A bill to repeal section 403 of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013.

Mr. President, I rise to address two issues. The first is what is before us. That is the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Extension Act. The second is something that should be before us; that is, the confirmation of the U.S. attorney for Minnesota. This will be the third time in a few days that I have spoken on this issue, which I will continue to do so until this gets done.

I rise in support of the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Extension Act. I know we are making progress on a proposal that extends Federal support for emergency unemployment compensation for 3 months and is fully offset.

I have spoken about the need to extend Federal support for unemployment insurance, and I would like to thank Senator Jack Reed and Senator Dean Heller for their bipartisan leadership on this issue.

Unemployment insurance provides a critical lifeline. Workers pay into the program so it will be there when they are looking for work. Unemployment insurance helps families pay the mortgage or rent and put gas in the tank. Federal support for unemployment insurance is crucial for those Americans who exhaust their State-funded benefits and are still looking for work.

Throughout my time as the Senate chair of the Joint Economic Committee, I have focused on the continuing problem of long-term unemployment. Last month, I issued a Joint Economic Committee report that makes the clear economic case for extending Federal support for unemployment insurance, which keeps those Americans afloat, those Americans who are continuing to search for work.

The long-term unemployment rate now stands at 2.5 percent, nearly twice as high as when these benefits expired during the last recession.

We already know the consequences of allowing the Federal benefits to expire are not good. At the end of last year, 1.3 million workers lost all unemployment benefits, and another 3.6 million jobless workers could lose their benefits this year.

In my home State, roughly 9,200 people lost benefits at the end of last year and about 65,000 workers could lose their unemployment insurance by the end of this year.

Now is not the time for Congress to cut off extended unemployment insurance for those people who have been actively looking for work for more than 26 weeks.

These are not the people, as you know, who benefited from the uptick in the stock market over the last few years. They do not have stock portfolios. They are not checking the stock rate. They have not noticed that it has gone down a little bit recently, and they have not noticed that it went up all last year. They are just trying to put food on their table and keep a roof over their head. They are people who live in our States and who are our neighbors.

I have heard from countless Minnesotans who are sharing their stories with me about how unemployment insurance is a lifeline for their families and that ending Federal support for the long-term unemployed would be devastating.

I am sharing some of these letters because they tell the stories of hard-working Americans who are doing their best to look for work and support their families.

Linda from Little Falls wrote:

Dear Amy,

Please, please, please fight to extend the emergency

unemployment past the end of the year. My husband and I are

both still unemployed, by no fault of our own, and are both

over 55. We are having a very difficult time finding

employment, and to stop this program would be devastating for

us and many others that we know. My husband was at his job

for 37 years and they closed the doors, and I made more than

some of the more junior people in my office, so I was let go

first.

Think of that: a couple, the man working at his job for 37 years, the woman more senior at her job saying she was let go because she made more money than others in the office.

She ends by saying:

Please help to get this extended. I feel like the people

who are still left jobless are being forgotten!

Thank you. . . .

Second letter, Donna from Prior Lake. She says this:

. . . Having worked for over 30 plus years of my life, I am

currently unemployed. I have applied for over 300 positions

during the last 6 months. I do not expect a handout but I was

really disappointed when I found out that I could no longer

receive unemployment insurance after the 28th of December. .

. .

It's not that I am not trying to work, or that I am not

looking for a position, but I am 55 years old and my full

time job right now is to find a job. I am looking for

temporary, full time, part-time, contract work. I would like

to know that my congress people are doing the same for me.

Donna.

Thirty-plus years of working. She is 55 years old. She has applied for over 300 positions. That is who we are talking about here. These are the people we are talking about when we talk about this kind of long-term extension of unemployment. It is something I hope my colleagues will keep in mind as we move forward and get this done and get this passed.

Andrew Luger Nomination

Now I would like to turn to another matter. The only thing these two have in common is they are both kind of victims of stalled-out situations of gridlock. The second one is about one person, but it is not really about one person, it is about a system of justice and it is about a decision on the part of the United States, part of our Founding Fathers, the part of our Congress that is going way back, that we would have a U.S. attorney in most States in this country, that we would have a U.S. attorney who would be charged with enforcing the Federal laws, that the Congress would have a role in deciding who that U.S. attorney would be, that the President would recommend, would appoint someone, and then the Congress has the job of simply deciding if that person is qualified or not for the job.

But it is not even just about one person or one system of government, it is also about the people who work in the U.S. attorney's office, in the case of the district of Minnesota, over 100 people, over 50 people who are prosecutors working in the office who deserve to have a full- time leader in the U.S. attorney's job.

For 2\1/2\ years, 888 days--I counted each day--Minnesota has not had a full-time U.S. attorney. It is a modern-day record. During those years, from August 2011 to August 2013, B. Todd Jones was responsible for doing two jobs. He was the Minnesota U.S. attorney, and as those of us involved in the long vote in this Chamber that lasted over 8 hours remember, he was also the Acting Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. They had not had a full-time confirmed Director for 7 years. So he went in after the mess with Fast and Furious and was willing to be the Acting Director. At the same time he was the U.S. attorney for Minnesota. As you can imagine, there was a lot of work and cleanup to do at the ATF. That was where he was focused for most of his time.

Meanwhile, the U.S. attorney's office in Minnesota kept going. But at some point after 2\1/2\ years, you cannot keep going on your own. Over the summer, the Senate finally confirmed B. Todd Jones as Director of the ATF, leaving the Minnesota U.S. attorney's position finally open for good. Even before the confirmation of B. Todd Jones, Senator Franken and I, upon the recommendation of our bipartisan U.S. Attorney Advisory Committee, had already recommended Andy Luger, Assistant U.S.

Attorney, to fill the position. That was 197 days ago.

In November, President Obama nominated Andy Luger to become the new U.S. attorney. The Judiciary Committee approved his nomination unanimously on January 9. Our colleague from Texas, Senator Cruz, had no objection to this nomination. We had no objections on the committee, which is saying a lot, because we have a lot of different people from different backgrounds and different political views on the committee.

Usually when people speak on nominations on the floor, it is because they are fighting to get someone through because there is an objection. This is not at all the case in the case of Andy Luger, who is trying to be the U.S. attorney for Minnesota.

What has happened in past cases with U.S. attorneys? Over the past 20 years, 4 Minnesota nominees to be U.S. attorney, appointed by Republican and Democratic Presidents alike, were confirmed within a day of when they passed out of the committee. During this timeframe, all of the nominees were confirmed within an average of 9\1/2\ days of being voted out of committee.

It has been 26 days since Mr. Luger was approved by the committee. It is time that we do the right thing by quickly confirming him to make sure that Minnesota has its highest law enforcement officer in place.

I want to thank Senator Grassley for his help on this. He actually also has a U.S. attorney who is pending for the District of Iowa.

Why is the U.S. attorney important? I thought our pages would be interested in this fact, because we are going to be talking a lot about the U.S. attorney over the next few weeks if this keeps going on. The position of U.S. attorney is a law enforcement post that the Founders regarded as so vital that they created it during the very first Congress in the Judiciary Act of 1789. This is the same act that created the Attorney General and the structure of the Supreme Court and the lower courts. According to the act, each judicial district would be provided with:

a person learned in the law to act as attorney for the

United States . . . whose duty it shall be to prosecute in

each district all delinquents for crimes and offenses

cognizable under the authority of the United States, and all

civil actions in which the United States shall be concerned .

. .

The U.S. attorney is a position so necessary that President Zachary Taylor appointed Henry Moss--this is a name you may not have heard of before--to the post within 2 days of Minnesota becoming a State. So back then somehow they are able to get it done in 2 days. Now, we have been waiting 888 days. But in 2 days they were able to get a U.S. attorney in the job when Minnesota first became a State.

Since 1849, the District of Minnesota's 31 U.S. attorneys have upheld the rule of law, the Constitution, and the rights of our State's citizens and tirelessly pursued justice on their behalf. This quick action by President Taylor and the speed with which the Senate has confirmed past U.S. attorneys for Minnesota shows how much our government has historically valued this position.

These people have not been used as pawns in some kind of a fight over other issues, they have simply been confirmed. We have simply gotten it done. I think we can all agree, given what we have seen with the heroin cases that are on the rise all over the country in the last few months--this has certainly come to our attention in Minnesota. In Hennepin County alone, 60 opiate-related deaths in 1 county in our State in just 6 months of the year. So I think we can all agree that the importance of this position is no less important than it was in 1789 when this job was created.

Since the founding of the country, we have recognized the great authority placed in the hands of U.S. attorneys to uphold the rule of law, to protect our freedoms, and to exercise their power responsibly and only for just ends. A 1935 Supreme Court decision called Berger v. United States has gained iconic status for Justice Sutherland's description of a prosecutor's duty to follow the rule of law, serve justice, and play by the rules. Justice Sutherland so aptly wrote:

The United States Attorney is the representative not of an

ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose

obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its

obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore,

in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case,

but that justice shall be done.

As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the

servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt

shall not escape nor innocence suffer. He--

And we could say he or she for the modern day.

--may prosecute with earnestness and vigor--indeed, he should

do so. But, while he my strike hard blows, he is not at

liberty to strike foul ones. It is as much his duty to

refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a

wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means to

bring about a just one.

That is the kind of statement that rings as true today as it did nearly 80 years ago. The men and women in the Minnesota U.S. attorney's office exemplify the professionalism, high ethical standards, and unwavering commitments to the rule of law and public safety that we expect of prosecutors. They work to protect public safety by focusing on offenders who harm our communities: terrorists, the ``worst of the worst'' violent criminals and drug traffickers, and major financial fraudsters.

They also work closely with local law enforcement to ensure local and Federal resources are used efficiently and effectively to prevent crime and lock up criminals.

For example, the office won a conviction in a $3.65 billion Ponzi scheme case, the second biggest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history. Now this case was originated when, in fact, they had a full-time U.S. attorney. Most of the prosecution did take place when they had a full-time U.S. attorney in the office. Of course, with a major case like this, you would want a full-time U.S. attorney there to make critical decisions.

Also the office has an ongoing terrorism investigation that has led to charges against 18 people for aiding the terrorist organization al- Shabaab--8 of whom have been convicted, some receiving sentences of up to 20 years in prison.

So at some point, as that investigation continues, one wonders why the United States of America would want to have an office overseeing and prosecuting major terrorist cases without having a full-time U.S. attorney. I do wonder if this would ever happen in New York City or in the city of Chicago. I hope people keep this in mind as they look at the situation.

Other major accomplishments of the office include Operation Highlife, a major drug trafficking investigation involving more than 100 local, State, and Federal law enforcement officers that resulted in 26 indictments, 25 guilty pleas, and sentences of up to 200 months in prison.

Operation Brother's Keeper, a successful investigation and prosecution of a RICO case involving a regional 200-member gang, took 22 dangerous criminals off the streets. This does not sound like a case that should be handled by an office that does not deserve a full-time U.S. attorney. That would be the prosecution of a RICO case involving a regional 200-member gang.

Or how about Operation Malverde, which received national attention, and was a prosecution of 27 defendants associated with a Mexican drug cartel, including the apprehension of the cartel's regional leader, and sentences as high as 20 years in prison.

The office also recently played a key role in shutting down a major synthetic drug seller in Duluth. This head shop was a major problem. They went after this head shop. They prosecuted the owner. The owner was recently in his house and was found to have over $700,000 in plastic bags hidden in his bathroom. They won that case.

These are just a few of the major cases that office has worked on in recent years. I will be telling you more in the days to come.

After 888 days without a full-time boss, these hard-working people deserve a leader, and Mr. Luger is the right person for the job. Again, I am not up here speaking about this because anyone in the Senate objects to Mr. Luger for the job.

It is time we vote on Mr. Luger's nomination. In the past, as we know, U.S. attorney nominations have simply gone through on voice votes, without much hurrah, within a few days after they go through the committee. Mr.

Luger is a dedicated public servant and has the breadth of experience, strength of character, and commitment to justice that makes him a well- qualified candidate to serve as Minnesota's next U.S. attorney. I have no doubt that he will uphold the principles Justice Sutherland sought in that opinion in a U.S. attorney. I urge my colleagues to support Mr. Luger's confirmation and to finally give the Minnesota U.S. attorney's office and its hard-working prosecutor the full-time U.S. attorney they deserve.

I yield the floor and I suggest of a quorum.

Will the Senator yield for a question?

I thank the Chair.

Does the Senator agree with me, if the budget deal had not been paid for it would never have passed?

Most Republicans, and I am sure some Democrats, would not have voted for a budget deal unless it was deficit-neutral and paid for. I know it wouldn't have passed the House. So now, after the fact, if you fix the COLA problem without paying for it, haven't you basically blown the budget deal apart?

And their response was: We can fix it later. Our response was: Well, will you pay for it later? And everybody said yes.

So here we are. I appreciate Senator Pryor and Senator Hagan from North Carolina wanting to fix it. The good news is everyone in the body wants to undo the damage done to our military retirees. That is the good news. The bad news is we are doing it in a fashion that would break the budget agreement, and I don't think that should be our choice.

In order to right a wrong done to the military retirement community-- which was a $6 billion taking from them, unlike anybody else in the country--can we not find $6 billion over the next 10 years to make up for it? Because if we don't, we have broken the budget agreement and put a burden on the next generation. So, really, to help the military retiree, do you have to turn around and screw future generations by adding $6 billion of debt on top of the $16 trillion? I guess that is the question. And I would say no. That is why I appreciate the Senator's offset.

What is the Senator proposing here?

Let me see if I have this right. There is an earned income

tax credit you can receive based on need; is that right?

We are not going to get it. You are not going to get it for your kids because you make too much money.

I think this is a Ronald Reagan idea. If you are working, even though you may not have any income tax liability, we are going to give you an earned income tax credit. I think it is $500 per child; is that right?

Yes, I know. But under the earned income tax credit----

I think it is $500. But the point is, do you have to have a Social Security number?

Ok. If the argument is that by adding a Social Security number requirement to the additional credit you are somehow burdening people, why isn't that an argument made against the EITC? Because to get the earned income tax credit you have to have a Social Security number.

This new additional tax credit, on top of the earned income tax credit, doesn't have the same requirements. So those who come to the floor to say we are destroying families, why wouldn't you come down here and propose to do away with the Social Security number on the earned income tax credit? That would make perfect sense to me.

If requiring a Social Security number is a bad thing for families, why do you tolerate it for the EITC? The reason you wouldn't propose that change is because people in Treasury would say you would be crazy, because now you have an additional tax credit, something new on top of the EITC, that Senator Ayotte has found without a Social Security number you have $19 billion in fraud.

So I am curious. If you think requiring a Social Security number for a child to get an additional tax credit is destroying the family, why don't you come down here and suggest changing the law for the EITC? If you did that, you would get blistered by the auditor saying you are opening a new line of fraud.

So could the Senator tell us what would happen to the American taxpayer, what benefit would inure to the American taxpayer if we followed the Senator's proposal and accepted her amendment of requiring a Social Security number?

Senator McCain is absolutely right.

I thank him for showing such an interest in this topic. He has been so helpful in making sure we get this detention issue right. Having been incarcerated in a war, I think Senator McCain knows the difference between a system that works and one that doesn't. It has always been helpful to have Senator McCain travel with me and make a point to the Afghans that he knows what doesn't work.

General Dunford called this morning with a lot of sadness and, quite frankly, anger in his voice. We have captured thousands of Afghans and some third-country nationals during the 12-year war in Afghanistan. Our confinement facility at Bagram Air Base has improved a thousand percent. We have made our fair share of mistakes, but the prison now called Parwan I would put up against any prison in West Virginia, South Carolina or Arizona. It is a state-of-the-art prison. It is being transferred over to the Afghans.

As we take this prisoner population and turn it over to the Afghans with a collaborative process where we work together to determine what force to take, they have what is called an Accountability Review Board, which is an Afghan board looking at the disposition of this prison population. They were about ready to release about 88 about whom our commander felt the evidence in question deserved criminal court disposition.

The Afghan criminal court at the prison, which is attached right to the prison--the JSAF--has heard 6,000 cases with a 70-percent conviction rate. I am very proud of the judges and lawyers who run that facility.

All we are asking is that they not let 65 of the 88 walk out the door because of an administrative review board which is not recognized under Afghan law. The guy in charge of it is openly against the Bilateral Security Agreement. I think he is a corrupt individual.

General Dunford has basically said: You are going too far here. I cannot in good conscience not object.

We have lodged our objections, and we thought this would be fixed, and they were going to turn these cases over to the attorney general. I received a phone call Sunday night. There was a caveat which nobody told us about. They turned the 88 files over to the attorney general we thought for prosecution, but apparently President Karzai told the attorney general to release 65 of the 88.

If you believe in the rule of law, the President of the country does not have the authority under Afghan law to tell the judiciary or the attorney general what cases to dispose of. This is an extrajudicial exercise of legal authority by the President of Afghanistan. The people in question, the 88, are responsible for killing 60 Americans and coalition forces and 57 Afghans, and the Afghan population does not like the idea that these people are going to walk out of the jail.

I will read the statement issued by our commander in Afghanistan right after the phone call:

United States Forces-Afghanistan has learned that 65

dangerous individuals from a group of 88 detainees under

dispute have been ordered released from the Afghan National

Detention Facility at Parwan.

The U.S. has, on several occasions, provided extensive

information and evidence on each of the 88 detainees to the

Afghan Review Board, the Afghan National Directorate of

Security and the Attorney General's office.

This release violates the agreements between the U.S. and

Afghanistan.

The agreement is called the Memorandum of Understanding, and this violates the spirit and the letter of the agreement we have negotiated.

We have made clear our judgment that these individuals

should be prosecuted under Afghan law. We requested that the

cases be carefully reviewed. But the evidence against them

was never seriously considered, including by the Attorney

General, given the short time since the decision was made to

transfer these cases to the Afghan legal system.

So within 24 hours they decided to let 65 people go. Clearly, they didn't spend much time.

The release of the 65 detainees is a legitimate force

protection concern for the lives of both coalition troops and

Afghan National Security Forces.

It goes to Senator McCain's question, and I have spent a lot of time looking at every file. This is our own ground commander, General Dunford, who I think is doing a great job, telling us: If you let these people go, it represents a force protection problem.

He further goes on to say:

The primary weapon of choice for these primary individuals

is the improvised explosive device, widely recognized as the

primary cause of civilian casualties in Afghanistan.

And quite frankly, the death of our own troops. Senator McCain made a good point. Twenty-five of the 65 are directly linked to planting IEDs against our forces. We have fingerprints on these people. I have literally seen the evidence where there is biometric identification, where we can look at the pressure plate and the tape and all the material around the making of the IED and pick up fingerprints. When we do that, they match to the biometric data. We have identified the person by fingerprint, and they are going to let that person go. Some of

these people have been captured previously. The recidivism rate is growing in Afghanistan.

This is the final paragraph:

The release of these detainees is a major step backward for

the rule of law in Afghanistan. Some previously-released

individuals have already returned to the fight, and this

subsequent release will allow dangerous insurgents back into

Afghan cities and villages.

Back into the Afghan cities and villages to kill our troops and kill innocent Afghans.

I thank Senator McCain so much for his interest in this subject matter.

We are drafting a resolution condemning the actions of the Afghan government, President Karzai, in the strongest terms possible. We are suggesting that, in light of the breach of this agreement, putting our troops at risk, letting killers go, that we suspend all economic aid until after the election.

I want to let this body know that the troops are watching this. Can you imagine being one of the soldiers--Afghan and American--who risked their life to capture these people to have them walk right out the door and never face justice for killing one of your comrades? They are watching us. We have to prove to the troops on the ground in Afghanistan--both Afghan and American and coalition forces--that the Congress of the United States will not accept this; that we have their back; and that we should push back as hard as humanly possible to make the message clear to President Karzai and the Afghan government how much this displeases us. They are due to walk out of the jail Thursday.

I hope I don't have to come back on the floor of the Senate and read about the death of an American caused by one of the people President Karzai released.

Senator McCain and I have been to Afghanistan more times than I can think of. I have not found anybody more attuned to the idea that we need a sustaining permanent relationship with the Afghan people than the Senator from Arizona. He understands a follow-on force is necessary, and that we can win this conflict and end it well with honor if we have a follow-on force, and the Senator from Arizona wants to stay involved.

But does Senator McCain agree with me that the actions of President Karzai defying our commander, his own judges, his own legal system has done enormous damage to public support for this war effort--which is already low--and has hurt the relationship between the Congress and the Afghan government?

We are not asking to bring these people back to the United States for trial. We are asking that they go through the criminal process under Afghan law where Afghan judges will decide their fate. Afghan prosecutors and defense attorneys will take over the case, not us. We agreed to 550 people being released under this administrative review board, but these 88--according to General Dunford, and my own review--represent a different case of detainee.

The evidence in some cases is overwhelming. With some investigation, I think a case could be made against all of them. Many of the people who are part of the NDS, which is basically their FBI and CIA rolled into one, lost their lives capturing these folks.

All we ever asked the Afghans to do is basically follow their own rule of law. The accountability review board was never meant to be a release mechanism. General Dunford did the right thing by lodging a complaint.

I talked to the President of Afghanistan personally about how this is against the letter and spirit of the memorandum of understanding we have regarding detainees and how this will play back in America. Apparently what we think doesn't matter to him anymore. I understand being upset with this administration for the uncertainty and a lot of mistakes they made.

We may be the last two in the whole Senate who understand that we need a relationship with Afghanistan post Karzai. I believe a lot of my colleagues understand that too.

I hope every U.S. Senate Member will agree, no matter what they may think about what we should be doing in the future in Afghanistan, that we need to make a clear statement and agree to this resolution. If there are any Members who have any ideas to enhance it, I welcome those ideas.

I want this body to speak with a single voice--Republicans and Democrats--and stand behind our general and tell the President of Afghanistan that we will not let this happen without a push-back. We owe it to those who have died, we owe it to those who are in harm's way, we owe it to our own value system, and now is the time

for the Congress--and particularly the Senate--to speak with one voice and let President Karzai know that he doesn't understand what is going on in America. He is detached from reality when it comes to Afghanistan and America. No President of Afghanistan who understood this issue at all would ever do this. He is making it impossible for an American political leader and an American general to not respond forcefully.

I look forward to working with Senator McCain on this resolution.

I thank the Senator from Arizona.

To conclude, this is not Lindsey Graham or Colonel Graham saying this. This is what General Dunford is saying. I know he is right. I clearly understand what he is telling us. I have seen it firsthand.

To the folks at 435, who are in charge of the detainee population-- they lost two yesterday. An IED killed two of our civilian contractors, Paul and Michael, who were working out of the Pul-i-Charkhi prison. I know them well. I met them a bunch of times. They have been over there as civilian contractors for years trying to improve the Afghan detention facilities and legal system, and they gave their lives for a very worthy cause.

All I am saying is we need to suspend aid. We are taking hundreds of millions of dollars of American taxpayer money and investing it in Afghanistan in a way that is inappropriate.

After President Karzai's decision to release these detainees, we should cut off the money. Not a dime should go to economic development. No more money. I can't go to a taxpayer in South Carolina and say that they should write a check to a government that is being led by Karzai. Hopefully, as Senator McCain said, when somebody new comes along, reason will prevail.

I thank my colleagues and need their support. I urge every Member of this body to speak out with one voice.

I will conclude with recognizing my good friend from Connecticut. His son is a marine who served in Afghanistan, and he has been there many times. I want Senator Blumenthal to know that we are doing this today to let our marines know that their sacrifice will not go unnoticed, and we will not let these guys walk out of jail without a fight.

Mr. President, the Presiding Officer is new to the Senate, and we are glad to have him. He will find in the course of his senatorial experience that occasionally good legislative ideas come from unexpected places. Occasionally they come from phone calls to your office, emails, and letters, where people tell their stories, and from those stories you see the need for a new law, a change in policy.

That happened to me 13 years ago. A Korean-American mother called my office in Chicago with a problem. Her problem was that her daughter Tereza was about to graduate from high school and had an opportunity to go, on scholarship, to the Manhattan Conservatory of Music in New York.

This was a poor family. Mom worked at a dry cleaners. They barely got by. But her daughter had an extraordinary musical talent. She was an accomplished pianist, even as a senior in high school, and this was her chance.

As her daughter started to fill out the application form for the Manhattan Conservatory of Music, there was a box that asked her to identify her nationality, her citizenship. She turned to her mom and said: What should I put here? Her mother said: I'm not sure.

You see, Tereza Lee was brought to the United States at the age of 2 on a visitor's visa. When the visa expired, her mom, her dad, and she stayed in the United States and did nothing else. Technically Tereza, having lived about 16 years in this country, was just another undocumented kid.

So they called my office and said: What do we do about this? Well, we checked the law. The law is very clear. Tereza and those just like her were to be deported from the United States for a minimum of 10 years and then be allowed to petition to come back in.

That seemed to me fundamentally unfair. So I wrote a change for the law called the DREAM Act. The DREAM Act said if you are a child under the age of 16 brought to this country by parents, if you will finish high school, have no serious criminal record, and you are prepared to go to college or enlist in the military, we will put you on a path to citizenship.

I introduced that 13 years ago. As you can see, the wheels of justice grind exceedingly slow in the U.S. Senate. But over the years, this idea of the DREAM Act has really caught hold. The reason is not because of me; it is because of the DREAMers. Initially, they were frightened, afraid of deportation, raised as children in families where they were warned every day: Be careful. Do not get in a position where you are going to get arrested. You will get deported, and the whole family might get deported. We don't want to break up our family, so be careful. So they held back in the shadows, wondering, worrying about a knock on the door.

Over time, though, something happened, and I cannot explain it. The same kids who used to stand outside my meetings, after I would talk about the DREAM Act in Chicago--waiting in the darkness, in the shadows, to tell me, in a whisper, they were DREAMers--decided to step up and speak to the United States, to identify themselves. It was an act of courage. Some people say: Well, they were kids, and kids do rash things. I think it was more courageous than rash.

I came to the floor on more than 50 different occasions to tell the story of the DREAMers: who they are, what they have done, what they hope to do--amazing stories, incredible stories, of young people across America just asking for a chance to be legalized, to be part of America's future. They felt they were Americans start to finish.

The Presiding Officer's colleague, Senator Bob Menendez, used to talk about Hispanics, who are the largest group of DREAMers, standing in those classrooms, hand over their heart, pledging allegiance to the only flag they have ever known, who faced the cruel reality that they were not going to be American citizens unless we changed the law.

Here is the good news. Over time--a long time; 13 years--the sentiment not just of the American people but of Members of Congress started to change. It changed for the better. The House of Representatives enacted the DREAM Act. Even the Senate, in the comprehensive immigration reform bill this last year, enacted the strongest DREAM Act ever written.

In fact, just last week, when Speaker Boehner, in the midst of his examination, if you will, of the immigration issue, issued a statement of principles, smack-dab in the middle of it, in clear language, was an endorsement of the DREAM Act. So although the Speaker may have some misgivings--and I am sorry to say I disagree with him--but may have some misgivings about comprehensive immigration reform, he acknowledged that on a bipartisan basis the DREAM Act was something that both parties should embrace.

I still believe in comprehensive immigration reform. The DREAMers will be the first to say: Don't forget my mom and dad when you are talking about immigration reform. But the reason I give this preface to my remarks is to put in perspective an amendment which will be on the floor of the Senate this week offered by Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire. It is an amendment which addresses a provision of the Tax Code.

Here is what our laws currently say when it comes to taxes and families working in America. If you are undocumented, you are not legally allowed to work in America. That is what the law says. But if you do work in America, even undocumented, you have a legal obligation to pay your taxes. So how would an undocumented worker pay their taxes? Well, they would have an ITIN, they call it, a basic identification number that they can use to file their tax returns; and so many do.

Undocumented workers here in the United States pay their income taxes, as required by law. One of the provisions in our Tax Code--for every taxpayer--says if you are in certain income categories, you are allowed to claim a credit for your children. It helps 38 million American families who take this credit on their tax returns because they are working families and have children and the Tax Code said: We will help you raise your children.

On its face, it is worth about $1,000 a year in reduced taxes. But there are limitations. If your income reaches certain levels, you do not qualify for this tax credit.

Now comes Senator Ayotte who makes a proposal that we basically change this child tax credit as it applies to the tax-paying undocumented workers--that we say to them their children can only be claimed for this child tax credit if the children can produce a Social Security number. Therein lies the problem, because many of these children, although they are legally claimed today, do not have a Social Security number.

Let's talk about DREAMers, because that is a group affected most directly by the Ayotte amendment. DREAMers--those who would qualify if the DREAM Act becomes law--have been given a special status because of President Obama. He created a deferred deportation, deferred action program so that DREAMers could step up, identify themselves to the government, register, be given a work permit, and be allowed to apply for a Social Security number--DACA it is called.

We estimate there are about 2.1 million eligible DREAMers in America for the law that I want to change. So far, a half a million of them have applied for DACA and therefore can obtain Social Security numbers. That leaves 1.6 million DREAMers who cannot, under the Ayotte amendment, be counted as children under the child tax credit.

So ultimately what Senator Ayotte is doing is to deny those who are working in America and paying their income taxes that provision of the Tax Code which says: You get a special consideration for your children. I think that is just plain wrong.

Listen to these numbers: The child tax credit--a refundable credit for working families--of $1,000 for each child under the age of 17 is limited, as I mentioned earlier. The most anyone can claim for the tax credit is 15 percent of family income minus $3,000, regardless of the number of children. For example, a minimum-wage worker earning $14,500 with two or more children would receive at most $1,725 as a tax credit or refundable tax credit. The credit is only available for taxpayers who are working, earning income, and raising children.

The Ayotte amendment, though, has to be put in this perspective. Nearly 38 million families are expected to benefit from this child tax credit this year--I should say this year, filing for last

year's income. Sixty percent of those who claim this tax credit earn less than $25,000 a year. Nearly half of the workers, members of families working in America claiming the child tax credit, earn $10 an hour or less, and 90 percent of those who would be hurt by the Ayotte amendment are Hispanic.

The tax credit is legally available for qualified taxpayers who have children with ITINs--these are individual tax identification numbers-- and not everyone who uses an ITIN is undocumented. This amendment, the Ayotte amendment, would also affect lawfully present children who use ITINs, including victims of human trafficking, DREAMers, as I mentioned, under DACA, Cuban and Haitian entrants, and those with a pending application for asylum.

The child tax credit, we estimate, lifts about 3 million people, including 1.5 million children, out of poverty every year. It is an incentive for these low-income families who are working and paying taxes but not earning enough to take care of their kids. The Ayotte amendment would eliminate the use of a tax credit for 1 million children, pushing many low- and moderate-income families with children deeper into poverty.

What Senator Ayotte is trying to do is to use the proceeds from this amendment she is offering to pay for the cost-of-living adjustment under the military pensions. Those veterans have already paid for their pensions. They paid by volunteering to serve this country and risk their lives. Some of them have come home with visible and invisible wounds of war that will be with them for a lifetime.

I do not believe we should come up with a pay-for for something these veterans have already paid for, No. 1. And, No. 2, I think it is unfair for us to impoverish more children in America as a means of helping our veterans. What a cruel choice to put before the U.S. Senate.

Do not take my word for it. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the statement I am about to refer to be printed in the Record.

Sister Simone Campbell is somebody whom I greatly respect. Sister Simone Campbell is executive director of NETWORK, a national Catholic social justice lobby. She is also one of the organizers of Nuns on the Bus, Catholic nuns who have traveled all over the United States speaking out on issues of social justice.

She has sent us a statement opposing the Ayotte amendment. It is a lengthy statement. I will not read it all, but I do want to read several parts that I think are important. Sister Simone Campbell says:

To set the record straight, children targeted by [the

Ayotte amendment] do exist and they do live in the U.S. Four

million of them are U.S. citizens and others are ``little

DREAMers,'' young children brought to this country by their

families. Under existing tax laws, their families may apply

for the child tax credit if they qualify financially. If

fraud is suspected, the solution is not to deny all eligible

children access to this critical antipoverty program. That is

cruel and ineffective.

Those are the words of Sister Simone Campbell in reference to this proposed amendment. She concludes by saying:

Responsible leaders in Congress should look into their

hearts and reject proposals like this one pushed by [Senator]

Ayotte. This political tactic is not good for our economy or

the wellbeing of our entire nation--especially children who

are the future of our country. We are better than this.

I agree with Sister Campbell. Why is it, week after week, from the other side of the aisle, from the other side of the Rotunda, we hear proposal after proposal to make it harder for working families, and particularly lower income families, to get by in America?

When we talked about unemployment benefits for those who have lost their jobs so they can find additional work, only four Republicans Senators would step up and join us in that effort. When we talk about extending the minimum wage so that those who get up and go to work every single day have a fighting chance, the opposition consistently comes from the other side of the aisle.

Now we have before us this proposal to change the Tax Code to the disadvantage of the poorest workers and the poorest families and the poorest children in America. We are better than this. Sister Campbell is right. I would say to my colleagues, if you believe in the DREAM Act--and many of you have said you do--you cannot vote for the Ayotte amendment without realizing what it does to these children. To impoverish these children on 1 day in the Senate, and before that say that we think they should be citizens some day--we have to have a consistent moral ethic when it comes to the way we treat children in America.

Denying children the most basics in life, whether it is food stamps or assistance on the tax returns of their parents, is just not what America should be about. This Ayotte amendment will really call into question our dedication to these kids and their families. These workers are stepping up, meeting their legal obligation to pay their taxes. All they are asking for is to be treated like everyone else under the Tax Code. The Ayotte amendment will deny that to millions of these children. That is absolutely unacceptable.

Now, let me address a very real issue. Senator Ayotte has identified some instances--I do not know how many--of fraud in the use of this child tax credit. I stand with her in trying to fight back and end that fraud. But let's be honest. A person making barely minimum wage, filing their tax returns and claiming this credit, is not likely to set out to game the system.

The people who are gaming the system are the tax preparers. They are the ones who may be lying to the government and are guilty of fraud. I will join with Senator Ayotte and any other colleague who wants to stop that perpetration of fraud. I do not stand for fraud in any program. I do not think any Senator would. But to take this out on the children and low-income taxpayers is just plain wrong.

I urge my colleagues, let's stand by the veterans and restore their pensions. Let's do it as quickly as we can. But please do not help our veterans at the expense of children in America. This is an important amendment. It is one that calls into question our values. I urge my colleagues to look at this very carefully.

This is the last point I will make before I yield the floor; I see other colleagues here. I support comprehensive immigration reform. If the Ayotte amendment is enacted into law, the cost of bringing the DREAMers into citizenship has just gone up by billions of dollars, which we will have to raise to undo the Ayotte amendment at a future time. Let's not put ourselves in that position.

For the good of these children and their families and to put this Nation in the right place by fixing our broken immigration system, I urge my colleagues to oppose the Ayotte amendment.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I returned to the Senate in 2011 to tackle what I believed to be the greatest challenge facing our country, and I have devoted much of my first 3 years in this returned term on working to achieve a debt reduction agreement that would put our Nation on a path to fiscal health and fiscal responsibility.

I have been involved in discussions for endless hours and days and months with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle--Republicans and Democrats--with the administration and with outside groups over trying to put together a long-term deficit and debt reduction plan that will put us on the path to fiscal health, to finding a way forward to deal with our ever mounting debt.

I am committed to working with my colleagues and the administration on this issue because I believe, ultimately, the most important thing we can do for the future of our country, for future generations--the most important legacy we can leave during our term of service here--is to solve our Nation's fiscal crisis.

Recently, we have heard relatively little about this. Despite efforts which have been ongoing for the last 4 to 6 years, we have not come to a resolution; we have not come to an agreement which puts us at the beginning of a path to resolve this problem. Yet each year it mounts. Our debt dramatically increases. We continue on deficit spending.

Even though we have made a few efforts to reduce deficit spending to half of what it has been--at least for this coming year, based on the sequester and the implication of that--it is also clear that this is temporary. It is also clear that whether we reduce it in half or not, the other half still amounts to more than half a trillion dollars of excess spending, driving our debt higher and higher.

I am privileged to serve as the senior Republican Senator on the Joint Economic Committee. We spend a fair amount of time looking at the projections for the future and how they ought to shape our actions here in the Congress, as well as how we should work with the administration in terms of dealing with this issue.

The Congressional Budget Office is a nonpartisan group who deals with numbers, not with politics--at least they are not supposed to. They bring about their annual ``Budget and Economic Outlook,'' which was released today. Looking at it is shocking. Never has my conviction been stronger than today when I read this outlook which has just been released. It addresses issues important for all of us. I am going to talk about just the top 10. But if this is not a siren call to us to refocus our efforts on this issue, we are going to regret to the end of our lives not having taken action to begin the process of getting this country's fiscal health and responsibility back in order.

Again, this is the Congressional Budget Office--a nonpartisan group established by this body to deal with numbers and give us facts and projections from economists who give us the opportunity then to look at how we shape policies.

I was stunned by the CBO report, and I would like to share the shocking findings. I hope every Member of Congress will look at this. I am going to distribute it on behalf of the Joint Economic Committee so we have access to this. But it ought to send a shock wave through all of us, and it ought to provide us with the courage and the will to step up and do what I think we all know we need to do.

Finding No. 1. The national debt has exploded over the last several years. Gross Federal debt in 2014 is projected to reach $17.7 trillion, which is a figure larger than our entire economy and an increase of over $7 trillion in just the last 5 years under this President.

Point No. 2. CBO projects cumulative deficits from 2014-2023 to be $1 trillion larger than last year's projection for the same time period.

Last year was startling enough. Now we learn--after 1 year of sequestration, holding down spending, and speeches on this floor saying we are getting control of this, CBO comes along and says the cumulative deficits from 2014 to 2023 will be $1 trillion larger than they thought just last year. So while we are congratulating ourselves for holding down spending, we are told we are adding $1 trillion more than was projected and anticipated last year.

Now we are dealing with the so-called Affordable Care Act--yet to be proven to be affordable. CBO says that ObamaCare will reduce the number of full-time workers by 2.3 million people through 2021. At a time when this was sold as a plan to put Americans back to work, as something that would reduce our deficit because we would get control of out-of- control health care spending, we are told by the Congressional Budget Office that the number of full-time workers will decrease by 2.3 million. This is a significant increase from the last estimate of 800,000 during the same time period. So we have gone from an 800,000 projection not that long ago to 2.3 million.

Point No. 4. Mandatory spending--particularly our health and retirement security programs--is crowding out all other priorities. The Congressional Budget Office once again has said that as we look at our total budget, the mandatory spending continues to crowd out all other spending priorities.

This figure stood out and stunned me because it is the first time I have seen such an extraordinary jump in the mandatory spending percentage of our total spending.

On mandatory spending, CBO says interest on the debt is projected to consume 94 percent of all Federal revenues 10 years from now, squeezing out funding for all other priorities. Squeezing out? Eliminating. We are entering the season when interest groups from our State come with many creative and innovative ideas as to how they could better spend or spend more money on their particular programs.

They come in and say, ``We are here to encourage you to increase spending for medical research at the National Institutes of Health'' or, ``We are here to have you understand how important scholarship grants, Pell grants, and others are for enrollment of students in our States'' or, ``We are here to talk about the need to improve our infrastructure, to pave our roads and fill potholes and build and repair and establish new infrastructure for the movement of water, sewage treatment.'' On and on it goes. We can go right down the list of literally hundreds of requests as to how tax dollars ought to be spent to better improve our States, to better improve our health, to better improve our education, to better improve a whole range of things, including support for national security.

I have to look them in the eye and say: Every year we have a smaller pot of money percentage-wise of our budget to apply to all these discretionary spending programs which Congress has to approve every year.

I say: I am really not here to argue about whether money for the National Institutes of Health is more important than money for education grants or money for infrastructure development or any other endeavor in which the Federal Government is involved.

Every year all of these are going to be faced with less money to fund these programs. Some of them ought to receive less and some of them ought to be closed and the waste and fraud ought to be eliminated. Nevertheless, there are essential functions that need to be funded, and they won't be able to be funded adequately and will continue to shrink as the mandatory spending runs out of control.

But to think that of all the revenue--all the tax dollars that come into the Treasury 10 years from now, 94 percent will be spent on programs we have no control over and won't be available for any of the things I mentioned and dozens--if not more--of programs. It is simply unsustainable. Ninety-four percent. Six percent left to provide for our national security and national defense, our institutes of health, education, infrastructure development, manufacturing innovation, research and development--you name it.

CBO also said Social Security is in jeopardy. They project that Social Security ``will continue to run cash flow deficits every year during the next decade.'' And the disability insurance trust fund will be insolvent by 2017. That is 3 years away.

Let me repeat that. The Congressional Budget Office said that at the current rate the Social Security disability insurance trust fund will be insolvent in 3 years.

They also said mandatory spending on health care programs is exploding.

We have heard it said on this floor and we have heard it mentioned in the State of the Union Address and by the administration numerous times, that we are getting control of our exploding health care costs through the Affordable Care Act. In 2013 the Federal Government spent $861 billion on Medicare, Medicaid, and other major health care programs. This year the collective cost is expected to reach $933 billion and then nearly double by the year 2024 to $1.8 trillion. I don't call that getting control of our health care costs. Yet this mandatory spending part of our budget will continue to grow to the point where we simply have no money left for any other function of government.

All this, of course, is based on interest rates and the assumption as to what they will be. CBO says interest on our debt is set to double. Annual interest payments on the national debt are estimated to more than double over the next 10 years from 1.3 percent of our gross domestic product in 2014 to 3.3 percent of GDP in 2024. And we know from the past that estimates of what will happen with interest rates will drive that rate higher, particularly as our fiscal crisis gets more desperate.

Point No. 8. Again, the Congressional Budget Office says: We have a spending problem and not a taxing problem. Projected revenues will exceed the 40-year historical average of gross domestic product this year and outpace growth in our economy over the next 10 years.

So they say the problem isn't too little revenue. That is going to continue to pour in here as we continue to raise taxes. But you can't raise taxes fast enough or adequate enough without, one, destroying our economy or limiting our economy, but, secondly, to keep pace with the spending, which will hit its projected average of 20.5 percent this year and over the next 10 years outpace economic growth to a greater degree.

CBO notes that ``after 2024, the long-term trajectory of spending will drive up debt to nearly unprecedented levels.

Let me repeat that. This is a quote from the Congressional Budget Office: ``After 2024, the long-term trajectory of spending will drive up debt to nearly unprecedented levels.''

CBO suggests that such an upward path would ultimately be unsustainable.

Point No. 9. Labor force participation will continue to decline over the next several years. CBO projects that labor participation will drop to 62.5 percent by the end of 2017, fueled in part by the mandates in the Affordable Care Act and negative impact on job creators as a result.

Point No. 10. The Congressional Budget Office suggests that even these dire projections may be overly optimistic. CBO projects real economic growth of 3.1 percent, which is notably higher than private sector and IMF estimates of 2.4 percent to 2.8 percent. CBO says that it ``would probably trim its projection of GDP growth'' in 2014, based on late-2013 data. So the numbers we are dealing with today may be overly optimistic. As dire as this report is, it may be that we are underestimating the damage that will come from our inability to control spending and put us on a path to fiscal health.

This isn't another siren alerting Washington to the stark reality of our country desperately needing a real debt reduction agreement; this is, a five-alarm fire. Our fiscal house is engulfed in flames. The question is, When are we, who have been given the responsibility by the people we represent, going to have the courage to stand and do something about this, to put out this fire?

We cannot overlook the fact that our Nation is facing record deficits as far as the eye can see. We are careening on an unsustainable, unstable fiscal path. We need all hands on deck to address this now-- not tomorrow, not after the next election. How many times have we heard, after this next election, we need to dig down and roll up our sleeves and take on this challenge. We need to do this now because the threat is now.

A credible, long-term plan to reduce our debt and put our country back on a path of fiscal health and economic growth and opportunity is the only way we can preserve the America we enjoy today or have enjoyed in the past. It is the only way to preserve that for future generations. So I think we have a generational responsibility that is as important as any we have faced before.

Many say our legacy rests on what we do here. Whether that is true, we certainly will be measured by what we do or what we don't do relative to this particular crisis. Again, this is not a Republican conservative standing and saying: This is how I see things. I am simply reciting how the entity we turn to, the Congressional Budget Office--a neutral body which just does the math and then draws conclusions from it--actually, we draw the conclusions; they put the numbers down. This is what the Congressional Budget Office has told us. These are stunning numbers, much more than any of us anticipated. I think there has been a little lull of us thinking: Well, we have things under control. We had sequester; that was kind of messy, but it did save some money. Now we have a budget. We are going forward and back to regular order.

What is regular order? Regular order is continuing to spend more than a one-half trillion dollars more than we bring in, in revenue. Raising taxes, according to CBO, is not going to solve the problem; that just hinders economic growth.

So those of us on both sides of this body who have worked to address these issues now, not later; those of us who have worked with the administration--and I was part of a small group working with the administration over a 7-month period of time with the President directly and with some of his top advisers to try to put something in place, as modest as it was or as it seemed to end up being--and we were not even able to complete that. That burden, that responsibility, that legacy rests on our shoulders. That duty rests on our shoulders, to acknowledge these facts, acknowledge these numbers, and to understand what impact it is going to have on the future of this country, our children and grandchildren, everybody's children and grandchildren, and perhaps even our generation.

So I will be distributing this report from Republicans on the Joint Economic Committee. I am hoping our report sends out yet another alarm, and we will not simply rest on the fact that we have made a baby step here in terms of getting some control over our spending. But as we turn around--akin to a little grass fire over here that we put out across the street while the five-alarmer is burning away, blazing away, and we are saying we will deal with it later. We can't deal with it later. We must deal with it now.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Blumenthal for his remarks, and I am going to utilize the same chart he had in a moment because I think it says it all. It was my colleague Mark Begich who first used this terminology--that our soldiers have paid for this benefit already and to get distracted by a discussion on how much to hurt children in order to restore these benefits is not worthy, in my opinion, of the men and women in uniform. So I am proud to stand up in support of Senator Pryor's commonsense bill.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed to proceed for 15 minutes.

Senator Pryor's bill is a restoration bill. It restores fairness and justice to our military veterans. It repeals the cuts to cost-of-living adjustments--we call them COLAs--for military retirees under the age of 62.

I see the Senator from Alaska just came in the Chamber, and I want to reiterate how much I appreciate his leadership. I say to Senator Begich, his analysis of this important restoration bill--restoring fairness and justice--was so right when he said our veterans have paid in full, and to get into some conversation of who do we hurt in order to pay these veterans is not worthy of our men and women in uniform. I want to thank him for his leadership.

Repealing these COLA cuts, well, that is the right thing to do. We are talking about men and women in uniform who have served our Nation bravely for more than 20 years. I have to say, as I stand up in strong support of the Pryor amendment in restoring these benefits to our veterans, I adamantly oppose the Ayotte amendment, which is hurtful to children, very hurtful to children, and I will get into that later.

When these veterans first put on the uniform and they promised to protect and defend our Nation, we made them a solemn promise to provide them with the care and benefits they earned. These men and women have sacrificed so much for us and, tragically, too many of them made the ultimate sacrifice.

In my State of California, we lost 892 service men and women in Iraq, and we have lost 411 in Afghanistan. We cannot break faith with those who put their lives on the line for our Nation. We hear about people who have served 4 deployments, 5 deployments, 6 deployments--I have heard of 10 deployments.

When this benefit was diminished as part of the budget deal, everyone knew we would have to move quickly and change it. We knew right away. That is what we are trying to do. We are not offering a slew of amendments on unrelated matters that hurt children and risk losing this very simple premise: that we honor our men and women in uniform.

We want a simple vote. Either you are for the vets or you are not for the vets. It is pretty simple. Thirty-five organizations are supporting this. We must recognize that when you attach unrelated amendments that have nothing to do with veterans, you slow down the bill. We all know that. It is a way to derail things.

Look what my friends tried to do on unemployment compensation--get us off on some discussion of how to pay for all that in an emergency situation with the long-term unemployed; and that rate is so high historically. Then we said: OK, we will play on your turf. We will agree. We will find a pay-for. We found a pay-for they said they liked. No. It was not good enough for them. We only got 59 votes. We needed 60. If anyone thinks that was not planned, I have a plot of land to sell you in a dump somewhere. Come on. We know how it goes around here. Don't tell me 59 and no more. Please. Those are games. This is not an issue we should be playing games about--restoring veterans' benefits.

So what we have in the Ayotte amendment is an amendment which demeans an entire population--an entire population. The amendment is antichildren, it is anti-immigrant, and it does not do one thing to help our veterans. But it will hurt some of our young DREAMers. We know the DREAMers. We have met the DREAMers--those children who came to the United States through no fault of their own, but now they want to contribute to our great society by staying in school and staying out of trouble. But yet the Ayotte amendment attacks the childcare tax credit, which impacts some of these DREAMers and which protects 1.5 million children from falling into poverty every year.

Honestly, this Ayotte amendment is so mean-spirited, so unnecessary, I just hope it is defeated soundly. The U.S. poverty rate is now the highest it has been in 20 years, with 22 percent of children living in poverty. Why would someone come down to the floor and attack children? Twenty-two percent of children live in poverty.

Low-income immigrant families who claim the child tax credit earn an average of $23,000 a year, and they use this tax benefit to provide for their children's basic needs, including food, rent, and clothing.

This tax credit, which Senator Ayotte would essentially take away from a whole group of people, is an incentive to do the right thing. These low-income families are working hard. They are earning money. But they need a tax break to help care for their children.

My Republican friends are always fighting for tax breaks for the top, top, top--for the top. What about the people struggling, who are working and earning $23,000 a year? Where are my friends on raising the minimum wage? So far I have not heard of their support. I hope they will change their mind. Where are my friends on giving unemployment insurance to those who through no fault of their own cannot find a job and who paid into that insurance system? Where are they? They are absent. They offer amendments they know are going to get us off track, distract us, and bring the bill down. But we are not doing it this time, I hope. I hope we will say no to the Ayotte amendment because it is an amendment that guts a very important tax break.

So let's be clear. To claim the child tax credit, which is what Senator Ayotte's amendment wants to weaken, families have to file taxes. So we are talking about tax-paying families. The child tax credit only goes to working people who earn money and pay payroll taxes, who pay State and local taxes, and any other taxes they may owe.

This Ayotte amendment is an outrageously disproportionate response to a problem the Internal Revenue Service is addressing. The IRS has implemented changes to improve enforcement. They are working with the Department of Homeland Security to make sure fake documents do not slip through the cracks.

Let me be clear. If a person commits fraud in this program, as in any other

program, we should go after that person. The law is on the books. I ask Senator Ayotte, look at the law. The law says: If you commit in any way fraud in the filing of this credit, and you are found guilty of a felony, you will be fined not more than $100,000--$500,000 in the case of a corporation--or imprisoned for not more than 3 years, or both.

So here we have a situation where if fraud is committed by anyone claiming this child tax credit, they can go to jail for 3 years and be fined $100,000.

But what does Senator Ayotte do? She takes a brush and she paints it all across America to immigrant families with children and says: We do not trust you. I think it is so offensive. It is not fair for law- abiding, tax-paying families to lose their child tax credit because of fraud that might be committed by a few.

I have worked with a number of my colleagues. They have identified billions and billions of dollars of tax-avoidance schemes in this country. We have corporations that use tricks so that they pay zero in taxes. I do not see Senator Ayotte--and I hope she will do this in the future--come down to the floor and rail against these wealthy individuals and corporations. No. She just goes after the weakest constituency--children. Children. Why should any of us attack children, literally take food out of the mouths of children? Why?

We need to keep our promise to the veterans, but we should keep our promise to the children. You do not say: I will restore one promise, but I will break another promise. We already have a law on the books: If anyone is guilty of fraud in this program, they go to jail for 3 years; they could be fined up to $100,000.

I just think it is so wrong. It is so wrong.

We can do this.

I wish to close by reading from Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of NETWORK, a national Catholic social justice lobby. I know Senator Durbin has quoted this. I hope I am not being too repetitive, but her words ring to my heart.

Some of you know about Nuns on the Bus. These were nuns who saw the injustice in some of the budgets that came before the Congress. They went on a bus and they said: Please do not cut funds for the most vulnerable people. That is not America. We are already losing the middle class.

The Presiding Officer knows that 400 families are worth more in this country than 150 million Americans. I want us to think about that--400 American families are worth more than 150 million Americans. Surely we can do better than hurt our most vulnerable children as we aim to restore benefits to our veterans.

This is what Sister Simone Campbell says about the Ayotte amendment:

For a while now, kids--particularly those in immigrant

families--have been unfairly under attack in the Senate, and

the only plausible explanation is unconscionable: to score

political points.

This is Sister Simone:

Sen. Kelly Ayotte recently proposed variations of a plan to

strip away the refundable Child Tax Credit that now goes to

millions of children of taxpaying immigrant workers in low-

wage jobs. The proposal is misguided and antithetical to the

Gospel call to care for children and those at the margins of

society. It violates our long-held values as a nation, and it

should be rejected.

I have such respect for Sister Simone Campbell and the work of NETWORK because they do not just read the gospel and go to church and practice their religion, they live it. They live it. When they see things happening on this floor that hurt the most vulnerable people, they speak out. That is what Nuns on the Bus did. That is what Sister Simone Campbell says.

This is what she says further:

Ayotte says she understands families' needs, yet she wants

to deny a child tax credit to taxpaying immigrant families.

Actions speak louder than words, and her proposal hurts

families. Our political leaders should never place poor

children in the condition of competing with other vulnerable

populations for funds that help pay for food and other basic

needs.

Deliberately harming immigrant families goes against the

fundamental goodwill of Americans, including thousands of

people we met last year as our ``Nuns on the Bus'' traveled

6,500 miles across the U.S. to speak out for justice.

Throughout our journey, we stood with, prayed with, and heard

the stories of hundreds of immigrants who have long served

the needs of our nation.

Responsible leaders in Congress should look into their

hearts and reject proposals like this one . . . The political

tactic is not good for our economy or the wellbeing of our

entire nation--especially children who are the future of our

country. We are better than this.

As I sum up, let's go back to our other chart. Senator Pryor, Senator Begich, and a group of Senators, I believe including Senator Shaheen, Senator Hagan, and Senator Landrieu--I believe they are all on this proposal.

With their sacrifice, military retirees paid in full. They paid in full. And to offer amendments that have nothing to do with the subject matter but open an entire battle on immigrant families, who are working so hard, because there are some examples of fraud, just as there are examples of fraud in corporate America--unfortunately, there are examples of fraud all across America, including in politics. But I have to say that to go after the most vulnerable children and the most vulnerable families and try to convince this Senate that is something fair--I think it is off the mark. I hope we will reject the Ayotte amendment. I hope everyone will read what Sister Simone says:

The proposal to go after children is misguided and

antithetical to the gospel call to care for children and

those at the margins of society. It violates our long-held

values as a nation and it should be rejected.

I want to remind everyone that if anyone commits fraud in this society, I will be the first one on the floor saying: Go after them. We already have a law that is very clear. Anyone who commits fraud in connection with the child credit, the refundable credit, shall be guilty of a felony and upon conviction thereof shall be fined not more than $100,000--$500,000 in the case of a corporation--or imprisonment of not more than 3 years or both.

If the Justice Department or the IRS is not doing enough to go after this fraud, I have to say, let's call the folks in charge and let's tell them we want to make sure there is an effort. Write a letter. But do not say--because a few people are doing a bad thing and should go to jail for it, do not take your paint brush and paint every immigrant family who has dreams with this. This is an outrageous thing to do, especially to claim that you are not doing anything to hurt children and you are doing it to help the veterans. The veterans have paid in full.

Let's vote for the veterans--for the veterans and for the children. You vote for the veterans by voting for Pryor. You vote for the children by voting no on the mean-spirited Ayotte amendment.

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

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

I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 10 minutes as if in morning business.

Madam President, I come to the floor week after week and talk about the President's health care

law. As a physician who has practiced medicine in Wyoming for 25 years, I am here to give a doctor's second opinion about the law. As we continue to learn more and more and see more and more, I am concerned about how the law affects my former patients, the doctors and nurses who take care of those patients, and the taxpayers who, of course, have been impacted as well.

It has been clear for a long time that this health care law is not working. It has been obvious from the beginning that this law would not work out the way the Democrats had promised the American people it would work out. Republicans had warned that it was a terrible idea, and even some Democrats have admitted this law has been a train wreck.

The Obama administration has been desperate to talk about anything but the failure of the health care law, and they have been desperate to hide some of the biggest problems with the law. The President has unilaterally made one change after another--sometimes with, in my opinion, no legal authority to do so--and tried to do this in a way that, perhaps, nobody would even notice.

Late yesterday the administration leaked word that it would delay again the law's unpopular employer mandate. It was the second time the Obama administration had changed the health care law in just a few days.

On the front page of USA Today, above the fold: ``Health law faces new delay.''

The Wall Street Journal: ``Health-Law Mandate Put Off Again.''

The Washington Post reported on modifications over the weekend. This is from Saturday: ``Administration to allow some changes to health-care plans.'' That article says:

The Obama administration has quietly reworked rules and

computer code for HealthCare.gov to try to stem an outpouring

of discontent--

``an outpouring of discontent''--

by . . . Americans who have discovered that the health plans

they bought do not include their old doctors or allow them to

add new babies or spouses.

So the administration then sent out a 14-page memo to insurance companies with changes to how its Web site works and new rules for how people can buy coverage.

The Washington Post article goes on to say:

The changes reflect recent work--still underway--to improve

the computer system for the marketplace, as well as fresh

thinking about the needs of people who are buying the

coverage.

``Fresh thinking about the needs of people who are buying the coverage''? Did the administration not think of these people before they wrote all of these things? The Obama administration has been working on this Web site for 4 years. Do they not talk to people and think about people and lives? I know a lot of these folks who work for the administration have gone right from college to graduate or law school and then right into some cubicle on the administration's payroll. Do they have no clue about how the real world works?

It is worse than that. On Super Bowl Sunday, President Obama sat down for an interview, and he was asked about the failure of his health care Web site, healthcare.gov--the Web site. This is what he said:

It got fixed within a month and half, it was up and running

and now it's working the way it's supposed to.

I do not think many people around the country who have gone on this Web site even today believe it is working the way it is supposed to.

The President was with Bill Clinton in September at the Clinton Forum, and President Obama said: Easier to use than Amazon, cheaper to buy than your cell phone bill. I assume the President actually believed that. I assume the President believes it is working the way it is supposed to today. But I think that is the reason the President's poll numbers are so low--because the American people say the President is out of touch with what the American people are seeing in their own homes and in their own communities, and the President in the White House has very little realization of what is happening in America. So according to the President, healthcare.gov is now working the way it is supposed to work.

Well, if that is true, why did we learn a week later that there are another 14 pages of rules changes and changes to the Web site? Did the President not have a clue that they were even coming? Why do we learn now that their work is ``still underway,'' trying to think about the needs of people who have been forced to buy insurance through this Web site?

Back in December the press gave President Obama the lie of the year award for his statement that if you like your health care plan, you can keep it. Well, when the President says that his Web site is working the way it is supposed to, either he continues to be in denial or he has another entry for this year's lie of the year.

On Sunday, Bob Schieffer on ``Face the Nation'' asked about the latest rules changes. Those were the rules changes that were before Sunday, not the ones that came out yesterday. The President has changed these rules now over two dozen times.

Bob Schieffer said: ``Things just seem, in every day and every way, to be more confused.'' This is Bob Schieffer, who for years, as the face of ``Face the Nation,'' has become a trusted person whom people turn to. As he says in a reasonable way, things just seem, in every day and every way, to be more confused. He then asked: ``Is there any hope of getting it straightened out?'' That is what Bob Schieffer asked-- ``any hope of getting it straightened out?''

Well, the majority party whip was on the show. The Democratic Senator was on the show, and instead of answering the question, he avoided it. He tried to change the subject, and he repeated an old Democratic talking point. This time that Senator claimed that ``10 million Americans have health insurance today who would not have had it''--this is the Democratic Senator--without the President's law--not actually responding to the question from Bob Schieffer about whether we can get things straightened out--no, not at all, not answering whether there is any hope of getting the law straightened out, just the same old talking points, and the talking points are not even true.

The Washington Post Fact Checker said the statement was so wrong, it deserved four Pinocchios--the most you can get. Well, that is the highest number possible--four Pinocchios. The Washington Post called the Democratic Senator's claim ``simply ridiculous.''

The reality is that the overwhelming majority of the American people signing up under the Obama health care law already had health insurance, so they are actually not getting new insurance or are newly insured because of the law. These are people who got cancellation letters and then said: Uh-oh, I need to get insurance. So then they went to the Web site to buy something--often much more expensive, requiring higher copays, higher deductibles. The law forced them to lose the coverage they had and the coverage that actually had worked for them.

Many people are paying far more now than they were for worse coverage, and it is not the right fit for their families. They are often paying for insurance which they are not going to use, do not want, which is more than they would ever need, and they are paying more than they ever had intended. That is what I hear when I talk to people in Wyoming. I was in Wyoming--in Cheyenne and Casper--this weekend. That is what I hear at home. The administration does not want to talk about that. Democrats in Washington do not want to talk about it at all. They just want to repeat their talking points even though they are completely false and have been proven to be false. Democrats want to avoid the tough questions about how the law has failed. They rely on denial and deception.

The Web site still is not working in spite of what the President may have said on Super Bowl Sunday. The law is not working. The answer to the question is, No, there is no hope of getting it straightened out. The Web site problems we have seen are just the tip of the iceberg.

People are paying higher premiums. Coverages are canceled. People cannot keep their doctors. Fraud and identity theft are going to continue to be a plague of this health care Web site. People are paying higher copays and deductibles.

It has been reported, interestingly enough, that in California, with the so-

called navigators--the people who are the certified navigators--over 40 of them are convicted criminals. Forty convicted criminals were hired and certified--certified--to be navigators in California in spite of the fact that people are being asked to give personal information, health information, financial information to these navigators. So it is no surprise that we are going to continue to see issues of fraud and identity theft.

Another interesting thing we learned recently: The Congressional Budget Office came out with its new estimates about the health care law and its effect on parts of the economy and on jobs. It also talked about the number of people who do not have insurance. It said that in the year 2024--10 years from now--there will be 31 million Americans who will be uninsured: Ten years from now, 31 million Americans uninsured.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for an additional 5 minutes.

Let's think about the speech the President gave in 2009. He came to Congress. He wanted to talk about health care reform. He talked about why it was so urgent that the Congress pass health care reform. He said: ``There are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage.'' So in 2009 the President said 30 million Americans could not get coverage.

The Congressional Budget Office just comes out and says: Ten years in the future--15 years after the President gives his speech--31 million Americans with no insurance. Yet we will have spent trillions of dollars, and yet it will not fix so big of a problem that we know we need to deal with--health care in America--and this present law, this enormous law, this 2,700-page law, has completely failed to deal with the reason the President said we had to deal with this in 2009. Fifteen years later, the same numbers--30 million; over 30 million in 2024. How is that a victory for uninsured Americans? How can the President say this law has succeeded? How is it a sign that the health care law is working in the way it is supposed to work?

On top of that, middle-class people all across the country are paying more because of the health care law. Their premiums have gone up. Their deductibles have gone up. Their copayments have gone up. Millions of hard-working Americans have had their insurance policies canceled because of the law. And the administration is still working on the Web site, in spite of what the President may say about it.

The President says it is working as it is supposed to. On this and so many issues, the President continues to be wrong, and the American people see it. The Web site is not working. The health care law clearly is not working. It is not working the way he promised. It is not working the way the American people need health care to work for them in this country.

It is time for the administration to stop sneaking out these changes under the cover of darkness, in blog posts. If the President is going to make a change, why doesn't he come and tell the American people what he is going to do?

It is time for the Democrats to stop the four-Pinocchio talking points. It is time for folks to be honest about the failings of the health care law. It is time to eliminate this terrible health care law and replace it with real reform that gives people better access to quality, affordable health care--the care they need, from a doctor they choose, at lower cost.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, we have reached a historic moment in the history of our Republic when the President of the United States claims the unilateral power to waive, delay, or just simply ignore the law of the land.

One of the most frequent questions I get back home in Texas is, How can the President do that? How can he do that? They remember when he was sworn in and put his hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States, and now how can he simply ignore what those laws are? How can that contradiction exist?

Usually what I find myself doing is saying: Well, Congress has the authority to pass the laws, and it is the executive branch--the President--that has the authority to enforce the law. That is why he has the authority to appoint the head of the Department of Justice, the Attorney General of the United States, Attorney General Eric Holder.

But when the President and, by extension, his own Department of Justice refuse to enforce the law of the land, what have we become? Well, we certainly cannot claim in good conscience to believe in the rule of law, where the law applies to all of us no matter whether you are the President of the United States or you are the most humble of our citizens. That is the promise over the top of the Supreme Court of the United States. All you have to do is look out the window here. It says: Equal Justice Under The Law.

Quite simply, the President has no legal authority under our Constitution or under any law in America to pick and choose which laws he is going to enforce or not enforce based on political expediency. And the fact that he claimed to do so again, for perhaps the two- dozenth time, does not change anything.

So my constituents at home ask me--they say: Well, Senator Cornyn, what are you going to do about it? I said: Well, I am going to support private litigation to challenge the President. Indeed, that is the nature of the litigation that originally challenged the Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare. There was private litigation that challenged the President's claimed authority to make a recess appointment and bypass the advice and consent function in the Constitution for the Congress to the National Labor Relations Board, which has now been held unconstitutional by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, and now the Supreme Court of the United States is considering an appeal from that court.

So there is a way to challenge the President, although it takes time and it is not exactly very satisfying because people say: Well, months, if not years, will go by before we will ultimately get a decision. But just think about the implications of what the President is doing. How would our Democratic friends feel if a Republican President decided not to enforce certain laws--let's say as they pertained to the environment?

They would be outraged. You know what. They would be right; it is wrong. I do not care whether you are a Democratic President or you are a Republican President or an Independent or whatever. It is wrong for the President to put his hand on the Bible, to take an oath to uphold the law of the land and then refuse to do so and to have no embarrassment, no sense of regret, but just the hubris and the arrogance to say: I am going to do it until somebody stops me.

I have said it before, and I will say it again. The issues here go far beyond the health care policy and ObamaCare. Checks and balances are not optional. They are the very fundamental structure of our Constitution. James Madison and the authors of the Federalist Papers, who wrote so eloquently about the new Constitution, at the time said that the concentration of power in a single branch of government is the very definition of tyranny. If the Obama administration continues to undermine checks and balances, it will not only undermine respect for the rule of law but also will create even greater distrust of the Federal Government and Congress itself, not to mention the office of the Presidency.

Make no mistake. We all understand why the President is going down this path. It is because ObamaCare has proved to be even more unworkable than its biggest critics might have imagined. The entire law needs--well, we need a do over. Let me put it that way. This side of the aisle has repeatedly encouraged the President and his allies to work with us to try to replace ObamaCare with patient-centered reforms which would bring down the cost and make sure that we as patients and our families get to make decisions in consultation with our family, and not outsource those to the Federal Government.

We could come up with some ideas, and we actually have ideas that would lower costs, expand coverage, and improve access to care. Unfortunately, the President has shown zero intention in addressing those. I know I heard him say, even at the latest State of the

Union: If my Republican friends have some good ideas, bring them to me.

We have been bringing them to him since 2009 and he simply has ignored or affirmatively rejected any other idea because he is so wed to this signature piece of legislation. I cannot help but think that one reason why the President claimed the authority to unilaterally waive the employer mandates until after the election is because he is focused on--you guessed it--the November elections, and he realizes what an albatross this is around the necks of those people who are going to be going to the voters and asking for them to reelect them.

But if he is wondering why Americans have grown so cynical about Washington, DC, all he needs to do is to look at his own administration's handling of this signature piece of legislation, a program that has come to symbolize big government overreach, and--I hate to say it, but it is true--contempt for the rule of law.

I want to say just a few more words in conclusion about America's fiscal health. As you know, Members of Congress have once again been asked to raise the debt ceiling, even though the national debt is in excess of $17 trillion. The President likes to boast about short-term deficit reduction. That is the difference between what the government brings in on an annual basis and what it spends.

It is true that on an annual basis the last couple of years the number has gone down a little bit, primarily because the President raised taxes by $1.7 trillion, coupled together with the caps on discretionary spending in the Budget Control Act. But the long-term trajectory remains just as bad as it ever was, and America continues to spend money that it does not have.

We are waiting for the President. He is the Commander in Chief. He is the leader of the free world. We are waiting for the President to put out a serious plan to address this problem. Many of us held out hope in December 2010 when the Simpson-Bowles bipartisan fiscal commission got together and made some bipartisan recommendations for doing exactly that. Unfortunately, they were ignored by the President. He demanded, in exchange for the so-called ``grand bargain'' that he wanted $1 trillion more in revenue, more taxes.

Imagine what a body slam that would have been to the American economy. The American economy is still so weak that unemployment is at a historic high, particularly compared to recoveries following recessions. But $1 trillion of additional taxes would have been catastrophic in terms of people looking for work and not being able to find work.

But since the President took office in 2009, our national debt has increased by $6.6 trillion. It is now larger than our entire economy. I wonder who the President thinks will have to pay that back. Probably not our generation; we will not be around. But this generation will be around. They will be left holding the bag as a result of our irresponsibility and unwillingness to deal with this important problem.

Even though interest rates are at a very low point now, and, yes, the interest we have to pay the Chinese government and our other creditors is at a relatively low rate, imagine what will happen, as the Congressional Budget Office has, when interest rates start to tick back up to their historic norms. We will see that more and more of the tax dollars of the American people are used to pay interest on the debt. Whether you are concerned about safety net programs that our most vulnerable citizens need or our national security, we will not be able to do either the way we want to and need to.

According to the CBO's baseline projections, the annual deficit will steadily rise after 2015 and exceed $1 trillion in 2022, at which time the Federal Government will be spending $755 billion a year on net interest payments alone. To put that in another perspective, net interest payments in 2014 are estimated to be $233 billion. That is not money that helps the most vulnerable in our society. That is not money that helps the warfighter keep us safe. That is money we are paying on the debt to our creditors, to the Chinese and other creditor nations as interest for all of this money we are borrowing that eventually somebody some day is going to have to pay back.

The Congressional Budget Office has consistently reminded us that even a small change in U.S. economic growth or interest rates or inflation could dramatically affect the Federal budget outlook. In fact, if interest rates were to rise just 1 percentage point above the CBO baseline each year over the next decade, our cumulative deficit will increase by $1.5 trillion. That shows you how fragile the condition of our fiscal house is.

On multiple occasions back in the mid 1990s, this Chamber came within one vote--one vote--of passing a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Since the vote in March of 1997, our national debt has gone from $5.3 trillion to $17.2 trillion. It has more than tripled. Yet even as the debt problem has gotten massively worse, the number of folks on the other side of the aisle who are willing to acknowledge that we cannot continue to spend money that we do not have and that the debt is a threat to our national security and our ability to do the things we know we want to do and need to do, continue to seem to ignore it.

I am proud to say that everyone on this side of the aisle has cosponsored a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution that would force Washington, whether led by Democrats or Republicans--it would force Washington to live within our means and meet the same type of fiscal requirements that virtually all State governments have to meet.

To those who think that a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution is not the answer, I ask: Where is your plan? I realize that there are some who think that we can raise taxes. Let's raise taxes some more. But even they must understand that we simply cannot tax away our long-term debt problem. The only way we can solve that is by controlling our spending and reforming our programs like Social Security and Medicare. Sooner or later, even the President will have to acknowledge that.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with the Senator from Hawaii for up to 20 minutes.

Madam President, I am on the floor with my colleague Senator Schatz from Hawaii to talk about our recent introduction of a piece of legislation entitled ``The College Affordability and Innovation Act of 2014,'' which we introduced along with our good friends Senator Murray of Washington and Senator Sanders of Vermont.

By way of framing the conversation we will have today, I wish to speak about one particular college that maybe paints a picture of the crisis we are in today with respect to the mounting cost that confronts kids and families when they want to get a college education and the variety of outcomes--the frankly surprising and often shocking variety of outcomes--that students are getting when they show up at the doors of institutions of education, particularly institutions of for-profit education. Corinthian College is a school in California--not a small one but a pretty big college. It has about 100 campuses in 25 different States. Let me give some statistics about Corinthian College. After about a year, over half of the students who enroll drop out. When they are finished with their education, whether it be to a degree or not, about one-third of all students who go to Corinthian default on their student loans. If 56 percent isn't a bad enough number in terms of 1- year dropout rates, after 4 years, only 6 percent of all the kids who walk in

through the doors of Corinthian College get a degree--6 percent of those kids.

Affordability isn't an argument in favor of this school either. For a legal assistant degree, they charge $28,000, but down the street at a community college a person can get that same degree for $2,500. They have a 35-percent default rate, a 6-percent 4-year graduation rate, and degrees that can cost 14 times as much as comparable local schools.

Guess what. The Federal Government rewards this school with $1.6 billion in Federal aid every year and $500 million in Pell grant money every year. So this example, which frankly can be repeated over and over, especially in the for-profit world, speaks to the challenge we have.

We have done a very credible job over the course of the last few years in keeping down the interest rate we charge students who want to take out loans to go to school. No one has worked harder on this issue inside this body and outside this body than the Presiding Officer. But we also have to have a concurrent conversation about the sticker price of college because it can't be enough that we are facilitating student borrowing; we actually have to try to engage in a real effort, using Federal leverage, for the first time perhaps in our history of Federal higher education policy, to push the cost of tuition down in the first place. That is what the College Affordability and Innovation Act seeks to do.

As Senator Schatz will talk about, there aren't a lot of issues that are much more important to the middle class than the cost of higher education. We both know that. We have partnered on this piece of legislation in part because not only are we not that far away from the time in our lives when we were in college, but we are paying back our student loans and saving for our kids' education, so we get how much of an annual budget can be taken up in paying for both prior and saving for future college. So we attack this problem in two ways--and I will just briefly speak about the first way and then I think the Senator from Hawaii can speak a little bit about the second method.

First, we think it is time for a little bit more innovation when it comes to the way in which college is structured. There is no magic to the fact that today one has to sit in a classroom for 4 years, taking a requisite amount of credits, in order to get a degree. There is a lot of interesting innovation happening out there where a small subset of schools are saying: Wait a second. Maybe there is a different way to do it.

For instance, maybe we should award a degree based on the competencies a student gets, regardless of whether the student needs 2 years or 3 years or 4 years to get that degree or, for instance, maybe we should give students who show up at their freshman year of school with prior learning more credit for that, whether they got that experience studying at a high school or in the work force or in the military. Some students don't have to start as a freshman; some students can start as a sophomore or a junior.

Maybe it is a renewed effort to consolidate graduate programs with undergraduate programs. I think President Obama is right; one doesn't need 7 years to become a lawyer in this country. It doesn't make a lot of sense that one has to essentially spend 10 to 15 years in education and training to become a doctor. We can consolidate graduate and undergraduate programs.

But whatever we do, we have to admit that one of the easiest ways to reduce the cost of a degree is to reduce the time it takes to get a degree. So the first part of our bill focuses on giving some grants to a small number of schools to build out the right way to do competency- based degree programming or initiatives to give greater credit for prior learning or consolidations of graduate and undergraduate degrees.

We introduced this piece of legislation because we think it is time to start having a real conversation about what the Federal Government can do to control and lower the price of college education. It is breaking the bank for families. We can do something about it. If we didn't have any tools at our disposal, maybe this wouldn't be a worthwhile conversation, but we give out $140 billion in Federal aid every year, and it is about time we start demanding some accountability for that money, whether it is accountability for cost or accountability for quality. It doesn't make sense for taxpayers to be sending $1.6 billion a year to a school with a 6-percent graduation rate, a 38- percent loan default rate, and prices that are simply not competitive in the landscape of college education.

I am pleased to be on the floor with my colleague Senator Schatz, and I am happy to turn the floor over to him.

I thank Senator Schatz.

Here is another statistic to think about: It was not so long ago that we ranked first in the Nation with respect to 25-year-olds to 35-year- olds with college degrees, and that was not only a source of immense pride for this country but really the genesis of our economic greatness--that we turned out more college-educated young people than any other country in the world. In a very short period of time we slipped from 1st to not 2nd or 3rd or 4th but to 12th. We are now 12th in the world with respect to the number of 25- to 35-year-olds with college degrees.

Part of the reason for that is that a lot of other countries have caught up to the United States. But the crisis in this country is no longer just a crisis of access. That was the buzzword for a long time, that we needed to increase access to college. We now have a crisis of completion in which millions of students are starting school and not finishing for a variety of reasons but largely because of the astronomical cost.

Today the majority of students are not graduating in 6 years. So the issue about affordability is not just about attracting more kids into the doors of college--because I will tell you, as I am sure Senator Schatz does, I talk to a lot of kids who graduate high school and do not apply to schools in my State because they are scared off by the cost and they do not believe they are going to be able to put together the family resources to pay for it--but we also are losing a generation of workers because it is taking young people now 6, 7, 8 years to complete a degree, and often many of them are never completing that degree while still taking on loan after loan after loan and getting stuck in the worst possible situation whereby they have thousands of dollars in debt and no certificate to bring into the workforce.

So our effort is an effort to address cost because we care about access, but it is also an effort to address cost because we care about completion, and that is one of the big problems we have in our system today.

Let's be clear as to what we are talking about here. We believe we are talking about a pretty light hand of accountability in the sense that we are really going after the true outliers. The Senator talked about the work happening at the University of Hawaii or the University of Connecticut. We do not imagine that any flagship university is going to run afoul of these accountability standards. I, frankly, do not believe many public universities at all are going to run afoul of these standards. We are really talking about the handful of outliers that have just absolutely abysmal retention rates, graduation rates, default rates, or tuition increase rates.

We are also talking about, we think, a pretty nuanced process to try to bring those schools around before they lose eligibility for funding. Our bill says that if you are not meeting these standards, you have a pretty long period of time in which you would be on probation with no practical effects, in which you could set upon an action plan to improve your affordability or outcomes. Then if, after that period of time, you still were not hitting your benchmarks, then you lose 10 percent of your Federal aid, then 20 percent, and then finally, in the fourth or fifth years, you would become ineligible. That is plenty of time for a university to correct. But if a school that is starting out with a 6-percent graduation rate cannot improve that over 5 years, why on Earth would we continue to send $1 billion to that school when it could be used for students who are attending schools that care a lot more about quality education?

As we wrap up our time on the floor, when my great- grandfather came to this country, he knew that without a college education he could get a job pretty easily that would be able to put food on the table, have decent health care for his family, even provide him with a little bit of a pension that would take care of him. His son, my grandfather, followed him into that same profession, working for a ball bearing factory in New Britain, CT.

While those jobs still exist, they are getting rarer and rarer. For the next generation to succeed, we know they need access to a college degree. They are not getting that access to completion because we have been woefully inadequate in using the tools at our disposal at the Federal level to try to put pressure on colleges to deliver on both affordability and outcome.

We hope the introduction of the College Affordability and Innovation Act will allow us to open a new front in the debate on higher education to promote the idea of reducing the sticker price of college.

I thank my colleague for joining me, and I yield the floor.