in that committee, we found out that we sent $9 billion in cash over to Iraq, on pallets, handed it out in duffel bags. We found out that when we were subcontracting to these subcontractors to do security, they subcontracted again, and they subcontracted again, and everybody takes a little money off the top every time. We did not know. We had not heard about any of that until we started doing hearings.

So you are exactly right. Hammer that point home. This is not doing hearings for hearings sake. This is doing hearings to uncover the waste, fraud and abuse that has been happening in this government. This is my taxpayer dollars. This is my neighbor's taxpayer dollars that are going down the drain with some of these programs. This is real stuff.

First of all, let me say that there is nothing that acts as a tantalizing teaser to whet the appetites of the American people than telling them if they tune in next time, we will talk about foreign-held national debt. That really gets people's blood pumping.

I cannot give the chart without letting people know out there that the clock is ticking. 365 days you have left officially in the 30 Something Working Group. Congratulations. Happy birthday today. I do not know why the rest of the Members are not here to celebrate.

They might be having one of your behalf.

Anything we have talked about today, if people want to get more information about, they can e-mail us at [email protected], and you can always visit www.speaker.gov/30something. One of these days when they go to that Web site, they will actually see our faces on there. Technology sometimes does not keep up with the changes in the House, but I am sure that our faces will be on that Web site, sooner rather than later.

It is how every young boy hopes to celebrate their 39th birthday.

Mr. Speaker, welcome to the chair. I hope you enjoy your duration up there, as many years ago, it must have been 1995, I had the privilege of my first time in the chair. I hope you enjoy it as much, and I hope everybody at home is watching you in your day of glory.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Iowa.

I appreciate that, Mr. King.

At this time it is my privilege as the new chairman of the Congressional Immigration Caucus to actually recognize Congressman Nathan Deal of the great State of Georgia, who actually has agreed to serve as the subcommittee chairman on the Immigration Caucus for Birthright Citizenship.

At this time I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to say thank you very much to Mr. Deal for taking a leadership role on this issue. It is quite appropriate you are pointing out how broad the problem is of this automatic citizenship given to people that have no obligations, no responsibilities, and are leveraging the fact that some people think that everyone born on U.S. soil somehow gets automatic citizenship. The fact is I think that the Korean parents are a good example.

The subject to the jurisdiction clause of the 14th amendment does not only mean that you can be arrested. It means that you must, according to common law, be totally obligated. You must be able to be tried for treason and be forced into the military.

Can you imagine if these terrorists from Korea were told, sorry, you are now going to be drafted into the United States Army? People would come unglued. They would say that is inhumane, that is outrageous, how can you do that. Well, it is just as outrageous to give automatic citizenship to the people that have no obligations and no responsibility to the Federal Government, to give them citizenship, as it is to require them to be tried for treason against the United States or to serve in the military when they are not, quote, unquote, subject to the jurisdiction in a manner that applies to the 14th amendment.

This thing we have to understand, that rights and responsibilities come together, and as these legal Korean tourists come to our country, they have certain rights and certain responsibilities, but they do not have total responsibility, and thus they do not have birthright citizenship.

I think that is a clause to get into. I just wish that the people who would be as outraged about us drafting a Korean tourist or trying them for treason will be just as outraged about the people leveraging and taking advantage of our hospitality and then trying to demand rights where the rights obviously do not exist historically or in fact.

I appreciate the fact that you took a leadership role on this after I got my 5-year sabbatical that the voters gave me from Congress. You picked up the baby and actually carried it, and I really appreciate that and your leadership will be appreciated.

It is astonishing that back in the 1990s when we first brought up this issue, some people were saying, well, what is this issue. But more and more when you go talk to the American people, they want to know what has kind of been tagged this, what they call it, ``anchor baby'' issue because they see this huge open door for abuse.

In California alone, I want you to know and I just say this to the people, how big a problem, how big a price tag can automatic citizenship to foreign nationals and illegal aliens can be. How big can it be? Just in California, it costs the State of California to pay for the births of the children of illegal aliens $400 million a year, and that is a price tag to people who are illegally in the country.

Let us face it, that $400 million could sure provide a lot of basic health care to legal Americans, both immigrants and U.S. citizens, that is being denied those people of need, while we accommodate those who have broken our laws and their families and encouraged them to emigrate.

So I thank you very much for taking this leadership role, and I greatly appreciate the fact that Georgia is represented on the Immigration Caucus, and that is a great advantage for us. Thank you very much.

Mr. Speaker, I have the privilege to serve on the Immigration Caucus, and as someone who grew up on the Mexican border between San Diego and Tijuana, I saw this issue as it has evolved over the last 45 years.

I grew up in an area where illegal immigration was just sort of a matter of fact. You saw people going north, and I got to tell you, as a young man, you never knew where they were going. They were all going to a place called L.A. or norte, norte, and you never understood what was the impact in the communities beyond the border.

But, seriously, I think the one thing that I would ask those of you that live beyond the border, you do not see on the border, like those of us that grew up there, I happen to have had the privilege to serve as a life guard in a small community on the border called Imperial Beach. In that job, I had the experience of rescuing illegals when they were drowning in the Tijuana River. I recovered their bodies when they did not make it, and in the 1980s, some of you may not remember a thing called the bonsai charges, where the coyotes, the smugglers, would organize illegals into huge groups at the border and rush them up the freeway.

I would just ask any of you to consider what your reaction would be if you were driving along at 65 miles an hour, 55, and you saw massive pedestrians running at you on the freeway in a manner that you do not have a chance to stop. Well, let me tell you something. After seeing what happens when somebody gets hit by a vehicle at 55, 60 miles an hour, I became committed as a member of the county board of supervisors in San Diego to finally say stand up and say this is wrong, this is immoral, this is outrageous.

Americans should be ashamed that we do not control our frontier, that we do not guarantee our sovereignty on U.S. soil. And the immigration issue is an issue of sovereignty. It is a concept of protecting the land that our forefathers have given to us and also protecting those rights and those privileges that should and can be rendered to those who are citizens and legal residents.

But, sadly, we have found excuses to look the other way. Be it political correctness or some sick concept that encouraging illegal activity somehow is going to be good for America, it is sad that we allow not only illegal immigration but all the illegal activity that happens along the border.

I am really encouraged, though, to see colleagues like the gentleman from Georgia and Mr. King, people from the interior, that get it, that understand that the immigration problem is not something at the border that can only be addressed at the border, but is something that is in our neighborhoods every day; that it is on the street corners, we see it every day; and that the American people, though they have been ignored on this issue for too long, are saying we are going to hold both parties accountable if you do not address that.

I think in all fairness, as a Republican, I think we can all agree that a

degree of the problems in the last election was that voters did not believe Republicans were doing enough and are going to demand that Democrats and Republicans put their partisanship on the side and take care of this problem.

I am glad to see the kind of general support that we have seen working on this issue and the community support on this; and at this time, if I may, Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield to Mr. King.

Mr. King, first of all, I have to say I am so proud that you are our ranking member on the Immigration Committee. With you on that, leading the Republican side of that committee. Hopefully you will be able, and I know it is a tough sell; I am going to meet with your chairman and try to point out what is the obsession that the Senate and some Members of the House of Representatives have to give amnesty and reward 12 to 13 to 15 million people for breaking the law?

Do they really think we can defend the concept, the rule of law, by having up to 60 million people in this country celebrating the fact that they are here because they broke the law? You know, I am thankful that I was able to listen to you tonight, because I keep saying, and I was saying to a couple of Senators this week, what is the obsession, what is the motivation for giving amnesty and rewarding people for breaking our laws? What message have you seen? What agenda are you fulfilling? What political group are you fulfilling?

Now that you brought it up, you are right, you point out you gave amnesty to a group that originally was proposed to be 300,000, ended up with all the delays in the agenda to be 3 million; then you get all of their relatives coming in. This is the group that is lobbying and able to vote to encourage more people to come in, and this downward spiral has started. If we don't stop it now with the American people that really believe in the rule of law, that really believe in the concept of common decency that you do not punish somebody for waiting patiently to immigrate legally while you reward somebody who breaks the law, if we are not willing to stop this downward spiral now, it will continue to grow larger and faster down the line.

I think the American people here know this is not a Republican or Democratic issue; this is an American issue. If anybody doesn't believe that the rule of law is important, I can take you to a lot of places I spent a lot of time in other countries where people can buy off the law by politics or by money.

This amnesty, it just seems like the most un-American concept I heard. Let me tell you something, my son was sitting there, 19 or 20 years old, and he brought up the interesting issue, and I guess from the mouths of babes, he said, Dad, let me get this straight, Mr. Kennedy says that if you break the law for 5 years, you now get rewarded for it? Does this mean that if I am willing to testify that I have driven without a license for 5 years, I get a license for free?

Because that is what people think they can do with immigration and make it work. It won't work with the traffic situation; it won't work with an immigration issue.

I am glad you bring this up, and just seeing a self-made special interest group that is driving us toward an abyss of the destruction of the entire concept of what this greatest Republic we call the ``American experience.'' I yield to Mr. King.

Mr. KING of IOWA. I thank the gentleman from California for adding to this subject matter in that way.

A piece that I left out was that the 66.1 million that would have been legalized by the Senate version of amnesty last year happens to be, and I believe coincidentally, the sum total of all Americans who have immigrated into the United States and become naturalized, most through Ellis Island, but done so legally. We are talking about doing that in one fell swoop.

So, in 1986 it was a 300,000, maybe a million number. That was a great big piece to try to swallow and get our brains around. In 1995, before the 1996 election, there was an accelerated effort, especially in California, to naturalize a million people so that they could go to the polls and vote in that Clinton/Gore election. And we all know where the incentive was, on which side of the aisle that was. That was perhaps 1 million in 1986. At most, it was 1 million in 1995 before the 1996 elections. That was an appalling number to think about a million people getting fast-tracked to citizenship or amnesty. And this is a time now we are seriously talking about 66 million people. Sixty-six times an amount that was too many in 1995, it was too many in 1986, it is absolutely too many today.

There is another component of this, too, and that is that we know on the left, and I am going to say on the part of Democrats, they recognize that they are going to pick up about two out of every three immigrants that would have amnesty. They have a strong political motive that subordinates the United States, our Constitution, their oath of office, by the way. That is the incentive. It is a political incentive on the left hand side of the aisle. On the right hand side of the aisle we have elitists. They aren't all on the right hand side of the aisle; we have plenty of left-wing rich folks, too, that are capitalizing on cheap labor. They believe that they have some kind of birthright to always be hiring cheap labor and continue getting richer off the backs of the people they are hiring.

Think of this kind of like a barbell. On the one side, the weights over here on the barbell are the liberals that get all the political power that comes from illegal immigration. On the other side there are probably about 2-1 Republican conservatives that get empowered by getting rich off of cheap labor. In the middle is the handle of the barbell, that is the middle class, the middle class that used to be an ever-broadening, an ever more prosperous middle class that now is losing its purchasing power and being narrowed by the greed of the people that are politically greedy on the one side, and economically greedy on the other side.

I asked this question to the business community in America, because I know I will not convince the people on the other side of the aisle, where will you apply your trade once we have destroyed this America that is based upon the rule of law?

I will yield back to the gentleman from California.

Let me say, what we are fighting for here is nothing short of the middle class. The fact is there are those on the left and the right that say we desperately need more poor people. You know why? It is because the major corporates want cheap labor on the right, and the left wants cheap votes. And they are willing to sell their children's birthright out, their grandchildren's future out just to be able to capitalize off of this illegal activity.

At this time, I have the privilege of recognizing the gentleman from California who has agreed to be the subcommittee chairman on the Border Security Policy Committee team for the Immigration Caucus, Mr. Royce.

Mr. Royce, I yield to you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Royce. Seeing that you are the chairman of the Border Security subcommittee, it is good to hear today that the administration has found the money to finally fill in the border tunnels across our border. A lot of people when I say the fence isn't working, if the fence wasn't working, the cartels would not be spending millions of dollars trying to figure out how to tunnel under the fence.

I thank you for that. Because before the fence, as somebody that grew up down there and watched this game being played, any criminal on either side of the border could jump

across the border and avoid enforcement on the other. Even in Mexico, they had the area called the Zona Norte, the northern zone, and everyone knew that it was a criminal hideout because they could always jump onto the American side if the Mexican officials came. So this issue of creating a barrier is common sense and common decency.

As Governor Ruffo of Baja, California, once said, he said something in Spanish and said in Mexico, we have a saying, Good fences make good neighbors. Frankly, I think those people that always attacked the concept of having secure borders should just listen to Ruffo's advice that common sense does go a long way.

I yield to the gentleman.

I appreciate that. The fact is most Americans may not understand that it is so out of control that they have had over 30 police officers murdered in Tijuana and over nine Federal prosecutors assassinated in Tijuana. In fact, it was so bad that the Mexican government 10 years ago sent their army to the American border. You hear an outcry here when we talk about the possibility of sending our troops or our National Guard down to the border. I wonder where these people are that are so outraged about America exercising our sovereignty, using our resources, when they ignored the fact that Mexico did the right thing by bringing their troops up.

I appreciate, Mr. Chairman, your work on this and look forward to working with you.

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about border control, but I want to make sure that the American people and everybody recognizes, in your district, the real problem exists that those who hire illegals are the ones who are creating the number one source of illegal immigration. When we talk about the violence at the border, when we talk about people dying, drowning at the border trying to come into this country illegally, the people that are at fault for that are those employers who provide the incentive for people to break our immigration laws and those who are profiteering off illegal immigration, and that is the illegal employers.

I would ask you and I would ask every Member of Congress and I would ask everyone who is listening across the United States to take a look at H.R. 98 which is a bill that Silvestre Reyes, a very respected Democrat from El Paso, who is a former Border Patrol agent, and David Dreier, a Republican, former chairman of the Rules Committee, put together working with the men and women who actually have to control our frontier and control immigration, the immigration agents themselves. They put together a bill called H.R. 98, and it is so simple that there is no excuse for anybody not to support it, unless they think that there is an advantage to encourage illegal immigration.

In this bill, it says one thing. It says, let's get rid of the 37 different documents that anybody can prove they are legal to be in the country to work. Let's go down to one simple document, a tamper- resistant Social Security card to allow Americans and foreign nationals alike to prove that a Social Security number that they are required by law to provide for employment is actually their number and not one that they have taken or 20 of their buddies have taken from somebody else and are using because they have stolen a Social Security number. One document for any employer to know to check, to be able to verify electronically that whoever is in front of them is qualified to work in the United States. Because it is essential that we give employers a simple, verifiable way of knowing who is legal and who is not legal so that we can do what I think Democrats and Republicans who really care about America can do together and, that is, crack down on the employers who knowingly hire illegals. We all know who they are, we know where they are, and we need to eliminate the excuse for hiring illegals. We need to start cracking down on that.

I just ask that when we get into this issue, let's not talk about amnesty, let's not talk about excuses for rewarding people for illegal immigration, let's talk about working together and cracking down on the illegal employers, making it clear that if you want to come to this country and work, then you come here legally, you play by the rules, you get rewarded for that.

So, Mr. Speaker, a lot of people may not know, but I am privileged to have a mother who is a legal immigrant who came back to this country back in the 1940s. And as she reminds me so often, everyone who rewards illegal immigration is insulting those immigrants who came here and played by the rules. Anybody who talks about giving amnesty or any reward to those who have violated our immigration law is insulting the hard work, the patience, and the perseverance to be a legal immigrant and everyone who has played by the rules and stayed within the law.

So, Mr. Speaker, I would like to say tonight that every Wednesday night we are going to try as the Immigration Caucus to give a report to the American people about what is going on with the immigration issue. It is something that politicians have ignored for too long, but it is something that the American people are demanding that we finally address if we want to stay in this city representing the people.

So tonight I appreciate the time to be able to address this issue.

30-SOMETHING WORKING GROUP

I thank my friend, the gentleman from Georgia, for stepping up here tonight and organizing this Special Order and bringing this subject matter before you, Mr. Speaker, and before the American people.

This immigration issue that is before America is I believe the most complicated and least understood piece of policy that I have seen debated in this country in my lifetime.

I have been involved in the immigration issue since well before I came to Congress 5 years ago. Today as ranking member of the Immigration Subcommittee, I sit through immigration hearings two times a week, sometimes three times a week, sometimes more than that. Witnesses bring a lot of information before the committee, and

we are required to read a lot of information. And then one has to read the press clippings to try to understand what the American people are trying to divine out of the things that we are wrestling with here in this Congress.

As I state how complicated this issue is, and I look at the chart that Mr. Gingrey had up, the one that I believe demonstrates the 273 people that could be brought into the United States under the chain migration program, the family reunification plan, the plan that presumes that all family reunions, however minor or major, are reunions that all must take place in the United States as long as there is any one person of one of those families that is here. That is quite a presumption, that you can't have a happy family reunion except in America.

And the 273 that can generate from one individual that is lawfully present in the United States and starts this process, this is a calculation that isn't something that we happen to know in this Congress, because Mr. Gingrey has presented that here tonight; this is a calculation that is done by illegal immigrants and legal immigrants across the world, not just across our southern border into Mexico and points down south towards the Panama Canal, but China as an example. So the going rate, if you are a pregnant Chinese lady, is $30,000 for a roundtrip ticket to come illegally into the United States, have the baby, get his little footprints put on a U.S. birth certificate and go on back to China. Then after the 18th birthday, that child can start the family reunification plan, and you start down the path of this chart that shows 273.

Mr. Speaker, that 273, that is the calculated number that one individual can bring in, and they might come in illegally and find the path to a legal lawful presence and then start the 273. When that chart was done, it was not really limited to 273 except space on the spreadsheet confined it to 273. The number could be 100 or more above that. And the size of the sibling unit, it might be 6 or 12. And if I remember right, the size of the unit for the chart was 3.1 siblings per family. A very conservative estimate.

So we have the automatic citizenship plan, the anchor baby plan, and that will yield 350,000 babies born a year to illegal mothers but on U.S. soil. Some argue their constitutional right to citizenship. I will argue that they also have to be subject to the jurisdiction of the United States when they are born. Therefore, it is a practice, not a constitutional right. But we have 350,000 new citizens that would not be citizens if we enforced our law on that. That is Nathan Deal's bill, another leader on immigration from Georgia. I certainly support that bill.

But the family reunification, the chain migration, 273, and this usurps the kind of policy that the United States of America ought to have. Every nation, and we are the most generous Nation in the world when it comes to immigration, by raw numbers, by percentage of the population, by having a standard there that isn't a very strict standard at all, but we need an immigration policy designed to enhance the economic, the social and the cultural well-being of the United States of America.

As the gentleman from Georgia alluded, we are not measuring in this chain migration plan the relative merits of the individual immigrants that would come in. We are simply letting that be set by genetics of the family, maybe that and marriage and whatever kind of familial relationship they want to have. I would submit that we need to establish in this Congress, first we need to get control of the illegal flow over our borders. That is about 11,000 at night.

I have sat on the border and I have heard the fence squeak at night, and I have watched the shadows go by me. It is twice the size of Santa Ana's army pouring across the border. And then we have the 350,000 automatic citizenship anchor babies that are born, and the family reunification plan. All of those things are out of the control of the Federal Government right now.

Because we have those elements and we have the overstayers of the visa that are not being enforced, because of that, the immigration issue has become so chaotic that we cannot engage in a rational immigration debate that can be designed to do the things I say and enhance the social, economic, and cultural well-being of America.

If we can get enforcement back under the control of the American people, then I believe we need to put together a matrix, a score system, a score sheet that rewards potential immigrants for their education level, for the capital that they bring into the country with them, for the business acumen that they might have, for the likelihood that they can assimilate into this broader, overall American culture that we have, so we can have some cultural continuity in the United States of America and assimilate and tie together and maintain this vision of one people, one people under God. As we sit today, it is out of our control.

Another thing that we are going to see, a White House initiative, a Senate initiative, and I believe a House initiative coming together trying to get a critical mass of voters between the Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate to work with the White House on this bill that I believe clearly the American people understand, and that is amnesty. That is the bill which has been dropped in the House within the last day.

But the thing we must insist upon, however the issue of amnesty is resolved, however the issue of the national ID card is resolved, we must insist on an overall national cap. The aggregate of all of immigration components that are there, and I think there are 30-some different categories that people can come into the United States legally under, that needs to be capped.

So if a family reunification plan takes up to a million a year, fine, we hit the cap, we stop. No H-1Bs, no work permits. It is simply we hit the cap.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia.

The thought that goes through my mind as I listen to that discussion about the cumulative total of legal immigrants in the United States, it occurs to me that the Senate bill that passed last year that they said was not amnesty, that the American people rejected because clearly it was amnesty, according to Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, would have legalized over the next 20 years, and that is the calculation period of time that we have for immigration, 66.1 million people.

It also occurs to me that back in 1986 when President Reagan signed the amnesty bill, that was supposed to legalize 1 million people, and that went over 3 million people.

Reclaiming my time, I am happy to yield to the gentleman to make any clarification he likes, but I have a flow in my thought process here that I want to make sure I can stay with here.

The published numbers, though, was supposed to be amnesty for 1 million and ended up being 3.1 million the numbers I have. Then if you go up to 1996 in California, when President Clinton accelerated the naturalization of a group of citizens in the number of 1 million in 1996.

So I am pointing this out that 1 million people was an outrageously high number in 1986, was an outrageously high number in 1996, and last year, the Senate passed a bill that legalized 66.1 million people, and we swallowed that and talked about it not in terms of the magnitude of it but just simply is it amnesty or is it not amnesty.

But put this into the scope, that the point I want to make here is that my numbers show, my census numbers, from 1820 until the year 2000, and those would be the years when our census was keeping track of the naturalization, that period of time, 1820 to 2000, the sum total, the cumulative total of all naturalized citizens come into the United States was 66 million.

So the Senate would have legalized a number in one of the stroke of the pen equal to the sum total of all legal immigrants that have come into America in all of its history and still leave these kind of programs here. That is the essence of the point I wanted to make.

I thank the gentleman from California.

So, picking up on this point, I want to broaden this discussion, if I could, a little bit, too, and that is, the labor supply in the United States of America. We hear continually from the other side the specious argument that we do not have a labor supply in the United States, and so since there is a demand for more cheap labor, therefore, you ought to bring in more cheap labor, as if the United States of America was just a giant ATM and there was nothing more to our Nationhood than a giant ATM.

We are more than a giant ATM. In fact, we are a sovereign Nation based upon a constitutional foundation, and we have a whole series of foundations that have created and established American exceptionalism, and without going down into the components of American exceptionalism, I would point out that we do have a labor supply, Mr. Speaker. That labor supply is not something where you just go looking at an unemployment rate and say, well, traditionally, it is kind of low, it is 4.6 percent. How many does that make? A few million out there you could hire. You could add up a few that are on the welfare rolls.

It is more than that. Look at the whole United States of America as if we were one huge company. If you were going to establish a company in a locale, you would not just go into that locale to measure how many were on the unemployment rolls and count them and say that is the only available labor supply. You would hire a consulting company to go in and survey that region and find out how many people were underemployed, how many people were not in the workforce, and how many people were unemployed so that you could look at the universe that could be hired from.

I did that for the United States of America. It was not hard to do. I am kind of astonished those big business interests did not do that. So I went to the U.S. Department of Labor's Web site, and I started to add up what about the people that are not in the workforce.

Well, between the ages of 16 and 19, there are 9.3 million that are not even

doing part-time work, and then you go into the ages of 20 to 24, and there is a number there that I believe is 5.1 million. 9.3 million for the teenagers, 5.1 million for the 20- to 24-year-old, and you go on up the line. So I began adding up these available workforce, and I went on up to 65, and then I thought but you know Wal-Mart is hiring up to 74. They get greeters there to hand you your cart at 74. So they are available workforce, too, not a lot of them, but they are there. You add this up, there are 6.9 million working illegals in America, and there are 69 million nonworking Americans of working age.

So any company that is worth their salt would look at that and say all we have to do is go hire 1 in 10 of those that are not in the workforce. One in 10 is all it takes to replace the illegal labor that is in America.

If you want to look at it from another perspective, Mr. Speaker, I would submit this, that 4.7 percent of the workforce is illegal labor, and they represent 6.9 million workers but they are not as productive as more educated, more efficient and more effective workers that are the American workers. So they are really only doing 2.2 percent of the work. Well, if you wanted to replace 2.2 percent of the work, if this great huge megafactory of the United States of America got up in the morning and realized that 2.2 percent of your labor force was not going to show up for work, it could happen all at once but it will not, then you could make an adjustment on your production line and you would just say to the people, well, you know that 15-minute coffee break that you have in the morning and the afternoon, for the sake of this emergency that we are in, we are going to shorten that down to 9.5 minutes in the morning and 9.5 minutes in the afternoon, and you have picked up 2.2 percent of your productivity. Eleven minutes a day will more than recover all the illegal labor in America in the size of the economy that we have.

We are not in a labor crisis. We just simply always will have more demand for cheap labor as long as we have more labor that makes it cheaper.

I wanted to make the point that we tried mightily in this House last year to bring immigration reform, we passed H.R. 4437. It had a lot of the things in it that would clean up the problems that we have with an enforcement here, internally, domestically, with employment enforcement, as well as border enforcement. That bill, of course, didn't make it through the Senate. The Senate passed their amnesty bill, and we passed our enforcement bill.

We came back and we did the one thing that we could agree to, and that was provide the online border security at the fence. That was something the American people wanted and demanded, and it was right, and it was appropriate, and it was just.

But the reason that that was the one thing we could agree on, because there is a tug of war going on in this country, a tug of war would be going on between big business that wants to have a supply of cheap labor, and people that want to have a supply, a long supply of voters, or at least people in the

United States they can count for the census purpose. There is a lot of political power, most of that is on the left, and there is a lot of business power, most of that is on the right.

We have this, it's an unusual, odd and some would say an unholy alliance. I think of it as a set of barbells where you have the weight on the right of the business interests, where you have the weight on the left is the political power, and the barbell in the middle, that handle that you pick it up with, the bar, that's the middle class. The middle class is being squeezed ever more narrow because of the overload on the upside and the overload on the downside our economy.

We got to this point last year, and we did all we could do. But the American people became cynical because they weren't seeing legislation get to the President's desk that fixed the problem. Now we are faced again this year with trying to arrive at a consensus, trying to arrive at something that preserves the rule of law, does not provide amnesty, satisfies the interests on both ends of that barbell that I described, and doing it quickly. Because once we get past the summer, once we get past the August break, we are into the fast slide into the next Presidential race, as well as the elections here and a third of the Senate.

But the Presidential race, if it's done and if it's done right, we will take this issue up in Congress, and if we don't solve it first, it will be become the issue du jour of the Presidential debates. And I am looking forward to a Presidential candidate that will step forward with clarity on this issue and start that inertia towards the White House. That is the one thing that can solve this issue. That is my best hope.